Paleozoology in the Service of Conservation Biology

Conservation biologists, restoration ecologists, and wildlife managers often select an ecological benchmark,1,2 ecological baseline,3 or historical landscape4,5 that they seek to recreate or maintain in an area. A benchmark is a goal toward which conservation activities are aimed; it is an ecological condition or process that is desired. Benchmarks vary in scale from a particular gene pool or range of phenotypes to the presence or absence of a species in an area of a few hectares to compositions of biological communities occupying tens to hundreds of hectares, as well as to ecosystems consisting of organisms, geology, fire regimes, and so on, as well as ecological and evolutionary processes.6–8 Typically, a benchmark is established by reference to the early historic period because written records are available and also because anthropogenic, particularly industrial-era influences, are usually undesirable. Conservation biologists realize that any chosen benchmark is a moving target given the vagaries of both particularistic contingencies and evolutionary histories.9 They worry about long-term climatic change and anthropogenic variables and their influence on plant and animal taxa and ecosystems.10,11 Conservation biologists findmultidisciplinary research necessary to contend with ecological, biological, and landscape degradation.12–14 The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network established by the United States National Science Foundation monitors, over long periods, how and why ecosystems and ecological variables and processes interact and operate.15 LTER recognizes that research must exceed a season or two, a year or two, or a even decade or two if we are to understand ecosystems. Conservation biologists grapple with the fact that ecosystems and landscapes are not static for natural and anthropogenic reasons.16 Their desire to manage a minimally anthropogenically influenced ecosystem introduces the difficulty of identifying the boundary between natural and unnatural.17–19 But nonanthropogenically influenced ecosystems are not always desired. For example, some anthropogenically introduced exotic taxa such as game birds in the western United States are economically beneficial and ecologically benign. The paleozoological record provides unprecedented data that reflect the long-term operation of many ecological and anthropogenic processes and may provide guidance to distinguishing effects of the two.20–23 My specific goal here is to show that paleozoological data are a significant source of information on benchmarks. I focus on mammals, but any taxon of plant or animal can provide data concerning a benchmark. My general goal is to encourage paleoecologists to consider how their research might be of value to conservationists and to publish their research in journals such as Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, BioScience, Ecological Restoration, and Environmental Management to inform conservation biologists of the value of paleoecological data. Paleoecologists publish in these venues, but they seldom identify the exact management implications of their observations.24–30 Perhaps this is because they believe it would be “dangerous” to offer suggestions outside their field of expertise.31 I believe, however, that we must make explicit suggestions because conservationists do not always perceive the value of R. Lee Lyman became interested in the utility of paleozoological data to conservation biology in the middle 1980s, when he was studying the morphometry of the prehistoric sea otter (Enhydra lutris) in the eastern Pacific Ocean. That interest expanded with his examination, in the late 1980s, of the controversy regarding the exotic or native status of mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) in Olympic National Park. Together with Ken Cannon, Lyman recently edited the volume Zooarchaeology and Conservation Biology.