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Killing 2 Million Cats: When Broad Targets Aren’t Enough

Posted on August 7, 2019 by Sam Perrin Leave a comment

Image Credit: Joey Doll, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped

Conservation or politics? Australia’s target to kill 2 million cats (2019) Doherty et al., Conservation Letters, https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12633

The Crux

We’ve talked a lot lately about competition between causes on Ecology for the Masses. Often when extra attention is given to one cause over another equally valid cause, it’s a product of social trends coinciding at the right time, sudden events capturing the public interest (think the Notre Dame fire) or a particularly effective marketing campaign. But sometimes a cause or a conservation target can be used to deliberately distract the public from another cause, and it’s a potential example of this that we’re looking at today.

Australia has long had an issue with cats. They’ve decimated populations of native species, playing a large hand in the extinction of many species found nowhere else. So it makes sense that part of Australia’s first Threatened Species Strategy would be to minimise the impact of cat populations on local wildlife. The strategy included a target of 2 million cats being killed between 2015 and 2020. Whilst this might sound like a reasonable goal, this paper argues that the actual scientific evidence supporting the target is pretty weak, and goes into some alternatives and motives.

Paper of the Week

Biodiverse Gardens: Where Doing Less is More

Posted on June 27, 2019 by tanjakp Leave a comment

Kiftsgate Court Garden: The Wild Garden 1. An example of a “wild garden” in the UK, where the plants have been left to grow (Image Credit: Michael Garlick, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped)

How do you make your garden more biodiversity-friendly? During my time at the Futurum exhibition at The Big Challenge Science Festival, I spent a lot of time talking to people who expressed a desire to be manage their gardens for more plants and animals, but were unsure where to start. So I’ve compiled a brief guide on what to do, and it’s your lucky day – it involves not doing anything.

Opinions

Shannon McCauley: The Rise of Community Ecology

Posted on December 13, 2018 by Adam Hasik 3 comments

"...there’s been huge growth in what we can do, but I think there’s been some loss in understanding the behavioural base of biology." (Image Credit: Shannon McCauley)

Image Credit: Shannon McCauley, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped

Community ecology is one of the more recent ecological disciplines, and has enjoyed a rise in popularity in the last decade. Yet it’s often been criticised as a little obscure, and has had difficulties integrating with other branches of ecology like evolution and population dynamics.

With this in mind, I sat down with Doctor Shannon McCauley of the University of Toronto during her recent visit to the University of Arkansas. Shannon is a community ecologist at the University of Toronto-Mississauga who uses dragonflies and other aquatic insects to answer questions about dispersal, community connectivity, and the effects of climate change. We attempted to put a little more context behind community ecology, and highlighted its relevance in the coming years.

The Forefront

Populations Can’t Grow without Homes

Posted on December 12, 2018 by Adam Hasik Leave a comment

Sea otters are one of many charismatic species found along the California coast, yet recovery doesn’t seem to be helping them. Is it something about their habitat that is preventing population growth? (Image Credit: Mike Baird, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

Gaps in kelp cover may threaten the recovery of California sea otters (2018) Nicholson et al., Ecography, DOI:10.1111/ecog.03561

The Crux

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the fur trade was a massive industry in North America. As a result, many species were hunted and trapped to near extinction. The California sea otter (Enhydra lutris) was reduced in population to less than 50 total individuals. The enactment of the Internation Fur Treaty allowed the species (and others) to come back from the brink of extinction, and they now number over 3200 individuals and are spread across 525km of the California coast. Interestingly, although the population is recovering, it has not bounced back as quickly as other protected mammals living in the same habitat. The California sea lion, for example, has a maximum population growth rate more than twice that of the sea otter (11.7% compared to 5%).

Despite the remarkable recovery of the species, the sea otters occupy less than a quarter of their historic range and have not expanded along the coast in 20 years. The authors of this paper wanted to investigate what it is about the sea otters and their habitat that is slowing this population’s growth rate and spread along the coast.

Paper of the Week

Kath Handasyde: Charisma, Culling and Conservation

Posted on November 8, 2018 by Sam Perrin 2 comments

Koalas are gorgeous, no doubt. But does their overwhelming charisma mean that we forget about other species? (Image Credit: Erik Veland, CC BY-SA 3.0, Image Cropped)

Australia plays host to a wonderful range of very endearing species. Tourists come from the world over to get up close with kangaroos or koalas. But the charisma of these animals can often lead to issues, whether it’s prioritisation of resources for them over other more endangered species, or even to the detriment of the species themselves.

Doctor Kath Handasyde of Melbourne University has been working with Australian field wildlife for almost 40 years, and is perhaps the most charismatic teacher I had during my Bachelor’s at the same institute. During my time in Melbourne, I had the chance to talk to Kath about the sometimes problematic role of charismatic species in Australian wildlife conservation.