Ecology Primer Vogl
A Primer of Ecological Principles
Book One
by
Richard J. Vogl
A Primer of Ecological Principles
A dictionary-reference-source book of ecological laws, principles, rules, concepts, and facts ⎯ providing basic knowledge and the essential background information needed for decision making by both the casual and serious student of ecology as well as average citizen, politician, businessman, land owner, farmer, rancher, lumberman, miner, fisherman, planner, developer, and resource manager.
Richard J. Vogl
Department of Biology
California State University
Los Angeles, California
PYRO UNLIMITED
P.O. Box 2283
Cypress, California 90630
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author.
Copyright © 1976, Richard J. Vogl
To those students who are
willing to listen.
”It is a very poor student who does not surpass his teacher.”
I must acknowledge all the students, and those to follow, who have shared my enthusiasm for learning and for ecology, in particular my first student, my brother Mike, and my most fascinating students, my children. I am appreciative of the inspiration and encouragement I received from my parents, my most important teachers, Dr. Stanley Peloquin who brought excitement into the most boring of biological subjects, Dr. Ralph Dix who exposed me to ecology, the powerful and persuasive Dr. John T. Curtis, the humorous and practical Dr., Grant Cottman, Professor Roland Case Ross who has been a source of intellectual stimulation, and my wife Carol, who is the woman behind this man.
Preface
A number of things have been written on the dangers of overpopulation, pollution, and the plundering of our environment, but almost nothing has been written or said about basic ecological principles and how they are being ignored, defiled, or heeded. Environmental issues have been discussed, debated, and endorsed by laymen of all kinds, but seldom are the opinions of trained ecologists solicited and rarely are basic issues considered.
This book’s primary purpose is to focus on the common basic “yardsticks” by which ecologists measure and evaluate various ecological relationships and which govern environmental situations. Man can only begin to live in harmony with himself and his environment when he recognizes, understands, and accepts these guiding principles. Our continued existence is rapidly becoming dependent upon the immediate consideration of these fundamentals by people in all walks of life.
These basic rules are presented in a concise dictionary or glossary style so that they are not masked or lost in the tangle-of-text of many ecology books and might serve as references for study and work in ecology and related fields.
Quotations occur throughout the book. Credit is given in those cases in which the sources of the quotes are known. The others are quotes in which I do not know the source or are paraphrased approximations of quotes or thoughts that I had read or heard somewhere, or are thoughts that I have formulated.
NOTICE
It is hoped that by keeping each principle to a minimum statement, it will be emphasized and impressed upon the mind of the reader. Too often students using turgid textbooks and taking courses that claim to cover the principles of this or that, find it difficult naming or recalling even one principle when they are finished. Space has been provided to expand these statements, to write in examples, and to make notes.
This book does not attempt to include all ecological principles, but rather to include those that I believe are important based on my teaching experience and my work in practical and academic ecology.
“Experience is the father of wisdom.”
WARNING
If this book is used as an aid in teaching ecology, field trips are considered absolutely essential. In science, there is no substitute for the first-hand experience gained by the student through laboratory exposure and exercise. But unlike most of science, ecology is strictly tied to the living world found out-of-doors, and functions, among other ways, by applying lab-obtained knowledge back to the real world of biology, the natural world. As a result, field trips take the student to the sites of ecology action where ecological principles and interactions can be easily and vividly illustrated and studied. Attempts to teach or study ecology without field contact, whether it be cursory or detailed in urban, rural, or wild environments, result in something less than a direct learning experience. This can only add to the already alarming deficiency of personal encounters present in our education.
Contents
Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………… vi
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Ecology defined 1
Ecological experimentation 1
Environment defined 2
Ecologist defined 2
Role of ecology 3
Branches of ecology 4
Related fields 7
History of ecology 7
Ecological terminology 9
Ecology reference books 9
Chapter II General Ecological Principles
1. No absolute principles 11
2. Amplitude of tolerance 12
3. Web of life 14
4. Similar environments support similar systems 15
5. Ecosystem concept 15
6. Similarities between organisms, systems 15
7. Living things are derived from living things 15
8. Nature maintains balances 15
9. Biotic succession 15
10. Diversity = stability 16
11. Recovery abilities 17
12. Edge effect 17
13. Growth curve 18
14. Inversity 18
15. Natality ⎯ mortality 18
16. Minimal number 18
17. Competition 18
18. Biological activities and temperature 18
19. Competitive exclusion 18
20. Synergistic effect 18
21. Cycles 18
22. Vacant niche 19
23. Predator ⎯ prey relationships 19
24. Plants ⎯ animals cannot live in wastes 19
25. There are no averages in nature…………………………………………… …19
Chapter III Natural Resources Principles
1. Life 20
2. Renewable and nonrenewable resources 21
3. Mismanagement of renewable resource 21
4. Carrying capacity 21
5. System backlash…………………………… 21
6. Increasing costs 21
7. Energy in = energy out 21
8. Dictates of management…………………………………………………………… 21
9. Geology ⎯ substrate ⎯ vegetation ⎯ animal relationships 22
10. Natural resources support monetary systems 22
11. Resources and economics 22
12. All food is derived from plants 22
13. Management must duplicate nature 23
14. Adjusting animals and vegetation to environment 23
15. Proper habitat 23
16. Nothing is free in nature 23
17. Introducing exotics 23
18. Life is climate-dependent 23
19. Climatic conditions are interrelated 24
20. Water 24
21. Air 24
Chapter IV The Role of Man
1. Man the conqueror or citizen 26
2. Man the animal 26
3. Man the grassland animal 26
4. The family as the basic unit 26
5. Need to preserve wildlife 26
6. Conservation essential for survival 27
7. Decreasing production areas and increasing consumption rates 27
8. Preserving productive lands 27
9. Studying undisturbed systems 27
10. Reducing or eliminating natural factors 27
11. Nature’s alternatives 28
12. Nature will win in the end 28
13. Disrupting natural processes 28
14. Restoring nature’s ways 29
15. When man destroys nature 29
16. Nature knows best 29
17. Healthy environment = healthy economy 29
18. Competing with man 29
19. Human population growth or equilibrium 29
20. Industrialization leads to instability 30
21. The affluent are using others’ share 30
22. Consider the alternative before acting 30
23. Consider the future 30
24. Learn from our mistakes 30
25. Evidence of man changing 30
Chapter V Energy Principles
1. Sun is the source of energy 32
2. Sunlight 32
3. Plant 32
4. Matter and energy are indestructible 32
5. No transformation of energy is completely efficient 32
6. Reducing steps in energy flow 32
7. Entropy 32
8. More energy needed to concentrate matter 33
9. Energy in must equal energy out 33
10. Energy requirements when at work or when idle 33
11. Food chains concentrate matter 33
Chapter VI Ecological Comments
The price of specialization 34
Water 35
Food and agriculture 36
Is living better through chemistry 37
Men and machines 38
Why all the noise 38
Wilderness 39
What’s happening to wilderness 40
How many children 41
Preserving civilization 42
People of principle 43
What is progress 44
What is important 45
Working on 45
The pursuit of happiness 46
Time alone 47
What the world needs is love 47
Education 48
Chapter 1
Introduction
Ecology defined
Ecology is that branch of biological science that studies the interrelationships between organisms and their environments. This discipline attempts to bridge the gap between the biological world of living organisms (biology) and the physical or environmental world (physical science) of geology, soils, climatology, limnology, oceanography, chemistry, physics, etc.
Alternate definitions of ecology
a) The holistic study of natural landscapes with their biotas so that man might learn to live in harmony with those environments.
b) The understanding and recognition of the common-sense workings of nature.
c) On the lighter side, ecology has been defined as a painful elucidation of the obvious things in nature.
d) The study that takes natural things that are easy to comprehend, and translates them into languages (including mathematics) that few can understand.
e) The study of everything all at once.
Ecological experimentation
The scientific method is employed in ecological studies which involves hypothesis or problem formulation, experimentation, objectivity, quantification, and reproducibility. Even seemingly nonexperimental ecological inventories or research of archival (basic ⎯ general) nature as the description of undisturbed environments, serve as necessary foundations for future studies as comparative controls for later investigations. It is analogous to learning what makes a watch function before opening a watch repair shop. In other words, nonexperimental studies of undisturbed systems or communities will later serve as scientific comparisons for disturbed systems; systems altered by man.
“Wilderness is the only standard, control, or common denominator (even if imperfect, for we have already fouled all the air and water of the Earth) by which management activities can honestly and scientifically be evaluated.”
Frank Egler, 1973
“An optimist sees a light that’s not there.
A pessimist comes along and blows it out.”
Environment defined
The environment, defined in its broadest sense, is anything and everything that directly or indirectly contacts or interacts with the study organisms, including other organisms.
Ecology = Field Science
It should be remembered that ecology is a field science; dealing with the natural world, natural processes, and real interrelationships.
Ecologist defined
An ecologist is one who is trained in and scientifically studies the interrelationships between organisms and the environment. We are not ecologists, or practicing ecology, when we plant a garden, save newspapers, drink beer out of bottles, or picket local power plants.
Some consider ecologists as doomsday soothsayers who are born skeptics that should be given little attention. But are predictions made by ecologists really disproportionate exaggerations? Or is it a necessity to take either an optimistic, or pessimistic viewpoint in order to “sell” the American public into accepting anything, an apathetic nation that will not stir until crises or catastrophes knock? Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring accomplished this when it rang an alarm that alerted a complacent public to the dangers of pesticides, an alarm that jangled even the chemical industries.
“Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
New Testament
“Believe all that you do,
half of what you see,
and nothing of what you hear.”
Chinese proverb
Ecologists should strive for excellence by insisting on a broad background in ecology, biology, and the physical sciences, and by continuing to maintain a general interest in these areas, thereby resisting the whirlpool of specialization that is engulfing science.
Public beware
Ecologists have mixed emotions about the recent interest in environmental problems. Many individuals and organizations are trying to create certain public images concerning the ways they treat the environment. Ecologists are not trying to discredit, debunk, or negate the present ecology awareness, because it is essentially a good, necessary, and inevitable cause. But rather they are trying to warn people to be critical and careful, for all that is said or done in the name of ecology is far from true or scientifically sound, might never have been said by trained ecologists, and may have been motivated by immediate selfish interests and profits, rather than our general interests now and in the future.
Role of ecology
Of all the fields of biology, ecology functions to bring together in a holistic manner the data, understanding, and knowledge obtained in the various branches of biological and physical sciences, integrating and synthesizing the heretofore miscellaneous and seemingly useless scientific facts and information. In this way, man might begin to understand nature and come to live in closer harmony with it, a necessity for his continued survival.
Ecology = synthesis
Ecology makes its major gains through the synthesis of thought, ideas, and facts, and advances largely by making overriding generalizations. Synthesis of ecological concepts is difficult, as ecology must bridge the biological and physical sciences, or must relate similarities between subjects that were previously considered unrelated.
“Imagination is more important than intelligence.”
“While waiting in the wild things happen, and thoughts arise, assemble, and illume. How to stop the onrush of conscious thought is difficult self-control. Harder is to hold no fact, a blank mind, but waiting, undirected, non-quantified, so that preoccupations cease, and new synthesis and perspectives rise and flood the conscious.”
Roland Case Ross
“Madness has not only served as an artistic theme, but it is an essential element of the creative process itself.”
Kenneth J. Fleurant, 1974
Generalization versus specialization
Ecologists, and other scientists, who have the ability to synthesize, appear to be uncommon. Perhaps this ability is a rare gift that is innate and uncommon, or perhaps it is seldom acquired or manifested because of training deficiencies. The current emphasis on specialization certainly does not appear to promote synthesis. Harnessing ecological data to traditional scientific approaches may actually be impairing opportunities for generalizations. Some fields advance, for at least a time, by methodical, logical, stepwise research, but ecology seldom finds direction or makes progress within this type of framework. In this connection, perhaps ecological journals and thesis-manuscript writing should deviate from standard scientific procedure by including some type of generalization or speculation section following the normal results and discussion. This would allow capable authors to synthesize, evaluate, speculate, and make judgments, and would give others the opportunity to learn and think in terms of generalizations. The present system confines ecologists to limited and almost sterile interpretations of their data. Ecology will progress and function most freely and efficiently when holistic minds are allowed to interplay in an unimpeded manner, exploring realistic and seemingly unrealistic considerations either logically or obliquely, probing simplicities and complexities, examining related and unrelated facts, as well as entertaining facts and near fantasies, until new ecological insights are gained.
“Study without reflection is a waste of time,
Reflection without study is dangerous.”
Branches of ecology
Despite a need of overviews, the synthesizing role of ecology is often neglected as ecologists specialize in certain aspects of ecology. This results in confining and concentrating their efforts to specific fragments, minimizing any chances for synthesis as they become expert on a narrow subject, community, species, method, or tool, to the point where it sometimes becomes difficult to even generalize within a specialty.
Plant ecology: studies the interrelationships between plants and their environments. Ecology got its start in this field in the nineteenth-century as plant geographers began to seek answers as to why certain plants were found in certain environments and how they were adapted to these environments.
Animal ecology: studies the interrelationships between animals and their environments. Many of the early (1920 - 1950’s) animal ecology studies took the form of life histories of given animal species.
Synecology: studies groups of organisms as they relate to their environments. This includes the study of communities and their associations, that is, groups of organisms that occur together more than just by chance. These studies often take the form of inventories, listing the organisms present and defining the environmental parameters. Often they are sociological studies, concerned primarily with the spatial and behavioral interrelationships of organisms, paying little attention to the physical environment.
Autecology: studies the interrelations of a single species to its environment. Such studies usually take the form of life histories or life cycles of a given species or relate a species’ adaptations or reactions to certain environmental conditions. Practical ecological problems are often solved by autelogical studies.
Population ecology: studies the structural and dynamic relationships of groups of the same species. It may deal with basic numbers, birth, death, age, and sex ratios, relationships, and changes or mathematical representations and derivations of these processes. Many population studies completely ignore the environmental aspects or are concerned with sampling methods and problems as they relate to populations or estimating populations.
Physiological ecology: deals with the functions of organisms, particularly, as they relate to environmental factors. It often involves physiological laboratory equipment adapted for field use, or bringing organisms into the laboratory to determine basic functions. This field has helped to emphasize the usefulness of experimentation in ecology. Studies can often be improved by conducting laboratory experiments to test field hypotheses and to support field work, as long as all laboratory experimentation is related to actual field problems.
Systems ecology: studies ecological systems, entire communities and their environments, usually via an integrated team approach. Systems are analyzed by experts studying individual components and detailed aspects which are ultimately combined, or by the construction of real or abstract system models. System studies invariably involve mass data collection, mathematical simulation, and computer programming. One aspect of systems ecology deals exclusively with the pathways and dynamics of energy flow through systems.
Structural ecology: studies physical or morphological features of organisms as they relate to environmental factors. Organisms can often be used as biometers, since structural adaptations can tell us more about a given environment than can instrument readings.
Reproductive ecology: is concerned with the inter- and intra-species relationships as they relate to reproductive mechanisms and processes. The main areas of concentration have been plant-animal interactions as they relate to such things as pollination, fertilization, diaspore dispersal, and cultivation, as well as the evolutionary development of reproductive features and mechanisms.
Behavioral ecology: studies the responses of organisms to environmental stimuli, and is usually involved with social reactions and basic life cycle responses. Behavioral characteristics of plants relate to growth or life forms.
Evolutionary ecology: is concerned with the interrelationships of organisms to their environment through time. Particular attention is paid to such things as island colonization, population changes and species interactions during given time intervals, and speciation as it relates to specific environments and environmental changes.
Theoretical ecology: is concerned with the speculative and synthetic aspects of any branch of ecology. Most often it is involved with mathematical hypothesis formulation, or deals with simulated or abstract situations, modeling, or evolutionary considerations.
Social or human ecology: studies man and his social problems and how they interrelate with the physical environment. Centering on man as the major organism, it is concerned with the impact of various social institutions, and often merges with human development, psychology, sociology, environmental and mental health, and law.
Terrestrial ecology: deals with the study of land-bound organisms. It is subdivided into various terrestrial habitats such as grasslands and rainforests and the numerous species occupying them.
Aquatic ecology: deals with the study of interrelationships of organisms in fresh-water, brackish, or marine habitats.
Qualitative ecology: concerns ecological studies of a descriptive nature. They usually contain unquantified descriptions and measurements of ecological relationships, communities, or environments. Usually, worthwhile qualitative studies require the input of an experienced ecologist.
Quantitative ecology: concerns ecological studies in which data are collected in a numerical fashion. Numerous objective observations, counts, or measurements (or some sophisticated version of counts or measurements) are taken in an effort to increase precision, reliability, and reproducibility. The collected data are usually treated in some mathematical and statistical manner.
Quantitative versus qualitative: Many purely quantitative studies would contribute more if they were tempered with qualitative observations, interpretations, and evaluations. Some studies are lacking descriptive material to the extent that they are only meaningful to a few individuals who have received similar training or who are working in the same area. Apparently, some authors conscientiously avoid description in fear of being labeled old-fashioned or being accused of writing understandable research. The current policies of many journals to shorten all manuscripts has undoubtedly been a factor in reducing qualitative material to the point that some papers read like telephone directories.
Some ecologists appear to use quantitative techniques as a substitute for experience. Quantitative studies are often handled in a mechanical and routine fashion, leaving some investigators with a complacent feeling that they can function and succeed without acquiring field experience. This is a dangerous practice in any field and is especially hazardous in ecology which relies heavily on subjective judgments and experienced decisions.
“What you see depends mainly on what you look for.”
“Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science.”
Emerson
The heart of science is research.
Academic studies: are ecological studies conducted to answer queries or to test hypotheses posed by ecologists that are initiated out of scientific curiosity. These studies are undertaken to resolve questions that may or may not have immediate practical application; studies conducted for the “sake of science and the scientist.” Each branch of science is dependent, nonetheless, on basic academic studies to lay the foundations, develop the basic principles, and to give the field direction. Many long-range studies, for example, are of an academic nature, but often also, contribute to the resolution of specific practical problems.
Applied studies: are ecological studies conducted to find answers to specific and often eminent problems facing man. The scope of the study is defined by the size of the problem. Practical studies are usually initiated to solve specific problems, and their purposes and hypotheses are interrelated.
Sometimes academic studies, particularly those related to inventories of some sort, lack objectivity, and the research conclusions, in turn, reflect this vagueness. All too often, ecologists are without solutions because the basic facts are unknown, and practical problems surface faster than the necessary basic facts can be uncovered by research.
“Certainly what we need today are not more narrow specialists., with their tendency to bureaucracy, to egocentrism and to the worst abuses of competition. What we need are more enlightened generalists.”
Georgie Anne Geyer, 1974
“The longer I live and the more I travel and observe the world around me, the more convinced I am that broad knowledge is the key to pleasurable understanding of nature.”
Edmund C. Jaeger, 1960
Related Fields
Ecology is one branch of biology with unusually strong practical affiliations, particularly when it is compared to many other branches of biology. Application of ecological knowledge is particularly tied to the field sciences. Such disciplines as agriculture, forestry, range management, wildlife management, fish management, watershed management, and park management are primarily concerned with ecological problems. Branches of biological science that are often ecologically oriented include entomology, mammalogy, ornithology, herpetology, animal behavior, invertebrate zoology, marine biology, plant geography, mycology, and phycology.
Common ground is now being shared by geography, sociology, climatology, meteorology, geology, soil science, oceanography, limnology, psychology, anthropology, ethnology, and ecology. Recently, such seemingly unrelated areas as economics, engineering, architecture, basic design, real estate, urban and regional planning, and business management are dealing with ecological concepts. A positive exchange of information also exists between chemistry, physiology, physics, mathematics, statistics, and ecology.
Unfortunately, the only important lesson that we appear to have learned from the study of history is that man is condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
Without a past there is no future, for it is only with our past learning that we can intelligently plan and forge a future.
History of Ecology
Many people erroneously believe that the field of ecology and the term ecology originated about the time of the first Earth Day, in April 1970, completely unaware that ecology dates back to the late 1800’s when German botanists coined the term ecology (from the Greek, literally meaning the study of the home) and set forth some of its basic principles. Interestingly, the field of genetics which is about the same age as ecology, was much better known and recognized prior to the first Earth Day. Educated people knew about such things as inheritance, chromosome, mutations, genes, and even DNA, but not ecology. If you look up ecology in older biology texts, it is invariably related to a last vague chapter, if it made it at all. And, of course, most teachers seldom got through their high school or college texts, leaving ecology as one of the unfinished chapters. But most biology teachers were unconcerned, because they believed that they had thoroughly covered the “important” topics such as mitosis, osmosis, the circulatory system, the Krebs cycle, and the skeleton of the frog. Genetics was actually recognized on a international scale on several occasions when geneticists were awarded Nobel Prizes, a distinction that ecologists have yet to earn. The Sputnik era and the space race with the Russians also helped to focus our attention away from growing environmental problems and the need to solve them.
Ecologists are the first to admit that this holistic field has accumulated few facts and is still in the juvenile stages of its development. Rapid accumulation of facts and the subsequent development of generalizing principles has been hampered by the inherent genetic variability of living organisms and the endless variations in landscapes and environments. In other words, the tremendous variability of the subject matter of ecology has impaired the synthesis of sweeping conclusions. The push of specialization in scientific training and practice also appears to have retarded the progress in synthesis needed to give direction to any body of knowledge.
Ecology actually arose out of the foundations of plant geography prior to 1900 to explain the distributions and adaptations of organisms occurring in various environments around the globe. Ecology started because of academic curiosity, for after biologists had succeeded in collecting, categorizing, and cataloguing most of the plants and animals of the world, it was only logical that they should next ask why and how they occurred where they did. From about 1900 to 1930 a small number of independent European and American biologists, naturalists, and field-oriented researchers began to pursue these questions, but the first general recognition and emphasis in this new discipline did not occur until the depression.
The past is the yardstick that we must use to measure out our future.
“Wise men learn by other men’s mistakes, fools by their own.”
The 1930’s witnessed a financial depression, a drastic drought with dustbowl conditions, and the widespread failure of small businesses, including most importantly, farms. At that time most Americans were still aware that resources were related to the productivity of the land, and that many essential economic needs were supplied by farming. This resulted in the first ecology movement, a national awareness of environmental problems, and a need to study and solve these problems. This first activity occurred 45 years ago, which makes ecology action something less than new. Most Midwestern land-grant universities and agricultural colleges began employing and training people with various aspects of ecology in the 1930’s. In fact, the trained ecologists present in this country today, are the first to fourth generation academic descendants of these depression-era pioneers.
Most of these ecologists are employed by institutions of higher learning, with only a small percentage working in practical research. The field of ecology in not new, nor is the public’s current recognition of it entirely new; it is just that environmental problems and disasters have become conspicuously eminent forcing the general public to search for answers, thereby becoming receptive to what ecologists have been teaching all along. As with most scientific knowledge, the worth of it is not realized until the lay world is ready to accept it.
“You can’t condemn that which you understand.”
Goethe
Trying to place undue and unnecessary precision on nature and our measurements of it, is like trying to carry out axe handles to the fourth decimal.
“Many scientists use statistics in the way that drunkards use lampposts, that is, they use them more for support than for illumination.”
Ecological Terminology
Ecologists have established a vocabulary of unique terms. Some of this terminology was necessary and helpful, but some was apparently an attempt to impress or make ecology appear prestigious or rigorous. At any rate, ecology has created its own necessary and unnecessary jargon, just as other scientific disciplines.
Recent trends have been to discard useless terms and to minimize the proliferation of new ones. This movement gained acceptance when it became apparent that ecologists needed to communicate with a variety of people and not just among themselves.
A faction of contemporary ecologists have begun to substitute mathematical symbols and equations for written language. Whether this is a fad, another attempt to gain status among scientists in other disciplines, or a necessity, can only be determined with time. It is obvious that the adoption of mathematical language has already created communication problems, making ecological research findings more difficult to understand, less acceptable, and sometimes less useful. The precise nature of mathematics has been unnecessarily and incorrectly applied to describe variable and indefinite ecological ⎯ biological interactions. As a result, many interactions are given unreal degrees of inflexibility and exactness, when they could have been more accurately and easily described and understood using pliable and prodigious words.
Ecology Reference Books
Ecological terminology has been kept to a minimum in this publication. If you should encounter ecological terms not defined here, please consult one of the many general ecology texts published, or one of those listed below.
Billings, W.D. 1968. Plants and the Ecosystem. Wadsworth Publ. Co., Inc., Belmont, Cal.
Clarke, G.L. 1965. Elements of Ecology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., N.Y.
Collier, B.D., Cox, G.W., Johnson, A.W., and P.C. Miller. 1973. Dynamic Ecology. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Daubenmire, R. 1968. Plant Communities. Harper & Row, Publ., N.Y.
Daubenmire, R.F. 1974. Plants and Environment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., N.Y.
Knight, C.B. 1965. Basic Concepts of Ecology. The Macmillan Co., N.Y.
Krebs, C.J. 1972. Ecology. Harper & Row, Publ., N.Y.
McNaughton, S.J., and L.L. Wolf. 1973. General Ecology. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., N.Y.
Odum, E.P. 1971. Fundamentals of Ecology. W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia.
Oosting, H.J. 1958. The Study of Plant Communities. W.H. Freeman & Co., San Francisco.
Ricklefs, R.E. 1973. Ecology. Chiron Press, Inc., Newton, Mass.
South wick, C.H. 1972. Ecology and the Quality of our Environment. Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., N.Y.
Wagner, R.H. 1974. Environment and Man. W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., N.Y.
Watt, K.E.F. 1973. Principles of Environmental Science. McGraw-Hill Book Co., N.Y.
Whittaker, R.H. 1975. Communities and Ecosystems. Macmillan Publ. Co., Inc., N.Y.
“The trouble with man is twofold. He cannot learn truths that are too complicated, he forgets truths that are too simple.”
“The contemplation of the laws of the universe is connected with an immediate tranquil exaltation of the mind, and pure mental enjoyment. The perception of truth is almost as simple a feeling as the perception of beauty, and the genius of Newton, of Shakespeare, of Michelangelo, and of Handel, are not very remote in character from each other.”
Humphry Davy, 1807
The Parallels Between Science and the Arts
Chapter II
General Ecological Principles
This chapter contains a list of important principles dealing with and underlying general or basic interrelationships between organisms and their environments. Most of these are covered under various topics in general ecology texts and courses. The organisms involved are both plants and animals, and usually include or relate to man in some manner. Fundamental environmental generalizations are also included.
Many of these principles appear as logical simplicities that are obvious and easily understood. But this should not detract from their importance or reduce their significance. Too often, we are fooled into believing that only complex and difficult to understand things are important.
“The role of biology today, like the role of every other science, is simply to describe, and when it explains it does not mean that it arrives at finality; it only means that some descriptions are so charged with significance that they expose the relationship of cause and effect.”
D.C. Peattie, 1935
An Almanac for Moderns
“Facts are stupid things until brought into connection with some general law.”
There are no absolute principles or universal ecological laws, other than those that govern the physical (nonliving) and biological worlds. When generalizations are made in ecology, it should be remembered that there are always variations and usually exceptions.
Generalizations made about organism interactions are usually based upon a variety of responses over certain ranges, sometimes including extreme reactions. This occurs because of the inherent variability of organisms, species, populations, and living systems.
Broad environmental statements must also be tempered (moderated) by the seemingly endless and constantly changing landscapes and environmental conditions found across the face of the earth.
In spite of the variations and exceptions, principle, concepts, and generalizations are applicable, useful, and essential to ecological understanding and progress within the discipline.
1a) Biological variability. Because of basic inherent genetic machinery no two organisms (except identical twins and asexual offshoots) are alike and respond in the same way to a given environmental factor. This diversity is assured at the genetic level by such things as genes, chromosome numbers, independent assortment, segregation, breakage and crossing-over, linkage, position effect, sexual recombination, and mutation.
1b) Environmental variability. All those things that an organism comes in contact with tend to vary in time and from place to place. Climatic conditions change through time and with locations as do other environmental factors, and these dynamic features complicate synthesis and generalization. No two thunderstorms or forest fires are exactly alike, not even if they occur in the same location or at the same time.
1c) Landscape-water variability. Land and water vary around the globe. Environments or habitat types differ because of different origins (volcanism, glaciation, uplifting, geological substrates etc.), the effects of different and fluctuating climates, and the various purposeful and chance (accidental) events that have occurred at any one site through tome. Landscapes with similar origins, ages, and past histories are almost alike. But no two landscapes or bodies of water are identical, thereby complicating comparison and experimentation in ecology.
“The Great Spirit put in your heart certain wishes and plans. In my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.”
Sitting Bull
2. Amplitude of tolerance is the range of environmental conditions that a species can withstand. (Shelford’s law of tolerance)
Individuals of a given species do not respond identically (because they are all different genetically) to any environmental factor or factors. Rather their responses are distributed over a range or scale restricted by some minimum or maximum amount or amounts, with the majority of individuals responding to some optimum environmental conditions. In other words, no species or no two individuals of the same species (unless identical) will have the same responses to environmental factors and identical amplitudes of tolerance. In addition, no species has the ability to live in all possible environments or under all environmental conditions.
One of the primary goals of ecology is to understand the various amplitudes of tolerance of plant and animal species.
Study nature, not instruments!
Corollary principles of the amplitude of tolerance.
2a.) Species with extremely specific and limited environmental requirements have narrow amplitudes of tolerance. Sometimes these species are used as INDICATOR SPECIES, since their presence denotes specific environmental conditions. Management problems arise because these species are often easily displaces or eliminated. Many extinct and presently endangered species have specific requirements and possess extremely narrow amplitudes of tolerance, at least to certain critical environmental factors. As environments change or are man-altered, many of these restricted species readily become endangered or are threatened with extinction.
2b.) The organisms in a given environment are there because of certain genetic, anatomical, physiological, and behavioral features and adaptations (life forms). Organisms often reflect or are indicative of environmental conditions and can be used as BIOMETERS. Biometers or biomonitors are the ultimate environmental instruments that measure conditions directly. They also react constantly and completely by integrating complex interactions. Sometimes more can be learned about existing environmental and habitat conditions by observing the organisms present, than by using various instruments and gadgets.
2c.) Species with very wide amplitudes of tolerance, or species in which the limiting factors have been altered or removed are successful, adaptable, or ubiquitous (widespread) species. They often include persistent and aggressive species and NOXIOUS PESTS AND WEEDS. THE HEAVIER THE PRESSURE PUT ON AGGRESSIVE SPECIES WITH WIDE AMPLITUDES OF TOLERANCE, THE MORE LIKELY INDIVIDUALS WILL ARISE WITH INHERENT RESISTANCE OR IMMUNITY.
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Management problems usually relate to the control of wide-amplitude species rather than to their preservation and perpetuation.
2d.) Limiting or controlling factors, (Liebig’s law) Among the many environmental factors that influence a species, one or more of them often act as key factors by restricting a species’ occurrence. A species may have a wide amplitude of tolerance for one environmental factor and narrow for another, and those environmental conditions producing the restrictions are called limiting factors. In other words, many species are particularly sensitive to one or more factors, that singly or in concert together, govern or control the presence or absence of a species. Limiting factors not only influence species by their presence or absence, but also exert control by amounts or intensities. Responses are not only produced by some minimum amount, but can be negated by too much or some maximum amount.
Ecological management is often concerned with determining the controlling factors of critical species, because species numbers can often be regulated by manipulating these limiting factors.
“Now man can peer down through the microscope, up at the revealed stars. And behold, the lens has only multiplied the facts and deepened the mystery.”
D.C. Peattie, 1935
An Almanac for Moderns
2e.) In nature the exceptions, even the once-in-a-lifetime occurrences, often determine the course of things. Infrequent, but nevertheless, limiting factors are often overlooked because investigations are too often short-termed. Organisms and the communities in which they exist must be considered in terms of the species’ lifespans and system cycles. Unusual events need to occur only once in a climatic or geomorphological (landform) cycle to have profound effects, or only once in a life of an organism to be controlling factors.
2f.)Multiple factors. Although species are often controlled by one or more limiting factors, the general occurrence of a species is invariably the result of a number of ecological factors operating together. Many ecological studies have focused on only one factor, thereby creating the illusion that single factors are all important and oversimplifying the usual complexities of nature. Species occur in certain habitats or environments because of multiple factors interacting in complex ways. Ecological studies are complicated by these complexities and ecologists have traditionally attempted to study only one to several of the more important factors at a time.
2g.) Optimum conditions. Environmental conditions under which the majority of organisms of a given species exist and flourish are considered to be the best possible conditions for that species. Members of a species usually maintain themselves best under these ideal or optimum circumstances.
The web of life enmeshes all life.
“To move one grain of sand on a beach is to change the entire world.”
“Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.”
New Testament
Management of desirable species often includes attempts to create more optimum conditions so that they might flourish.
2h.) Ecotypic variation. Individuals or groups of individuals of the same species that react differently to environmental factors than the rest of the individuals of that species are called ecotypes. These individuals look like other individuals, but are set apart from them by their ecological requirements and functions.
2i.) Peripheral selectivity. Individuals at the edges of a species’ range often differ from those in the centers of distribution. Species at the edges of their range are often subject to different amounts and kinds of environmental factors.
Everything living and nonliving is related to or connected to everything else. (web of life) Every time man does something in the natural world, it causes extensive reactions that usually extend beyond those that are expected and observed.
In nature there is order.
4. Similar environments usually support similar or equivalent communities and/or organisms even though the species and locations are different. (Convergent evolution)
5. Ecosystem concept. Ecological interactions are best understood in the context of everything around them, both biotic and abiotic (nonliving). Ecosystems consist of groups of organisms occurring together and all environmental factors that influence them directly and indirectly. This holistic approach considers ecological systems at various levels, from single populations of organisms at one location, communities of plants and animals sharing common environments, broad assemblages or formations of plants and animals under the influence of similar regional environments (biomes), to the entire globe.
6. There is more in common between ecosystems and between different organisms or species than there are differences. Various organisms and different ecological systems are bonded or unified by basic requirements and functions shared by all living things.
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Eradication programs, efforts to eliminate a given species, or controls applied to a system invariably have effects that extend beyond the original objective and targets because of these similarities.
Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
Confucius
7. Living things are only derived from previous living things.
Organisms and ecological systems are characterized by a basic drive to continue, to reproduce, and thus provide continuity.
8. Nature strives to maintain balances. (Concept of dynamic equilibrium or ecosystem homeostasis) Nonliving and living systems tend to be oriented toward a balanced state. When the existing quasi-equilibrium of these systems and the organisms compromising them is disturbed or upset, feedback mechanisms come into play and phenomenal forces are amassed in the recovery and restoration to stability and balance.
9. Biotic succession ⎯ the dynamic nature of organisms and systems. The basic premise of biotic succession is that plants and animals are dynamic (changing) in nature, and that communities composed of them are characterized by constant change. When a living thing, community, or system ceases to change it is nonfunctioning, decadent, or dead.
“Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain.”
Old Testament
The major tenets (principles) of succession are :
9a.) Vegetation developments and the animal changes that accompany them (or biotic succession) occur in predictable patterns that vary with different vegetation types and environments.
9b.) Although vegetation development can start by species pioneering either dry (xeric) or wet (hydric) environments, the direction of succession is toward mesic (adequate moisture) and stable (climax) endpoints. The endpoint species vary from place to place. The unidirectional changes take place in a stepwise replacement series whereby one species or a group of species modifies the environment to where it is replaced by another, and so on.
9c.) Biotic succession starting with virgin substrates (those previously unaffected by organisms) caused by such things as glaciation, mountain building, volcanism, and erosion is termed primary succession.
9d.) The range of development that occurs from the pioneering invasion of virgin substrates to the mesic and stable endpoints is called a successional sere.
9e.) If the developing sere is interrupted or set back (retrogression) by such catastrophic and retrogressive agents as fire, flood, wind, avalanche, animals, disease, frost, drought etc., the redeveloping sere is called secondary succession. In these cases, the substrates have already been modified by organisms and successional development.
9f.) In many environments, the periodic assertion of certain limiting factors repeatedly prevents development beyond a certain point so that succession is a cyclic phenomenon. In these environments, retrogressive or catastrophic agents function as progressive and maintenance factors.
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Biotic succession can be regulated by managing the vegetation. Animal management, for example, generally takes the form of vegetation management . Since the organisms and vegetation are dynamic, it is naive to think that given areas can be preserved by complete protection. Preservation, unfortunately, is usually erroneously equated with protection, when protection is only one restricted form of vegetation management. Purposeful or inadvertent control and alteration of the frequencies or intensities of the prevailing catastrophic or maintenance agents causes serious and often undesirable results. Many organisms exist because of certain catastrophic factors or extreme conditions, and not in spite of them.
“Viva la difference!”
10. Diversity = stability principle. (Elton’s principle) The relative stability of a system or community increases with the total amount of life, genetic diversity of the organisms, variation in ages of organisms, and the variety and kind of successional stages present.
Important premises of the diversity = stability principle are:
10a.) Diverse and healthy systems are not readily invaded, displaced, or disturbed by introduced (non-native) species, diseases, or pests and are not commonly subject to natural causes.
10b.) Diversity is not only created by species variety, but by species age diversity and successional or stand age variation. Mosaics of different-aged groups juxtaposed upon one another (placed side by side), even if they are comprised of the same species, provide a degree of stability to that community.
10c.) Species diversity tends to be low in the early pioneer stages of succession, increases with successional development reaching a peak sometime during the intermediate or subclimax stages, and usually declines somewhat in the final stages of succession. Productivity and energy capture follow a somewhat similar problem.
10d.) Pioneer and intermediate successional plants and animals can survive and often thrive with disturbances, whereas mesic (climax) species are usually eliminated with disturbance.
10e.) Plant species diversity (and therefore stability) tends to be greatest in tropical vegetation types and becomes simpler (and less stable) as environments become more variable and extreme. Severe environments tend to produce simple systems. environmental diversity promotes community diversity.
10f.) As the number of different species decreases, the numbers of individuals per species tend to increase.
10g.) Monocultures (single species dominating) and simple vegetation types (low diversity) are more commonly subject to natural catastrophes. Under natural conditions, these communities develop or possess recovery mechanisms to counter the prevailing unstable conditions. Conversely, the more diverse vegetation types are seldom visited by natural catastrophes which, if they do occur, usually result in wholesale setbacks, complete changes, or their elimination. These diverse communities have little chance of immediate restoration since recovery mechanisms or adaptations are generally absent. Ecological diversity increases with decreasing stress. Man-made disturbances should be minimized in these communities.
Modern man is destroying nature’s diversity throughout the world, replacing it with man-made monocultures that invite widespread catastrophe without any inherent recovery mechanisms. Many of these monocultures not only consist of a single species, but often of a single variety or the same genetic strain, further simplifying the community. Natural diversity should be preserved and restored, and not destroyed and replaced with monotonous monocultures that invite unnatural catastrophes.
11. Organisms, communities, and ecosystems respond positively to counter contamination, intrusion, and injury. Although these responses take a variety of forms, including seemingly unpredictable reactions, within certain limits, nature has powerful self-cleansing, self-repairing, healing, and recovery abilities.
12. Edge effect. Biological activities, productivity, and diversity increase along edges, interphases, or transitions (ecotones) at the molecular, cellular, organismic, and ecosystem levels. Animal numbers and activities, for example are higher along edges created by the juxtaposition of two contrasting vegetation types such as forest and field, than they are within just forest or field.
13. “S”-shaped growth curve. Expanding populations of organisms tend to increase exponentially until reaching a ceiling created by limiting factors or attaining the carrying capacity of their environments. Carrying capacity is the average number of individuals a given area can support.
14. Inversity principle. The rate of reproductive gain of an animal species is inversely proportional to its density at breeding time. In other words, a higher percentage of offspring are produced when the population is at a high. With this type of self-regulation or compensation, population numbers tend to remain relatively constant through time.
15. Natality-mortality proportions. Organisms with low birth (natality) rates tend to have low death (mortality) rates and long life spans. Organisms with high birth rates usually have correspondingly high death rates and short life spans.
16. Principal of minimum number (Allee’s principle). In certain gregarious animal species (that herd, school, or flock), populations reduced below a certain number can no longer maintain themselves and become extinct. The minimal number is more than just one breeding pair, and includes all those additional individuals necessary for successful courtship, breeding, rearing, and survival to again reproduce.
17. Competition. Species with similar requirements often compete or vie for essentials, or at least overlap and interact in their demands when essentials are scarce. Reductions in critical resources and habitats, as well as species introductions, can bring unrelated species into competition.
Through time, cooperation tends to replace competition among species that are in contact, have similar amplitudes of tolerance, and alike niche (functional) requirements.
18. Within optimum ranges, biological activities tend to increase with increases in temperature. Metabolism and respiration rates generally increase in animals with increased temperatures. Reproduction and growth also commonly increase with higher temperatures among micro-organisms and plants. Unusual or unnatural increases in air, soil, or water temperatures (thermal pollution) often results in shortened life cycles and explosive increases of micro-organisms that deplete oxygen supplies and cause other undesirable effects. Higher temperatures within warm-blooded vertebrates lead to the virulent (strong) growth of internal bacteria and viruses.
19. Principle of competitive exclusion. (Gause’s principle). When two species with similar requirements compete for limited resources, only one species will survive.
20. Reactions at the chemical, organism, or system level often react synergistically when any of them are combined, producing different and unexpected results in concert than they would singly.
“Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.”
Thomas Paine, 1794
21. Natural functions tend to be cyclic, phasic, rhythmic, or periodic at the molecular, cellular, organism, and system levels. Functions at any level and between levels of organization interrelate, intermesh, and synapse. Cycles also occur in nonliving systems.
22. Concept of vacant niche. When a species is purposefully or accidentally removed from its ecological niche or from a favorable habitat, new members of the same species or a similar species will soon invade.
23. Predator-prey relationships. Predators are usually intimately associated with definite prey species. Predators tend to regulate prey numbers while helping to maintain healthy prey populations by culling the weak, sick, and old. Predator numbers are often directly related to the number of prey. When the prey are decreased or eliminated, the predators will also decline or switch to new prey species. If the predators are reduced, prey numbers will increase to where they will produce dramatic changes or irreparable damage.
24. Most plants and animals cannot live, survive, or establish themselves anew (reproduce and continue) in their own wastes.
25. There are no averages in nature. In our efforts to count, measure, and quantify nature and natural phenomena, the day to day happenings, normal occurrences, and the usual variety of individuals and responses are lost and buried in averages and statistics. In order to properly assess ecological interrelationships the variations in organisms and responses, including the unusual and exceptional ones, must be considered.
Good resource management is still an art, requiring applied talent, dedication, sensitivity, responsibility, ambition, pride, and a genuine concern for the future; qualities that seem to be fading in our present society. Ties with the land are also being broken by specialization, tendencies to divorce work from pleasure and to measure happiness monetarily, and depreciation of individual creativeness through loss of individual merit.
Chapter III
Natural Resource Principles
This chapter lists principles relating to major natural resources. Natural resources are defined as material present in the natural world or products of nature that can be used by man. These resources are mineral, vegetable, animal, and include water and air and the materials they contain. Basic statements about the ecological significance of some resources are included since they often appear to be unknown, ignored, or forgotten.
Principles governing the proper utilization of natural resources by man are also included. Proper management transcends good administration, engineering, and technology, as well as public relations and profits, and begins and ends in basic ecology. Emphasis must be placed on a holistic ecological approach so that every resource administrator, researcher, and manager is familiar with the underlying relationships of organisms and their environments, and axiomatically believes that these unchanging principles cannot be ignore, compromised or breached.
These resource principles are not listed in any order of importance.
The most important moment of life is not birth or death but now.
“What is life? It is the firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
Chief Crowfoot
The most remarkable thing about human beings is that they are alive, and that they are able to express that life in multi-faceted and unique ways. Occasionally, our thoughts and expressions are able to escape our animal forms and material laws, and we momentarily overcome time and space limitations. At these times we get a glimpse of who we really are, and can sense a purpose, a freedom, and an inner peace. If we do not attempt to express this ultimate gift of life, we stand little chance of experiencing it.
“I warn you, then; do not worry about your livelihood, what you are to eat or drink or use for clothing. Is life not more than food? Is not the body more valuable than clothes?”
New Testament
1. The most precious natural resource is life, starting with human life and including the equally important diversity of animal life, living plants, insects, microbes, and other living things inhabiting the earth.
2. Resources are either renewable or nonrenewable, and must be treated accordingly. Just as many minerals are in limited supply, so too land, soil, air, and water, and the living spaces, foods, fuels, energy, and resources they provide are finite or limited.
3. Mismanagement or the destruction of renewable resources, including plant or animal species, can render them nonrenewable or nonusable.
“Formerly we had no forestry science and enough wood; now we have that science, but no wood.”
Heinrich Cotta, 1816
“The good physician lets people die, the poor one kills them.”
Verdey
4. Any ecological unit, from the smallest population, community, or system to the earth, has a limited or definite carrying capacity.
5. Principle of stress, over-use, and system backlash. When a system is unduly stressed by over-use of its resources, if its resources are not recycled, or its carrying capacity is exceeded, the system will usually backlash by substantially and sometimes irreversibly reducing the resource output and the amount of life it can support. As a rule, when the damage is not irreversible, return to original resource output levels is at least equal to the number of years of stress.
6. Principle of increasing costs. Attempts to increase the production output of systems already near maximum productivity, that are almost depleted, or that approach carrying capacity, are much more costly in energy, expenditures, and efforts than comparable production increases when supplies are abundant and the systems are not being pressed to their limits.
From nothing, nothing comes!
“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
7. The energy in must equal the energy out. The energy expended obtaining a resource and making it useful, must not exceed the amount of energy derived from the resource, or eventual failure will result.
8. Management guidelines are dictated by the inherent biological-ecological-environmental composition of the resources under consideration, and not by any economic, technological, or political expediencies. The use or uses of an area are determined basically by the organisms and environments present, and not by ephemeral (temporary) monetary maneuvers.
9. Geology ⎯ soil or water ⎯ vegetation ⎯ animal ⎯ climate interrelationships. Since the geology, soils, water, vegetation, and animals of a region are all inseparably related and directly influenced by each other, as well as governed by the climate of the region, the use or uses of the area must be completely compatible with these factors. Management should attempt to adjust and regulate the vegetation and animals of an area, since attempts to alter or improve the geology, soils, water, or climate usually involve excessive expenditures of energy or are unfeasible. An area with poor geology will usually have infertile soils (and water which is reflected in the unproductive growth of the plants and animals (and sometimes people) they support. A rich geology and fertile soils, on the other hand, can be completely negated by an unfavorable climate.
The only real capital of a nation is its natural resources and its human beings. So long as we take care of and make the most of both of them, we shall survive as a strong nation, a successful nation and a progressive nation ⎯ whether or not the book-keepers say other kinds of budgets are from time to time out of balance.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The chemical weed killers are a bright new toy. They work in a spectacular way; they give a giddy sense of power over nature to those who wield them, and as for the long-range and less obvious effect ⎯ these are easily brushed aside as the baseless imaginings of pessimists. The ‘agricultural engineers’ speak blithely of ‘chemical plowing’ in a world that is urged to beat its plowshares into sprayguns. The town fathers of a thousand communities lend willing ears to the chemical salesman and eager contractors who will rid the roadsides of ‘brush’ ⎯ for a price. It is cheaper than mowing, is the cry. . . . but were the true costs entered, the costs not only in dollars but in the many equally valid debts. . .”
Rachel Carson, 1962
Silent Spring
10. Natural resources, the work that is applied, and the energy obtained from them, are the basis of economic and monetary systems; and systems that expand beyond this resource base must ultimately collapse.
11. If an economic venture fails, the resource continues to exist, but if the resource or its environmental base is destroyed, all is lost. Economic efforts that destroy the environment or resources for profit can only lead to destruction.
12. All food is derived directly or indirectly from plants. In spite of this, man has brought about the extinction or severe reduction of numbers of plant species, converted diverse plant regions to weedy wastelands, and reduced the area available for plant growth, The uses of herbicides (plant killers) in most countries of the world has reached astronomic proportions.
13. Resource management practices and techniques that duplicate or approximate natural processes inherent to a given region are most likely to succeed and be compatible, and they are the only way in the long run.
14. Sound ecological management attempts to adjust the humans, animals, and vegetation to the existing environment and not the reverse.
15. If a species is provided the proper habitat or environment, it can take care of itself, flourish, and even produce surplus numbers which can be harvested.
“There is no such thing as a free lunch in nature.”
Barry Commoner, 1970
The Closing Circle
“A man ought to desire that which is genuine instead of that which is artificial.”
Okute, Sioux Indian
Limitation is the mother of good management.
16. What is extracted from nature must be replaced. Nothing is free in nature! Since everything is related to everything else, the removal of resources, organisms, and communities has complex and far-reaching effects. Resource removal should be minimized, and the “costs” of their use, removal, and change must be fully recognized. Surplus and unused portions should be recycled, and natural processes should be allowed to continue whenever possible. Imbalances and voids created by the removal of organisms, species, communities, environmental factors, and resources will be corrected or compensated for by changes in the affected system as well as related systems. Man often finds these changes undesirable and unacceptable, and in this way, “pays” for the original use or misuse of what appeared to be “free for the taking.”
17. The introduction of alien species or substances is to be avoided, and if it must be done, it should be with extreme caution and when there are no alternatives. The introduction of exotics is degrading the diversity of the natural worlds. Foreign substances are materials put into an environment which are out of place and nonbiodegradable.
18. All life is weather-related and climate-dependent.
Technology will not save us, but management that works with nature will!
“The fires of life burn only in water.”
D.C. Peattie, 1935
An Almanac for Moderns
19. Although each region has its own unique climate, climatic conditions are interrelated on a global scale. Attempts at weather modification in local areas will also alter weather in other regions, perhaps even in unfavorable ways.
20. Water is the medium of life. Without water, life at the molecular, organism, and system levels could not exist. Water is also necessary in any energy transformation.
20a.) Water, with its various physical attributes, is a key or limiting factor in the occurrence and distribution of organisms and ecosystems in soil, air, and water.
20b.) Water is a finite resource, renewed and regulated in its various states in cycles within a global cycle driven by evaporation and precipitation.
20c.) Fresh water is the most usable form of water for man and salt water is the least usable.
20d.) Rivers not only transport water, but substrates and nutrients, accumulating sorting, and distributing them.
20e.) Lakes, ranging from oligotrophic (low nutrient) to eutrophic (enriched) waters, as well as swamps, marshes, and bogs function as very efficient nutrient traps and detain, store, regulate, and cleanse water supplies. Lakes die by the processes of biotic succession, debris entrapment, and eutrophication.
20f.) Coastal wetlands are key links and transfer points for nutrients and food chains between terrestrial and marine environments.
21. Air, with its component parts, is essential for most life.
21a.) Air not only holds oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, but transports and sorts water, nutrients, and particulate matter.
21b.) Air is the medium in which gases and moisture are exchanged and cycled between plants, animals, land, and water.
21c.) Air stagnates, overturns, or moves in the form of masses, fronts, cells, jets, and streams in response to unequal differences in temperatures or pressures.
Chapter IV
The Role of Man
This chapter contains some of the basic guidelines necessary for man to find his appropriate place in the world of nature and man. Statements about the nature of man are included, since they are essential to understanding his role and proper behavior.
“There is no philosophy with a shadow of realism about it, save a philosophy based upon Nature.”
D.C. Peattie, 1935
An Almanac for Moderns
“But if biologists and ecologists or, for that matter, planners, won’t concern themselves about the fate of Nature, who is there that will?”
Hugh H. Iltis, 1973
“In short, a land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.
Aldo Leopold, 1947
A Sand County Almanac
“Not until man places man second, or, to be more precise, not until man accepts his dependency on nature and puts himself in place as part of it, not until then does man put man first! This is the greatest paradox of human ecology.”
H.H. Iltis, 1970
“The milieu in which man lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, into a universe for which he was not created...He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone.”
Jacques Ellul, 1964
If a pig knows he is a pig, then baptize him.
Man is a part of nature, not apart from it.
1. Man must change his role as conqueror of the earth and all that it contains, to a responsible citizen that takes his place among the order of things. (Leopold’s land ethic). Man must learn to share the earth with all other living things, and not dominate, kill waste, and destroy.
2. Despite intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual attributes and technological achievements and potentialities, man is an animal and is completely dependent upon the natural environment. Nothing man has done to alter his environment has reduced his dependence on the earth and its products.
3. Man is largely a grassland animal, having spent most of his evolutionary existence in grasslands or grassland-forest transitions, hunting, gathering grassland foods, domesticating grassland animals, and cultivating grassland plants. As a result of this past existence, man has developed certain external and internal, as well as physical and mental requirements, that cannot be ignored or dismissed.
4. Throughout time, the basic units of man’s tribes, societies, cultures, and civilizations have been families. Societies only functioned as long as the families maintained their integrity. The families consisted of monogamous or polygamous marriages created for the primary purpose of having and rearing children. The marriages were bonded by mutual sharing, love, and fidelity. The family instilled and perpetuated the basic human attitudes and actions necessary for the continuance of families, thereby assuring the survival of societies.
5. The need to preserve wilderness, living things, and to set aside natural areas transcends any redeeming aesthetic, spiritual, recreational, restorational, and economic values. Preservation is necessary because of man’s basic dependence on the natural world and his need for wilderness, natural areas, and breeding populations as life preserves and genetic storehouses. We have no idea, particularly in light of our ever increasing scientific knowledge and technology, of what living thing, what presently overlooked plant, animal, microbe, or genetic variant, we might need for our continued survival and well-being in the future.
“We must stop thinking of conservation as a gratuitous, altruistic, and optional act...rather, it is self-preservation in the noblest sense of all. There is no truly human alternative.”
David Ehrenfeld
Conserving Life on Earth
“Conservation is religion. The religious impulse is directed, if I am right, primarily to one end and one end only, the conservation of life. This end is served in two ways, one negative and one positive, by the riddance of whatever is conceived to be hostile and by the enhancement of whatever is conceived of as favourable to life.”
Jane Ellen Harrison
6. Conservation is not a luxury, or an optional practice, but one of the essentials for survival.
7. Each year the total area (land and water) available for resource production (particularly food) decreases, while human populations and their consumption rates increase. The worldwide and unrelenting push of agriculture into marginal soils, lands, and climates as a result of expanding cities and man-made structures can only lead to marginal nations and a starving world.
8. Valleys, plains, wetlands, and lowlands are the most productive ecosystems and should be reserved exclusively for crops, livestock, forest products, fish, and wildlife. The loss and destruction of these productive areas by the present placement of cities, homes, factories, stores, churches, schools, hospitals, garages, parking lots, driveways, and other structures are the past and present generations’ way of guaranteeing death by starvation for those who follow.
Learn from nature’s experiments!
Where have all the flowers gone,
when will we ever learn?
9. A way to solve environmental problems is to study and understand comparable situations in undisturbed or natural systems. This is another reason why intact and undisturbed populations or organisms should be set aside and preserved. Ecology is dependent upon such areas to make advances and derive principles.
10. Protection of living things and systems often takes the form of trying to undo nature by attempting to reduce or eliminate natural extremes or catastrophes. Attempts have been made to shield natural systems and organisms from such natural and often essential events as lightning-caused fires, floods, predation, starvation, erosion, insects, and droughts. Often the organisms in a given region are there because of these extreme or limiting factors, and not in spite of them. Even human systems only remain healthy when they are continually pushed, worked, and exercised. It is more logical and sensible to adjust to natural forces than attempt to combat them.
“Men argue, Nature acts.”
Voltaire, 1764
“I have flouted the wild. I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, along; yet the wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.”
Robert Service
“Nature is not to be conquered save on her own terms.”
Paul Sears
“If we are not careful, we shall leave our children a legacy of billion-dollar roads leading nowhere except to other congested places like those they left behind. We are building ourselves an asphalt treadmill and allowing the green areas of our nation to disappear.”
Omar Bradley
11. Whenever natural processes are thwarted, circumvented, or prevented, nature will nonetheless respond with new alternative which may be more difficult to accept than the original responses. Nature cannot be stopped and is continuously working on alternatives.
12. Nature will win in the end. The natural world is like a perpetual merry-go-round that operates whether man is present or not. Ignorant, naive, and defiant men have unsuccessfully attempted to stop this merry-go-round or have it run at their speed, with consistent losses of limbs, lives, property, productivity, cultures, and civilizations. If man is going to survive he must work with nature, learning to board that merry-go-round without disrupting it, thereby getting the ride of his life. Natural laws will overcome! To work with nature is to be on the winning side.
13. Man must function without disrupting or terminating natural processes. Disturbances cause a systematic degradation of life that is of profound importance to man. Human societies and cultures cannot survive unless man learns to live with nature.
“The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.”
Rachel Carson, 1962
Silent Spring
The greatest difference between men and bugs is that bugs do not know they are bugs.
“Nature is not governed except by obeying her.”
Francis Bacon, 1623
“Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
Things were better when they were worse.
14. Man must restore nature’s ways where they have been thwarted or aborted by misuse and abuse.
15. When man destroys nature, man is actually destroying himself. (Rachel Carson). Man is an inseparable part of nature and shares basic functions and common environments with the organisms that he attempts to control, destroy, eradicate, or exterminate. Man loses every time organisms or environments are destroyed, often even when the destruction is considered necessary and beneficial.
16. Nature knows best. (Barry Commoner). Working with nature is the cheapest and only way in the long run. In this way, the greatest benefits can be derived with the least expenditures of energy. Man cannot improve upon nature in any basic or substantial way. At best, man can only hope to sway or bend natural processes to where he believes they are to his advantage. By using his knowledge, man can capitalize on nature’s ways by working with them, thereby ensuring his succession and survival through time.
“He will do well to have a heed to the nature of life, for of life there is but one kind. Man share it with the corn and the crow, the oak and the mayfly.”
D.C. Peattie, 1935
An Almanac for Moderns
“An acquaintance with a single bird, animal, or flower develops the sympathies and promotes universal brotherhood.”
Liberty H. Bailey
17. A healthy and stable economy and a healthy environment are inseparable goals.
18. Any higher animal that has competed, or has been considered to be in competition with man for space, food, or other resources, or got in man’s way, has been relentlessly pursued, eliminated, and even put to extinction.
19. Human population growth and increased consumption must give way to stability and equilibrium in order for societies and cultures to continue. Growth, the unchallenged goal of every industrial society, can no longer be regarded as unquestionably desirable.
“Industry and commerce must expand their accounting to include all costs and benefits.”
Ian L. McHarg, 1971
Design with Nature
20. From a long-range viewpoint, efforts to modernize (along the lines of western and world powers) underdeveloped countries may be unwise and unrealistic, since they are often presently closer to a quasi-equilibrium with the environment than are industrialized nations. The advanced development, technology, and industrialization spreading throughout the world will only persist if the characteristic waste, resource exploitations, and environmental deterioration associated with these processes is replaced with a sane and balanced utilization within nature’s limitations.
21. Some people and countries are able to indulge in luxuries and exercise affluent practices (to exploit, waste, pollute, and destroy), because the majority of people and the rest of the world are not demanding their full share.
22. Alternatives should be considered before initiating action in any ecological-environmental-resource management decisions. The
alternatives should include one of the most important and often forgotten ⎯ that of postponing action, thereby allowing future generations to make their own decisions. This is a particularly important consideration since so many decisions regarding resources are exclusive and irreversible.
“We can forgive the past its mistakes if only for the truth they reveal. But in this present time there is no excuse whatsoever for bringing land under cultivation or pasture without knowing whether such use can be sustained. If it cannot, no argument of expedience can justify the despoliation of an adjusted ecosystem and the creation of a desert for posterity.”
F. Fraser Darling, 1960
“Those who cannot remember the past [or learn from it] are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana, 1905
We learn as much from our failures as from our successes.
23. Resource uses, regulations, and management practices that do not consider the future are nothing. All of our activities, rules, laws, or treaties are worthless if they do not relate to a pact with the unborn. Man must develop a historical perspective, and consider the long-range effects as much as the immediate gains.
24. Man must learn from his mistakes; he must look, listen, read, and be critical so that he might understand and do what is right. By learning from our mistakes, we can profit and make gains from even disastrous losses. We are not condemned to repeat ourselves, to make the same mistakes over and over until it is too late. We should learn from history and study our lesson.
25. There is no historical evidence that man’s basic needs, abilities, and intelligence have changed substantially through time.
“The sun, moon and stars would have disappeared long ago if they had happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.”
Havelock Ellis
Chapter V
Energy Principles
This chapter lists some principles and generalizations dealing with energy. The principles are written in an ecological context, as opposed to the ways physical scientists might view them. Ecological interrelationships are often better understood when considered in terms of energy capture, exchange, and flow.
The principles are not necessarily listed in any order of importance.
1. The ultimate source of all energy is the sun. The earth is a closed thermodynamic system operated by solar energy.
2. Sunlight is essential for life. Sunlight is the energy source of the life-sustaining carbon dioxide and oxygen cycles of plants and animals, including man. It regulates the reproduction, migration, and behavior in birds, the breeding behavior of mammals, the behavior and life cycles in cold-blooded vertebrates and invertebrates, and the growth and reproduction in plants. It also affects man’s psychological moods, hormonal balance, and body chemistry.
“How can anyone own the land, the sky, the water and the animals of the forest? They are sacred.”
Robert Hunter, Paiute Indian, 1975
3. Plant life is the receptor and converter of sunlight energy, and therefore, the basis of all life. It seems that much of what man has done since he has become industrialized and chemically oriented, is increasing the turbidity (pollution) of air and water, thereby screening out the incoming sunlight energy.
4. Matter and energy are indestructible, but can be readily transformed to less desirable, unusable, and even harmful forms.
5. No transformation of energy is completely efficient. Capture or transformation of energy from one organism or form to another is usually only about 10% efficient.
“Eat it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
What business is really looking for is the throw-away consumer. ⎯ Once the consumer ceases buying and/or wasting, he is disposed of.
6. Reducing the number of transformation steps in the flow of energy increases the conservation of energy and energy utilization.
7. That portion of energy not transformed into work undergoes a noncyclic degradation called entrophy. All the earth’s systems need a continued input of sun energy, since more energy must be put into each step or system than is retained or derived.
8. It takes more energy to concentrate matter than it does to scatter or disperse it.
9. The energy put in must equal the energy derived. The amounts of energy that man derives from organisms or their products, or from various sun-driven systems, must at least equal the amounts of energy man applies to extract that energy.
10. Human beings require roughly the same amounts of energy whether at work or not. Large number of unemployed individuals in a tribe or society can become an excessive energy drain, since the amounts of energy needed by them is not expended to obtain more energy or to put energy back into the system in the form of work.
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Old-time farmers knew that their draft animals required the same amounts of food whether they were working or idle. Those that worked their animals from dawn to dusk got the most for their investment. Too many idle humans are a wasted resource in a society.
11. Pyramids of consumption lead to increased concentrations of matter. Matter is concentrated as it passes through the various levels of food chains, starting with the broad base of decomposers and producers, passing through consumers and herbivores, and terminating in a relatively few carnivores and predators, including man.
“Growth, the unchallenged goal of every industrial society, is no longer regarded as unquestionably desirable. The mere possibility that the energy which makes expanding industrialism feasible may run out in the year 2,000 suggest that fundamental changes are no longer an idealist’s luxury. They have become, it seems, a grim necessity imposed on everyone.”
Richard Buffum, 1974
12. Man obtains energy from either renewable or nonrenewable sources or supplies. The only way that a country or nation can be ultimately and permanently energy independent, is to shift entirely to renewable energy sources and adjust energy consumption rates below the rates of renewal or energy capture.
13. Energy utilization and resource consumption can be reduced and minimized by the construction, manufacture, and use of permanent or long-lasting materials, items, equipment, and structures. If this is not possible, permanent or long-lasting substances should be replaced with those that are easily recycled and renewed. Substances that must be discarded should be natural and biodegradable, or inert and non-contaminating.
Chapter VI
Ecological Problems
This chapter contains a variety of statements and quotations that relate to principles presented in the preceding chapters. The comments also deal with ecological crises and problems that I believe are important or have been ignored. Other remarks pertain to thoughts about life, purpose, happiness, education, and miscellaneous topics.
You may disagree with statements in this chapter or elsewhere in this book. The purpose of these comments is not to convince the reader of my opinions or to create the illusion that I have the best answers to problems, but rather to stimulate thought.
The first step in the solution of any problem is to recognize that there is a problem.
“For ill, the growth of forests or their destruction, the spread of deserts, would be more and more at the whim of that cunning and insatiable creature who slipped so mysteriously out of the green twilight of nature’s laboratory a short million years ago.
The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, and more tolerant, people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger, and the bear.”
Loren Eiseley, 1957
The Immense Journey
The price of specialization
“It was once important to everyone that each generation be able to stand on the shoulders of those who went before. Horizons were thus higher and broader, and there was profit from past experience. Today there are too many persons prepared only for work in so specialized a fashion that they become functionally isolated still unaware of the complexities of the nature of Man, of his history, his ideas, and the world around him.”
Alex C. Sheriffs, 1975
“Science is a first rate piece of furniture for man’s upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1872
“Some societies, for instance those of France and Germany before World War II (before their “Americanization”), were highly analytical, often short on facts but long on theorizing. On the other hand, the American system seems heavily skewed in the opposite direction; it often seems hip on fact but adverse to prolonged analysis.”
Amitai Etzioni, 1970
Modern societies are putting unlimited, unending, and unreal demands on the world and its resources have real and definite limits.
“How in the heck am I going to wash my neck, if it ain’t gonna rain no more?”
Water
There is no question that water is essential for life. But how long will it be available? As a result of man’s insatiable needs for water and his wasteful ways, roaring rivers have become open sewers or muddy trickles, permanent streams have become intermittent, and springs and watering places have become dry. Many lakes have become fouled by nutrients or reduced to stagnant ponds, marshes are all but gone, and wet meadows are dry and compacted. Wells are being drilled in the last valleys and prairies, those established must be continually deepened to stay with receding aquifers, and “fossil” water supplies are being recklessly exhausted with little chance for replenishment.
Deserts are on the march everywhere, riparian forests are dying, and many upland forests are being converted to less valuable brushlands without water. Water has to be pumped and transported farther and farther with increased expenditures of energy and money. Domestic, agricultural, and industrial use rates continue to escalate. More and more reservoirs trap water that was formerly destined to replenish underground supplies where it could remain sweet, pure, and cool and are now exposing the water to evaporation, salinization, eutrophication, and contamination. Pure waters have become clouded and contaminated with unpotable salts, alarming numbers of toxic chemicals, and human and animal wastes. More and more farmers have grown tired of fickle nature and her undependable rains and have gone to man-controlled irrigation, forgetting that those uncontrollable rains relate directly to irrigation waters.
Irrigation agriculture in semiarid and arid climates, while increasing agriculture production, leads to salt and silt contamination of the irrigated soils, and a permanent loss of production. The more extravagantly the water is used, and the farther it is imported for use, the more rapid is the salt buildup.
The once blessed rains now often rake the land and rush into the sea unused. Do you think that when the last drip has dropped, that science, technology, and the politicians will be able to fill your cup with this essential liquid? How can this worldwide trend be stopped?
“The opening of new agricultural areas in undeveloped regions in tropical countries is becoming an increasingly favoured tool incorporated in numerous development schemes involving agrarian reform, land colonization, and other types of action which is hopefully expected to result in ‘economic development’. The available evidence shows, however, that much of the land opened in the past has contributed very little to food increases, and improper practices have led to destruction of the landscapes.” [and the diversity of life they supported]
Gerardo Buowski, 1970
Food and agriculture
Some people forget where food is produced, and they seem to be only concerned that there be a modern supermarket or store close by their homes. Apparently they have forgotten that every new supermarket with its spacious parking lots and loading docks is another 5 to 20 acres of level land that will never produce another crop. As new supermarkets are established, the transportation distances between farm produce and consumer also increase.
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Urban sprawl, central city deterioration, leapfrog development, homes in the country, and road building are in themselves unnecessarily and particularly wasteful of energy and resources, and are destroying prime agricultural lands. The flight from the cities to their edges and surrounding countryside’s is the result of social and economic problems which are beginning to create ecological problems.
The displacement of agriculture is resulting in higher costs of agricultural products and local shortages of specific crops. Even if the remaining lands are pressed into higher production, how long will it be before they have reached their limits? And how long before the production of the remaining croplands falls below the demands of the ever-increasing numbers of people? Already we have seen that one or more poor years for the production of a particular crop can lead to shortages. Can we count on other countries, with their increasing populations, instability, and ecological crises, to have food surpluses that they might export to us? Or do we, perhaps, have an obligation because of our bountiful climate and soils, to help feed the hungry people of the world?
Most people believe that modern American farming is one of the greatest success stories of American history. And this was indeed the case, except that it appears that present-day agriculture may have gone beyond the point of being successful. Many farmers, ranchers, and agriculture experts are becoming aware tat the expenditures of petroleum fuels, petro-chemicals in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and sophisticated machinery are exceeding the amounts of energy and the profits derived from the crops produced. When this is coupled with increasing costs of obtaining water, skyrocketing costs of land, and higher costs of farm loans it leads to disaster as evidenced by the high rate of bankruptcy among farmers.
It is taking more money and energy that can be gained from the crops produced on more and more farms across America. The only way that many farmers or ranchers e to forestall future failure is that their lands and buildings were paid off by preceding generations, and that they are working many long hours that they are not being compensated for. And as the farmers give up and sell out, they are often bought out by giant conglomerates that seem to welcome unprofitable ventures to offset the profits of their other corporations.
It makes one wonder why foresters, fish, and wildlife managers are so insistent on trying to manage their resources by following the example of agriculture.
Is living better through chemistry?
Some experts estimate that up to 50% of the chemicals (pesticides and herbicides) sprayed by aircraft or from land vehicles often drift in the air, or re-enter the atmosphere by evaporation and volatilization, thereby contributing directly to the pollution of the air we breathe.
The chemicals that fall on the soil sometimes persist or become airborne on wind-blown dust, but commonly enter and accumulate inn our water supplies. Even the so-called harmless ones contribute to the salt contamination of soil and water.
Those chemicals that reach the intended targets often concentrate through food chains. More and more of man’s foods contain questionable to intolerable levels of chemicals, including those that are known to be harmful.
The manufacture and application of these chemicals involves the use of many nonrenewable resources, including large amounts of petroleum products. Contamination of employees, air, and water also sometimes occurs during the manufacturing processes.
In spite of all these “costs”, the chemical companies are convincing us to use more and more of their products. The benefits derived from their uses vary, but many are unnecessary, temporary, or nonexistent. How did we survive before we had all these chemicals? Could there be a connection between the escalating use of chemicals and the fact that up to 90% of the cancer in man is now suspected of being environmentally related or induced? When all of the cost are taken into consideration and compared to the real benefits, there are few chemicals that we can justify using, and then only when they are used discreetly. Must the damages be catastrophic and “costs” overwhelming before we do something?
And farmers are not the only users of chemicals (and sometimes the victims of worthless or hazardous ones). Recent studies show that the use of chemicals in cities often reaches the amounts applied on farmlands which sometimes is many tons per square mile annually. Municipalities, parks, schools, stores, and homeowners use chemicals at the slightest provocation without regard for the safety of the users or others. The rights-of-way of the roads, railways, rivers, flood channels, sewers and power lines that divide our cities are often soaked with chemicals. People have fears of fires and the like because they have seen and felt what they can do, but handle chemicals as if they are harmless waters, and use them unnecessarily, carelessly, and lavishly. Even forest lands no longer escape these “silent killers.”
It is nice for man to life, do what he or she has to do without interventions, live safely and without fear, perhaps have some healthy and intelligent children, and then, satisfied and fulfilled, wait for a graceful death. But expectations of such a good life are rapidly fading as birth defects, permanent injuries, and premature mortality caused by such things as cancer, technological breakdowns, chemical and nuclear contamination, crime, violence, terrorism, war, drugs, alcoholism, and unhealthy concentrations of people continued to skyrocket. Shouldn’t the right to live a full life span be a basic freedom? Maybe things were better when they were worse!
Men and machines
Men, women, and children today marvel at machines, thrill at the power they have built into them, and ride and use machines incessantly as if mesmerized. Their lives are literally dominated by machines. But the power of a rocket, the deafening roar of a jet plane, the speed of a train, the enormity of a giant earthmover, the rough ride of a motorcycle, the precision of a computer, or the beauty of a complicated machine can never compare to the feelings generated by natural phenomenon.
Some of the experiences that machine slaves are missing that can stir the heart, brush the soul, rustle dormant instincts in ways that machines can never engender include the eerie call of a loon, a red-ball sunset seen in solitude, a fresh mountain meadow and melodious stream in spring, a flight of unerring geese, the hypnotic spell created by a blazing fire, a twilight rally of coyotes, the spell of a hazy afternoon in the country, viewing a sky full of stars interrupted by shooting stars, the smell of a damp swamp, the unexplainable restlessness at the onset of a snowstorm, an eagle soaring, the roar of a relentless surf, the smell of freshly burned ground and charred wood, a midnight display of northern lights, the feel of the first frost with frozen ground and pinging ice, walking in the wild, the pre-dawn booming of prairie chickens, the north wind in tall pines, the chill, calmness, and darkness preceding a violent thunderstorm, an osprey plunging to water, a torrant waterfall, the searing heat and brightness of a summer desert, wild noises in the night, an impenetrable marsh thicket, walking on fresh snow, the loneliness of a deep woods, an ocean view alone, lightning after dark, the smell of the desert after a rain, and the anxiety feelings of finally going home.
Machines must be put in perspective, they should not interfere with natural experiences. Rather we should allow nature to pour into our souls to help fill the emptiness that is otherwise there to haunt us.
“There is a definite link between boredom and the abundance of electronic and mechanical appliances which have given us easy access to gustatory, visual, and aural delights. Excessive boredom is common to many in the United States.”
Robert Wenger, 1975
Why all the noise?
If noise were power, then contemporary Americans would be the greatest. Background noise is ever-present. Air conditioners and heaters rumble away the hours in the office, school, store, home, or auto. Even backyards are no escape from these unnecessarily noisy machines. Every city is under the constant roar of traffic on surface streets or freeways. Country places are also subject to the steady drone of distant highway and air traffic. The air space around airports is crowded with insensitive civilian and commercial aircraft.
Technology has provided us with all kinds of gadgets, conveniences, and appliances. Unfortunately, most have been engineered to sell and not to operate with a minimum of noise. Why must refrigerators, water heaters, washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners, blenders, ventilators, electric razors, knives, and the like make so much noise? Even televisions scream with audible and near-audible sounds.
What ever happened to all those city ordinances and laws prohibiting excessive noise? Most weekends become unbearable with loud lawn mowers, edgers, trimmers, outdoor vacuums, and chain saws. And then there are the unmuffled go-carts, power boats, snowmobiles, swamp-buggies, motorcycles, race cars, hot rods, and dragsters that turn up each weekend in the garage and tests on the street, and then used to deafen the countryside just for fun. Oblivious homeowners scream away the weekends with electric saws, drills, sanders, and sprayers.Even the famous weekend baseball and football games are noisy.
Today’s youth are in a class by themselves, the noise champions. Live, tape, radio, or record music isn’t music unless it is loud. Young people also like to drive in particularly noisy ways; roaring takeoffs, peeling rubber, squealing starts, turns, and stops, and continually gunning the engine when stationary. The vehicles are “fixed” so that they are loud, whether they are motorcycles, cars, trucks, or vans. Apparently, these kids believe that they will never be noticed in this crowded world of ours unless they make noise, or could it be that they are afraid of silence?
Many young people are suffering from occupational deafness even though they have never had an occupation.
“The fact that people who live under airport flight paths say they get used to the noise and that eventually it doesn’t even wake them, does not mean the noise is not having serious effects.”
Dr. Joyce Friedmann, 1973
(That is like the horse that was fed sawdust; just about the time that he got used to it, the horse died.)
Wilderness
“It is too easy to say that people prefer landscapes humanized and that we adore wilderness only after it no longer howls. The presumed fact that man likes to tame wilderness does not prove that men are well off without the wilderness. We are still ignorant of what men, in the deepest levels of their brain, need from the world.
Daniel McKinley
“There are thousands of men in our cities to whom a month’s annual sojourn in the wilderness would bring a renewal of all their powers and a vast increase of their energies. . .
This as it seems to me, is the true use of the wilderness, and its value to the country at large. . .”
William H.H. Murray, 1869
“The human being, as we know him, is a product of evolution controlled by natural selection exerted by the environment. Man’s requirements are, as a result, the features of this environment. This is not only true of his physical requirements, but of those of his other levels of being. Perhaps in the long run, beauty and inspiration are full as important aspects of environment as a habitat for man as our food and energy . Perhaps this is what is meant by total environment as a resource, and all other resources are merely parts of it.”
Jack Major
“Man cannot live by bread alone.”
New Testament
“The buffalo is gone, and of all his millions, nothing is left but bones. . . Those discordant serenaders, the wolves that howled at evening about the traveller’s camp-fire, have succumbed to arsenic and hushed their savage music . . . The rattlesnakes have grown bashful and retiring. The mountain lion shrinks from the face of man, and even grim “Old Ephraim’ the grizzly bear, seeks the seclusion of his dens and caverns.”
Frank Parkman, 1892
“A wilderness area, like a woman, loses its character permanently if it is visited by too many lovers.”
Macdonald
Roads in mountains are scars that will never heal.
“Wilderness has many values. It serves as a biological base for an otherwise increasingly synthetic and hybrid world. It provides us with diversity in an otherwise increasingly monotonous world. It gives us some contact with the natural order from which our species emerged. And it provides us with a form of aesthetic experience quite different from any which many can create through his art, however great that may be.”
The editors, 1973
The Living Wilderness
What’s happening to wilderness?
“Beauty of wilderness falls to earth, crushed under the pounding herd, as humans climb peaks by way of blacktop roads. Trail Peak Road from Ownes Valley has in three years brought unconscious but fatal desecration to Horseshoe Meadows Roadhead, at 9600 feet and upwards, by such mass transportation indicated by July 4 car counts. What the motorists come to see vanishes before the viewers. The bighorn sheep have disappeared, dispersed; the big game bird, the blue grouse is gone. As easy hikers flood in, the trails deepen and spread, meadows sicken, and tiny, clear, cold Cottonwood Creek muddies, its banks mucked and silted. Silting choked the golden trout fingerlings, reproduction ceased so Fish and Game closed fishing in the nearest four lakes. Thousands of humans astride, beside, within this tiny stream scared the rest the live-long day, so none grew big. Like disease, the remaining Cottonwood Lakes will succumb to human over use, disturbance, and siltation,. Thus shall pass the world’s most beautiful trout, The Golden Trout ⎯ saved elsewhere but only in controlled breeding pens; destroyed as free-living wildlife, killed by kindness (?), by sightseers trampling wilderness to wasteness. Trail Peak Road must close; human herds stay out. Horseshoe Meadow and the Boreal Plateau need the next 100 years to recover. Healing in the high country takes 50 times longer. Only the adept should pack in and pass through. Substitutes for mountaineers, the insensitive and heavy-footed, the gas powered should stay out of the Sierran Alps, the nearest of earth to heaven.”
Roland Case Ross
How many children?
Perhaps the most important issue is not how many children a couple will have, although the eventual crush of numbers will restrict availability even to the point of depleting space and the essential resources, but to make certain that these offspring do not become part of the “fat society”. Existence in the “fat society” appears to be based on unrestricted use, runaway consumption, and wanton waste. It would be better if these offspring become the producers and the actively contributing members of society and the land community.
“Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards.”
Saint Francis Xavier
“Children do not need to be taught how to explore and learn, they will do so naturally given an environment that will allow it to happen.”
Roger Hart, 1973
The trouble with our modern Western culture is its total dismissal of the older generation. Their experience and objective realism are needed to ground the high-flying idealism of youth, for progress cannot be made until idealism is harnessed to realism. Old people also have a perspective that other adults do not because they are free from the pressures and worries of the present.
“When people of various ages, young and old, live and work together, the past and future seem to merge. Anyone who is around children and old people must develop a respect for and an understanding of the past, and a desire to see a better future.”
Sharon Curtis, 1973
“Every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession a duty.”
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
“Ownership is stewardship; title embraces life and the community of life along with land use ‘Rights’.”
Roland Case Ross, 1973
Preserving civilization
Groups of people living with an advanced social organization and enjoying cultural and technological developments are considered to be civilized. Life in civilized societies is usually well above a life or death existence. Sometimes we forget that civilization is only eggshell thin, with little separating us from a chaotic, gut-survival, and “cannibalistic” existence. Civilization cannot be taken for granted but must be constantly cultured. Even at that, perhaps the sheer weight of too many people will ultimately break it.
The wealthy and ruling class in our society realized that they had an obligation to help preserve and uphold civilized amenities such as peace, justice, and the various freedoms, and invested a part of their wealth promoting them. As others began enjoying these amenities, they made educational efforts to perpetuate them.
The wealth has now also been distributed among the middle class. But these people generally use their educations, abilities, time, and money purely for self-gratification, entertainment, and recreation. Now the majority of Americans have much to lose if the thin veneer of civilization is shattered, while those uneducated, below the poverty-line, and dissatisfied believe more and more that they have little to lose with terrorism, violence, gangs, dishonesty, stealing, robbery, rape, murder, and vandalism.
Those that have must realize that they have an obligation to maintain our civilization that goes with their affluence. This must start with the minimum responsibility of making certain that their children learn what is right in terms of respect for life, property, freedom, security, and trust. The new rich must also change their prevalent insanity of selfishly amassing material goods without sharing. Otherwise, the rift between those that have nothing to lose and those that have, will continue to widen until the mantle of civilization is shattered.
Dominant philosophies in the world are short-sighted or crisis-orientated, and are based on the belief that man will, by his inventiveness, bail himself out of trouble.
The bulk of humanity has a man-centered and materialistic view of nature and the world.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul.”
New Testament
Americans are the most sensitive people in the world. Unfortunately, this sensitivity is directed inwardly to their own needs, and not to the needs of others.
“You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty.”
Chief Joseph
As modern societies and countries grow richer, their environments tend to grow poorer.
People of principle
What this country needs is not a good five-cent cigar but people of principle, that is, honest, trustworthy, and responsible persons willing to stand up for what is right no matter how uncomfortable that might be. It seems that more and more people in all walks of life, from the unemployable poor to proper , believe that anything is permissible and right as long as one can do it and get away with it. Moral codes have been abandoned, religious mandates considered rubbish, and laws treated as if they were made to be broken.
Concern for the environment, resources, and the natural world, sometimes referred to as a land ethic, can only be built upon a foundation of general human ethics. Ecological problems stand little chance of being resolved as long as immoral, amoral, and lawless attitudes prevail in our society. People of principle will do what is right for their fellow humans, the country, and their environment, since their actions are based on standards of conduct founded on a just and moral philosophy that does not change with the times, conveniences, or conditions.
It seems that people today are reluctant or almost incapable of making decisions and commitments at every level.
We will never have leaders, until we again have discipline and men born of adversities.”
Fulton Senn, 1974
What is progress?
Future “progress” must turn away from such things as runaway growth, sprawling cities, rampant road building, more cars, second homes in the country, additional consumer products, and more and wasteful people. It must rather focus on adjusting our needs to the resources available, protection all forms of life, attempting to improve the quality of life for all people, and strive to develop values, industries, technologies, and societies that will ensure that future peoples inherit an earth with a full compliment of resources and living things which will provide the opportunities for then to live happy lives in benign environments.
“We deem those men remarkable who think as we do.”
It seems to be so much easier today to organize a conference on environment than to bend down and pick up a gum wrapper.
“The stones that critics hurl with harsh intent, a man may use to build his monument.”
Why is it, that whenever some individuals become concerned about others, the environment, or the future, and try to do something about it, they are immediately under suspicion and considered to be unrealistic obstructionists against progress with selfish, anti-establishment, subversive, and even revolutionary leanings?
And yet, when others are clearly wasteful consumers concerned only with their necessary and unnecessary needs, or believe that their existence entitles them to a full share of the “good life” and the right to make insatiable demands on the world and profit in doing so, they are completely accepted, usually envied, and even respected.
“The logger looks at stately trees in a primitive area and sees only cellulose and dollars. He puts the matter to the federal or state forest service and speaks in terms of employment of men, the importance of the payroll to the nearby communities, the number of people on relief, and so on. Building a road to the ridge and cutting the trees is even put in terms of patriotic duty.”
William O. Douglas
It seems that as we acquire more leisure time for relaxation and recreation, the places conducive to these activities diminish.
What is important?
Why are there so many “little” people that are more concerned about petty things than they are about the important things in life like their families, friends, environments, countries, and futures? These “little” people seem to be everywhere, expending energy worrying about what the other guy is doing, overly concerned with pleasure and comfort, how to do less for more pay, getting more days off, more fringe benefits, making their lawns greener than the neighbors’, going out more often, getting a bigger camper, another car, motorcycles for the kids, or another radio, stereo, or T.V. Isn’t anyone trying to do something about the really important things and using his or her abilities to make this a better world? Most of the things that we “just got to do” will make little difference one month, one year, or one century later. But one day it will be too late to do the important things that should be done now.
“We judge ourselves by what we think we can do; others judge us by what we have already done.”
“Frankly, I’m worried that relatively few of our best minds are able to expend significant energy on the major problems of our time, and that, though they might agree on some things, they are unable to influence society in any profound way. Virtually every talented person is occupied in a daily routine of detail; the really major decisions are made without time to consider all of the relevant information.”
R. Van Potter, 1975
“God grant us Serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
Courage to change the things we can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
Ignatius Loyola
Working on!
When we lived in the northwoods, people used to say that life was nothing but a “wood cycle.” The reason for this was that firewood was the energy source used to keep warm and stay alive, but sometimes it seemed that the only reason one survived the cold by staying in front of the home fires was to again go out into the woods to cut more firewood,
Apparently many people consider work as some vicious and demeaning cycle; the treadmill of life and a necessary evil. And yet, work, the toil of hands and minds, is the way human life is given purpose and dignity.
Hard work is the best cure for neurosis, but it must be to make, maintain, or pursue something you love. The labor must be with love, enjoyment, and purpose.
Today, people are demanding equal pay for equal work, a just demand. But what happened to those days when employees gave a full-day’s work for a day’s pay? It appears that more and more people from all walks of life, including professionals, work only for the weekends, vacations, and retirement, caring little for the tasks that make up most of the best days of their lives.
“My father once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition there.”
Indira Gandhi
One of the most fulfilling ways to spend our lives is doing the best jobs we can at those things we are most suited to do. The secret to a satisfying life is in finding tasks, vocations, and challenges that match our abilities and talents, to seek whatever and whoever draws out the best in us, and most importantly, in doing things for others, including those yet to come. Some of us will live longer than others, but all in all, we are on this earth for such a short time. And after we are gone, life will go on, the sun will follow dark storms and warm the earth, winters will melt into springs, the balmy winds of summer will still blow, and oceans will continue to wash at continental edges.
It is not important that we will be remembered or immortalized in some manner, but that we pass on to those who will follow, more than just inheritable traits or genetic materials. Other animals are restricted to being genetic receptacles solely involved in sustaining a continuity of life through time, but we can also leave our heirs a legacy of experience, knowledge, and values, as well as viable environments that will ensure their survival, fulfillment, and happiness.
The pursuit of happiness
The 20th Century version of happiness appears to place great importance on being free from any form of suffering, on being cushioned in material wealth, and pampered with technological pleasures.
And yet, to fully understand oneself and life, one must experience and share hardships and suffering. We cannot begin to appreciate such things as relaxation until we have toiled, health until we have been sick, a cold drink until we have experienced thirst, friendship until we have been lonely, and life until we have accepted some of the challenges of living. Only by facing challenges, surviving suffering, overcoming hardships and giving of ourselves can we begin to get a real insight into life, thereby gaining an understanding that is a prerequisite to happiness. Human health and fitness are also only maintained by effort, and are prerequisites to a healthy mind.
Fools will follow the “soft” roads that can only lead selfishly inward, happy humans will seek our “hard” roads that are outward bound.
“It is better to give than to receive.”
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Time alone
All of us need to spend time alone. Throughout our lives, we require time away from our daily duties and those things that demand our deliberate attention. Starting as small children, we need periods to meditate, daydream, or reflect upon things we have sensed or learned directly or indirectly. These times are not only needed to reinforce previous experiences and to order our thoughts, but to allow subconscious thoughts to come into conscious grasp. Without frequent periods free from external bombardment, we stand little chance of developing a certain awareness, perspective, and understanding of ourselves.
Today’s world offers fewer and fewer times and places to temporarily escape our immediate needs and idle our minds. Natural settings that create conducive conditions for reflection are rapidly fading, even in the countryside. Waking hours, excellent times for random thought activity, are invariably taken up by the hectic rush to meet daily obligations. Time to and from work is usually preoccupied with driving, parking problems, traffic jams, and car performance. Idle periods, rest breaks, and relaxation times are often filled with television. Time is no longer available for routine and monotonous activities such as walking and waiting; good times for thinking alone. Sabbath religious services, often with repetitive singing, praying, or ceremony, were a once-a-week guaranteed time for meditation, and they have also been abandoned or replaced by ”meaningful” dialogues or sermons.
The material world has little time left for the mind, except for those who use theirs to make money, and many bodies are placed in their graves that had minds that never contemplated or groped with their existence, life, purpose, inner thoughts, or came to understand themselves or others.
What the world needs is love
Today’s youngsters appear to be far more independent than the predecessors were. They come to believe that it is most important to “take care of yourself” above all else. They also seem to mature physically so much more quickly, and prematurely abandon childhood before its developmental phases have been completed. Too many juveniles enter the adult world trying to escape an unhappy childhood, equipped only with immaturity, selfishness, and knowing little of love.
“When the well-being of another person is as important to you
as your own well-being, then a state of love exists.”
William H. Brown, 1973
“The object of love is to serve, not to win.”
Woodrow Wilson
“Look beyond yourself.
There you will find peace.”
We must first understand ourselves, before we can begin to understand others. And we stand little chance of learning much about ourselves until we experience and come to know of the natural world of living things. Efforts must be made to break away from the ever-expanding world of material man, and make frequent contact with those things that go back to the roots of our being and development.
Before anyone sets out to find a mate, they should first be certain that they have found themselves.
A life well lived does not depend upon whether one is married or single.
You get out of, or derive benefits from such things as a trip, game, play, opera, book, lecture, course, occupation, marriage, vocation, or life according to what you put into them.
“...meaninglessness breeds despair, and despair, I think, is a secret destroyer of the human spirit, as real and as deadly a menace to our cultural sanity as the misused power of the atoms is to our physical survival.”
Roszak, 1974
Daedalus
The problem with young people appears to be cultural. Order and discipline are gone. The divorce rates go up, wrongs are rationalized as right, and children have lost their sense of belonging to a family. The television young expect to be continually entertained and instantly gratified. The only thing more and more parents expect of their bored children is that they soon will “get the hell out.” They learn from adults how to waste and pollute, to demand their full share or more, how to break laws without getting caught, and how to get by with a minimum effort.
Education
“Learn as if you were to live forever
Live as if you were to die tomorrow.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
Oscar Wilde, 1891
The trouble with our education system is that it places undue emphasis on skills at the expense of values. And now there is serious question as to whether students are even learning the basic skills.
“There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.”
“Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.”
“Aim high! For if you aim at nothing you will hit nothing.”
“Goals are for those who need them.”
“It is easier to attain success than it is to live with it.”
The purpose of a university is to stimulate and train those interested in learning. The university community should search for truth and interest students in thinking about it. It must encourage social change and revolution by the continual critical evaluation of society and by considering ways of improving it. The university must provide enough general information so that students can develop a perspective and set goals. Idealism must prevail. Students should not only search for truth and knowledge, but should also attempt to find themselves and their purpose. The university can help in the student’s self-fulfillment and realization of talents, and in the process, perhaps also help provide society with leaders and skilled manpower.
College has been a success if the graduate knows as much as he thought he did when he started.
“The primary purpose of the University is to provide an environment in which faculty and students can discover, examine critically, preserve, and transmit the knowledge, wisdom, and values that will help ensure the survival of the present and future generations with improvement in the quality of life.”
R. Van Potter, 1970
“Memory is like a child walking along a seashore. You can never tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.”
“Interest is the greatest educator.”
“Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of our attitude towards a whole active mass of organized past reactions or experience.”
Sir Frederick Bartlett, 1932
“He that knows nothing, doubts nothing.”
Education turns the wheels of a democracy. Unfortunately, education is often no longer an objective and unbiased search for truth and an open and unhampered quest for knowledge. Rather, education is frequently forced to deal with incomplete or biased facts and outright propaganda, with those interested in learning often being exposed to only those things, true or untrue, that certain factions, groups, businesses, industries, corporations, or governments want to be known.
“To meet eager young minds restores what thrilled me earlier, the hopefulness through youth for human betterment and a better world, and a natural systems preservation for the whole earth.”
Roland Case Ross, 1975
We must first recognize our problems, and that is the beginning of their solution. I think our only hope is in open education. If people are honest and perceptive to promoting truth and change, education can become a big enough lever to move the world.
“The outlook for man, I believe, is painful, difficult, perhaps desperate, and the hope that can be held out for his future prospects seems very slim indeed...”
Robert L. Heilbroner, 1974
An Inquiry into the Human Prospect
“I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more.”
Chief Joseph
All kinds of ecologists representing a broad range of interests and specialties are making similar predictions. These forecasts invariably take the form of warnings of pending problems, including forthcoming losses, short-ages, and disasters as a result of the disruption, overuse, abuse, destruction, pollution, contamination, or overpopulation of some part of the earth.
Are ecologists, by their very nature, eternal pessimists and forecasters of doom? Or could it be that the consensus judgments of these scientists is indeed a genuine warning for all to heed? How many more warnings are needed before we will listen and do what is necessary for our survival? We cannot expect visions from heaven to enlighten us when the prophets are already among us, and the prophecies are written across every landscape and can be seen in the waters of the world.
“I will soon be off again. . .
The mountains are calling and I must go. . .”
John Muir