Conservation With Kate

Photo by Keiran White (@keirancwhite)

There is a lot of talk around Christmas about what to do and what not to do - especially this year with COVID-19 and discussions over whether it's okay to see people, what regulations to follow, etc. etc. Equally, reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions around a time of excessive eating and hyper-consumerism is hard to get your head around.

Stuff like global pandemics and existential crises (e.g. climate change) aren't super festive, and are not really what you want to focus on at this time of year. So I have written out some really simple steps to have a more sustainable Christmas:

Recyclable wrapping paper and sellotape (or at least remove your sellotape before recycling the paper)
Sustainable crackers! Apparently Christmas crackers are a British thing and we do love them, but they're not very sustainable. Not only are they single use, but they are often filled with plastic toys you never use or even see again after 25th December. My mum's solution to this was pouches - she filled them and so put things in we'd actually want (we kept the jokes, and had chocolate instead of a toy). You can also get recyclable crackers.
Sustainable presents! Buy your loved ones things they can use and keep for life, and products that will reduce their waste - e.g. water bottles, coffee cups, make up removing cloths, refillable deodorants, shampoo bars, or high quality sustainable made clothes made to LAST
Support local businesses for your Christmas shopping! Shopping local reduces emissions from transport.
Get organised (she says, publishing on 13th December...) BUT next day delivery is a massive emitter of greenhouse gases. The rush to deliver things in time for Christmas means even more vans, planes, ships transporting products around. If you are organised and there's no rush for your products to get to you, we wouldn't need this surge in transport leading to extra vehicles on the roads and even more emissions.

I have purposefully not delved into some of the bigger topics around a green Christmas (e.g. the meal and the tree) because I wanted to keep this simple and light hearted - something we all deserve nearing the end of a tough year.
If you want to read more about having an eco-Christmas, I recommend this article by Fi Watters for SheSapiens.

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** This is a repost of a blog I wrote for SheSapiens **

If you take only one things from this article, let it be the title: shark nets kill sharks.

When I say shark nets, what I referring to are nets that are deployed across stretches of coastline near popular beaches in order to keep water users safe from being bitten by a shark. Marketed as a necessity, shark nets are plugged to the public as a something to keep people safe from dangerous, human-eating sharks. It is assumed that without these nets, hungry sharks would have easy access to vulnerable swimmers and we’d either not be able to go in the water, or go in at our peril. This is a lie.

Shark nets do not prevent sharks from getting close to beaches. Firstly, they do not form a barrier to sharks. They are suspended in the water column, and there is a gap above them, below them, and between them on both sides. Sharks can literally go over, under, or around the nets if they want to. What’s even more interesting is that in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, the majority of the sharks caught in the nets are caught on the shoreward side. Therefore, the sharks had made it past the nets and were caught in between the beach and the net when swimming back out to sea (away from swimmers). Secondly, the design of nets is not to act as a barrier, but to entangle, catch and kill large sharks.

Calling these lethal devices shark nets is the first big marketing win. They are actually gill nets. As in, fishing nets. Gill nets are used by commercial fishermen, and shark nets are the same nets: just on bigger scale for a bigger fish, like a great white shark. If beaches that have shark nets advertised that they have gill nets, we would avoid a lot of misconception (i.e. that these nets form a barrier).

Source: Cape Town SharkSpotters

Another important point to touch on is the non-target nature of gill nets. By this what I mean is, non-target species are also often caught in the net. This is known as by-catch: when you catch something that you didn’t intend to. Turtles, whales, dolphins and smaller sharks all get caught and die in these nets. These are animals that pose no threat to human life. Their only mistake is living in the ocean and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some critically endangered and endangered species have fallen victim to shark nets, such as the humpback dolphin in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa (Atkins et al. 2016).

One of the biggest issues surrounding shark nets is that people are largely unaware this is happening. However, the managers of beaches that sign off on these nets are not technically lying to us. If you look for the correct information about shark nets – i.e. they’re are designed to catch and kill sharks, do not form a barrier to shark, and the majority of sharks are caught swimming back out to sea – you’ll find it. But you have to look. You have to be deliberately searching for this information, and so you basically have to already know it to find it. They may not be lying, but they are not forthcoming with the truth.

I think this is deliberate. It’s not exactly a good look for them to promote that they kill sharks, along with lots of other species. But this omission of truth means that the public opposition that I imagine would be there, is missing. Campaigns to end this culling, and to promote human safety AND shark conservation, a coexistence of both, are either not there or not loud enough to be heard.

Conservation-wise, the biggest issue with these shark nets is that they violate internationally agreed responsibility to protect endangered species. In Australia, the use of these nets goes against the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act. Several species of so-called ‘dangerous’ sharks are endangered, and much of the by-catch is too. Furthermore, sharks carry out critical ecosystem functions as apex predators. Removing them from the system could have cascading consequences for marine life and ecosystem services (natural processes that directly or indirectly benefit humans).

BALANCING HUMAN SAFETY WITH SHARK CONSERVATION

You might be reading this and be conflicted. Yes, killing sharks for just existing in their natural space seems harsh, but if people want to continue recreationally using the water in areas these sharks exist, which encourages tourism and thus has huge direct and indirect economic benefits, then we do need to do something to keep people safe.

So what can we do?

Firstly, it’s important to understand that sharks do not attack people. Sharks bite people sometimes, but incredibly rarely. And these bites are not a calculated malicious attack. The primary theory of why this happens is curiosity on behalf of the shark. Sharks cannot come up and ask us what we are, or touch us to figure it out. Their way of identifying objects or creatures is to bite them and see. There is also a theory that sharks mistake humans (often on surf boards in wetsuits) for seals. That’s why humans are rarely eaten by sharks: they bite us, realise we are not at all what they wanted, and leave. It’s just unfortunate for us that the force of a curious bite from a great white shark could take your leg off.

Sometimes sharks are just aggressive, particularly juveniles. But again, it’s incredibly rare. If you consider how many people have encountered sharks and not been bitten, or the number of people who have swam at beaches where sharks frequent and not been bitten, you get some idea of just how unlikely being bitten is.

Finally, there are shark management strategies that are harmless to sharks, but keep people safe. The Shark Spotters Programme in Cape Town is the most notable and successful to date. A spotter sits at a high vantage point (Cape Town is ideal for this kind of programme with mountains situated adjacent to popular surfing beaches). They use a flag system to signify level of risk or shark activity. If a shark is spotted, the white flag is raised and an alarm goes off notifying everyone to get out of the water. The water is evacuated until the spotter deems it safe for people to return. The flag flying also indicates how recently a shark has been spotted, and how good the spotting conditions are.

There are other options too if you don’t have a conveniently placed mountain. New technologies are in the works, including cameras that detect movement in the water. They use machine learning technology to identify sharks based on how they move, so they would be able to tell if the motion they detect is a shark. There are wetsuits you can buy that are supposed to camouflage you into the water column based on a sharks visual system, and individual shark repellent devices you can attach to yourself.

There is also such thing as an exclusion net! A net that actually does form a barrier to sharks AND does not kill them! These nets form a complete barrier from the water surface to the sea floor, creating an enclosed space for swimmers which marine life cannot enter. The mesh of the net is small (45mmx45mm) and square which reduces entanglement risk. An example of this is also found in Cape Town, at Fish Hoek beach, where a section of the bay is enclosed from sharks. The net is retrieved every evening and deployed every morning, to minimise environmental impact.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Overall, it’s safe to say I do not agree with lethal shark management. I believe it is not only possible, but essential, to promote coexistence with sharks. These days there are ways to recreationally use the oceans and let sharks live. Some beaches, such as in Cape Town, lend themselves easily to shark spotters or exclusion nets. I acknowledge that this is not the case everywhere, and more work is needed to figure out universal solutions or technologies.

But, an ocean without sharks is no ocean at all, and to kill these animals for our own enjoyment of their home is senseless. It’s time to leave shark nets in the past.

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** This post is a repost of a blog I wrote for SheSapiens **

There is a stigma of perfectionism around environmentalism which arguable does more harm than good. By definition, perfection is unattainable. Therefore, the concept of perfectionism is more alienating than it is inspiring. When it comes to environmentalism, this can be damaging.

CHOICES

It is impossible to live a zero impact life. Just by existing, you are exhibiting a carbon footprint. Equally, all products have a carbon footprint. But we need certain things to survive and so we have to engage in some level of consumerism. Therefore, we do inevitably buy things which contribute to our carbon footprint.

However, you can make “better” or “worse” choices. For example, most of us have to go to work. Let’s say you live 30 minutes away from work. You can either get the bus or drive yourself. The “better” choice here is the bus: the bus is driving the journey anyway and if you’re on it, then that’s one less car on the road.

That was a relatively simple example: choice 1 (bus) has a much lower carbon footprint than choice 2 (car). But the thing with environmentalism is, it’s inherently complex. What if the bus takes 1 hour and the car takes 30 minutes? Furthermore, what if the more obviously “greener” choice, isn’t what it seems?

Let’s say the zero waste store is a 30 minute drive from where you live, but a regular supermarket is a 5 minute walk. Do you drive to the zero waste store, your boot/trunk brimming with Tupperwares and tote bags, to avoid plastic packaging on your food; or do you walk to the supermarket and accept that your pasta and vegetables might be individually wrapped in plastic?

Environmentalism involves constant trade-offs like these, and it’s important not to beat yourself up for not being perfect. It’s also important not to be deterred from trying to make environmentally conscious choices. Just because you can’t be perfect, doesn’t mean you can’t help.

WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTALISM?

Another added complication of environmentalism is, it’s an umbrella term for a lot of different stuff. Tackling climate change, preventing pollution, and conserving wildlife: all of these (massive) movements come under ‘environmentalism’. While they have similar overall objectives (a more sustainable and greener future), they are nuanced in their approaches and multifaceted in their aims. Balancing every branch of environmentalism in every decision you make is almost impossible. Balancing every branch of environmentalism overall in your lifestyle is much more achievable and much more beneficial.

THE ACHILLES HEEL

Convenience is the Achilles heel of most environmentalists. The ‘easy’ sustainable choices often do not have the biggest impact. Yes, it’s great you use your reusable coffee cup and don’t accept straws anymore, but neither of those things massively affect your carbon footprint or prevent the decline of endangered species. Plastic pollution and climate change are often conflated together, whereas their only real overlap is the carbon used in the manufacturing and distribution of plastic products. If you want to help tackle climate change, then you need to make choices that reduce your individual carbon emissions. If you want to tackle plastic pollution then you need to make choices than minimise how much single-use plastic you are using and dispose of plastic in a sustainable way so it doesn’t end up on land-fill. If you want to tackle the decline of biodiversity, then you need to make choices that conserve nature and wildlife.

Some sustainable choices are easier and cheaper than the alternative (e.g. reusable coffee cups or moon cups). But sometimes it’s quicker to jump in the car. It’s also ‘simpler’ to stick with what you know. Some people don’t want to learn to cook vegetarian food or stop buying from cheap well-known fast fashion giants over sustainable fashion brands. If you stick with the norm, you don’t have to do any research, go anywhere new, or try anything different. Many people don’t want to sacrifice convenience for sustainability, and until sustainability becomes the norm, this will continue to hinder the movement.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Strive for progress, not perfectionism. Accept that you can never be the perfect environmentalist, and use this to motivate you to be the best you possibly can. Don’t worry that you cannot be 100% zero waste, flawlessly vegan, carbon neutral all the time or save every species yourself. Just worry about what you can do and inspiring others to do the same. In the words of Earthrise Studio:

“If you have to be perfect, we’d have a very small movement.”

We do not need a few perfect people: we need everyone to TRY.

Here’s some simple things anyone can do:

Minimise your single-use plastic waste. Reuse plastic before recycling it. Throw away as little as possible.
Minimise your carbon transport footprint: utilise public transport as much as you can (if/when it is safe to do so with the pandemic) and walk/cycle short journeys.
Minimise your meat consumption. Start by cutting down and gradually reduce it. Why not try going 4 or 5 days a week without meat?
Compost! 6.6million tonnes of food was wasted in the UK in 2018, 70% of which could have been eaten.
Buy second hand clothes.
Support local and sustainable businesses.
Support conservation efforts and organisations.
Only plant indigenous species in your gardens and homes. Avoid invasives or introduced species which could negatively impact local wildlife.

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One of the joys of social media is that you have control of the content you see. Therefore, aside from advertising space, your feed looks how you want it to. You can choose to fill it either with just your friends and family, with celebrities you admire, cooking channels, fitness videos or wildlife photography. There are communities on all social media platforms tailored to specific interests, and so you can find yours.

Overall, this is a great thing. It means you can remove toxic content from your feed at will and it means you are never forced into seeing something you don't want to. Equally, it means you can have direct access to what interests you most.

However, for scientists and conservationists, this can be an issue. Communication is a key aspect of research: informing relevant stakeholders and the public of your findings is a crucial aspect of the scientific process. Social media can be a great way to do this. Many scientists use social media as a tool to their advantage, myself included.

But when you look at who is following you, you often see you're in an echo chamber. The majority of your followers are fellow scientists or conservationists, or at least have a keen interest in your field. For conservation, this worries me. The people who don't care about the environment or climate change, or maybe even don't believe in it, are no where to be seen. Essentially, you're preaching to the choir.

Now this can be great. Meeting and interacting with like-minded people is incredible gratifying. I've definitely found it inspiring to know that there are lots of people out there just like me: who care deeply about these issues and wish to help. But these aren't the people who would benefit most from this content.

I started thinking about this when a friend said she loved my feed, but found it overwhelming and hard to understand sometimes. She's not a scientist and hasn't ever studied conservation or climate change. She has attended protests about climate change and I would count her as someone who cares about the future of this planet and her impact on it. But she self-admits not to understanding these issues. I would wager I'm the only conservationist she follows, and only because I am her friend.

As she is someone who cares about the issues, this isn't so bad. But what about all the people out there who don't? And not because they're bad or selfish people, but because they simply don't understand them? And maybe they don't understand them because they've never had access to the right information? Understanding how to fix this is one of sciences greatest challenges.

But the thing is: everyone does have access to the information, because it's all on social media. Of course, social media isn't peer reviewed. In fact there's no review process whatsoever and anyone can post something and claim it's true. But, there is a lot of accurate, clear scientific information shared on social media everyday. A lot of well known scientists are verified and share resources to back up their statements. Unfortunately, a lot of the time they're sharing this to someone who already knows, someone already converted, and not the people who need to hear it most.

Now, just because something is on social media does not mean everyone who could access it is choosing not to, for whatever reason. Algorithms are designed to show you what you want to see. So if you've never expressed an interest in climate change publicly online before, the algorithm is not going to point you in the direction of climate scientists of activists. The people we need to target are the people who know nothing about these issues already. But how do we reach them if they don't know who we are, and we don't know who they are? How to we break out of the echo chamber?

I honestly have no idea. I'm very open to suggestions. I always want this blog and my instagram to be somewhere anyone can come to learn about conservation. But I have no control on who clicks on my page. I can't force someone to read this, and the only people likely to click on it are people who already care, either about the topic or me. How do I access everyone else? How do we make people care about conservation?

It should be simple. If we don't tackle climate change, millions, if not billions, will die. Our lives will never be the same and we will all suffer the consequences. The science alone should prompt people to want to do everything they can to stop this from happening. But it's not. And we can't blame ordinary people for this. The gravity of the situation is not effectively communicated and when it is, it's easily dismissed. The actions of governments do not back up the words of science, and if the government isn't taking it seriously, why should you? This is the attitude of a lot of people, about more than just climate change, and I don't blame them for it. How can we?

But if we know this problem exists, how do we solve it?

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At the beginning of the pandemic, there were a lot of parallels drawn to climate change. You can see why: disaster on a global scale, disproportionate impacts on those less privileged, both systematic and individual change necessary to combat the problem. Many environmentalists also took the opportunity to highlight the global panic around coronavirus contrasted with the startling lack of panic relating to climate change.

I think the more obvious parallel of the pandemic to a conservation issue is the spread of invasive species. Invasive species are species that occur outside of their native range AND cause negative impacts to the indigenous species or ecosystems in their new space. Grey squirrels in the UK are a classic example. Due to their introduction, for ornamental reasons by humans in the 1876, red squirrels have declined almost to the point of extinction. Grey squirrels are more generalist and so out-compete red squirrels for food and space, meaning reds have been pushed out. For example, red squirrels find tannins in acorns unpalatable, whereas greys can digest them fine. Another classic example of a successful invasion is of two lionfish species in the USA, Caribbean and Mediterranean. Lionfish are endemic to the Pacific (red lion fish; Pterois volitans) and Indian (devil filefish; Pterois miles) Oceans. It is thought their invasion into the Atlantic was a result of exotic pet owners dumping them when they realised they could not look after them (they're are predators and can be aggressive). A small number were thought to be released in the 1980s, and since their population has exploded. They have few predators in these new environments and their arrival has had severe implications on the native fish and coal reef systems.

The reason I link invasive species to COVID-19 is that invasive species and zoonotic diseases sometimes spread in similar ways. Just like a virus, invasive species do not pay attention to country borders or boundaries, and globalisation enables the spread of invasive species through travel - via airplanes, boats, or just carrying them on you (eg insects or bacteria). As with the grey squirrels and lion fish, humans are responsible for a significant number of cases where invasive species have been introduced. During the invasive species module in my CB masters, I drew the parallel that we spray planes for diseases, but not invasives. We are much more diligent of our impact on the planet when we are the victims. But our impact on the planet goes far beyond our own species. COVID-19 is showcasing to us how powerful nature is, and gives an insight into how easily things can spread around the shrinking world we’ve created.

Zoonotic diseases are diseases that spread from animals to humans and cause illness in humans. They are caused by harmful germs like bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses. They can spread from animals to humans in various ways: through both direct and indirect contact, through eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water, or through vectors (e.g. ticks, mosquitoes). Scientists believe COVID-19 spread from animals to humans at a wet market in Wuhan, China.

The current way we treat the natural world is damaging. We know that we are polluting the planet and destroying natural habitats at an alarming rate. What this pandemic has done is show us how these actions are also incredibly harmful to us. We have been playing with fire, and now we've been burnt.

If the way we treat wildlife does not change, this will happen again. Professor Paula Cannon of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California said: "Humans are increasing the odds of diseases happening as we move into wild areas and catch wild animal.s We are creating the circumstance where it is only a matter of time when this was going to happen, and it will only be a matter of time before it happens again."

As we continue to encroach on wild space, continue to travel so much, and continue to disregard nature as we have been doing, the spread of zoonotic diseases and invasive species will persist. Every invasive species case is different, but there are simple ways to help minimise their spread:

In the same way you must wash your hands to avoid corona, wash your clothes when you visit new places.
Take all your rubbish with you (even biodegradable produce).
Never release your pets - re-home them if you don’t want them or can no longer look after them.
After leaving any water body (river, lake, ocean etc.) clean & dry everything thoroughly - from swimming stuff to surf boards to boats! The tiniest little creatures can remain if not and you might mistakenly transport them to a new home. Same goes for hiking gear: clean it thoroughly before entering a new system.
Keep your pets out of waterways where possible. They can act as a vector for invasive species.
Join removal efforts.
Report invasive species you find to local nature trusts/organisations. Take pictures and mark your location if you can.
If a species is classed as invasive, do not breed, buy, import, sell or keep this species as a pet.

And remember during this pandemic, many species are face their own version of COVID-19 everyday because of us.

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Pages

BALANCING HUMAN SAFETY WITH SHARK CONSERVATION

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

CHOICES

WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTALISM?

THE ACHILLES HEEL

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Here’s some simple things anyone can do:

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