Apologies to John Donne for the parody, but don’t ask on whom the quoll tells because it tells on you, or at least on your “wise” species. The Australian marsupial quolls became an endangered species when they developed an appetite for invasive poisonous cane toads. So, humans intervened to save the quolls by transplanting them to a couple of islands called Astell and Pobassoo in 2003. On the islands, the quolls recovered and proliferated. Then, in a typically prideful move indicative of our belief in our superiority over Nature and in a demonstration that we can “fix” it, Christopher Jolly of the University of Melbourne and some others decided to reintroduce some of the island quolls into Kakadu National Park.*
It seemed to be a reasonable move. And they had guaranteed that the quolls wouldn’t die off because they swallowed poison. They had trained some of the quolls not to eat cane toads, so what could go wrong?
Murphy’s law, of course. If there’s potential for an unintended outcome in any human interference with Nature, chances are pretty good that that outcome will occur. Dingoes ate the reintroduced quolls. The “island” quolls had no innate fear of dingoes, no sense that the scent of a dingo meant danger. The reintroduced quolls were less wary of the predators.
What’s to say? It seems that a more reasonable approach in reintroducing any animal species is to make sure it knows its predators. But who foresaw the weak link in the chain made by human decisions? Humans introduced the invasive frogs, humans tried to save the quolls, humans reintroduced the quolls to the mainland, and now humans have to figure a way to make island quolls aware of dingoes. Of course, all the “fixing” implies that there aren’t other dangers reintroduced quolls might have to face, dangers for which they are ill prepared.
Is there a lesson? Sure, probably several. Nature is a bunch of things, right? Like rocks, and trees, and air, for example. Nature is also a bunch of processes, interactions among the bunches of things in sometimes very complex ways that range from the micro- to the macroscopic. And many processes are cycles and sub-cycles with intermixed occasional influences introduced from “outside”—sometimes as abruptly as an incoming comet.
I don’t know about you—but I can guess—but I have a tendency to see the “obvious,” such as the decimation of quolls by their feeding on poisonous frogs for which they had no evolutionary training. And I, like those Australians who tried to save the quolls, would have looked for the most immediate causes of the most apparent consequences.
Object and process. We’ve become involved with both, but we’ve found that every time we use or alter objects, we also involve ourselves in some process. Take several examples: We love our beaches, don’t we? We vacation on them. We build on them. We destroy their dunes. And then we try to “fix” the problem. We build slatted “snow” fences, for example, to capture sands to make new dunes, and we restrict access to those reestablished dunes. Or we widen beaches through the construction of groynes (rock piles built perpendicularly to the beach face), hoping to capture sands transported by the waves in the surf zone, usually in a prevailing direction. So, we stop the movement of sands in one place only to find we rob the sands from a place farther along the beach where the longshore transport of sands would have deposited them. Or we build on cliffs at the bottoms of which waves constantly cut, only to find that our eventual choice is limited to shoring up the cliff temporarily or moving the building; sea cliffs have always formed and have always been undercut. “Clods,” to use Donne’s word, “will be washed away by the sea.” Our belief in our foresight and mastery usually comes at great expense and ultimate loss of the stability we sought.
In almost every instance of human control of nature, we find the root of future problems whose solutions exacerbate natural changes and disruptions. Nature has always changed, and organisms like quolls have come and gone through processes unrelated to the recent invasion of interfering humans; check your neighborhood for living dinosaurs or giant sloths for proof.
Nature always bounces between equilibrium and disequilibrium in its objects and processes. Weather under high pressure eventually gives way to weather under low pressure; calm gives way to storm, and vice versa. In our observation of the obvious and our desire to make it permanent, we impose either consciously or accidentally, something or some process we believe to be “better” than the prevailing circumstance.
We’ve been living a trial-and-error existence during the entire history of our species, and the errors won’t stop just because we think we have learned our lessons. In its objects and processes, Nature still has lessons to teach.
So, now, if you want to keep quolls on the mainland of Australia, you have to figure a way for them to survive under the threat of dingoes. You have to go out of your way to “educate” quolls. You just caused yourself another time-consuming, money-consuming task that offers no guarantees that in teaching quolls to fear dingoes, you might introduce another unforeseen disequilibrium, like a runaway quoll population and possibly some disease they might carry to other animals and humans.
Homo sapiens sapiens? Don’t ask on whom the quoll tells; it tells on thee.
*Warren, Matt. This endangered Australian marsupial was set to make a comeback--until it stopped fearing wild dogs. Science, June 5, 2018. Online at http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/endangered-australian-marsupial-was-set-make-comeback-until-it-stopped-fearing-wild
It seemed to be a reasonable move. And they had guaranteed that the quolls wouldn’t die off because they swallowed poison. They had trained some of the quolls not to eat cane toads, so what could go wrong?
Murphy’s law, of course. If there’s potential for an unintended outcome in any human interference with Nature, chances are pretty good that that outcome will occur. Dingoes ate the reintroduced quolls. The “island” quolls had no innate fear of dingoes, no sense that the scent of a dingo meant danger. The reintroduced quolls were less wary of the predators.
What’s to say? It seems that a more reasonable approach in reintroducing any animal species is to make sure it knows its predators. But who foresaw the weak link in the chain made by human decisions? Humans introduced the invasive frogs, humans tried to save the quolls, humans reintroduced the quolls to the mainland, and now humans have to figure a way to make island quolls aware of dingoes. Of course, all the “fixing” implies that there aren’t other dangers reintroduced quolls might have to face, dangers for which they are ill prepared.
Is there a lesson? Sure, probably several. Nature is a bunch of things, right? Like rocks, and trees, and air, for example. Nature is also a bunch of processes, interactions among the bunches of things in sometimes very complex ways that range from the micro- to the macroscopic. And many processes are cycles and sub-cycles with intermixed occasional influences introduced from “outside”—sometimes as abruptly as an incoming comet.
I don’t know about you—but I can guess—but I have a tendency to see the “obvious,” such as the decimation of quolls by their feeding on poisonous frogs for which they had no evolutionary training. And I, like those Australians who tried to save the quolls, would have looked for the most immediate causes of the most apparent consequences.
Object and process. We’ve become involved with both, but we’ve found that every time we use or alter objects, we also involve ourselves in some process. Take several examples: We love our beaches, don’t we? We vacation on them. We build on them. We destroy their dunes. And then we try to “fix” the problem. We build slatted “snow” fences, for example, to capture sands to make new dunes, and we restrict access to those reestablished dunes. Or we widen beaches through the construction of groynes (rock piles built perpendicularly to the beach face), hoping to capture sands transported by the waves in the surf zone, usually in a prevailing direction. So, we stop the movement of sands in one place only to find we rob the sands from a place farther along the beach where the longshore transport of sands would have deposited them. Or we build on cliffs at the bottoms of which waves constantly cut, only to find that our eventual choice is limited to shoring up the cliff temporarily or moving the building; sea cliffs have always formed and have always been undercut. “Clods,” to use Donne’s word, “will be washed away by the sea.” Our belief in our foresight and mastery usually comes at great expense and ultimate loss of the stability we sought.
In almost every instance of human control of nature, we find the root of future problems whose solutions exacerbate natural changes and disruptions. Nature has always changed, and organisms like quolls have come and gone through processes unrelated to the recent invasion of interfering humans; check your neighborhood for living dinosaurs or giant sloths for proof.
Nature always bounces between equilibrium and disequilibrium in its objects and processes. Weather under high pressure eventually gives way to weather under low pressure; calm gives way to storm, and vice versa. In our observation of the obvious and our desire to make it permanent, we impose either consciously or accidentally, something or some process we believe to be “better” than the prevailing circumstance.
We’ve been living a trial-and-error existence during the entire history of our species, and the errors won’t stop just because we think we have learned our lessons. In its objects and processes, Nature still has lessons to teach.
So, now, if you want to keep quolls on the mainland of Australia, you have to figure a way for them to survive under the threat of dingoes. You have to go out of your way to “educate” quolls. You just caused yourself another time-consuming, money-consuming task that offers no guarantees that in teaching quolls to fear dingoes, you might introduce another unforeseen disequilibrium, like a runaway quoll population and possibly some disease they might carry to other animals and humans.
Homo sapiens sapiens? Don’t ask on whom the quoll tells; it tells on thee.
*Warren, Matt. This endangered Australian marsupial was set to make a comeback--until it stopped fearing wild dogs. Science, June 5, 2018. Online at http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/endangered-australian-marsupial-was-set-make-comeback-until-it-stopped-fearing-wild
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