In the mid- to late-90s, there were a slew of papers (e.g. Costanza et al. 1997; Pimentel et al. 1997) estimating the economic value of global biodiversity. Estimates ranged from about $16 to $54 trillion. At that time, world GDP was about $30 trillion. So, a question: has human economic output finally exceeded natural economic production? When? Did anyone even notice that it happened?

p.s. A mountain lion was shot and killed near Chez Panisse earlier this week [thanks Clare].

In case you hadn’t noticed, consblog has been on hiatus due to field work outside of the deathly grip of the internet. See you in the fall.

Some beautiful photographs of endangered species of the United States.

Wow, some fantastic, earnest conversation about the current state of conservation going on at the GECP (live here), it will also be archived for later viewing if you missed it. Paraphrase: we need to stop worrying about individual species going extinct; nature is more resilient than we are; etc. Lively debate. “The intrinsic argument for conservation doesn’t work.” Biodiversity is a subdiscipline in the long history of conservation.

Edit: the video is, indeed, now archived for viewing here. Definitely worth watching!

Just returned home from UC Davis, where the John Muir Institute of the Environment was hosting a day-long forum, “Exploring New Opportunities for Educating Conservation Professionals” (here’s the blog). Two fora in the morning, both hosted by Andrew Revkin, focused on how to prepare graduate students for jobs in conservation. The first panel were a group of federal agency folks, and the second were an impressive collection of representatives from WCS, TNC, CI, WWF, and the American Museum of Natural History. Here’s the short version of their message: to be a good candidate for a position in conservation, and to be an effective conservation biologist, you must be an economist; a linguist; a sociologist; a political scientist; a manager of people and programs; a great communicator; an organizer of meetings; a do-er, and more importantly, a finisher. Oh and it helps if you have some scientific background, but not so much that you are fanatically attached to having enough data. You are the decider.

There was a lot of encouraging information, but perhaps too many expectations. The major road blocks to graduate students gaining that experience are obvious: first, it’s hard to put participatory and applied conservation into a dissertation chapter; and second, the people training you are academics. They know, quite well, how to prepare yourself for an academic job. But for me, and I suspect most graduate students in ecology, the idea of shooting specifically for a job in academia without making room for other options is unrealistic, and there wasn’t much discussion of the best ways to hedge your bets. Few of the graduate students I know are strongly set on one career over another, but it makes for a lot of indirect academic paths. The real message from the meeting, I suppose, was keep your options open, spread yourself wide, but keep strong to your core discipline. It was a real pleasure to see so many dedicate conservation professionals in one place, especially ones who all seemed satisfied with their varied careers.

Photographs, get your photographs.

There’s a tiger that’s been prowling Hamilton, Ontario for a few weeks now. Some immortal hand or eye (okay it was a camera) finally captured its fearful symmetry.

Frank Leslie’s Boy’s & Girl’s Weekly, March 2, 1867

Most in the conservation world know nearly by heart Aldo Leopold’s “Thinking Like a Moment,” featuring what Bill McKibben called “the key Damascan Road story of American environmental conversion.” The pioneer of game management-cum-wildlife ecology recalls when he “was young…and full of trigger-itch,” reflecting:

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen edible bush and seeding browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

Taking nothing away from Leopold, I was delighted nonetheless to discover the following passage—similarly prescient about conservation biology and ecological niches —in Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man, published (and set!) on this day in 1857. The narrator, surveying the St. Louis waterfront, spots a

peddler [who] hawked , in the thick of the throng, the lives of Meason, the bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers Harpe, the Thugs of the Green River county, in Kentucky—creatures, with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for the most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same regions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause for unalloyed gratulations, and is so to all except those who think that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes increase.

This article is suitably flippant about people dying. A hunter -sorry – poacher in Kruger National Park was killed by hippos and eaten by lions: “While authorities may have their hands full when it comes to stopping hunters, there remains a more natural form of justice, lurking among the wildlife so often pillaged–and in this case justice, like dinner, was served.” Ugh.