Human-Wildlife Conflict: An Interview with Dr. Michael Hutchins
Jordan Carlton Schaul of Wildlife SOS on March 9, 2013
Michael: Simply put, a conflict may arise when the interests of humans and wildlife—real or perceived—do not coincide. Chief among these is competition between wildlife and humans for food. Taxa as diverse as elephants, gorillas, deer, waterfowl, passerine birds, such as starlings and blackbirds, rodents and insects can have devastating impacts on agricultural products and thus economies, both on the ground and in storage facilities.
An excellent example is the flooding damage to homes, municipal water systems and timber production that occurs when beaver dams impede drainage (http://icwdm.org/handbook/rodents/beavers.asp).
No mention of flow devices, no mention that sometimes we need the wildlife we’re eliminating, no mention of unintended consequences to lethal methods. Forget all that, and allow me just to say that this is National-something-Geographic and they should bloody well know how to post a link properly. Every single link in the entire article is just pasted in direct html. It even transformed my comment from a link to straight code. I suppose there’s some etiquette-based explanation for it, like it allows you to see where you’re going before you click, but it is SO annoying it’s almost impossible to read. Which honestly, considering the subject matter, may not be a bad thing.
New technologies may revolutionize our ability to manage human-wildlife conflict non-lethally, at least for some species. For example, Taser has now developed a wildlife product, which can be used as a powerful form of aversive conditioning (Lewis, L., Dawes, D., Hinz, A., and Mooney, P. 2011. Tasers for wildlife. The Wildlife Professional 5(1): 44-46). The devise has been used in Alaska on habituated bears and looks to be an extremely valuable new tool for wildlife management. In fact, large animals find the experience so distasteful that they appear to totally avoid the location of their experience and humans, in general, after only one application.
Tasers for Wildlife? That’s the nonlethal control you’re decide to mention? The mind reels. The jaw drops. The subscription waivers. You should know, that years of graduate school have forever made it impossible for me to read the words “aversive conditioning” without substituting the word “pointless sadism” and flashing on helpless Scottie dogs whining on electrocuted panels. I suppose I can understand the hypothetical theory behind it being better to tase a wayward tiger than to shoot it, but you KNOW that’s not how it will work. Tasers don’t really ever replace guns. All kinds of human activity gets responded to with tasers that would never justify getting shot by the police. If you market wildlife tasers for 5 minutes I can easily imagine ardent neighbors on the front porch tasing raccoons, or possums or cats.
Jordan: Road ecology is an emerging field, but few people are familiar with this applied scientific discipline. Can you explain what it is and discuss some of what we have learned about managing wildlife in regard to our expanding network of roads here in North America and around the globe.
Michael: Yes, road ecology is a fascinating topic and one that has important implications for wildlife conservation. The construction of a system of roads that allow us to drive from place to place or transport goods can have a number of direct and indirect effects on wildlife. For animals, roads can present significant obstacles. Depending on the type of animal and amount of vehicular traffic present, roads can be risky to cross or completely impenetrable. As barriers to movement, roads disrupt natural migration and fragment habitats. Individual animals attempting to cross roads in order to migrate, find food or mates, or return to their breeding grounds are not always successful as evidenced by the vast number of dead animals found on or near roads. One clever author has published a field guide to identifying wildlife killed on or near roads: Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets and Highways.
No, road ecology is not a fascinating topic and the author of flattened fauna is not ‘clever’. Honestly Dr. Michael Hutchins used to be the director of The Wildlife Society which was responsible for the beaver conference in Oregon that Igor attended in 2007. He can NOT be this stupid. Maybe it’s the author. I commented yesterday and it’s still ‘awaiting moderation’. Maybe I should post how wonderful I think this interview is instead and see if that gets moderated faster, for comparison
For the record, this is the only part of road ecology that interests me.
I’m pretty sure that elephants trampling crops and leopards eating children is not really the same as beavers flooding culverts, and putting them together in the same field makes the problem seem so insurmountable that any response is justified. What the article never mentions is unintended consequences. What happens to the rodent population when you kill all the coyotes, what happens to gazelle health when you poach all the lions, and what happens to fish when you trap all the beavers.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. Robert Frost
