Southern Brown Bandicoot, Image from Australian Wildlife Conservancy.
According to Professor Norman Myers earth is experiencing the largest mass extinction in 65 million years with the loss of species more severe than the five mass extinctions of the geological past.
As mentioned at a previous blog post, south-western Western Australia has been listed as one of the hotspots in Australia. I asked David Ward from Western Australia for comment and he replied:
"Hello Jen,
I am not an expert on extinctions, but I believe there have been a lot in south-western Australia, especially in the cleared wheat belt.
The forests have had, as far as I know, very few losses, despite logging and regular burning for many years. I would say that lack of regular burning, followed by very fierce fires, is the main threat to forest species.
Several times, plants have been reported extinct, or endangered, only to reappear profusely after a fire. Native animals are, if anything, making a comeback, due to CALM's fox-baiting.
The supposedly endangered Brown Bandicoot is common in the semi-rural suburb where I live, and is even regarded by some as a nuisance, digging up gardens.
A nearby golf course is swarming with kangaroos.
There is a problem with loss of habitat and species, but we should take a balanced view.
Does Norman Myers mention inappropriate fire exclusion as a threat to biota? I would say it is at least as worthy of attention as clearing.
Oddly, few university researchers have tackled it, concentrating instead on the effects of frequent burning.
Scientists may be objective in a particular study, but the choice of research question is far from objective. Four legs good, two legs bad?
Regards
David Ward"
Ian Mott writes,
Thinksy,
Given your response to my not having a reference to the Florida Panther story was to imply that this was a multiple case, I did go back to a highly relevant discussion on the Lanholders News & Views in May 2004.
Discussion, Redefining a species to suit a political Agenda
"U.S. FISH & WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST CHARGES MANIPULATION OF SCIENCE ON FLORIDA PANTHER"
A veteran biologist at the U.S. Fish and wildlife Service (FWS) has filed a legal complaint against FWS, charging it with
intentionally using flawed scientific data in decisions regarding the endangered Florida panther.
"The Fish and Wildlife Service is under severe pressure from its political superiors to commit scientific fraud to avoid inconveniencing campaign contributors," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which joined FWS scientist Andrew Eller, Jr. on the May 4 complaint.
Eller, a 17-year employee of the FWS, has worked on Florida panther recovery efforts for 10 years. Eller and PEER charge that "[p]anther literature considered 'best available science' by the USFWS contains unsupported assumptions, uses inappropriate analytical methods, and selectively uses data to support conclusions."
FWS has cited this literature to justify overestimates of the panther's breeding population, reproductive and survival rates,
and underestimates of the panther's habitat needs - using the panther's less active daytime habits to estimate the range for the mostly nocturnal species.
The errors have been exposed in published peer reviews, field reports, court declarations, and by a 2003 independent, joint review team of the FWS and the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. FWS has 60 days in which to accept or
contest the Eller/PEER complaint.
The Florida panther was listed as endangered under the ESA in 1967. There are only an estimated 60-80 wild panthers left, numbers so few that the species is on the edge of genetic collapse. Cougars from Texas have been introduced into the Florida population to diversify the gene pool".
Some thoughts on the Panther story. - Walter Starck, UCQ
The American panther (aka cougar, mountain lion, puma, catamount) has long been recognized as a single species that ranges throughout temperate and tropical North, Central and South America. Like many other wide ranging land mammals its population is divided into numerous sub-populations that differ slightly from one another but which can and will readily interbreed
given the opportunity. By any reasonable definition of species these sub-populations are not even subspecies but at best simply races.
Systematists have long recognized one species with little question or disagreement. For purposes of incurring the Endangered Species Act however environmentalists have redefined the species concept to suit their agenda and any detectable difference in populations can and often is accorded species distinction.
Over the past 50 years panthers, raccoons, grey wolves, coyotes, American opossums, armadillos, and sundry other creatures have markedly increased their range, habitats, and populations in the U.S. In part this is due to better game laws and probably decreasing hunting but there has also been a change in the behaviour of some of these animals as well. Somehow they learned to live with humans and instead of continuing to retreat they started to move in. Foxes, raccoons, and opossums are now common in many cities and coyotes and panthers are increasingly seen in suburban areas. Wolves have notably expanded their range eastward.
Wildlife has a much greater capacity to adapt than is generally credited and given half a chance many species will literally move in with us.
Here in Australia we have an ongoing example of adaptability with the geographic spread on cane toads. When they first arrive in a new area naive predators eat them and die creating hysteria among even more naïve environmentalists. In a short time however most predators leave them alone and a few figure out how to eat them while avoiding the poison glands. Then the toads spread into another area and the eco-hysteria follows never looking back to see that all the dire predictions of extinctions didn't happen.
Pointing such things out however never finds hopeful interest among environmentalists, only denial and anger. Their commitment is to the problem, not its solution.
Walter Starck
Ian Mott (Landholders Institute) Comments
I couldn't agree more, Walter. Have you read Tim Low, "the new nature", which has hundreds of examples of same.
The real story in this article is the fact that the Texas Cougar has been mated with the Florida Panther to diversify the gene pool [and thereby remove the very minor distinctions that were used to justify its listing as a separate species]. This is another way of saying that they are essentially the same species. This fragmentation of the one species into a number of species, apparently based on human state boundaries, can only serve to mislead the public on the true spread and population of that species.
It is a bit like the way sub-tropical Byron Shire has included the plains dwelling Brolga on it's list of threatened species. True, one may have been sighted there but one has also been sighted in New Zealand (presumably after a big night in Bondi). It's listing may well also be based on the inputs of the sort of "esteemed scientists" that the PEER statement above refers to (is that high or low esteem?). But one can truthfully state that any modification made to environmental values in either place will have absolutely zero impact on the sustainability of Australia's Brolga population.
One might ask, "what about the Georgian Panther, the Alabama Panther or the Louisiana Cougar"? Surely, these would be even more closely related to the Florida Panther. An old sceptic might ask why their closer genetic material was not introduced instead. The only plausible reason these Cougars/Panthers (Couthers?) from in between were not introduced would be due to some deemed lack of [sufficient] genetic differentiation that would not solve the Florida Couther's supposed inbreeding problem.
And the very pregnant (sic) conclusion to be drawn from this is that roving young single Couthers in heat, like young single humans from Byron to Bali, may be in the habit of crossing more than one state boundary in the hope of getting laid.
One could reasonably suspect that US FWS Biologists may also be guilty of manipulating science by over compartmentalising the one species (Dixie Couther?) into a number of less numerous species and failing to distinguish between it's ordinary (mum and dad) night time range in search of food and their much, much, larger mating range. This, along with the species
willingness to cross, and exploit, so called "gaps" between habitat clusters is, of course, the real determinant of sustainability.
For as any owner of an orchard, chook pen or Mango tree will testify, farms and backyards are rarely classified as "habitat" but they seem to deliver remarkable levels of "habitat services" to a remarkable array of both threatened and non-threatened species.
But you will never read that on BushGreenwatch, will you? And as for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), one could ask, what next? Paedophiles for the Rights of Children? Ian Mott"
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Comnment was blocked by filter.
Motty's on the rampage again. The more pressure we exert on species and subspecies, the fewer opportunities there are for them to make either evolutionary or ecological adaptations. Period.
You've made a valiant attempt, as usual, to argue. But the standard pattern is emerging - the sketchier your understanding, the noisier you get. As you acknowledge, your examples are unsubstantiated (& unAustralian) so there's no point examining them further, particularly as we know too well how you revert to lumberjack humour as a diversionary tactic when you're grasping for straws. If you want to demonstrate any knowledge of this topic Ian, give some decent examples from your own region.
Name an instance where you have pressed me for more information. If not then retract the statement!
Indicate an instance when you pressed for more information and I declined. If not then retract the statement!
You are still begging the question and blatantly weasling. Tell me what an "unsuitable area to pass through" might be.
I can give you one good example of such connection without "suitable areas to pass through" and that is the way eggs of certain aquatic species stick to the feet of ducks and get transported to newly constructed farm dams. No connectivity but nature finds a way.
Sorry to confuse you Ian, my reference to migration was not specifically linked to cougars. It was a question relative to any species, not just your unsubstantiated KFC dunpster raiding cats. The asking for a reference is because I have read a number of things from you that seem to have no factual basis whatsoever when pressed for more information. So in relation to creatures large and small that do not have suitable areas to migrate through, how do these fill the niche created by the no longer existing population? I trust I can look forward to a suitably neanderthal response, as you seem to have filled that niche quite ably.
Fine, Thinksy, instead of "rules out the possibility of any successful genetic response", I will substitute "reduces the probability of any successful genetic response". Once again you are extrapolating my statements to an extreme to facilitate your usual "bile movement".
And I am merely pointing out that change has already taken place rapidly, in the form of past habitat modification and that we are unlikely to see much genetic modification in our lifetime.
And your example of a behavioural adaption with a genetic foundation was no such thing. For a behavioural adaption to have a genetic foundation it would need to relate to an action that could not have been learned without the genetic change. Raiding dumpsters is nothing more than a modification in the hunting behaviour of Cougars.
And as for the reference to Cougars in dumpsters, I don't recall whether it was in an email string or a published reference. So you can choose to either ignore it or accept the possibility that something could exist as fact without having been referenced.
Your statement, "and if that behaviour is hereditary, then the population's gene pool will be skewed towards garbage raiders, ie adaptation is occurring." is typical of your soggy intellect. You used a conditional "if, then", to proclaim a conclusive fact, ie "adaption is occurring", instead of retaining the conditional, "adaption would, or may, occur".
This taking of a conditional case on board as some sort of self evident fact, is par for the course for schizophrenics and heavy dope users. You can actually test for it with an MRI scan. And given Travis' persistence with his wipe out accusations, it might pay to take him along with you.
And Travis' question, "how does migration happen when there are no suitable routes to migrate along, or is there no such thing as fragmentation?" is simply begging the question.
What does he think a suitable route for a cougar to migrate along might be? A continually linked canopy of trees? Does he think they won't migrate across an open paddock at night? Does he think they won't go through a corn field or along a creek bank? Do they never cross roadways to get to the chook pens, garbage bins and dumpsters?
These moggies have obviously managed to get across the mighty Mississippi so Travis might like to justify his implication "when there are no suitable routes to migrate along", by taking out a map of southern USA and identifying what it is on the boundary of the Florida and Alabama state line that severs connectivity.
Again we have this conclusion of fact from an imaginary circumstance. All that green propaganda has rotted your brain.
You don't understand these issues very well Ian or you're deliberately playing ignorant because every point you made above is faulty.
Mating does not alone provide a species definition.
In NO way did I say or imply that the ONLY possible response is an evolutionary one. Ecological responses can also occur.
How can you make an absolute, narrow statement that 'the very pace of change rules out the possibility of any successful genetic response'? ARe you prepared to argue that there is no evidence whatsoever, anywhere, in recent times, that any species is evolving in response to modern day pressures? (Are you arguing that the climate is changing rapidly now? Or that we're logging too much too fast? Doubt it.) It's not solely the pace of change that's the problem, it's the nature and extent of the pressures too.
You should be aware that you argued against yourself. Some behavioural responses can have genetic foundations. eg if garbage-raiding individuals successfully live and reproduce, yet non-garbage-raiding individuals die of starvation, and if that behaviour is hereditary, then the population's gene pool will be skewed towards garbage raiders, ie adaptation is occurring. However if you getting locking lids on the bins, then they'll all starve to death. Voila, extirpation. No doubt you'd like to shoot a few more just to test the boundaries between extirpation and extinction.
As Travis asked, where are the references for you ill-considered arguments? Either you were playing silly buggers or you know next to nothing on this topic and should spend less time mouthing off on areas where you're ignorant and more time learning how to assess the full extent of the biodiversity on your property. Forget the cougars, what's threatened in your backyard (aside from treehugging greenies)?