Unnatural Kingdom

In the article The Unnatural Kingdom by Daniel Duane, on the New York Times, two ways of conserving animal populations are mentioned.  Both ways discussed utilize various types of trapping and locating through technology.  The technology allows conservationists to monitor and protect the populations of endangered species while keeping them in the wild.  The two ways of conserving the animal populations are: predation prevention, and animal relocation.

Animal relocation, is just what it sounds like.  Scientists measure the population of a specie until that population has reached a sustainable number, and then the scientists will take some of that population and transport it to another area that needs a greater population, or higher diversity.  In the example used in the article, pregnant female sheep were captured in one area of the Sierra Nevada park and transported to another location where they’d give birth to their baby sheep, and add to the population.  Predation Prevention is when scientists monitor the predation habits of an ecosystem, if a predator is harming the population of an endangered species too much, professional hunters will intervene, and kill the main predator before it has a chance to kill more of its prey.

I am of the opinion that neither method is superior over the other.  In the circumstance presented in the article of the Sierra bighorn populations, and mountain lion predation, both methods were necessary.  The scientists needed to grow the populations of the Bighorns through the park, and they also needed to prevent the over-predation of the sheep by the mountain lions.  In other circumstances, the prevention of over predation might only be necessary.  In cases like the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone park, animal relocation was the only method needed.  The superiority of either method is purely circumstantial.

The restored populations of the Bighorn sheep will have a lower genetic diversity in the coming years than they did 200 years ago.  This is because the population of sheep have been grown from a small population recently (by the scientists), and so right now there is a very small genetic pool for the sheep to reproduce from.  Though, as the population of the sheep continues to grow, it will become more diverse, as the gene pool will grow, and diversity will be inevitable.

After reading this article, I still think that the animals who have had their populations should still be considered wild.  The animals still live in the wild and still are not domesticated by humans, and therefore they are still wild.  Our definition and concept of what a wild species is may need some adjustment though.

IFAP Topic 2 - Environment

Main ideas of the Executive Summery:

• Farms are located in poorly planned areas (flood plains or close to communities that utilize well water) and, the surrounding area cannot take such a high amount of waste and leads to pollution, and general degradation of the surrounding environment
• The annual production of manure produced by animal confinement facilities exceeds that produced by humans by at least three times - this results in large quanities of manure that carry excess nutrients, chemicals, and microorganisms that find their way into waterways, lakes, groundwater, soils, and airways which as a result in excessive nutrient loading, eutrophication of surface waters, reduced air quality is due to releases of toxic gases, odorous substances, particulates, and bioaerosols containing a variety of microorganisms and human pathogens
• High resource use
• High amounts of greenhouse emissions 
• It is extremely energy intensive and requires disproportionately large inputs of fossil fuels, industrial fertilizers, and other synthetic chemicals

Summary of Topic 2 (from the main document):

IFAP farming focuses on high efficiency and low cost production, and when compared to previous generations of farming styles, IFAP is much less sustainable. This uses high amounts of feed, chemicals, fuels, and energy in general to produce as much protein and animal products as possible in as short of a time as possible. This method of farming has many more environmental impacts, and has more public health concerns when compared to older methods of animal farming.

Possible solution:

The best way to make a change is to write to your senators, governors, and other public officials in order to have them pass legislation to regulate, control, and stop as many of the negative impacts of IFAP farming as possible. Also to accomplish this general education of people would bring about greater change, as the more people who know the negative impacts on the environment and their health, the more likely it is that legislation will be passed.

Tar Sands and EROI

1. We should extract tar sands first as the EROI is 5 and the EROI is 3 - this means you get more energy per a single unit of energy
2. Both require heat to get the oil into its final form.  Heat added in oil shale turns the oil shale into crude oil and natural gas - heat added to tar sands extracts the oil from within the sand.
3. The major difference between getting oil from oil shale and tar sands is that you get more oil from tar sands.  When extracting oil from oil shale, natural gas is a byproduct of the process.
4. With off-shore drilling there is a much higher EROI and therefore you get more oil and have to use less fossil fuels to get it.  In the long run, this means we produce more oil without having to use as much oil/ fossil fuels to get it - this results in lower rates of CO2 pollution
5. When searching for food in my house I first look for junk food or something I can consume quickly with little to no work.  My last choice is having to make food as it takes a lot more time and work to get the food.