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Shifting Baselines

The Cure for Planetary Amnesia

The Shifting Baselines Blog

JacquetSEED.jpgJennifer Jacquet is a Ph.D. candidate with the Sea Around Us Project at the UBC Fisheries Centre. She works closely with Dr. Daniel Pauly, who coined the term Shifting Baselines, the syndrome on which this blog focuses. <img alt=
Josh Donlan
is a conservation scientist and a Visting Fellow at Cornell University. He often hides out in the backcountry of the Teton Mountains, pondering bygone giant beavers and ground sloths. He also is also the founder and Director of Advanced Conservation Strategies and has a habit of restoring remote islands.

RODodos.jpgScientist turned filmmaker Randy Olson, founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project is also a blog contributor.

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New Projects & Publications

April 2008: Randy Olson and the Puget Sound Partnership release the flash video Shifting Baselines in the Sound.

April 18, 2008: Jennifer Jacquet gives the talk "Market Inefficiencies: Why Do We Waste Good Fish on Pigs?" at a forage fish workshop hosted by the Marine Fish Conservation Network.

April 15, 2008: Josh Donlan gives a invited talk in New York at Wildlife Conservation Society's annual meeting, Gateways to Conservation 2008: The State of the Wild.

April 5, 2008: Randy Olson delivers the Claude Bernard Distinguished Lecture at the American Physiological Society meeting in San Diego, titled, "Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking substance in an age of style."

March 15, 2008: Josh Donlan is selected as a 2008 Kinship Conservation Fellow. He will join 17 others from around the world to explore business and economic tools for biodiversity conservation gains.

March 6-13, 2008: Josh Donlan co-directs a working group at the US National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara. The group is exploring biodiversity offsets and market-based instruments as solutions for biodiversity-fishery bycatch offsets.

Mar. 25-27, 2008: Randy Olson presents his films and his "Don't Be Such a Scientist" lecture on science communication at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Mar. 2008: Dr. Josh Donlan joins the Shifting Baselines blog.

Jan. 2008 Jennifer Jacquet launches the Eat Like a Pig Seafood Wallet Card EatLikeaPigHalf.jpg

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Losing Track:

(Un)Happy Endangered Species Day

Today is Endangered Species Day, a resolution introduced by Maine Senator Susan Collins and California Senator Dianne Feinstein to help increase awareness about threats to endangered wildlife, fish and plants. In celebration, let's look at this article in the BBC...

Will the Future Be Fishless?

Over the weekend, the Observer's Alex Renton gave it to us straight on how the world's oceans are running out of fish. Here's just a taste: Unlike global warming, the science of fish stock collapse is old and its practitioners...

Goodbye Salmon, Hello Prawns

Fishermen off of Oregon's coast could go broke sitting, or could go broke working, which is why they're trading in their salmon fishing gear and began outfitting their boats for prawns. This is a classic case of overfishing (as well...

The Forgotten Mollusk

For a baseline to shift, there must be an element of amnesia. To be forgotten, you must first be acknowledged as existing. What of the unlucky mollusks then? Few people know much about these slimy, slow movers. A new article...

The Future Stinks: A Scratch & Sniff Children's Book

I used to love scratch-n-sniff when I was little. I remember one about a little bear at Christmas and I could smell his hot chocolate, oranges, and pine trees. Well, that was then and this is now. My book about...

Lifespans Shorten and Baselines Shift

I always say that the shifting baselines syndrome, the tendency for each new generation to accept a degraded environment as normal/natural, is partially a result of the short human lifespan. If we would only live 1000 years, we would do...

A Call for More Science to Combat Shifting Baselines in Puget Sound

In The Seattle Times yesterday, there is an excellent article that talks a lot about shifting baselines in Puget Sound, including issues with population growth, the loss of a healthy marine ecosystem, and the formation of the Puget Sound Partnership....

State Of The Wild

The state of the world can be measured by the state of the wild. The Wildlife Conservation Society takes on that challenge by publishing their annual State of the Wild series with Island Press. The 2008-09 volume is fresh off...

From Randy Olson: New Shifting Baselines Flash Video for Puget Sound

Last fall I was contacted by the folks at the newly created Puget Sound Partnership regarding the "shifting baselines" predicament they face with Puget Sound. Their phone polling showed that over 90% of the people of Seattle are in favor...

Should More Jellies Fill Your Belly?

The Economist published an article last week on jellyfish, which featured a fellow graduate student at the Fisheries Centre, Lucas Brotz. Can jellyfish really be the future of seafood? Jellyfish only provide about 4 calories per 100 g but, beyond...

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