Every other year the Wild Things conference is held in Chicago. It's a forum geared primarily towards individuals who are engaged in natural land restoration throughout this part of the Midwest.The number and diversity of programs is amazing -- ranging from how to make toys with buckthorn wood, to advice on using Social Media (like facebook and blogs) to connect with the community and other volunteers, plus plenty of research updates related to bird diversity, woodland restoration and invasive plant control...
The program was held in early March this year at UIC, and organizers say there were at least 1,400 people in attendance! That's a lot of Wild Things in one place! Generally speaking, the crowds were pretty laid-back. (Except when they realized that the Crunchy Vegetable sandwich was just cream cheese with cucumber slices... things nearly got ugly...)
I think my favorite session was by Joel Brown, a UIC faculty member known for creating "Project Squirrel" to monitor the distribution of grey & fox squirrel species around the US.
Dr. Brown is an evolutionary ecologist. That means he studies how natural selection serves to optimize natural community characteristics like feeding and reproduction. The data gathered through Project Squirrel help to understand the trends and characteristics of the two species. For instance, the study has found that fox squirrels tend to occur more frequently in areas with lots of stray cats than their grey cousins. Over time, the data will serve to track changes in the populations, perhaps yielding insights into the ways that evolution -- natural selection -- gives species the ability to adapt to environmental changes in just a few generations.
But, Dr. Brown didn't talk about Project Squirrel at Wild Things. Instead, he gave the room examples of how much & how fast species will evolve in the face of human disturbance.
Take Yellow Jackets for example. This bane of Labor Day parties in the Chicago region is now resistant to the poison in common pesticides like Black Flag. Dr. Brown suggested taking a can of Black Flag, and spraying a yellow jacket until it is so wet it cannot fly. Then watch the pest. It will spread its wing to dry off, and once dry, it will fly away. Now, spray the pesticide on some ants or a fly -- they will die. But the yellow jacket will not. That's because over many generatons, yellow jackets in the Chicago area have evolved to be resistant to that chemical.
How does this happen? Well, consider that in the early days of the pesticide, there were a few yellow jackets who survived - either they didn't get a strong enough dose, or they already had some natural resistance to the chemical. Those individuals passed their resistance on to the next generation. And so on and so on, until the vast majority of yellow jackets that emerge in the Chicago area have that same resistance. That is "natural selection," and it is happening right in front of us every day.
Plants adapt the same way to herbicides - they become resistant. And then the chemical companies create new poisons that the plants are not yet resistant to. BUT, it's only a matter of time before they develop resistance. It's a viscious circle, isn't it?
The same type of adaptation happens to animals - even to city-dwelling pests like raccoons. As Dr. Brown pointed out, one is not doing the neighborhood raccoon any favors by trapping it and taking it out to live in "nature" at a forest preserve or conservation area. City raccoons are adapted to live in town. Putting one out in nature is essentially signing its death warrant.
Better to learn to live with the raccoons than to relocate them.
No comments:
Post a Comment