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Review: Another Modest Proposal for the Great PlainsAuthor(s): Jon K. PiperSource: Ecology, Vol. 79, No. 7 (Oct., 1998), pp. 2574-2575Published by: Ecological Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/176851 .Accessed: 23/12/2010 23:36

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2574 BOOK REVEEWS Ecology, Vol. 79, No. 7

changes in the current approach to studies of amphibian pop-ulation decline. From Green's chapters it is also possible toobtain information that the reader was probably eager to learn,such as that 17 of 46 species of amphibians in Canada havesuffered losses of population; that more than a human lifetimewould be necessary to determine whether apparent declines

are a significant departure from random or from normal levelsof extinction, so we have to find other ways to monitor pop-ulations; that there is no information on minimum viable pop-ulation size for any Canadian amphibians; that there is noevidence that global causes are behind amphibian declines inCanada, or that ozone depletion, ultraviolet radiation, or acidrain are directly responsible.

Appendix I, which reports current status of amphibian spe-cies of Canada and presents black and white pictures for mostof them, also helps one understand which species are con-sidered in decline. In a future edition of the book, I would

suggest turning this appendix into an introductory chapter.This would avoid the use of the artifice of distributing picturesof one amphibian species per chapter throughout the book,which makes no sense when a chapter treats more than onespecies. I do not believe that the stated objective of the DAP-CAN was achieved with this book. However, undoubtedly

DAPCAN is interested on organizing professionals beyond astrict focus on amphibian population biology and the resultsof this effort can already be seen in the diversity of subjectscovered in this book. I strongly recommend this book to any-one interested in amphibian studies as a valuable compendiumof current studies that are being undertaken in Canada.

CLAUDIA AZEVEDO-RAMOS

Universidade Federal do PardDPE/Centro de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas66070-100 Belim, PardBrazil

Ecology, 79(7), 1998, pp. 2574-2575? 1998 by the Ecological Society of America

ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE GREAT PLAINS

Licht, Daniel S. 1997. Ecology and economics of the GreatPlains. Our Sustainable Future. Volume 10. University ofNebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska. xii + 225 p. $45.00,ISBN: 0-8032-2922-4 (alk. paper).

Before there was the Wildlands Project, there was Ernest

Callabach's vision of a wind-powered, bison-fed society,Montana's Big Open, and Frank and Deborah Popper's Buf-falo Commons. There is no shortage of proposals that addressthe sustainability of the North American Great Plains, andconcern for its future is not new but stretches back at leastto the earlier part of this century. Indeed, most of the originalprairie, what Walt Whitman called North America's char-acteristic landscape, has disappeared beneath the plow, tothe extent that less than 1% of the original tallgrass prairieremains. And the biota of the prairie bioregion continues toincur losses due to habitat-fragmentation, elimination of nat-ural predator-prey associations, introduced species, and var-ious commercial practices. Now, Daniel Licht offers a newproposal to preserve the Great Plains landscape and its bio-diversity that is eminently sensible, and he lays out a scenariofor its implementation that is both clear and plausible.

The purpose of this book (Volume 10 in University ofNebraska Press's Our Sustainable Future series) is to arguecompellingly for a plan to restore the native ecosystems ofNorth America's heartland while at the same time revitalizingits diminished rural economies. The author, a biologist withthe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stationed in Ft. Snelling,Minnesota, has an obvious passion for the Plains and its hu-man and nonhumman inhabitants.

The book is organized into 12 chapters. The first chapter,appropriately entitled The Land, orients the reader to the207 million ha prairie bioregion. Here, Licht introduces the

biota of the region, and discusses briefly the factors that have

drastically reduced its species richness during the past twocenturies. The next three chapters are a kind of primer on thehistory of biodiversity loss in the region and the various at-tempts and costs incurred to halt these extinctions. The newsis sobering. Approximately 500 plant and animal species havegone extinct in the region since 1492, and another 9000 spe-cies remain at risk in the U.S. Particularly useful at this pointin the discussion is Licht's highlighting of 10 case studies

(four mammals, three birds, two insects, and a plant) to il-lustrate that the sources of the threat are as diverse as thetaxa involved. He closes by discussing the failure of species-level approaches to conservation, arguing instead for the ne-cessity of landscape-level protection of endangered ecosys-tems.

Up to this point, Licht has dealt mainly with ecologicalsubjects. In the next two chapters, he turns to issues of publicpolicy, land use, economics, and agricultural production. Inreviews of public and private lands management, he sum-marizes the philosophical changes that have taken place inwiidlife management since the 1930s. Conventional wildlifemanagement, with its typical short-term planning horizon and

focus on game animals, contrasts starkly with the science ofconservation biology, which has a centuries-long perspectiveand a broad emphasis on biodiversity. Another impedimentcited here is the variety of U.S. government agencies, rangingfrom the National Park Service to the Department of Defense,with their very different missions and priorities, that hold andmanage public lands in the Great Plains. A third major hurdleconfronting restoration is that public lands exist as nearly1400 non-contiguous blocks intermingled with private lands.The resulting high perimeter: area ratio is an administrationnightmare that argues strongly for an effort to consolidateconservation holdings into fewer, larger tracts.

Chapters 7 and 8, on the waning rural economy and the

various U.S. government farm programs, bring economics

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October 1998 BOOK REVIEWS 2575

more into the conservation equation. Many environmentalhistorians contend that the collapse of Great Plains rural com-munities after the turn of the 20th century was inevitablegiven the region's inhospitable climate, lack of natural re-sources, and great transportation distances. Hence, economicviability of the region has always depended heavily on federal

subsidies to stimulate and maintain settlement. Licht blamesdirect government payments to farmers, not the market, formuch of the overcultivation of the Plains. The point here isthat government farm programs, in shoring up agriculturaleconomies, have merely supported excess production capac-ity at the dire expense of grassland biodiversity. Even theConservation Reserve Program (CRP), commendable in itsgoal of paying farmers to stabilize highly erodible soils, isinadequate to restore grassland biodiversity mainly becauseit comprises too little land area and ignores many conser-vation principles (for example, that introduced grasses maynot substitute for native grasses in providing habitat suitablefor ground-nesting birds). A remarkable conclusion is that

U.S. taxpayers could have purchased the CRP land directlyand restored suitable wildlife habitat for less money than thetotal cost of the CRP payments over the life of the programand with far greater benefits for biodiversity conservation.

Finally, 10 chapters (and 160 pages) into the book Lichtdetails his proposal for a set of 10 large grassland reserves,containing a total of 7.3 million ha, to be established withinthe various grassland ecoregions of the central U.S. In whatis probably the most valuable part of the book, Licht mapsprecisely where the reserves could be established and presentsa reasonable estimate of the total cost for such a program.Although representing only 4% of the U.S. grassland biome,the plan could potentially reduce federal agricultural subsi-

dieswhile

protectingcritical

ecosystems.A

beautyof

theproposal is that the system of reserves would require no netincrease in federal ownership of land. In Chapter 10, he deals

necessarily with the politics of his proposal, detailing thebenefits to such stakeholders as farmers and ranchers, outdoorrecreationists, and adjacent rural communities.

Overall, Licht succeeds in presenting a case that is orga-nized, thorough, clear, and approachable by non-specialists.Clearly, he has given this proposal a lot of thought. The title

of the book may be misleading. Rather than the potentiallydry subject matter implied, Licht's argument for setting asidelarge tracts of land to create grassland wildernesses is insteadprovocative and well developed. This book has much to offerto conservationists, policy-makers, and land managers inter-ested in the current state and future of the Plains bioregion.Portions of the book would make useful addenda to a con-servation biology curriculum. Except for one or two minortypos, and misuse of the term ecotype to mean habitattype, the book appears free of errors. Ecologists may desiremore scientific treatment than this short book provides. Butwhat is lost in depth is gained in the book's valuable blendingof conservation, public policy, and economics. There is a niceappendix that lists all the threatened and endangered speciesin the Plains.

The real strength of this book is Licht's translation of hisvision into a concrete plan for implementation. The proposalis grounded in the reality of an uncertain economic future forthe region and certain extinction for many of its wild species.With the recent creation of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve nearStrong City, Kansas, the political climate seems to be pro-pitious for a renewed effort to conserve grassland biodiver-sity. One can hope that this book will at least expand ourimagination about a future both wild and sustainable for allthe inhabitants of the Plains.

JON K. PIPER

Bethel CollegeDepartment of BiologyNorth Newton, Kansas 67117

Ecology, 79(7), 1998, pp. 2575-2576C 1998 by the Ecological Society of America

A POLICY ANALYST'S PERSPECTIVE

Roe, Emery. 1998. Taking complexity seriously: policyanalysis, triangulation and sustainable development. Klu-wer Academic Publishers, Norwell, Massachusetts. xii + 138

p. $98.50, ISBN: 0-7923-8058-4 (acid-free paper).

Policy issues with high complexity and uncertainty shouldbe analyzed with non-probabilistic methods, says policy an-alyst Emery Roe. In this book, he advocates using one suchmethod, triangulation, or considering an issue from the per-spectives of several different methods or theories. He illus-trates triangulation using sustainable development as a casestudy. His source materials on the sustainable developmentcontroversy are the notorious paper by Ludwig, Hilborn andWalters, which summarizes humanity's rather dismal trackrecord in achieving sustainable use of resources and expresses

considerable doubt that we will do much better in the future

(Ludwig, D., R. Hilborn, and C. Walters, 1993. Uncertainty,resource exploitation, and conservation: lessons from history.Science 260:17, 36), together with a series of responses tothis article by other ecologists (1993, Ecological Applications3:545-589).

Roe recommends triangulation as a very powerful wayto analyze and make recommendations about exceptionallycomplex issues. Triangulation aims to throw more light onsome aspect of an otherwise murky issue where the variousanalyses converge, without expecting that the whole picturewill become clearer or that something new will emerge. Ofcourse, the results of a triangulation may not converge at all,particularly as social scientists recommend the use of theoriesthat are as radically different as possible.

The theories that Roe uses to triangulate on issue of sus-tainable development are Girardian economics, cultural the-ory, critical theory, and the local justice framework. An eco-

logical perspective was not included, which seemed very