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The Endangered Species Act Is on the Chopping Block. Would Privatizing Wildlife Protect Them?
The radical idea has a track record of success in some sense. But there are lot of concerns as well.

In the US, Republicans have vowed to roll back the Endangered Species Act, saying the law doesn’t protect vulnerable wildlife as intended, but hurts industries such as logging and drilling instead. Meanwhile, due to global warming, we are in the midst of a mass extinction event of unprecedented proportions. Up to two-thirds of all species will vanish utterly by mid-century. Climate change is by far the biggest driver of this trend scientists say, disrupting habitats and winnowing food sources.
The Endangered Species Act has been under assault several times in the last eight years. But in each foray, the White House or Democrats in Congress have intervened, or lawsuits from environmental groups have halted efforts. Now, Republicans say that the law has been hijacked by environmentalists, and so hasn’t been used as intended. Rather than protect species, critics argue the law is used mainly to safeguard land. But supporters say conserving precious habitat is what safeguards vulnerable species.
The law was first enacted in 1973 to save the country’s national symbol from extinction. They’ve come back in record numbers, and in 2007, the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list. Even so, efforts to conserve other species have run up against difficulty or opposition. Protecting California salmon for instance, has complicated water management in the state. Efforts to preserve the Canadian lynx obstructs logging efforts, and wolf attacks on livestock have put ranchers at odds with conservationists. Possible Republican reforms include limits on lawsuits and a cap on how many species will be offered protection. As a result, conservationists and wildlife advocates are gearing up for a legal battle.
Drought causes California wildlife officials to move salmon downstream.
Activists say any species getting in the way of corporate interests may be in Republican’s sites. But some Democrats too see the law as restrictive. Minnesota Congressman Collin Petersen and two others from his party joined 11 colleagues across the aisle, to call for an end on the ban on hunting wolves in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region. President Trump’s position on the matter remains unclear.
Over 1,600 plant and animal species are currently protected under the act. Hundreds more are up for consideration. Republicans and other opponents say few species are ever removed from the list. Even so, hundreds may be reliant on the protections the act provides. Once removed, advocates say they would become vulnerable. This issue is likely to heat up among an already divided populous. And even the most business friendly don’t want to see all of our wildlife disappear.
What can be done to ensure businesses stay profitable and ranchers can protect their livestock, while vulnerable species remain protected? One Australian scientist believes he has the answer. He proposes privatizing wildlife conservation and in doing so, empowering citizens and giving them control over their own fauna.
Wolves have made a comeback in parts of the US, threatening livestock. Yet, they remain on the endangered species list, causing controversy.
Veterinary science adjunct professor George Wilson of Australian National University, put forth a paper that has colleagues and others across the world talking. He wrote that in the late 1960s, countries in Southern Africa such as Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, granted land to people and asked them to tend to the wildlife living on it. These wild animals essentially became their property, but also their responsibility. Wilson in the journal Conservation Letters argues that a similar approach should be taken today. He proposes a trial to take place in southern Africa—one of the hotspots for mass extinctions.
Here, private land owners would take the reins. There’d be an end to all government conservation programs, eco-tourism, and hunting regulations. Those private citizens who “owned” the animals would instead make all the decisions surrounding them. Wilson argues that when everyone owns a bit of something, say wildlife or water resources, no one takes care of it. The government controlling these resources is akin to all of us owning them, at least in a democratic republic. Therefore, citizens don’t have an incentive to watch over such resources and they dwindle. This is known as the tragedy of the commons.
But when one or a few individuals or a community or certain group, is given ownership and responsibility to look after such resources, they are thought to take it more seriously, and help initiate programs and protocols to ensure its protection. Plus, incentives, like in this case earning money from tourism or hunting, will ensure that interest in conservation doesn’t wane.
Some studies have found privatization efforts in Southern Africa have worked. Is it transferable?
Some studies have found that the privatization programs Wilson speaks of were successful. A 2000 study examining ranches in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, found that around 20% helped manage wildlife, at least sometimes. Bigger gains were found in Zimbabwe. But these small instances don’t offer enough evidence to establish concrete, reliable trends.
Wilson argues that land owners incentivized by businesses involving wildlife would restock their numbers, monitor their health, and reestablish animal populations. He also claims that southern Africa today has larger numbers of at-risk wildlife than a century ago, while in other parts of the continent, the same such fauna hasn’t fared as well.
Wilson’s idea, first proposed by Lawrence W. Reed in 1988, leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Animals generally roam free for example. Would they be penned in, if they became someone’s property? Would those who had such animals care for them, or would they abuse or neglect them, like what’s been reported about zoos and animal-based theme parks.
In cases in America, it will certainly be difficult for ranchers to support the protection of wolves, regardless of whether or not they are endangered. And what if corporations bought up land in order to acquire mineral wealth in a protected animal’s habitat? Would such a program be a way for the elite to hoard endangered species and do what they will with them? One thing is for certain, something must be done soon if we are to preserve the planet’s wildlife. Some scientists have even question whether or not it’s too late to even attempt to save endangered species at this late date.
To learn more about how wildlife is affected by climate change, click here:
No, the Yellowstone supervolcano is not ‘overdue’
Why mega-eruptions like the ones that covered North America in ash are the least of your worries.
Ash deposits of some of North America's largest volcanic eruptions.
- The supervolcano under Yellowstone produced three massive eruptions over the past few million years.
- Each eruption covered much of what is now the western United States in an ash layer several feet deep.
- The last eruption was 640,000 years ago, but that doesn't mean the next eruption is overdue.
The end of the world as we know it
Panoramic view of Yellowstone National Park
Image: Heinrich Berann for the National Park Service – public domain
Of the many freak ways to shuffle off this mortal coil – lightning strikes, shark bites, falling pianos – here's one you can safely scratch off your worry list: an outbreak of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
As the map below shows, previous eruptions at Yellowstone were so massive that the ash fall covered most of what is now the western United States. A similar event today would not only claim countless lives directly, but also create enough subsidiary disruption to kill off global civilisation as we know it. A relatively recent eruption of the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia may have come close to killing off the human species (see further below).
However, just because a scenario is grim does not mean that it is likely (insert topical political joke here). In this case, the doom mongers claiming an eruption is 'overdue' are wrong. Yellowstone is not a library book or an oil change. Just because the previous mega-eruption happened long ago doesn't mean the next one is imminent.
Ash beds of North America
Ash beds deposited by major volcanic eruptions in North America.
Image: USGS – public domain
This map shows the location of the Yellowstone plateau and the ash beds deposited by its three most recent major outbreaks, plus two other eruptions – one similarly massive, the other the most recent one in North America.
Huckleberry Ridge
The Huckleberry Ridge eruption occurred 2.1 million years ago. It ejected 2,450 km3 (588 cubic miles) of material, making it the largest known eruption in Yellowstone's history and in fact the largest eruption in North America in the past few million years.
This is the oldest of the three most recent caldera-forming eruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot. It created the Island Park Caldera, which lies partially in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming and westward into Idaho. Ash from this eruption covered an area from southern California to North Dakota, and southern Idaho to northern Texas.
Mesa Falls
About 1.3 million years ago, the Mesa Falls eruption ejected 280 km3 (67 cubic miles) of material and created the Henry's Fork Caldera, located in Idaho, west of Yellowstone.
It was the smallest of the three major Yellowstone eruptions, both in terms of material ejected and area covered: 'only' most of present-day Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, and about half of South Dakota.
Lava Creek
The Lava Creek eruption was the most recent major eruption of Yellowstone: about 640,000 years ago. It was the second-largest eruption in North America in the past few million years, creating the Yellowstone Caldera.
It ejected only about 1,000 km3 (240 cubic miles) of material, i.e. less than half of the Huckleberry Ridge eruption. However, its debris is spread out over a significantly wider area: basically, Huckleberry Ridge plus larger slices of both Canada and Mexico, plus most of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Long Valley
This eruption occurred about 760,000 years ago. It was centered on southern California, where it created the Long Valley Caldera, and spewed out 580 km3 (139 cubic miles) of material. This makes it North America's third-largest eruption of the past few million years.
The material ejected by this eruption is known as the Bishop ash bed, and covers the central and western parts of the Lava Creek ash bed.
Mount St Helens
The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history: it created a mile-wide crater, killed 57 people and created economic damage in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
Yet by Yellowstone standards, it was tiny: Mount St Helens only ejected 0.25 km3 (0.06 cubic miles) of material, most of the ash settling in a relatively narrow band across Washington State and Idaho. By comparison, the Lava Creek eruption left a large swathe of North America in up to two metres of debris.
The difference between quakes and faults
The volume of dense rock equivalent (DRE) ejected by the Huckleberry Ridge event dwarfs all other North American eruptions. It is itself overshadowed by the DRE ejected at the most recent eruption at Toba (present-day Indonesia). This was one of the largest known eruptions ever and a relatively recent one: only 75,000 years ago. It is thought to have caused a global volcanic winter which lasted up to a decade and may be responsible for the bottleneck in human evolution: around that time, the total human population suddenly and drastically plummeted to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs.
Image: USGS – public domain
So, what are the chances of something that massive happening anytime soon? The aforementioned mongers of doom often claim that major eruptions occur at intervals of 600,000 years and point out that the last one was 640,000 years ago. Except that (a) the first interval was about 200,000 years longer, (b) two intervals is not a lot to base a prediction on, and (c) those intervals don't really mean anything anyway. Not in the case of volcanic eruptions, at least.
Earthquakes can be 'overdue' because the stress on fault lines is built up consistently over long periods, which means quakes can be predicted with a relative degree of accuracy. But this is not how volcanoes behave. They do not accumulate magma at constant rates. And the subterranean pressure that causes the magma to erupt does not follow a schedule.
What's more, previous super-eruptions do not necessarily imply future ones. Scientists are not convinced that there ever will be another big eruption at Yellowstone. Smaller eruptions, however, are much likelier. Since the Lava Creek eruption, there have been about 30 smaller outbreaks at Yellowstone, the last lava flow being about 70,000 years ago.
As for the immediate future (give or take a century): the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone is only 5 percent to 15 percent molten. Most scientists agree that is as un-alarming as it sounds. And that its statistically more relevant to worry about death by lightning, shark, or piano.
Strange Maps #1041
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
What the rise of digital nomads can tell us about the next wave of remote working
The pandemic has many people questioning whether they ever want to go back to the office.
If one thing is clear about remote work, it's this: Many people prefer it and don't want their bosses to take it away.
When the pandemic forced office employees into lockdown and cut them off from spending in-person time with their colleagues, they almost immediately realized that they favor remote work over their traditional office routines and norms.
As remote workers of all ages contemplate their futures – and as some offices and schools start to reopen – many Americans are asking hard questions about whether they wish to return to their old lives, and what they're willing to sacrifice or endure in the years to come.
Even before the pandemic, there were people asking whether office life jibed with their aspirations.
We spent years studying “digital nomads" – workers who had left behind their homes, cities and most of their possessions to embark on what they call “location independent" lives. Our research taught us several important lessons about the conditions that push workers away from offices and major metropolitan areas, pulling them toward new lifestyles.
Legions of people now have the chance to reinvent their relationship to their work in much the same way.
Big-city bait and switch
Most digital nomads started out excited to work in career-track jobs for prestigious employers. Moving to cities like New York and London, they wanted to spend their free time meeting new people, going to museums and trying out new restaurants.
But then came the burnout.
Although these cities certainly host institutions that can inspire creativity and cultivate new relationships, digital nomads rarely had time to take advantage of them. Instead, high cost of living, time constraints and work demands contributed to an oppressive culture of materialism and workaholism.
Pauline, 28, who worked in advertising helping large corporate clients to develop brand identities through music, likened city life for professionals in her peer group to a “hamster wheel." (The names used in this article are pseudonyms, as required by research protocol.)
“The thing about New York is it's kind of like the battle of the busiest," she said. “It's like, 'Oh, you're so busy? No, I'm so busy.'"
Most of the digital nomads we studied had been lured into what urbanist Richard Florida termed “creative class" jobs – positions in design, tech, marketing and entertainment. They assumed this work would prove fulfilling enough to offset what they sacrificed in terms of time spent on social and creative pursuits.
Yet these digital nomads told us that their jobs were far less interesting and creative than they had been led to expect. Worse, their employers continued to demand that they be “all in" for work – and accept the controlling aspects of office life without providing the development, mentorship or meaningful work they felt they had been promised. As they looked to the future, they saw only more of the same.
Ellie, 33, a former business journalist who is now a freelance writer and entrepreneur, told us: “A lot of people don't have positive role models at work, so then it's sort of like 'Why am I climbing the ladder to try and get this job? This doesn't seem like a good way to spend the next twenty years.'"
By their late 20s to early 30s, digital nomads were actively researching ways to leave their career-track jobs in top-tier global cities.
Looking for a fresh start
Although they left some of the world's most glamorous cities, the digital nomads we studied were not homesteaders working from the wilderness; they needed access to the conveniences of contemporary life in order to be productive. Looking abroad, they quickly learned that places like Bali in Indonesia, and Chiang Mai in Thailand had the necessary infrastructure to support them at a fraction of the cost of their former lives.
With more and more companies now offering employees the choice to work remotely, there's no reason to think digital nomads have to travel to southeast Asia – or even leave the United States – to transform their work lives.
During the pandemic, some people have already migrated away from the nation's most expensive real estate markets to smaller cities and towns to be closer to nature or family. Many of these places still possess vibrant local cultures. As commutes to work disappear from daily life, such moves could leave remote workers with more available income and more free time.
The digital nomads we studied often used savings in time and money to try new things, like exploring side hustles. One recent study even found, somewhat paradoxically, that the sense of empowerment that came from embarking on a side hustle actually improved performance in workers' primary jobs.
The future of work, while not entirely remote, will undoubtedly offer more remote options to many more workers. Although some business leaders are still reluctant to accept their employees' desire to leave the office behind, local governments are embracing the trend, with several U.S. cities and states – along with countries around the world – developing plans to attract remote workers.
This migration, whether domestic or international, has the potential to enrich communities and cultivate more satisfying work lives.
Rachael A. Woldoff, Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University and Robert Litchfield, Associate Professor of Business, Washington & Jefferson College
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
CRISPR: Can we control it?
The potential of CRISPR technology is incredible, but the threats are too serious to ignore.
- CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary technology that gives scientists the ability to alter DNA. On the one hand, this tool could mean the elimination of certain diseases. On the other, there are concerns (both ethical and practical) about its misuse and the yet-unknown consequences of such experimentation.
- "The technique could be misused in horrible ways," says counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke. Clarke lists biological weapons as one of the potential threats, "Threats for which we don't have any known antidote." CRISPR co-inventor, biochemist Jennifer Doudna, echos the concern, recounting a nightmare involving the technology, eugenics, and a meeting with Adolf Hitler.
- Should this kind of tool even exist? Do the positives outweigh the potential dangers? How could something like this ever be regulated, and should it be? These questions and more are considered by Doudna, Clarke, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, psychologist Steven Pinker, and physician Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Smartly dressed: Researchers develop clothes that sense movement via touch
Measuring a person's movements and poses, smart clothes could be used for athletic training, rehabilitation, or health-monitoring.
