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This is a document I have written up to point out the absurdity and cruelty of the Government of Ontario's proposal. It has been submitted to all relevant government entities. Download a PDF here. Many other seabird specialists and wildlife professionals are also voicing their grave concerns about this proposal to the provincial government. Make sure you do the same: follow this link and submit comments before January 3rd, 2019. On proposed hunting of the Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) in Ontario; a scientifically baseless and environmentally naive proposition |
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Figure 1: Double-crested Cormorants at rest and in flight.
The Ontario government is proposing the creation of an open hunting season for Double-crested Cormorants from March 15 to December 31 each year, with a special classification as ``small game" in central and northern Ontario from June 16 to August 31 each year, which would allow even more hunters to target these birds during these weeks. The proposal (EBR 013-4124) is being justified as a ``management tool," a justification that has no scientific or ethical basis.
This document aims to summarize the current state of knowledge about the Double-crested Cormorant in and around the Great Lakes, and to critique the Government of Ontario's hunting proposal on all relevant points. The full EBR is appended to the back of this document in its original form. {\bf Please note that the window to submit comments on this EBR closes on January 3, 2019,} so do not wait to voice your concerns to the Ontario government.
Critique of EBR 013-4124
In this section, I quote a piece of the Government of Ontario's proposal and then critique it. The full text of EBR 013-4124 is reproduced in the Appendix of this document.
Point 1: "Double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) populations declined significantly in the Great Lakes from the 1950s to the 1970s primarily due to environmental contaminants affecting reproduction. Their numbers began to increase rapidly from the 1970s to the early 2000s, with the latest information indicating Great Lakes populations have since stabilized or declined slightly."
*** This statement is essentially accurate, but it neglects to mention two important points. First, Double-crested Cormorants are a native species to the Great Lakes. Second, before the human-induced contaminant-based declines of the mid-20th Century, they were hunted extensively. Population analyses of current and historical data indicate that cormorant populations were likely much higher than they are now in the Great Lakes before the advent of European settlement (Wires & Cuthbert 2006). The current population rebound is a common pattern for waterbirds in North America (Blight et al. 2015) and Europe (Grandgeorge et al. 2008) following protection from hunting in the early 1900s (North America) and late 1800s (Europe). The species is not overabundant in the region in any historical or scientific sense, in direct contradiction to the common assertions of many anglers and hunters (see a typical example at OFAH 2018).
Point 2: "There continues to be concerns expressed by some groups (commercial fishing industry, property owners) and individuals that cormorants have been detrimental to fish populations, island forest habitats, other species and aesthetics."
*** Dozens of studies over the past three decades have repeatedly shown that cormorants do not have a significant negative impact on commercial fish populations, with most of these studies targeted specifically on the Great Lakes. For example, studies on Lake Ontario indicate that fish most attractive to human fishermen (Lake Trout and Salmon) comprise less than 2% of cormorant diets, and that cormorants consume about 0.5% of critical prey fish, an insignificant number especially when compared against the 13% taken by sport fishermen (Weseloh & Collier 1995). Many other studies that fail to show a meaningful impact of cormorants on open fisheries are discussed in Reed et al. 2003. Moreover, it is well known that cormorant diets consist of mostly nonsport fish species like the invasive Alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) (e.g. see Belyea et al. 1999, Reed et al. 2003). Anglers have been shown to impose far more stress on their preferred fish populations than cormorants do on theirs (Ridgway et al. 2012).
On the other hand, evidence does exist that cormorants can negatively impact aquaculture systems (a distinct concern from openwater fisheries). However, it has been thoroughly documented that lethal management tools are not effective at solving this problem, and are likely to simply allow other piscivorous species to take the cormorant's place (see Reed et al. 2003 for detailed discussion and many relevant references).
If the Government of Ontario is truly concerned with the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem, then it would be wise to actually pay attention to what ecologists have to say on the issue. Management of piscivorous birds does not address the root causes of fish population instability or decline. Moreover, it directly contradicts current conservation measures, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. The most important factor affecting fish stock in the Great Lakes is the establishment of more than 150 exotic and invasive species, many of which have direct, documented impacts on the health of Ontario fisheries (e.g. see Belyea et al. 1999, Wires & Cuthbert 2006).
*** It is true that nesting cormorants (Figure 2) can drastically affect island forest habitats at a very localized level. Cormorant excrement can quickly kill trees and surrounding plant life, which of course will alter the local ecosystem. However, it must be emphasized that these changes occur at an extremely localized level; i.e.~there is no evidence that cormorants have an appreciable effect on forest habitat away from the immediate vicinity of their nesting and communal roosting sites.
Figure 2: Double-crested Cormorants at a nesting colony.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that cormorants are threatening island forest habitat in general. In fact, as a native species to the Great Lakes, the default ecological position would be that cormorants are simply active members of a healthy regional ecosystem. There may exist very particular cases where cormorant control is desirable (e.g. to protect the rare habitat of Middle Sister Island, Hebert et al. 2005), but in these cases population control measures must be justified scientifically and instituted only by trained wildlife professionals. Moreover, nonlethal control measures should always be considered first. Such techniques (e.g. habitat enhancement and social attraction) have been shown to be quite successful at relocating cormorants away from sensitive forest areas (Suzuki et al. 2015). Each potential case is unique; there are no generalizable reasons to justify cormorant control.
*** There is no evidence (outside of occasional anecdotal observations) that cormorants negatively affect other species (Cuthbert et al. 2002). In particular, Cuthbert et al. (2002) reported that cormorants do not negatively influence Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) or Black-crowned Night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) populations. While these species often compete (naturally) for limited nesting sites and can have similar ``detrimental" consequences on forest habitat, cormorants are the only species singled out for persecution under the guise of `wildlife management.' Cuthbert et al. (2002) explicitly advise that "cormorant control policy should not be justified by assumption of potential impacts on other waterbird species."
It is also important to note that some species may actually benefit from cormorant-induced habitat change. Dorr and Fielder (2017) pointed out that American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos), an officially `threatened' species in Ontario, may benefit from these habitat changes as they prefer to nest on remote islands with sparse vegetation.
*** The supposed negative effect on 'aesthetics' that cormorants can have is obviously entirely subjective. Birders are certainly likely to claim that cormorants have many positive aesthetic qualities. Moreover, it is important to once again note that Double-crested Cormorants are a native resident and nesting species of the Great Lakes. Thus, 'aesthetic' considerations seem rather irrelevant.
Point 3: "Create an open hunting season for double-crested cormorant from March 15 to December 31 each year across the province."
*** Even discounting all the previous information that stands in opposition to cormorant hunting, the Government of Ontario's proposed hunting season is gratuitously long. Crucially, it extends across the entire breeding season of the species, from approximately May to August. Cormorants generally nest only once per year, unless their nest fails early enough in the breeding season and, like most seabirds, they have a very high rate of mate fidelity (e.g. Aebischer et al. 1995). Thus, killing a single adult bird during the breeding season can have the likely consequence of wiping out that bird's offspring for the entire year. If hunting is permitted at or near nesting colonies, this could lead to nest abandonment en masse, condemning any chicks to death by starvation and/or exposure.
Ethically speaking, such a proposition is unacceptably inhumane and could easily destroy the relative health that this species' population has only recently begun to enjoy.
Point 4: "Create an exemption allowing small game licences to be valid for double-crested cormorant hunting in central and northern Ontario from June 16 to August 31 each year."
*** This policy would serve to only exacerbate the problems previously described. Such an extension of the cormorant hunt could be particularly deleterious given that this proposed small game license time frame would coincide with fledging at cormorant colonies, the time when young cormorants are at their most vulnerable and are poorest equipped to fend for themselves.
Point 5: "Establish a bag limit of 50 cormorants/day with no possession limit."
*** This is an astoundingly short-sighted proposition. The average hunter in Canada will engage in hunting-related activities approximately 44 days of the year (FPTGC, 2014). Supposing hunters kill 50 cormorants a day for only half of these days would mean that each hunter would kill 1100 cormorants per year, on average. The Canadian Nature Survey (FPTGC, 2014) reports that about 709,500 Ontarians participate in hunting activites. If only 1 in every 100 of these hunters participated in this type of kill, this would lead to nearly 8 million dead cormorants in a single year alone, not adjusting for nestling and fledglings mortality due to parental death [Calculation note: 14,190,000 x 5% = 709,500 number of hunters in Ontario (5% of total Ontario population figure taken from the Canadian Nature Survey - FPTGC, 2014). 1 in 100 hunters: 709,500 x 1% = 7095. This many hunters killing 50 cormorants a day for 22 days in a year: 7095 x 50 x 22 = 7,804,500 cormorants dead.]. The entire Great Lakes population is estimated at only about 250,000 birds, and the entire global population is estimated at about 2 million (Dorr et al. 2014).
Making a similar calculation, if only 1 in every 100 Ontarian hunters killed only 50 cormorants per entire hunting season, this would still be enough to eradicate the species from the Great Lakes in a single year. [Calculation note: 709,500 hunters in Ontario. 1% of these totals 7095 hunters. This many hunters killing 50 cormorants over the course of an entire hunting season: 7095 x 50 = 354,750 dead cormorants.] It is obvious that whoever proposed this bag limit has not done the slightest bit of calculation to consider its most rudimentary effects on the cormorant's population.
Cormorants would not be difficult to hunt. They are generally quite tolerant of a variety of human disturbances, including motorboats. They nest conspicuously out in the open (see Figure 2). Colonies usually consist of a few hundred pairs at most (Wires & Cuthbert 2006). A single hunter could therefore easily eradicate an entire colony of cormorants in less than a week's time. Cormorants are also well-known for their prominent and frequent outstretched wing displays in open locations. These displays are thought to help dry the cormorant's wings (Figure 3), as they lack the usual oils that naturally wick away water that are present in most seabirds. This is thought to be an adaptation to make them more effective divers (Dorr et al. 2014). Unfortunately, it also means that they would make particularly easy targets for even the most inexperienced hunter.
Figure 3: Double-crested Cormorant in the common wing-drying posture.
Point 6: "Allow hunting from a stationary motorboat."
*** Beside for its obvious ethical indefensibility, the Government of Ontario seems to ignore the socio-political consequences of such a policy. One need only to examine the public backlash from similar machine-aided killing programs in other jurisdictions - for example, the extremely controversial and publicly unpopular helicopter-aided wolf hunt in British Columbia - to realize that the public-political optics of such a proposal are not promising.
Furthermore, allowing hunting from motorboats will mean that no cormorant colony on the Canadian Great Lakes will be safe; all will be accessible to hunters. In Lake Ontario, 16 of 20 major colonies lie in Canadian waters; in Lake Erie, 7 of 11; in Lake Huron, 87 out of 91; in Lake Superior, 37 out of 50. In total, fully 85% of cormorant colonies on the Canadian Great Lakes are situated in Canadian waters (Weseloh et al. 2002). Virtually all will be vulnerable.
Point 7: "Via this posting, the Ministry is also consulting on a proposal to amend the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act to add provisions so hunters could allow cormorant to spoil. This proposal would add provisions to the Act, so that persons who lawfully hunt (or possess) cormorants could be exempt from this requirement and would be subject to conditions that require the person to retrieve and dispose of the carcass."
*** Allowing a free-for-all retrieval and disposal system of cormorant carcasses is sure to have cascading impacts on the surrounding ecosystem. Under this provision, hunters would be able to simply string the carcasses together with fishing wire, weigh them down, and then toss them into the water so as to be out of sight. But these species do not exist in a vacuum and carcasses do not just disappear. 50 cormorant carcasses lying in the open or washed ashore, even for a short time, will assuredly attract all kinds of scavenging animals, including bears, coyotes, small mammals, crows, and gulls. The consequent effects on other local wildlife (including on these scavenging species) are not at all well understood. Regardless, the wanton waste that would be allowed under the current proposal appears totally unjustified and is reminiscent of the shameless wildlife slaughter scenarios of 100 years ago.
Point 8: "To accompany the proposed hunting seasons, the Ministry will implement a cormorant monitoring program to assess population status and trends. Monitoring of cormorants will allow the Ministry to assess the impacts of the hunting season and to adjust cormorant hunting regulations if necessary to address any concerns about population sustainability."
*** This part of the proposal gets the scientific best practice completely backwards. Monitoring programs should be in place long before any changes to population management are instituted; otherwise, there is little knowledge available to inform these changes, and even less knowledge of what to expect. This is basic to wildlife management best practice (e.g. see Nisbet 1995, Weseloh & Collier 1995, Weseloh et al. 2002, Reed et al. 2003) and it is inexcusable in the twenty-first century that any government would make a proposal like the one discussed here without substantial knowledge about current population status and trends.
Point 9: "The anticipated environmental consequences of the proposal are expected to be neutral."
*** There is no evidence for this incredibly sweeping claim. In fact, the likely consequences outlined in this document indicate the very real possibility of serious negative environmental consequences of this proposal, including the legal sanctioning of the eradication of the species from the Great Lakes. That is not a "neutral" outcome. Nor is it a far-fetched one given the absurd parameters of the proposed hunt.
Point 10: The anticipated social consequences are both positive and negative. Those interested in hunting cormorants or who believe cormorants are having detrimental impacts will likely support the proposed changes. Individuals and groups opposing cormorant hunting or hunting during summer months will likely oppose the proposed changes."
*** This claim is likely true. But one should add that people who simply enjoy co-existing with, or watching, or studying wildlife will also likely oppose the proposed changes. This is a sizeable demographic. Birding alone is nearly 4 times more popular than hunting in Ontario. In particular, birding is exceptionally popular among older Canadians, aged 55+; data indicate the past-time is 8 times more popular than hunting in this demographic. On average, Ontarian birders spend 139 days per year engaging in birding activities, whereas hunters spend only 44 days per year (on average) engaging in hunting activities (FPTGC 2014). The Government of Ontario cannot responsibly ignore those large demographics that peacefully engage with wildlife.
Point 11: "The anticipated economic consequences of the proposal are expected to be neutral but depend on levels of hunter participation."
*** This claim is unjustified and quite dubious given the relative popularity of birding and wildlife viewing compared to hunting (FPTGC 2014). Birding generates more than half a billion dollars of economic activity annually in Canada, almost twice as much as what hunting of waterfowl or hunting of other game birds generate (FPTGC 2014).
Since the Government of Ontario claims that all environmental, social, and economic consequences are expected to be neutral, one wonders what possible reason the government could have for even proposing such a drastic change to current policy. The answer seems to be simply that they wish to placate a small group of anglers and hunters, both groups that consume public resources. Anglers and hunters do not have some special claim to wildlife. Cormorants, like all native bird species, are considered public resources, and as such, the entire public has the right to access and enjoy them. That the government has not even considered this element of their ill-conceived proposal is evident from the preceding critiques.
Concluding Remarks
The Double-crested Cormorant is a beautiful and tenacious native seabird of Ontario and of North America in general (Figure 4). They have survived centuries of hunting, persecution, and poisoning by humans. Now that their population may finally be returning to something resembling what it was before the advent of European settlement (Wires & Cuthbert 2006), it seems the epitome of foolishness to introduce a change in policy that would allow the conservation gains of the past 50+ years to be obliterated in a matter of a year or two. Double-crested Cormorants have a fundamental right to exist and feed on their native lands. The fact that such a simple consequence of reality may inconvenience the occasional angler should not be of the slightest concern to the Government of Ontario, nor to any government.
Figure 4: Double-crested Cormorant portrait.
Literature Cited
Aebischer, N.J., Potts, G.R., Coulson, J.C. 1995. Site and mate fidelity of shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis at two British colonies. Ibis, 137: 19--28.
Belyea, G. Y., S. L. Maruca, J. S. Diana, P. J. Schneeberger, S. J. Scott, R.D. Clark, Jr., J. P. Ludwig, and C. L. Summer. 1999. Impact of double-crested cormorant predation on the Yellow Perch population in the Les Cheneaux Islands of Michigan. Pages 47–59 in M. E. Tobin, technical coordinator. Symposium on double-crested cormorants: population status and management issues in the Midwest. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Technical Bulletin 1879, Washington, DC.
Blight, L.K., Drever, M.C., Arcese, P. 2015. A century of change in Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) populations in a dynamic coastal environment. Condor, 117: 108--120.
Cuthbert, F.J., Wires, L.R., McKearnan, J.E. 2002. Potential impacts of nesting Double-crested Cormorants on Great Blue Herons and Black-crowned Night-herons in the U.S. Great Lakes region. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 28(2): 145--154.
Dorr, B.S. & Fielder, D.G. 2017. Double-crested Cormorants: Too much of a good thing? Fisheries, Bulletin of the American Fisheries Society, 42(9): 468--477.
Dorr, B.S., Hatch, J.J., Weseloh, D.V. 2014. Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus), version 2.0. In The Birds of North America (P. G. Rodewald, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, USA.
Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Governments of Canada (FPTGC). 2014. 2012 Canadian Nature Survey: Awareness, participation, and expenditures in nature-based recreation, conservation, and subsistence activities. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Councils of Resource Ministers.
Grandgeorge, M., Wanless, S., Dunn, T.E., Maumy, M., Beaugrand, G., Grémillet, D. 2008. Resilience of the British and Irish seabird community in the twentieth century. Aquatic Biology, 4: 187--199.
Hebert, C.E., Duffe, J., Weseloh, D.V.C., Senese, E.M.T., Haffner, G.D. 2005. Unique island habitats may be threatened by Double-crested Cormorants. Journal of Wildlife Management, 69(1): 68--76.
Nisbet, I.C.T. 1995. Biology, conservation and management of the Double-crested Cormorant: Symposium summary and overview. Colonial Waterbirds, 18(1): 247--252.
Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH). 2018. Cormorants. Online article. Accessed December 12, 2018. URL: https://www.ofah.org/issues/cormorants/
Reed, J.M., Causey, D., Hatch, J.J., Cooke, F., Crowder, L. 2003. Review of the Double-crested Cormorant management plan, 2003: final report of the AOU Conservation Committee's panel.
Ridgway, M.S., Dunlop, W.I., Lester, N.P., Middel, T.A. 2012. Relative demand by double-crested cormorants and anglers for fish production from lakes on Manitoulin Island, Lake Huron. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 38: 514--523.
Suzuki, Y., Roby, D.D., Lyons, D.E., Courtot, K.N., Collis, K. 2015. Developing nondestructive techniques for managing conflicts between fisheries and Double-crested Cormorant colonies. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 39(4): 764--771.
Weseloh, D.V. & Collier, B. 1995. The rise of the Double-crested Cormorant on the Great Lakes: Winning the war against contaminants. Environment Canada Special Report, Environment Canada and Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.
Weseloh, D.V., Pekarik, C., Havelka, T., Barrett, G., Reid, J. 2002. Population trends and colony locations of Double-crested Cormorants in the Canadian Great Lakes and immediately adjacent areas, 1990--2000: A manager's guide. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 28(2): 125--144.
Wires, L.R. & Cuthbert, F.J. 2006. Historic populations of the Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus): Implications for conservation and management in the 21st Century. Waterbirds: The International Journal of Waterbird Biology, 29(1): 9--37.
Wires, L.R. 2014. The Double-crested Cormorant: Plight of a Feathered Pariah. Yale University Press.
Appendix
Find the full content of EBR 013-4124 at the Government of Ontario's website. If the previous link does not work for some reason, visit http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-External and search for "013-4124" to view the proposal. Please submit comments to the government online before the closing date of January 3, 2019.
In Europe and North America, gulls have long been cross-cultural icons of the sea and shore. They adorn our art, our photography, even our theatre and literature. And of course, they have long been of great scientific interest.
But just how common are gulls, really? And are they all the same? Depending on what taxonomic authority you want to follow, there are somewhere between 50 and 60 distinct species of gull recognized worldwide. Due to the propensity of many gull species to hybridize, gull taxonomy can be notoriously contentious. Below is a world map with the names of the 55 gull species that I recognize (I mostly follow the classification used by Olsen, 2018). I've placed the common species names in the approximate centre of their breeding range. This gives a decent picture of where these gulls make their homes, though a few species' ranges are distorted. For example, the Grey-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus) breeds in both southern Africa and southern South America; the Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus) breeds on all four continents in the southern hemisphere, the only gull known to nest in Antarctica.
But just how common are gulls, really? And are they all the same? Depending on what taxonomic authority you want to follow, there are somewhere between 50 and 60 distinct species of gull recognized worldwide. Due to the propensity of many gull species to hybridize, gull taxonomy can be notoriously contentious. Below is a world map with the names of the 55 gull species that I recognize (I mostly follow the classification used by Olsen, 2018). I've placed the common species names in the approximate centre of their breeding range. This gives a decent picture of where these gulls make their homes, though a few species' ranges are distorted. For example, the Grey-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus) breeds in both southern Africa and southern South America; the Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus) breeds on all four continents in the southern hemisphere, the only gull known to nest in Antarctica.
The 55 species of gull (Laridae) on the planet. Common species names are placed at
the approximate centre of their respective breeding ranges.
the approximate centre of their respective breeding ranges.
What's the first thing you notice about this map? It could be the preponderance of different species in North America and Europe (more than half of all species), but to my eye, it's the empty middle. Where are the equatorial gulls? True, we have the Swallow-tailed (Creagrus furcatus) and Lava Gulls (Leucophaeus fuliginosus) off the coast of Ecuador (and their presence is easily explained by the anomaly of the strong Humboldt Current off the Pacific coast of South America) but otherwise there is a lot of blank space in the middle of the map.
The obvious answer seems to be that gulls simply don't like to nest in tropical climates. Indeed, this seems to be the case, but the question then becomes why not? The tern family (Sternidae) comprises the closest cousins of the gulls, yet they have no problem nesting in the tropics as you can clearly see from the map below (taxonomy taken from Bridge, Jones, & Baker, 2005).
The obvious answer seems to be that gulls simply don't like to nest in tropical climates. Indeed, this seems to be the case, but the question then becomes why not? The tern family (Sternidae) comprises the closest cousins of the gulls, yet they have no problem nesting in the tropics as you can clearly see from the map below (taxonomy taken from Bridge, Jones, & Baker, 2005).
The 45 species of tern (Sternidae) on the planet. Common species names are placed at
the approximate centre of their respective breeding ranges. Unlike gulls, many species have
breeding ranges that circumnavigate the globe along wide swaths of latitude.
the approximate centre of their respective breeding ranges. Unlike gulls, many species have
breeding ranges that circumnavigate the globe along wide swaths of latitude.
One thing gulls and terns seem to have in common is that they don't like deserts (with some fascinating exceptions); both families avoid the barren interiors of Africa and Australia. This shouldn't be surprising though as very few birds thrive in a desert climate. The gulls seem to be most diverse in the Holarctic latitudes, while the terns are most diverse in the tropics. This likely reflects differences in the evolutionary origins of the two families (Hand, Hunt, & Warner 1981).
Yet, gulls have been around for long enough to disperse and speciate globally, about 5 to 10 million years (see Pons, Hassanin, & Crochet 2005). Gulls of course pass through the tropics during migration, and some will even overwinter there (e.g. the Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) of the Caribbean). So why haven't they started breeding more in the tropics? There have been many hypotheses over the decades, but no satisfying answers.
The tropics provide many rich food sources and sustain plenty of other similar species, like many terns. The tropics should have no trouble supporting gulls too. Gulls are highly adaptable omnivores and will change their feeding habits to accommodate all kinds of short- and long-term changes in their food supply. Moreover, a favourite food source is the eggs and chicks of other birds (sometimes, even other gulls). The tropics are home to a variety of colonially breeding birds year-round, providing vast and stable food sources for gulls. Surely there would exist competition for these food sources with other species, but no one would accuse gulls of meekness. If gulls can bully eagles and ravens in the Holarctic, it's unlikely that they have been bullied out of the tropics themselves by competing species.
Clearly then, it's not lack of food or opportunity that is keeping gulls away.
One hypothesis that I find intriguing is that gulls don't usually breed in the tropics because their bodies just aren't well adapted to dealing with the heat stress. Like all animals, gulls possess ways of cooling themselves: they "pant", erect their feathers to capture a breeze, seek shade, bathe, and drink water. However, sitting on eggs and tending to young can make all but the first of these options difficult. You may notice that a nesting gull will often stand above their nest and pant when it is very hot out. This is no accident: gulls loose heat through their feet (Steen & Steen 1965) and standing also makes feather erection more effective at capturing a breeze. Standing can also prevent their eggs from getting overheated, a potentially fatal event for the developing chicks inside.
Yet, gulls have been around for long enough to disperse and speciate globally, about 5 to 10 million years (see Pons, Hassanin, & Crochet 2005). Gulls of course pass through the tropics during migration, and some will even overwinter there (e.g. the Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) of the Caribbean). So why haven't they started breeding more in the tropics? There have been many hypotheses over the decades, but no satisfying answers.
The tropics provide many rich food sources and sustain plenty of other similar species, like many terns. The tropics should have no trouble supporting gulls too. Gulls are highly adaptable omnivores and will change their feeding habits to accommodate all kinds of short- and long-term changes in their food supply. Moreover, a favourite food source is the eggs and chicks of other birds (sometimes, even other gulls). The tropics are home to a variety of colonially breeding birds year-round, providing vast and stable food sources for gulls. Surely there would exist competition for these food sources with other species, but no one would accuse gulls of meekness. If gulls can bully eagles and ravens in the Holarctic, it's unlikely that they have been bullied out of the tropics themselves by competing species.
Clearly then, it's not lack of food or opportunity that is keeping gulls away.
One hypothesis that I find intriguing is that gulls don't usually breed in the tropics because their bodies just aren't well adapted to dealing with the heat stress. Like all animals, gulls possess ways of cooling themselves: they "pant", erect their feathers to capture a breeze, seek shade, bathe, and drink water. However, sitting on eggs and tending to young can make all but the first of these options difficult. You may notice that a nesting gull will often stand above their nest and pant when it is very hot out. This is no accident: gulls loose heat through their feet (Steen & Steen 1965) and standing also makes feather erection more effective at capturing a breeze. Standing can also prevent their eggs from getting overheated, a potentially fatal event for the developing chicks inside.
A Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) standing and panting to cool off at her nest
on a particularly hot day in Vancouver, BC. Note that chicks this young still cannot regulate their own
body temperature; they need their parents' help to stay warm enough and cool enough.
on a particularly hot day in Vancouver, BC. Note that chicks this young still cannot regulate their own
body temperature; they need their parents' help to stay warm enough and cool enough.
Now, terns share all these behaviours with gulls, but they also have a few more adaptations in their favour that would make tropical nesting more feasible. Terns, especially those that live in the tropics, are smaller and have proportionally narrower and longer bodies compared to gulls (on average). This means that terns have a large surface-area-to-volume ratio, while gulls have a relatively small one. A higher ratio is good for tropical living: the body has more surface area from which to dissipate heat. A lower ratio is good for colder climates: less surface area means less heat loss. This general principle is called Allen's Rule after the 19th Century zoologist Joel Allen.
Moreover, it has been experimentally shown that dark plumage can be more effective than light plumage at alleviating heat stress in a breeze (Walsberg, Campbell, & King 1978). There are 7 gull species that have non-white chests and/or bellies as adults, and all but one (the Dolphin Gull (Leucophaeus scoresbii)) breed in high heat conditions: these are the Heermann's, Swallow-tailed, Lava, Grey, Sooty, and White-eyed Gulls. If you look back at the gull breeding map above, you'll see that these gulls comprise all the "tropical" species. Note too that the Grey Gull (Leucophaeus modestus) nests in the Atacama Desert (!) of Chile, another high heat stress location. Dark plumage is far more common in the tern family (about 35% of all species). In fact, all the noddies have darkish plumage and all nest in tropical locations. Same for the terns of the Middle East and India.
A Heermann's Gull (Larus heermanni) in San Diego, CA. Notice the all
grey chest and belly, along with the very dark wings.
grey chest and belly, along with the very dark wings.
These facts explain why gulls look the way they do given their environment, but they don't really tell us why evolution hasn't equipped more gulls with adaptations to breed successfully in a high temperature climate. Of course, the reason could be as simple as the positive selective pressures to colonize the tropics just aren't strong enough. But there is one other interesting possibility too.
Some species of gull are known to prey on the eggs and young of their conspecifics (i.e. members of the same species). This would be a maladaptive trait in a high heat environment: parents would require more trips to water sources to drink, bathe, and cool themselves off, more frequently leaving vulnerable eggs and young exposed to predation. The Grey and Swallow-tailed Gulls have adapted to their high heat environments by not attacking exposed eggs and young. Basically, they've evolved a kind of quid pro quo understanding with their neighbours. To my knowledge, all tern species have a similar arrangement: they do not prey on the eggs and young of conspecifics (e.g. see Dinsmore 1972). Such an arrangement allows nesting adults to leave their nests to cool off without fear of a raid. Moreover, their neighbours provide a deterrent to any non-conspecific predators.
This is an interesting hypothesis. From an evolutionary point of view, perhaps the advantages of colonizing more of the tropics are balanced out by the fitness advantages of preying on the eggs and young of conspecifics: you can't seem to have both at once. However, I think the prevalence of such cannibalistic behaviour has been overestimated in the gull family. It has been well-documented (see e.g. Tinbergen 1953, or Parsons 1971) in the European Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), undoubtedly the most thoroughly studied species of gull. Egg cannibalism has also been observed in Glaucous-winged Gull colonies. However, there are many other species of Holarctic gull that do not exhibit this behaviour (e.g. the Franklin's Gull (Leucophaeus pipixcan) - see Burger 1974), or for which such behaviour has never been observed, e.g. the smaller Mew (Larus brachyrhynchus) and Bonaparte's Gulls (Chroicocephalus philadelphia). Perhaps then a tendency toward egg cannibalism is just a characteristic of the large, white-headed gulls of the Holarctic. This only accounts, however, for about 30% of all gull species. So the fitness advantages of egg and young predation can only be part of the reason why the gull family has failed to colonize the tropics.
One final note: the gull habit of preying on the eggs and young of their neighbours is a characteristic of colonially nesting gulls. I have been studying non-colonially (urban) nesting Glaucous-winged Gulls for awhile now, and conspecific predation seems to be vanishingly rare. I am unaware of any literature mentioning if such behaviour is retained in non-colonial (urban) populations of the European Herring Gull, but I would like to find out. If non-colonial nesting is causally related to urban nesting (this is likely, given the structural realities of the urban environment), then might we predict that urban centres would be the easiest locations for new gulls to colonize in the tropics?
That's heavily speculative. One thing I can say for sure though is that until more gulls colonize the tropics, you won't find me living there!
References
Bridge, E.S., Jones, A.W., Baker, A.J. (2005). A phylogenetic framework for the terns (Sternini) inferred from mtDNA sequences: implications for taxonomy and plumage evolution. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 35, 459-469.
Dinsmore, J.J. (1972). Sooty Tern behaviour. Bulletin of the Florida State Museum Biological Society, 16, 129-179.
Hand, J.L., Hunt Jr., G.L., & Warner, M. (1981). Thermal stress and predation: influences on the structure of a gull colony and possibly on breeding distributions. The Condor, 83, 193-203.
Olsen, K.M. (2018). Gulls of the World: A Photographic Guide. Princeton University Press.
Pasons, J. (1971). The Breeding Biology of the Herring Gull. Doctoral thesis. Durham University.
Pons, J.-M., Hassanin, A., & Crochet, P.-A. (2005). Phylogenetic relationships within the Laridae (Charadriiformes: Aves) inferred from mitochondrial markers. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 37, 686-699.
Steen, I. & Steen, J.B. (1965). The importance of the legs in the thermoregulation of birds. Acta Physiologica Scandinavia, 63, 285-291.
Tinbergen, N. (1953). The Herring Gull's World: A Study of the Social Behavior of Birds. Oxford, England: Frederick A. Prager, Inc.
Walsberg, G.E., Campbell, G.S., & King, J.R. (1978). Animal coat color and radiative heat gain: a re-evaluation. Journal of Computational Physiology, 126, 223-231.
Dinsmore, J.J. (1972). Sooty Tern behaviour. Bulletin of the Florida State Museum Biological Society, 16, 129-179.
Hand, J.L., Hunt Jr., G.L., & Warner, M. (1981). Thermal stress and predation: influences on the structure of a gull colony and possibly on breeding distributions. The Condor, 83, 193-203.
Olsen, K.M. (2018). Gulls of the World: A Photographic Guide. Princeton University Press.
Pasons, J. (1971). The Breeding Biology of the Herring Gull. Doctoral thesis. Durham University.
Pons, J.-M., Hassanin, A., & Crochet, P.-A. (2005). Phylogenetic relationships within the Laridae (Charadriiformes: Aves) inferred from mitochondrial markers. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 37, 686-699.
Steen, I. & Steen, J.B. (1965). The importance of the legs in the thermoregulation of birds. Acta Physiologica Scandinavia, 63, 285-291.
Tinbergen, N. (1953). The Herring Gull's World: A Study of the Social Behavior of Birds. Oxford, England: Frederick A. Prager, Inc.
Walsberg, G.E., Campbell, G.S., & King, J.R. (1978). Animal coat color and radiative heat gain: a re-evaluation. Journal of Computational Physiology, 126, 223-231.
The Surrey city council recently passed a motion to capture and relocate the approximately 100-150 peafowl that live in the Sullivan Heights area of Surrey, BC. These peafowl are all descendants of the few birds that were left behind by a negligent resident who moved away in 2006. Their growing presence has created deep rifts in the local community, as those who enjoy their presence clash with those who dislike the noise and mess that they create. The city's plan is to gradually capture the birds and relocate them to the Surrey Animal Resource Centre.
It's clear that the birds were creating problems in the community as the fight between pro- and anti-peafowl residents was getting more embittered. City officials clearly needed to address the issue in some way. A humane capture and relocation program seems like a good option for a non-native, introduced, exotic species.
It's clear that the birds were creating problems in the community as the fight between pro- and anti-peafowl residents was getting more embittered. City officials clearly needed to address the issue in some way. A humane capture and relocation program seems like a good option for a non-native, introduced, exotic species.
A male Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) I photographed in Victoria's Beacon Hill Park. As the name suggests, they are native to the Indian subcontinent, but introduced populations are found worldwide. Due to their natural glamour and relaxed disposition (for a bird), they have made an attractive species for humans to keep in parks, on estates, or in private.
However, there are several issues that are worth noting with the whole program and the community response. First of all, 100-150 peafowl is a lot of bird to care for. I am skeptical that the Surrey Animal Resource Centre (SARC) really has the capabilities and support to tend to these birds. As far as I am aware, the centre's main function is to find homes for orphaned or abandoned pets (mostly cats and dogs). But it is illegal to keep peafowl as pets in BC (as it should be), so presumably SARC will be tasked with caring for the birds entirely on their own. Do they actually have the resources for this? I don't know the answer.
Another issue here is that the city's plan includes providing individual property owners with traps upon request. This seems like an immensely bad idea to me. The city has hired a "certified biologist" (I assume this means a certified wildlife biologist) to ensure that the captures are done ethically, but how exactly is that going to be possible when the city is also going to equip private citizens with traps? Perhaps they envision educating a private citizen on the proper and ethical way to capture a peafowl; a nice idea, but one that is going to create problems. There is already considerable animosity towards these birds by some community members. One resident has admitted that while the birds are beautiful, he hates pretty much everything else about them. It isn't hard to imagine someone like this neglecting the proper capture methods accidentally through carelessness or intentionally through malice. Why introduce this level of uncertainty into the process, especially when the potential for abuse of the peafowl is high? 150 birds will take awhile for the city to capture itself, but the length of time is hardly prohibitive.
I believe this reflects the general feeling among most policy-makers and many (most?) private citizens that consideration and treatment of wildlife are simply not in the same ethical category as pets or humans. Legally speaking, wildlife are generally viewed as a commodity or natural resource. And while I would guess that most people would balk at the idea that their pets should be viewed similarly, the courts have repeatedly taken this perspective. This is a major ethical failing of modern society in my opinion, but it's one that is likely to persist for some time.
Yet, the peafowl situation in Surrey reflects another problem with wildlife too, one whose ethical resolution is far murkier in my eyes. One pro-peafowl resident states that "You see them walking gracefully on the sidewalk, minding their own business. They give out a call; that's nature." It's a sentiment I am very sympathetic too, but in this case, we are talking about a non-native, exotic, introduced species. Dealing with such species is a notoriously tricky ethical problem.
Human behaviour has been responsible for the introduction of all kinds of new species into new environments. Sometimes, the introduction is sudden and stark, as with the case of the Surrey peafowl (not even native to the continent). Other times, the introduction is indirect, the passive result of other processes like the clearing of traditional ecological barriers. The spread of the Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) is an excellent example in North America. Before urban developments on the continent, the species lived in the prairies. But as humans cut down forests and cultivated more farmland, the cowbird spread and is now a continental resident across the entire contiguous US, every Canadian province, and most of Mexico. As they are brood parasites, they have had substantial negative effects on many other songbird species that traditionally did not have to contend with the cowbird. There's no going back to the way things were for the cowbird given the reality of human development. Ethically speaking, while they may be driving other species to vulnerability, they should not be forcibly removed from those areas to which they have expanded.
A Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) I photographed at Britton Creek along the Coquihalla in summer 2017.
Truly introduced species though, like the Surrey peafowl, don't fit this mould. Removal is a reasonable - perhaps necessary - course of action, in the interest of preserving the native ecosystem. Of course, it was entirely the fault of our own species that these birds were introduced to begin with; thus, our species is the one that must alone bear the labour and cost of remediation, ethically speaking. This is far easier said than done. We can ethically remove them from Sullivan Heights and even provide them with comfortable homes to live out the rest of their days (we can do this; I'm not convinced that the Surrey City Council's plan will actually accomplish this), but we will also remove the ability of these birds to reproduce. With birds, this usually means allowing them to mate and lay eggs, but then either removing these eggs before they hatch (perhaps replacing them with plastic dummy eggs), or oiling these eggs to prevent fetal development and hatching. Is this ethical? Do peafowl feel despair at an inability to produce offspring? We know that other birds can feel this kind of sadness; do peafowl? We simply don't have an answer at this point. And as a result, we don't have an answer to the ethical question either.
I remain skeptical but hopeful that the City of Surrey will do right by their resident peafowl. I think that people are slowly becoming more attuned to the ethical issues that are involved when humans intersect with wildlife, but our society (and especially our laws) still have a very long way to go.
Overall score: 3 out of 4 (worth reading)
Tom Nichols’ new book, The Death of Expertise: the Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, aims to explain the current culture of anti-intellectualism, marked by a notable public distrust of experts from all fields. The book focuses on the problem as manifested in American culture, and though certain strands of anti-intellectualism are uniquely American, the general affliction has infected many secular democracies, Canada included.
Nichols is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, as well as an adjunct at Harvard and a former US Senatorial aide. His professional specialties are international security and Russia. He is certainly, by any definition, an expert in his own disciplines, and thus had ample motivation to dwell on the subject of this book.
The main thesis of Nichols’ book is that the current wave of anti-intellectualism and public distrust of expert knowledge and advice is worse than it ever has been in modern history. This is a thesis I have long been sympathetic too, but I have always wondered if modern technology (mainly via the Internet) simply allows us to see and hear more about the proud ignorance of a disturbingly large proportion of misinformed American society, one that was perhaps always present. My main interest in Nichols’ book was to see what kind of case he could make for the “worse than ever before” thesis versus the “more visible than ever before” one.
Nichols argues that the modern, unprecedented rejection of expertise has occurred for six broad reasons: (1) bad tendencies of ordinary human nature, including confirmation bias; (2) the commodification of higher education; (3) the rise of the Internet; (4) the “new journalism” of entertainment over information; (5) the false equivalency between an expert erring and an expert knowing nothing; and (6) the confusion between policy-advisers (experts) and policy-makers (politicians). Nichols gives a good treatment of each of these broad points, but I want to focus on the one that interested me the most in this review, as it is the one I have to deal with the most in my own profession: the commodification of higher education.
Post-secondary education in the US (and in Canada) was once reserved for the chosen few: about 5% of the population at the end of World War II. Now, 1 in 3 Americans holds at least a bachelor’s degree, while nearly two-thirds of the population have acquired at least some college education. From a naïve point of view, this seems to be a good thing. How could more education be bad for a society? It can be bad precisely when an undergraduate degree of today equips a person with the equivalent of a high school diploma of 70 years ago. Schools and colleges in North America have dumbed down their curricula and lowered their expectations to accommodate a societal demand for a more egalitarian distribution of credentials, all while raking in ever larger amounts of tuition dollars. As Nichols notes, “schools and colleges have caused this degree inflation the same way governments cause monetary inflation: by printing more paper” (p. 75).
Regrettably, it is not simply that North Americans are getting smarter or that they are better educated. “College is no longer a time devoted to learning and personal maturation; instead, the stampede of young Americans into college and the consequent competition for their tuition dollars have produced a consumer-oriented experience in which students learn, above all else, that the customer is always right,” says Nichols (p. 70-71). In my experience, there is large agreement on this issue among teachers in higher education, often in direct contradiction to the feelings of many college and university administrators. The commodification of higher education means that the main function of a college or university is no longer to educate and equip new professionals with rigorous expertise (and to fail those who cannot adequately master these rigours), but is instead to generate revenue. This new model of higher education began to arise after WWII, but it is only since the 1980’s that the customer-driven approach has become the new norm in North America.
Nichols offers plenty of evidence for this disturbing trend, and it’s something that I have witnessed myself, both as a student of various North American institutions of higher education, and now as a postdoctoral researcher and teacher. To take one particularly glaring example, consider the phenomenon of grade inflation. Nichols reports: “A study of two hundred colleges and universities up through 2009 found that A was the most commonly given grade, an increase of nearly 30 percent since 1960 and over 10 percent just since 1988. Grades in the A and B range together now account for more than 80 percent of all grades in all subjects, a trend that continues unabated” (p. 95). See here for the source of those numbers and much more.
I still (mostly) remember the grading scales employed in the local public schools that I attended growing up in suburban Chicago in the 1990’s. The standard scale was as follows:
A+ = 98-100%
A = 95-97%
A- = 93-94%
B+ = 89-92%
B = 86-88%
B- = 83-85%
C+ = 79-82%
C = 76-78%
C- = 73-75%
D+ = 70-72%
D = 68-69%
D- = 66-67%
F = 0-65%
Some of these exact percentages are likely off, but I distinctly remember the B+ to A+ ranges (the ones I was most concerned with), as well as the D+ and F thresholds. Compare this to today’s grading scales in the same school district:
A+ = 97-100%
A = 94-96%
A- = 90-93%
B+ = 87-89%
B = 84-86%
B- = 80-83%
C+ = 77-79%
C = 74-76%
C- = 70-73%
D+ = 67-69%
D = 64-66%
D- = 60-63%
F = 0-59%
There’s been some downward movement, but is it enough to get greatly upset about? Maybe. But let’s return to grade inflation in higher education. During my undergraduate degree at DePaul University in Chicago (2003-06), the standard grading scale was as follows:
A = 93-100%
A- = 90-92%
B+ = 87-89%
B = 83-86%
B- = 80-82%
C+ = 77-79%
C = 73-76%
C- = 70-72%
D+ = 67-69%
D = 60-66%
F = 0-59%
To DePaul’s credit, this seems to be the same scale they currently employ. I got quite used to thinking of an A as 90% and above, a B as 80-89%, a C as 70-79%, a D as 60-69%, and an F as anything less. For an arbitrary scale, this metric-inspired classification seems somewhat reasonable. Compare this scale though to the one employed for undergraduates in most faculties at the University of British Columbia where I teach:
A+ = 90-100%
A = 85-89%
A- = 80-84%
B+ = 76-79%
B = 72-75%
B- = 68-71%
C+ = 64-67%
C = 60-63%
C- = 55-59%
D = 50-54%
F = 0-49%
I’ll be the first to admit that this is an unfair comparison, one that makes UBC look particularly bad. As Nichols’ research assures us though, UBC’s scale of assessment is extremely common nowadays. It’s easy to see how A’s and B’s can account for 80% of all grades given, now that a B- can correspond to the same percentage value that a D did in grammar school.
[NOTE: I am not ready to declare DePaul a model of pedagogic integrity. There are many ways to inflate grades besides actually shifting the percentage scales, including enforcing “no fail” policies on faculty, setting GPA targets, and other schemes hatched by various administrations in the name of increasing revenue. I don’t know if DePaul is guilty of any of these practices one way or another. Therefore, don’t read this as an indictment or an absolution either way.]
What’s more, this grade inflation means that it is often impossible to distinguish graduates with some level of real expertise or mastery of a subject from those who simply showed up. Many college transcripts give only letter grades (my DePaul transcripts did; I am not sure about UBC). It is a massive disservice to potential employers and to the students themselves to remove any semblance of objective meaning from these metrics. I feel particularly incensed for those students who really do exhibit mastery of a subject. Under a system like the one employed in most faculties at UBC, an A+ and an A- can be separated by 20% points. An 80% is a reasonable grade, but there is no way it should ever be lumped into a category so close to a 99%. You got an A+ in Calculus 1? Well, I got an A-, so we know about the same thing. This is another way that expertise has been undermined by the commodification of higher education: it’s hard to value expertise when it is seemingly so easy to acquire, at least in the form of a credential.
Some people will object though: college is hard. Shouldn’t the scale of expectation change with the difficulty level of the material? To this, I say a hard and loud no. It is precisely the increased difficulty, rigour, and expectation of critical thought comprising a higher education that demands a stringent metric. You don’t equip someone with expertise by lowering standards, you simply give them a false sense of their expertise.
This is a point that Nichols drives home repeatedly, and it is a critical one to make. As he notes, “the industrial model of education has reduced college to a commercial transaction, where students are taught to be picky consumers rather than critical thinkers. The ripple effect on expertise and the fuel this all provides to attacks on established knowledge defeat the very purpose of a university” (p. 98). Personally, as an undergraduate, I never thought of myself as a “consumer” of higher education. But I certainly see that mentality as a teacher in higher education now. It is quite common for some students to protest low grades because of the amount of money they are spending to attend the institution. I have often heard the lament, If I’m not doing well enough, then the school/department/instructor is not doing their job. I was accepted here, so I must be good enough to be here. Therefore, my grade must be at least adequate.
Another variant I will hear from some students is that if they show up to class and do all the required assignments, then they deserve an A! Before I heard a student say this to me, I always imagined that merely showing up to class and doing all the assignments guaranteed you a passing grade. (This is a reflection of the educational system that I grew up with, itself a dumbing down of those of past generations, as simply doing the bare minimum was not always a guarantee of a passing grade!) While I am pretty confident in asserting that most faculty would not agree with such a self-entitled expectation, there seem to be an alarming number of administrators at North American colleges and universities who do agree. Thus, the pressure to pass - and not only to pass, but to pass with distinction, high honours, or other festoons of academic pageantry. The customer must always be right. If not, they’ll take their tuition dollars (and residence dollars, and food dollars, and parking dollars) to another institution that will gladly grant that A with a smile and a cheery “Thank you, please come again!”
One more quotation from Nichols: “How to solve all this is a crucial question for the future of American education. In 2016, a Democratic Party presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, said that a college degree today is the equivalent of what a high school degree was fifty years ago — and that therefore everyone should go to college just as everyone now attends high school. In reality, treating colleges as remedial high schools is a large part of how we got here in the first place” (p. 76). The democratization of higher education is a major problem that North America has to grapple with.
The Washington Post just reported that New York is set to become the first state to offer free tuition at all four-year public colleges. This is being trumpeted as a win for progressivism. Ideology aside, I think it is more of a blow to higher education and the future state of expertise in American society. Most Americans recognize that there is something wrong with the state of American education today. But we do not address this problem by printing more degrees. Revenue-driven colleges and universities will gladly take government money in exchange for handing out diplomas: the New York proposal will be an incredible boon to commodified higher education in the state. What it will not do will be to increase expertise, or generate new knowledge, or educate the population. If the public education system is no longer equipping high school graduates with a reasonable bank of knowledge and skills, then it is that system that needs to be revamped. Simply expanding the domain of government-funded education does not address the problem; it ignores it, while managing to actually spend more money than doing nothing at all.
Overall, Tom Nichols makes a convincing case for his thesis that the current strain of anti-intellectualism in American society is both unprecedented and dangerous. His analyses of the commodification of higher education and the rise of the “new journalism” of entertainment over information are well worth the read alone. These two points also provide the strongest evidence that this anti-intellectualism is, in fact, truly new, and not just newly noticed. I am more convinced of the reality of this phenomenon than before I read his book.
The Death of Expertise is worth a read for anyone interested in the growing culture of anti-intellectualism in North America and beyond. And really, that means it should be worth a read for anyone who is capable of reading 200 pages. Sadly, as his analysis suggests, the number of people who fall into that category may be much smaller than we would like to think.
Tom Nichols’ new book, The Death of Expertise: the Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, aims to explain the current culture of anti-intellectualism, marked by a notable public distrust of experts from all fields. The book focuses on the problem as manifested in American culture, and though certain strands of anti-intellectualism are uniquely American, the general affliction has infected many secular democracies, Canada included.
Nichols is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, as well as an adjunct at Harvard and a former US Senatorial aide. His professional specialties are international security and Russia. He is certainly, by any definition, an expert in his own disciplines, and thus had ample motivation to dwell on the subject of this book.
The main thesis of Nichols’ book is that the current wave of anti-intellectualism and public distrust of expert knowledge and advice is worse than it ever has been in modern history. This is a thesis I have long been sympathetic too, but I have always wondered if modern technology (mainly via the Internet) simply allows us to see and hear more about the proud ignorance of a disturbingly large proportion of misinformed American society, one that was perhaps always present. My main interest in Nichols’ book was to see what kind of case he could make for the “worse than ever before” thesis versus the “more visible than ever before” one.
Nichols argues that the modern, unprecedented rejection of expertise has occurred for six broad reasons: (1) bad tendencies of ordinary human nature, including confirmation bias; (2) the commodification of higher education; (3) the rise of the Internet; (4) the “new journalism” of entertainment over information; (5) the false equivalency between an expert erring and an expert knowing nothing; and (6) the confusion between policy-advisers (experts) and policy-makers (politicians). Nichols gives a good treatment of each of these broad points, but I want to focus on the one that interested me the most in this review, as it is the one I have to deal with the most in my own profession: the commodification of higher education.
Post-secondary education in the US (and in Canada) was once reserved for the chosen few: about 5% of the population at the end of World War II. Now, 1 in 3 Americans holds at least a bachelor’s degree, while nearly two-thirds of the population have acquired at least some college education. From a naïve point of view, this seems to be a good thing. How could more education be bad for a society? It can be bad precisely when an undergraduate degree of today equips a person with the equivalent of a high school diploma of 70 years ago. Schools and colleges in North America have dumbed down their curricula and lowered their expectations to accommodate a societal demand for a more egalitarian distribution of credentials, all while raking in ever larger amounts of tuition dollars. As Nichols notes, “schools and colleges have caused this degree inflation the same way governments cause monetary inflation: by printing more paper” (p. 75).
Regrettably, it is not simply that North Americans are getting smarter or that they are better educated. “College is no longer a time devoted to learning and personal maturation; instead, the stampede of young Americans into college and the consequent competition for their tuition dollars have produced a consumer-oriented experience in which students learn, above all else, that the customer is always right,” says Nichols (p. 70-71). In my experience, there is large agreement on this issue among teachers in higher education, often in direct contradiction to the feelings of many college and university administrators. The commodification of higher education means that the main function of a college or university is no longer to educate and equip new professionals with rigorous expertise (and to fail those who cannot adequately master these rigours), but is instead to generate revenue. This new model of higher education began to arise after WWII, but it is only since the 1980’s that the customer-driven approach has become the new norm in North America.
Nichols offers plenty of evidence for this disturbing trend, and it’s something that I have witnessed myself, both as a student of various North American institutions of higher education, and now as a postdoctoral researcher and teacher. To take one particularly glaring example, consider the phenomenon of grade inflation. Nichols reports: “A study of two hundred colleges and universities up through 2009 found that A was the most commonly given grade, an increase of nearly 30 percent since 1960 and over 10 percent just since 1988. Grades in the A and B range together now account for more than 80 percent of all grades in all subjects, a trend that continues unabated” (p. 95). See here for the source of those numbers and much more.
I still (mostly) remember the grading scales employed in the local public schools that I attended growing up in suburban Chicago in the 1990’s. The standard scale was as follows:
A+ = 98-100%
A = 95-97%
A- = 93-94%
B+ = 89-92%
B = 86-88%
B- = 83-85%
C+ = 79-82%
C = 76-78%
C- = 73-75%
D+ = 70-72%
D = 68-69%
D- = 66-67%
F = 0-65%
Some of these exact percentages are likely off, but I distinctly remember the B+ to A+ ranges (the ones I was most concerned with), as well as the D+ and F thresholds. Compare this to today’s grading scales in the same school district:
A+ = 97-100%
A = 94-96%
A- = 90-93%
B+ = 87-89%
B = 84-86%
B- = 80-83%
C+ = 77-79%
C = 74-76%
C- = 70-73%
D+ = 67-69%
D = 64-66%
D- = 60-63%
F = 0-59%
There’s been some downward movement, but is it enough to get greatly upset about? Maybe. But let’s return to grade inflation in higher education. During my undergraduate degree at DePaul University in Chicago (2003-06), the standard grading scale was as follows:
A = 93-100%
A- = 90-92%
B+ = 87-89%
B = 83-86%
B- = 80-82%
C+ = 77-79%
C = 73-76%
C- = 70-72%
D+ = 67-69%
D = 60-66%
F = 0-59%
To DePaul’s credit, this seems to be the same scale they currently employ. I got quite used to thinking of an A as 90% and above, a B as 80-89%, a C as 70-79%, a D as 60-69%, and an F as anything less. For an arbitrary scale, this metric-inspired classification seems somewhat reasonable. Compare this scale though to the one employed for undergraduates in most faculties at the University of British Columbia where I teach:
A+ = 90-100%
A = 85-89%
A- = 80-84%
B+ = 76-79%
B = 72-75%
B- = 68-71%
C+ = 64-67%
C = 60-63%
C- = 55-59%
D = 50-54%
F = 0-49%
I’ll be the first to admit that this is an unfair comparison, one that makes UBC look particularly bad. As Nichols’ research assures us though, UBC’s scale of assessment is extremely common nowadays. It’s easy to see how A’s and B’s can account for 80% of all grades given, now that a B- can correspond to the same percentage value that a D did in grammar school.
[NOTE: I am not ready to declare DePaul a model of pedagogic integrity. There are many ways to inflate grades besides actually shifting the percentage scales, including enforcing “no fail” policies on faculty, setting GPA targets, and other schemes hatched by various administrations in the name of increasing revenue. I don’t know if DePaul is guilty of any of these practices one way or another. Therefore, don’t read this as an indictment or an absolution either way.]
What’s more, this grade inflation means that it is often impossible to distinguish graduates with some level of real expertise or mastery of a subject from those who simply showed up. Many college transcripts give only letter grades (my DePaul transcripts did; I am not sure about UBC). It is a massive disservice to potential employers and to the students themselves to remove any semblance of objective meaning from these metrics. I feel particularly incensed for those students who really do exhibit mastery of a subject. Under a system like the one employed in most faculties at UBC, an A+ and an A- can be separated by 20% points. An 80% is a reasonable grade, but there is no way it should ever be lumped into a category so close to a 99%. You got an A+ in Calculus 1? Well, I got an A-, so we know about the same thing. This is another way that expertise has been undermined by the commodification of higher education: it’s hard to value expertise when it is seemingly so easy to acquire, at least in the form of a credential.
Some people will object though: college is hard. Shouldn’t the scale of expectation change with the difficulty level of the material? To this, I say a hard and loud no. It is precisely the increased difficulty, rigour, and expectation of critical thought comprising a higher education that demands a stringent metric. You don’t equip someone with expertise by lowering standards, you simply give them a false sense of their expertise.
This is a point that Nichols drives home repeatedly, and it is a critical one to make. As he notes, “the industrial model of education has reduced college to a commercial transaction, where students are taught to be picky consumers rather than critical thinkers. The ripple effect on expertise and the fuel this all provides to attacks on established knowledge defeat the very purpose of a university” (p. 98). Personally, as an undergraduate, I never thought of myself as a “consumer” of higher education. But I certainly see that mentality as a teacher in higher education now. It is quite common for some students to protest low grades because of the amount of money they are spending to attend the institution. I have often heard the lament, If I’m not doing well enough, then the school/department/instructor is not doing their job. I was accepted here, so I must be good enough to be here. Therefore, my grade must be at least adequate.
Another variant I will hear from some students is that if they show up to class and do all the required assignments, then they deserve an A! Before I heard a student say this to me, I always imagined that merely showing up to class and doing all the assignments guaranteed you a passing grade. (This is a reflection of the educational system that I grew up with, itself a dumbing down of those of past generations, as simply doing the bare minimum was not always a guarantee of a passing grade!) While I am pretty confident in asserting that most faculty would not agree with such a self-entitled expectation, there seem to be an alarming number of administrators at North American colleges and universities who do agree. Thus, the pressure to pass - and not only to pass, but to pass with distinction, high honours, or other festoons of academic pageantry. The customer must always be right. If not, they’ll take their tuition dollars (and residence dollars, and food dollars, and parking dollars) to another institution that will gladly grant that A with a smile and a cheery “Thank you, please come again!”
One more quotation from Nichols: “How to solve all this is a crucial question for the future of American education. In 2016, a Democratic Party presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, said that a college degree today is the equivalent of what a high school degree was fifty years ago — and that therefore everyone should go to college just as everyone now attends high school. In reality, treating colleges as remedial high schools is a large part of how we got here in the first place” (p. 76). The democratization of higher education is a major problem that North America has to grapple with.
The Washington Post just reported that New York is set to become the first state to offer free tuition at all four-year public colleges. This is being trumpeted as a win for progressivism. Ideology aside, I think it is more of a blow to higher education and the future state of expertise in American society. Most Americans recognize that there is something wrong with the state of American education today. But we do not address this problem by printing more degrees. Revenue-driven colleges and universities will gladly take government money in exchange for handing out diplomas: the New York proposal will be an incredible boon to commodified higher education in the state. What it will not do will be to increase expertise, or generate new knowledge, or educate the population. If the public education system is no longer equipping high school graduates with a reasonable bank of knowledge and skills, then it is that system that needs to be revamped. Simply expanding the domain of government-funded education does not address the problem; it ignores it, while managing to actually spend more money than doing nothing at all.
Overall, Tom Nichols makes a convincing case for his thesis that the current strain of anti-intellectualism in American society is both unprecedented and dangerous. His analyses of the commodification of higher education and the rise of the “new journalism” of entertainment over information are well worth the read alone. These two points also provide the strongest evidence that this anti-intellectualism is, in fact, truly new, and not just newly noticed. I am more convinced of the reality of this phenomenon than before I read his book.
The Death of Expertise is worth a read for anyone interested in the growing culture of anti-intellectualism in North America and beyond. And really, that means it should be worth a read for anyone who is capable of reading 200 pages. Sadly, as his analysis suggests, the number of people who fall into that category may be much smaller than we would like to think.
Vigilantism can have serious emotional appeal. The idea of a noble crime-fighter burning the red tape and casting bureaucracy aside to see justice done - and done now - is one we have all probably found alluring at one time or another. But Gotham is still just a fantasy, and there are good reasons why vigilantism is not - and should not - be tolerated in civil society.
The incredibly sad case of Jaxson Jacoe is a recent and excellent example of why vigilantism ultimately fails as a means to serve justice. This 21-year-old, Burnaby resident with developmental disabilities was recently ambushed by a few guys from the Langley Creep Busters and White Rock Creep Catchers networks, vigilante organizations that hunt for pedophiles online, setup fake meetings, then confront their targets, usually with cameras in hand. Such organizations have become popular across Canada and other countries recently. Much good work has seemingly been done by some of the groups, as they often provide information to the local police that assist in laying actual charges and, presumably, obtaining convictions.
But these groups have also needlessly, and wrongly, destroyed lives. Jacoe was confronted by the vigilantes at his work and promptly lost his job as scorekeeper at the Planet Ice arena in Coquitlam. If you read the CBC report linked above, you'll see that Jacoe's disabilities rendered him incapable of dealing with the confrontational situation, and he will likely deal with lasting trauma from the incident for years to come. Most importantly, there is zero evidence that Jacoe is a pedophile by any reasonable definition of the term. His social faculties are on par with those of a pre-teen, and just because he agreed to meet an allegedly 14-year-old girl because "she" was interested in becoming friends, does not a pedophile make.
The whole situation is an example of Type II error, or "false negative", in action. Much of scientific methodology is traditionally concerned with controlling the rate of Type I error (the rate of "false positives") first and foremost , and then designing studies or adapting analytical tools to minimize the rate of Type II error, in some sense. (Yes, the reality is a bit more complicated than this, but the general idea works for this discussion.) To take a specific example, it is far preferable to mistakenly infer that a drug does no good (false negative) than to mistakenly infer that it does (false positive). Patients consuming a drug that does no good are not actually being treated (minus any placebo effect), and in the meantime many of them could be getting worse. [Interestingly, there are plenty of instances when we actually care more about controlling the rate of false negatives, but that is probably best left as a topic for another post.]
The Canadian justice system, and those of most other secular democracies/republics, operates under the same principle. This is the classic "innocent until proven guilty" credo reformulated in statistical terms. As Blackstone's formulation asserts, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." Put another way, it is better that we commit a Type II error (incorrectly infer someone is innocent) than a Type I error (proclaim an innocent person guilty). The default, or null, position is of no effect; in this case, that means no guilt. It should require ample evidence to move us from this null position.
As a natural consequence, our justice system allows some guilty people to roam free (a Type II error), those for whom enough evidence is not available to ensure a proclamation of guilt is not simply a Type I error. Of course, no reasonable system of justice carries with it a zero chance of Type I error (otherwise, no one would ever be declared guilty no matter how much evidence was stacked against them!), but it seems eminently preferable to live in a society where you don't have to be worried about convincing the state that you are innocent should they decide to correlate your location or habits with the occurrence of a crime. You found someone's wallet on the bus and want to return it? Too bad you have to prove you didn't really steal it first. This is not a system of justice that one would like to live under.
This is the system of justice enforced under vigilantism, however. Though often well-meaning, vigilantes like the Langley Creep Busters and White Rock Creep Catchers trade Type II errors for Type I errors. They subscribe to the theory that it is better to catch all criminals at the expense of snaring some innocents, and eschew Blackstone's formulation. When they confronted Jaxson Jacoe outside his work on February 20th, they did so with a verdict already rendered. He was guilty in their eyes and now justice had come to be served. Of course, they were wrong in this instance (a Type I error), and the consequence is that they have destroyed this young man's life, a life that will be very difficult to put back together given his developmental disabilities.
The allure of The Batman is undeniably strong, on a visceral level. If I happened to be The Joker's dry-cleaner though, I would rather not have to deal with Batman beating me up under suspicion of laundering money.
[P.S. It is true that our classical justice system also commits Type I errors, but there are many mechanisms in place to minimize the chances (burden of proof), and to correct such mistakes after the fact (the entire system of appeals). Incidentally, this is a good argument as to why the "death penalty" has no place in a modern judicial system. Putting a convicted person to death eliminates any future possibility of appeal, or the relevancy of new evidence, and thus ensures that some Type I errors will never be rectified.]
The incredibly sad case of Jaxson Jacoe is a recent and excellent example of why vigilantism ultimately fails as a means to serve justice. This 21-year-old, Burnaby resident with developmental disabilities was recently ambushed by a few guys from the Langley Creep Busters and White Rock Creep Catchers networks, vigilante organizations that hunt for pedophiles online, setup fake meetings, then confront their targets, usually with cameras in hand. Such organizations have become popular across Canada and other countries recently. Much good work has seemingly been done by some of the groups, as they often provide information to the local police that assist in laying actual charges and, presumably, obtaining convictions.
But these groups have also needlessly, and wrongly, destroyed lives. Jacoe was confronted by the vigilantes at his work and promptly lost his job as scorekeeper at the Planet Ice arena in Coquitlam. If you read the CBC report linked above, you'll see that Jacoe's disabilities rendered him incapable of dealing with the confrontational situation, and he will likely deal with lasting trauma from the incident for years to come. Most importantly, there is zero evidence that Jacoe is a pedophile by any reasonable definition of the term. His social faculties are on par with those of a pre-teen, and just because he agreed to meet an allegedly 14-year-old girl because "she" was interested in becoming friends, does not a pedophile make.
The whole situation is an example of Type II error, or "false negative", in action. Much of scientific methodology is traditionally concerned with controlling the rate of Type I error (the rate of "false positives") first and foremost , and then designing studies or adapting analytical tools to minimize the rate of Type II error, in some sense. (Yes, the reality is a bit more complicated than this, but the general idea works for this discussion.) To take a specific example, it is far preferable to mistakenly infer that a drug does no good (false negative) than to mistakenly infer that it does (false positive). Patients consuming a drug that does no good are not actually being treated (minus any placebo effect), and in the meantime many of them could be getting worse. [Interestingly, there are plenty of instances when we actually care more about controlling the rate of false negatives, but that is probably best left as a topic for another post.]
The Canadian justice system, and those of most other secular democracies/republics, operates under the same principle. This is the classic "innocent until proven guilty" credo reformulated in statistical terms. As Blackstone's formulation asserts, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." Put another way, it is better that we commit a Type II error (incorrectly infer someone is innocent) than a Type I error (proclaim an innocent person guilty). The default, or null, position is of no effect; in this case, that means no guilt. It should require ample evidence to move us from this null position.
As a natural consequence, our justice system allows some guilty people to roam free (a Type II error), those for whom enough evidence is not available to ensure a proclamation of guilt is not simply a Type I error. Of course, no reasonable system of justice carries with it a zero chance of Type I error (otherwise, no one would ever be declared guilty no matter how much evidence was stacked against them!), but it seems eminently preferable to live in a society where you don't have to be worried about convincing the state that you are innocent should they decide to correlate your location or habits with the occurrence of a crime. You found someone's wallet on the bus and want to return it? Too bad you have to prove you didn't really steal it first. This is not a system of justice that one would like to live under.
This is the system of justice enforced under vigilantism, however. Though often well-meaning, vigilantes like the Langley Creep Busters and White Rock Creep Catchers trade Type II errors for Type I errors. They subscribe to the theory that it is better to catch all criminals at the expense of snaring some innocents, and eschew Blackstone's formulation. When they confronted Jaxson Jacoe outside his work on February 20th, they did so with a verdict already rendered. He was guilty in their eyes and now justice had come to be served. Of course, they were wrong in this instance (a Type I error), and the consequence is that they have destroyed this young man's life, a life that will be very difficult to put back together given his developmental disabilities.
The allure of The Batman is undeniably strong, on a visceral level. If I happened to be The Joker's dry-cleaner though, I would rather not have to deal with Batman beating me up under suspicion of laundering money.
[P.S. It is true that our classical justice system also commits Type I errors, but there are many mechanisms in place to minimize the chances (burden of proof), and to correct such mistakes after the fact (the entire system of appeals). Incidentally, this is a good argument as to why the "death penalty" has no place in a modern judicial system. Putting a convicted person to death eliminates any future possibility of appeal, or the relevancy of new evidence, and thus ensures that some Type I errors will never be rectified.]
Now that I have a semi-decent camera, I decided to setup a structured depository for my photos. Flickr seemed like an easy option, and with 1 free terabyte of storage, hopefully I won't have to worry about running out of space. I just finished uploading some of the better shots from my recent trip to Kauai in Hawaii, US. Naturally, most of the shots are of birds.
A wintering Sanderling (Calidris alba) at Kekaha Beach, Kauai, Hawaii, US.
Blog
This is a simple space for random items of interest.
Gulls of the World Poster
View and download the cartoon "Know Your Gulls" poster I made. Perfect for spreading some basic gull knowledge and appreciation!
World Urban
Gull Map
Seen a gull (or tern) nesting in an urban location? Check the map! If your location is not yet recorded, please send me a quick message with the approximate location and species (if known) of your sighting.
Movie List
An alphabetized archive of movies I've watched since early 2016, with rankings.
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