EnvironmentalReview · 2007. 1. 31. · success were for the three different plans.Itoldthemwhat...

EnvironmentalReviewAMonthly Newsletter of Environmental Science and Policy

Volume Ten Number Six June 2003

CONTENTS:

MANAGINGLAKEOKEECHOBEEFOR

EVERYBODYAlanSteinman

WOLFRECOVERYINACHANGINGLANDSCAPEDavidMladenoff

enough water; the sport fishery wantsthe lake lower so that bass habitat isn�tdrowned out; the people on the coaston the receiving end of the drainagecanals don�t much like having theirestuaries turn to freshwater every timethere is a big release from the lake.

Lake Okeechobee faces threemajor environmental problemsaswell:it has excessive phosphorous loads,which increases its tendency towardsoxygen depletion; it is undergoing arapid spread of nuisance and exoticplants, which is hurting the fisheriesand changing the lake in undesirableways; and it is undergoing extremes ofhigh and lowwater levels because it isbeingmanaged formultiple and oftenconflicting purposes. Management of

The ManagedRecession of LakeOkeechobee

Introduction:

In the early part of the 20th CenturyFloridians drained thewetlands be-tween Lake Okeechobee and theEverglades to the south to make wayfor farms, in the process disconnectingthe natural plumbing that fed a steadyflow of water to the Everglades. Todayit costs tens to hundreds of millions ofdollars a year tomanage this artificialwater works, and almost no one ishappy with the results.

Lake Okeechobee is the secondlargest body of fresh water in the U.S.(only LakeMichigan is larger), with anaverage depth of nine feet. The lakeprovides drinkingwater for 6millionpeople and irrigation for $1.5 billion�sworth of agricultural products a year;and it has extensive sport fisheries andrecreational value. But probablymostimportant is the lake�s role in regulatingwater in south Florida. Flooding in the1920s killed several thousand people,which led the Army Corps of Engineersto modify the lake with canals andlevees for flood control. Today excessfresh water from Lake Okeechobee,water that once supported one of thebiggest wetlands in the world, is sentby way of canals into the ocean.

The lake is nowmanaged to keepits levels within bounds, but there aremany competing interests. Farmerswant to keep the lake high so they have

the lake is controlledbyapoliticallyappointed board which does its best tomeet its constituents' needs, but itrecently was caught in a politicalcrossfire worthy of a comic opera.

In the spring of 2002 the Govern-ing Board of the South FloridaWaterManagement District acting upon thebest science available, decided to lowerthe lake levels to address some of theenvironmental problems that haddeveloped. This was followed by anunexpected and severe drought, whichlowered the lake to record low levelsand which set most of the stakeholdersin the region at each other�s throats.

We spokewithAlan Steinmanabout his experiences as the recentdirector of the Lake Okeechobeerestoration program.

ER: Professor Steinman, what is yourtraining?

AS: I obtained my Ph.D. at OregonState University working on streamecology. I also worked on Mt. SaintHelens andCrater Lake althoughmydissertation was on algae-invertebrateinteractions and their effect on thetaxonomic structure, physiognomy,and biochemistry of the algal assem-blages in streams. My training as anaquatic ecologist includes nutrientcycling, primary production, ecosys-tem processes, and understanding theimpacts of disturbance, particularly theimpacts of humans in ecosystems. I didmy postdoctoral work at Oak RidgeNational Laboratory and was then hiredas a research scientist there for anothertwo years, working on nutrient cycling,ecosystem restoration, and disturbance

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ecology. I am now the director of theAnnis Water Resources Institute,which is part of Grand Valley StateUniversity. The Institute integrateseducation, research, and outreach.Prior to coming here I was thedirector of the Lake Okeechobeerestoration program for the SouthFloridaWaterManagementDistrict and was with the WaterManagement District for eightyears. In that capacity I oversawa restoration program thatinvolved about fifty people, with afairly substantial budget ($20 to$30million per year), whichinvolvedengineering,planning,research, monitoring, regulation,and real estate acquisition; it waspretty much a cradle to graveprogram on how to restore thatecosystem.

When I first moved to Floridain 1993 most of the attention wasfocused on the Everglades. Theywere in the process of settling thefederal legislation, theEvergladesForever Act. Although that was inthe spotlight, eventually people�sattention started gravitating northto Lake Okeechobee.

ER:What is the connectionbetween the Everglades and thelake?

AS:Historically, the lake andEver-glades were contiguous. When lakelevels got too high, maybe five feetabove its normal state, it would top anearthen berm at its southern end andenter directly into the Everglades as aforty-mile wide sheet flow of water. Itwas a wide, slow-flowing river. That�swhy Margaret Stoneman Douglascalled the Everglades theRiver of

Grass.Now the dike surrounds the lake,

which in effect disconnects the lakefrom the Everglades. The area south ofthe lake, thousands and thousands of

acres, has become the EvergladesAgriculturalArea,which is dominatedby sugar cane but also includes rowcrops. Then south of that are thedifferent parts of the old naturalEverglades that have been diked. Inany case, if we�re talking hydrologi-cally, the real connection now isbasically one of the canals. The sheetflow is long gone.

ER:Why did this become a problemnow?

AS:A series of events in the 1990striggered this increased interest in the

Lake. For several years SouthFlorida was wetter than averageand the lake did not have anopportunity to recede the way itmight do under a normalhydroperiod.Lake level isregulated by the U.S. ArmyCorps of Engineers and theSouth FloridaWaterManage-ment District according to aschedule.

ER:What is a normalhydroperiod in the lake?

AS:Normal is a relative termfor such a managed system, butclearly amore naturalhydroperiodwould includewater levels falling each spring,which is the end of the normaldry period in south Florida.However, Lake Okeechobee isnot a natural lake by any means.An earthen dike surrounds thelake, which was built for floodcontrol. When the lake gets toohigh the integrity of the dike isthreatened so the Corps willopen the floodgates and release

water out to the estuaries. These canalsare part of the flood control project thatwas built in South Florida in the fortiesby the Army Corps. The canals can getrid of a lot of water. The Corps wascharged to build a system for floodcontrol, and they did a very good job.

ER:What was there before the Corpsdikedit?

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AS: TheLake waspart of thelargestwetland inNorthAmerica, butthe wholearea wouldget floodedfrom time totime. In thebig hurri-canes of1926 and1928 andthenagain inthe 1940s,over 90 percent of South Florida wasunder water. This degree of floodingcombined with the increasing amountof intensive urban and agricultural landuses in the area, helped catalyze theflood control efforts in the region.

ER:Where does the water go?

AS: They can open up the floodgates tothe west, in which case water ends upin the Gulf of Mexico, or to the east, inwhich case water ends up in theAtlantic Ocean, turning those estuariesinto freshwater at least temporarily. Somuch fresh water was being dis-charged out of the lake it would changethe salinity regime and, as youmightexpect, have a fairly negative impact onthe estuarine ecology, although it tendsto be relatively short term.

ER:What brought about this push tolower the lake?

AS: In 1998 we had a big El Niño. ElNiño in South Floridameansmore rainthan usual, and that resulted in the lakelevel getting very high. As a result wewere discharging lots of water from thelake, creating some impacts in those

estuaries. In fact, there was an algalbloom that was implicated in thedevelopment of lesions occurring onthe fishes, which became quite a mediaevent. The lesions look nasty; they arenasty. That was probably one of themain triggers that started focusingattention again on the way the lake ismanaged and the problems with thelake.

We received heavy rains through1999 and up to the spring of the year2000; at that point the Florida Fish andGame Commission�s surveys foundthat there wasn�t much in the way ofrecruitment of juvenile bass in the lake.Most of the good fish habitat, whichwas the submerged aquatic vegetation,was being lost because the lake levelswere too high and not enough light wasreaching the lake bottom.

ER:Who decides what to do?

AS: The South FloridaWater Manage-ment District is governed by a nine-member governing board, and thesegoverning board members are selectedby the Florida governor. They areselected to represent different geo-graphic regions of South Florida, aswell as different interests. It�s a

politically appointedboard andwerecognize that politics is part of theagency.

Going into the spring of 2000, thegoverning board was working withstaff trying to figure out ways toresolve this problem. (The reality of it isthe District usually goes from one crisisto another.) Staff went out to differentstakeholder groups around the SouthFlorida region, presented to them theproblems with the lake, and soughttheir ideas for solutions, recognizingthat not only every interest group had adifferent value that they placed on thelake, but also each region had a differ-ent value for the lake. You could have,say, a group of environmentalists whoare interested in saving the environmentas a whole, but they may be pittedagainst each other depending on whatgeographic region they are in SouthFlorida.

For example, the environmentalistsinterested in the Everglades wanted tomake sure that there wasn�t so muchwater coming out of Lake Okeechobeethat the nutrient-rich water would endup in the marsh and cause more loss ofthe native saw-grass to cattails.However, environmentalists concernedwith the lake wanted to see the lake


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levels reduced to bring back thesubmerged aquatic vegetation and torestore the fisheries. It was a bit of amanagementchallenge.

We came back with all this inputfrom the local people and variousgroups, and brought together theecologists, the planners, the regulators,the folks from the Army Corps ofEngineers, the South FloridaWaterManagement District, and the hydro-logic modelers, trying to piece thisinformation together in such a way thatwe could then bring a set of choices toour governing board.

ER:What remedies did you come upwith?

AS:Melding together the ideas that wereceived resulted inthree approaches: theno action base plan,which is self explana-tory; the moderate orpublic inputplan,which made someoperational changesbut did not causeanybody much pain; and then theshared adversity plan. A group ofhydrologic modelers and ecologists attheWaterManagement District put in alot of blood, sweat, and tears, under avery tight timeline, to develop a riskanalysis model for the three plans. Ipresented to the Governing Board at anEmergency Meeting, what our hydro-logic models indicated the chances ofsuccess were for each of the plans.

For example, if the lake levelstarted out on 14.85 feet on April 25th,what were the chances of meeting thatthirteen-foot level on June 1st? Thethirteen-foot level is somewhat arbi-trary. We couldn�t guarantee that if thelake dropped to thirteen feet that all thesubmerged aquatic vegetation wouldreturn, but that was our best profes-sional judgment.

ER:Was the recreational fishery theones who were screaming for help?

AS:Recreational and commercialfisheries using the lake.

ER:We�re talking aboutmillionsofdollars. It�s an interesting politicalproblem how to generate enough heatto make something like that happen.

AS: That�s a good point, and there wasa lot of heat generated by those people.They would come to the governingboard meetings every month. Theywould contact their local and staterepresentatives, who were contactingthe governor.

The person who was the head oftheHouseAppropriationsCommittee in

the state legislature represented the PortSaint Lucie area, which is one of theestuaries that was being hit by the lake.RepresentativePruitt�s involvementwas critical; he was interested insolving the lake�s problems becausethey were occurring in his own backyard, but also as the head of theAppropriationsCommittee, he had theleverage to do something about it. So itwas to our advantage and to hisadvantage that he get interested in this,and I developed a fairly close relation-ship with representative Pruitt becauseof our mutual desire to improve thesystem and reduce the amount of angstthat was going into this whole process.

ER: Saint Lucie was getting hammeredby releases?Was that it?

AS: That�s exactly it. They figured ifthey could solve the problems with thelake, that would result in less frequentdischarges into the Saint Lucie estuary.

ER: So there was some pain beingreported at that end too.

AS:Right. I mentioned the 1998 ElNiños, but also water releases alsooccurred up until 2000. People were sosensitized after those fish lesions werereported that every time somebodyfound a fish lesion after that theyattributed it to Lake Okeechobee, evenif releases weren�t occurring. It was anexcuse, and that again is human natureand perfectly understandable underthose circumstances.

At that point themedia had gottenonto the bandwagon.There was a cartoonin the PalmBeachPost, which showedtheFloridapeninsula,and in themiddle ofthe state where thelakewouldnormallybe was a toilet bowl.

ER:What was that all about?

AS: The phosphorus levels hadincreased threefold, so it wasn�t just amatter of water quantity. It was waterquality.We started seeing the blue-green algae dominating, which is anindicator of eutrophication. TheAudubon Society was interested in thechanges that were going on. Therewere lawsuits threatened by environ-mental groups.

ER:Where is the phosphorus comingfrom?

AS: In the 1950s a lot of the dairyfarmers were operating in theMiami�Dade County region, and as that land

After two large floods in the 1920s in which severalthousand people died, Lake Okeechobee was dikedand connected by canals to the ocean to provide floodcontrol for south Florida.


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dating back to 1994.The archive is searchable and available free to the public.

becamemore valuable they sold out andmoved north of the lake. The dairyfarms and cattle ranches in that area allwere putting a lot of extra phosphorusin the water. And since they wereinterested in getting water off the landas fast as possible to keep the land inproduction, there was not much naturalassimilation of phosphorus by thevegetation.Historically this landscapewas filledwithwetlands and had alotofassimilativecapacity, now itwas all ditched andwater went offquickly right intothe lake. Thephosphorusconcentrations hadgone from about 40parts per billion upto 110 parts perbillionby the timealot of this washitting the fan.

So we had awater quality issue;we had a waterquantity issue.There was atremendousamount of media attention. The sugarcane farmers south of the lake wereclaiming that the phosphorus going intothe Everglades wasn�t their faultbecause it was coming from the lake.There was a farmer against farmerissue that was emerging.

ER: The sugar farmers probably had

some validity to that argument, don�tyou think?

AS: I do. They certainly were gettingnutrient-rich water, and they were alsogrowing their cane on rich peat landsand so they did not have to fertilizemuch if at all with phosphorus. Buthistorically, wetlands would have beenlocated where the sugar cane farms are

now located, so we did lose somenatural assimilation thatwould havegone on. And though they might havebeen nutrient neutral in the sense thatthey weren�t adding more, they werenot helping the matter because if therewere a more natural land use, it wouldhave certainly helped theEverglades.

But that too can be debated as towhat�s appropriate or not. Some people

had suggested the solution was to teardown the dike and flood the sugar canefields. That�s a $2 billion a year indus-try and a well-connected industry, soyou just can�t do things like that.

In any case, I took the GoverningBoards through the risk analysis and Iexplained to them based on our hydro-logic models what the chances ofsuccess were for the three different

plans. I told them whatthe risks might be interms of the Everglades,the estuaries, and watersupply.At that time,April

2000,NOAA�sclimateprediction center wasforecasting that therewould be a one-in-fourchance of drought thefollowing fall.Thegoverning board took allthis information anddebated it and much tomy surprise theyapproved the sharedadversity plan, the mostaggressive plan. I did notexpect that.Weimmediately

opened the floodgates tolet water out of the lake. Then, as itturned out, May was the driest monthin recorded history in Florida. Droppingthe lake level down to thirteen feetwasn�t that big an operational decision.The real problem we thought we werefacing was keeping it at thirteen feet foreight weeks.We believed that eightweeks would be sufficient to allow newplants to germinate and grow to a stage

Introduced torpedo grass is overgrowing thousands ofacres of Lake Okeechobee's shoreline.


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where they could survive higher waterlevels. The problem is that this time ofthe year is the start of our wet season insouth Florida, when hurricanes come inand inflows to the lake increase. Inorder to keep the lake at thirteen feet wewould have had to keep thefloodgates open so that as watercame into the lake it would go outjust as quickly, which wouldhave probably caused someserious impacts to the estuaries.

ER:Youwould have lost yourflood control capacity.

AS:We�d keep flood controlcapability in the sense that we didnot have to worry about theintegrity of the dike. It�s just thatthe floodwaters would be goinginto the estuaries, which couldcause another salinity imbalance,and heaven forbid more fishlesions.

It turned out that we didn�thave to wait until June 1st to hitthirteen feet because May was sodry we met it on May 14th. Thenwe closed the floodgates, and itcontinued to be unusually dry. Infact, we had one of the worstdroughts ever in Florida, so thetiming was rather bad withrespect to water supply. The lakecontinued to drop precipitously.

Then in the winter of 2000-2001, our next dry season, thelake levels went down to thelowest levels ever recorded. Infact, once the level got below ten feetthere�s no longer enough head togravity feed water from the lake intothe irrigation canals.

The farmers in the agricultural areasouth of the lake had agreed to theShared Adversity Plan with the under-standing that if things got bad at leastthey�d be provided sufficient water tomaintain their crops. So theWater

ManagementDistrict obtained hugepumps, and spent millions of dollars topump water from the lake over thelevee to the canals so that the farmershad enough water to irrigate theircrops.

ER:Did the vegetation dowhat youhoped?

AS: The good news is that the vegeta-tion in the lake did return beautifully,and to this day it has stayed and is doingwell. Even now the lake levels are backup to fifteen feet, close to the levels that

triggered all of these problems, and thevegetation is doingwell.

ER: The District didn�t have a mandateto keep it at thirteen feet?

AS: No, but nobody wants tokeep it at a static level. Ideallyyou�d have a fluctuating level.Obviously you can�t controlMother Nature, but you try toanticipate things.LakeOkeechobee is a highlyregulated system, so you canchange some things but thereare many constraints in place.For instance, some peopledon�t want the water, and theyhave regulations to preventthat. In fact, as soon as westarted discharging water, LeeCounty (where one of theimpacted estuaries is located)filed an injunction to stop thedischarges, claiming that therewas no real emergency. Thegoverning board approved thereleases from the lake as anemergency order, which theyhave the legal authority to do,but Lee County claimed that itwasn�t an emergency and thatthe District was using the termto justify the release of water.They said it was an invaliddecision and they wanted tohave it overturned.We had to go to court andduring testimony, I had toexplain to the judge why the

water releases did truly constitute anemergency and that the lake was in direshape. I took no joy in that because,ironically, I started off at the WaterManagement District overseeing theoperations in this estuary, and wasconcerned with its ecological welfare. .And as an ecologist, you never want topit one ecosystem against the other.

The entrance to the St. Lucie estuary


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However, it�s a unique system in SouthFlorida.

ER: This is the drinking water reservoiralso?

AS:LakeOkeechobee is the potablewater supply for fivemunicipalitiesaround the lake that draw their waterdirectly from it, and it�s also the backupwater supply for southeast Florida. Italso helps to rechargethe aquifers, preventingsaltwater intrusion, andof course it�s usedheavily for irrigationandfor the utilities.

It is also part of thecross-Florida canal fromthe Saint Lucie estuaryto the Caloosahatcheeestuary, ironically thetwo estuaries that werebeing hammered byfreshwater. So nonavigation was occur-ring during the drought,I can assure you. Theycould not get throughthe canals and theycouldn�t get through thegates and locks.

ER: I imagine theshoreline looked likeagreat salt flat.

AS:Yes. TheWater ManagementDistrict had a fleet of helicopters andwe�d go out there on the float chopperand land on the sand bed of the lake thatwas totally dry. We went out there witha variety of media, ranging from localnews channels to national newspaperandmagazines. Themedia attentionwas overwhelming.

Even though I am convinced wedid the right thing, and would recom-mend a similar course of action again,the fact remains that even if we had

never done the managed recession, thelake still would have dropped down toall-time records because of thedrought. But the fact that we loweredthe lake right before the drought hit, leftthe impression in people�s minds thatwe had totally botched the managementof the lake.

ER: It would have gone down if youhad done nothing.

AS: Yes, but nobody knew that wewere about to go through a drought. Itwas the right thing to do at the time,given the problems we faced and theinformation we had. But if we had donenothing, the lake still would havedropped down to record levels.

ER:Was introduced species a signifi-cant part of the consideration or wasthata sideline?

AS:A little of both.We had a numberof factors we were relying on toconvince the governing board that itwas important to drop the lake. Themain one that I�ve focused on so far isthe regrowth of the submerged aquaticvegetation in order to restore thefishery.

One of the other factors that wasof concern were a couple of invasivespecies that were problematic inside the

lake. The one thatwas most problem-atic, and still is, iscalled torpedograss, Panicumrepens. Torpedograss was intro-duced from Europenear the turn of thelast century as aforage crop forcattle. It�s normallyan upland speciesbut it can toleratewet conditions.The littoral zone onthe western side ofthe lake, which iskey habitat for fishandwildlife, isstarting to beovergrown by thistorpedo grass.

There areabout 100,000

acres of shoreline marsh in the lake,and the torpedo grass in about fifteenyears had gone from negligible amountsto 16,000 acres. It forms huge monoc-ultures we refer to as the hayfields,after the VanGogh paintings. It lookedlike long amber waves of grain, only ithas a hearty rhizome, an undergroundroot, which is hard to kill. It�s ex-tremely poor habitat for sport fish.

ER: The bass don�t like it.

Lake Okeechobee is the second largest lake in the U.S.


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AS:No. The gar like it, but that�s aboutit. So although torpedo grass didn�texpand much under wet conditions, itcould take off as the water recededbecause that�s its preferred habitat. Sothere was a concern about the lakelevels going down far enough to let thetorpedo grass expand, as opposed tobringing the water levels up andkeeping it constrained.

On the plus side, when things getdry there�s an opportunity for treat-ment that you don�t have when condi-tions are too wet. The optimal treat-ment that we�ve found so far is a hotfire to burn it down to the soil, and thenlet the new shoots come back and thenhit the new shoots with herbicide to getit translocated down into the rhizome tokill it off.

Although the dry conditionspresent the potential for more expan-sion, it also presents a unique potentialfor treatment that you would not haveunder normal hydrologic conditions inthe lake. We took advantage of that. Wehad the largest prescribed burn everattempted in the state of Florida duringthe summer of 2000. We burned20,000 acres of torpedo grass.

ER: Is it stable now? Is it going torequire continualmaintenancewithtorpedo grass?

AS: I think all of South Florida requirescontinual maintenance. The Compre-hensive EvergladesRestoration Plan, atwenty-year, $8 billion project toremove some of that plumbing that theArmy Corps of Engineers put in, isbuying another twenty-five to fiftyyears of life for South Florida, in myopinion. But unless humans controltheir population growth, which is thedriver of all these problems, they aregoing to be on continuous maintenancemode. The lake is part of that.

In 1999-2000 the state legislature

Should Wolf ProtectionBe Relaxed?

Introduction:

Since being listed as an endangeredspecies wolves in the Upper Midwestincreased from about 700 animals in1974 to about 2,000 in 1996, with mostof the increase occurring in Minnesotaand the upper peninsula ofMichigan.As a result wolves were moving intonorthern Wisconsin. Wisconsin�sDepartment of Natural Resourcesstarted radio collaring wolves in 1979and by 1996 there were about 100wolves in the northern part of the state.David Mladenoff's research was aimedat finding out how much good wolfhabitat there was in the state, where itwas, and what made it good habitat forwolves. He used a geographic informa-tion system approach to map the placeswhere wolves were and to ask what itwas about those places that wasdifferent from other places. It turnedout roads, or rather the lack of them,are the best predictor of good wolfhabitat. That is, the more likely a wolf is

to come into contact with people, theless likely it will stick around orsurvive. In 1996 there were about 100wolves in northern Wisconsin; todaythey are up to about 380 animals, andthey are starting to cause some prob-lems, occasionally attacking livestockand hunting dogs. The wolf�s dramaticrecovery inWisconsin has highlightedsome of the conflicts inherent inmanaging the landscape for different,often conflicting purposes. Dave�sinterests have beenmore in the line ofunderstanding how the landscapechanges over the long haul in responsedifferent management practices anddifferent climate scenarios. His interestin wolves was and is secondary tounderstanding how the land changes,but wolves are giving us good cluesabout what trajectory the northernwoods are on now.

DavidMladenoff receivedhisPh.D. in forest ecology from theUniversity ofWisconsin. He hasworked for the Nature Conservancy inWashington state and inCalifornia, andalso theUniversity ofMinnesota�sNatural Resources Research Institute.He is currently a professor in thedepartment of forestry at the Universityof Wisconsin at Madison. We spokewith him about his work on under-standing how landscapes change andhow the wolf recovery fits into thatstory.

ER: Professor Mladenoff, what areyour group�s research interests?

DM:A lot of emphasis on landscapeecology. We�ve been doing broad-scalemodeling of forest change looking atdisturbance dynamics, historic windand fire patterns in the upper GreatLakes region, and also a few fine scalefield studies where people go out andsample things and get dirty.

ER:Where abouts?

passed the Lake Okeechobee Protec-tionBill, which laid out a comprehen-sive, fairly detailed restoration plan overa fifteen-year period to deal with theproblems of the lake. That includesnutrient control, water management inthe lake and the watershed, andinvasive species control. Some of itfolds into the comprehensive Ever-glades Restoration Plan and some of itis independent of it. The state allocateddollars to try and deal with those issues,so there is hope.


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DM:Mostly inWisconsin but also innorthernMinnesota and upperMichi-gan.

ER: How do wolves fit in with yourresearch?

DM: I often get inquiries from pro-spective graduate students, that areinterested in wildlife. They see mywolfwork and they want to do somethinglike that, or work on another carnivore.I always have to tell them that that�s notwhat I do and that they should look atsomeone who works inwildlife with carnivores.

My interest in wolveswas that they were formerlya significant component ofthe forest ecosystems in thisregion, and they were goneand now they are comingback. I was more interestedin its role in the forest andecosystem overall rather thanspecifically in wolves. Thatcontinues to be the case. I�vetried to convey how I see thewolf issue in a larger context.I think about ecosystems andhow we manage things andwhat does restoration mean,which is about the whole system aswell as certain species. We�ve got quitean interesting situation here.With thereduction of forest cutting in thenational forests in the Northwest, thehighest cut in the country is comingright here.

ER:When did you start looking at wolfhabitat?

DM:When we were first starting ourecological work ten years ago, wolveswere just coming back, they werespreading inMinnesota and just startingto show up in Wisconsin. Back thenpeople thought wolves require wilder-

ness and that�s why they were in theBoundaryWatersWilderness and theywere only spreading a little bit out ofthere.When it was finally apparentthere were packs in the northwest partof the state, Wisconsin DNR startedmonitoring them. They set a goal ofeighty wolves, and I don�t think anyoneever thought we would see that many inWisconsin. Then graduallywe realizedwolves don�t need wilderness. In factwhere there are more deer is wherewolves do the best.

ER:And that�s not old growth.

DM: That�s anything but old growth.I�m not the one who came up with this,but basically if we don�t kill wolves,either accidentally or on purpose, theyhave great fecundity and they�ll do finein many areas.

ER:What kind of areas?

DM: The first question was, We haveabout a dozen or fewer wolf packs inWisconsin, and what does this mean?This was ten years ago or more. DNRdidn�t know what it meant either. Arethey random? Are they not going to beable to persist? We thought that the first

thing to find out is if they were locatingthemselves randomly in the landscape.So we used geographic informationsystems to map northern Wisconsin tofind out what the characteristics are ofthe landscape where wolves are; whatare the characteristics of the rest of thelandscape, and are there more suchareas?We did find that wolves are notlocated randomly. It turned out that themain variable was road density. It�s notthat wolves don�t like roads; it�s justthat roads are a good measure ofhuman access which translates to

increase and intentional andaccidental wolf mortality. Roaddensity was themain variablethat correlated with wolfhabitat. So then we made astatistical model of the otherparts of northern Wisconsin thatare most like those that wolvesoccupied and we made a map ofwhat we thought was favorablewolf habitat.

ER:What does that mean interms of how many wolves toexpect?

DM: Wemade an estimate ofwhere wolf habitat was in

northern Wisconsin, and then weextended it to upperMichigan, whichwas starting to get a few wolves fromWisconsin. We said that based on theamount of habitat that we see, if thistop 10 percent of habitat, the best-quality stuff, gets filled,Wisconsincould have maybe 400 wolves andupper Michigan maybe 1,200. Thatwas an order of magnitude more thananyone had ever thought possible at thetime.

Then we waited and we did areassessment using newer data abouthalfway through, and themodel stillseemed to be working. We were a littlebit surprised because our model was


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based on a relatively small number ofwolves in the landscape at one point intime; it�s a recolonizing area and not astatic situation, and the landscape alsochanges. So we thought the modelwould need updating. We thought thatmaybe after a few years road densitywouldn�t be a good predictor any more,but it has continued to work fairly well,and it seems to workin other places too.We got the sameresults when welooked at the north-east. The modelbreaks down whereyou apply it todramaticallydifferentlandscapes, like themountainous areas ofthe West, becauseroads are much morerestricted there.

ER:What is themainline of your research?

DM:We�re doingbroad-scale forestmodeling lookingatwhat is going tohappen in northernWisconsin forests if the climatechanges; for instance if warmertemperatures might allow differentspecies to migrate in.

One of our projects is doingsimulations from the present, butwe�ve also been doing a lot of workwith a big historic data set. We�vespent about five years digitizing thepublic land survey, which is an amazingdata set. The public land survey dividedthe land into townships and sectionsand when they were surveying all thenew land, at every section corner andevery quarter corner they put a post inthe ground and they recorded the twoor four nearest trees and what the

species was, what their diameter was,what their distance was, and they alsorecorded wind disturbances and fire. Ifyou�ve had any ecology training, youknow that that�s basically the same aspoint-quarter sampling and it�s given usan incredible data set.

I�ve had students working withthat and I had one Ph.D. student finish

and one paper out and one going backto Ecology and one going toEcosytems, and another newer Ph.D.was going to dig much more intohistoric information of that time aswell. So we are getting this picture ofwhat the landscape was like.

So we�re doing this historic workand trying to see what both the forestsystems and disturbance regimes werelike in the past. It�s not so much anobjective for restoration, but it�s anawfully important benchmark to knowabout. That�s our approach.

Then we�re doing modeling work,which asks what would happen fromthe present if climate changed or if thedisturbance patterns changed. We can

simulate changes in forest managementand things of that sort. You�ve gotdifferent scenarios and differentamounts of change in those differentvariables. We�ve been working on thismodel also for about ten years, but it�sin the last five years that it�s becomemature enough that we�re making a lotof use of it now.

ER:What time frameare you looking at?

DM:We consider thelast thirty years meancondition. We don�tassume that there�sanyequilibriumbetween vegetationand climate. I don�tthink that�s ever thecase, even to the scaleof hundreds of years,because vegetation isalways chasingclimate. So we say,Here�s the knownrange tolerances ofthese different treespecies, and this iswhat mean specieshave been. Then what

if you increase precipitation or decreaseit and increase temperature, what willbe the consequences then?

ER: So you�re thinking longer term?

DM:At least a couple hundred years orso. The manuscript we have closest tobeing finished for submission is somesimulationwork on the BoundaryWaters in northern Minnesota, notspecifically looking at climate changebut looking at the trajectory of thatlandscape now. If forest managerscontinue to be concerned about fires,are they going to be able to keep thecomponents that they want to have


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there like red pine, for example? Theanswer is no.

ER:Has the landscape changed much?

DM: This landscape has changedtremendously. It was all cut over, andmost of it was burned and some of itwas farmed. Now it�s pretty much insecond and third-growth forest in thenorthern half ofthe state.

Wolveshaveincreased quite abit recently and alot of peoplethink that meansthat the ecosys-tem is healthy andbalanced andeverything is fine.The irony of thatis many of thepeople who arehappy about thewolf comingback, oppose thepractices that areresponsible for it;that is, thecontinuedmaintenance of young forests, and lotsand lots of deer.

Attitudes towards wolves havebeen changing. Wisconsin didn�t doany introduction of wolves, they justmoved in. The DNR said, Okay,they�re out there and we�ll monitorthem. DNR put quite a bit of moneyinto education, and in a decade and ahalf peoples� attitudes toward wolveshave changed dramatically. It�s positivenow, especially in the more urbanareas. Now we�ve convinced mostpeople that wolves are not all bad andthat we should leave them alone; and allof a sudden we have 350 instead ofeighty in the state and they�re startingto cause some problems. Their preda-

tion on livestock is probably the mostcommonproblem, and killing huntingdogs.

ER:Are they losing their fear ofhumans?

DM:Recently biologists are seeingpark-bear behavior in wolves in someplaces. We�ve protected wolves so well

that now they�re coming into contactwith people more often and they�refinding less reason to be afraid of us.Lately there have been a couple in-stances where wolves have attackedpeople.Biologists all over theworldsaid it never happens, they don�t do it,that they fear people, but now we knowthat in fact they do sometimes attackpeople.

We�re at this interesting placewhere after we�ve convinced people toleave them alone, now we�re going tohave to kill somewolves.

ER:But is downlisting the best way toprotect the wolves?

DM: I would like to see the wolfpopulation inWisconsinget a littlehigher, but I think in the long term thisdown listing is probably a good thingbecause it�ll give the state moreflexibility. If they have problemwolves,relocating them hasn�t been toosuccessful. They�re running out ofgood places to put them. Wolves don�tstay put too well.

The irony isif we let theagency kill a fewwolves nowwhen there areproblem wolves,we can probablystill increase thepopulation.Aslong as wolvesare a littlemorecautious ofpeopleandavoidgetting intotrouble on farms,thepopulationprobably can stillgrow. But if wecontinue muchlonger the way itis now where

they can�t manage too much, we couldstart to see a backlash against wolfrecovery.

ER:That would be terrible.

DM: There are all these conservationconundrums in the Bioscience paper,which is a littlemore philosophical.Weteach people to leave them alone andthat they shouldn�t be hurt, and nowwe have to tell them that we have to killsome. A lot of people get angry anddon�t make any distinction. Why can�twe leave nature alone? The wolves areback, they�re doing fine, and theecosystem is good, but at the sametime, we still have too many deer.

Wolves have been moving into Wisconsin from Minnesota.


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ER: There�s a human cost to that.

DM: There is, so there�s a balancingact with forest management in theregion. I wouldn�t say that across theregion that wolves are having muchimpact on deer population, not with amillion and a half deer inWisconsin.

ER:A couple hundred wolves aren�tgoing to do much about that.

DM: They�re not. The other thing is ifmanagement can allow the populationto grow a little more. We now knowthat the wolves are sometimes movingquite far when they disperse. If thepopulation of wolves inMinnesota getspushed back north, it seems logical thatwe�re going to have fewer disperserscoming down into Wisconsin fromMinnesota, which is what reestablishedthe wolf population in the first place.

So even though there are quite afew wolves now in Wisconsin, wedon�t know how many of those aredispersers that came in fromMinne-sota, or even how important that is.There could be a source-sink dynamicgoing on. where Minnesota has a lot ofwolves and they�re chunking out longdistances dispersers all the time, but infact we don�t know how many or howfar they go.

Wisconsin may not be in thesimplest sense a sink for the Minnesotapopulation, but it is a more precariouslandscape for a wolf. It seems likemaybe thewolf densitywill declinesomewhat in Wisconsin instead ofcontinuing to grow. We have highermortality inWisconsin, because thegood wolf habitat in the north ispatchier thanMinnesota. Again, it�sabout road access and coming intocontact with people, either by accidentordeliberately.

ER:Howmanywolves are you losingeach year?

DM: I don�t know the highest numberof collaredwolves that are killed in thedeer season. If the sample is four to tenand you�ve got sixty wolves collared,that�s a significant part of the wholepopulation. If that�s a sample of theentire population, perhaps 10 percent ofthewolves are getting killed during deerseason. That�s not trivial.

ER: How does that work? Is thatbecause they�re competing with peoplefor deer?

DM: I think some people do that. Ithink actuallywolves have a highfavorability rating on surveys amonghunters, but there are an awful lot ofhunters out there and they�re not all thesame. Again, in this broken-up land-scape in Wisconsin it gets prettysaturated and hunters move everythingaround.Wolves are more likely to beseen when there are more hunters in thewoods; a fair proportion of the popula-tion gets killed every year.

ER:How effective is hunting on deer?This has been an acknowledgedproblembybiologists sinceAldoLeopold�s time. Still it sounds likeyou�ve got a problem up there.

DM: I think in the whole state it seemslike the deer population is almost out ofcontrol. It�s difficult for the DNR toinstitute the kinds of management andhave people do the hunting that needs tobe done to control the population.There�s a statewide season, and thenthey have special seasons in certainareas where they determine they�re toomany. But in reality, the background toall that is there is a great deal of politicalpressure still to manage for a highnumber of deer.

ER: From the hunters?

DM: Sure. It�s a big hunting state andthey�rewell organized. Local legislatorsare strongly influenced by that, andtheywill get involved once in awhileand tell the DNR to back off. But wehave this added issue just in the lastyear where we�re seeing chronicwasting disease in deer inWisconsin.It�s in the southwestern part so far,west of Madison. With that, the DNRhas finally been able to get a ban onfeeding and baiting of deer becausethat�s a mode of transmission of thisdisease when deer are concentrated.They�re trying to eliminate or drasti-cally reduce the deer in the area wherethe infection is, but they have a littlemore ammunition to say that they haveto reduce deer population overallbecause there�s a high risk of thisdisease spreading and the deer popula-tion is too high.

ER: Is chronic wasting a prion causeddisease like mad cow?


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DM: Yes. It�s presumed to have comefrom game farm animals imported fromColorado, one of the few areas outWest where the disease occurs. This isthe first instance of chronic wastingdisease this side of theMississippi orthis side of the Plains even, and amongwildlife managers it�s a big concern.The worst-case scenario is prettyincredible when you think of howmanydeer there are from theMississippi tothe East Coast.

ER:We just saidthere are too manydeer on the land-scape. Perhaps thiscould knock themdown.

DM: But of coursea lot of people don�tfeel that. Deer are ahuge industry toevery state in termsof hunting, andpeople like to seedeer, so it�s a greatconcern at thewildlife and eco-nomic level. Thereare other scarypossibilities.Couldthis disease jump to livestock? Is itharmful to people?

ER:Especially peoplewho eat deermeat. I�m surprised we don�t know theanswers to those questions consideringthere is a potential for a public healthproblem.

DM: We�ve gotten some funding fromthe DNR and fromNational ScienceFoundation to start a research project inthat area west of here where they�retrying toeliminateordramaticallyreduce the number of deer to try to stopthe disease. Knocking down the deerpopulation in a large area like that is an

incredible landscape experiment. It�s amixed-forest agricultural landscapewith extraordinarily high deer popula-tions subsidized basically by agricul-ture. To look at the effect on the forestwith deer removal is an experiment at ascale of deer reduction that we wouldnever dream would be possible to do.So we will look at not only what�shappening in individual stands, but byradio collaring we�re going to look atwhat it means as far as how it changes

how they use the landscape patchinessoverall. It�s an incredible opportunity.

ER:How big is that area.?

DM: It�s the size of about a countyright now or maybe a little larger. Sothey�ve been trying to knock the deerdown as much as possible, but it�stough, it�s hard to sell politically, andthere are so many deer and then you geta 40 percent increase every spring. Youhave to kill a lot of deer.

ER:.That many deer is going to havesome big effects on the kinds ofvegetation and trees you get.

DM: The deer are an issue all over thestate because they have such a greateffect on forests ecology. This causestension between how people want theforests managed because many peoplelike deer and other people see thatthey�re a big problem. That includesnot only environmentalists but forestersas well.

My family has property on a lakeup north of Madison. It�s basically atypical forest up there: it�s about eighty

years old. It was pine, itwas cut over and then itburned and it came backin with a lot of aspenand birch. The aspenand birch are prettymuch at the end of theirlife cycle and they�redying back and we havea lot of open areas. Iknow these birches areseeding like crazy, and Iwondered why theyaren�t coming up. I gotdown on my hands andknees and found lots ofbirch seedlings, but theydon�t get more than twoinches high before theyget nipped off by deer.That�s true for many

other forest species, a lot of them thatwe�re more concerned about thanwhite birch maybe.

ER:What was the composition of thewoods before European settlement?

DM: It was variable. There are threebig, sandy, wash plains across thenorth, and those were predominantlywhite pine and red pine. About 6percent of the uplands in between thosesand plains was northern hardwoodswith hemlock being the dominant onthose larger wetter areas. It was adifferent landscape in terms of the


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structure of the forest, probably 60percent or more mature and oldgrowth. It was conifer dominated bothon the sand plains and on the wettersoil. The landscape has changeddramatically both in age structure andin going from a conifer to more of adeciduous-type landscape.

ER:My first suspicion on seeing thiswire service articleon down listingwolves was that theusual suspectswere at work again;that is, Republicanstrying to roll backenvironmentalprotections.

DM:Well that�strue too. There arethe usual suspectsat work. Every-thing is being donein all the federal agencies now, as muchas can be done administratively, tochangeenvironmental regulationswithout properly changing the laws,until someone takes them to court. It�sjust one thing after another. But there�sperhaps a confluence of interests herewhere the wolves are concerned. Thereare good people who think we need alittlemoremanagement flexibilityorwe�re going to be in trouble here, butthere are certainly a lot of people whothink it is all a conspiracy and weshould leave thewolves alone.

ER:What�s wrong with leaving themalone?

DM: Ideally that would be nice.Sometimes students say in class, Whydon�t we leave things alone? I have torespond by saying there is nothing onthe planet that is not managed. If youincludevarious kinds of unintentionalhuman effects, there�s nothing that�s

unmanaged. So unfortunately we can�toften say, Okay, that�ll be fine by itself.Leaving things alone is an activemanagement decision and it�s notpassive or necessarily benign at all.Leaving it alone has consequences,whether it�s for forests or an integralspecies like wolves.

This is something we talk about alot, and it often is tied in with the idea of

trying to restore ecosystems. In mycase we�re usually talking aboutforests. I think the first impulse formany people is passive restoration, thatwe�ll take this piece of forest and we�llstop logging it and leave it alone.Buteven then you�re not really leaving italone in a passive way that has noeffect other than that the trees grow.Leaving it alone is an activemanage-ment decision because it has a wholesuite of potential consequences. If youdon�t manage the forest, the trees aregoing to get old and the composition ofthe forest is going to change in waysthat some people might think is goodand others might think is bad.

There�s this idea that if we leavethings alone they�ll somehow return towhat they were 150 years ago, but itdoesn�t work that way. If we leave anisland of a few hundred hectares ofyoung forest alone under current deerpopulations and intensivemanagement

going on around it, most of thosespecies that were there 150 years agowon�t be able to come back; we�ll getsomething different. We�ll set theecosystem on yet another differenttrajectory, it�s not one that�s going toreturn to what it was.

There aren�t many places in theMidwestwhere leaving things alonemeans you stop fire suppression. Even

in theBoundaryWatersWilder-ness, with a bigblow-down afew years ago,there�s muchmore concernabout control-ling fires even inthat area.That�s one ofthe largestwildernessareas in thecountry.

We don�t have the same issue withfire suppression as out West becausewe don�t have such extensive areas ofthose kinds of fire-prone systems. Butin a sense it�s similar to theWestbecause there are people who saythinning and under burning to open upwoods, to open grown ponderosa pine,that that�s a total conspiracy betweenthe lumber industry and their support-ers. And it could be. People will usethings on both sides of an argument,and certainly that has been and some ofthe activities that have been proposedare more abuse, another way to meetone�s objectives. But at the same time,if you want that ecosystem and youdon�t want it to burn in a crown firebecause that�s not good for ponderosapine, it does take active management. Ithas consequences whether you leavethings alone or not.

DM:Historicallyyouhavehadappliedscientists and then academic scientists


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Table of Contents: Environmental Review Volume NineJanuary - December (2002)

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January

Womens' Health and the Politics ofAbortion: BarbaraCraneUnderstandingEvolutionCanHelpUsFightAIDS:StephenPalumbi

February

Deforestation and Cloud Forests inCostaRica:RobertLawtonOrganic FarmsHold Their OwnAgainstPests:DeborahLetourneau

March

HumanAppropriationofNaturalSystems:ChristopherFieldBioengineering Pesticides Into Plants:AllanFelsot

April

UnderstandingBiological Invasions inHawaii:DavidBurneySeaOtter Recovery in PrinceWilliamSound:DavidGarshelis

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FindingWildPlacesWherePandasCanLive:ColbyLoucksHavingFaith:AnEcologist'sJourney toMotherhood:ReviewedbyGeorgeWoodwell

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Measuring What Matters: An AlternativetotheDow:ClarkWilliams-DerryTheNaturalHistory ofHawaiianHoneycreepers:PaulBanko

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Aldo Leopold and the HuronMountainClub:CurtMeineUnderstanding the Threats to HawaiianHoneycreepers:LeonardFreed

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WhatWill It Cost toSavePipingPlovers?MichaelLarsonTheDecline of theAtlanticBluefin Tuna:ElizabethBabcock

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WhyAre Steller Sea Lions Declining?DouglasDemasterANewSpecies of Forest Elephant in EastAfrica:LoriEggertClassicsCorner:TimothyHarris

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FloridaPanthers:DownbutNotOut:DavidMaehrCanBiotechSaveEndangeredSpecies?WilliamConway

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Alaska's Glaciers and Climate Change:KeithEchelmeyerReintroduction of the MexicanWolf in theSouthwest:BrianKellyClassicsCorner:TimothyHarris

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and then environmental groups. I thinkgradually over the last couple decadeswe have more scientists, especially inacademia, willing to be more advocacyoriented. There has been the wholegrowth of conservation biology, forexample.

ER: This has been a big change in whatprofessors and scientists think isappropriate activity. They are morelikely to leave their ivory towers.

DM: I think there is also this percep-tion that people who are interested inenvironmental issues come from moreof an esthetic direction (which I wouldcall more naive) versus people who areconcerned about the environment andcome from more of a scientific direc-tion. It often is perceived that there�soverlap in goals, and there often is, butnot always, and I think that�s whereyou see some interesting conflictscome up.

I�ve been taken to task sometimesby industry people and sometimes byenvironmentalists for work that I�vedone or things that I�ve done or said. Ithink that�s a consequence of the moreurban esthetic, wolf on the sweatshirt

interest in the environment, which Ithink is good. It�s good to have pres-sure from interest groups on all sides,but at the same time we know thatmanagement issues are becoming morecomplicated. So how do scientistsadvocate when they have to disagreewith people who think you�re supposedto be their ally?


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