[MCN] Rivers: Ag, sprawl, & winners-losers among fish

[Lance Olsen]

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Public Release: 21-Feb-2017
Winners, losers among fish when landscape undergoes change

Excerpts

A new study by the University of Washington and 
Simon Fraser University finds that some fish lose 
out while others benefit as urban and 
agricultural development encroaches on streams 
and rivers across the United States

"There are a lot of good reasons why we should 
try to stem the spread of non-native fish, but 
the reality is communities are shifting rapidly 
with global change, and species from other 
locations are playing an increasing role in 
ecosystems," Moore said.

Although the researchers recognize the potential 
ecological damages caused by some non-native 
fishes, they point to their growing importance in 
freshwater rivers and streams in buffering 
against environmental degradation. In the western 
states, more than half of the fish species in 
rivers and streams are non-native.

"The reality is, many of these non-native species 
are here to stay, and we found they do serve an 
important ecosystem role," Olden said. "It's 
important to recognize that species of all 
origins are playing a role in how communities 
function."

JOURNAL
Global Change Biology
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13536/abstract
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"In the early 1990s a number of long-running 
trends were apparently cresting Š. Tommy 
Mullaney, eleven, of Crownsville, Maryland, 
returned home from camp in the summer of 1990 to 
find his name inscribed on a MasterCard complete 
with a $5,000 credit line.  ' I jumped up and 
down and said Wow - the hologram was cool,' 
Tommy told the Washington Post. 'But it sure made 
me wonder who was running that bank'."

James Grant. Pp. 436-437, "Afterword: End of the 
Line," Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending 
in America from the Civil War to Micheal Milken.

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"Full of recent references and statistics, 
Harvesting the Biosphere adds to the growing 
chorus of warnings about the current trajectory 
of human activity on a finite planet, of which 
climate change is only one dimension.

"One can quibble with some assumptions or tweak 
Smil's calculations, but the bottom line will not 
change, only the time it may take humanity to 
reach a crisis point."

Stephen Running. "Approaching the Limits" Science 15 March 2013.
Book review. Harvesting the Biosphere: What we 
have taken from Nature. by Vaclav Smil .  MIT 
Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 315 pp. $29, £19.95. 
ISBN 9780262018562