″ While building dams decreases the frequency of floods, damage per flood is afterward so much greater that average yearly damage increases. ”
This is fascinating. Should we not be building dams? Could we say the same thing about fighting bushfires, since fighting them increases the amount of fuel they have available for next time?
Short answer: Yes. Forest fires are a natural and necessary part of forest development, and controlled burns are a long-standing indigenous practice. There are trees that will not start new generations without a fire; the seeds are dropped into the ashes, which let them crack open from heat, and they need the new sunlight access and nutrient access from the fire to get established. Fires also keep on top of pest populations and diseases, which can otherwise reach astronomical numbers and completely wipe populations. And if fires are frequent, each fire will stay small, as it will soon run into the area affected by the last fire where there is no fuel, and stop. The lack of fuel means they do not flicker high, and they do not run hot, so the inside and top of the larger trees remain fine. The contained area means they can be fled. So most mature trees and large animals will survive entirely.
The build-up of fuel due to fire suppression, on the other hand, leads to eventual extreme fires that are uncontainable, and can even wipe out trees previously considered immune to fire, such as sequoias, and reach speeds and sizes that become death traps for all animal life, as we saw in Australia.
Going back to indigenous fire management is all easier said than done, though; nowadays, human habitats often encroach so closely on wildlands that a forest fire would endanger human homes. And many forests are already so saturated with fuel that attempting a controlled burn can get out of hand.
But the fire management policies that got us to this point are one of many examples where trying to control a natural system and limit its destructive tendencies is more destructive in the long run, because the entire ecosystem is already adapted to destruction, and many aspects of it that seem untidy or inefficient or horrible at a glance end up serving another purpose.
E.g. You might think on the base of high underbrush promoting forest fires that we should cut down underbrush and remove dead trees from forests to limit fires; many humans thought that. This turned out to be a terrible idea, as this effectively devastated habitat for insects and small animals that burrow into or hide under dead wood, pulled nutrients from the ecosystem that was previously a closed circle, and removed fungi food sources, which in turn were crucial for tree networks that facilitate water trades during draughts and warnings from insect infestations, and removed perches on which animals could flee during floods. Historically, the healthiest forests were the ones we just left the fuck alone, and many interesting natural sites are the result of destruction, but then having humans pull out.
The current Chernobyl site is a startling illustration of this; humans fucked up the area, but then, we stopped messing with it, and it turned into a stable biodiversity hotspot despite the radiation; animals migrated there to flee humans, thrived and multiplied. We’ll have to see how it gets through the war.
We also have nature reserves in Germany that are former military testing sites, that essentially got exploded to bits. The resulting habitat (lots of open ground with holes and shards and sand) was incredibly interesting for reptiles and insects, who also profited immensely from the fact that humans did not enter the area out of fear of being blown up by remaining grenades. Realising that having it grow back into a forest would ruin it for these animals, we decided to release natural grazers on there, which are wild and which humans cannot interact with. We got some leftover grazers which zoos said were hopeless and not reproducing no matter what they tried, so they would not be too sad if they got blown up. They did not get blown up. They are doing great. They are reproducing. The fact that nature thrives in areas which humans contaminated radioactively or littered with explosives, simply because we stop going there and messing with it, is simultaneously hopeful and depressing to me.
Forests doing fine if just left alone might change with climate change though; assisted tree migration will likely be needed here, as trees to not migrate the distances fast enough naturally to keep up with the rapid changes. This is currently being extensively trialed in Europe.
Dams are also bad for other reasons, because they tend to wipe out the varied shallow water, shore and flooded and then drying marshland habitat that is so crucial for biodiversity, for the survival of many birds, amphibians and insects that are endangered, and even fish; young animals often hide in dense vegetation in shallow water to hide from predation and stay warm, and a deep river with standing, deoxygenating water or fast currents is a completely hostile habitat for them; they reduce migration options for animals and hence genetic diversity as populations become practically isolated from each other, they interrupt nutrient exchanges.
Which is very unfortunate, because they are one of the leading options we have for storing renewable energy for winter, which is a massive hurdle, and getting renewable energy in winter without the insect and bird deaths current wind energy causes.
Sorry for the long rant this late. I really care about wild lands. They are incredible systems.
Realising that having it grow back into a forest would ruin it for these animals, we decided to release natural grazers on there, which are wild and which humans cannot interact with.
Odd that your cautionary tale about humans accidentally ruining wilderness includes a story about humans successfully releasing animals into a new environment to keep it safe.
Not a new environment. These animals were native in this environment, and humans had hunted them to regional extinction. We first hunted the wolves to regional extinction, seeing them as evil predators eating our livestock. Then the grazers’ population exploded, and they ate all out food, so we hunted them to extinction. It turns out they had kept the forest at bay, and the whole ecosystem was wrecked, and we lost the reptiles and insects too. Bombing it ironically restored the lack of forest, and the insects and reptiles came back, but as the forest regrew, they were threatened again. And after that point, we basically just reversed our steps to how it had been before we messed with it. Put the grazers back, and a fence around. Monitored from a distance. Saw it had returned to a stable state. Stopped messing with it.
Allowing the large grazers and apex predators back is essential for rewilding. We had a project in the Netherlands where they decided to skip the wolves, and the necessary land for balance. The grazers massively multiplied, and then mass starved, and humans completely lost it.This is beginning to fix itself—the huge amounts of dead grazers seem to be attracting the wolves. They have crossed the border and are reestablishing. The whole return of wolves in Europe was unplanned, just a result of us having fixed the ecosystem so it could support them again, and them crossing back in from a reservoir in the East. But for many of these animals, they have been pushed incredibly far out of their original range, and in that scenario, assisted migration speeds things up a lot. Similar with trees.
Putting the original apex predators and original grazers back is very, very different from “hey, you know what Australia needs? Rabbits!”
And it is not so much a story about humans ruining nature in general. But about the fact that stable natural systems include destruction, and that what looks like optimising from a human’s standpoint often fucks the balance up. This is a valuable lesson to learn for bio-hacking, too.
The increased damage is due to building more on the flood plains, which brings economic gains. It is very possible that they outweigh the increased damage. Within standard economics, they should be, unless strongly subsidized insurance (or expectation of state help for the uninsured after a predictable disaster) is messing up the incentives. Then again, standard economics assumes rational agents, which is kind of the opposite of what is discussed in this post...
The straightforward way to force irrational homeowners/business owners/developers to internalize the risk would be compulsory but not subsidized insurance. That’s not politically feasible, I think. That’s why most governments would use some clunky and probably sub-optimal combination of regulation, subsidized insurance, and other policies (such as getting the same community to pay for part of the insurance subsidies through local taxes).
″ While building dams decreases the frequency of floods, damage per flood is afterward so much greater that average yearly damage increases. ”
This is fascinating. Should we not be building dams? Could we say the same thing about fighting bushfires, since fighting them increases the amount of fuel they have available for next time?
Short answer: Yes. Forest fires are a natural and necessary part of forest development, and controlled burns are a long-standing indigenous practice. There are trees that will not start new generations without a fire; the seeds are dropped into the ashes, which let them crack open from heat, and they need the new sunlight access and nutrient access from the fire to get established. Fires also keep on top of pest populations and diseases, which can otherwise reach astronomical numbers and completely wipe populations. And if fires are frequent, each fire will stay small, as it will soon run into the area affected by the last fire where there is no fuel, and stop. The lack of fuel means they do not flicker high, and they do not run hot, so the inside and top of the larger trees remain fine. The contained area means they can be fled. So most mature trees and large animals will survive entirely.
The build-up of fuel due to fire suppression, on the other hand, leads to eventual extreme fires that are uncontainable, and can even wipe out trees previously considered immune to fire, such as sequoias, and reach speeds and sizes that become death traps for all animal life, as we saw in Australia.
Going back to indigenous fire management is all easier said than done, though; nowadays, human habitats often encroach so closely on wildlands that a forest fire would endanger human homes. And many forests are already so saturated with fuel that attempting a controlled burn can get out of hand.
But the fire management policies that got us to this point are one of many examples where trying to control a natural system and limit its destructive tendencies is more destructive in the long run, because the entire ecosystem is already adapted to destruction, and many aspects of it that seem untidy or inefficient or horrible at a glance end up serving another purpose.
E.g. You might think on the base of high underbrush promoting forest fires that we should cut down underbrush and remove dead trees from forests to limit fires; many humans thought that. This turned out to be a terrible idea, as this effectively devastated habitat for insects and small animals that burrow into or hide under dead wood, pulled nutrients from the ecosystem that was previously a closed circle, and removed fungi food sources, which in turn were crucial for tree networks that facilitate water trades during draughts and warnings from insect infestations, and removed perches on which animals could flee during floods. Historically, the healthiest forests were the ones we just left the fuck alone, and many interesting natural sites are the result of destruction, but then having humans pull out.
The current Chernobyl site is a startling illustration of this; humans fucked up the area, but then, we stopped messing with it, and it turned into a stable biodiversity hotspot despite the radiation; animals migrated there to flee humans, thrived and multiplied. We’ll have to see how it gets through the war.
We also have nature reserves in Germany that are former military testing sites, that essentially got exploded to bits. The resulting habitat (lots of open ground with holes and shards and sand) was incredibly interesting for reptiles and insects, who also profited immensely from the fact that humans did not enter the area out of fear of being blown up by remaining grenades. Realising that having it grow back into a forest would ruin it for these animals, we decided to release natural grazers on there, which are wild and which humans cannot interact with. We got some leftover grazers which zoos said were hopeless and not reproducing no matter what they tried, so they would not be too sad if they got blown up. They did not get blown up. They are doing great. They are reproducing. The fact that nature thrives in areas which humans contaminated radioactively or littered with explosives, simply because we stop going there and messing with it, is simultaneously hopeful and depressing to me.
Forests doing fine if just left alone might change with climate change though; assisted tree migration will likely be needed here, as trees to not migrate the distances fast enough naturally to keep up with the rapid changes. This is currently being extensively trialed in Europe.
Dams are also bad for other reasons, because they tend to wipe out the varied shallow water, shore and flooded and then drying marshland habitat that is so crucial for biodiversity, for the survival of many birds, amphibians and insects that are endangered, and even fish; young animals often hide in dense vegetation in shallow water to hide from predation and stay warm, and a deep river with standing, deoxygenating water or fast currents is a completely hostile habitat for them; they reduce migration options for animals and hence genetic diversity as populations become practically isolated from each other, they interrupt nutrient exchanges.
Which is very unfortunate, because they are one of the leading options we have for storing renewable energy for winter, which is a massive hurdle, and getting renewable energy in winter without the insect and bird deaths current wind energy causes.
Sorry for the long rant this late. I really care about wild lands. They are incredible systems.
Odd that your cautionary tale about humans accidentally ruining wilderness includes a story about humans successfully releasing animals into a new environment to keep it safe.
Not a new environment. These animals were native in this environment, and humans had hunted them to regional extinction. We first hunted the wolves to regional extinction, seeing them as evil predators eating our livestock. Then the grazers’ population exploded, and they ate all out food, so we hunted them to extinction. It turns out they had kept the forest at bay, and the whole ecosystem was wrecked, and we lost the reptiles and insects too. Bombing it ironically restored the lack of forest, and the insects and reptiles came back, but as the forest regrew, they were threatened again. And after that point, we basically just reversed our steps to how it had been before we messed with it. Put the grazers back, and a fence around. Monitored from a distance. Saw it had returned to a stable state. Stopped messing with it.
Allowing the large grazers and apex predators back is essential for rewilding. We had a project in the Netherlands where they decided to skip the wolves, and the necessary land for balance. The grazers massively multiplied, and then mass starved, and humans completely lost it.This is beginning to fix itself—the huge amounts of dead grazers seem to be attracting the wolves. They have crossed the border and are reestablishing. The whole return of wolves in Europe was unplanned, just a result of us having fixed the ecosystem so it could support them again, and them crossing back in from a reservoir in the East. But for many of these animals, they have been pushed incredibly far out of their original range, and in that scenario, assisted migration speeds things up a lot. Similar with trees.
Putting the original apex predators and original grazers back is very, very different from “hey, you know what Australia needs? Rabbits!”
And it is not so much a story about humans ruining nature in general. But about the fact that stable natural systems include destruction, and that what looks like optimising from a human’s standpoint often fucks the balance up. This is a valuable lesson to learn for bio-hacking, too.
The increased damage is due to building more on the flood plains, which brings economic gains. It is very possible that they outweigh the increased damage. Within standard economics, they should be, unless strongly subsidized insurance (or expectation of state help for the uninsured after a predictable disaster) is messing up the incentives. Then again, standard economics assumes rational agents, which is kind of the opposite of what is discussed in this post...
The straightforward way to force irrational homeowners/business owners/developers to internalize the risk would be compulsory but not subsidized insurance. That’s not politically feasible, I think. That’s why most governments would use some clunky and probably sub-optimal combination of regulation, subsidized insurance, and other policies (such as getting the same community to pay for part of the insurance subsidies through local taxes).