Anthropogenic Effects and Conservation

The Human Problem

• Humans are causing the next great extinction wave in animals

• And they are doing so by drastically altering their environment.

The Human Problem• And a lot of the current focus is

on freshwater and marine environments– What we think of as normal in

terrestrial systems is already actually a highly modified system

• And this is true of oceans too

The Human Problem

• But these impacts are getting worse especially for ecosystem engineering species

Seagrasses declining at a rate of 7% per year

The Human Problem

Impacts to Ocean Environments

• Agriculture– Eutrophication and Chemical Residues

• Industrial development and CO2– Greenhouse effect and warming• Changing species distributions

Impacts to Ocean Environments

• Industrial development and CO2

Impacts to Ocean Environments

• Fishing

Impacts to Ocean Environments

• And alone many systems have redundancies that might help prevent ecosystem crashes

Additive or Synergistic Impacts

Additive or Synergistic Impacts

• But together, the impacts of these pressure overload the system and shift it to a “new normal”

Nutrients

Behavioral Impacts

• Obviously our impacts affect the health and survival of animals– But how do they affect their behavior?

• Eutrophication

Behavioral Impacts

Pesticides

• W-water• A-Acetone Control• Numbers- concentration

in mg/L of Carbaryl

Ocean Acidification

Over-fishing impacts

• Decline in predator body size affects the landscape of fear

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Decline in body size affects the landscape of fear

Using Behavior for Conservation

• Assessing habitat preference– Selecting restoration sites or MPAs

Using Behavior for Conservation• Assessing where human impacts are the least– Use Giving Up Densities Create Topographical

Maps

• Helping to Translocate animals• Cormorants and the bay bridge

Using Behavior For Conservation

Using Behavior For Conservation

• Increasing Survival of Translocated animals– In social species,

translocating family groups results in higher survival rates

• Training hatchery reared animals– Hatchery trout

trained to recognize predator odor (PO) by combining it with trout skin extract (TSE)

Using Behavior For Conservation

After 21 days

Using Behavior For Conservation