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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Thanks to Peter Boise for
forwarding on the below article:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;background:white'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><img width=314 height=91
id="_x0000_i1027" src="cid:image001.jpg@01CE2F9F.1F916190"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:9.0pt;background:white'><font size=1
face=Arial><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Permanent Address: <a
href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/03/26/butterflies-and-bombs/"><font
color="#222222"><span style='color:#222222;text-decoration:none'>http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/03/26/butterflies-and-bombs/</span></font></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<h1 style='background:white' id=postTitle2><b><font size=3 color="#222222"
face=Georgia><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'><a
href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/03/26/butterflies-and-bombs/"
title="Permanent Link to Butterflies and Bombs">Butterflies and Bombs</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:21.75pt;
background:#F1F1F1'><span class=byline><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>By Laura Jane Martin | </span></font></span><span
class=datestamp><font face=Arial>March 26, 2013</font></span> <font size=1
color="#666666" face=Prelude><span style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:Prelude;
color:#666666;text-transform:uppercase'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'><a
href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/files/2013/03/NCWRC110176.jpg"><font
color="#19437c"><span style='color:#19437C;text-decoration:none'><img border=0
width=448 height=296 id="_x0000_i1028" src="cid:image002.jpg@01CE2F9F.1F916190"
class="alignleft size-full wp-image-6059" title=NCWRC110176></span></font></a>The
<a href="http://www.fws.gov/nc-es/insect/stfrancis.html" target="_blank">St.
Francis’ Satyr</a> is small, brown, and fabulously rare. Once found
across North Carolinian sedge meadows, the federally endangered butterfly is
now restricted to a few square miles. Its historical habitats, openings
maintained by beaver dams and lightning fires, are increasingly threatened by
intensive agriculture. The only place that currently harbors the species is
closed to the public for reasons of national security.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>Ecologist <a
href="http://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Ehaddad/" target="_blank">Nick Haddad</a> has been
visiting <a href="http://www.bragg.army.mil/Pages/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Fort
Bragg</a> military base in central <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">North
Carolina</st1:place></st1:State> for ten years with net, notebook, and
sharpie in hand. He has special permission to work in the bomb ranges, where
hot fires from artillery rounds scorch the earth – much like lightning
would – allowing sedge meadows and their resident butterflies to persist.
An explosive ordinance disposal expert must accompany them on each trip. Nick
laughs: “The expert will point out a 40 mm shell while I watch
butterflies. We make a good team.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>Having myself only
seen a few flat line drawings of the St. Francis’ Satyr, I ask Nick to
describe it. “It has a subtle beauty,” he says, “a background
of brown intersected by red-orange stripes and rows of silver-blue eyespots.
Oh, and it is the slowest, most sedentary butterfly I’ve ever seen. Its
favorite activity is just sitting there.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>While we tend to
think of butterflies as bright flyers – most have evolved to forage on
flowers in open grasslands – Satyrs are part of a small group that has
evolved to live in places surrounded by forest. Fittingly, they are named after
the Satyrs of Greek myth, roguish and subversive companions to Pan and Dionysus
that roamed the woods playing their pipes. With inconspicuous behaviors, tiny
caterpillars, and a three day adult lifespan, they can be a frustrating species
to work with. After hundreds of hours of searching, last summer Nick’s
team finally found one caterpillar in the field, by accident, when a student
dropped his sunglasses next to an inhabited sedge.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>“Something
interesting happens in the field almost every day,” Nick says,
“whether that’s soldiers dropping from the sky, Black Hawk
helicopters flying low over the field site, or a truck towing a howitzer. I
tell my students that they’re acclimated to research when they can tell
the difference between thunder and bombs dropping.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>The St.
Francis’ Satyr monitoring project is part of a collaboration between the
U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), the Environmental Protection Agency, and the
Department of Energy that funds <a href="http://www.serdp.org/" target="_blank">ecological
field research on military lands</a>, everything from deep sea mapping of sperm
whales to climate change assessment in Alaskan boreal forests. With over three
hundred installations that cover nearly thirty million acres, the DOD’s
ecological resources are vast. And because the DOD restricts access to large
tracts of land, many installations protect unique habitats. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Fort</st1:PlaceType> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Bragg</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>,
for example, encompasses much of the intact longleaf pine savannah in the
South. On the other coast, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Camp</st1:PlaceType>
<st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Pendleton</st1:PlaceName></st1:place> spans sixteen
miles of undeveloped Californian shoreline and sustains over 1250 species,
eighteen of them threatened or endangered.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>The <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military
and ecological research might seem an odd match, but their histories are deeply
entwined. During the nineteenth century many biological expeditions were
motivated by military interests and funded by the federal government. Lewis and
Clark’s 1804 expedition across the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> was for the express
purpose of documenting plants, animals, and other resources that could be
exploited commercially. During the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Navy employed
botanists to survey western Pacific islands. Such federal support of ecological
research continued into the twentieth century, skyrocketing after World War II
when “radioecology” became a centerpiece of the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> government’s
Atoms for Peace program.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>Connections between
ecological research and the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
military remain strong. For example, the National Park Service is currently
collaborating with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Nuclear
Threat Initiative, and Russian research institutes to <a
href="http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/upload/ycrar01-2.pdf"
target="_blank">develop a vaccine</a> for brucellosis, an infectious disease
that affects humans, livestock, and bison in the <st1:place w:st="on">Yellowstone</st1:place>
area. <em><i><font face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Brucella
abortus</span></font></i></em>, the bacterium that causes brucellosis, was
identified as a potential biological weapon during the Cold War. In response,
the former <st1:place w:st="on">Soviet Union</st1:place> invested heavily in
studying the disease.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>What would an
ecology of war look like? War, by definition, brings disturbance and rapid
change. While rapid change often favors weedy species – species that,
because of their close associations with humans, we tend to devalue – on
occasion it can favor species we value. This observation has led biologist Thor
Hanson and colleagues <a
href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01166.x/abstract"
target="_blank">to contend</a> that in some cases the weakening of
sociopolitical frameworks during wartime can “confer ecological benefits
through altered settlement patterns and reduced resource exploitation”;
that war can be a “conservation opportunity” when militarization
restricts human activity. There are examples of species that have rebounded
with war. One such species is the European plaice, a flat fish whose numbers
skyrocketed during WWI because of reduced commercial fishing. Other biologists
have praised areas abandoned during insurgent activity – such as the <a
href="http://www.npr.org/programs/re/archivesdate/2004/mar/tigers/"
target="_blank">Hukawng Valley tiger reserve</a> in Myanmar, the <a
href="http://www.protectedplanet.net/sites/115179" target="_blank">Maquenque
National Wildlife Refuge</a> in Costa Rica, and <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/13/wildlife-thriving-korean-demilitarised-zone"
target="_blank">Korea’s DMZ</a> – as hotspots of biodiversity.
Biological refugia created with land mines, razor-wire fencing, and forced
emigration.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>But the argument
that war is good for biodiversity is a bleak one. It suggests that humans are
unable to occupy the same spaces as other species. There are currently
twenty-nine armed conflicts occurring, or more, or less, depending on who is
counting, and war preparation is estimated to occupy nine million square miles.
Must biodiversity conservation come through human suffering? In taking the bomb
field as nature’s salvation, don’t we assert our inability to share
the world?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>Recently a number of
biologists have called for a more hopeful ecology, an ecology of “<a
href="http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/070046" target="_blank">novel
ecosystems</a>” or “<a href="http://ecotope.org/anthromes/"
target="_blank">anthromes</a>.” Unlike traditional geographical
frameworks like biomes, these new frameworks emphasize that humans and other
species <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090722/full/460450a.html"
target="_blank">do coexist</a>, sometimes successfully. Indeed, over 75% of the
Earth’s terrestrial surface has been impacted by human action. Humans are
moving more earth and producing more reactive nitrogen than all other
terrestrial processes combined – not to mention <a
href="http://www.pnas.org/content/98/10/5466.full" target="_blank">global
extinctions</a> and climate change. Humans must therefore count as a component
of ecosystems – an important component of ecosystems, these biologists
contend.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>To many it will seem
obvious that humans are part of their environment, but ecologists have
historically <a
href="http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100716/full/news.2010.359.html"
target="_blank">ignored humans</a> in their studies. This is changing.
Conservationists are also taking heed. Many things that humans do can promote
biodiversity – conservation, after all, is a human action.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>The St.
Francis’ Satyr is a living juxtaposition of butterflies and bombs that
challenges the borders we take for granted between innocence and corruption,
nature and culture. Though butterflies might symbolize peace and happiness,
metamorphosis and rebirth, the St. Francis’ Satyr can only do so in bomb
fields. They are a muddled metaphor, a humanized wildness.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 color="#222222" face=Georgia><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'>We say that we
understand ecosystems: What’s the difference between thunder and bombs
dropping?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:18.75pt;
line-height:18.0pt;background:white'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Image: <a href="http://mcgawphoto.com/" target="_blank"><font
face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia'>Melissa McGaw</span></font></a></span></font><font
color="#222222" face=Georgia><span style='font-family:Georgia;color:#222222'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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