08 Apr 2010: Analysis
The Natural World Vanishes:
How Species Cease To Matter
Once, on both sides of the Atlantic, fish such as salmon, eels, and, shad were abundant and played an important role in society, feeding millions and providing a livelihood for tens of thousands. But as these fish have steadily dwindled, humans have lost sight of their significance, with each generation accepting a diminished environment as the new norm.
If you are a resident of the East Coast of the United States or of Western Europe, when did you last attend a shad bake, eat an eel, or watch Atlantic salmon vault a waterfall? Community shad bakes once celebrated the return of American shad to rivers as a marker of spring. Recently though, a dearth of shad led to a “shadless shad bake” on the Hudson — a river that in its glory days supplied more than four million pounds of shad in one season. Eels were widely consumed by Europeans and Americans in the 1800s and were often featured on holiday tables. And salmon once ran inland in countless numbers, providing sport and food; today, only a few hundred wild salmon remain in the eastern U.S., migrating up a handful of rivers in Maine to spawn.
Today, most people in the U.S. and Europe are scarcely aware that eels, wild Atlantic salmon, shad, and alewives — once-vital sources of food and employment — are no longer a part of their ordinary experience. This decline in importance is a manifestation of a loss of standing in society for these fishes, part of a larger phenomenon involving a regrettable interplay between ecology and the social order.
Every generation takes the natural environment it encounters during childhood as the norm against which it measures environmental decline later in life. With each ensuing generation, environmental degradation generally increases, but each generation takes that degraded condition as the new normal. Scientists call this phenomenon “shifting baselines” or “inter-generational amnesia,” and it is part of a larger and more nebulous reality — the insidious ebbing of the ecological and social relevancy of declining and disappearing species.
My colleague, Karin E. Limburg, and I have come up with another term for the broader context of this phenomenon: “eco-social anomie.” Anomie is defined as a state or condition of individuals or society characterized by a breakdown of social priorities and values. Eco-social anomie describes a biological and cultural
As species disappear, they lose relevance to a society and a constituency to champion their revival.feedback loop that spirals toward this breakdown: As species disappear, they lose both relevance to a society and the constituency to champion their revival, further hastening their decline. A vivid example of this was highlighted in a recent study in Conservation Biology, in which researchers found that younger residents along China’s Yangtze River knew little or nothing of the river dolphin, the bajii — now believed to be extinct — and the threatened paddlefish.
“Our data from the Yangtze shows that, in certain cultural environments at least, local communities will immediately start to forget about the existence of even large, charismatic species as soon as these species stop being encountered on a fairly regular basis,” said Samuel Turvey, lead author of the study.
In the case of migratory fish, their once-vital niche in society is often reduced to vestigial place names, such as the Sturgeon Pool in the Hudson watershed in New York and the Salmon Kill on the Housatonic in Connecticut, which today offer local color — but no eponymous fish. Numerous measures show that the two-dozen migratory fishes of both shores of the North Atlantic have seen profound reduction. An historical review that I conducted with Limburg, of the State University of New York — College of Environmental Science and Forestry, on the sturgeons, salmon, shads, eels and other fishes that migrate between fresh and salt waters revealed deeply alarming statistics. Of 35 studies of the long-term fate of migratory fish, relative abundances had dropped below 98 percent from historic highs for 13 species, and below 90 percent for another 11, with most species reaching their lowest levels in recent years.
Numerous populations of these fishes persist at sharply reduced levels, but all species had suffered local extirpations and many are now classified as threatened or endangered. A particularly worrisome case is the European sea sturgeon, so highly regarded that in the 1300s it was designated as a “royal fish” by England’s King Edward II. Sea sturgeon once comprised almost 20 populations in rivers between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea; they are now restricted to a vanishingly small stock in France’s Gironde River.
New York State Archives
In this 1899 photo, a man pulls a net while shad fishing on the Hudson River.
Because of their remarkably high abundances and importance in early Colonial times and the sheer magnitude of their subsequent collapse, North Atlantic diadromous fishes — those that migrate between salt and fresh water — offer a particularly egregious example of eco-social anomie. Here is a generalized history: As industrialization intensified, already overharvested migratory fish populations were sacrificed for the construction of dams for power mills. This blockage of spawning habitat reduced runs further, wiping out upriver fisheries and causing downriver fisheries to dwindle or perish. The fundamental aquatic ecology of these systems also was harmed: With fewer adults entering rivers and fewer juveniles leaving them, the normal energy transfers between fresh and marine waters were reduced, and interdependencies between diadromous fishes and their associated animal and plant communities withered.
With catches diminished, local dependencies on this food source declined, and with that, a primary constituency for the welfare of the fish runs. Industrialization led to increased contamination, growing human populations led to greater discharge of sewerage, and rivers began to serve more as power sources and gutters for societal wastes than as productive ecosystems. The disappearing migratory fishes may have granted “permission” for additional ecosystem corruption because there was less cost in further debilitating rivers.
Mitigation for the loss of wild runs of these fishes was most often in the form of the easy but nearly always ineffective — if not downright destructive — stocking of hatchery-reared specimens. The exquisitely
To end the steady degradation of ecosystems, we need to rewind important historical connections.fine-tuned life histories of natural runs to their home rivers became quashed by mass-produced specimens that were less fit, but that nonetheless competed with any remaining wild individuals, reducing their fitness, too, as they interbred. Responsibility for the continuity of the runs shifted away from maintaining ecological integrity of fish runs and rivers to what amounted to a cosmetic patch via outsourcing. Abundant research has shown that a fish is not a fish is not a fish.
As Richard Judd wrote in Common Lands, Common People, “An artificial resource maintained in a habitat no longer capable of spontaneous growth, fish became a property of the state rather than an element of the providential natural landscape.”
To put an end to the steady degradation of many ecosystems — marine and otherwise — we need to rewind important historical connections and dependencies. But tools to do so are also necessary: funding, legislation and, finally, education to rebuild societal awareness and the will to effect needed changes.
In the U.S., until the importance and legal standing of these fishes and their habitats were elevated with the Clean Water Act of 1972 and other environmental statutes, resource managers lacked the means to do much except to try and maintain existing baselines. Since then, a few victories have been won and critical precedents set. It took a population crash of Chesapeake Bay striped bass in the 1980s to push Congress into enacting laws that forced the necessary draconian changes to those fisheries. But these fish made a celebrated comeback, showing what can be accomplished with a truly determined effort. The striped bass was fortunate because it had a vocal constituency of commercial and recreational fishermen calling for its revival.
The lesson from this — one which has been learned the hard way across all kinds of fisheries — is to avoid reaching the crisis stage. This philosophy, known as the “precautionary principle,” is beginning to take hold with the simple wisdom of erring conservatively in setting fish harvests.
Maine has shown exemplary leadership in reopening rivers to migratory fishes with the dismantling of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in
The striped bass had a vocal constituency of fishermen calling for its revival.1999, an action that allowed sturgeons, shad, and striped bass to swim and spawn in a 17-mile stretch of the river that was blocked for a century. Similar efforts are underway in Maine’s Penobscot River, and these include novel compromises that will maintain hydroelectric power generation levels while eventually reopening hundreds of miles of main-stem river and tributaries.
Many smaller dam-removal and fish-passage efforts are also underway on both sides of the Atlantic, including efforts to bring Atlantic salmon back to the Thames, the Rhine, and the Seine. Maine also is home to the newly formed Diadromous Species Restoration Research Network that will help coordinate restoration efforts of academic, government, and watershed activists and residents, both in the Penobscot River and throughout the northeast.
Alewives were once so numerous along the eastern coast of the U.S. that they were likened to the passenger pigeons of the sea. Sadly, precipitous decline across much of their range is reminiscent of the passenger pigeon’s demise. A new amendment to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Interstate Management Plan for alewife and its relatives calls for detailed restoration, adapted to the state level.
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Although we are still far from hearing the societal shout on their behalf that is needed, voices are rising as numbers of many North Atlantic diadromous fishes continue to dwindle. But it will require greater concerted action to actually reverse their vicious spiral. Until then, these creatures would be advised to heed the words of Henry David Thoreau, from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers: “Keep a stiff fin then, and stem all the tides thou mayst meet.”
POSTED ON 08 Apr 2010 IN Biodiversity Pollution & Health North America North America
ABOUT THE AUTHORJohn Waldman, a professor of biology at Queens College, New York, works on the ecology and evolution of anadromous fishes, historical ecology, and urban waterways. Before joining Queens College, he worked for 20 years at the Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research. He is the author of Heartbeats in the Muck: A Dramatic Look at the History, Sea Life, and Environment of New York Harbor. In a previous article for Yale Environment 360, he wrote about the ways that warming temperatures are causing the “global weirding” phenomenon.
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That's how it is (thought it doesn't have to be) with the human mind. We can become used to the most desolate of environments, and think it okay, because to correct, to work through towards solutions requires effort and sacrifice and sharing. We're not so good with these, no in totality. We have our moments, and we string these moments together and form some sort of cohesive bond of society and "progression" of civilization, but we're mostly just making it up as we go along, without understanding the finer points. That takes time. Question is, how much time have we?
Enough.
This tragic vanishing is also occuring in the iconic Salmon species of the Pacific Ocean. While hatcheries did prop up some runs for a while, now we have the threat of global corporations rearing lucrative Atlantic Salmon in open net pens along all the wild Salmon migration routes. This poses a huge risk of disease and parasite transfer, so unless we can force government to remove fish farms from wild Salmon migration routes, it's only a matter of time before "privatized" Salmon kill off all the wild ones.
Do us and the wild Salmon a favour and stop eating "pharmed salmon" from BC until they switch to closed containment aquaculture on land.
Shifting baselines aren't only generational. Individuals seem to develop amnesia when it comes to a degraded environment. They compare this autumn to the last autumn - not an autumn 10 or 20 or more years ago.
Thus it was in 2009 that when leaves never turned brilliant colors, but just fell to the ground - a month ahead of normal - nobody noticed. As trees are rapidly dying, people seem to have forgotten that they rarely used to fall over, or exhibit broken branches, thin crowns, and splitting, peeling bark.
The same can be said for the bird population. People seem to have forgotten what life was like when the air was full of the sounds of birds, most of which are now dead. We should really stop polluting our environment before our species is next on the extinction list.
To whom it may concern and President Obama,
Please issue an executive order outlawing all aquatic pesticides being applied to our estuaries. The recent listing of the Pacific Smelt as threatened along with Kim Patten's revelation concerning (90 percent) major declines of ghost and mud shrimp at the Dept. of Agriculture's Burrowing Shrimp Conference held March 12th, 2010 in Long Beach Wa, should at the very least, inspire you to stop this poisoning / polluting of our waters. These chemicals, carbaryl, glyphosate, imazapyr and other inert chemicals used and endorsed by certain oyster growers in Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay Wa. are decimating our fisheries. Oyster FARMING is not a fishery. They are not even NATIVE! Please issue this order immediately and SAVE OUR SALMON and other NATIVE fish by saving the food chain! Steve and Cynthia Ocean Shores, Wa (govanswers@gmail.com)
p.s. Please don't eat the farmed oysters from these areas as they spray/filter chemicals
There was really no problem when human predation of the oceans was limited to a few millions of individuals. Then, even with only plant and animal derived fibers, a bit of stone or bone or, later, maybe a little metal, it was pretty easy to fill a basket with yummy snacks.
Now, with several billions of predatory humans, the old stories of schools so thick you could walk across the sea on the backs of the fish seem to make no sense, even metaphorically.
Does it take a genius, here, to figure out the imbalance?
It's sad that American Shad are now the most numerous anadromous fish in the Columbia river and considered trash fish by most west coasters. It only took changing that mighty river into a series of lakes to kill off the salmon and let the shad thrive.
I am just reading eco-cide, a book given to me by Dr.Vandana Shiva. It provides a historic account of the tragic loss of species extinction on our environment and world. Devastating.
We started www.ediblegardens.com to try to address the issue of this same irrevocable loss with our staple food crops - the seeds are rapidly disappearing and it really seems like the general population just isn't all that concerned with things like feeding ourselves and biodiversity, much less species loss.
Collectively we need to lower our consumption of stuff - it's killing everything and the price is just too high...
So, basically, the authors have thought of a very complicated name ("Eco-social anomie describes a biological and cultural feedback loop that spirals toward this breakdown") for a basic phenomenon: people forget.
Good luck in coming up with a rallying to stop mass-extinction!
Bova wrote:" Now, with several billions of predatory humans, the old stories of schools..."
The issue would be better focused on the resources being used, not necessarily the billions of people. It has been estimated that Bangladesh people have a zero ecological footprint whereas Americans use the resources of ten times their numbers. To put this numerically Americans use the equivalent resources of 3 billion other people on the planet.
All you need to do is look at a high resolution satellite image of Bangladesh to see that the ecological foot print is far from zero. Low per-capita consumption is easily made up by increasing the "capitas". Unfortunately the number of "capitas" is increasing in both America and Bangladesh.
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