The learned men of the Boston Natural History Society had studied their Bestiaries, ancient, illustrated volumes of all the animals, and set out for Gloucester’s high rocky shore to survey the seascape. There, they found what they were looking for. A sea serpent with an ugly open-mouthed head followed by a row of slithery humps moving up and down, propelling the beast forward. Had they heard the local fishermen, the scientists would have dismissed claims that their sea serpent was a school of bluefin tuna.
The English economist, cleric, and scholar Thomas Robert Malthus observed that increased food production would improve the population’s well-being. However, when with abundance the population grew, the standard of living would go down. People would suffer “the Malthusian trap.”
The authors of the publication Limits to Growth studied the steep rises in human consumption of a wide variety of commodities. Based on their careful calculations and projections, they concluded that population growth was not sustainable. There would come a time when the number of people would exceed the carrying capacity. With resources overexploited, overpopulation would be followed by a sudden and tragic decline in the human population.
Cattle were observed deteriorating a pasture. Consistent with their expectations, the experts proclaimed that this was over-grazing and that the population must be reduced to a level sustainable to what could be provided. In a large African elephant park, they found that the carrying capacity for elephants had been exceeded because the resource base had been destroyed. They called for the culling of more than a hundred elephants. For the elephant population to survive, they said, many elephants must die.
In both cases, the experts assessed the situation, prescribed the solution, and left others to manage it. When they returned to find neither pasture nor elephant park improved, they clung to faith in their science, blamed the managers, and wrote off the loss.
With adaptive management, C.S. Hollings took a very different approach to the certainty of the Malthusians. They identified critical uncertainties regarding ecosystem dynamics and designed diagnostic management experiments to reduce the unknowns. They took the radical step of including all stakeholders in the management deliberations because the greater the diversity of perspectives, the more robust the solutions would be. Mutual ownership in solving the problem assured effective implementation.
There were outcries from the scientific community. They knew the best practices through extensive research and juried publications. Doing anything different would be less effective and might cause more damage when time is of the essence. In other words, adaptive management is too risky, and management should be left to those who know best.
In central Oregon is Bear Creek. There, 25 cattle were let out to roam freely in June and brought back into the barn in August. The cattle stayed by the riverside, where it was the coolest, and ate all the tasty plants. Stream banks turned to mud. Scoured by sediments, the river cut deeply into the land. The pasturelands, with less diversity of plants and compacted soils, became arid.
The adaptive management approach was to section the grazing lands with fencing. The cattle were let out to the creek in May to graze on first shoots that included rushes and willows. This saved the rancher money for a month of cattle feed. Cattle thrived on the new growth. They were moved to another pasture well before the resource was overgrazed. Every few weeks, the cattle were moved to higher pastures. Grazing in moderation stimulated plant growth. Cattle fertilized the higher meadow and removed thatch, allowing more wildflowers to grow.
Over the course of 20 years, riparian plants along Bear Creek thrived and spread. The 500,000 gallons of water per mile once held in the land became 4 million gallons per mile. The stream bed rose 2.5 feet. It overflowed its banks and meandered to become one-third of a mile longer. The carbon, nitrogen, and hydrological cycles were restored and strengthened. Grazing cattle had regenerated the land like the buffalo in grasslands long ago.
For the pachyderms, the improvements when they were moved according to what was best for the land was nothing short of elephantine. African farmers wanted elephants in their fields, stomping fibrous plants, pushing seeds into the ground, and pooping. Communities gathered and worked out when and how long the elephants would visit each family’s field. Arid wastelands turned to lush green areas retaining water. People coordinated with elephants to improve ecosystems with more resources for all. Elephants and people prospered in more synergistic balance with one another as active parts of nature. Plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and microbes that cooperate are more fit for survival and growth than those that compete.
By organizing, life overcomes the odds, entropy, and limits to growth. Families organize into populations, populations into communities, and communities into ecosystems. Adaptive management recognizes that ecosystems have vast networks of interconnections, where it is impossible to predict what one management action will do fully. Through experimentation, observations of entire systems (animals, plants, soil, stream flow, etc.), and informed actions, people of the place come to know the workings of their ecosystems better. What happens on the margins, beneath hooves and elephant feet, or stimulated by grazing, is critical for the turning of cycles and the balance of nature.
To identify the uncertainties, recognize the unexpected as it arises, and be able to adopt responsible stewardship practices, we must first see beyond expectations and not mistake a school of tuna for a sea serpent.
About The Author
Dr. Rob Moir is a nationally recognised and award-winning environmentalist. He is president and executive director of Cambridge, MA-based Ocean River Institute, a nonprofit providing expertise, services, resources, and information unavailable on a localized level to support the efforts of environmental organizations. Please visit www.oceanriver.org for more information.
More Article by Dr. Moir
- Cooling Our Planet: New England’s Battle with Climate Change
- Land & Sea Change for Earth Day, Expanding The Climate Change Narrative
- The Earth and Three Blinkered Scientists
- Fallen Forests and Rising Ocean Fury
- What If There Was a Right Whale National Marine Sanctuary?
- Atlantic Ocean off Florida Spawns a Giant Sargassum Blob Due to Climate Change & Nutrient Pollution
- Emerald Bracelets to Solve Three of the World’s Greatest Environmental Problems
- Slowing Water for Greener Neighborhoods
- Put Down the Federal Stick to Build a Greener Future
- Of Mousy & Elephantine Cycles, Managing The Climate Crisis After Glasgow COP26
- Melting Greenland Ice Sheet, Sea Ice Formation, and the Flow of The Gulf Stream
- A Whale of a Pattern of Thought and Organizing Principle for Community-Based Environmental Management
This piece was prepared online by Panuruji Kenta, Publisher, SEVENSEAS Media