No Way Home: The Decline of

The following is an interesting "book review" by Paul J. Nyden, a Gazette writer.

Interesting and informative, ..... even though it is in actuality a "Global Warming WARNING".

David S. Wilcove, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, warns us about the future in his new book, No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations.

Seasonal migrations are very different. Arctic terns fly from pole to pole. Spotted salamanders migrate just 150 yards.

Red knots, the size of robins, are sandpipers that breed in the Arctic, then winter in places like Tierra del Fuego, on South America’s southern tip.

Every year, red knots fly 18,000 miles — from one end of the earth to the other. During their trips, like other migratory species, knots regularly stop in specific locations to rest and eat.

Almost the entire population of one species of knot stops in the Delaware Bay, eating enough to increase their weight by 50 percent to survive the next leg of their journey.

Knots and other shore birds dine on billions of tiny eggs laid on beaches every spring by horseshoe crabs, a fascinating species more than 200 million years old.

When commercial horseshoe crab fishing increased dramatically in the early 1990s, it not only threatened the survival of the ancient crabs, but also the migrating knots and other shorebirds.

The long evolution and interactions between many species mean damaging one also devastates others.

Many other migratory birds, Wilcove notes, dine on caterpillars for their nourishment. But in doing so, they also protect trees and forests from devastation.

Migrating insects and salmon

Insect migrations are poorly studied and often ignored. Most people don’t even think about them.

Cape May, on the southern tip of New Jersey, experiences major insect migrations every year.

On a September afternoon in 1992, a biologist Wilcove knows estimated more than 400,000 dragonflies flew over the cape in one 75-minute period.

In December 1991, a single swarm of dragonflies migrating across Argentina was estimated to contain between four and six billion individuals.

Insects, many of which are beautiful and most of which play critical roles in the earth’s natural food chains, are also falling fall victim to human disturbances.

“A life history strategy that works brilliantly in a pre-industrial world can be a major liability in a world dominated by people,” Wilcove writes.

In earlier times, salmon easily spent their early lives in freshwater rivers, migrated to oceans for most of their lives, then returned to their home waters to produce a new generation.

Timbering, gold mining and dams devastated salmon populations. Farmers using herbicides, insecticides and synthetic fertilizers killed many more.

And all this is not an entirely new problem. Even colonial legislatures, at the time of the American Revolution, were passing laws to control fishing to ensure their survival.

Wild salmon also help sustain many other creatures in areas such as the Northwest, including bald eagles, grizzly bears, minks and many other birds and mammals. Declines in native salmon hurt those species as well.

“The only migration most salmon will make in the future is the journey from the fish farm to the canning factory,” Wilcove warns.

Bison, wildebeests and whales

North American bison, African wildebeests and white-eared kobs, as well as ocean whales are subjects of other chapters.

Before Europeans migrated across North America, bison were the “greatest aggregation of large mammals on earth.”

But at the end of the 1800s, bison were devastated — along with passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeets and sea otters.

Wilcove calls that period, during which most Native American Indians were also driven off their lands, “a time of wholesale slaughter.”

“In less than a century, the most abundant large mammal in the world would be brought to the brink of extinction.”

Today, people defending the small wild bison populations that remain must often fight cattle ranchers eager to kill bison that stray out of Yellowstone National Park. They work to block oil and gas drills from destroying bison’s remaining migratory routes.

Today’s tourists, however, are playing increasingly critical roles in protecting threatened wildlife.

Some species of endangered whales are rebounding after the heyday of whaling from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries, and from callous harvesting voyages by whalers from countries such as Japan and the former Soviet Union.

“Thanks to tourism, people up and down the Pacific Coast now have a direct economic stake in the welfare of gray whales,” Wilcove writes.

By protecting wildlife, local communities can enhance their own economic welfare.

But most people and most governments wait to do much until species are in dire straits.

No Way Home cites these disastrous examples:

“Today, Haiti is almost devoid of trees, having destroyed 97 percent of its original forest cover.”

Cuba has cut down more than 75 percent of its forests for plantations to raise sugar cane and other crops.

The Dominican Republic has lost 71 percent of its wooded lands, while Mexico has lost 50 percent.

Wilcove urges government leaders to spend more foreign aid money to help governments and private organizations in poor nations, helping them protect their habitats and migratory routes.

This very readable book closes with a warning that has become all too familiar.

“Unless we come to grips with the problem of global warming, we are unlikely to be successful in saving many of the world’s migrations, regardless of what we do in terms of safeguarding current breeding grounds, wintering grounds or migratory routes.”

Today, climate change is a specter that overshadows everything.

No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations by David S. Wilcove, Island Press, 245 pages. Hardcover, $24.95.

To contact staff writer Paul J. Nyden, use e-mail or call 348-5164

http://www.sundaygazettemail.com/section/Opinion/Op-Ed+Commentaries/200801192

I wonder if Wilcove noted in his book the demise of millions of Beaver in North America?

Or made mention of the millions of penguins that inhabit the Southern and Antarctic oceans. The Emperor migrates 100+- miles across the ice to their rookery.

Global warming would cut their "commute time" considerably.

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