Faunal Force

Habitat Managing Thoughts

In 1958 along Bath County, Virginia, USA, highway #39 there was a dense stand of  sericea lespedeza.  The planting was said to be a cooperative effort among the soil conservation, highway department, and wildlife agency interests. The small-shrub lespedeza, a nitrogen-fixer, had been demonstrated to grow well on poor soils and was widely used to revegetate the exposed soils on the cut banks of roadways. 

Years before '58, sericea had been recommended for farm wildlife plantings. It produced abundant seeds taken by game birds such as quail and was said to provide rabbit and small game bird cover.

One expert thought that no plantings for wildlife should be made along or near roads for they might increase kills by vehicles. One thought that the road pollutants would be harmful to any animals attracted to feeding near the roads. One thought that the planting here, excellent for soil erosion and tree vegetation control, was too dense for any wild faunal benefits. (He did not discuss that  sericea had been introduced for wildlife on farm lands and had then been discovered to be good for soil erosion. Not dense patches but long thin rows of such plantings had been recommended. Patterns, not just area or volume of seeds are the means to faunal benefits.) A highway person praised the low cost and highly desired appearance; a biologist said the patch was too large to influence the home ranges or to be within the cruising radius of many family groups of animals (thus too expensive per animal benefitted). Another wondered about permanence of the stand and replanting requirements. That prompted a question (unanswered) about long-term survival  in the extremely low winter temperatures of the mountain. One said, "What about summer droughts?" One person whispering in the back row wondered whether extra lime and fertilizer might have been added to this highly visible "demonstration" plot. His buddy wondered aloud if there was much soil erosion from this roadside bank and whether it deserved so much attention. A wildlife biologist wondered about how much literature there was backing up the goodness of sericea and his coleague (a habitual list writer) pulled out his notepad and began listing birds and mammals that might forage on the seeds and plants. His colleague said he missed the point entirely ... the planting was for cover ... but it could not be too tall for it might obstruct the views and thus safety of drivers.

What do micro-faunal system managers do?  They think such thoughts, resolve them, lay out the options, decide among them to meet their objectives, and take actions within budgets. For the public-agency faunal system manager, the citizens need to state their objectives. For the manager for others, the boss or owner states the objectives and the manager decides and takes action.

The Importance of "Volume"

In the past, most ecological analyses have been of area. We measure and estimate animals per unit area. We express their density which is an area expression. We buy land in acres or hectares, an area measurement. We apply fertilizers by area (as in tons per acre). We develop ecological theories in terms such as "the species-area curve." Area has gained control of our minds.

An alternative is to think and make measurements in terms of volume. I think that fish in ponds or lakes should be expressed in terms of biomass per 1000 cubic meters, not in terms of surface area. Birds do not live on areas (but perhaps meadow larks and a few exclusive ground dwellers may be an exception). They live within a volume. Tree canopy dwellers have their volumes where they spend 80 % or more of their time. Others live between the ground and 4 meters. Birds on the same mapped area occupy different layers. Each layer has a volume. Birds seem to compete for or maintain territorial volumes. Rodents living in an area from which firewood has been removed do not live within the same volume. The thichkess has been reduced (in addition ot other changes). The thickness of the volume explains the difference between the animal density in otherwise similar looking and well-measured area. Differences in results that result from analyzing the count of species per unit area within islands, I hypothesize, are largely differences in the thickness of the vegetation on islands and the range in elevations of the areas. Of course vegetative thickness is influenced by dominant factors such as elevation. Thus, some future analyses might be not for species-area but for species-volume curves.

The relevant spatial system for wild animals and their management is a volume, a "chunk" as if cut from dough by a cookie cutter, approximating a hexagon when seen from the top, undulating as clouds along the top, having topographic roughness along the bottom surface. They may be described as fuzzy and the literature of that set theory may be useful.

So What?

A volume estimate might help in analyzing and explaining differences in the fauna of areas. If the volume will increase due to management, perhaps knowledge of the relation between animals and their life volume will help predict the future populations. Computer help makes the cost of a few extra measurements insignificant. Thinking volume is likely to be fun because it will be challenging and may provide insights. It will help gain statistical control over field variations, and it will help in comprehending the places for management, the many-layered volume from below the land surface up to the air high above the vegetation canopy.

Volumes change. Increases have different effects on fauna than decreases. A grassy area becomes a brushy area, then a forest. Animals occupy such changing volumes. They are a function over time of volumes, not only area. Bird species require certain foraging volumes, nesting volume,  and defend volumes of "their territory." There must be sufficient volume; loss of volume may mean loss of a species.

Thinking about volumes suggests that if analyzing area has been limiting (perhaps in error) to undertanding wild fauna and providing for it, then perhaps analyzing for a dimension of area may also be erroneous. There are only two dimemnsion of area, length and width (or width as radius along with its pi constant and that simple realization suggests the often-discussed linear topic dear to the literature of wildlife management - edge.

The Zoo Danger

The recent (May, 2008) 7.8 earthquake near Chengdu, Peoples Republic of China, (where I visited in 1990 to explore research opportunities for my students and to advise on several wild faunal problems) reminded me of the special problems posed by zoos.  (Here is a panda in a Chengdu zoo.) Zoos, like chemical plants and prisons need special planning and tactical exercise rehearsals before times of floods, earthquakes, and terrorists' attacks. In addition to preventing the loss of expensive and rare creatures (even species in some endangered species rescue facilities) and continuing reasonable emergency care of all of the animals, there are other concerns. The objectives need to be to protect people from the large carnivores (e.g., the large cats, wolves), poisonous animals, and those likely to be agressive in unknown environments after escape.

Folks of the Field

I started observing employees of state and federal "wildlife agencies" when I was about 15, 60 years ago. Most were conservationists and interested in all aspects of nature. Only a few were narrow and disparged other workers such as those interested in song bird management ("dickeybird watchers") or fish. They were conservationists. Most were very bright and loved the outdoors and felt that that love canceled-out low financial gains from such work. They had a vocation, a calling. Many were "loners" and chose a field in which they could be "as one with the great outdoors." That, they soon learned, was not to be. Many students entering my classes had no idea what such people did, were paid, how they gained benefits or advanced. They knew little of the required education. They loved animals and "wanted to work with them," not realizing that there were few opportunities to do so and that most of the work was with populations, habitats, and people ... oh, that too! (Some were interested in being veterinarians and in zoo work.) Attempts to teach about the social dimensions of the work have generally failed because students were positive from not-very-extensive summer work, hunting, and camping that "outdoor work" was what they wanted.

University graduates have tried to make the field more scientific, pressing for controlled studies and ever-greater understanding of individual animals and habitat particulars. Managerial studies are rare; funds are diverted from this highly applied and managerial field to do "basic" research. Funds are diverted to vocal competitors (conservation biology) as the field awakes to the challenges of reduced license sales, reduced hunting, reduced population control techniques, reduced travel funds, reduced state and federal agency stability, and a rapidly-changing rural human population. Some of that population has left for the cities, some were redefining "rural" as "residential property" where owners become intolerant of wild fauna.

This post is not to speak to solving the problems but to suggest a situation that has always needed risk takers, innovators, people with very diverse interests as well as social skills (at least those of team building and work). The needs were for an almost unimaginable combination of interests and skills. My educational efforts over many years have not helped very much in preparing graduates to deal with the present situation. I continue to try by this blog medium and my web site to suggest the changes needed, how to achieve them, and the forces needed

Nidhin Photographs

I'm very pleased to have made contact with Nidhin G. Poothully in India. He is an outstanding wildlife photographer who is genuinely interested in wildlife and its proper treatment, protection, and human benefits. We seem to share very similar interests and concerns for the future. With his permission, I shall be using some of his images to illustrate and beautify my written work here, in Rural System studies, in distance learning developments and to explore other ways to expand his influence and recognition of his amazing talents.

His photograph and information about him was published before one of his presentations.

I hope you will contact him for access to a variety of other wildlife and related images.

A Thought about Ecology and Resources

I learned from many respected teachers to think "study of ..." when encountering "... ology." "Wildlife biology" seems limiting to me for it, being important, is only about study. "Ecology" although widely and improperly used in the press and elsewhere, still summons from me notions of study. "Wildlife management, " admittedly having to study and use studies, is a topic of control, of regulated change, of cost-effective action to achieve a stated objective. But even these two words are erroneous. The modern wild faunal system manager does not want (necessarily) to manipulate animal populations but to change the benefits potentially derived from them. Animals as seen by the wildlife manager are a resource. Resources, distilled from many easily-forgotten introductory university classes, are "the total means or assets available (typically grouped as goods or services and including facilities, labor, and armaments and raw material) for economic, political, and other development for increasing production, profit, or well-being." A resource is a fundamental economic concept. It is a physical entity or a service that may produce human benefits. Each resource is dynamic, changing in the major dimensions of

• valued energy and/or matter
• time
• space
• variety

All resources - forests, water, wildlife, or minerals - have the same four characteristics. They are means to human ends with the root of value. (Protectionists may claim management for animals ends, but there are no discernable criteria for success if this is the basis for work, and rarely will there be convincing evidence for differences in multi-species projects even if the ends are in question. Protectionists must address the ends of proper management actions in the face of zoonoses, food loss, and high property value loss from unmanaged wild animal populations and individual animals.)

Micro or Macro?

As a wildlife manager, I often stumbled over a question of my duties and my responsibilities to citizens and the future faunal resource for them.  It was a micro- or macro-management question. 

In the quiet moments, I could resolve that my life goal was to maximize human benefits for as many people as possible from the wild faunal resource over time (greater than my life expectancy), and over area. It was an elaboration of an ecological threesome: production/area/time.

My duties often carried me far from that work. It helped me to realize that some of my activity was very micro - e.g., designing and implementing food patches, educating school children, analyzing and prescribing for a black bear killing sheep. I could do more broad scale work such as writing magazine articles and writing plans for an improved statewide hunting season for white-tailed deer. Perhaps this was meso management? 

Macro mangement of the wildlife resource had to be at the agency or non-government-organization level in developing regulations and laws, meeting to revise migratory bird refuges and hunting regulations, deciding on research funding, designing university curricula, and selling new levels of staff financial support. There was no contact with a mammal or bird but the work was clearly wild-fauna-related and had widespread consequences.

Colleages and administrators questioned why I (or any wildlife department person) was working on analyzing the impacts of high voltage powerlines. It did not seem like wildlife management to them! For any environmental impact analysis of any major development, I simply wanted wild fauna to have a fair "place" at the table in the analyses and difficult decsions. I thought I could develop a general system that would perform such an analysis and make a useful presentation of probable impacts to wild fauna if a well-described structure was placed on the land. (I did with great graduate students.) I saw the computer-based analytical system as having broad utility and effects on fauna on each project (one was about 72 miles long) but then the same system, with revised data, cound be useful for many other powerline proposals.

I worked for 5 years on National Forest cooperative-wildlife efforts and developed much habitat and influenced forest harvest decisions on many hundreds of acres. The year that I left for more education, an Interstate highway project in the same area destroyed more habitat than I could have created if I had continued there at the same rate until my retirement. I needed more power for the resource. There are needs at all scales, micro, meso, and macro ... perhaps with a little coordination and planning.

Areas for Wild Fauna Management

Wildlife-oriented people are often educated as biologists. They seem to neglect the rules of that field that relate to precisely using words and acknowledging and holding to the first-use principle. (To maintain the consistent use of a word or phrase clearly defined.) Wildlife and wildlife management, as described previously, are good examples of such words. Areas for wildlife are equally confusing. Parks may be for wildlife and other natural and recreational purposes. Wild fauna are just one part of the resources of such areas. They are mainly owned (for citizens) by state and federal agencies (e.g., the National Park Service). There are some city parks that have a wide variety of stuctures, pools, recreational areas, etc. On National Parks, most State parks, hunting is not allowed. Fishing is allowed in many parks, adding to the confusion. Sanctuaries, less well known and more variable, are often established by individuals, non-profit organizations, and cities and usually stress protection or preservation of species and natural conditions. Wildlife Management Areas are usually state-owned and are typically public hunting and fishing areas (in-season) and for other controlled uses during the rest of the year. (Wildlife management goes on on Parks and Sanctuaries.) Preserves may be the same as a sanctuary but are often (in the US) "hunting preserves," private areas, some fenced, in which for-fee hunting is conducted, often with stocked game species. Refuges (often synonymous with sanctuaries, or preserves) are now much like "wildlife management areas." The US National Wildlife Refuge System is a natable example of many such areas. National Forests serve wild fauna in many of their ecological and multiple-use roles, allow legal hunting anf fishing, have special preserved areas, and have many park-like qualities in their recreational areas. There are many Wilderness Areas on National Forests, Refuges, and Bureau of Land Management lands. Bureau Lands of the US Bureau of Land Management have roles similar to those of the US Forest Service, especially on rangelands and forests in the western USA. Thousands of acres of public lands in military areas are intensively managed for wildlife. Timber-oriented and other companies often have special faunal management activities. Many Native American areas are intensively managed for wild fauna. The areas for wild fauna, terrestrial or aquatic, are many but their names are very confusing to citizens as I have seen as a state biologist, professor, consultant, and in many "public participation" and "impact" meetings. There is almost no possibility for easy communication, reducing such confusion, or for advancing a "brand" as for selling a product and all of its benefits. Assuming the public knows the difference in such areas can lead to failures. Faunal system management needs to be practiced on all of these areas.

Life Groups

I'm sorry. We have to back up a little. More heresy...

Species may not be the right category for management. I think the word will suffice for most species because we do not know what to do for each of them, have the funds to do anything for them, or do not recognize the importance of "the life group" as the management entity.

Examples of life groups:

• turkey poult vs. adult
• buck vs. doe deer
• male cardinals vs others
• singing quail vs others
• ruffed grouse sex/age classes, each having different behavior
• insect and amphibian instars

There are often greater differences between life groups within a species than between a group and similar genera.

The manager of the wild turkey must manage for at least two life groups, i.e.,the turkey poult (young and just-hatched) and the adult. The poult is largely an insect feeder and managerial work can increase the abundance and diversity of insects for the brood. The adults are largely seed eaters and omnivorous. Management is very different for the desired life spaces of the two life groups. (Life forms, has prior use and another meaning.)

Wilderness Wild Fauna

There are many labeled types of wild fauna (e.g., waterfowl. shorebirds, small game, big game). There are experts in each type. One such type is wildlerness fauna. How to manage it seems like a major conflict because if managed, can it be wild?

In prior posts I've stated the importance of gaining area. Wilderness areas are typically large and achieve that, and are said to be for many species of wildlife (and other objectives).

I started my Ph.D. program seeking to elaborate further Aldo Leopold's concept of wilderness as "...the base datum of normalcy" (implying that we need an unspoiled area or area uncontaminated by human variables as a basis for comparison for the changes in other sites). I found various ways to begin those studies, then found the extreme difficulties that left me (and I hope future students with related ideas) with important questions. I was caught up by wilderness advocates who listed scientific research as one major reason for wilderness preservation.

I continue to seek ways to do such studies but I know that there are very few of them other that area descriptions (which many people do not call "research."). Comparisons of unique areas are impossible or probably meaningless, no matter how interesting to the observer.

In Idaho I helped secure the wilderness research center there with Dr. Paul Dalke and others, but I left the university there too soon. I realized later the risks of entering and leaving the site as well as the dangers of study in remote areas with limited communications and little chance of rescue in the event of an extreme emergency. All wildlife studies have risks (few ever discussed) but those within wilderness area are exceptionally great. I was once deep in an Oregon forest building a Forest Service trail and slipped down a tallus slope, severing my thumb. I ruined several days of crew work because I had to be taken out for surgery.

In addition to high risks, there are hight financial costs. The returns per unit cost are high. Costs are always relative, so the returns must be very high, even though the costs, (compared to laboratory equipment and years of lab technicians salaries) are also very high. Horseback travel, air flights, temporary work stations, communications, and year-around base camp maintenance etc. are costs rarely seen by neophytes. The findings may seem high relative to low costs of binoculars and telescopes, but the other costs add up like the ticking taxicab meter. There are few dollar sources for such studies and not enough to sustain studies over a long enough period to produce significant results ... even if well planned and a breakthrough in formulated objectives.

The key question is what would I do with it if the answer if I had a good one? This is one example of the faunal system manager "starting at the end." The question needs to be answered first.

It is very important to distinguish between descriptive work and hypothesis testing. In wilderness work, no "treatment " is allowed, making conventional studies difficult to formulate. Where the ecoectomy discovery may be a useful scientific ploy, removals in wilderness are not allowed, thus the role of the removed animal cannot be discovered (as in thyroid removal experiments that advanced science).

"Normalcy" will have to be discussed and defined very precisely. Whether human-produced effects will be tolerated remains a question. The extent and whether "pre-settlement" (in the US) will have to be addressed. It seems that all areas now have human effects, however slight, and they range from human-set forest and rangeland fire to contamination from nuclear testing and accidents.

Wildlife in Parks (a special kind of wilderness)

Federal and state parks are special places, often said to be dedicated to science. Wildlife studies on parks are as difficult as suggested above although access for many park areas is easy.

Questions arise such as:

• Are there behavioral difference in animals in parks and those outside?
• Should diversity be encouraged so that the sum of animals can be stabilized?
• What is maximum use level of the park?
• How to maximize planned research on such areas. Often researchers are in conflict with disturbance, access, equipment, etc.
• What are the maximum tolerable off-park impacts?
• What is minimum user impact?
• What are maximum opportunities for people in time, space, and quality and diversity of experiencess?
• How to relate site studies to the findings reported for "landscape ecology"
• What are off-park effects? Are they beneficial ? Net benefits?
• What animals and plants are present on parks unavailable elsewhere?
• What are the impacts of the researchers?