Articles by Eric de Place

Massive new Washington habitat conservation plan is bad news.

Today is the final day for the public to weigh in on a giant new habitat conservation plan--called the Forests and Fish Plan--that will govern how Washington's timber industry behaves and how well it safeguards habitat for endangered salmon. Here's the punchline: the plan will essentially grant the timber industry 50 years of legal immunity to the federal Endangered Species Act.

This is not a smart move.

Habitat conservation plans, ostensibly designed to protect endangered species, often authorize destructive activity that harms the very creatures they are supposed to protect. The Forests and Fish Plan will supposedly require timber companies to repair roads that erode into salmon streams, as well as leave streamside timber uncut. But the plan also leaves out a number of important measures.

Here is just a sampling of criticism that appeared in a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article:

Charismatic animals get all the love.

If you could monitor only 7 species for a region, which would you choose, in order to learn the most about the region's ecological health?

Here's why I ask...

Unless you've been living in a cave, you probably already know that the ivory-billed woodpecker was re-discovered, not extinct after all, in the swamps of Arkansas. But unless you happen to be a mollusk biologist you're probably not aware that two freshwater snails in Alabama were also recently re-discovered alive and well.

The many consequences of human interference with ecosystems

We all know them: English ivy, European starlings, Himalayan blackberry, Scotch broom. No, they're not foreign exchange students or international meals. They're part of the legion of exotic invasive species that threaten the ecological integrity of the Northwest. Of course, the Northwest is hardly alone. The American south is overrun with kudzu, for instance.

The poster children of over-abundance are deer, as anyone in the Upper Midwest or the Northeast can tell you. Deer, of course, are native species, but because their predators have largely been eliminated, and because they thrive in semi-developed fragmented landscapes, they are legion. But deer are not alone: Canada geese, grackles, raccoons, opossums, and other species can wreak havoc on ecosystems that are already out of balance.

A good article today, picked up by the Seattle Times, examines the consequences of our alteration of ecosystems. Not only do some foreign invaders out-compete native species, but the populations of a few native species metastasize at the expense of more sensitive species. Here is the crux of the article:

...what's happening isn't natural. It's all man's fault. As the land is changed, often to accommodate development, ecosystems turn much more vanilla, scientists say.

The world does better when it has a buffet of diverse species -- some of those plants and animals can benefit people with food and medicine -- instead of one flavor fits all, said Oregon State University zoology professor Jane Lubchenco, president of the International Council for Science.

Are old forests really returning west of the Cascades?

Are old growth forests growing back? According to an article in the Oregonian, new federal research shows that there are 600,000 more acres of old forest west of the Cascades than there were a decade ago. I'm suspicious.