Global Change Ecology (BIO347)

Population control

Most of the environmental problems nowadays like climate change and biodiversity loss, have one thing in common, human overpopulation. According to United Nations the world populations will reach around 9 billion people in 2050 with their ever demanding need for food and fresh water [1], prospects are not looking good. Drastic measures need to take place and in the world we live in nowadays it looks like that is not going to happen. On the climate convention in 2009 in Copenhagen it was decided that temperatures should not raise any more than 2 degrees Celsius without any nations that really wanted to give in [1]. Instead of countries trying to bring down their CO2 emissions they’ve resulted in a global trade of ‘fresh air’ . Belgium for example has spent around 194 million euros on fresh air in order to meet the Kyoto norms [2]. Public awareness is simply too low for governments to take any drastic measures, in the Netherlands for example the green minded party GroenLinks, has since foundation in 1990 never been part of the government and at the last elections they only received 2.3 percent of the overall votes [3].
Democracy seems a great way to govern a country where everybody has an equal vote, but when it comes to affairs that are greater than the wellbeing of a nations inhabitants it seems like it doesn’t work. Every party that has some drastic ideas concerning the environmental preservation, doesn’t get a place in the government because people mostly don’t care, vote in regard to their own wellbeing and they cannot directly perceive the measures a party takes because it takes a long time to notice any environmental change, let alone some ideas about population control which has been established in China a communistic country [4].
Because let’s face it the best way to preserve our environment and wildlife is not by trying to lower our ecological footprint but to control human population growth and preferably make it decline but since that is not a priority in most western countries further boundaries need to be established.

References
1. www.un.org
2. http://www.hln.be België koopt «schone lucht» vooral in het buitenland. 20/11/2013
3. www.parlement.com GroenLinks
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ What is China’s one-child policy? 30/9/2014

Alien species dilemma

Non-native species that have been introduced by humans over the past decades have been known to cause a lot of trouble. For example the introduction of rabbits in Australia who were introduced for the hunting sport but quickly caused the most rapid invasion of animals ever recorded(Animal Control Technologies Australia), or the Nile perch that was introduced in lake Victoria and completely disrupted the lakes ecosystem (Ogutu-ohwayo 1990). All for various reasons, whether it is for the hunting or fishing sport, as with the rabbits and some fish species, or to kill a plague in an area, after which the introduced species handled themselves better than expected (Philips & Shine 2006). Internationalisation doesn’t help much either. Almost every kind of species which is farmed or bred can be spread almost all around the world and are being introduced into an area in which it is not native, where escapees or pollen can cause a lot of trouble on both economical and environmental scales. Transport these enables humans to travel to the other side of world while we unknowingly spread all kinds of plant seeds, spores or even eggs from insects for example (Mack & Lonsdale 2001, Keth 1999). All in all humans have become a greater form of global dispersal rather than mother nature itself we have given the non-native or alien species a very bad reputation.
But we should also consider this, it is by all means clear that humans have had a bigger impact on the global ecosystem than all directly or indirectly introduced species combined, mainly by changing the native species’ original habitat in all kinds of ways (Davis 2011). It is therefore not remarkable that non-native species do so well since the original habitat has shifted to a state not suitable anymore for some native species, and because a lot of non-native species are either intentionally or unintentionally introduced, there is bound to be one or more species among them that are able to adapt to the new environment (Davis 2011). Since we might be too late to restore habitats in their original state (and yet we still try to), an article by Mark Davis argues that rather than trying to get rid of non-native species we should embrace them and maybe use them to our benefits. The article mentions for example that tamarisks, which have been introduced from Europe and Asia to America, fulfil in the habitat the same role as the species it outcompeted in the first place.
Non-native species will be introduced everywhere around the world whether we want it or not. Instead of preventing introductions we should maybe do more research in using alien species to our advantage. We changed to world in major way ourselves, so we should just deal with the consequences.

References

Davis, M. A., Chew, M. K., Hobbs, R. J., Lugo, A. E., Ewel, J. J., Vermeij, G. J., Brwon, J. H., Rosenzweig, M. L., Gardener, M. R., Carroll, S. P., Thompson, K., Pickett, S. T. A., Stromberg, J. C., Del Tredici, P., Suding, K. N., Ehrenfeld, J. G., Grime, J. P., Mascaro, J., Briggs J. C. 2011. Don’t judge species on their origins. Nature 474, 153-154, 09 June 2011.

Keth, A.C. 1999. Three Incidents of Human Myiasis by Rodent Cuterebra (Diptera: Cuterebridae) Larvae in a Localized Region of Western Pennsylvania. Journal of Medical Entomology, Volume 36, Issue 6, 1 November 1999.

Mack, R. N., Lonasdale, W. M. 2001. Humans as Global Plant Dispersers: Getting More Than We Bargained For. Bioscience 51 (2): 95-102, 2001)

Ogutu-Ohwayo, R. 1990. The decline of the native fishes of lakes Victoria and Kyoga (East Africa) and the impact of the introduced species, especially the Nile perch, Lates niloticus, and the Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus*. Evironmental Biology of Fishes 27: 81-96, 1990.

Philips, B. L., Shine, R. 2006. An invasive species induces rapid adaptive change in a native predator: cane toads and black snakes in Australia. Proc. R. Soc. B 22 June 2006 vol. 273 no. 1593 1545-1550

http://www.animalcontrol.com.au/rabbit.htm