This is really interesting to me. Based on past chapter I guess this point was lost on me. I understood that many endemic species were lost due to habitat fragmentation and therefore the entire area genetic diversity went down. I didn't realize that it also lead to lower genetic diversity due to inbreeding. It was really interesting to me that habitat change can increase the number of individuals but also increase inbreeding.

I feel like this is true in all of science not matter the area. Whether you are trying to find a relationship between the type of tree and the number of bird nests found in it or trying to find the average voltage of a voltaic cell the bigger the sample size the more accurate and significant the results. Df increases and p should decrease.

I totally agree with this and I feel like a broken record saying over and over again about the privilege we have in order to be able to consider conservation when we are discussing topics like agriculture. If we can fix the root of the problem ie food insecurity and poverty then we will also conserve land. An idea I have stated before is freeganism. Taking produce that is considered not sellable but still edible and eating it, or selling it to farmers that grow pigs. (we already do this with soy hulls and beet pulp for cows)

I like that this was one of the goals. I feel like a lot of the time we take a privileged stance in these matters. You have to be coming from a place of privilege ie food security to look at an industry where the producers are barely able to make ends meat, while feeding millions, and tell them they are killing the planet but give few resources to do better. We tend to point fingers at who we think the problem is and try to throw our limited money at them to get them to go away instead of working with them to create a more sustainable way to simultaneously conserve natural biodiversity and achieve whatever needs to be done.

I feel like we really aren't giving indigenous people enough credit here! The Abenaki tribe (tribe in the Appalachians) used to control the now boreal forests with controlled burns. This made it much easier for them to hunt but it also kept a balance not only in the biodiversity of north America but it is hypothesized that it contributed enough carbon into the atmosphere that it controlled the weather in Europe. When the indigenous people were whipped out by small pox they stopped burning the forests and it caused a mini ice age in England. Which made it possible for the dark age to be so devastating. https://www.livescience.com/64723-great-dying-little-ice-age.html

As I've said before I live on a small dairy farm in Newbury Vermont and we grow our own crops. Last chapter we talked about agroforestry which immediately interested me because I thought that it would be possible to implement these practices as well as being proud that we were already implementing some of them. For example Vermont and federal programs have provided us with funding because we donated land to wood ducks and a rare species of ladybug. As well as having large natural buffer strips. So as much as agriculture contributes to the destruction of the environment I think this provides evidence for how much we are listening and trying to improve. With that being said I also outraged that we were not using more nitrogen fixing crops instead of fertilizer (which the cows make). The reason he gave me was that clover and other nitrogen fixing crops are really difficult to grow in the north east because the deep frosts that we have in mild winters kills the roots and the nitrogen fixing microorganisms. As well as they are not very nutritionally dense for our animals and the nitrogen they would fix would not be enough to sustain the more nutrient dense crops we rely on. This made sense to me but deeply saddened me that the solution is even more difficult than we really recognize.

This reminds me of how palm oil is made. Palm trees are naturally occurring in tropical rainforests and some of the most abundant trees in the Amazon and other rainforests. In order to get palm oil however in Malaysia they burn down large sections of the rainforest so they can plant and harvest palm trees to make palm oil more easily. This is a huge problem because it is destroying natural biodiversity as well as send huge amounts of CO2 in the air. https://qz.com/1711172/the-global-demand-for-palm-oil-is-driving-the-fires-in-indonesia/

I think this is really cool and a step in the right direction as far as scientists working with people to achieve both a conservation goal and a human rights goals. This will be important in communities where agriculture is the only source of income for the majority of the people who live there.

Punishment usually doesn't give an incentive not to do something because it doesn't address what is behind the behavior in the first place. If farmers are destroying habitat it is because the price of milk, ect. is not high enough for them to sustainably operate (usually due to middle man waste not hunger), if someone lives in a community where the only way to make money is to be a poacher then they will poach to feed their family, if someone has enough money where they can do whatever they want, they will do whatever they want. Waste and poverty need to be addressed in order to save habitats and endangered species. https://www.thetherapistparent.com/post/why-punishment-doesn-t-work-and-what-does#:~:text=*%20Punishment%20doesn't%20address%20what,our%20relationship%20with%20our%20child.

In cases where there is human intervention such as veterinary services will the population become too dependent on the services? Will there be an evolutionary set back because of human intervention. For example in humans when there is one recessive allele for sickle cell anemia the person is immune to malaria but now that there are antibiotics we see this trait slowly going away. Will medical intervention could something like that evolve within the population and therefore make it impossible for the population to survive without humans.

I think these guidelines are really important. Quantitative guidelines can not be disputed because numbers don't lie. I think that a big reason why conservatives can argue against these issues like habitat loss, loss of biodiversity, and climate change is because there is not enough significant quantitative evidence.

I feel like this is not good enough. I realize they are tripling the region that is being protected which is great but Madagascar is unique in the way that is one of the most biodiverse places on earth with species that are only native to Madagascar. It just seems to me that unless there needs to be more like a minimum of 30% protection.

The Rosie Periwinkle is only found in Madagascar as are many indigenous plants. This flower has been proven to fight cancer. There are so many species threatened on Madagascar that we may not even know about. Think of all of the medicines ect that could be hiding on this island that we have no idea about and may never know about because of the high rate of extinction currently present on the island due to human interference. https://livingrainforest.org/learning-resources/rosy-periwinkle

This is actually insane to me. I find it kind of ironic that we are giving away money for conservation to other independently wealthy countries for conservation instead of using it within our own country or within the countries that grow our food and manufacture basically everything for us. This is going to be a bit harsh but it kind of seems like we want conservation efforts to go to places that wont effect how cheap goods are made. For example if we put this money into protecting the amazon then palm oil wouldn't be as cheap.

This number seems significantly lower than it should be. I think it is a combination of bird being better adaptors as well as our extreme lack of knowledge about the number of bird species.

would the founder effect also determine whether a species goes extinct on an island? Less genetic diversity is bad for the population and that is usually how island species end up on the islands themselves.

Is decoupling a good thing for conservation? I realize that it happens naturally and unnaturally. For example the forest fires we have had recently in California and a year ago in Australia were due to human presence but they are also naturally occurring in these areas as well. So I wonder if this is something that also needs human to stop in order to save biodiversity. https://www.nytimes.com/article/why-does-california-have-wildfires.html#:~:text=California%2C%20like%20much%20of%20the,serves%20as%20kindling%20for%20fires.

This kind of reminds me of extremophiles. Some protists and prokaryotes can live in really extreme condition and continue to create their own food and reproduce. For example there are some bacteria at the bottom of the ocean that are auto-chemotrophs. They use pockets of warm water to make their own food as an adaption to living without light. there are also some that live in extremely hot geysers.

could one argue that this is a type of ecotourism that is detrimental to the very environment that everyone is trying to see. for example making easily accessed trails in Vermont's more remote forested area can lead to habitat degradation. such as soil erosion, increase in human population and therefore decrease in the percent of land conserved. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zq4hvcw/revision/7#:~:text=Negative%20impact%20of%20ecotourism%20on%20the%20environment&text=Natural%20resources%20are%20destroyed%20to,of%20some%20areas%20becoming%20overused.

This is especially bad for artic animals like polar bears. Not only are they losing habitat but they are also losing food sources. They not only are drowning but they are starving. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/polar-bears-could-disappear-2100-due-melting-ice-climate-change-n1234439

I feel like pathogens and parasites are much worse than any other type of invasive species for a few reasons. First is that viruses can be zoonotic which means they can go from species to species. Like Black Plague and Avian Flu. The second is that in many cases an individual traveling from one population to the next could have a pathogen without symptoms, so they infect others without even knowing they have the pathogen themselves.

These are a huge problem in a lake near me. There is usually a person sitting at the boat launch stopping people from driving off with their boat and stopping anyone from putting a dirty boat in the water. There were even key chains made to stop the spread of zebra mussels https://dec.vermont.gov/sites/dec/files/wsm/lakes/docs/lp_zmreport2003.pdf

I realize that elephants and white tailed deer are very different species and deer hunting is justified by keeping deer populations in control to stop the spread of disease etc. But I am curious as to whether this is just justification for the industry and not about conservation at all. Because of Corona travel was stopped to Kanya and the Game reserves were shut down to tourism. This has resulted in an elephant baby boom ( a species that is endangered). Would a similar thing happen to deer populations and would it necessarily be a bad thing or have the white tailed deer evolved to deal with human's as predators and would therefore harm the ecosystem by ending hunting? A similar thing happened in Uganda with gorillas!

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/14/902177466/some-good-news-an-elephant-baby-boom-in-one-kenyan-national-park https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53997900

why are reptiles not included... why didn't they wait for information about reptile? I wonder if they are at a larger risk of at less risk? It would be interesting to see the graph with them included.

What is meant by restoring habitat? Does this mean reintroducing species? When reintroducing species could there be an effect similar to that invasive species or would reintroducing a species potentially just be completely unsuccessful and they all die?

here is an interesting article that talks about this. I didn't realize this was such a huge problem. I always think of habitat loss as basically destroying the entire habitat or removing the edges of the habitat. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/2/e1500052

I think that a large reason why agriculture is on the rise is not just due to population increase but also due to the insane amount of wasted food. The solution to me is GMOs and freeganism (eating food that are unfit to sell or have gone past expiration date but still okay to eat). https://www.ted.com/talks/tristram_stuart_the_global_food_waste_scandal?language=en

I feel like we throw a lot of attention at cattle farmers and other meat producing industries as being "the bad guys". Maybe this is just because my parents are dairy farmers and I've had to defend them my whole life but in the US dairy/meat does a lot of good. For example the corn that is deemed unsuitable for human consumption that is cheap and nutritious for our cows contribute to removing 8 tons of carbon per acre of corn. A lot of the land that is used currently in the US was already destroyed (dust bowl). I don't disagree that there needs to be more regulation and protection of habitat. I just think that dairy and meat aren't the group to always be attacking. Especially considering the impact that high demand plant crops have. For example avocado farming is destroying a significant chunk of rainforest and are relatively difficult to produce so the amount of people being fed by avocados doesn't begin to offset the damage being done. Also palm tree farming for palm oil. It's cheap so it's in everything and is replacing fats like butter to make baked goods vegan.

https://blog.agrivi.com/post/why-grow-corn#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20USDA%2C%20one,on%2020%20percent%20less%20land. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/avocado-environment-cost-food-mexico/#:~:text=Intensive%20avocado%20production%20has%20caused,entirely%20human%2Dmade%20environmental%20disaster. https://www.arcusfoundation.org/publications/research-explores-environmental-impacts-palm-oil-industry/?utm_term=environmental%20impact%20of%20palm%20oil&utm_campaign=Arcus+%7C+Publications+9&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=2137832502&hsa_cam=1978407509&hsa_grp=73204261858&hsa_ad=354949461262&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-297170740305&hsa_kw=environmental%20impact%20of%20palm%20oil&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAiAg8OBBhA8EiwAlKw3kkadqyvN2h4qwVq0NjsBo7ynLoGoFHW9qZ8qfOMcEhKwEvhbYmJa_BoCr30QAvD_BwE

This is interesting to me. When I think about conservation I don't really consider predators to necessarily be that important to an ecosystem. The point of conservation is to protect species and I don't really first think of predators when wanting to protect a species from even a pest.

So obviously all of the organisms stated above produce oxygen through photosynthesis, but I feel like we (as people) don't really give enough credit to the algae and microalgae. They produce about 70% of our atmospheric oxygen and for some reason when we talk about conservation of oxygen producing systems everyone is all about planting trees... https://web.uri.edu/smile/files/Save-the-Plankton-Breathe-Freely1.pdf

I feel like this is the biggest obstacle in fighting for conservation. If there is no universal way to measure biodiversity then how can we prove its importance?

This is insane! For me seeing these numbers makes it a lot easier for me to grasp just how diverse prokaryotic species are and how little we know about them.

In my first college Chemistry class I used the same book as my mother (my high school chemistry teacher) did when she was in college. But I used the 45th edition and she used the 15th (I think). So its crazy to me to think that a science can be so new that the first text books are on only the third editions. It also deeply saddens me that funding isn't widely available.