Transcript A Sand county Almanac - Leuzinger High School

Wilderness areas
Wild or primitive portions of national
forests, parks, and wildlife refuges where
little to no human activity occurs
 Wilderness Act created National
Wilderness Preservation System
 Encompasses a wide variety of
ecosystems throughout the country

Land Conservation Options
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Protect functioning of public land ecosystems
through monitoring and enforcement
Adopt a user pay to extract resources on public
lands
Institute fair compensation for resources
Require responsibility for any user who damages
or alters public lands
Adopt uneven aged forestry management
Include ecological services of trees in estimating
value
Reduce road building into uncut lands and require
restoration plans for areas currently used
Land Conservation Options
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Coordinate with forest service to leave fallen trees
to promote nutrient cycling
Grow timber in longer rotations
Reduce or eliminate clear-cutting, sheltered wood
cutting, or seed tree cutting on sloped land
Rely on more sustainable tree cutting methods
Reduce fragmentation of remaining large forests
Require certification of lumber that is cut
according to sustainable practices
Use sustainable techniques in tropical forests
Create solutions to urban land use problems
including zoning.
Conservation vocab

Preservation or sustainable: to keep or maintain
intact


Remediation: to act or process of correcting a fault
or deficiency


Ex: cleaning up from Exxon Valdez or Deep Water horizon
oil spills
Mitigation: to moderate or alleviate in force and
intensity


Ex. Land trusts
Ex: Road reflectors to make deer freeze before entering a
road
Restoration: to restore to its former good condition

Ex: removing a dam
Mining
Over view of mining
Steps
Descriptions
Environmental Issues
Mining
Removing a mineral resource
from the ground. Can involve
underground, open pit, strip
mining, etc.
Mine wastes – acid and
toxins
Displacement of native
species
Reclamation of land and
recycling
Processing
Removing ore from gangue
(non-ore material). Involves
transportation, processing,
smelting, and manufacturing
Pollution (air, water, soil, and
noise)
Use
Involves distribution to end
user
Human health concerns,
risks, and hazards
Steps of mining
1.
2.
3.
4.
Exploration: looking for areas that
contain desired resources
Site Development: take samples to
determine quality and quantity of
material; construct roads and bring in
equipment
Extraction: Removing the material from
the ground
Processing: Valuable material is
extracted from the ore
Types of mining
1.
Surface mining: soil and rock over resource is
removed to gain access to material underneath

Enlarged until deposit is exhausted or costs become to
high
Types of surface mining
1.
Strip mining: area stripped is fairly flat; take from
a large area
Ex: tar sands
2.
Open pit mining: removal of materials from an
open air pit
Ex: diamonds
3.
Mountaintop removal mining: all rock and soil
above seam is removed and placed in valleys
Ex: Coal
4.
5.
Dredging: collecting soil from bottom of the sea
Highwall mining: uses continuous mining machine
under remote control to remove material
Ex: coal
Types of mining
2.
Underground mining: large shafts dug
into earth to remove material


3.
Less surface damage
Can lead to acidification of ground water after
mine is abandoned
in situ leaching: small holes drilled into
site and water based chemical solvents
are used to extract minerals
Processing


Removes usable materials from ore
Involves heat and/or chemicals
Global Reserves
2 billion tons of minerals are extracted
and used each year in the US
 US imports 50% of the most needed
minerals
 US, Germany, and Russia are 8% of the
population but use 75% of most widely
used metals

Relevant Laws
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

General Mining Law (1872): grants free access
to individuals and corporations to prospect for
minerals in public domain and allows them,
upon making a discovery, to stake a claim on
that deposit
Mineral Leasing Act (1920): authorizes and
governs leasing of public lands form developing
deposits of coal, petroleum, natural gas and
other hydrocarbons, phosphates, and sodium
Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act
(1977): Established a program for regulating
surface coal mining and reclamation activities
Fishing
Fishing Techniques
Bottom trawling
 Drift Net
 Long Line
 Purse Seine
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
Terms:

Target/ commercial
species: the species
that are being
sought in the
fishing

Bycatch: animals
caught that are not
the target species
Bottom trawling

Use a funnelshaped net to drag
the ocean bottom

Target Species:



Cod
Flounder
Scallops
Drift Net
Long Expanses of
nets that hang
down in the water
 Traps: turtles, sea
birds, marine
mammals
 1992 UN voluntary
ban on drift nets
longer than 1.5 mi
 Ghost fishing

Longline
Place very long
lines with
thousands of
baited hooks
 Target species:
swordfish, tuna,
sharks, halibut,
cod
 Bycatch: sea
turtles, pilot
whales, dolphins

Purse Seine
Surrounds school
of fish spotted with
aircraft with a
large net which is
drawn tight
 Target species:
tuna, mackerel,
anchovies, herring
 Bycatch: dolphins,
sea turtles

Overfishing



Oceans supply 1% of
all human food and
10% of world’s protein
source
China responsible for
1/3 of all fishing
1/3 are used for nonconsumption
 Fish oil
 Fish meal
 Animal feed

1/3 of global catches
are bycatch


discarded
Maximum sustained
yield = largest
amount of marine
organisms that can
be harvested without
causing a population
crash
Overfishing
Techniques to Sustainably Managing
Fisheries
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Regulate locations and numbers of fish farms
and monitor their pollution output
Encourage the production of herbivorous fish
species
Require and enforce labeling of fish products
that were raised of caught according to
sustainable methods
Set catch limits far below maximum
sustainable yields
Eliminate government subsidies for
commercial fishing
Techniques to Sustainably Managing
Fisheries
6.
7.
8.
9.
Prevent importation of fish from foreign
countries that do not adhere to sustainableharvesting methods.
Place trading sanctions on foreign countries
that do not adhere to sustainable-harvesting
methods
Assess fees for harvesting fish and shellfish
from public waters
Increase the number of marine sanctuaries
and no-fishing areas
Techniques to Sustainably Managing
Fisheries
10. Increase
penalties for fishing techniques that
do not allow escape of bycatch, including
unwanted fish species, marine mammals,
sea birds, and sea turtles
11. Ban the throwing back of bycatch
12. Monitor and destroy invasive species
transported through ship ballast
How to restore freshwater fish
habitat
Planting native
 Restoring fish passages
vegetation on
around human madestream banks
impediments
 Rehabilitating in Monitoring, regulating,
stream habitats
and enforcing
recreational and
 Controlling erosion
commercial fishing
 Controlling
 Protecting costal
invasive species
estuaries and wetlands

Aquaculture

(or mariculture) =
fish farming


Growing
commercial species
for food
Involves:
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Stocking
Feeding
Protection from
predators
Harvesting
Aquaculture
Industry growing
by 6% annually
 Provides 5% of
world’s total food
production
 Most in lessdeveloped
countries
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Products:

Seaweeds
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Mollusks = 80%
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Kelp = 75%
Mussels
Oysters
Shrimp = 40%
Salmon
Trout
Catfish
Advantages

Cold blooded animals convert more feed
to useable protein


Requires less feed than livestock systems
For every hectare of ocean oyster farming can
produce 58,000 kg of protein

Harvesting oysters = 10kg
Requirements
Species must be marketable
 Inexpensive to raise
 Trophically efficient
 Marketable to size at 1 – 2 years
 Disease resistant

Disadvantages
Industrial aquaculture posses a threat to
marine and coastal biological diversity
 Creates wide-scale destruction and
degradation of natural habitats
 Leaves nutrients and antibiotics as
aquaculture waste
 Accidental release of alien or modified
species into native waters
 Transmission of disease to wild stocks
 Displacement of local indigenous human
communities

Case Study – Salmon Farming
22% of all retail seafood
 Farmed salmon have more PCBs than any
other protein source
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Fattened with fish meal and fish oils high in
PCBs
PCB = polychlorinated biphenyls
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
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Banned in US in 1970’s – persistent pollutants
Cause cancer and fetal development effects
Farmed salmon contains 52% more fat
that wild caught salmon
Relevant Laws

Anadromous Fish Conservation Act
(1965): authorizes Sectary of the Interior
to enter into agreements to conserve,
develop, and enhance anadromous fish
resources in the US.


Anadromous = fish that migrate from the sea
to fresh water to spawn
Example: Salmon
Relevant Laws

Magnuson Fishery Conservation and
Management Act (1976):
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Governs marine fisheries in US federal waters
Aside in development of domestic fishing
industry by phasing out foreign fishing
Manage fisheries
Promote conservation
Created eight regional fishery management
councils
1996 amendments focused on rebuilding
overfished fisheries, protecting essential fish
habitat, reducing bycatch
Relevant Laws

United Nations Treaty on the Law of the
Sea (1982):
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
Defines rights and responsibilities of nations in
their use of the world’s oceans
Establishes guidelines for businesses, the
environment, and management of marine
resources
Global Economics
Global Economy and the environment
The environment contains resources that
can be used in the economy
 Use of resources contains new
environmental issues
 Increased economic activity improves
standards of living
 Until recently development of economies
and local environments were seperate

World Bank
Source of financial and technical
assistance to the developing world
 Owned by 184 member countries
 Provides low interest loans, interest-free
credit, and grants to developing countries
to improve education, health,
infrastructure, communications, and
environmental issues
 In 2001 endorsed a strategy to focus on
environmental issues

World bank environmental projects
$13.8 billion in areas of biodiversity,
conservation, climate change, and
international waters
 $740 million to phase out ozone-depleting
substances
 $1.6 billion into projects that reduce green
house gas emisions

“Tragedy of the Commons”
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Overuse of common/public land leads to:
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Uncontrolled human population growth
Air pollution
Over extraction of ground water and wasting
water due to excessive irrigation
Frontier logging of old growth forests and slash
and burn
Habitat destruction
Poaching
overfishing
Limits to “Tragedy of the Commons”
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Economic decisions are short term while
environmental consequences are long term
Land that is privately owned is subject to market
pressure
Some commons are easier to control than others
Incorporating discount rates into the valuation of
resources would be an incentive for investors to
bear a short-term cost for a long-term gain
Breaking commons into smaller, privately owned
parcels fragments government policies
Different standards and practices may affect one
parcel differently than others
Names to know
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Rachel Carson: Wrote Silent Spring lead to ban on
DDT
Aldo Leopold: book A Sand county Almanac.
Developed environmental ethics
John Muir: Founded Sierra Club and helped save
many wilderness areas
Theodore Roosevelt: 26 president setting aside land
for national forests, wildlife refuges, developing
farmlands, and advocating for protecting wild spaces
Henry David Thoreau: book Walden discussed
materialism and need for conservation