Bringing Back the Wolf

Ever since I read the book “Never Cry Wolf” by Farley Mowat, wolves have fascinated me. In this book, Mowat describes his work for the Canadian government on a project to determine the feeding habits of wolves in the wild. Caribou hunters had accused the wolves of decimating caribou herds, but Mowat found that in fact the wolves subsisted largely on small mammals, like mice. He tests the hypothesis that an animal the size of a wolf could exist solely on these rodents by limiting his own diet to mice, developing recipes like “Souris à la Crème”.

Wolves have always had a reputation as savage killers; chasing sleighs in rural Russia and eating the riders, for instance. The modern day equivalent of this drama is the attack by wolves on domestic livestock like sheep. After wolves had become an endangered species in the American west, largely because of loss of habitat and extermination measures, they were reintroduced in 1995, and sheep farmers have been up in arms ever since. Wolves are coming back naturally in Europe, and sheep farmers on this continent are similarly unhappy.

In a world in which wild and domestic animals generally inhabit separate territories, it is of course chilling to imagine one’s sheep herd as targeted prey to these wild animals. Why then reintroduce or encourage the wolf?

To answer this question one must consider the wolf’s effect on its environment in the wild. After its reintroduction in Yellowstone Park, the entire park ecosystem thrived. Greatly increased deer populations had decimated vegetation, and within a few years after reintroduction of the wolf, vegetation grew back again. This was, to be sure, partly the result of the wolves feeding on the deer, but was also a matter of the deer avoiding those parts of the park with the largest wolf populations.

With increased vegetation came flocks of birds, and beavers returned to build dams, thus benefitting both the groundwater supply and aquatic animals like waterfowl. Populations of rabbits, hawks, foxes and bald eagles grew. Because wolves are able to prey on large mammals, the increased supply of carcasses brought back scavengers such as the raven, the bear and the coyote. Herds of deer became healthier, as the wolves culled the weak and the sick. Within a few years, it was noted that because of the increased vegetation, riverbanks were less apt to erode and wash away.

The wolf is thus a keystone species, one defined as having a disproportionate impact on its environment relative to its abundance. This is, of course, small comfort to a sheep farmer who finds several dead animals in his flock, as wolves do leave the woods and venture into civilization. How then to reconcile the needs of an ecosystem such as a national park with the needs of livestock owners on private land?

Whereas ecosystem needs can be met using natural measures,

the needs of human beings and domestic animals often require ingenious human solutions. Trained dogs have been herding sheep since biblical times and are effective, but not ideal, wolf alarms. Dogs scare hikers, and recently it has been found that a hiker-friendlier animal, the llama, is a good guard animal for sheep. The llama is alert, good at herding animals and leading them away from predators, sounding an alarm when a wolf appears and chasing it away. Other solutions being tested are better fencing for the sheep and collars that sound a warning when a wolf appears.

There is no perfect answer. We see here a microcosm of the whole human situation, caught between cooperation and coexistence with the wild, on the one hand, and the satisfaction of the needs of civilization on the other. These needs include, however, the acquisition of knowledge and the use of imagination and ingenuity, all of which are most helpful in working out the problems of coexistence with our wilder fellow beings.

Collision of Values?

CERN, the atomic research facility in Switzerland/France, recently announced plans to build a circular particle collider much larger than its collider that was used to discover the Higgs particle last year. The cost of the new facility will be in the 2-figure billions of francs; the cost of the Higgs particle project was ca. CHF 4-5 billion. At the time that plans for researching the Higgs particle were announced, a friend wrote an essay asking if such a costly project was ethical, considering the number of starving children in the world.

This is a worthwhile question; given the fact that in West Africa alone, something like 1 million children are starving. It raises a host of other questions as well, questions about other huge expenditures in the world and why, in a world with enough food, people are starving. Let’s look at some of the answers to these two questions, starting with the causes of starvation.

First, there is the enormous problem of food waste. Something like 40% of the world’s food is wasted before it gets to the table. In developing countries, home to the majority of the world’s starving children, most of this waste occurs in the field because of the lack of efficient harvesting techniques, adequate storage and transportation. Globalization contributes as well, as too many people in developing countries are growing cash crops rather than food for themselves.

Two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, famine and war, ride roughshod over large areas of the world, leaving starving populations in their wake. Then there is extreme poverty, and rapidly rising food prices in the wake of speculation that sees food as just another commodity. Global warming means more crop shortages due to inclement weather and droughts. Another example of the law of ecology that says everything is connected to everything else.

We know about these problems; we read about them in the newspaper and see pictures of pitiful children with the swollen bellies of severe malnutrition and stick arms and legs. We know that various organizations are on hand with food distribution in crises, teaching programs for farmers, and Fair Trade implementations. Greater investment in infrastructure and transportation are needed. On a larger scale, peacekeeping missions and measures to slow global warming mean, among other things, less hunger in the world. All of these programs are very, very costly.

So here we have an enormous humanitarian problem in need of a lot of money, on the one hand, and a huge scientific project that will use a lot of money, on the other. Seems imbalanced. But wait; there are other sinks for huge amounts of money in the world:

Military spending: In 2013, the United States had a military budget of $682 billion, 39% of the world’s total.

Fossil fuel subsidies: These are estimated to be close to $2 trillion a year. In the developed world subsidies are mostly indirect, in the form of a dearth of responsibility on the part of the fossil fuel companies for the havoc wrecked by global warming, the negative health effects of burning fossil fuels etc. Direct subsidies in the developing world have contributed to a raised standard of living but created problems for the future (global warming, the negative health effects of burning fossil fuels etc.) Given the fact that fossil fuel companies are the most successful companies of all time, raking in enormous profits, one questions why such subsidies are given at all.

Bailing out Greece: The EU rescued Greece from financial meltdown at a total cost of €240 billion in two loans. The CERN project costs peanuts by comparison.

Super-high salaries: Small in scale compared to military spending and fossil fuel subsidies, these salaries are so out of proportion that they raise a moral question:

-Bankers’ boni: in the EU these are supposed to be capped at 100% of the salaries of top officers, but a loophole may make possible boni of up to 250%. Needless to say, the salaries themselves are out of sight.

-CEO, sports figures and entertainers’ earnings: the 2013 pay to Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney, was $37.1 million, an increase of 18% over his 2012 salary. Golf pro Tiger Woods made $78 million and tennis star Roger Federer $71.5 million. Madonna was the highest paid figure in the entertainment industry, with $125 million for the year.

I would say that most of these examples are of inflated spending, money not spent wisely. And the CERN project? It concerns our most fundamental understanding of the structure of our world. In addition, basic scientific discoveries often lead to useful applications in the most diverse fields. Einstein’s discovery of the photoelectric effect made possible solar power, for example. The World Wide Web got its start at CERN. One can’t get much more basic than the discovery of the electron in 1897, and that has become the basis for all of our electronics.

 Let’s not forget that doing and analyzing the experiment are only the final steps in what is essentially a huge construction project, providing jobs for thousands of people, new techniques and smaller discoveries along the way. That part of the project money paid for these things gets plowed back into the economy.

Even with all the technical challenges, building the new collider will

be a lot easier than solving the problem of starvation in the world. Spending money on the latter can alleviate hunger but will not keep countries from going to war, nor make the weather less fickle or globalization less damaging. It is basically a human problem, not a financial one.

Believe It or Not

A friend with whom I was discussing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change vs climate deniers mentioned that one is always hearing conflicting “scientific” evidence in various fields. She commented that in the changing nutritional landscape, for example, where whole grains are the panacea one year and omega-3 fats the next, the great importance of vitamins has remained constant for ages, but just what vitamin is the answer to a nutritionist’s prayer varies considerably. Vitamin C ranked first for a long time, then it was E, then D, B12, folic acid….

In a day and age that prides itself on its scientific competence, how can this be? Can’t one do a big study once and for all and get the answer? Conversely, should we be as skeptical of the information in the IPCC’s reports as we apparently need to be in the field of experiments involving vitamins?

Let’s look at the process of experimentation itself as applied first to vitamins for human beings and second to the many aspects of climate change.

I. There are a number of scientific protocols that can be used in experimentation in both fields. Some are more expensive to use than others, more time-consuming, more difficult. Some are more accurate than others. In addition, there are various types of statistical analysis, and the laws of statistical analysis as applied to large samples are complex.

II. Then we have the subjects themselves. Mice are frequently

used to test substances that are given to humans, and one would think one could control their lives rigidly. But only in the last few years has it been found that the temperature at which the mice are kept and the design of their cages have appreciable effects on the outcome of experiments. If studying mice is complex, consider studies done on people. The lives of the people taking part in a study cannot be controlled; we are not kept in cages in a laboratory. There is much reliance on the answers of the participants themselves, not always as accurate as one would like. It is know, for example, that study participants’ estimates of the amount of exercise they get in a week is usually exaggerated. In addition, the human body is so much more complex than, say, an iceberg, that it is difficult to use the scientific method, in which only one variable changes. To be sure, there are factorial experiments, involving more than one variable, but one must know what they are, not always the case in human beings.

Now let’s consider the subjects used for climate change research. Atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, sources of greenhouse gases, sea level rise, degree of melting of arctic ice etc. also involve enormous quantities of data, but they are much more straightforward and controllable than are people.

There is another complication in experiments involving people, that of ethics and legality. One is not worried about an iceberg’s rights or perhaps harming it during the experiment.

III. The experimenters: It is not only the subjects in experiments on people who are human, those sponsoring the testing are, too. In the case of vitamins, the sponsors are often pharmaceutical companies, with a vested interest in the outcome. It is easy enough to manipulate the experiment itself, the analysis thereof or the reporting so as to present a result favorable to the company. Most notable in this regard are probably experiments done in another area, that of the effect of smoking on one’s health. It is know that tobacco companies skewed their research results for years so as to present their products as harmless.

By contrast, those doing research cited by the IPCC’s fifth report are mostly at universities and research institutes. They are not in the business of selling anything. Anyone getting grant money is under scrutiny and must publish all the data if he wants to be taken seriously as a researcher.

IV. Money: And then there is money. Experiments are extremely

expensive, and who has the money to experiment on vitamins? Pharmaceutical companies. Who is paying for climate research? Government and university laboratories, without the vested interests of corporations. Businesses are not interested. An exception here is renewable energy companies, but they are still very small, and focused further down the line; convincing homeowners to buy their products, for example. They assume climate change, they don’t investigate it.

Returning to my friend’s question, it appears that there are a number of differences in research on vitamins, on the one hand, and research on climate change on the other. The IPCC goes yet further in adding up the results of many, many experiments done in a great many different university and government laboratories. It looks as if we can believe their conclusions.