environmental preservation discourse, native vs non-native species etc

there was a thread several months ago where we were discussing this a little bit but i can't remember what it was.

anyway, i've been noticing that great basin national park in nevada is unusually vehement when it comes to "non-native species" so i gave them a little shit about this.

sorry to link to my own fucking tweet

idk man. i get removing weeds but this seems a little drastic. https://t.co/wqAJTM3UMP

— Matt Pierce (@manthonyslc) October 24, 2022

killing all the fish in a lake seems a little deranged?

haha i know it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of us government land management but this kind of thing feels pointless and outdated when you consider what we're dealing with re climate change. kind of feels like nature as theme park instead of nature as this reality we're all a part of.

that other thread: Zebra Mussels, Honeysuckle, and Spotted Lanternflies! - Rolling Invasive Species thread

it does seem kind of intense to kill all the trout in a lake so you can reintroduce the original trout. I'm sure someone will point out that it's ecologically sound, but I agree it feels like restoring the deck chairs on the titanic to their original finish

oh dang, thanks

a blanket anti-"invasive species" stance is bullshit, you're fucking up new ecosystems and relationships that are developing often assuming a stasis that never existed and also what the fuck are you doing there with your cars and buildings and whatnot. it can feel borderline racial the way people talk about it sometimes. and no one agrees what an ecosystem is "supposed to be like" anyway

species is fiction anyway and i go back and forth on whether it's a useful or harmful one

the argument for doing this is that the eggs may be dispersed to other bodies of water. it's not just a matter of one trout species replacing another - different species will have different impacts on an ecosystem, and that might be as simple as merely consuming more food, but even that has an impact on the abundance of food species, and also possibly the water quality (more poop!)

how far back do we rewind the clock though? there is no such thing as a pristine ecosystem, new species have been introduced throughout time, whether by invasion or evolution (xp what left said i guess)

left, i basically agree with you.

nick that sounds reasonable. i guess there are measurable and more desirable outcomes, more ecologically friendly scenarios.

nb other national parks i follow seem to be a little more nuanced / less heavy-handed when it comes to invasive species discussion. i think the heritage of national parks in the us isn't necessarily an unqualified good thing, there is that desire to sort of freeze nature and turn it into an accompaniment to a whole ideological complex that has evolved over time and has a history of including things like white supremacy etc.

I get that in this case the methods seem extreme. But to take a blanket pro-invasive species stance is quite ignorant of ecology.

good thing no one's doing that then

is tis the "throwing canned food at art " thread

i think a larger point is that ecology isn't an absolute, objective science and it would do well / has done well already i'm pretty sure / to acknowledge its baseline assumptions. i don't think you have to be an ecology expert for that to be a valid point.

i also don't think you have to be an ecologist to recognize that say native american ecological practices didn't involve killing all the fish in a lake and were generally a lot more sane and productive than whatever it is we're doing with ecology as a field now.

going back to the techno-social point in the 'step backwards' thread. science is socially constructed and more people should get into sts.

I completely agree while also being aware that some people get into sts so they can justify being AIDS denialists and the like. Hard to envision a current education system that could handle it properly, but in my utopia it would be a key part of the science curriculum

I think even now it should be requisite for softer sciences like psychology

if i could be that one guy here, ecology is totally an objective science, it's environmental policy that's the problem here

There's no such thing as an "objective" science is basically where we're coming from though...or putting it better, "objectivity" is itself a historically contingent, culturally constructed idea with no essential or fixed meaning

(see: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781890951795/objectivity)

That's not to say ecology is pure bullshit or something, just to recognize that like all sciences it's created by humans in particular social, cultural, economic, and historical contexts which affect what gets accepted as valid truth by the social community of scientists.

well okay, it's as objective as any other science. the science bit doesn't seem to be the problem here though, it's the policy decisions that are being questioned?

I can't speak for map, but what I thought he was getting at was that ecology has a specific view of the way the world works that isn't "objective" (meaning a transparent description of reality) and can be contrasted, for example, with indigenous ways of viewing the same ecosystem and deciding how to live within it.

It's true that if all ecologists did was write articles and books and their findings were never acted on by governments, they wouldn't constitute any kind of problem. But I don't know if you can separate science & policy so cleanly—many ecologists are surely motivated to do their work in order to influence policy makers, even if yes they do not have ultimate control over the resulting policy. And for sure, a lot of what matters here (to me) is how science enters public discussions and affects democratic governance, which I wouldn't "blame" ecologists for.

Btw your question upthread about how far to wind back the clock and the impossibility of a pristine ecosystem is exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking about here. Part of the danger with science as a public discourse is that nuances understood by experts get lost in translation to other audiences.

yeah i see what you're getting at, thanks for spelling it out. for me the science bit is testing hypotheses through designing experiments and gathering data and statistical analysis and all that stuff, but yes i accept that some alternative hypotheses probably never get looked at due to funding or politics or whatever else

I have weird theories about the will behind invasive species. We might brand something as invasive, but the species itself may just be expanding its territory, by any means necessary.

There's a big discussion about eucalyptus in California - are they purely invasive, or somewhat naturalized by this point? At one point does something become a natural part of an ecosystem, even when it's been introduced, like ring-necked pheasants.

Then there's shit like the japanese knotweed in the UK, which is just an absolute nightmare... invasive by any defintion

knotweed is a problem (from our perspective, from its perspective it's doing great) but I wouldn't want to get rid of rabbits or fallow deer or canada geese or even ring necked parakeets (which conservationists have issues with but they do bring a bit of colour to this miserable grey island)

shout out to pigeons, fucking legends (weird how much contempt people have for life that manages to survive in cities)

i think what you have to look at from a conservation POV is how the balance of an ecosystem is being affected by a new species. there might be a period of adjustment and then a new balance is found, and then you could say the species was naturalised. otoh there could be more of a death spiral thing happening where the final outcome is just complete collapse, and yeah, you probably don't want that happening. a lot of the time though, it's the economic impact that's prioritised - japanese knotweed is mostly a problem because of how destructive it is to the built environment

i think a larger point is that ecology isn't an absolute, objective science

It is. It really is. Ecology is closely associated with field biology. So basically whatever you think about biology as a science you can apply that to ecology.

Okay so no one's literally taking a blanket "pro-invasive species stance" but there does seem to be a widespread assumption here that ecology is significantly open to interpretation and it isn't. Yes policy based on the science is going to be more "soft". It's very much like public health in terms of science firmly grounded in empirical evidence vs political application of science which is much more subjective.

you don't seem to be reading the posts above, as usual

there is literally no such thing as "objectivity"

there's a helpful link from rob one if you feel like learning something

one above

there is literally no such thing as "objectivity"

So glad I'm here for this

empiricism is literally subjective by definition!

Okay I am not a philosopher and I'm open to being schooled on the correct terminology but in this instance assume that whatever the precisely applicable term for "hard" science is, that's what ecology is.

literally just objective reality? what do you need the scientists for then

I think we're done right

I know you are but what am I

I think we're done right

― recovering internet addict/shitposter (viborg), Wednesday, October 26, 2022 8:51 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"we".

btw you don't seem to be recovering

It's a process dear

never call me dear

Okay pam

Sorry I'm an agnostic dyslexic