Biological invasions: time to increase the pressure against invaders or lay down the pitch forks?
by

Biological invasions: time to increase the pressure against invaders or lay down the pitch forks?

Katie Murray and Zarah Pattison

INNS

We recently held our departmental lunchtime “Conservation Conversation”, discussing whether or not invasive non-native species (INNS) are really that bad after all. This is an interesting concept to think about, especially for Zarah Pattison and myself who both work on different groups of invasive species in Stirling University’s Natural Sciences department. This is particularly in light of the flurry of books, namely Fred Pearce’s “The New Wild” and Ken Thompson’s “Where do camels belong?” which are promoting INNS. There has been a storm of surrounding media attention and outrage of invasion biologists worldwide. But who is right? And if they are “Nature’s Salvation” (Pearce, 2015), then are we wasting money on biological control of these organisms? Continue reading →

by

Guest blog from Matt Gollock asking The Big Question….

Who migrates further, the eel or the person trying to conserve them?

Not that it’s a competition, of course, but I do think that I win.

European eel

The Sargasso Sea

The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) – the species of Anguillidae that has the longest migration; at a generous estimate, might travel up to 20,000km in its lifetime, if it visited Norway or Turkey during its lifetime before migrating back to the Sargasso Sea to breed.I did over that distance during a trip to the Philippines to visit a project aiming to conserve a number of these species. Continue reading →

by

Piecing together catchment management

By Kathleen Stosch 

Our brains naturally compartmentalise things. Germans call this ‘Schubladendenken’ which translates as ‘drawer thinking’. We have drawers for different species, different people and different scientific disciplines. This may help us understand separate drawers and their differences, but it can also mean we lose the whole picture of how the drawers are connected and are being influenced by one another and other drivers.

Continue reading →
by

A Steppe Towards Conservation

By Tom Bradfer-Lawrence

Lost in the steppe

The heat haze is intense. Not only is the sun burning in the sky, but an incessant desert wind is blowing straight out of the Gobi. And, if the sun and wind weren’t already enough, the radiator in our aged minibus is packing up. The only way to avoid the engine overheating is to have the fans on at full blast. Even then, every few miles we have to turn the van into the wind and open all of the doors in an attempt to reduce the engine temperature from incandescent to merely roasting. There isn’t a sign of another human. Every five minutes or so we pull up next to a barrel on top of a pole and I look inside. Between the heat, the emptiness, and the repetitive task, I feel like I’ve entered another world. Continue reading →

by

The Conservation Conversation: Is climate change the greatest threat to biodiversity?

In 1984 Jarod Diamond synthesised the threats facing biodiversity and famously came up with his “four horsemen of the ecological apocalypse” – 1. Over-exploitation, 2. Introduced species, 3. Habitat destruction and 4. Chains of linked extinctions – with the recent addition of a fifth, 5. Climate change. While these threats are not independent of each other, it can be useful to identify which are the most urgent in order to prioritise conservation actions.

At October’s Conservation Conversation here at Stirling I asked researchers, “What is the top threat to biodiversity?” Most attending the discussion said “habitat loss” or “habitat degradation”. I was surprised that not one person said “climate change”. I grew up in the 1990s as an environmentally aware kid and was inundated with campaigns from my favourite NGOs about the imminent threats of deforestation and large-scale land-use change across the world. However it appears the environmental agenda has moved on, and in the 2010s talk of deforestation and land-use change has been replaced with climate change. Clive Hambler, in a provocative article for ECOS in 2013, argues, “… some NGOs have lost perspective and now obsess with preventing climate changes…” In anticipation of the COP21 climate talks in Paris this November, I set out to understand this a bit more and explore the relationship between habitat loss and climate change as threats to biodiversity.

Continue reading →

by

Are the simplest solutions ever the right ones?

By Tom Mason.

I have recently returned from a conference in the foothills of the Austrian Alps where one presentation in particular resonated with me. It concerned the fate of the Bargy population of Alpine ibex living in the Haute-Savoie region of the France. In this population there is a high prevalence of brucellosis; a bacteria-borne disease which – unfortunately for ibex – Image: Tom Masoncan be transmitted to humans and livestock. The Haute-Savoie region is famed for its production of the cheese Reblochon, which contributes substantially to the area’s economy. Reblochon is a raw-milk cheese central to dishes such as fondue and tartiflette, but here it is the final ingredient in the recipe for conflict between conservation and human livelihoods (apologies, that was incredibly cheesy). Continue reading →

by

The battle of the sciences

These last two weeks I have been lucky enough to be at two workshops that could not have been more different. One was surrounded by the high mountains of the French and Swiss Alps and the other one close to the flat muds of the Wadden Sea at the Danish-German border. Both landscapes are equally inspiring and I was massively looking forward to broadening my horizon and being inspired by two workshops in such great settings.

Wadden Sea

Alps

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading →