Geoscience Reference
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Oregon and Washington (Bart and Forsman 1992; Carey et al. 1992; Lande
1988; Taylor and Gerrodette 1993). Attempts to predict what habitat config-
uration will permit the owl to survive are ecologically sophisticated because of
the extensive background of descriptive studies on this owl. But even with
maximum effort, the medium-term predictions are more uncertain than a
conservation biologist would like, particularly in the mixed logging-partial
preservation strategies.
If ecologists cannot at present achieve long-term predictions, we do have an
extensive storehouse of knowledge about what management policies will
not
work. The catalog of disasters is now large enough that, without additional
hypothesis testing, we can provide management agencies with sound advice
about many ecological problems. For example, designating no-fishing zones or
refuges for marine fisheries is an important conservation measure that we can
recommend without detailed studies of the mechanisms of dispersal and com-
munity organization in the marine community affected by overfishing.
Because ecological communities are open systems and are subject to a
changing climate, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to provide broad eco-
logical laws that apply universally in time and space. We should concentrate on
understanding and developing predictions for short-term changes in commu-
nities and populations. This understanding will be local and specific, and we
should not worry that our spotted owl understanding cannot be applied uni-
versally to all owls or all birds on all continents.
Recommendation 6: Concentrate on short-term predictions to solve local
problems. Learn to walk before running.
This recommendation to focus on the local and the particular is the complete
antithesis of what Brown (1995) recommends as a macroecological future for
ecology. There is a sense of frustration among ecologists that their chosen sub-
ject does not advance as rapidly as genetics or nuclear chemistry. Why is it so
difficult to design theory in ecology? Is it because we are not studying the right
questions? Not using the right methods? Do the textbooks we are using teach
us to focus on unsolvable problems, as Peters (1991) suggests? Lawton (1996)
gives an example of what he considers a critical question in biodiversity: Why
are there 2 species of a taxonomic group in one ecosystem, 20 in a second sys-
tem, and 200 in a third? I suggest that this is an unanswerable question, the
ecologist's analog of angels-on-the-pinhead, and you could waste your scien-
tific life trying to find an answer to it. But you will find in the literature almost
no discussion of which types of questions in ecology have proven to be unsolv-
