Scientists, the world over, have a common belief that over 90% of earth’s species have become extinct over the last three billion years that the planet has supported life . It is estimated that there have been at least five mass extinctions spread over millions of years at a time. The latest known mass extinction was towards the end of the Cretaceous period. It is most likely so well known because, the event which occurred over 65 million years ago, caused the end of the dinosaurs. Although in terms of the scale it was smaller than the previous four, it was estimated that 70% of extant species were eliminated and mostly the large-bodied animals. These mass extinctions have received a lot of academic interest because unlike natural evolution, these events changed the ecology of the planet suddenly and with very little regard to how well the species had adapted to their environments.
Research has shown that there are positive and negative outcomes of this type of extinctions. Mass extinctions allow new species to propagate, evolve and become dominant . The last mass extinction allowed birds and mammals, particularly humans to evolve to what they are in the present day. On the negative side, sudden, catastrophic extinctions change the natural laws of survival and remove even those species that have adapted perfectly to their ecosystems. Studying these phenomena help geologists and other scientists to understand how to remedy the current biodiversity crisis perpetrated by the actions of human beings. It is estimated that humans have accelerated the extinction time spans and more than half of the world’s currently known life forms will be wiped out in the next 100 years. The major concern surrounding the need to prevent such extinctions is the fact that recovery from mass extinctions takes upwards of 10 million years.
One of the means to this end is conservation. Within conservation there are several methodologies. One is to preserve a habitat against loss thereby protecting its inhabitants, the second is to preserve the species outside its natural habitat through human intervention, and yet another is to re-introduce endangered species to a certain habitat or introduce a species to a habitat other than its own and let it evolve from there . Almost all conservation efforts revolve around removing or moving species from habitats. According to the theory of evolution, a species evolves to the best fit for its native habitat and it is intrinsically connected to the natural order of that habitat .
Therefore, removing an animal from its habitat has tremendous impact both on the animal and the habitat. This paper will review this hypothesis with references to academic literature and the documentary Blackfish.
Conservation through captivity and relocation
Conservation of biodiversity refers to the methods adopted for preserving all life forms on earth and keeping natural ecosystems healthy and functioning . The methods mostly ensure that the entire system is preserved to ensure that the diversity of species, genetic diversity and the ecosystem’s diversity remains intact. Such methods of in situ conservation ensure that species are protected within their natural habitat without excessive human management in their internal lives . Humans manage the external processes like regulating access to a particular area, restricting invasion by non-native species, and devising methods to not disturb the natural order as much as possible. Conservation of a particular species that is under severe stress can employ ex situ conservation methods. These include gene preservation through preserving plants, seeds, eggs, sperm and embryos , captive species centers where animals are bred and raised, and also through human intervention during unfavorable times for the species. The last includes methods like removing eggs from nests and hand rearing chicks, and relocating a species to a more favorable location. Both captive breeding and relocation methods involve removing the species from its natural habitat.
Blackfish
In the documentary film Blackfish , the story focuses on wild killer whales that have been captured from Iceland and transported to the various facilities of Sea World, an American parks and entertainment company. The whales and other marine mammals are taught tricks to perform for the entertainment of people which creates revenue for the company through ticket sales. While the company maintains that the parks are a means of conserving many species including killer whales , the documentary shows how the large mammals are actually kept in captivity.
The swimming pools for the whales are not large enough for animals that are used to swimming 100 miles a day in the oceans. The holding pens have only enough space for the animals to float. Rarely are pools deeper than the length of their bodies resulting in low water pressure which has been noted as a cause for the bending of their dorsal fins. Killer whales or orcas live in family groups, sometimes for life, and have distinctive connections within each family. Blackfish recounts how baby orcas are separated from their mothers and brought to Sea World, a traumatic event for the animals. Clubbing together members of different families results in aggression and fights with no means of escape. Orcas, who communicate via high pitched sounds, are kept in cement holdings through which sound cannot penetrate. They are fed thawed frozen fish; killer whales in the wild typically don’t scavenge . Their unnatural aggression not only results in injury and deaths of other whales and sometimes their trainers, it also results in damage to the individuals as well. Captive whales are known to chew on metal railings resulting in broken teeth which require repair and human intervention for the rest of their lives to prevent bacteria entering the bloodstream. Blackfish focuses on one of the whales, a 12,000 pound male ‘Tilikum’ who had been captured as a baby, exposed to aggressive females on arrival at Sea World and who ended up killing three people, including two trainers. The documentary captures the challenges and issues facing ex-situ conservation efforts worldwide.
Challenges of Captive Conservation
Jett and Ventre reported that 152 orcas had died in captivity worldwide after spending an average of 6.6 years in captivity . This is an especially short duration for whales born in captivity, since in the wild killer whale females are known to live equivalent of human life spans. Although natural breeding occurs, artificial insemination is also used to sustain the numbers because of the high mortality rates. It has also resulted in younger females becoming mothers and then rejecting their babies because they have no pods to help them with the process. For a population to breed well, it must become self-sustaining. However, due to psychological, physiological and environmental conditions captive breeding programs are not effective for all species . Poor diet and nutrition, hand-rearing, incompatible individuals, and in-breeding impact the reproductive effectiveness of such programs. Most are plagued by low fertility and low mortality. They are also impacted by disease and psychological stressors. In some cases in order to create a population large enough for breeding, more animals have to be removed from the wild for restocking or borrowed from other conservation programs.
Impact of removing animals from their natural habitat
Top predators have tremendous impact on their natural habitats. Such predators keep smaller predator populations in check which allow smaller species of prey and plants to thrive . When the top predator population declines, it results in abundance of smaller predators which leads to extreme stress on the populations of plants and animals that had been thriving as long as the smaller predators were controlled. A small example can be found in gardens. Presence of predatory birds and snakes keep the number of frogs, mice, rats and insect-eating reptiles in check which in turn allows insects to flourish and pollinate plants and plants themselves to be protected from burrowing animals. If snakes and birds were to be removed from this habitat, the smaller predators would overrun the habitat leading to massive losses of insects leading to pollination failure and loss of plant life. In short, the eco-system collapses or becomes severely stressed. This is also true when prey animal populations are removed.
In another research it was noted that in sub-Saharan Africa as lion and leopard populations declined, the baboon population increased resulting in intestinal parasites being transferred from the animals to humans . When a rinderpest epidemic wiped out large numbers of herbivores, forest fires became more frequent. As the populations recovered, the fires became less in frequency. Industrial whaling has resulted in loss of several species of plankton-consuming whales. Whales sequester carbon into the sea via feces deposits. As whale populations declined, close to 100 million tons of carbon was released into the atmosphere contributing to climate change.
Relocation of species to other more favorable ecosystems is another means by which animals are removed from their environment. This method too impacts the animals and their new habitats adversely. However, relocation has become a means of conservation due to climate change that has changed the habitats of many species. Climate change is a result of human activities like industrialization, clearing forests for agricultural land, introducing domestic species which compete for food. When the climate changes the habitat like it did in the case of the lemmings in the Arctic and lemming numbers came down, its predator the arctic fox began preying on a bird called red knot. Since traditionally the red knot did not face this level of predation, the species’ natural coping and recovery responses are much slower than in the case of a species that has always had predators. Relocating the red knot was deemed to be the solution to the problem. In other cases like that of the Californian quino checkerspot butterfly, the fast developing city of Los Angeles is preventing the natural escape of the species to colder climates. In such cases also, the species needs to be removed from its natural habitat. Over the years the governments especially in the US have been formulating legal frameworks for this process, however resistance from the scientific community is considerable.
Removing a species from its habitat destroys the food chain of that habit. In the case of the butterfly, it will mean that insect-eating animals will be left without this prey and will start preying on other insects not equipped for large scale predation. It will also mean that plants dependent on the butterfly will no longer have a pollinating agent. This means that it is not enough to move just one species, the entire ecosystem needs to be moved.
Another more compelling argument against relocation of animals is the impact of introducing animals into a new habitat. A classic example of this is the dodo bird which lived in the isolated Mauritius islands several centuries ago. With no natural predators, the dodo had no fight or flight response. When new animals in the form of human settlers arrived along with their cats, dogs and monkeys, the dodo was easily hunted to extinction in a span of few centuries .
When the animal is moved to an unfamiliar environment, it will have no knowledge of its predators and the food sources available to it. Large animals tend to reproduce slowly which means that an entire generation may get killed or die of starvation before they learn what is available in their new homes .
A new environment puts extreme stress on the animals during the adjustment phase. If only younger generations of animals are removed and relocated, they have no references from the older members of their species to learn how to behave in their environment. In Blackfish, it was evident that by capturing only the young whales and socializing them with members of different families there was no natural learning process for the animals. Since the original captives did not know whale behavior they were unable to impart any such knowledge to their offspring who were born in captivity.
Disease is another major effect of removing animals from their habitats. This can happen in two ways. Removing a species from its ecosystem leads to the rise of another species that spreads diseases. This was seen previously in the case of the baboons. The other method is when species is relocated, it will introduce specific diseases to the new habitat. The new habitat has no defense against these diseases and will become stressed . In other cases, when captive animals are released to the wild, they will introduce diseases to their own wild counterparts. Also, the new habitat will present with diseases and parasites which the relocated species cannot handle. This was notable in the case of orangutans that were removed from Taiwan and relocated to Malaysia. All the individuals became infected with tuberculosis and herpes.
This is not to say that species do not thrive on removal. Many do, but the inherent uncertainties of the process are the major reason for the scientific community to view such practices with doubt. It is also clear that removing an animal from its habitat will change the habitat. It is also clear that, over time, the habitat will become hospitable to some species and inhospitable to others.
Conclusion
Michael Crichton, the author of Jurassic Park and The Lost World , had tackled an issue related to removal and relocation of animals, namely, resurrection and reintroduction. Both processes, he said, were fraught with uncertainty and danger. As the character of Ian Malcolm repeatedly points out, interfering with natural processes is charting unknown waters. Although animals can adapt to changing environments it can never be determined how quickly or how completely they would adapt or even the nature of the adaptation. Crichton says, “But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning.” In the books the dinosaurs behaved in unexpected ways as they adapted to their new environments. This is clear in the case of the killer whales in Blackfish that had no one to teach them whale behavior. They were taught only tricks by humans. They did not know how to be whales and were always stressed and aggressive. Relocating only young animals to a new habitat increases the risk of generating new behavior to cope with the new variables of the environment.
The issues related to conservation through removal and relocation of animals to either captive centers or other ecosystems have become compelling the in face of rapid climatic changes and depleting ecologies. However, the practice of removing animals changes the animals and their habitats irrevocably.
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