Living with lions in Namibia: family presentation

Last fall, our family was invited to give a talk about our year in Namibia. The invitation came from the School of Natural Resources, and our presentation was on a Tuesday evening for the public.

Since then, we've had lots of inquiries about that talk, and whether it was available as a video. Our genius multi-media people in the School of Natural Resources have pieced together a video of our presentation, along with close-up views of the slides that we showed.

Our title was "Living with lions in Namibia: how a year and three suitcases changed our lives". Kelly shares her experiences with orphans and vulnerable children, and Tristan shares some of his most memorable experiences, as well.

So, if you're interested, enjoy! You can link to the video as this web page: go here.

Pausing to laugh at ourselves

Here's a more-than-hilarious video of animal voice-overs from the BBC.

The anthropomorphisms in the video probably will make some of my colleagues shudder--one of the first lessons we teach in Animal Behavior classes is to be careful ascribing human traits and behaviors to animals.

However, Aldo Leopold, as he wrote "A Sand County Almanac" used anthropomorphism as a technique to show that humans and animals were all part of the same community. Not a bad thing to remember. And, it's just darn funny.

"Allen!" "Allen!" "Allen!"

Enjoy.

Looking at our own mortality

The recent rash of mass bird deaths prompted one "ALE" reader to ask me to comment. For those who have not heard, several hundred blackbirds fell to the ground in Arkansas, and officials seem to have determined that the flock's flight through New Years fireworks is to blame--rather than any disease or other option.

Similarly, there were mass fish die-offs in the Chesapeake Bay and Vietnam, as well as crabs in Britain. People are calling the rash of die-offs, "AFLOCKALYPSE"!

Seth Borenstein of the AP wrote a nice article, which appeared in our Lincoln Journal Star this morning. He documents that these mass deaths are a regular occurrence. Apparently, even Glenn Beck believe there is no reason for mass hysteria.

If you want to see where mass die-offs of animals occur, you can link to this Google map. Make a poster for your wall, perhaps!

However, I think it is interesting to think about why "WE" react (as humans) to news of such events. Why do we care if 5000 blackbirds fall from the sky?

Well, it should be fairly well ingrained in our behavior to wonder if the mass deaths mean that we might be next. Concerns from certain diseases that animals pass to humans are certainly worth our concern, in some rational manner.

And, for the portion of the human population that has trouble sleeping at night, we might also be concerned whether 'we' are doing something to cause these deaths. The deaths of vultures in India have caused the country to ban a drug, Diclofenac, that was being used as a livestock treatment. The vultures ingested the drug when they ate carcasses containing the drug, which is toxic to vultures. So, it's not a bad idea to think about these mass deaths.

The most interesting reason for our 'gut reaction' to these mass deaths may be a little more psychological and personal. Throughout our evolutionary history, humans have small numbers of offspring, with long generation times, and fairly low mortality rates---relative to the rest of the animal Kingdom. Thus, our reaction to mortality events is fairly sensitive. Crabs, blackbirds, and fish are at the opposite end of the spectrum---they have tens, or hundreds, or thousands of offspring, and they have relatively high mortality rates.

So, their populations are not as sensitive to mass death events. But, we look through the lens of our own mortality. And, armed with cell phones and the internet, we start to see mortality around the world...not just around us, locally.

I study mortality in birds...so perhaps I am a bit jaded. When we hire new technicians to work on our projects, single mortality events are much more shocking to them. By season's end, they have perspective. One-third of all female prairie chickens will die between breeding on the lek site in March/April and their nesting attempt in May. Two thirds of all songbird nests fail (no fledglings). Up to 95% of duck nests fail (no ducklings).

Nature is red in tooth and claw, as someone once said.

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Photo from CNN

Looking in a mirror: government funding of science

Science. Research and development. Call it what you will.

Scientific American is poised to publish an article outlining how the US government (that's us and our tax dollars!) prioritizes money for research and development. The graphic above is from the January 4, 2011 issue, summarized on-line now.

These are not the entire budgets of each agency....just what they budget for research and development. Science.

Of course, it's interesting to compare where our government (through pressures, real or perceived, from tax-payers to their legislators) prioritizes research funds. It's easy for a wildlife ecologist to get upset---"maybe I should go into defense research". Well, several of my colleagues do research on military bases for this reason....effects of military training on a species of conservation concern, etc. Eugene Odum and his brother, Howard (both founding ecologists), were renowned for figuring out how to tap into military and health budgets to fund ecology. A long term research site in the rainforests in Puerto Rico was established to determine the effects of low-level radiation (which everyone figured was safe) on the rainforest--during the Cold War years. The radiation emission device is gone, and the long term research site remains. Creative adaptation to funding sources.

Of course, the real reflection of this figure is of our society: what we think is important. In lean budget years, research and development (science) is always threatened. Research that provides results which keep people alive is most important. It's just a fact.

It's easy for a biologist who has studied species X for their entire life to begin to believe the world revolves around Species X and that specific research. But, really?! Of course not. If that scientist can't figure out a way to communicate the importance of their research, then they might as well pack their bags and head to the Defense Department.

One of my favorite quotes about research comes from Charles Darwin, who wrote in a letter to Fawcett, in 1861:

“About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the stones and describe the colors...how odd it is that anyone would not see that all observation must be for or against some view, if it is to be of any service.”

His point? If there isn't any application for your research, it's not worth much.

Now, does that mean that basic research is less important than applied research? Hardly. Basic research provides fundamental information that makes applied research possible, in many cases. But, I would argue that scientists doing basic research must come out of their labs and figure out how to communicate the importance of their research to the public, and policy makers---who develop funding priorities.

In 1998, Sydney Brenner wrote the following in the journal, Science:

"The history of the last 25 years teaches us the profound lesson that it is necessary for scientists to communicate to society at large not only the content, use, and misuse of scientific discoveries, but also what their work tells us about the intrinsic limitations of our bodies and minds. This is not an easy task, especially in a science whose content becomes more complicated every day."

I've blogged about the importance of communication to science before, and funding is where it all comes home--at least in terms of being able to do science. Dr. Brenner stated:

"Actually, the answer to the question of which type of science to fund is quite simple: Since all science is problem driven, it should be judged by the quality of the problems posed, and the quality of the solutions provided."

The last reflection of this depiction of our research spending is that the figure only shows OUR research spending (the USA). Dr. Brenner also talked about the paradox that exists when you start to think of research spending, world-wide, relative to our world's problems:

"In advanced societies an increasing proportion of national wealth is now spent on health and recreation and large sums of money are devoted to military enterprises, while in the underdeveloped world famine and pointless wars still exact a terrible toll of human lives, malnutrition and disease are still rife, and even the basic necessities of life such as food and shelter cannot be provided for all. There is no doubt that great advances could be made in the treatment of malaria and other parasitic diseases that afflict more than half of the world's population, but the people who have these diseases also have another called MDD—money deficiency disease."

Having spent a year in southern Africa, this notion really hits home to me. It makes my disdain for the disproportionate funding in the figure seem petty. My wish to receive a large grant to study species X's reaction to habitat transformation on the Great Plains doesn't stack up--in the broad scheme of things--to the economic and health needs of many people in many countries.

And so, the conundrum. Nebraskans pay my salary to solve problems in Nebraska (at least, under current legislative funding to the University of Nebraska, they do). And so, I search for research funds to do just that. Can Nebraskans also afford a little of my time to allow me to train scientists from other countries? Probably. Will I sleep better at night? Definitely.

TED talks: Namibia's conservancies

I was thrilled to find that a representative of World Wildlife Fund and the IRDNC (rural development) in Namibia was a featured speaker at this year's TED talks. These 18-minute presentations are a collection of cutting-edge thinkers on a broad range of topics.

I did not meet the speaker, John, while we were in Namibia last year. But, I conducted research on two of the conservancies that he speaks about. Our initial results suggest that when people become involved in ecotourism---benefiting economically from wildlife---the value of wildlife increases to individual people. I can't wait for our research to be published, to further support the claims made in this talk. Of course, the results speak for themselves...some great evidence toward the end of the talk, regarding the staggering increase in wildlife numbers where poachers once decimated populations.

I also enjoyed his suggestion that rural communities in the Great Plains can learn from Namibia. Exactly what I argued in my proposal for my Fulbright fellowship. It's good to see things coming full circle, and I hope our research group in Nebraska can be involved.

Take a look at the talk. It's entertaining and quite eye-opening.