Yesterday's belated decontextualization of previous comments provides an opportunity to recontextualize them.
Human activity generates resources for many taxa. Regardless of their intentions, researchers traveling to and entering areas otherwise unfrequented by humans are agents of change: vectors of species introduction and providers of resources for human commensals. My *rhetorical* question about whether rats on Samoa would follow humans was intended as a reminder that efforts to closely observe mau nests -- even if limited to locating nests, then installing and maintaining instrumentation -- might inadvertently lead predators to them. If so, the study could have a net negative effect on mau conservation. Since, by definition, the productivity of unmonitored mau nests cannot be recorded for comparison, this 'observer effect' cannot be accurately accounted for. Apologies for not stating the obvious more obviously the first time. The problem is not new. In a marginal note scrawled on a copy of a conservation philosophy memorandum during World War Two, Charles Elton revealed (to Aldo Leopold) that he (Elton) had once oversampled an island mouse population, possibly to the point of extinction. His research presumably generated robust information regarding a subspecies that may have ceased to exist as a result. A good outcome or a bad one, and why? For his dissertation research, Daniel Simberloff exterminated the animal (mostly arthropod) populations of entire mangrove islets to document the subsequent process of colonization (or re-colonization). E.O. Wilson was his mentor; Robert MacArthur (Wilson's mentor) was also on the committee. Would you do that today? Why or why not? If not, what has changed? In the case of the mau, is it better to leave remote nests unmonitored or to risk the complications of "invasive" procedures needed to generate further information? What if the best guarantee of population persistence is zero penetration by humans into habitat? If so, the 'safest' populations are the undocumented ones. Non-documentation conflicts with the basic goal of science, but putting a population at risk conflicts with the basic goal of conservation. I'd like to hear from anyone who made such a choice, either way: How did you decide what to do? Why? When did it come down to the very practical matter of letting 'the money' decide? Matthew K Chew Assistant Research Professor Arizona State University School of Life Sciences ASU Center for Biology & Society PO Box 873301 Tempe, AZ 85287-3301 USA Tel 480.965.8422 Fax 480.965.8330 [email protected] or [email protected] http://cbs.asu.edu/people/profiles/chew.php http://asu.academia.edu/MattChew
