Good News, Good News, and Unsurprising Bad News on the Environment: Tigers, Amur Leopards Get a Break, Not So Elephants

For those of us depressed by the continuing hammer blows delivered to the environment by humans, there are a few bright spots. A couple below, although one can’t sugarcoat them.

Bengal Tiger Resurgence

I recently heard that the population of Bengal Tigers is on the upswing in India (they have been increasing in Nepal too). I couldn’t find that recent story with a Web search, but here’s a report from January 2015, with numbers cited by India’s Environment Minister: Bengal Tiger Numbers Up

Assuming we can trust NDTV and India’s environment minister, these are promising numbers—an increase of 58% in seven years. 

Unfortunately, there’s a downside to these stats: the populations are scattered, meaning genetic diversity is still low, and the total number of the big cats, unsurprisingly, is 1/50th of what it was circa 1900 (then 100,000).  At the same time, India’s human population has gone up by a factor of 4.

We like to blame poachers for the big declines, and they are the villains of the moment, but the main driver of tiger decimation over the last century is habitat destruction and fragmentation.  Fragmentation now gives poachers access by road. That’s coupled with villagers defending themselves from the tigers that have been forced into near proximity. And who can blame them? If you had a wild tiger roaming in the vicinity, what would you do? You can’t blame individuals, especially in a poor nation, for the massive forces of development and exploitation of the wilderness.

For the next good + bad story, we go to. . .

Amur Leopard Numbers Up

Here’s another mixed message, but something to at least cheer realistically about: the Amur Leopard population has doubled between 2007 and 2016. https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/amur-leopard-numbers-are-increasing

The downside: there are only about 70 left in the wild. Too small a pool to guarantee sustainability without concentrated conservation efforts, but proof that conservation efforts can work.

What’s the Deal with “Charismatic” Species?

The Amur Leopard raises the question of how much time, money, and other resources should go into saving an animal that has only a slim chance of surviving in sustainable numbers. The bare fact is that certain “charismatic” animals, such as the Amur leopard, get a disproportionate amount of attention, taking eyes away from more humble species that we hardly notice, but could be more important to the health of the planet. For instance:

Insect numbers are crashing worldwide, but we don’t pay attention to many insects apart from the charismatic Monarch Butterfly. . . also honeybees in North America, that are not even native to the continent, and compete with other native wild bee species, thus lowering biodiversity (I’m not against saving honeybees, but they do hog the environmental airwaves). This from Yale Environment 360:

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters/3012/

(BTW, I have mentioned this elsewhere but I’ll say it yet again; subscription to online Yale Environment 360 will expose you to some of the most timely, important, and authoritative reporting on the environment you will find anywhere on the web. If you’re interested in decluttering your Inbox, you’d be much better informed about the environment if you subscribe to Y.E. 360 and tell me to stop sending you emails. On the other hand, you wouldn’t be getting any jibes at sportswear companies from them.)

The plus side of charismatic animals is, that they can act as a surrogate for an ecosystem, such that saving them saves habitat and a bunch of other species in the process.  The still-fragile protection of the Northern Spotted Owl carrying over to the protection of old-growth tree habitat is a salient case in point. Some criticism of the Endangered Species Act is justified, but I believe it has been a success story with the Spotted Owl.

Speaking of charismatic species, here’s the unmistakable bad news concerning . . .

African Elephants Under Siege: The Numbers

My typical reader will have heard a lot about the heartbreaking slaughter of elephants at the hands of poachers—much of which owes to the Asian market for decorative ivory. This slaughter is particularly wrenching because these beasts are so intelligent and social, that the death of any individual reverberates throughout an entire herd. Just like us.

It’s bad, but how bad?  Thanks to the recent Great Elephant Census, we have some hard numbers to go with our sense of tragedy: 27,000 elephants a year, 8% of the existing total, sacrificed for human greed.

http://www.greatelephantcensus.com/

(I should qualify this by noting that elephants in proximity can be extraordinarily dangerous; male elephants in “musth” go temporarily insane with gushes of testosterone, and a three-ton animal crashing through your neighborhood can really get your, not always friendly, attention. In addition, on rare occasions, individuals become homicidal, musth or no musth. A few individual elephants, therefore, are killed for the protection of people, but a distant herd has no interest in attacking human beings. Although they may have reasons to.)

These stats are for savannah elephants, but it is known that forest elephant populations are also in steep decline, though without exactitude. Forest elephants are small and elusive, and, unlike savannah elephants, are difficult to spot from planes or drones.

Should We Keep Our Hopes Up?

Time and again I have heard prominent environmentalists say something along the lines of “yes, the situation is grave, but I’m an optimist, therefore. . . .”  And I wonder, what kind of optimism does it take to say that? Well, that’s how they get prominent, by keeping their hopes up and pushing forward, despite mounting evidence portending catastrophe of one environmental kind or another. Certainly the U.S. presidential election has sent a lot of environmentalists (not just on the left) into a tailspin. Not least because there are so many bad things threatening to happen on various fronts—not just the environmental one—under the impending administration, you don’t know where to pick your battles. But, we’ll never win without trying, so whatever action you can take, no matter how small, is a step toward environmental salvation.