Habitat is where it’s at

 For seven years I flew support for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Biologists were my customers. Working with these professionals was both a pleasure and a great opportunity.

One thing I picked up from NDOW biologists was habitat, the land, and waters, and climate are key to the health of the plants, animals, fish, and birds they oversee.

Recently, I met another biologist, Brian Jackson. He oversees the 1,180,000-acre wilderness called Quetico Provincial Park. This pristine park sits above the American Boundary Waters Canoe Area of near equal size. Arguably, these are two of the best canoe wilderness parks on the planet.

Wilderness areas, like these and our Porcupine Mountains, are set aside for us and our progeny to enjoy. The rough guideline for wilderness management is for park biologists and employees to maintain the “ecological integrity”, or E.I. of the park. Expanding on this, E.I. means conserving biodiversity, maintaining intact and functioning ecosystems, and retaining the natural ecosystems.

Park rules and protocols are set to meet these objectives. Visitor numbers are managed by quota systems. Impact is monitored and sometimes people are restricted from sensitive areas to protect the wildness of the area. In lake areas live bait is usually prohibited to slow the spread of invasive fish. Visitors entering are sometimes required to read or view presentations. The goal is to ensure visitors, while enjoying themselves, also preserve the ecological integrity of their surroundings.

Given most visitors to these areas love these areas, visitors usually respect the rules. Up until now, preserving E.I. was an ongoing but achievable challenge.

Unfortunately, the intense burning of carbon-based fuels by mankind is challenging E.I. Two of the most important elements maintaining the Ecological Integrity of any landscape are sustaining its temperature and precipitation. Biologists are worried, worldwide, and for good reason. Human caused global warming is heating the whole planet. The warming is changing the precipitation patterns.

If temperature warms and precipitation remains the same, or decreases, soil moisture evaporates. Then we have the ingredients for drought and wildfires. This combination of heat, lack of precipitation, and evaporation was on display this summer.

But some of the changes are less easy to see. Quetico park, for instance, has warmed, from its 1971—2000 average temperature, 1 degree Celsius or 1.8 degree Fahrenheit.  This raised the average annual temperature from 16.2 C to 17.2 C.

The Conifer dominated forests of the BWCA, Quetico and parts of the Keewenaw depend on temperatures to remain, on an annual basis, at or below 18 C, (64.4 F). Above 18 C, broadleaf seedlings will out-perform the conifer seedlings. Especially endangered conifers are Black Spruce, Jack Pine, and noble Red Pine.

Biologists are fighting a rear-guard action. In the military context a rear-guard action is the commitment of troops to slow the advance of an attacking army with the intent of protecting the main force while preparing the retreating army for eventual counter-offensive operations. 

Biologists have been waiting for a counter-offensive for a long time. In 2014 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued an Assessment Report called AR5. In AR5 scientists outlined pathways humankind could adopt with various costs and consequences. These pathways are called RCPs, short for Representative Concentration Pathways. These are basically blueprints of what we may do, or not do, with consequences of each described. There were four RCPs offered by the IPCC in 2014. These ranged from basically doing nothing (RCP 8.5), to aggressively addressing the crisis, (RCP 2.6). 

There was an assumption among scientists and biologists that we would come to our senses and create mitigation plans and implement them. We have not come to our senses. We are on pathway RCP 8.5.

On this path, by the years 2070 to 2100, adding 10 degrees C of warming, or 18 degrees of F warming is a possibility.

By law, the Canadian Biologists in charge of wilderness areas are charged with maintaining the Ecological Integrity of their domain. Biologist Jackson notes, “…this definition (of E.I.) is difficult to meet in the face of a disturbance as widespread and disruptive as climate change is expected to be.

Let me be more to the point. We are warming 10 times faster than any other period scientists can identify. There are five ancient events identified by fossil examination called “Extinction Events”.  If we do nothing and stick with RCP 8.5 the fate of Quetico’s and the BWCA’s ecosystems are the least of our worries. We will be deep into a new extinction event, #6 and all ecosystems, earth’s habitat, will be finished. Humans will be migrating in mass to find a meal and the only place you will find “civilization” will be the dictionary.

Wouldn’t it not be prudent if we acted now to support the biologist’s rear-guard actions? By acting now, by creating a counteroffensive by transitioning to clean fuels, we will sustain the Ecological Integrity of many loved places. One very special place comes to my mind. It is called earth.

My thanks to Quetico Biologist Brian Jackson. When I mentioned “climate change” he said, “wait a minute” and came back with 67 pages of information, tables, and graphs in his well-researched and documented report.

While I used portions of his work to write this column, the column is worded by me.

Note of optimism: The World Climate Summit convenes soon in Glasgow, Scotland. Given the intensification of extreme weather we are experiencing now caused by a one degree C temperature rise, scientists, climatologists, and meteorologists encourage us to shoot for only a half degree more.

It is a tight but achievable target.