Are We Trying To Save Animals In The Wrong Places?

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Sperm live in the open sea. Or at least that's what scientists have believed for a long time. The US government's 2010 Sperm Whale Recovery Plan describes their range as "generally marine". A 2016 Australian study described whales as searching the "deep seas of the global oceans". This concept has been around for a long time. In Moby-Dick, published in 1851, the whaling ship Pequod chases sperm whales out of port for several days.

But this does not mean that sperm whales want to be confined to the open sea. A new study that examined records of peaking Yankee whales between 1792 and 1912 found that sperm whales were approaching the coast. Although sperm whales need deep waters to search for food, they abandoned coastal areas because that was the first place humans hunted them. "Usually we look for what's available first," Tom B. told me. In other words, these remote ocean environments aren't the only places where sperm whales have always lived; They are the last refuge for whales that have survived centuries of whaling which has halved their population. (The study focused on the western Indian Ocean, but the pattern is the same around the world, Letiser said.)

A generation after mass whaling ended in 1986, giants of the sea still lurk. But if people could stop hitting them with boats or nets, and if marine activity could subside dramatically, there would theoretically be no way to prevent sperm from recolonizing those coastal areas. When the ocean is close to shore, as is the case in California's Monterey Bay, you may see them drifting ashore.

Whales aren't the only species where our distribution maps could be wrong. According to experts, the modern range of many species is probably determined not only by climate tolerance or food availability, but also by remoteness from dangerous people. So we try to save animals in the wrong places. If our understanding of species membership is based on guessing which groups live as far away from humans as possible, we endanger wildlife in limited, resource-poor areas. In a world where animals are already dealing with rising temperatures, hunting and fishing and managing larger portions of their habitats for agriculture and development, trying to preserve them in environments of poor quality seems like a challenge.

Species conservation often relies on the idea of the "native range," a somewhat amorphous concept that roughly refers to the area in which a species naturally or naturally occurs, excluding places where it has been introduced by humans. This range is generally accepted as the best possible habitat for the species. Therefore, protection zones can be built. Recovery efforts will attempt to compensate for this. And if a species doesn't fit in, it can be considered "invasive" and can even be targeted for extermination.

"Using the concept of native range limits us," says Brian Silliman, an ecologist at Duke University. Silliman, who has not been involved in sperm whale research, believes that many local distribution maps are wrong, not just a few. He gave me an example which he learned very cleverly. The crocodile almost ate it. He was collecting data on snails on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia when he was accosted by a 12-foot alligator, an unknown species, prowling in or near the ocean. Silliman appeared under the crocodile, and was startled and backed away, beating his wings until he fled. "It appears that the crocodile is in a marine environment along the southeastern coast," he said. Why didn't we know that alligators could thrive on the beach? Because we killed all the crocodiles on the beach.

The same thing happened to many animals. The puma's name "mountain lion" indicates that it preferred the mountains, but Silliman says they also roamed the plains, where there were more predators. "There is no such thing as a mountain lion," he said. "We just made it up. This is his last home." When conservationists worked to return sea otters to the Pacific coast, they assumed they would live in the ocean. But rehabilitated otter populations thrive in salt marshes and kelp meadows where they are protected from killer whales and sharks.

Silliman estimates that for many species, our inferred original ranges are only a quarter of the total historical range. And in many cases, the "native areas" that animals now occupy may be places where they hardly live because they are rugged and remote places where people do not want to go; Steep cliffs, high mountains and arctic seas. Conservationists try to encourage animals to live and reproduce in suboptimal environments by dumping resources in the wrong places.

Asking conservationists to consider the "full" or "true" range of a species seems reasonable, but quantifying that range quickly becomes difficult. If the goal is to understand where an animal lived "naturally" before humans hunted it or drove it from part of its habitat, in some cases this might mean looking back several hundred years. For others, it might mean turning back the clock thousands of years. Analysis of the ancient diets of pandas shows that mountainous bamboo forests are not their ideal habitat; New protected areas are required for pandas in lowland areas where their diet can be more varied. This means returning to the area they inhabited thousands of years ago.

In North America, if you're trying to pinpoint the local areas where species lived before humans arrived and began affecting ecosystems, your maps would come from the Pleistocene. You'll be stuck trying to recreate an entirely different world: the frozen Midwest, the land of mammoths, and the giant ground sloth. Eland arrived from Eurasia only 15,000 years ago. Bullfish arrived in North America with the power of their wings in the mid-20th century. Tires will also no doubt continue to be changed in the future, especially as the climate warms. Should new areas colonized by species seeking cooler temperatures be considered part of their native range?

Conservationists have usually focused only on protecting and restoring the species within their range, but if that range is often misunderstood and fundamentally dynamic, it will be difficult to create a single accurate map of each species. The way out of this dilemma, which I like, remains the opinion of the minority, but I like it for its logical coherence; Completely abandon the idea of one local area.

"Where do these species belong?" instead of asking the question. Some ecologists ask, "Where can these species thrive without adverse effects?" They start asking something like they're looking at areas where species might do well today and a warmer tomorrow. These regions likely overlap significantly with the traditionally defined native range, but may include regions where the species never existed, or at least not within human memory. A widely accepted approach to moving away from close allegiance to indigenous lands is to accept newcomers as "refugees" rather than as "invaders". Another, more controversial tactic is to move species into physically suitable habitats because the climate makes the previous habitats unsuitable, a practice called "helpful colonization".

Understanding the environmental history of places and species will remain important even as we move away from basing our conservation strategies on local areas. For example, knowing that sperm whales are happy living close to shore is useful information for imagining where they might thrive in the future and for identifying proposed marine protected areas.

Given how much human beings have changed the world, no matter how much we agree, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to return things to the way they were. But we can work hard to create a world where wild animals are abundant and thrive in habitats that meet their needs. The good news is that once you stop killing animals and protect their preferred habitat, they can come back. Wolves re-colonized Western Europe and saw their numbers increase by more than 1,000% after humpback whales and some green sea turtles were listed as endangered. Wild animals may return.

Some tension may arise when animals recolonize their former habitats or if they expand into new habitats that are now close enough to human settlements. Researchers are already documenting an increase in human-wildlife interactions as people expand into wilderness areas, animals move in response to climate, and conservation efforts return species to ancient habitats. Symbiosis can cause conflicts, risks, crop loss and other problems, but it also has benefits. Seeing sperm whales from the shore, hearing wolves howling from the suburbs, a green sea turtle or a crocodile giving you some space while surfing; In a world where we work so hard to make room for other species, we can be. You will be surprised at how comfortable they are with us and people.