I was recently given the opportunity to read and review Will Stolzenburg’s book Where the Wild Things Were, recently out in paperback, about the importance of top predators in ecosystem functioning. It was a pleasure to read and recommended for ecologists and non-ecologists alike. Will does a great job going through the last century of our understanding of food webs, slowly building up the argument that top predators really are necessary to sustain any balance that has evolved within a community. Will was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book:

Q. To me, the great appeal of Where the Wild Things Were lies along two axes: first, a respectable caution with regards to “the truth” and second, a painstaking craft of organization. The argument in the book builds upon itself, while the true weight of the situation is slowly revealed.

I’d like to start with the first part of that, “Truth.” I’m often told as a graduate student that my job is to question all of the “truths” in my field. By contrast, in science journalism, it often seems that the job is to shoe-horn the truth into the hook. One of the great things about this book is the care that you take to delineate what is and is not known. For example, your depiction of the Pleistocene extinction debate (p. 40-41) is excellent. You’re able to somehow take a complex subject that gets a lot of people very angry and lay out the major points without detracting from the flow of the book. What’s your process for getting a handle on what scientists know, and then whittle it down to make it entertaining, but still informative?

A. If my rendition of the Pleistocene overkill seems even-handed, it’s because I’m honestly divided, albeit heavily veering to one side. I’ve always harbored a naive sense of disbelief that these skinny spearmen could clean out entire continents of megafauna in so rapid fashion. But I wince even more when I’m asked to believe that the umpteenth glacial cycle in a series of so many finally punched the megabeasts’ ticket. Over the years I’ve spoken with both sides of the debate more than a few times, and I’ve come to sense that each mischieviously loves the fight as much as the truth. So I’ve come to the point of feeling comfortable just throwing the debate out for grabs, to let the buyer beware, even though I don’t doubt that we had a starring role in the blitzkrieg then as we do now.

(more…)

Here are photographs of young albatross, dead from too much plastic in their stomach. These really look like a conceptual art piece. (via The Edge of the American West)

“Fearless.”

From Robert Harrison’s review (sorry, subscription only) of two new books on Teddy Roosevelt:

One of the hardest lessons for Americans to learn is how to receive, perhaps because we believe so fervently in earning, or perhaps because we have a long history of merely taking, if not grabbing. Perhaps Robert Frost had it wrong in his poem ‘The Gift Outright’ when he wrote: ‘the land was ours before we were the land’s.’ What if you first have to feel that you belong to the land before you can feel that the land belongs to you?

• Argentina, Paraguay join Brazil in pledging to preserve the Atlantic Forest (the “most endangered” tropical forest, down from an estimated 500,000 sq. kms to about 35,000 sq. kms. today).
• Columbia University will not be accepting applications for its 2 year program in environmental journalism, due to falling employment in the field, rising costs of education and lack of financial aid for students.
• This one’s being picked up all over the place: forests in the NW might increase in the next century due to climate change. Although the net effects will be positive (in a value neutral sort of way), there will be a decline in growth at lower elevations, and an increase in growth at higher elevations (= more difficult to log). At, least, that’s what the model says.
• This is kind of awesome. Communities in the Andes are using large nets to collect fog drip to use for irrigation. Although it only rains about 1.5 inches / year in the area, it’s foggy for almost 9 months.

The Big Picture recently celebrated World Animal Day 2009. Some great photos, but this is my favorite (with the well-preserved baby mammoth coming in a very close second):

• Bushmeat hunting in central Africa still classified as unsustainable by TRAFFIC based on data from FAOSTAT (the UN Food and Agriculture Organization database).
• Winner of the Most Depressing Lead of the Year: “Species of plants, animals and other categories of living things are disappearing. And millions of people still live in extreme poverty.”
• Runner-up, division of Applied Ecology: “U.S. researchers say they’ve determined it will not be easy to scientifically predict the spread of invasive plants and animals.”
• On ecology and economics.

I’m sorry, this is literally insane. Not for pre-breakfast viewing.

After a dreadful PR year for both privatization and government intervention, perhaps we should have expected a renewed enthusiasm for the commons. And that’s just what we got yesterday morning, straight out of Oslo. It’s too bad that University of Indiana political science Professor Elinor Ostrom had to win both the first Nobel Prize in Economics ever awarded to a woman as well as the first pendant the committee handed out after sullying its credibility by awarding President Obama the Peace Prize before he even pardons his first turkey. But no matter! If we can spin Obama’s win as a “call to action,” why not do the same with Ostrom’s? Pessimism (fatalism) aside, I’m all for the twenty-teens being the decade of disappearing nuclear warheads and retreating neoliberal resource management.

Let’s hear from the Laureate herself!

An excerpt form the introduction to her 1990 book, (more…)