Conclusion by Moderator Anders Halverson

http://andershalverson.com

If you’re looking for a cheap thrill, I recommend a little etymology. A little research and suddenly a word you have been taking for granted all your life becomes a window on history and the human condition.

Jutland

Take for example, the name of the language in which this is written. English derives from the name of a Germanic tribe that migrated from the Jutland peninsula across the North Sea to Britain some time around the fifth century A.D. These Angles received their name from the Romans, who derived it from the Latin word ancus, or hook. Why? Most references will tell you it is because Jutland hooks into the North Sea. But since this shape is really only apparent from high in space (and even then it takes some imagination), an alternate explanation from historian Timothy Rawson seems much more likely to me: the Angles got their name because they caught their fish with a line and hook, instead of a spear or net like most of their contemporaries. And if that etymology is correct, we are thinking and communicating in a fishing language.

In the same vein, consider the rainbow trout. Taken for granted the world over, these fish are in fact layered with human history and all of its contradictions. They are a repository, a symbol of the different ways we have related to the natural world over the last 150 years and more. And to me they are a reminder of the need for humility as we consider where we should go from here.

My stint as moderator comes to an end this week. Thanks to all who enriched the discussion through the online comments. And thanks also to those of you who simply took the time to read the blog and/or the book.

Rainbow Trout

A reminder: I will be speaking at the National Conservation Training Center on February 27th at 7:00 pm and I will also be doing a broadcast discussion with Mark Madison. I am looking forward to more discussions in those events.

If you want to know more about the book, please visit http://andershalverson.com

And finally, if you would like to contact me about other speaking engagements or simply to carry on the discussion, please contact me here.

What Will They Say in 50 Years? By Moderator Anders Halverson

http://andershalverson.com

This morning, I received an email from someone who had attended a talk I gave recently. He asked: “Is there anything going on nowadays that you would consider comparable to the Green River poisoning? Is there anything that we are currently doing that is as stupid or outlandish or that will be considered insane 50 years from now?”

Good question.

First, for those of you who haven’t read that chapter of the book yet: In 1962 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the fish and game agencies of Wyoming and Utah poisoned all the fish in the Green River above Flaming Gorge (a watershed the size of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined). Their goal was to eliminate anything that might interfere with the fishery they planned to create by stocking (nonnative) rainbow trout. 

And let me emphasize that there are still people today who argue (quite convincingly) that the operation was neither stupid or insane, but a logical response to the dams that were being built on the river (see Wiley, 2008).

The white lines in the river are
rotenone, a fish poison that was
applied to the Green River in 1962

That said, clearly such an operation would never even make it onto the drawing board today. In fact, we have now spent more than $100 million trying to recover several of the same fishes that were poisoned out 50 years ago.

So is there anything we are currently doing in fisheries or natural resource management that will have people tearing their hair out in a few decades? Of course.

But one of the most striking things to me about the Green River incident is how absolutely noncontroversial it was when it occurred. When I began my research, I was surprised at how hard it was to find newspaper articles about the incident. After a lot of scrolling through the microfiche, I eventually found a few, but they were mostly puff pieces in the sports section. It took a long time for me to realize that most people in that era simply didn’t think in the same native/nonnative dualism that has become so prevalent today. To them, fishes were divided into the game fish and the trash fish. Neither did Americans seem to have the same skepticism about progress and our ability to engineer natural systems. It was commonly believed that scientists were able and duty-bound to accomplish these things.

That’s why it is so difficult to guess what they will be saying about us 50 or 100 years from now. I’m sure we are doing things that future generations will consider stupid, outlandish, or insane. But we’re all too wrapped up in our worldviews and preconceptions to know what those things may be.

Robert Miller (L) and Jerry Smith
(2nd from L) were some of the only
people who opposed the Green
River poisoning.

I have some ideas of course, at least in terms of concepts that seem ripe for rethinking. For example, the native/nonnative dualism that shapes so much thought in natural resource management today will surely have to be deemphasized if not thrown out. Climate change is about to show us how quickly ecosystems can change and organisms can move.

In addition, I think the incredible emphasis that we currently place on conservation of species will one day seem hopelessly simplistic. (The same thing goes for biodiversity since, despite the best intentions, it is almost always quantified in terms of species.) Though it seemed a relatively well defined concept through most of the twentieth century, the very  definition of “species” is once again generating some serious head-scratching in the biological community, just as it did for Darwin.

Finally, at risk of stating the obvious, let me declare that just because we're going to make mistakes is not an excuse for not taking action. Only a call for humility when we do.

The Hybrid Conundrum by Moderator Anders Halverson

http://andershalverson.com

One of the most vexing problems posed by the widespread introduction of rainbow trout in the American West has been their propensity to hybridize with the natives. Take for example, the westslope cutthroat of the northern Rockies. Once the most widespread cutthroat subspecies, their range has been dramatically reduced in the last century due to the introduction of rainbows. Just how far it has shrunk, though, is a matter of some contention. According to the criteria applied by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a fish can still be considered a Westslope cutthroat even if it has a small amount of rainbow trout DNA (say from a great-grandparent). Such fish still occupy about 20 percent of their original range.

Westslope cutthroat native range

But if only those fish that have absolutely no rainbows in their family tree can be counted, then that number drops to less than 2 percent. What’s more, most of these purebred fish are restricted to high, isolated, headwater streams. They’re threatened by inbreeding depression and, since all the pure mainstem populations have been compromised, many of the genes that might have adapted the species to larger rivers can probably only be found today in hybrids.

Interbreeding between slightly hybridized westslopes and their unpolluted cousins might alleviate these problems. But it would also create new ones. There are the biological issues, of course—some studies for example suggest hybrid fish are less fit. But maybe more importantly, it raises a host of legal issues.

The Endangered Species Act passed by Congress in 1973 did not include any guidelines on hybrids. Thus, when the issue arose in the 1980s, Department of Interior lawyers concluded that hybrids could not be protected under the act. It seemed a reasonable decision, at least for a few years. But when new technology gave us the ability to sequence DNA, it became apparent that hybridization was far more common than anybody had previously thought. Certain wolves (which had a little coyote DNA) and other listed species were thrown into legal limbo.

A likely hybrid westslope-rainbow trout

After a brief period of struggle, the lawyers threw in the towel. Hybridization would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis, they concluded, since hybridization was “more properly a biological issue than a legal one.”

I wonder whether it isn’t also an issue of human values and psychology. Are we really so concerned about purebred westslope cutthroats because hybrids may be less fit or because biodiversity may be associated with ecosystem stability? Or do untainted westslopes somehow appeal to our thirst for the prelapsarian, the rare, or some other innate urge?

The Technological Fix by Moderator Anders Halverson

http://andershalverson.com

Discussion topic:  An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World

George Perkins Marsh is primarily known today for his 1864 book, Man and Nature, which is widely credited with ushering the idea of conservation into the national discourse. Seven years earlier, though, Marsh wrote a state-commissioned report on the decline of Vermont’s fisheries that previewed many of the same themes.

In this fascinating document, Marsh drew a connection between the loss of fishing opportunities, “duller,” and “more effeminate,” American men, and a threat to “our rights and our liberties.”

Industrialization, logging, and overfishing had initiated the problem. However, “The unfavorable influences which have been alluded to are, for the most part, of a kind which cannot be removed or controlled,” he wrote. “We cannot destroy our dams, or provide artificial water-ways for the migration of fish, which shall fully supply the place of the natural channels; we cannot wholly prevent the discharge of deleterious substances from our industrial establishments into our running waters.”

What to do? Marsh advised artificially propagating and stocking fish into the public waterways. Boys would go fishing again. Democracy would be safe.

George Perkins Marsh

Flash forward to the present day. After hearing me talk about the ecological impacts of fish stocking, people often describe the joy they found as children fishing for what they now realize were probably hatchery rainbows. They connect these experiences to their present love of the out-of-doors and the natural world. And they propose that if stocking fish creates a constituency for such things, perhaps it’s worth any harm it may cause, especially in ecosystems that have already been so dramatically altered by humans.

Perhaps. But I think we should also consider what happens when we try to solve our problems with a technological fix rather than addressing the root of the problem.

On the one hand, history has shown the effectiveness of the technological approach over and over again. For just one example, take the famous 1980 bet between ecologist Paul Ehrlich and economist Julian Simon. Ehrlich believed that overpopulation and overconsumption would lead to a catastrophic depletion of resources unless we tackled both. Simon countered that human ingenuity would mitigate any scarcity issues. They agreed to use the price of certain commodities as an indicator, with Ehrlich betting prices on these items would rise over the next ten years, Simon that they would decline.

Simon won.

Colorado's Crystal River Hatchery

On the other hand, there may be some things that can’t be measured by such simple proxies. Fisheries biologist Ray Hilborn laments that the public in the Pacific Northwest seems to believe that the region’s salmon runs depend entirely on hatcheries. “This belief is particularly pernicious because it inexorably leads to the acceptance of hatcheries as a mitigative measure for further habitat loss and dam construction,” he concludes (full article here).

And when I was researching this book, I had the opportunity to talk to long-time Montana fisheries manager Dick Vincent. He believes that his state’s decision to eliminate most fish stocking has generated an unparalleled river conservation ethic. Because the technological fix is off the table, he maintains, Montanans fight like no others to conserve such things as clean water and spawning habitat.

I’m not a purist, and I don’t have the answers. But I do believe that relying on technological fixes for things like fisheries management can have widespread ripple effects. I wonder, for example, whether our unwillingness to address the root causes of climate change can in some small way be traced back to a hatchery rainbow stocked many years ago to mitigate the effects of a dam.

http://andershalverson.com

An Entirely Synthetic Fish by Author and WILD READ Moderator Anders Halverson

Thanks all for joining this discussion. I’m looking forward to your insights.

I’ll start by giving some background on how I came to write An Entirely Synthetic Fish. About ten years ago, I was working on a Ph.D. in which I used molecular tools like DNA fingerprinting to study ecology, evolution, and conservation. More specifically, I was working with amphibians, mostly wood frogs, addressing questions about inbreeding, kin selection, and microevolution.

I continue to find this field quite fascinating. Nevertheless, there’s nothing like an unfinished dissertation or the thought of all the samples in the lab that still need to be processed to smack you awake in the middle of the night and set you to thinking. And among other things, my late night thoughts focused on the purpose of my labors. So many of the most important debates in society are framed in terms of science. And yet, too often, advocates on all sides seem to use science not to illuminate or question, but rather to justify. Positions are based on value systems that usually remain hidden from scrutiny or discussion, and the resultant debates are therefore fruitless.

The upshot: I decided to leave the lab when I finished my dissertation and examine the issues from a different perspective. I obtained funding from the National Science Foundation to research and write a historical and journalistic narrative that is nominally about rainbow trout but is really, I like to think, about the way we have related to the natural world over the last 150 years.

Fish on Creatine
A group at the University of Missouri is
studying the  effects of the body-
building supplement creatine on
rainbow trout. Photo by Steve Morse

But why rainbow trout? They're frequently the subject of high-profile debates about aquatic ecosystems, for one thing. More importantly, though, I grew up in Colorado and spent many of my happiest hours trying to catch them. For me, as for most anglers, fishing was a way to escape civilization and technology and get back to the natural world. At some point in my late teens, though,  I stopped. I didn’t really think about why, or even notice that I had quit. I just ceased to pick up my rod. It wasn’t until years later (probably late at night) that I began to question it. And it occurred to me that there is a fundamental paradox inherent in recreational fishing, especially in freshwater. Because while it may seem like an escape, fishing is in many ways a product of technology and the industrialized world.

State and federal agencies currently stock more than 40 million pounds of fish in the freshwaters of the United States, almost half of which are catchable sized rainbow trout (more). And often even the fish that didn’t come straight from the hatchery are nonnatives introduced by fisheries managers and zealous anglers many years ago. Rainbows have been introduced to every state in the country and every continent but Antarctica (more). Two out of every three fish swimming in Colorado are nonnative. And I haven’t even mentioned genetic and chromosomal engineering and other ongoing experiments like the one pictured on the right (more).

A Worldwide Fish
Originally native to a narrow band around the Pacific from
Mexico to Kamchatka, rainbow trout can now be found
all over the world (countries in dark gray).

Let’s just say that a stocked rainbow on the end of a fly line is the embodiment of a pretty serious contradiction, at least in my mind. And while it was initially enough of a turnoff to make me quit the sport, it later became a fascinating conundrum that demanded further research.

Of course fish introductions and stocking programs have had some serious consequences for native fauna and ecosystems. Amphibians and freshwater fishes rank #1 and #2 as the most seriously threatened vertebrates in the world. And much of the blame can be laid on the introduction of nonnative fishes. But I’d like to hold off on that for future discussions.

Here I hope to initiate a discussion on the role that science plays in debate and policymaking in conservation and natural resource management. How should it be used? How is it used in fact? I’d very much value your insights in the comments, since if you’re reading this blog you are probably interested or perhaps professionally involved in these fields.

Of course if you've already read the book and have some questions or topics you'd like to discuss or have me discuss in a future post, please mention them. 

Finally, if you are interested in learning more about the book, seeing some cool old photos from the early days of fisheries management, or more photos and figures like those inserted here, please visit http://andershalverson.com

Anders Halverson, Author of An Entirely Synthetic Fish, Moderates WILD READ January 13-February 17, 2013

About Anders Halverson:

Anders Halverson is an award-winning writer with a Ph.D. in ecology from Yale University. He wrote this book, An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World,  as a research associate at the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West with a grant from the National Science Foundation.

About the Book:

Suppose that more than a century ago, U.S. government officials became concerned democracy itself was at risk because men seemed to be less virile.  Suppose that to reverse this trend they decided to populate streams, rivers, and lakes with “an entirely ‘synthetic’ fish”—quarry with which Americans could rediscover their abilities to capture and kill animals. And suppose that, up to the present, these creatures were still being produced and distributed on a massive scale, sometimes even being trained like gladiators and pumped full of the same supplements as the best human athletes so that they would provide a better fight.

Such is the true story of the rainbow trout. Sometimes vilified for their devastating effects on the native fauna, sometimes glorified as the preeminent sport fish, the rainbow trout is the repository of more than a century of America's often contradictory philosophies about the natural world. Exhaustively researched and grippingly rendered by award-winning journalist, aquatic ecologist, and lifelong fisherman Anders Halverson, this book chronicles the discovery of rainbow trout, their artificial propagation and distribution, and why they are being eradicated in some waters yet are still the most commonly stocked fish in the United States.

Silent Spring and the Sense of Wonder moderated by Julie Dunlap

 Discussion Topic:  Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Julie Dunlap is the author or coauthor of award-winning children’s books including John Muir and Stickeen and Parks for the People: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted.” Her current projects include co-editing, with Susan Cohen, an anthology of young writers’ nature essays, fiction, and poetry, as well as teaching about pesticides, wildlife ecology, and environmental management for the University of Maryland University College.

Stephen R. Kellert is Tweedy Ordway Professor Emeritus of Social Ecology at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is the author of many books including Birthright: People and Nature in the Modern World and Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection.


Adapted with permission from Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together, edited by Julie Dunlap and Stephen R. Kellert, MIT Press, 2012.

One of the most haunting images in environmental literature is the opening fable in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. In an unnamed village "in the heart of America," pesticides have stilled the lowing of cattle at daybreak, the afternoon droning of bees, the splashes of fish in the streams. Carson wrote, "On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh." Her tragic tale of poisoned hopes in a once-harmonious natural and human community is compounded by a bitter irony. "The people," Carson writes, "had done it themselves."
Carson’s allegory of an unseasonable hush prefaced a 1962 book that sparked public outrage over toxic chemical pollution and galvanized the modern environmental movement. But her blighted town suffers another silence rarely noted: the absence of children’s voices. A few youths in the story have been stricken and died after playing outside; the rest must be locked indoors, saved from the corrupted environment by being separated from it. Carson’s concern for children’s health imbues Silent Spring in discussions of birth defects, childhood cancers, and chromosomal damage from DDT and other persistent synthetic chemicals. In addressing the subject of children, the author opened herself to sexist attacks; one critic dismissed her scientific claims by saying, "I thought she was a spinster. What’s she so worried about genetics for?" But Carson refused to stand mute when faced with a moral imperative to speak out for the future.

In fact, she was envisioning a book about children’s relationships with nature in the late 1950s when research on hazardous pesticides overthrew her plans. The imagined work would have been an expansion of a 1956 essay, "Help Your Child to Wonder," published in Woman’s Home Companion. In the magazine piece, Carson recounts outings with her 2-year-old great-nephew, Roger, to the shores and woods near her cottage in Maine. One autumn night, she carries the blanket-wrapped toddler into a storm to feel rain on his face and hear thunderous waves pound the rocky shore. The pair laughs together in the dark, sharing "the same spine-tingling response to the vast, roaring ocean and the wild night around us." Already in 1956, Carson recognized that children, often living in cities and reared by busy parents with the increasing assistance of television, spent much of their time indoors. By toting Roger to the turbulent beach, his aunt shared with him a joy in wild nature she knew was denied to other boys and girls.

The "Wonder" essay is replete with such mild adventures, as Rachel leads Roger through the garden in search of insect songsters or joins him chasing ghost crabs across the sand. Parents are offered a few practical tips on initiating their own explorations, such as investing in a hand lens to reveal miniature worlds within forest moss or a drop of pond water. "With your child," Carson advises, "look at objects you take for granted as commonplace or uninteresting." But the purpose of such close observation is greater than "a pleasant way to pass the golden hours of childhood." Rather, it is to awaken the child’s senses, expand her definition of self and community, and open his heart—in other words, to develop a receptivity to nature that Rachel Carson poetically deems the "sense of wonder." The capacity to wonder is so elemental to Carson that she professed an oft-quoted wish, "If I had the influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength."

Similar concerns expressed in Richard Louv’s 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods, have sparked a growing movement to save our youngest generation from "nature deficit disorder." But decades earlier, Carson presaged the prospect of indoor childhoods in Silent Spring and enumerated solutions in the posthumously-published The Sense of Wonder. "A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful," Carson wrote, "full of wonder and excitement." Daily, intimate sensory experience is essential to keep that wonder bright for a lifetime, Carson asserted, and the early companionship of a responsive adult is the best way to make that happen. "By suggestion and example," she told parents, "I believe children can be helped to hear the many voices about them. Take the time to listen to the voices of the earth and what they mean—the majestic voice of thunder, the winds, the sound of surf or flowing streams."

Philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore sees Carson’s sense of wonder as a moral virtue that compels us to honor and celebrate the earth. As Moore avers, "The same impulse that says, this is wonderful, is the impulse that says, this must continue." As a walk in the woods can be an antidote for a child’s nature deficit disorder, sharing that walk between generations is a prescription against pesticide bioaccumulation, biodiversity decline, climate change, and other ills afflicting our planet. Leading a child to nature seems an elemental step we can all take each day. As Rachel Carson wrote, "Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with the lust for destruction."