Carbon isotope ratios in logged and unlogged boreal forests: Examination of the potential for determining wildlife habitat use

Due to assimilation of recycled CO₂ from litter decomposition and photosynthetic changes in carbon fractionation at low light levels, the foliage at the base of a forest is often more depleted in¹³C compared to that exposed to the atmosphere in either the canopy or in open clearings. This is referred to as the canopy effect. African research has indicated that these habitat differences in foliar ¹³C can be substantial enough to affect the carbon isotope ratios of resident fauna. Previous work documenting a 30-year chronology on moose teeth from Isle Royale National Park indicated a progressive depletion in¹³C and suggested that this could be due to forest regrowth following extensive burning. The present study examined the assumption implicit in this hypothesis that foliar ¹³C varies between open and closed boreal forest sites. I found a marginal canopy effect of 2 ¹³C difference between upper canopy and ground flora for a forest in northwestern Ontario and an average difference of 1.2 in under- and mid-story vegetation between closed forests and open clear-cuts. Because of these small differences, the utility of carbon isotope analysis in quantifying temporally integrated exploitation of deforested habitats will be low for northern boreal locations. In denser forests, such as those in the tropics or western North American where the canopy effect can be expected to be much greater, ¹³C analysis may still offer some promise for determining selection by wildlife of disturbed habitats.     

When is it morally acceptable to kill animals?

Professor Hugh Lehman has recently argued that the rights view, according to which nonhuman animals have a prima facie right to life, is compatible with the killing of animals in many circumstances, including killing for food, research, or product-testing purposes. His principle argument is an appeal to life-boat cases, in which certain lives should be sacrificed rather than others because the latter would allegedly be made worse-off by death than the former. I argue that this reasoning would apply to so-called inferior humans just as much as to animals, and that this appeal is unsuccessful in any case. I distinguish two versions of the rights view: the equal and the unequal rights views. Although the unequal rights view, unlike the equal rights view, would sanction the killing of animals (and some humans) for food under severely restricted circumstances, neither rights view sanctions the raising of animals for their meat. Moreover, neither rights view would sanction the killing of animals for research or product-testing purposes. I conclude with a brief discussion of the merits of phasing out the meat production industry.     

Crisis,argument, and agriculture

Scholarly critics such as Wendell Berry, as well as the popular media, frequently refer to problems associated with agriculture as the agricultural crisis or the farm crisis. Despite the identification of a problem or problems as symptomatic of this crisis, scant attention is paid to why the situation is a social crisis as opposed to a problem, tragedy, trend, or simple change in the structure of agriculture. This paper analyzes the use of social crisis as applied to the state of modern agriculture and, by extension, other crises such as those in legitimation and morality. It concludes that, although important social values associated with farming as a way of life may be in danger of being lost, the crisis we may be facing with respect to agriculture is more properly understood as a sociopolitical crisis that has broader implications than simply the loss of farms or traditional farming values. Indeed, what is in danger of being lost is our ability to affect a secure and sustainable political-economic system.     

Who can be morally obligated to be a vegetarian?

Kathryn Paxton George has recently argued that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even if Tom Regan is correct in arguing that humans and certain nonhuman animals are equally inherently valuable. She holds that Regan's liberty principle permits humans to kill and eat innocent others who have a right to life, provided that doing so prevents humans from being made worse off. George maintains that obstaining from meat and dairy products would in fact make most humans worse off. I argue that Regan's liberty principle either contradicts his equal rights view or does not permit the slaughter of another for food. I show that a different view recognizing the moral rights of nonhumans but according them less value than normal adult humans, the unequal rights view, would permit such action if human survival or health depended upon it. However, it would also permit the slaughter of innocent humans in the same circumstances. Finally, I argue that current nutritional research does not support George's contention that most humans would suffer if they ceased eating other animals and their products.     

A utopian perspective on ecology and development

Summary Effective communication concerning environmental issues can take a variety of forms. The following essay is offered as a metalogue, a piece of writing in which the writing itself illustrates the principles developed in the writing.International readers will be helped if they know that Jack Armstrong and Sergeant Preston are heroes of moralizing (and often jingoistic) radio dramas popular among children in the United States during the War years and that the Tom Mix Holster Set and the A-bomb Ring were premiums offered to children in boxes of cold cereal in the period after the War. These trivia illustrate the kinds of societal messages directed toward the generation of Americans who presumably will be running the country during the 1980s.The authors are a professor of Psychology and Ethology and a graduate student in International Development. Both attended Harvard University in the late 1950s and the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1960s. Their autobiographical reflections have something to say about the motivation underlying the environmental movement and where these motivations are likely to lead in the near future.     

Vegetarianism,morality, and science revisited

Professor Kathryn George's Use and Abuse Revisited does not contain an accurate assessment of my On Vegetarianism, Morality, and Science: A Counter Reply. I show that she has misrepresented my moral and empirical argumentation.     

Is there a morally relevant difference between human and animal nonpersons?

It is commonly believed that we humans are justified in exploiting animals because we are higher beings:persons who have highly complex, autonomous lives as moral agents. However, there are many marginal humans who are not and never will be persons. Those who think it is permissible to exploit animal nonpersons but wrong to do the same to human nonpersons must show that there is a morally relevant difference between the two groups. Speciesists, who believe that membership in a species whose normal adults are persons is sufficient for a right to life, attempt to do just this. As the failure of the best arguments which can be marshalled on their behalf indicates, they are unable to justify their view. I conclude that, although there is a morally relevant difference between human nonpersons and most animal nonpersons, this difference is not an indication of superior moral status. We would do better to abandon speciesism and the assumption thatpersonhood is morally paramount for a view which implies that both human and nonhuman nonpersons are morally considerable and have a right to life.     

Options and limitations in fisheries management

Conclusion As a final thought, I want to conclude with the cliche that a problem recognized is half solved. Certainly, I cannot be accused of laying out a solution to solving the major fisheries management problems, but it is hoped that the problems managers face are now clearer. The complexity of fisheries assystems to be managed is clear to even the most casual observer. The second point, a broad theory of fisheries management, should provide a framework to categorize all of the disjointed activities that we associate with management of our fisheries resources.     

Naturalness In Biological Conservation

Conservation scientists are arguing whether naturalness provides a reasonable imperative for conservation. To clarify this debate and the interpretation of the term natural, I analyze three management strategies – ecosystem preservation, ecosystem restoration, and ecosystem engineering – with respect to the naturalness of their outcomes. This analysis consists in two parts. First, the ambiguous term natural is defined in a variety of ways, including (1) naturalness as that which is part of nature, (2) naturalness as a contrast to artifactuality, (3) naturalness as an historical independence from human actions, and (4) naturalness as possession of certain properties. After that, I analyze the different conceptions with respect to their implications for the three management strategies. The main conclusion is that there exists no single conception of naturalness that could distinguish between the outcomes of the three management methods. Therefore, as long as the outcomes of the different methods are regarded as being of a different value in conservation, we should either abandon the idea of naturalness as the guiding concept in conservation or use the term natural only in the ways that take both its historical and feature dependent meanings into consideration.     

Nuclear crisis relocation: Issues for a host community-the case of Greenfield,Massachusetts, USA

US civil defense planning for nuclear attack since 1974 has emphasized the doctrine of crisis relocation. Under this doctrine, some 150 million people would evacuate from urban areas and other probable targets to rural host communities. The population of the latter would stay put to assist the relocatees. Local communities would be responsible for the welfare of up to ten times their normal population for an indefinite period of time.This study examined certain implications of crisis relocation for the town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA, a typical host community. Various assumptions were articulated regarding the timing of events, the season of year, weather, and social behavior. Assumptions were favorable to the success of crisis relocation. Nevertheless, Greenfield would face impossible burdens in attempting to provide fallout protection, water, food, medical care, and civil order. Additional pressures would arise from adjoining communities which are functionally dependent upon Greenfield for normal goods and services, but which would receive their own allotment of relocatees. Crisis relocation is not taken seriously in Greenfield and virtually no preparations have been made to implement it.     

Forest Health,Collective Behaviors,and Management

This study compares community-based managed forests under different purposes of management, namely, state-driven conservation or community-designed utilization in two villages located in the Sopsai watershed, Nan Province, northern Thailand. The forest health under different intensity of uses is assessed in association with the collective behaviors and long-term purposes embedded in village social–cultural context. The study found no significant differences in forest succession and proportion in diameter at 1.3 m (dbh) class and height-class distribution of the forest under different use intensity. The forest for utilization also showed higher density and basal area of the local preferred species than the conservation forest. In the utilization forest, we also found a higher number of multipurpose and preferred species than in the conservation forest, which actually responded to the needs of the community in the long term to have more wood products (both firewood and timbers). The community-based forest management (CBFM) for utilization can also lead to natural regeneration and biodiversity similar to conservation forests. Through CBFM, forest resources can be managed to maintain the healthy condition under different intensities and respond to both community needs and external expectation. The findings also emphasize the importance of recognizing community needs and management objectives in watershed restoration and improving the productivity of forests under collective management.     

Uncertainties associated with the assessment of vegetation

The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) attempts to portray the current character of a given ecosystem. This provides a Baseline against which future possible changes can be assessed. Ecosystems, however, are dynamic and in a constant state of change. Consequently, data representing a single year reflect conditions only for that year and can be misleading if compared against any other year. In addition to this temporal variation, considerable spacial variation exists in species composition and cover. Ample sampling is required to compensate for this heterogeneity. Variation, or background noise, can be minimized by the use of similarity indexes and sampling over a period of at least two years.     

Nature Quality in Organic Farming: A Conceptual Analysis of Considerations and Criteria in A European Context

Nature quality in relation to farming is a complex field. It involves different traditions and interests, different views of what nature is, and different ways of valuing nature. Furthermore there is a general lack of empirical data on many aspects of nature quality in the farmed landscape. In this paper we discuss nature quality from the perspective of organic farming, which has its own values and goals in relation to nature – the Ecologist View of Nature. This is in contrast to the Culturist View characteristic of much conventional agriculture and the Naturalist View characteristic of the traditional biological approach to nature quality. This threefold distinction forms a framework for exploration of nature quality criteria in the farmed landscape. The traditional work on nature quality has mainly focused on biological interests based on a Naturalist View of Nature. In this paper we will explore how criteria for nature quality based on the Ecologist View can be developed and thereby feed into the ongoing discussion of the development of the organic farming practices. We suggest additional criteria for nature quality based on an Ecologist View of Nature: biodiversity, habitat diversity, extent and structure, functional integrity of habitats and agro-ecosystems, landscape integrity, accessibility, and experientiality. The larger set of Naturalist and Ecologist criteria can provide a wider and more balanced basis for developing nature quality indicators that are relevant in the farmed landscapes. This broader approach to nature quality is also expected to benefit the general societal discussions and decisions on farming and nature.     

Melanesian axiology,communal land tenure,and the prospect of sustainable development within Papua New Guinea

It is the contention of this paper that some progress in alleviating the social and environmental problems which are beginning to face Papua New Guinea can be achieved by supporting traditional Melanesian values through maintaining the customary system of communal land tenure. In accordance with this aim, I will proceed to contrast certain Western attitudes towards individual freedom, selfinterested behaviour, individual and communal interests and private ownership with attitudes and values expressed in the traditional Melanesian approach. In order to demonstrate the latter, I will briefly touch upon the phenomenon of wantokism and indicate how the Melanesian values associated with this concept find their locus in the system of customary communal ownership. Subsequently, I will describe how the emergence of a cash economy and the attachment to Western gadgetry and products have effected injury to the environment and undermined values which have previously maintained Melanesian social cohesion. While admitting that little can be done to eradicate the desire for cash and the products it can buy, I suggest that Melanesian communities and the environment itself would receive more protection if future development in Papua New Guinea embraced a system which incorporated certain of the traditional Melanesian values through the preservation of the communal form of land tenure. Ultimately, I suggest a way in which customary communal land tenure can be integrated into the established Anglo-Australian legal system.     

The evolution of sustainability

Six separate but related strains of thought have emerged prominently since 1950 in discussions of such phenomena as the interrelationships among rates of population growth, resource use, and pressure on the environment. They are the ecological/carrying capacity root, the resources/environment root, the biosphere root, the critique of technology root, the no growth/slow growth root, and the ecodevelopment root.Each of these strains of thought was fully developed before the word sustainable itself was used. Many of the roots are based on fundamentally opposing assessments of the future of mankind. Many of the roots, such as the ecology/carrying capacity root, are based on physical concepts, and they exclude normative values. Others, such as the ecodevelopment root, include such values as equity, broad participation in governance, and decentralized government.When the word sustainability was first used in 1972 in the context of man's future, in a British book,Blueprint for Survival, normative concepts were prominent. This continued to be the case when the word was first used in 1974 in the United States to justify a no growth economy.Sustainability was first used in a United Nations document in 1978. Normative concepts, encapsulated in the term ecodevelopment, were prominent in the United Nations publications.After about 1978, the term sustainability began to be used not only in technological articles and reports but also in policy documents culminating in the use of the term in the report of the summit meeting of the Group of Seven in 1989.The roots of the term sustainability are so deeply embedded in fundamentally different concepts, each of which has valid claims to validity, that a search for a single definition seems futile. The existence of multiple meaning is tolerable if each analyst describes clearly what he means by sustainability.     

Trade-Based Carbon Sequestration Accounting

This article describes and illustrates an accounting method to assess and compare early carbon sequestration investments and trades on the basis of the number of standardized CO₂ emission offset credits they will provide. The gold standard for such credits is assumed to be a relatively riskless credit based on a CO₂ emission reduction that provides offsets against CO₂ emissions on a one-for-one basis. The number of credits associated with carbon sequestration needs to account for time, risk, durability, permanence, additionality, and other factors that future trade regulators will most certainly use to assign official credits to sequestration projects. The method that is presented here uses established principles of natural resource accounting and conventional rules of asset valuation to score projects. A review of 20 early voluntary United States based CO₂ offset trades that involve carbon sequestration reveals that the assumptions that buyers, sellers, brokers, and traders are using to characterize the economic potential of their investments and trades vary enormously. The article develops a universal carbon sequestration credit scoring equation and uses two of these trades to illustrate the sensitivity of trade outcomes to various assumptions about how future trade auditors are likely to score carbon sequestration projects in terms of their equivalency with CO₂ emission reductions. The article emphasizes the importance of using a standard credit scoring method that accounts for time and risk to assess and compare even unofficial prototype carbon sequestration trades. The scoring method illustrated in this article is a tool that can protect the integrity of carbon sequestration credit trading and can assist buyers and sellers in evaluating the real economic potential of prospective trades. Published online     

Attitudes Toward Wilderness Study Areas: A Survey of Six Southeastern Utah Counties

Southeastern Utah is a region of world-renowned red-rock sandstone formations, large tracts of federal public land, rural communities centered on agriculture and extractive industries, and is often at the epicenter of environmental protection efforts in the western United States. Environmental groups have proposed formal Wilderness designations for much of the regions public land—proposals that have been actively fought by rural community leaders who do not want large areas locked-up from traditional livelihood and recreational uses. The debate over wilderness designation in the region has been characterized in the media as one that is particularly contentious and polarizing. A survey of southeastern Utah residents was conducted in order to better understand this conflict. The survey focused on attitudes toward wilderness designation and management. We found that residents of southeastern Utah have negative attitudes towards the designation and management of Wilderness Study Areas. We propose that these attitudes should be carefully considered and engaged in future policy and management decisions. We suggest that negative opinions expressed by residents of southeastern Utah are not directed primarily at the concept of environmental protection but rather at the strong perception that these programs and initiatives have been carried out in a heavy-handed manner and dominated by outside influences that have overwhelmed local voices.     

Allocation of River Flows for Restoration of Floodplain Forest Ecosystems: A Review of Approaches and Their Applicability in Europe

Floodplain forests are flood-dependent ecosystems. They rely on well-timed, periodic floods for the provision of regeneration sites and on tapered flood recession curves for the successful establishment of seedlings. These overbank flood events are described as regeneration flows. Once floodplain forest trees are established, in order to grow they also require adequate, although variable, river stage levels or maintenance flows throughout the year. Regeneration flows are often synonymous with flood flows and only occur periodically. There is a disparity between this need for varied interannual flows over the decadal time frame and the usual annual cycle of flow management currently used by most river management agencies. Maintenance flows are often closer to established minimum flows and much easier to provide by current operational practices.A number of environmental flow methodologies, developed in North America, Australia, and South Africa are described in this review. They include the needs of the floodplain environment in the management and allocation of river flows. In North America, these methodologies have been put into practice in a number of river basins specifically to restore floodplain forest ecosystems. In Australia and South Africa, a series of related holistic approaches have been developed that include the needs of floodplain ecosystems as well as in-channel ecosystems. In most European countries, restoration of floodplain forests takes place at a few localized restoration sites, more often as part of a flood-defense scheme and usually not coordinated with flow allocation decisions throughout the river basin. The potential to apply existing environmental flow methodologies to the management of European floodplain forests is discussed.     

Development aid: The moral obligation to innovation

The prominent, though not exclusive, role of basic needs strategies to attain ethically acceptable development goals raises the question of the ability of development agencies to find and employ basic needs strategies. The obligation to prevent severe human suffering leads to the obligation to employ basic needs strategies to attain basic needs goals. The history of failure by development agencies in finding and employing basic needs tools leads to a further obligation to cultivate bureaucratic environments which foster profound innovation. This requires not only new tools but also new bureaucratic behaviour. An understandable obstacle to simultaneously technological and bureaucratic innovation lies in the tension between responsible behaviour and behaviour promoting fundamental change. Since this tension is based on the unpredictability of creative change, a series of axioms and corollaries which reduce the unpredictability is given. They include: (1) an obligation to seek innovation; (2) a clear statement of basic needs goals and intent to use some basic needs tools; (3) increase in effective knowledge of the poor and their survival strategies; (4) bureaucratic learning flexibility; (5) participatory development and allied emphasis on sustainable resource technologies. The embodiment of these in the learning process approach is illustrated.     

Management and valuation of an environmentally sensitive area: Norfolk Broadland,England, case study

Wetlands, like any other environmentally sensitive resource, require very careful evaluation. While it is accepted that all wetlands may be equally valuable in terms of maintaining global life-support systems, individual areas may be ranked according to their uniqueness or the irreplaceability of the resource should the wetland be developed. The various techniques available for evaluating the wetland resource in the development versus conservation conflict situation are critically assessed. Indirect appraisal via the opportunity cost method can generate valuable data which have contributed to the mitigation of such conflict situations.The Broadland, in Norfolk, England, recently designated an environmentally sensitive area (ESA), provides a case study example of wetland management. The search for an acceptable flood alleviation strategy for the ESA is examined in detail. The economic and environmental asset structure of the study area is examined at two levels. A basic screening system is applied to each of the identified flood protection planning units to enable the rank ordering of the units. A more detailed appraisal is then made of the value of selected units so that the cost-effectiveness of any planned expenditure on flood protection works can be assessed. Specific management issues and their likely effect on the environment, in terms of land use for example, are also addressed. The 1986 Agriculture Act marks a potential watershed in British conservation policy. The ESA policy encompasses a dual management strategy that attempts to stimulate compatible agricultural and conservation practices and activities. Other countries that still retain significant unspoiled wetland resources may find that preemptive regulatory government intervention in favor of conservation would help to avoid the worst aspects of the British experience.