[MCN] Even without the effects of global warming, an urgency about wildlife populations

[Lance Olsen]

Scientific Reports 13 January 2023 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-27670-9#article-info>
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-27670-9

Partial COVID‐19 closure of a national park reveals negative influence of low‐impact recreation on wildlife spatiotemporal ecology 

Alissa K. Anderson, John S. Waller & Daniel H. Thornton

Abstract

Human presence exerts complex effects on the ecology of species, which has implications for biodiversity persistence in protected areas experiencing increasing human recreation levels. However, the difficulty of separating the effect on species of human presence from other environmental or disturbance gradients remains a challenge. The cessation of human activity that occurred with COVID‐ 19 restrictions provides a ‘natural experiment’ to better understand the influence of human presence on wildlife. Here, we use a COVID‐19 closure within a heavily visited and highly protected national park (Glacier National Park, MT, USA) to examine how ‘low‐impact’ recreational hiking affects the spatiotemporal ecology of a diverse mammal community. Based on data collected from camera traps when the park was closed and then subsequently open to recreation, we found consistent negative responses to human recreation across most of our assemblage of 24 species, with fewer detections, reduced site use, and decreased daytime activity. Our results suggest that the dual mandates of national parks and protected areas to conserve biodiversity and promote recreation have potential to be in conflict, even for presumably innocuous recreational activities. There is an urgent need to understand the fitness consequences of these spatiotemporal changes to inform management decisions in protected areas. 


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Nature Published: 11 October 2016 <https://www.nature.com/articles/538141a#article-info>
It’s time to get real about conservation

Aaron M. Ellison <https://www.nature.com/articles/538141a#auth-Aaron_M_-Ellison> 
Opening paragraphs
How can scientists protect biodiversity? In the wake of August’s Great Elephant Census, which revealed a precipitous decline in numbers throughout Africa, there were the usual calls from researchers for more and better data. Only if we know where and how many of each species there are, this argument goes, can we hope to conserve them. 

This is nonsense.

Better data will not save elephants, rhinos or any other species. An enormous number of individuals, academic institutions, local, state and national governments, and multinational and non-governmental organizations have been collecting, assimilating and organizing such data for decades, essentially fiddling while our biological heritage burns.

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“  …  recovery rates decrease as a catastrophic regime shift is approached, a phenomenon known in physics as “critical slowing down.”  ….  In all the models we analyzed, critical slowing down becomes apparent quite far from a threshold point, suggesting that it may indeed be of practical use as an early warning signal..”

Egbert H. van Nes and Marten Scheffer.  Slow Recovery from Perturbations as a Generic Indicator of a Nearby Catastrophic Shift. The American Naturalist June 2007

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Proceedings of the National Academies of Science

Turning back from the brink: Detecting an impending regime shift in time to avert it 

Reinette Biggs, Stephen R. Carpenter, and William A. Brock 

Ecological regime shifts are large, abrupt, long-lasting changes in ecosystems that often have considerable impacts on human economies and societies. Avoiding unintentional regime shifts is widely regarded as desirable, but prediction of ecological regime shifts is notoriously difficult. Recent research indicates that changes in ecological time series (e.g., increased variability and autocorrelation) could potentially serve as early warning indicators of impending shifts. A critical question, however, is whether such indicators provide sufficient warning to adapt management to avert regime shifts. We examine this question using a fisheries model, with regime shifts driven by angling (amenable to rapid reduction) or shoreline development (only gradual restoration is possible). The model represents key features of a broad class of ecological regime shifts. We find that if drivers can only be manipulated gradually management action is needed substantially before a regime shift to avert it; if drivers can be rapidly altered aversive action may be delayed until a shift is underway. Large increases in the indicators only occur once a regime shift is initiated, often too late for management to avert a shift. To improve usefulness in averting regime shifts, we suggest that research focus on defining critical indicator levels rather than detecting change in the indicators. Ideally, critical indicator levels should be related to switches in ecosystem attractors; we present a new spectral density ratio indicator to this end. Averting ecological regime shifts is also dependent on developing policy processes that enable society to respond more rapidly to information about impending regime shifts. 


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“Whereas any one line of evidence may be weak in itself, a number of lines of evidence, taken together and found to be consistent, reinforce one another exponentially.”

Preston Cloud and Aharon Gibor. The Oxygen Cycle. 
Scientific American, September 1970

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"Given the speed of climatic changes and numerous physiological constraints, it is unlikely that human physiology will evolve the necessary higher heat tolerance (21,22), highlighting that outdoor conditions will remain deadly even if social adaptation is broadly implemented. “
 
Mora et al. Global risk of deadly heat. Nature Climate Change. Published online 19 June 2017
DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3322
 

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