Saving endangered species sometimes means knowing where they used to live — before scientists started studying them. For that, we need historical ecologists.
One of the most fascinating challenges of endangered species management is the concept of shifting baselines — the idea that how much worse a problem has gotten, and what your recovery goal should be, depends on when you start measuring the problem. In many cases we need scientific data on the population and distribution of endangered species from before anyone started collecting scientific data.
So what do we do?
Solving this challenge has required the creation of an entirely new field called historical ecology, which looks at human interactions with the environment over long periods of time using historical research methods.
“Historical ecology sits at the intersection of a number of disciplines, including archaeology, history, anthropology and paleoecology,” says Ruth Thurstan of the University of Exeter, a leader in the field. “It is particularly useful for understanding the scale of changes that occurred before we started to scientifically monitor ecosystems.”
Take fish populations, for example. The impacts of fishing have occurred over hundreds of years, but we’ve only been monitoring some of these populations for decades. By using historical ecology, says Thurstan, “We find that deeper historical perspectives show a far greater magnitude of ecosystem change compared to the modern scientific evidence alone.”
What History Can Teach Us About the Conservation of Endangered Species • The Revelator
One of the most fascinating challenges of endangered species management is the concept of shifting baselines — the idea that how much worse a problem has gotten, and what your recovery goal should be, depends on when you start measuring the problem. In many cases we need scientific data on the population and distribution of endangered species from before anyone started collecting scientific data.
So what do we do?
Solving this challenge has required the creation of an entirely new field called historical ecology, which looks at human interactions with the environment over long periods of time using historical research methods.
“Historical ecology sits at the intersection of a number of disciplines, including archaeology, history, anthropology and paleoecology,” says Ruth Thurstan of the University of Exeter, a leader in the field. “It is particularly useful for understanding the scale of changes that occurred before we started to scientifically monitor ecosystems.”
Take fish populations, for example. The impacts of fishing have occurred over hundreds of years, but we’ve only been monitoring some of these populations for decades. By using historical ecology, says Thurstan, “We find that deeper historical perspectives show a far greater magnitude of ecosystem change compared to the modern scientific evidence alone.”
What History Can Teach Us About the Conservation of Endangered Species • The Revelator