Dispatches - Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

200
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Dispatches
Protected – but only until plundered
Adrian Burton
The first “International Serengeti
Day”, held on March 19th, was no
happy celebration of the Tanzanian
national park’s wonders, but a global
demonstration against the planned
building of a road that will cut
straight across the path of one of the
greatest migration spectacles on
Earth: the mass movement of 1.5 million
wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus)
and zebra (Equus quagga) following
the seasonal rains. Unfortunately,
this is only one of many of the world’s
protected areas facing peril, bringing
into question what “protected” really
means.
In late January, the Tanzanian
Government stated its intention to
begin building a 54-km-long, unpaved
road to connect the Lake Victoria area
west of the Serengeti with the Arusha
area east of the park, a project it
believes is essential to the country’s
development. “The Serengeti is a
jewel of our nation, as well as for the
international community”, Tanzanian
President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete
insisted in a press release. “We want to
give you our assurances that we cannot
be irresponsible by destroying the
Serengeti. We will do nothing to hurt
the Serengeti, and we would like the
international community to know
this”. However, he continued, “we
cannot deny these people living on
the northern side of the Serengeti
border a road.”
“This road would cut directly across
the main wildebeest and zebra migration
routes, leading to an environmental
disaster”, says Andrew Dobson, a
professor in the Department of
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ).
“Tanzanian predictions suggest traffic
loads for this road of 800 vehicles per
day by 2015, and 3000 per day by
2035. Night-driving, currently forbidden
[in the park], will also be allowed.”
Wildebeest migrate across the Serengeti.
Since no unpaved road could withstand
such traffic, especially in the
rainy season, the specter of tarmac
looms, and animal collisions would
likely become a huge problem.
“Fencing would have to follow”, says
Dobson, “leading to the migration
being cut off, dramatic reductions in
the size of wildebeest and zebra herds,
and all the knock-on ecological
effects that would have on the
Serengeti ecosystem, [including] a
decline in predators, an increase in
grass fires, and more poaching”.
An alternative southern route,
which both the German government
and the World Bank have expressed
interest in funding, would be 50 km
longer. “But this route could be
cheaper to make and would prevent a
huge loss of ecotourism revenue from
a collapsed migration”, says Dobson.
“It would also supply infrastructure to
ten times as many people, so economically,
ethically, and environmentally,
it’s a much better deal.” However,
Tanzania has rejected the southern
route, and flags marking out the original
route through the “protected”
area are already going in the ground.
Construction could begin in 2012.
While better news from the
Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) announces that oil exploration
will now not proceed in
Virunga National Park, it is clear
that “protected” doesn’t always mean
what it should. In a letter dated
March 14th sent to WWF and other
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environmental organizations, and
“cc’d” to the DRC’s Prime Minister
and Parliament, the country’s Minister
of the Environment José Endundo
wrote: “In view of the threat that
oil exploration activities potentially
represent for the survival of Virunga
National Park, I can confirm to
you…the suspension of the given oil
exploration activities. We have
rejected the recommendations of an
environmental impact assessment
developed by the oil company, Soco,
which we consider premature, superficial,
and which does not conform to
the standards that we would expect.
[I] have also received assurances from
senior managers [that they will not]
attempt any prospection work in the
park unless a positive consensus is
achieved in their favor, based on an
open and transparent process that
takes account of the real costs and
benefits of such a project.” The letter
does not say “protected” means forever,
but it at least provides the park
some respite.
Recent weeks have provided even
more examples of the need to protect
“protected” lands. For example,
the diversion of water for agriculture
from Spain’s Doñana National Park,
plus plans to make the Guadalquivir
River – which flows adjacent to the
park – navigable to larger ships, have
placed the park’s UN World
Heritage status at risk, while in the
US, a legal battle was required – and
fortunately won – to return the
Tongass National Forest its protection
under the US “roadless rule”.
“One might assume that ‘protected’
would mean ‘protected for all
time’”, says Paul Racey (Emeritus
Regius Professor of Natural History,
University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen,
UK). “But even now loggers are
removing trees from the ‘protected’
forests of Madagascar, and oil companies
are looking to drill in Alaska’s
Arctic Refuge area. And when
enough silver changes hands, the
definition of ‘protected’ can alter
shamelessly. Sadly, since you cannot
shame the shameless, the fight to
maintain the right definition of ‘protected’
will never be over.” n
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UNEP report tackles Congo
water issues
Jen Fela
Approximately 51 million people in
the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC) – 74% of the country’s
population – lack access to safe
drinking water, even though the
country holds more than half of
Africa’s fresh water reserves, according
to a new study by the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP;
http://postconflict.unep.ch/publica
tions/UNEP_DRC_water.pdf).
These findings and recommended
solutions were presented at an event
in Kinshasa, DRC, marking World
Water Day, on March 22, 2011.
The UNEP report attributes the
water crisis to years of mismanagement,
conflict, environmental degradation,
rapid urbanization, and
underinvestment in water infrastructure,
calling the networks in DRC
“insufficient, aging, and overloaded”.
Compounding the problem is the
uncontrolled clearing of critical
forested watersheds surrounding
urban areas for the construction of
homes and gardens, the production
of crops, and for firewood.
Congolese women can spend hours every
day fetching water.
UNEP’s DRC Program Manager,
Hassan Partow, says, “Improving the
water situation is not only necessary to
alleviate the high incidence of waterborne
diseases in the DRC, but is
equally critical to improving the daily
living conditions of DRC’s population
– particularly women and children –
who have to toil several hours every
day to fetch water, which is often contaminated.
Investing in the water sector
is equally important for kick-starting
development in a number of key
economic sectors, including agriculture,
transportation, and energy.”
The UNEP report recommends
promoting micro-investment strategies,
such as communal tap areas and
rainwater harvesting, stating that
“the development of local solutions
Hassan Partow/UNEP/GVA/UNO
can help make significant headway in
areas where the government is reluctant,
or does not have the capacity, to
invest.” Partow continues, “What is
needed in the DRC is a broad vision
and practical strategies drawing on a
mixture of both macro- and microsolutions,
from large-scale infrastructure
investments to autonomous
community-based water supply systems,
which have shown impressive
potential in the DRC”.
The UNEP report estimates that
US$169 million is needed over the
next 5 years to implement its recommendations,
which include “support
to water sector governance reform,
technical and institutional capacitybuilding,
and establishing the scientific
information base to strengthen
water resources management.” That
estimate excludes major infrastructure
projects.
According to Partow, US$500 million
has already been committed by
donors to the country’s water sector,
although gaining access to the funding
can be a complicated undertaking
at the local level. “And this is
precisely where UNEP is recommending
that the funding should be
targeted”, Partow concludes. n
201
Got weeds There’s an app
for that!
Robin Meadows
The war on weeds in California just
got easier, thanks to a new smartphone
application – or “app” – that
takes much of the drudgery out of
reporting and tracking invasive
species. The app, which will be available
this spring, also maps native
plant distributions and could reveal
climate-induced vegetation shifts.
Called Observer, the app takes
advantage of smartphone cameras and
GPS capabilities, geo-tagging plant
photos and notes for future uploading
to an online database via cellular signals.
Observer also facilitates plant
identification by displaying lists with
thumbnail pictures, ranging from all
12 000 taxa statewide, to just the 2000
invasives, to just those invasives
within a quarter mile of the user’s location.
Spearheaded by habitat restoration
expert Daniel Gluesenkamp
(Audubon Canyon Ranch; Stinson
Beach, CA), the app has freed his staff
from the nuisance of having to carry
cumbersome equipment and software
into the field. “We used to have to gear
up for mapping, but now the tool is
already in our pockets”, he says.
Observer is based on What’s
Invasive!, a simpler app developed by
the US National Park Service (NPS)
and the Center for Embedded
Networked Sensing (CENS). “We
took a ‘Top Ten’ approach that lets
managers focus citizen-science
efforts on their worst invaders, those
that are also easily recognized without
much training”, explains CENS
app developer Eric Graham.
What’s Invasive! can improve volunteer-collected
data, according to NPS
vegetation ecologist Robert Steers
(San Francisco, CA). “GPS makes
the spatial location more accurate,
and it’s easy to verify the species by
looking at the picture”, he points out.
“Early detection is critical to controlling
invasives, and this app helps us
have more eyes on the ground.”
Gluesenkamp predicts that the
more complex Observer program will
increase volunteer contributions to
weed control. “We’re trying to curate
the information”, he explains.
“Registration is required and users
report their level of botanical expertise,
so professionals can choose to
include data only from experts or
from everyone.”
Mapping apps may soon be even
more powerful. “My contacts at
Google think we’re 5 to 10 years away
from identifying species just from
their photos”, says Gluesenkamp. n
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IPM cuts losses in stored
grains
Noreen Parks
An international group of researchers
has developed a new, eco-friendly
method for greatly reducing damage
to stored grains by insects and molds.
The pesticide-free method could
increase global food security while
delivering healthier staples to potentially
billions of consumers.
Post-harvest food losses vary by
crop, country, and climatic region, but
global estimates range from 10–40%
annually, says project collaborator
Shlomo Navarro, formerly with the
Israeli Agricultural Research Organization
(Bet-Dagan, Israel). In developed
countries, stored commodities
are typically cooled by aeration and
treated with fumigants. However,
fumigation by methyl bromide, once
used widely, is now banned due to its
contribution to stratospheric ozone
depletion. Moreover, insects have
become increasingly resistant to phosphine,
another commonly used pesticide.
“In the developing world, farmers
keep up to 80% of their crops for
home consumption, and poor storage
methods under warm, humid conditions
often lead to major food losses”,
says Navarro.
In 2006, Maria Otilia Carvalho, a
researcher with the Tropical Reearch
Institute of Portugal (Lisbon),
invited scientists working on alternatives
for preserving stored rice to
cooperate in devising an integrated
pest management (IPM) system that
could wean agricultural producers off
pesticides. “We combined and
improved on known technologies
for protecting stored grains – none of
which, individually, could duplicate
the protective benefits of pesticides”,
Carvalho explains.
To assess the need for treatments,
the team used probes for temperature
monitoring and innovative
electronic traps to detect insects at
a rice mill in Portugal. Ventilation
and refrigeration (during winter
and summer, respectively) of ricestorage
silos reduced insect infestations
dramatically. The third tool,
applied as needed, was to manipulate
the interior atmosphere of the
silos by flooding them with CO 2
–
recycled from an industrial source –
to deprive pests and fungi of oxygen.
Using this strategy trimmed
the mill’s losses by approximately
94%, says Carvalho. The results of
the study are soon to be published
in the International Organisation for
Biological Control Bulletin.
While the costs for the IPM system
will likely remain prohibitive for
developing regions with limited infrastructure,
Navarro has pioneered the
development of gas-tight, plastic bags
– now in the early stages of distribution
– for grain storage, wherein respiration
by pests generates CO 2
, thus
curbing their own populations. “Hermetically
sealed bags can allow subsistence
farmers to prevent major crop
losses and give them the option to
hold out for better prices”, he says. n
Migrating birds may spread
deadly virus
Janet Pelley
The Asian bird flu grabbed headlines
in 2005, when it suddenly spread from
China and infected poultry in Africa,
Europe, and central Asia. This rapid
proliferation sparked a debate over
whether wild birds might be circulating
H5N1, the virus that causes bird
flu. Now, a new study provides the first
evidence of a mechanism for transmission
of the H5N1 virus between
domestic farm birds and wild birds.
The researchers focused on China’s
Qinghai Lake National Nature Reserve,
a remote wildlife reserve where
6000 birds – mostly bar-headed geese
(Anser indicus) – died as a result of an
H5N1 outbreak in 2005. “Because
Qinghai Lake is far from poultry farms,
which are the main reservoir for the
disease, we wondered how H5N1 got
there”, explains Diann Prosser, a
wildlife ecologist with the US
Geological Survey (Beltsville, MD).
Diann Prosser releases a bar-headed
goose fitted with a GPS tracking device.
Prosser and her team equipped 29
bar-headed geese at the Qinghai Lake
breeding range with GPS transmitters
that recorded the birds’ location every
2 hours. The scientists mapped the
migration routes and overwintering
ranges of the geese and compared
them to both the locations of poultry
farms and the timing of H5N1 outbreaks
at domestic bird farms in
China and Tibet. They also mined a
genetics database to determine the
degree of relatedness between viruses
isolated from poultry and other wild
D Zhang
birds in the flyway of the tagged geese.
The analysis revealed that the barheaded
geese overwinter in fields outside
Lhasa, Tibet, near farms that have
previously experienced virus outbreaks.
The study also showed that 14 out of
16 H5N1 outbreaks in domestic chickens
and wild birds were located within
the bar-headed goose flyway (PLoS
ONE 2011; doi:10.1371/journal.pone.
0017622). Although none of the
tagged birds contracted H5N1, barheaded
geese were the primary species
infected during other outbreaks.
“This paper provides evidence that
suggests there is potential for wild birds
to move the virus from poultry outbreaks
in Lhasa to the breeding
grounds at Qinghai Lake”, says Justin
Brown, a research scientist at the
University of Georgia (Athens). This
research will help target new areas for
future studies and monitoring, he adds.
The World Health Organization
reports that at least 300 people
worldwide have died from bird flu
since 2003.
n
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Fake seagrass makes the
case for conservation
Claire Miller
Scientists in New Zealand are using
plastic seagrass beds to study how
juvenile fish respond to changes in a
vital but shrinking habitat. While
meadows teeming with fish survive
in remote areas, sediment in runoff
from adjacent land development has
killed much of New Zealand’s subtidal
seagrass and degraded what little
remains.
Fisheries ecologist Mark Morrison
(National Institute of Water and
Atmospheric Research, Auckland,
New Zealand) says that creating fake
mats allows researchers to control
the density and length of fronds, and
then measure the effect of increasingly
dense seagrass on fish abundance.
The mats (24 in all, each
3 m 2 ) used in the experiment covered
a range of six densities, from
sparse to very thick, and were spread
over 2000 m 2 in the Whangapoua
Plastic seagrass is a haven for juvenile fish.
Estuary, near Auckland, just before
the fish recruitment period over the
southern summer. The study found
that the denser the seagrass, the
more abundant and diverse the fish.
Maximum abundance for some
species was reached at the highest
grass-blade densities, with food limitation
then probably kicking in as
fish consumed all the zooplankton
passing over the mats.
“There is only one seagrass species
in New Zealand, and it grows in both
the intertidal and subtidal zones”,
Morrison explains. “Subtidal seagrass
NIWA
beds are thought of as being rare, but
I don’t think it was always so. I think
we have just lost a lot of it over the
past 100 years. When the system is
stressed, the subtidal beds are the
first to thin out and disappear. But if
only the intertidal beds are left, then
much of its habitat value disappears,
because the fish may have to move
out into bare seafloor areas, where
they are susceptible to predation
when the tide goes out.”
While seagrass is making a tentative
comeback in some areas, threats
continue from land-based activities.
One problem is that people view
recovering seagrass as a weed to be
removed, to keep beaches sandy.
“Coastal managers need to protect
dense seagrass beds in the subtidal
zone”, says Morrison. “Restoration of
seagrass is very expensive, so the
take-home message is to look after
what you’ve got and create the right
conditions, by controlling degrading
activities, so seagrass can restore
itself.”
n
203
Re-examining invasive
indicators
Virginia Gewin
In a recently published paper, ecologists
Ken Thompson (University of
Sheffield, Sheffield, UK) and Mark
Davis (Macalester College, St Paul,
MN) assert that global changes in
nutrient deposition, climate, and
landscape disturbance are making the
distinction between native and nonnative
species less ecologically meaningful
(Trends Ecol Evol 2011; doi:
10.1016/j.tree.2011.01.007).
“Species are simply winners –
plants able to thrive in these conditions
– or losers, those that can’t”,
says Thompson. “There’s nothing
special about being alien or nonnative.”
A number of invasive species
experts agree with the essence of
Davis and Thompson’s claims. “There
is nothing really fundamental about a
species status as ‘native’ or ‘alien’ that
explains how they ‘work’”, agrees
Dave Richardson, Deputy Director of
Science Strategy at the University of
Stellenbosch’s Center of Excellence
for Invasion Biology (Stellenbosch,
South Africa). At issue is whether or
not country of origin matters.
Many ecologists believe that distinguishing
plants into native or nonnative
does still has value. “Plant
traits are only one aspect of invasions”,
points out Thomas Stohlgren,
a research ecologist at the US
Geological Survey’s Fort Collins
Science Center (Fort Collins, CO);
other factors – eg the pathways
responsible for moving species, as well
as their current and potential distribution
– also play a role in determining
whether a plant has the potential to
become invasive when introduced.
“The best, most consistent predictor
of species invasion is whether they
have successfully invaded another
habitat”, says Doria Gordon, Director
of Conservation Science for The
Nature Conservancy (Gainesville,
FL). While Thompson says this is
consistent with the view that winners
will be winners anywhere, Gordon
suggests that predictive tools based on
traits, history of invasiveness, and
biogeography avoid the import of
“winners” with high economic and
environmental costs.
While Thompson and Davis split
species into winners and losers, alternative
ways to classify species are
appearing in the literature. For example,
Richardson characterizes invasiveness
as inherent or induced. He
hypothesizes that in some plant groups
invasiveness has a strong inherent
component (species are either likely or
unlikely to become invasive), whereas
in others, invasiveness is induced,
influenced more by humans moving
species or modifying the environment.
Philip Hulme, a plant ecologist at the
Bio-Protection Research Centre in
Christchurch, New Zealand, suggests
splitting species into “passengers” or
“drivers” of environmental change.
“Unfortunately, we can’t yet predict
impact-based traits”, he says. As researchers
explore these new paradigms,
it seems unlikely that relying on native
or non-native status alone will prove
sufficient to identifying invaders. n
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Shark clean-up services
Madeline McCurry-Schmidt
For the past 20 years, divers have
observed sharks visiting the Monad
Shoal, a seamount off Malapascua
Island in the Philippines, but couldn’t
figure out why the flat-topped, relatively
barren area was such a popular
shark hang-out. The answer came in
2005, when researchers from the
Philippines, the UK, and Canada used
remote video cameras to monitor
shark behavior. The sharks were
enlisting the assistance of small
cleaner fish (eg the yellownose goby,
Elacatinus randalli) that inhabit the
shoal to remove various parasites. The
study was published this March (PLoS
ONE 2011; doi:10.1371/journal.
pone.0014755).
“Interactions with cleaner fish are
the principal method by which
sharks remove parasites, but little
information on shark–cleaner interactions
has been documented”,
A pelagic thresher shark (Alopias pelagicus).
explains Nigel Hussey, a post-doctoral
fellow at the University of
Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for
Environmental Research (Windsor,
Canada), and a coauthor of the
study. “The Monad Shoal seamount
– in the case of pelagic thresher
sharks [Alopias pelagicus] – is therefore
extremely important for facilitating
this interaction to maintain
shark fitness.”
The migration of sharks to the
shoal is more than just a beauty routine.
The study shows that parasites,
such as monogenean flatworms,
N Hussey
commonly infest pelagic thresher
sharks’ pelvic and gill areas, the
region most favored by cleaner fish.
To prevent infection, sharks that
usually live in deep, open water periodically
venture into shallow-water
shoals for cleaning.
Having parasites removed is so
important that visiting sharks of different
species “can be observed
together at the same cleaning station”,
says Hussey. Pelagic thresher sharks
are joined at the Monad Shoal by grey
reef sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos),
manta rays (Manta birostris),
and devil rays (Mobula spp), and the
various species have adopted different
strategies for getting cleaned. While
thresher sharks swim in a circular path
around the “cleaning stations”, grey
reef sharks “pose in a near-vertical,
[head-down] position with their
mouths open during the cleaning
interactions”. This odd pose may help
the cleaner fish to access parasites
around the sharks’ gills and mouth. n
Infectious disease: from
wetland to farm and back
Chelsea L Wood
Midnight meeting: peccaries and cattle
forage together for fruit.
As the UK’s National [Animal]
Vaccination Month gets underway this
May, veterinarians are encouraging pet
owners – particularly those in rural
areas – to vaccinate their animals
against infectious disease, and ecological
research is demonstrating that the
vets have a point. Wherever human
development encroaches on intact
ecosystems, diseases can be exchanged
between domestic and wild animals.
This sort of transmission appears to be
occurring in the Brazilian Pantanal,
where a recent publication reports that
leptospirosis may be carried from
wetland to farm (and back) by wild
white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari)
(Trop Anim Health Prod 2010;
doi:10.1007/s11250-010-9622-2).
Caused by Leptospira, a genus of
spirochaete bacteria, leptospirosis
affects a variety of vertebrates –
including humans and other mammals.
The disease is especially devastating
for livestock operations, causing
miscarriages in cattle, as well as
reductions in milk production and
body mass, and even death.
In Brazil, leptospirosis is a major
concern for the extensive livestock
industry in the Pantanal. Whitelipped
peccaries – wild ungulates
related to pigs and native to the
region – are particularly bold and
nomadic, and are therefore likely to
cross into agricultural land where
they can come into contact with
domestic animals, creating the opportunity
for disease transmission. To
investigate the potential for such contact
to facilitate leptospirosis, the
researchers trapped peccaries and
tested their blood for antibodies to
A Keuroghlian
Leptospira interrogans. They found
that 70% of the peccaries sampled
had a high prevalence of Leptospira
antibodies, representing a potentially
large reservoir of disease.
Alexine Keuroghlian (Wildlife Conservation
Society, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil), a coauthor of the study, explains,
“The high percentage of seropositive
animals that we observed…is
probably related both to favorable environmental
conditions and to the coexistence
of wild and domestic animals.”
The authors note that there is insufficient
information to assess whether
Leptospira flows primarily from wild to
domestic animals or vice versa. Tatiana
Tavares de Freitas (Federal University
of Mato Grosso, Cuiaba, Brazil), the primary
author of the paper, suggests that
“Further studies will be required to
understand the effects of leptospirosis
on the population dynamics and reproduction
of wild white-lipped peccaries
and other wildlife species. Forest fragmentation
and increased exposure to
exotic animals may cause diseases to
emerge that threaten the persistence of
wildlife populations.”
n
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Greening the Iron Curtain
Ken Ferguson
What Winston Churchill branded “the
Iron Curtain” – the virtually impenetrable
barrier of concrete walls, barbed
wire, guard towers, and land mines that
long separated Eastern Europe from the
West – is gradually being converted
into a ribbon of green snaking its way
through Central Europe. The
European Green Belt initiative, as it is
called, is backed by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) in partnership with an array of
local, regional, national, and international
organizations and government
agencies throughout Europe.
The long-term goal of the initiative
is to transform the remaining strips of
the largely depopulated border zones
between the nations of the former
Eastern and Western European realms
into natural corridors, linking together
the “core areas” of existing national
parks, biosphere reserves, and wildlife
A section of the European Green Belt
winds its way through Germany.
preserves. Representative slices of
almost all of Europe’s biophysical
regions will be included within the
Belt, conferring at least some measure
of protection for, and connectivity
between, remnants of the continent’s
natural heritage. “The Green Belt harbors
many endangered species and
ecosystems”, explains Uwe Riecken, a
researcher with the German Federal
Agency for Nature Conservation
(Bonn, Germany). “It connects many
large natural landscapes and forms an
important backbone for an ecological
network across Europe.”
© K Leidorf
Initiated in 2004, in a transboundary
park located in the former border
zone between Hungary and Austria,
the Green Belt currently stretches
from the Barents Sea in the north to
the Black Sea in the south, spanning
nearly 8500 km over 23 countries.
Because of its length, the Belt is separated
into three distinct regional sections
– Scandinavia and the Baltic,
Central Europe, and Southeastern
Europe – with each section overseen
by a regional coordinator, while the
project as a whole is managed by the
IUCN. The time frame for completion
of the Green Belt is “difficult to
say”, according to Riecken. “In
Germany, we are close to full implementation.
In other countries, the situation
is not that well developed.”
“An increasing number of people
visit this area for recreation and to
experience nature”, adds Riecken.
“The Green Belt is a living historic
monument that reminds people of
the former division of Europe.” n
205
Efforts underway to
restore the Gulf ecosystem
Johanna Polsenberg
In response to the unprecedented oil
disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, in
2010, President Obama issued an
Executive Order to establish the Gulf
Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task
Force (www.epa.gov/gulfcoasttask
force). In late February, in Louisiana,
the Executive Director of the Task
Force, John Hankinson (EPA,
Washington, DC), held the second of
five public meetings scheduled for
each Gulf state. The Task Force has
until October 2011 to engage with
stakeholders, including local governments,
business and industry, and scientists
– along with 11 federal agencies
– to prepare an Ecosystem
Restoration Strategy for the Gulf.
Hankinson’s experience in the
1990s with the Everglades restoration
project informs his work in the Gulf,
he explains. As with that massive
ecosystem restoration project, determining
the end goal is a major part of
the debate. “Fortunately, ecosystem
restoration for this project is clearly
defined in the Executive Order, but it
is broader than an ecological definition”,
continues Hankinson. “It also
discusses strengthening the ability of
the ecosystem to support the diverse
economies, communities, and cultures
of the Gulf Coast. One thing it
does not spell out, however, is a target
‘recover to’ date.”
“The Gulf ecosystem is highly
dynamic”, explains Scott Eustis,
Coastal Wetlands Specialist with
the Gulf Restoration Network
(www.healthygulf.org; New Orleans,
LA). “The goals for restoration need
to be helping the system become
what it might have evolved to in the
future, if it hadn’t been so disturbed.”
Determining restoration targets in
this complex ecosystem is further
complicated by the fact that industrial-scale
extraction of both seafood
and oil and gas in the Gulf began
decades before anyone started monitoring
impacts to the natural state of
the system, so baseline data are limited.
Funding such a major undertaking
presents another hurdle.
Although BP faces legal fines for
the Gulf spill, the amount of those
fines and whether they could be spent
on Gulf restoration remain unclear.
The Department of Justice filed suit,
claiming BP could owe from $4 billion
to $20 billion, based on fines
mandated by the Clean Water and
the Oil Pollution Acts. BP, in recent
court filings, claimed it was not willfully
negligent and suggested fines
from $2.8 million to $4.9 million.
Current law dictates that any
fines collected go into the Oil Spill
Liability Trust Fund, which is used
for initial clean-up of oil spills and
to cover uncompensated damages,
and then, once the $2.7 billion
funding cap is reached, directly
into the general US Treasury. A
Commission created by the
President to examine federal law
following the disaster recommended
redirecting 80% of fines to
Gulf restoration, which would
require legislative changes. n
© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org