Waste Management and Recycling Practices

Every time a ton of paper is recycled, 17 trees, 79 gallons of oil, 7,000 gallons of water, 41,000 kilowatts of energy, and 3 cubic yards of landfill space are saved (Fullerton, 2007.)  Every living creature on this planet depends on raw materials extracted from the earth.  If we continue to take resources from the earth at a faster rate than they can be produced naturally, we will not survive.  It is necessary that we conserve the earth’s resources by recycling our waste so that we can provide a healthy environment for our offspring to inhabit.  Recycling turns materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable resources.  It yields environmental, financial, and social returns in natural resource conservation, energy conservation, pollution prevention, and economic expansion and competitiveness. Continue Reading

Sustainable Timber Harvesting in New England

Conor Cappe (Envirisci), Chris DeGrass (NRC), Jon Hardy-McCaulif (NRC)

One hundred feet tall and eighteen inches in diameter. That is the size of a tree that represents how much timber product is used annually by the average American. Paper products, wood for construction or fuel, and items like furniture or wood chips for a garden. It raises the question: Where does your tree come from? While this is a vastly oversimplified question, the source of wood products is just as important to know as the source of the food you are purchasing and eating. Continue Reading

Conservation Easements: Essential Tools for Conserving a Modern World

Matthew Nardone Natural Resources Conservation

Living in the twenty-first century, we as a society face a wide array of environmental problems that pose serious concerns for our sustainability, prosperity, and even existence if they are not addressed.  These problems will indiscriminately affect every man, woman, and child on Earth regardless of wealth, race, creed, or sexual orientation.  Many of these problems have already begun to happen, like the too common scene in much of Earth’s periphery nations where villagers starve after their soil turns to sand and the logging company drives down the road to the next town.  People in West Virginia live in uncertainty stemming from the potentially toxic water they consumed earlier in 2014 as a result of a spill in the coal processing industry (Valentine, 2014).  Other problems have not fully shown their fullest devastation, but unmitigated climate change as a result of the greenhouse effect is predicted by leading scientists to increase sea level, threatening major coastal cities (Environmental Protection Agency, n.d.) as well as increase the range and severity of droughts worldwide, contributing to the associated issues of soil erosion and crop failure (EPA, n.d.).  As landscapes and ecosystems collapse, habitat for wildlife has shrunk to dwindling amounts or been altered to beyond repair for some species, resulting in Earth’s 6th mass extinction, still ongoing, in which The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that “dozens [of species are] going extinct every day.” (n.d.) This loss to biodiversity is limiting our knowledge of the genetic data pool where cures for debilitating diseases, or materials for new technologies wait to be discovered.  So who solves these problems? And how?

There is no one way to combatting the issues that threaten the environment today, but we all are needed for any of them to work.  Responsible landowners, informed voters and policy makers, and regulated business people all have a part to play, but for the purposes of this paper I will choose to focus on the first two.  So how do ordinary people make a difference in the fight against climate change and environmental degradation?  We fight fire with fire, or rather save the environment with the environment.  Nature is the best filter, Earth has been dealing with disturbances its whole life and transformed itself, healed itself into the beautiful Eden we know.  The only problem is under current circumstances in many places around the globe, nature is not always profitable.  It is easy to see why a poor Amazonian landowner would rather convert his patch of rainforest to grazing land, selling off the expensive exotic timber in the process, yielding him about 2,400 dollars per acre (Save the Amazon Coalition, n.d.).  What isn’t clear is why the tax code and environmental laws of this Amazonian farmer’s jurisdiction aren’t structured to incentivize against this kind of activity, when any informed policy maker should be convinced by the overwhelming facts supporting anthropogenic climate change. One “nature-based” solution which requires the active participation of governments and citizens alike is the strategic implementation of conservation easements, tools that incentivize landowners to utilize and maintain their land for conservation purposes.  Conservation easements are a cost effective, market based solution which offer a wide range of environmental and economic benefits to both the landowner and society.  We should be investing  both public and private environmental funds into creating conservation easements at home and abroad, as well as researching current easements, and educating the global population about the benefits of these programs, as part of a larger scale movement to mitigate the effects of climate change and environmental degradation.

Conservation easements are defined as an agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government unit, to constrain the use of a specified land area for a specific conservation objective, while allowing landowners to keep ownership of the land (Merenlender et al., 2002).  Conservation easements are interesting because no two are exactly alike, rather are independent contracts agreed upon by two free parties and authorized by the government to enact a clause to the title of land constricting future use to the specified use outlined in the easement (Merenlender et al., 2002).  They can be established in perpetuity or for a pre-determined set of time.  Popular objectives for conservation easements include agriculture, sustainable forestry, recreation areas, wildlife refuges, watershed health, and other ecosystem services.  An example of a successful agricultural easement program is the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation, MALPF (Geoghegan, Lynch, Bucholzt, 2003).  MALPF purchases easements that are at least 50 acres of farmland, and whose soils are at least 50% USDA Class I,II, or III (Geoghegan et al., 2003).  This organization creates an easement value estimate by subtracting the agricultural value of the land from the retail value of the land, compensating the landowner in the amount of the just calculated easement value, in exchange for creating a perpetual clause in the title of the land parcel, binding the area’s land use to agriculture for all present and future landowners (Geoghegan et al., 2003).

Other easements might incentivize landowner participation through tax credits.  The Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2010 introduced federal tax credits for landowners “whose property contains the habitat of an endangered or threatened species and who enter into a habitat protection agreement a tax credit for costs relating to habitat protection easements and restoration.” (United States Congress, 2010)  Costs, in this context not only means reimbursement for the direct costs in maintaining the habitat conditions, but also the cost associated in decreased land value with removal of developmental rights.  This type of incentive at the federal level reflects the shifting sentiment of many Americans towards recognizing biodiversity as an intrinsic right; an example of how environmental policy can coincide with the values and needs of a society, and a great example to other world leaders of how the government can take charge of environmental challenges without the political “baggage” of enacting command and control policies.

In a local case conservation easements have been created to preserve aesthetic values associated with the landscape.  Amherst is home to the Holyoke Range, a span of mountainous land in the southern part of town.  According to John Stranlund, a tenured professor of resource economics here at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, about 20 years ago the Kestrel trust, a local land trust organization stepped in to help conserve a large portion of the range threatened by an ambitious real estate developer.  Apparently the owner of the property in question agreed to sell to the developer, a move that created a massive backlash of public dissent, citizens arguing the neighborhood would turn a scenic landscape into an eyesore.  This argument made the landowner reconsider her original decision and breaking her contract with the developer donated her property to the Kestrel Trust, thus conserving it in perpetuity for all of Amherst to enjoy.  The encouraging part of this story comes when the Kestrel trust came in and paid the steep legal retribution she faced for breaking her contract with the developer (J. Stranlund, personal communication, April 2, 2014).  This highlights the role of local organizations and communities making a real difference on a small scale with actions that can carry over to a global scale.

Some easements can be created simply for the ecosystem services they provide.  Conserved forest lands around aquifers can act as filters for excess nutrients carried by surface flow over agricultural land, or uptake pollutant and sediment loads associated with certain industries such as natural gas fracking.  Since 2005 there have been 82,000 new fracking wells installed in the United States, producing 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater in this short time span (Rumpler, 2013).   Fracking poses an especially dangerous risk to our water supplies because of the lack of regulation around fracking startup operations (Rumpler 2013).  Fracking companies are still subject to existing environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, but Illinois was the first state to pass legislation specific to the regulation of the fracking industry, causing the industry to look towards states like California, New York, Maryland, and North Carolina, all states with no such regulations (Rumpler, 2013).  The reality is fracking companies create thousands of jobs and so state by state legislation regulating their operations will most likely prove a lengthy process, while implementation of conservation easements to protect water supplies is much easier. And while easements can never address the true cause of any environmental problem they can prove undoubtedly useful in mitigating the effects.

Despite the lengthy list of environmental benefits conservation easements provide and despite the fact that landowners are within every right to participate in them if they wish to, there is still a voice (louder than large) that attempts to undermine the past and potential progress attributed to conservation easements.  Most of this resistant audience in comprised of those with a vetted interest in minimizing conservation efforts.  These people might include real estate developers or loggers, the politicians lobbied by those industries and the populace they have managed to misinform.  This resistant group defends their negative stance on the implementation of conservation easements through several arguments that can be disassembled logically.  First they will say that all conservation easements are perpetual in nature creating land that can never again be changed for any pressing economic or demographic scenario that might arise in the future.  It should be clear to readers of this paper that this is false just based on the definition of conservation easements outlined earlier.  Each easement is created on an individual basis and laws do not necessarily only grant incentives to properties conserved in perpetuity.  The Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2010 is only in effect until 2015 (United States Congress, 2010).  Another falsity of this claim is that all private property, whether protected by a conservation easement or not, is subject under the fifth amendment to eminent domain, an executive power of the state upheld in 1876 in Kohl vs. The United States (Cornell Law School, n.d.), which gives the government the right to repossess any property for public use according to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute’s description of the matter (Cornell Law School, n.d.).  Another false argument brought forward by the opposition is accusations of conservation easements being tools for government intrusion in the lives of regular Americans.  And while research has shown that many landowners do feel apprehensive about creating easements in fear of government interference (Merenlender et al., 2002), these studies can hardly be considered conclusive nor should apprehension due to ignorance be an argument against any effective and essential policy.   Landowners who still fear government intrusion can simply choose to not volunteer their land into an easement.  On top of this there is the obligation of government to the environment.  The Clean Water Act of 1972 makes the federal government responsible for maintaining clean water standards (United States Congress, 1972).  Conservation easements are a cost effective way of ensuring these standards, which of course is an obligation of the government as well, to do things in the most cost effective manner.  And would critics of government intrusion rather have citizens volunteer their land for easements, or have them bought up with taxpayer money?  Most likely they would complain of the government waste being showcased by the later.  Critics also make the claim about losing future use of the land but sustainable forestry and agriculture are viable productive land uses that generate economic activity.  And that leads to the argument you will hear the most from developers and the like which is that conservation easements hurt the economy.  But to debunk this myth lets first take a look at some of the economic impacts of conservation easements and then assign a positive or negative value to their economic effects.

Conservation easements raise property values.  While the conserved parcel will be lowered in value because of the loss of developmental rights, surrounding parcels will increase in value in relation to proximity to conserved space while controlling for other factors.  Clarke University economics chairwoman Jacqueline Geohegan, shows in a hedonic pricing model the association between housing prices and proximity to open space, area of open space, and area of conserved forest or farmland, along with a host of other variables to control for other factors influencing housing price (2003).  All of the coefficients of the conservation related variables in the model have positive values meaning a positive association between the listed independent variables and the dependent variable (housing price).  Computing the t-statistics from the residuals of the regression, she shows all of these findings to be statistically significant at a 95% confidence level (Geoghegan et al. 2003).  Housing prices are related to local economies because higher values create higher tax revenues, as well as bring in higher income individuals whom economic theory shows spend more money, fueling small business growth.  In developing nations conservation easements would protect the land and fisheries from environmental degradation ensuring viable self-sufficient economies in the future (here economy is meant to denote a way of making a living, not necessarily monetary).  Based on these findings the argument that conservation easements harm the economy is debunked as research shows the contrary.

Understanding all of the issues facing our world is only the start to solving them.  Progress takes action and conservation easements allow governments and citizens alike to participate in this action, in a cost effective and productive, manner that coincides with free market values.  Conservation easements bring added, often overlooked economic benefits to local communities reaching beyond just the landowners of easements.  Conservation easements are adaptable to many scenarios and problems and remain effective for longer than the lives of the landowners who set them up.  That said if the public use of the land is deemed greater for another use, the government can step in and using the power of eminent domain, repossess the property.  Conservation easements use nature as the primary mechanism for helping nature, a concept as old as life itself, and the implications of their benefits can be seen at local, regional, and global levels.  The Earth is the most complex self-regulating, life-support system known to mankind; why not let it do what it’s good at? But to do this we need to set aside space for this to happen, reward those who make it happen, and encourage through support, research, and education, the continued spread and success of conservation easements over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Center for Biological Diversity. (n.d.). The Extinction Crisis. Center for Biological Diversity         Retrieved from    http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

Cornell Law School. (1992). National eminent domain power. Legal Information Institute. Retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/amdt5bfrag4_user.html

Save the Rainforest Coalition. (n.d.). Save the Rainforest. Save the Rainforest Coalition.               Retrieved from http://www.savetheamazon.org/

Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Climate Change. Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved from http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/11/3277541/west-virginia-coal-slurry-spill/

Geoghegan J., Lynch L., Bucholtz S. (2003). Capitalization of open spaces into housing values   and the residential property tax revenue impacts of agricultural easement programs. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 32(1), 33-45 doi: http://cfinetwork.org/Capitalization%20of%20Open%20Spaces%20into%20Housing%20Values.pdf

Merenlender, A.M., Huntsinger, L., Fairfax, S.K. (2002) Land trusts and conservation easements:

Who is conserving what for whom? Conservation Biology, 18(1), 65-75. doi:  http://ucanr.org/sites/merenlender/files/143679.pdf

 

Rumpler, J. (2013). Fracking by the numbers Key impacts of dirty drilling at the state and national level. Environment America. 4-41. doi: http://www.environmentamerica.org/sites/environment/files/reports/EA_FrackingNumbers_scrn.pdf

Valentine, K. (2014, February 11). Breaking: Pipe break at coal facility contaminates West Virginia waterway. Climate Progress. Retrieved from http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/11/3277541/west-virginia-coal-slurry-spill/

United States Congress. (2010). Congress.Gov. Retrieved from http://beta.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/3146

United States Congress. (1972). Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved from http://www2.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-clean-water-act

 

 

The Effects of Anthropogenic Sonar on Beaked Whales

Whales & Sonar

Alexandra Ferland- Natural Resource Conservation

Ilka Mayorga- Animal Science

Eric Granato- Animal Science

 

The time is 7:00 a.m. on the 24th of September 2002. A beachgoer on a morning walk of the normally beautiful Canary Islands comes across a dying family. Investigators and first responders are quickly on the scene. Of the fourteen family members who were found seven were pronounced dead when the responders arrived. The remaining seven were saved but could tell nothing of what happened to them. The deaths baffled investigators as there were no signs of blunt trauma or foul play. Autopsy revealed massive internal hemorrhaging and lesions but no signs of natural causes. After careful consideration of the clues the investigators had one suspect, military sonar.  Who was the family that was killed and subsequently changed the world of marine biology? We call them family Ziphiidae or more commonly beaked whales. Continue Reading

Population management of predatory carnivores in the mid-western United States

Predation Management in Coyotes and Wolves

 

Background

Among the flourishing peace, love and cultural progress that took our country by storm in the mid-1900’s a midwestern ecosystem was facing one of its biggest hits yet, at risk for an entire collapse. The collapse that we believed to have been appeased threatens our country yet again. This human-habitat turmoil had been brewing for over one hundred years when expansion in the 1800’s brought humans and their livestock into direct contact with canine carnivores. As human habitat encroachment displaced ungulate populations that need large territories to live, wolves began to prey on the livestock. Farmers were complaining of livestock losses due to coyotes and wolves and canine carnivores were quickly becoming the nation’s newest pest. In the early 1900’s Theodore Roosevelt, normally known for his environmental preservation activism, described these animals as “beasts of waste and desolation” advocating for their extermination (Johnson, 2002). A culture that has always seen wolves as the villain in popular fairy tales like The Little Red Riding Hood, and in which the werewolf was growing in popular culture as a horror monster, was finally taking actions against the canine carnivores. A modern organization that goes by Mission Wolf described this phenomenon as the “war against the wolf”, this battle being fought in the midwest (2014). Farmers and civilians took matters into their own hands, piling up skulls and pelts as trophies, and effectively eradicating the populations from most midwestern states (White, 2014).

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The Truth Behind the Curtain: Banning Performing Circus Elephants

Introduction

Most people have that one friend that they can go weeks or even months without seeing, and when they are reunited it is as if no amount of time has gone by. Now imagine going twenty two years without seeing that friend. With so much time passed, it is safe to say things would not be the same between you. However, this was not the case for two old friends, Shirley and Jenny, a pair of retired performing Asian elephants. Continue Reading

Using Pangolin Farms to Stabilize the Pangolin Population

This is a Pangolin. This mammal is one of the most poached animal in the world.  Pangolin(Platt, J.R. Pangolin.)

This is a Pangolin. This mammal is one of the most poached animal in the world.
Pangolin(Platt, J.R. Pangolin.)

By: Daniela Orozco, Sarah Krim and Andrew Beal

He was bobbing his head back and forth, registering the new scents. His scales rose and fell slowly showing off his easy breathing pattern. As he slowly crawled out of his hut the photographer began to capture the images of one of the most trafficked animal in the world (Sutter, 2014). The sound of the click and the flash of the lights became worrisome for Sutter. He thought that this would startle the poor creature, yet it showed to have curiosity towards the camera. He began to sniff the lens and did not show any signs of fear. Phuong stated, with a smile on his face, “he is performing” (Sutter, 2014).

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Going Solar

Chris Royce – BCT

Jordan Young – NRC

 

Solar Panels in Riverside: A Case Studty (The Frederick Law Olmsted Society of Riverside, ND)

Solar Panels in Riverside: A Case Studty (The Frederick Law Olmsted Society of Riverside, ND)

In April of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded off the Louisiana coast. Eleven workers were killed, and it caused the biggest accidental oil spill in history. More than 200 million gallons of crude oil cascaded from the rig before it was capped three months later. As Elaine Quijano, CBS News correspondent discovered, many adverse effects came from this disaster. Thousands of fish that were farmed for food were found to have huge lesions and fin rot. “You can’t spill that much oil into the system without having long term negative consequences,” stated David Muth, who is with the advocacy group National Wildlife Federation (Quijano, 2012). The spill resulted in the deaths of many ocean life forms, including dolphins and coral reefs. Quijano also visited an island in the Gulf of Mexico that was four acres in size before the oil spill. After, it was less than one acre in size. There are other areas nearby where “the ground is so saturated you can actually see the oil bubbling up from the ground” (Quijano, 2012). The environmental cleanup for this oil spill alone has cost BP more than $14 billion. Continue Reading

Conservation Easements: Too Much of A Good Thing?

Conservation Easement

Land, 2011

 

As the Mayflower’s hull scraped the rocky shores of Massachusetts and came to a stop in 1620, the land the puritan settlers first set foot upon was full of possibility, full of promise, and for the fleeing puritans, full of hope. From the beginning, the undeveloped and largely unutilized land the puritans first settled and formed their colonies upon represented both the freedom they sought as well as hope; hope for eventual expansion and growth of their newly founded colony. What if the land that the Puritan settlers had set foot upon on that November day in 1620 was not able to be settled? Speculations abound. Or more feasibly, what if the colonists had drafted and implemented legal documents that preserved, in perpetuity, the vast majority of land surrounding their newly founded colony? What if the land that modern day Marshfield, Duxbury, and Kingston are situated on was protected, in perpetuity, from a legal document implemented during a time that houses were built with thatched roofs and Kings still ruled all of Europe?  Would a legal policy this antiquated still be valid?

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The High Price of Shark Finning

 

                                                   The High Price of Shark Finning

Authors: Veronica Gordon, Chelsea Murphy, Amber Reilly

University of Massachusetts Amherst

The objective of shark finning: the fin. (Ocean.si.edu)

The objective of shark finning: the fin. (Ocean.si.edu)

Introduction

      A long line is cast into the ocean with thousands of hooks lining its 62 mile expanse. When its caster comes back for the line’s contents, they find and toss back albatross, loggerhead turtles, and other sea life until they come upon their goal: the shark. Dragged onto the boat of its captor, the hooked shark is often alive and struggling against its new environment. With a forceful blow to the spine, the shark is paralyzed. The fisherman then swiftly slices each fin off of the shark. And with that, the shark is pushed off of the boat and left to slowly die in the ocean depths.

     Shark finning and lack of sustainable population management in Asia are causing major population declines in multiple different species of sharks. Although there are government regulations currently in place regarding shark finning, they lack proper enforcement and contain many loopholes that allow finning to occur, as evidenced by continued population declines (Ward-Paige et al. 2012, pg. 1856). Further steps are slowly being taken towards sustaining populations. Sharks were  listed  on the endangered species list in 2001, and several states in the U.S. banned the possession of shark products, in turn creating “safe areas” for sharks in the Pacific Ocean (Clarke et al. 2013).  And it is not only the U.S. taking charge against this practice; New Zealand, in an effort to save their native species, has recently put a ban on the finning of dead sharks. This accompanies their ban on the finning of live sharks passed in 2009 (Davison 2014).

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