1. A stream corridor connecting forest and native grass habitats
2. The Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, crucial to the long-term recovery of grizzly bears and other wildlife labeled as one of the most endangered wild lands in the U.S.
Today in Professor Trumpey's lecture we heard about the importance of biodiversity and efforts to restore corridors for animals.
Groups around the world are working to establish "wildlife highways" with varying degrees of success. "In North America, the Wildlands Project is pushing for a huge "Yellowstone-to-Yukon" wildlife corridor. In Central America, conservationists are slowly and sporadically working on the Meso-American Biological Corridor. The dream: A monkey should be able to go up a tree in Panama and not have to climb down till it reaches Mexico," (Windstar Wildlife Garden Weekly)
"The corridor idea is relatively new: conservationists once thought that [preserves were enough. But groups of animals isolated from their species become genetically homogeneous, and don't develop the diversity necessary to adapt to threats- especially that of climate change," (Brandon Keim in Corridors Help Animals Flee From Climate Change).
What are your thoughts on these animal corridors?
They appear in our landscape as green, peaceful and graceful efforts to restore the natural environment and a natural way of life (migration) for animals... what else?
How might artists be a part of these efforts?
How do you imagine these corridors expanding into our world?
How might they extend into our urban spaces?
Also feel free to use this space to respond to the lecture as a whole, focusing on the importance of biodiversity.
Read More:
Corridors for a Healthier Environment
Article: Earth Times, San Diego
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
North Carolina State University Corridor Research
12 comments:
I think animal corridors are a fantastic idea. It makes sense: humans have highways crisscrossing the entire world; why can’t animals have the same? However, I am a little skeptical that animals will actually use them. After years and years they still wander into our roads and are hit by cars- why wouldn’t they continue to follow that pattern? I’m not saying the idea of corridors is going to fail by any means. In fact, I think after a few generations of animals get used to it, they will use them frequently. But there’s that big “What If” lingering in my mind… what if they just continue to cross the roads regardless of their new safe passage?
I believe artists will play a critical role in the development of animal corridors. If we can make them look appealing to both animals and humans (while still keeping them as functioning ecosystems), I believe they will be more likely to work. If they seem to be working and humans are open it, I can see these corridors canvassing our landscape of interstate highways. And why shouldn’t they? The biodiversity we would be helping to restore was here long before we were. Animals should always have the right of way.
SeanThompson
Darwin proposed that species evolve over time by means of natural selection. Natural selection is affected by many variables such as genetic variation, excess population, survival of the fittest, competition, and inheritability of traits. While studying finches on from remote islands Darwin concluded that species of Finches had adapted to live on that island and had formed specialized diets that related to physical abilities of the birds. Big beaked finches ate big seeds while small peaked finches only ate smaller ones. He concluded that this was due to natural selection. Specializing in food on a remote island helps avoid competition and give you a better chance of survival.
This idea has been refined into a theory of evolution. It says that speciation occurs due to natural selection, sexual selection, mutation, migration, and genetic drift. This speciation is what creates biodiversity on planet earth. It is estimated that there may be nearly 30,000,000 species on earth. Most of which are insects and of those insects most are beetles.
Although I can't recall where I was exactly or what I was doing, I have a vivid memory of a sudden and awful realization. Since reading the biodiversity article, I had been thinking extensively about the incredible variety of life and how mind-blowing those numbers are. When I ponder the subtle differences present in just humans, in faces, ethnicities, behaviors, beliefs, and try to apply that to the other 30-80 million species of animals on the planet...my brain is on overload. But it was with those thoughts in the back of my head that I had this horrible concept suddenly come to me, and though I would never say it is an original thought, never have I felt a more truer possibility.
Are we humans a disease?
I'm sorry for that statement's immediate tie to Agent Smith's decry in the Matrix, but I assure you it was not in my mind at the time. How is it that no matter where our species go or how we live, we create death and destruction of life around us? I wonder if it's apparent in a different spectrum, if to some the paths or circumferences of death are blatant and obvious. That's a difficult fate to be dealt, a species that has no choice or other means of living except involuntarily (or worse, voluntarily) terminating life around them. I felt truly horrified at the idea that just to live, others needed to die, other species. And then to exploit that and exponentially increase the rate at which we destroy, is horrifying. Every time we use a car, we build a house, we put on clothes or eat breakfast or watch a movie or exercise or read a book! It's like some kind of inverted Midas touch, where all that we come into contact with withers away and dies.
We know how critical biodiversity is, and we see the effects of shrinking numbers. How would planet Earth thrive without species Homo Sapiens Sapiens?
To pursues an existence that is balanced and both gives and takes might be all we can strive for.
it is almost enraging how the ecosystem on this planet has existed successfully, adapting itself over time and changing as the climate changes. but then in the last 100 years or so, as humans started building and taking over the land for their own use, the ecosystem was the first to be put aside. it just blows my mind that people who have no idea how the enivronment sustains itself, what the plants and animals rely on and how a change would effect the earth... and they still go and build a huge mall in the middle of any kind of landscape, either thinking that it wont effect such a large expanse of nature that is all around it, or the nature factor wont even cross their minds. if you think about a house being built in the middle of the mountains, it doesnt seem to be that big of a deal. but consider how that grows and expands until you get to a beautiful land covered in what is New York City. the New York city area is somewhat the base of the beautiful catskill mountains, and approaching the hudson river valley. imagine what our country would be like if we didnt have the blockage of big cities.
It's hard to get animals to use something like this. I think of creatures like deer and raccoons in particular, which have thrived in urban settings by feeding of our trash.
In many respects though, the pace of understanding may simply be too slow for some animals. If animals continue to get killed by cars, people, or lack of a proper food source then it won't really matter what route they take in two or three generations. There simply won't be enough of them at all.
On some level, animal corridors seem like a brilliant solution, but they are a solution to a problem we created and don't really deal with its source: The fact that humans encroach upon the ecosystems of others with our urban and agrarian ways.
I think we are a long way off from understanding how to meliorate that issue. Perhaps though I am being overly cynical, and a solution can be more simply found.
I think Hollock put it really well. I am a bit skeptical of this idea, especially in places that need it most like big cities. I cant really see this working in places like New York City. I seriously doubt people would be willing to sacrifice real estate to make these corridors.
We could however plan this sort of thing ahead of time in a developing area and leave space for it. Now that would be great. That would allow the wildlife to move freely and the real estate bastards could capitalize on having this sanctuary in the backyards of select building. This could even be its own division of urban planning.
Also, I see the potential for danger with these. Could it be that if we connected the wrong ecosystems, we could do more harm than good. I think a great deal of caution should be be taken, we wouldn't want to introduce a foreign spices that would dominate. Just a thought.
It’s certainly a depressing thought to think about what seems like an unavoidable collapse in our society. Our population has just soared with the industrial revolution and the many news ways to extend our health and lives. It’s a weird feeling. Here we are celebrating the triumphs of medicine to save people from life threatening diseases, and yet we may very well be undermining the system that has kept ecosystems in check for years. We would like to think survival of the fittest only applies to animals, but at one point it did for people too. We may be reverting back to that kind of reality. So now it would seem that the population will die from starvation due to overconsumption of our resources, war fatalities, or superviruses. All of these options are ones we are ethically against. People should not starve, war and the deadly cost it comes with is something often truly horrible, and we should find ways to combat superviruses before they take away our loved ones. I myself feel the same about fighting against these fatalities, but the statistics do seem to point to collapse. As much as all these potential reasons for collapse may seem horrible, the reality is that we’ve set ourselves up and we just cannot accommodate for so many people to consume at the rate they are with our planet. So something drastic will undoubtedly occur to knock the numbers back down. Perhaps we do have to regulate the amount of children people are allowed to have. Obviously there would be huge problems monitoring and enforcing this and the idea of limiting life is against many religions. But if we can’t provide for the new life being created, it is irresponsible to keep such an exponential growth going. We have gotten too comfortable, we have used up all our resources as if they would magically renew themselves, and now we are headed towards times of crisis. We will unfortunately have to make many tough decisions in the coming years as we face the repercussions of our overpopulated, overconsumed lives.
I love to picture a rainforest teaming with life high above our heads. Such a variety of species exists at each individual level of the forest. It’s almost like a multileveled world that animals can travel across. Unfortunately, in urban setting, we have confined our animals to the shorter trees and to the ground. We have also confined them to geometric enclosed shapes/patches of land. We close them off with our roads and highways and housing developments and often don’t think twice about it. Yet people are starting to realize the repercussions of such a thing. Animals cannot properly connect with other kinds of their species and adapt to stay strong and diverse in their settings. Animals get killed trying to cross roads and we become accustomed to it, just grimacing at the bloody mess, another typical road casualty. Sure it keeps overgrowing deer population down and we consider most raccoons and such to be trash vermin. We only truly seem to regret hitting people’s pets and other cute animals.
Until lecture, I had never heard of these passageways for animals to cross through. I find the idea both exciting and strange at the same time. First of all, it is undoubtedly unnatural and you just can’t escape the fact that we are trying to correct a problem we have made with our clearcut civilizations. Still, as far as creative problem solutions go, it is and exciting one. I’d love to think of animals traveling through natural passageways that might even be over our heads. I think designers could plan out some great pathways for animals to travel through efficiently. Yet I can’t help but agreeing with Matt. How would you convince a wild animal to take a tunnel like passageway to a place they have never gone before? Animals can be cautious in their explorations and the risks they take. As any new idea, it certainly has kinks, but with the right motivated designers and people I believe we could construct something wonderful that would help restore some biodiverstity to trapped, ailing creatures.
I think these corridors are a great idea, and we should create more of them. It is bringing earth back to it's natural state. It allows animals to live in a natural way and develop/evolve according to the environment (preserves save animals, but not in the most natural way possible). A clean, healthy environment is key to saving endagered species. Our cities and industrialization has taken over much of the environment, sacraficing several species. We can't be so selfish as to industrialize any more; too many species are becomeing endangered at a fast rate. A compromise needs to be made to help save these species. A corridor is natural, beautiful, and helps the environment and the animals within it. I feel we should take advantage of these corridors. Blocking off parts of the environment, instead of industrializing, benefits everyone. Too much industrialization will only pollute our environment, eventually to the point of a collapse. We need to reserve what's left of our environment, not only for the endagered species, but for people as well.
I think that this is a really creative idea but I am skeptical. Will this really work? I wonder if the animals will feel comfortable in this type of environment. I support the fact that it will promote the movement of plants and animals, but it is very ambitious. I think it is good starting point though.
I think that artists have incredible influence in these efforts by producing corridors that are aesthetically pleasing yet also fully functional for animals and plants. It will take an enormous amount of creativity if this is going to extend into more populated areas. By implementing this into urban areas, designers need to be mindful how this is going to affect the human population. Will it affect the residents in these areas? With the increase in animal population will there be more waste? More road kill?
I definitely believe this will work in more rural areas, but I think more research and planning needs to be done before expanding on this around the globe. There needs to be a balance between human space and plant/animal space.
I feel like there shouldn’t even be a debate over these corridors should exist or not. Of course they should, it would be like debating on whether or not humans should be able to leave their property, of course we should, we need to get food and interact with others. If animals were only confined to things like reserves than we have done nothing more than place them in a very nice zoo. Yeah sure they have their “ideal” habitat, but they can never leave, and if they try to we kill them because they then are a threat to humans. How can we deny the animals undeniable rights to move from one place to another? Haven’t we done enough to ruin their habitats, why must we insist on refusing to let them move?
Even without animals’ rights in mind I can’t think of a single reason that we wouldn’t want a chunk of “nature” near us, in places where that is hard to come by. Without these places how will be able to nurture the generations after us to care about nature if you can’t find a corridor like these for miles?
In my mind this really shouldn’t be an argument. We should realize that these are necessary and go through the steps to either create them or preserve them permanently.
Animal corridors seem like a beneficial way solve the biodiversity problem. We could be benefiting our lives as well as the animals. It seems like a smart way to work around the environment and think about not just ourselves but our surroundings and the other creatures that inhabit it.
I think that this is a great opportunity for artists. It could be an extension of the land art movement. Instead of altering the land to just make art. Artists could alter the land to make useful art. Something that doubles as an aesthetically pleasing object and an eco-friendly usable object.
This could be a nice change to our world. When driving into most subdivisions, all the houses start to look the same. I have often been in subdivisions where I pulled up to the wrong house because they all look identical. The land can be brought back into our lives. There is no reason why people and wild animals should not live in the same environment. If there is a way to bring both together, I think that would be a great idea.
Corridors are an important idea, and refreshing to hear about. I looked up habitat corridors for more information after our class. A few of the things that I saw where the problems of making corridors traversable by humans without disturbing the corridor usefulness. Also, according to online resources, there is not enough data available yet to support the success or failure of the corridors. Are there other solutions to reestablishing migratory routes? Corridors are also prohibitively expensive, and according to Wikipedia, at their fringes, nearest to human development, they are practically useless. Another problem was that animals may not necessarily use the corridors, but nonetheless, I believe that they are an important idea to pursue. On the other hand, it might be important for humans to learn to live with the biodiversity around them, rather than creating the "other" space for it. Is there a way for humans to integrate migratory routes and corridors into development?
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