There is a brief but interesting article concerning how courts are dealing with climate change as it relates to endangered species titled The Revival of Climate Change Science in US Courts
By WH Rodgers Jr, AK Rodgers, Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy, 2016, 6(2), p533-541. Generally, the courts have failed to act in such cases because of the fact that “climate change” is still reviewed as having a great deal of “uncertainty” about it. However, they cite one case in which Oregon District Court Judge Simon employed climate change in a ruling concerning federally-operated dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers and endangered salmon. The judge ruled that scientific “uncertainty does not excuse NOAA Fisheries from conducting an analysis using the best available science regarding climate change and its effects” and the court remanded the matter back to the agency.” This is interesting and shows how the criterion of “best available science” can counter the argument of “scientific uncertainty.” The article is available at https://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1603/6WJELP533.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y
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Ecotourism, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Wildlife. When I began my research for my Wildlife Politics book, I found relatively little research that focused on BOTH wildlife AND politics. One exception to this generalization concerns the literature on neoliberalism as it relates to wildlife conservation. There are a significant number of articles and chapters that discuss the themes of neoliberalism defined by the Hill & Byrne article cited below as “the environment is commodified and valued for its potential economic returns.” I appreciate the existence of this literature and have found some useful research from it. However, I have found that much of this literature seems satisfied to label some conservation activity as neoliberal thus implicitly condemning it but they usually do not go into detail on how it has been harmful and how some (usually vague) alternative to these activities would have been better. The 2016 article by Hill and Byrne is titled “The ecotourism-extraction nexus and its implications for the long-term sustainability of protected areas: what is being sustained and who decides? Published in the Journal of Political Ecology Vol.23, 308-327. This article is an example of research that goes beyond mere labeling of activity as neoliberal with a good description of the development of whale-watching ecotourism in a small Mexican village. The location of the ecotourism is El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve that has been designated a Whale Sanctuary and World Heritage site. The area has two lagoons where ecotourists come to watch gray whales up close enough to touch. The ecotourism businesses provide employment for 13 “seasonal employees” who live in the Ejido Benito Juárez, which can be described as “communal land” occupied by poor peasants that has received official designation from the Mexican government. The residents receive modest financial benefits from their ecotourism but Hill and Byrne state that more income is derived from payments by a private salt mining company that is using the land next to the lagoons. The authors interviewed ejido residents and some voiced the opinion they were dissatisfied with payments from the salt company because they were small compared to the profits the company was reaping. The salt company tried to expand their operations to another “pristine lagoon” but after a long battle, thanks to a coalition of ejido participants, foreign and domestic NGOs, and “international celebrities,” the proposed expansion was rejected in a 2000 presidential decree. Hill and Byrne conclude that ecotourism has brought “mixed blessings” because it has not lived up to its “purported social and economic benefits.” They argue that many of the ejido participants are satisfied with the status quo and have “little motivation to change existing arrangements.” They go on to state that the inhabitants are focused on “their immediate needs” and prioritize short-term economic development over “long-term social equity.” Thus they conclude that ecotourism “cannot substitute for genuine institutional reform” and argue that their findings show the need for “political reform” and changes to the ejido “land tenure system.” Although I am sympathetic to the authors’ wishes for ecotourism to result in underlying social change and equity, as an individual committed first and foremost to wildlife conservation rather than social equity, their description of ecotourism sounds to me like a success. It appears that the ecotourism helped to stop what was a strong effort at harmful development that would have hurt whales. It also appears that ecotourism is contributing to the well-being of the small community of members of the ejido. Still, as one reads this article, it appears that the authors think they have proven another case of the harmful effects of “neoliberalism.” I question this. What would have happened if there had been no ecotourism development? My reading of their case study suggests that the outcome would have been worse for wildlife conservation.
How is the requirement for consultation under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act? Does it hurt energy producers and does it enforce needed wildlife conservation? As a student of the implementation of the endangered species act, I have found few studies that give me an idea of how it works in practice. Thus I found the 2016 publication by Melinda Taylor, Romany Webb, and Vanessa Puig-Williams to be a most useful publication. (2016): Protecting Species or Endangering Development? How Consultation Under the Endangered Species Act Affects Energy Projects on Public Lands. Research Paper No. 2016-8 October. It studied 179 consultations done with energy producers (oil & gas, solar, and wind) between 2010 and 2014. It provides quantitative data on how long the consultations took. In general, their conclusion is that the consultations were done in a timely manner and were not characterized by long delays as critics of the ESA often contend. Their data show that the length of the consultations were well within the limits set by the ESA. They also found that “no project was stopped or extensively altered as a result of FWS finding jeopardy or adverse modification during consultation.” These findings appear to undercut much of the criticism of the ESA as causing a regulatory nightmare inhibiting energy development. The authors show that the official length of consultation can be misleading because “informal consultation” between USFWS and energy producers usually takes place long before the official start of the project. However, even taking into consideration the informal consultation, the report appears to show that the ESA has not been a major blockage to energy production on public lands. They show USFWS and the producers have developed mechanisms to speed up the consultation process such as Programmatic Biological Opinions (PBOs) which allow “expedited review” covering similar actions. The study found that consultations using PBOs took 90 percent less time. They state that PBOs often “include “boiler-plate” conservation measures designed to minimize the impacts of future projects and thereby provide project developers with greater certainty regarding the steps they may be required to take.” According to this study, consultations over oil and gas projects take relatively short periods of time. By way of contrast, solar and wind projects tend to cover a much larger area and consequently the consultation is much longer. The authors argue that, based on their communications with both USFWS and energy producers, the consultation process is “mostly collaborative” and not adversarial. In short, the ESA does not appear to be the “bugaboo” as it is often depicted by ESA critics. However, the report focuses much less on how well the consultation process protects wildlife. They note that only 10 percent of the oil and gas projects were found to be even subject to consultation. The authors list 3 possible reasons for this: (1) Federal agencies may be taking a narrow view of review to avoid the consultation requirement. (2) Oil and gas developers may be deliberately siting projects away from species habitat to avoid need to consult. (3) The best sites to develop may be located outside of species habitat. The authors believe based on “anecdotal” evidence that reasons 2 and 3 were the most likely reason for the low percent reviewed. However, as someone interested in wildlife conservation, it seems to me that a review of the consultation process that focuses on wildlife conservation is needed—this study is clearly focused on sensitivity to the needs of energy producers, not wildlife conservation needs. Based on this study, it appears that USFWS is sensitive and responsive to energy producer concerns—it is not clear that they are as sensitive and responsive to the needs of wildlife. This report is accessible from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2867113
One of most difficult wildlife politics issues concerns wild horses in the U.S. I discuss them in detail in my chapter on charismatic wildlife in my Wildlife Politics book. Humans are so positively attached to them that the option of killing them is not politically feasible so that their numbers have grown large. They conflict with both ranchers eating the forage they want for their cattle and also other wildlife species that are negatively affected by their impact on the range so that environmentalists also oppose them. The one ideal solution for all sides is the birth control option but it is not clear how feasible this is. An article by Jacob Bunge in the Wall Street Journal describes how volunteers are shooting darts into females He quotes a BLM official as saying that darting cannot deal with the problem that covers areas “as large as Delaware” so they are using multiple additional approaches such as “spaying, neutering, and adoptions.” The article is available at http://www.wsj.com/articles/they-shoot-horses-with-birth-control-darts-dont-they-1472415126
#1 Does rarity (and listing) protect or harm species? The accuracy and relevance of assumptions made about economics underlies many of the major arguments about the impact of activities such as illegal wildlife trafficking, the need to ban ivory and other products derived from wildlife. A major argument made by those who espouse the opening of trade in ivory and other wildlife products (e.g., medicine made from tigers, rhinos, etc.) is that regulated trade can help preserve wildlife habitat because owners of the habitat will have a reason to preserve it that will not exist if bans exist. Secondly, they argue that as wildlife become threatened and scarce, the cost of harvesting/poaching of them will become so great that these activities will cease and thus the species will not be driven to extinction but will be able to recover. A 2006 article in Plos Biology by Frank Courchamp et al. titled “Rarity Value and Species Extinction: The Anthropogenic Allee Effect” calls the second of these assumptions into question. They posit the existence of what they label an “Anthropogenic Allee Effect (AAE) in which the increasing rarity of a species makes it all the more desirable to humans as a matter of prestige and value so that threats to species are not saved by increasing rarity but, indeed, may suffer all the more from it! They cite several cases to illustrate the AAE including butterflies in Papua New Guinea, the great Auk (bird), Napoleon wrasse (a reef fish) served as a delicacy in China, many sturgeon and abalone fish, and rare turtles and geckos used as pets. The most disturbing aspect of the article is the fact that they find that official listing of a species as threatened such as by CITES increases the price of the species and thus can make it the subject of even more abuse from threatening activities such as trophy hunting, poaching, pet trade, native “medicinal” uses, and ecotourism. Unless the species can be effectively protected, the assignment of “threatened status can make matters worse! The authors have provide no hope for easy solution other than for humanity to be informed about the harm of their actions and the development of more effective regulations. The article is available from http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040415
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During my research for the book, I noticed that there was no blog available for sharing informaton on wildlife conservation and thus I set up this blog to accomplish this purpose. Please share any informaticoncerning issues related to wildife policy and politics. I welcome feedback from users concerning this blog and website.
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