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CONSERVATION SCIENCE INSTITUTE quality science for conservation. | home
October 2005
 The CSI Report, October 2005The monthly newsletter of the Conservation Science Institute
editor: Brian Petersen
Inside CSI
CSI has eliminated the link to the Environmental News Service. We have added a link to Downbound.com which will direct 10% of the proceeds of product sales to the CSI fundraising arsenal. The items being sold are environmentally friendly organic shoes, clothing, and other accessories that meet ethical requirements. We hope CSI can raise significant funds and help our members find these products.
A small selection of over 100 environmental and animal protection organizations who have partnered with Downbound.com include:
* Bat World Sanctuary
* Big Cat Rescue
* Grinning Planet
* EarthSave Louisville
* Macrocosm USA
* Foster Parrots Ltd.
* Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary
* Renewable Energy Long Island
* SOS Rhino
* The Arthur R. Marshall Foundation
* The Green Guide
* The Wild Connection
* World Trade Center Environmental Organization
So, consider doing some shopping and support CSI. Click on the below logo:
A Graphic Look at the State of the World has just been published by the Global Education Project. The color wall poster showcases a collection of over 100 charts, 15 maps, and explanatory text, all rigorously referenced to reliable sources, summarizing the conditions of the world's ecology and humanity and how they affect each other. It is a holistic and integrated overview, connecting a maze of apparently disparate issues such as wealth and climate change, oil supply and food production, global warming and global fisheries. The graphic may be a valuable tool for anyone teaching about or striving to understand the world's complex environmental and humanitarian challenges. You can view the graphic at: http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/preview.php
During September, I have been working with the U.S. Soil Conservation Service to restore a small salmon stream, Crocker Creek. One culvert was breached and one was plugged with debris. When the plugged culvert was cleaned, salmon moved through the stream and past the culvert only 50 minutes from fixing the problem. Fifth graders from a local school assisted in the efforts to fix the breached culvert on Crocker Creek. The first photo below shows Crocker Creek before the restoration effort. Note the 12 inch drop at the end of the culvert. The next two photos show the check dams used to raise the water level. The third photo is from downstream and shows the water level has been raised to the bottom of the culvert.
CSI fellow, Malin Jennings, has been invited to speak at a World Wildlife Federation symposium on climate change in Tokyo October 8. Her topic is the impact of climate change on the Arctic. Fellow speakers include Norbu Sherpa who will discuss the impact of climate change on Nepal and Mt. Everest and a woman from Fiji who will talk about the effects on Pacific islands.
 Lynn Aspatore sent some nice white-tailed kite photos which have been added to the CSI web site at http://www.conservationinstitute.org/whitetailedkite.htm
Bruce Wright
Executive Director
Is Renewable Energy Sources or Conservation the key to sustainable life?
 Greenhouse gases, due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, are the prime culprit in the global warming of the earth and the resulting climate change. All the mitigation polices to combat global warming promote better energy standards, efficient use of energy, more research and application of renewable energy sources. Is there a sustainable solution for 6.3 billion humans on earth? Efficiency and conservation are key components of energy sustainability--the concept that every generation should meet its energy needs without compromising the energy needs of future generations. Energy sustainability focuses on long-term energy strategies and policies that ensure adequate energy to meet today's needs, as well as tomorrow's. Sustainability also includes investing in research and development of advanced technologies for producing conventional energy sources, promoting the use of alternative energy sources, and encouraging sound environmental policies. But what are these renewable energy resources? And how efficient are they compared to conservation?
 1) Solar electric systems catch the energy directly from the sun resulting in no emissions. It is cost effective for business and powering houses and with time it has been getting cheaper. The most common asked question about solar energy is “What do you do when the sun is down?” Capturing and storing this energy is a major challenge. Solar energy will soon be accessible and cost effective for everyone. However, storing the energy and the availability of solar collection sites are the hurdles that this energy source faces. National Geographic reported that it would take 10,000 square miles of solar panels to satisfy all of the United States' electricity demand. It is also a unreliable source of energy unless you are in a very sunny state.
 2) Wind energy is one of the lowest-priced renewable energy technologies available today, costing between 4 and 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending upon the wind resource and project financing of the particular project. Wind energy is satisfying 20% of Denmark's energy demand. But this source of energy faces opposition from the aesthetic point of view, noise produced by the rotor blades, and also from the environmental aspect since it leads to the killing of migrating birds. And there is storage problem too. Most of these problems have been resolved or greatly reduced through technological development or by properly siting wind plants. Both wind and sun can provide distributed energy and are economically feasible for small scale users.
 3) The term biomass refers to plant materials and animal wastes used for energy, especially tree and grass crops, and forestry, agricultural, and urban wastes. Releasing the stored energy from the sun in the plant mass (generated by photosynthesis), green plants can offer a substantial supply of power when grown, harvested and combusted properly. Biomass-produced ethanol provides 50% of the automobile fuel in Brazil. The United States produces 60 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity from biomass; about 2 % of the nation's total. This energy source is also limited by the availability of land, specifically agricultural land. Growing plants strictly for the purpose of biomass energy production typically requires intense management of land and crops. Estimates suggest that powering all the world's vehicles with bio-fuels would mean doubling the amount of land devoted to farming.
4) Nuclear energy is the most controversial and powerful contender in the renewable energy scenario. The challenge of using nuclear energy is waste disposal and accidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Nuclear power is far from renewable.
 5) Hydro-electric power, using the potential energy of rivers, now supplies 17.5% of world electricity (99% in Norway, 57% in Canada, 55% in Switzerland, 40% in Sweden, 7% in USA). The chief advantage of hydro power is the elimination of the cost of fuel. Hydroelectric plants tend to have longer lives than fuel-fired generation. Hydroelectric power facilities in the United States generate enough power to supply 28 million households with electricity, the equivalent of nearly 500 million barrels of oil. In the developed nations this may not the best option of energy generation because major sites with the potential for harnessing energy in this way are either already being exploited for commercial uses or are unavailable for other reasons such as environmental considerations of erosion and habitat disturbance. Building a dam often involves flooding large areas of land and changing habitats (for example, the Three Gorges Dam in China).
 The general consensus is that renewable energy is not cost effective, as it often needs government incentives in order to be viable. All the renewable forms of energy have two important cost associated with it. One is the direct cost of adopting that technology i.e. the cost of setting up the plant, buying the land, etc. The other is the hidden cost of the system - environmental pollution, displacement, etc. The last major disadvantage of renewable energy technologies is that often they are dependent on certain conditions. Wind energy projects cannot be set up in an area with little wind. Small hydropower cannot be utilized in an area without small rivers or other water resources. Renewable energy is not the immediate solution to the energy crisis, especially with the increasing energy demand by countries like China and India. The current oil reserves will soon be depleted or completely exhausted. The efforts and cost involved in extracting oil from ever deeper reservoirs is also increasing. The world oil consumption is projected to rise by 41% by 2025. So how are we going to balance the supply and demand? More drilling is not the answer. If developed over the next decade, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge might produce 250 million to 800 million bbl a year The U.S. consumes that much oil in about a month. Conservation and efficient use of energy is the ideal and economically feasible practice of using the available energy resources in a sustainable way and to constrain the use of fossil fuels. Energy conservation extends available resources, increases supply relative to the demand, and helps offset future price spikes that result from shortages of both oil and natural gas, and when natural disasters like hurricanes hit. The choices we make about how we use energy-turning machines off when we're not using them or choosing to buy energy efficient appliances-impact our environment and our lives. Reducing the potentially catastrophic accumulation of greenhouse gasses would be a side benefit of using fossil fuels much more efficiently.
 Ants and Sprawl
by Brian Petersen
 After World War II the American landscape began a rapid transformation. The post war boom provided many people the opportunity to move to the suburbs, creating large tracts of housing development. This phenomenon has continued all over the country and people have coined the term sprawl to describe it.
Phoenix and Atlanta, two the nations fastest growing cities, often come up in discussions of sprawl. But nowhere is sprawl happening in a more biologically rich environment than in the Florida Keys. Two researchers have published a paper in Ecology and Society looking at the impacts of sprawl on biodiversity in the Lower Florida Keys.
 They note in their article that growth in suburbs is outpacing growth in urban centers by ten times. To assess the impact this suburban growth is having on ecological diversity they first conducted a thorough literature review of the existing data on the impacts of sprawl. Others have documented that in addition to the physical loss of habitat from sprawl, its impacts have a much larger impact on the landscape as a whole.
Many species will not enter areas with low human activity. Roads have played a major role in eliminating access to suitable habitat. One study mentioned in the literature review indicated that coyotes circadian rhythms actually change when exposed to sprawl, becoming more nocturnal than in areas with little or no human presence.
Sprawl blocks migration routes, isolates populations, and may lead to an increase in animal movement, which can lead to increased predation. But perhaps the greatest impact of sprawl is the proliferation of exotic, non-native species. Studies have shown that disturbed areas harbor more, and a larger proportion of, non-native species than do undisturbed lands.
Previous studies in the Florida Keys have documented the extent of non-native ants and the distribution of native species. These studies took place over the past 50 years and help determine how ant diversity has changed over that time.
This study used habitat sampling and bait traps over transects to assess ant diversity. The study looked at various habitat patch types and aimed to identify species presence, not abundance, of various species. The amount of sprawl at each patch was quantified by measuring the distance of human development to the patch, as well as by estimating the level of influence of development on that patch.
 The study identified 24 native ant species and 18 non-native. Previous studies had not identified such a large proportion of non-native species, but that was not the most surprising result of the study. The researchers found little evidence to suggest that sprawl was decreasing native species richness. However, the findings did suggest that sprawl increased non-native ant species richness.
These findings provide important insight in to the impacts sprawl and human development has on species diversity. The authors suggest that limiting future sprawl will help to ensure the maintenance of native ant diversity in the Florida Keys. They further speculate that such a limitation could enable native species, through predation and competition, to actually act to decrease non-native species richness.
Ecology and Society, 10(1): 25, 2005
The Neighborhood Nestwatch Program
by Brian Petersen
 The creation of the Neighborhood Nestwatch Program was intended to increase peoples scientific literacy and their sense of place. The program actively solicits participation in backyard bird surveys and studies by local residents, with the intention of helping them learn about the birds in their neighborhood. It also is an attempt to encourage people to take individual action at their local level to help the bird community.
A study published in Conservation Biology analyzes a Neighborhood Nestwatch program in Washington, DC. Designed to increase awareness and knowledge about avian ecology, Nestwatch helps collect important scientific data and teaches people living in urban areas about bird ecology and biology. Since its inception in 2000 about 175 households have participated in the program.
 Participants were given support material and asked to document activities of 8 species of birds in their backyard. In addition to their own observations, participants were paired with researchers from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center at least once per year during the breeding season. This provided participants to not only the opportunity witness scientific methods and research but also allowed them to ask questions and review their findings with an expert.
To assess whether or not the program improved science knowledge and fostered a sense of place, the researchers surveyed and interviewed participants. Participants included senior citizens, couples or singles between the ages of 30-50, and families in equal proportions. All the participants had specific reasons for joining the program but all of them indicated that helping an authentic research project was important to them.
 Almost 90% of participants indicated that the program had increased their knowledge of bird biology. With regards to sense of place, 83% said their overall awareness increased. Over half the people participating in the program took some form of action, independent of the Nestwatch program, in their own backyard. Some engaged in further bird studies, others planted shrubs and other bird habitat.
Participants also talked about the program with friends and neighbors. This served to not only educate people about bird biology but also generated new participants in the program. Programs like Nestwatch have the potential to help people understand science and to take part in scientific studies. Although the study did not address the overall impact on bird biology, such programs could positively influence bird populations by promoting awareness and habitat in people's backyards.
Conservation Biology, Volume 19, No. 3, June 2005
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