December 20, 2021 • 34 mins
Heading into the holidays we take a rare optimistic detour in the world of conservation. Our guest is Dr. Chris Haney, President of Terra Med Applied Sciences, a public interest ecological research company. He and Brian discuss the fate of the ivory-billed woodpecker – the bird that keeps scientists guessing no matter how often it’s declared extinct. Hear the only known recording of the woodpecker, and consider: is it really gone? Or is Woody getting the last laugh?
Chris's book, Woody's Last Laugh: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/changemakers-books/our-books/woodys-last-laugh-making-thinking-errors
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Episode Transcript
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Pat Choate (00:02):
From the Center for the Advancement of the Steady
State Economy, this is TheSteady Stater, a podcast
dedicated to discussing limitsto growth and the Steady State
Economy.
Brian Czech (00:17):
Welcome to the show. I'm your host Brian Czech,
and our guest today is Dr. JamesChristopher Haney, President and
Founder of Terra Mar AppliedSciences, an ecological and
economic research companydevoted to science-driven
solutions for land or sea. Chrishas been a Pew Marine Fellow at
Woods Hole, a wildlife facultymember at Penn State, and a
(00:40):
forest ecologist at theWilderness Society. But I met
Chris somewhere around 2002,when he was in Washington, D.C.
as the Chief Scientist forDefenders of Wildlife. I know
Chris to be a creativescientist, who happens to be an
outstanding communicator, atalented administrator, and a
great mentor to students andearly career professionals.
(01:03):
Chris Haney, welcome to TheSteady Stater.
Chris Haney (01:06):
Thank you, Brian.
It's good to be here.
Brian Czech (01:09):
It's great to have you in. Hate to do this, but I
want to put you on the spotright off the bat. Which of
those places the Woods Hole,Wilderness Society, or Defenders
of Wildlife? Which one was yourfavorite?
Chris Haney (01:22):
Well, there's without a question. It was Woods
Hole, because I love the sea.
And not only was my office ablock away from the ocean, I
lived in a small cottage thatoverlooks Sippewissett Marsh and
a beach. So you know, I wasaround the sea every day for
three years. And it was prettyhard to beat that.
Brian Czech (01:43):
Oh that sounds wonderful. A lot of our
listeners have some familiaritywith government agencies, and
nonprofit organizations, andcolleges, and universities. I'm
guessing that far fewer knowmuch at all about consulting
firms, and especially the typeof firm you run. Let me read the
first sentence from your website-- Terra Mar Applied Sciences,
(02:06):
LLC, conducts ecological andeconomic research in the public
interest, then applies itcreatively using principles of
civic responsibility andenvironmental stewardship. You
guys almost sound like a federalscience agency with a statement
like that. But give us someexamples of what you actually
(02:27):
do, Chris?
Chris Haney (02:28):
Sure. Well, we work very, very closely with federal
agencies. In fact, our coresuite of projects encompass
advising and sometimes fieldresearch on behalf of such
agencies as the Bureau of OceanEnergy Management, the US
Geological Survey, US Fish andWildlife Service and the
(02:49):
National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration. So we do this
often in partnerships thatinvolve other entities besides
the federal government, but weinclude them and also may
include such things asuniversities and research
institutes. So it generallymeans that the public interest
(03:09):
aspect of our portfolio means wedeal with environmental issues
that are largely driven by whatthe public can benefit from, not
necessarily what privatebusiness benefits from.
Brian Czech (03:23):
Okay, well, one thing I know about your career
is that you've been able to melda good deal of ecological
expertise and economic insightinto the programs you've run.
And now you've got a new bookhot off the press called Woody's
Last Laugh - How the ExtinctIvory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us
Into Making 53 Thinking Errors.
Chris, before we delve into thecontents of this very unique
(03:48):
book, I'm really curious, whatwas the impetus for taking this
on? And who is your targetaudience?
Chris Haney (03:57):
Well, you know, I'll start with my target
audience, Brian. It's almostanyone who wants to think more
clearly, who wants to makebetter decisions, and who wants
to be less -- I guess --influenced or biased by one's
own mind, but also the attemptsof others. So it's really
(04:17):
something for almost everyone.
If you're interested in Americanenvironmental history, if you're
interested in conservation,biology, wildlife biology,
science, I think it will alsointerest you. How did I get
involved in it -- it was it wasa rather long path. I became
fascinated in 2004 by how crazy,nutty, confrontational, and
(04:40):
downright mean people were aboutthis bird, especially after its
putative discovery andrediscovery in 2004 and 2005, so
that was part of my interest.
The other thing that piqued myinterest was it seemed like
there were contradictions aboutthe basic life history of the
(05:01):
bird. And these two things,pulled me in and hooked me. And
I couldn't make sense of ituntil -- I remembered some time
that I spent with economistsback in my fellowship days at
Woods Hole. And they used toteach me about heuristics, about
these mental shortcuts that wetake. And so I started an
(05:22):
exploration into cognitivepsychology, reading books that
might be standard in economics,like Kahneman's Thinking, Fast
and Slow. But these ideas arereally not so well-known inside
natural science. And as Idiscovered conservation biology,
and especially aboutivory-billed woodpecker, we make
(05:43):
lots of little mistakes.
Brian Czech (05:46):
Well, you definitely took a deep dive into
human reasoning and cognitivebias and the use of those
heuristics. Actually, let'sstart with that. Because the
word and concept of heuristictrips a lot of people up I
think, so please tell us, Chris,what exactly is a heuristic?
Chris Haney (06:05):
Sure, Brian.
Heuristic is simply a shortcut,a mental shortcut that we take.
And when we do, they help usmake decisions quickly. And so
that's the good side of them.
The bad side of heuristic, or ashortcut, is our decisions are
often inaccurate, incomplete, orbiased in a particular
(06:27):
direction.
Brian Czech (06:28):
So what would be an example of a heuristic that's
commonly used in wildlifeconservation, then?
Chris Haney (06:35):
Well, there are lots of them in biology,
unfortunately. One of the onesthat I've been most worried
about stems from our neglect ofprobability. And in the case of
wood, claiming extinction forvarious wildlife or plants, we
often err on the side ofdeclaring a species gone or dead
(06:56):
too soon. That bias comes fromsomething called base rate
fallacy. That is to say, weignore a background rate in
nature that we ought to payattention to. And we think that
our reasoning is infallible,that we know the answers all the
time, and we simply don't.
Brian Czech (07:15):
And that base rate fallacy, is that what leads to
this type of error that youwrote about the Romeo error? And
why is it why is it named Romeoerror?
Chris Haney (07:25):
Yes, exactly. So Romeo error is named for the
Shakespearean tragedy, in whichJuliet wakes up to see that
Romeo has already killedhimself, because he thought she
was dead. And then when she seeshim dead, she takes her own life
as well. So it's almost a doubletragedy here. And so in
(07:46):
conservation biology, when wedeclare an animal or plant gone
too early, we might back awayfrom protections, we might back
away from conservation practice,we might stop any kind of
protection that might have beenin place, and that can lead to
even further tragedy. So it wasgiven the name Romeo error in
(08:08):
the early 1990s. And it's kindof stuck.
Brian Czech (08:12):
It's a lose-lose.
Do we have any clues about theprevalence of this Romeo error?
Chris Haney (08:18):
We do. A paper about -- oh I guess almost 10
years ago now -- found that inthe last century and a quarter,
we have refound somewherebetween 350 and 400 species of
animals that were thought to begone, but were rediscovered.
Brian Czech (08:37):
Wow.
Chris Haney (08:38):
Yeah, it's a large number. In fact, that number is
just increasing. So we'reactually getting an acceleration
in the rate of theserediscoveries. Those animals and
plants that are refound arecalled Lazarus species. Because
they can that -- from adistance, it looks like they
were dead and then resurrected.
Of course, we know that's notthe case. But it's prevalent in
(09:01):
mammals, birds, reptiles,amphibians, and fishes, as well
as lesser known invertebratesand plants.
Brian Czech (09:11):
What other kinds of mental pitfalls influence our
beliefs about wildlifeextinctions? And does that mess
up our approach to the economicsof conservation, too?
Chris Haney (09:22):
Yeah, so let me try to draw a direct parallel
between wildlife conservationand economics. Suppose that we
have a belief about howsomething affects our economy,
just like we have a belief abouthow it might affect a species
prospects for survival orextinction. If we fail to
(09:42):
incorporate new information whenit comes in -- that is to say we
stick rigidly to our originalbeliefs -- we fall to a bias
called Bayesian conservatism, or-- put another way -- a lack of
Bayesian caution. In otherwords, we become anchored --
that's called an anchoring bias.
Your listeners might recognizethis when they go in and lease a
(10:05):
car, buy a car, and the carsalesman tries to anchor you on
a higher price that you don'twant to pay. And then when they
come down 1000 or 2000, youthink you've got a bargain. But
when we don't move our beliefsenough, we're guilty of two or
three biases, includinganchoring and Bayesian
conservatism.
Brian Czech (10:29):
What's the one where -- I think you talked a
little bit about if a species ismerely out of sight, yet we call
it gone forever? Isn't that likewhat babies do? And their mother
leaves the room, they concludethat she's gone for good?
Chris Haney (10:44):
Yeah, exactly, Brian, and this is one of the
most fascinating ones for me,and it's ubiquitous with the
ivory-billed woodpecker, andfrankly, other birds and some
mammals that disappear from oursite. We are like young
children. When a species isgone, we declare it extinct just
because we can't see it. Thatbias is a cognitive one that
(11:08):
usually we grow out of asinfants. It's called lack of
object permanence, meaning thatif something isn't there, we
think it's gone forever. Andthat -- object in constancy is
another term -- is moreprevalent in some of us as
individuals than others. That isto say, you might have less of
this problem than I would. So itvaries among individuals, but it
(11:32):
is a contribution to why wedeclare animals and plants
extinct too soon.
Brian Czech (11:38):
Okay, well, we've got some more questions for you
here. But first, we need to takea short non-commercial break
with James Lamont. And whilewe're on break, Chris, I wonder
if you can track down an audiorecording of an ivory-billed.
Meanwhile, take it away, James.
James Lamont (12:01):
Hello, listeners, we hope you're enjoying our
conversation with Dr. ChrisHaney, President and Founder
Terra Mar Applied Sciences. Weat CASSE just want to take a
moment to thank everyonelistening for their support
during 2021. We also want towish you all a safe,
sustainable, and steady-stateholiday season. And if you
should bump into Santadelivering lumps of coal, show
(12:22):
him our position statement oneconomic growth. It would surely
make his Christmas a lot lessstressful. And now, back to the
show.
Brian Czech (12:30):
Welcome back to the show. And you know what? We
built people's expectations upfor a sound file of the
ivory-billed. What did we comeup with there, Chris?
Chris Haney (12:40):
Well, I just sent you a file... [sound] ...and it
sounds much like a tiny tinhorn. And it's not a very loud
(13:06):
sound for such a large bird. Butit is the only recording that we
have from a known ivory-billedwoodpecker ever in history, is
just this one. And it was takenin the late 1930s by James T.
Tanner and a Cornell team ofacousticians in the singer track
(13:27):
of Northeast Louisiana.
Brian Czech (13:29):
The famous clip, yes. And to me a lot of
woodpeckers sound like they'relaughing and so, you know, your
book is loaded with not justmetaphors alone, but all kinds
of figures of speech. And I'mthinking well is that have a
little bit to do it to Woody'sLast Laugh title, but. Now,
Chris, how did you react to thatrecent proposal by the US Fish
(13:52):
and Wildlife Service to delist23 plants and animals as
extinct, including theivory-billed?
Chris Haney (14:00):
Well, Brian, I laughed.
Brian Czech (14:03):
You laughed!
Chris Haney (14:04):
I did. Because you know, we've been declaring this
bird extinct since 1913. So formore than 100 years, we've been
declaring this bird is gone. Andyou know, the bird just doesn't
get the memo. It just keepspopping up after long intervals
of apparent absence. And I laughbecause we are much like the old
(14:27):
cartoon strip that you mighthave heard of from the 1930s and
40s. With Woody the woodpecker.
We are Wally Walrus, we get setup again and again by Woody the
Woodpecker, and Woody tricks usover, and over, and over again.
Brian Czech (14:44):
Hey, well, you must have had a number of different
titles in mind for this bookbefore you settled on this one.
Chris Haney (14:52):
I did. They weren't nearly as good, you know. This
is actually -- Brian -- I feltthis way myself. Can I share a
story of how I felt I wastricked?
Brian Czech (15:04):
Yeah.
Chris Haney (15:05):
So as a young boy, my grandfather would give me old
1900s -- or late 1800s, early1900s books about birds. And
from reading them, I justassumed that the ivory-billed
was extinct. And, you know, Ididn't think much more about it,
it just put it away, filed itaway, and went on. And when the
(15:26):
US Fish and Wildlife Servicecompleted their recovery plan
for the ivory-billed woodpeckerin 2010, I raced over to the
appendix. And believe it or not,in its Appendix E, I tallied 100
incidents of people seeing thisbird since the 1940s. That was
(15:48):
when it was supposed to do havedied off.
Brian Czech (15:50):
Oh.
Chris Haney (15:52):
And I thought, this is not how an extinct bird
should behave. And so you know,what is this? What kind of trick
is being played here? And Ireally did feel pranked. I was
kind of annoyed, actually.
Brian Czech (16:07):
Well, Chris, what makes us so eager to declare
this bird gone, then?
Chris Haney (16:11):
Well, I think one is that we let a cognitive bias
called anchoring fixate us onthe birds extinction. And so
there are a couple of piecesthat go into this anchoring. One
is that the story of itsextinction has been repeated so
often. And that constitutes anavailability cascade. That is to
(16:32):
say -- you repeat somethingoften enough, and people will
believe it's true, even if itisn't. That's one thing that
sort of predisposes us towardsextinction. And another one --
and this one really fascinatesme. It's called the negativity
bias. And we're not aninstinctually optimistic
species, that is to say, ourbrains, our minds, don't just
(16:57):
naturally go into a kind ofhappy, cheerful optimism. And so
if we're presented with death,and life, death has a whole lot
more salience -- that is to say,it's a lot more available to our
mind, we will fixate on it. Andof course, death is a bit more
serious than life. And so it hasa greater power to kind of
(17:20):
influence us. So these thingscontribute to -- it's really
hard for us to get out of themindset that this bird may not
be extinct.
Brian Czech (17:31):
Well, that's very interesting in it -- in a way it
resonates. And yet, we have thisoptimism, that's -- I would say,
plagued the conservationcommunity for decades now,
because it's a false optimism. Ithink, you know, what I'm
talking about the win-winrhetoric, you know, there is no
(17:52):
conflict between growing theeconomy and protecting it, we
expose that all the time on TheSteady Stater. And that's been a
political tool, I guess, runningin the face of that tendency
toward negativism.
Chris Haney (18:07):
Well. And actually this problem that you point out
-- this picture that the economycan just continue to grow
without there being any kind ofserious consequences -- that's a
framing effect, Brian. It's sortof, it's a way of anchoring the
the listeners or the viewersexpectations about a topic in
(18:28):
advance, and creating a story, anarrative that's hard to get
away from, because it's sort ofput out there first. And I am an
environmental science, not aneconomist. But I do believe that
this idea that economic systemscould continue to grow came
first. And so it's hard for usto undo that. And that's a
(18:49):
framing effect. And that'sanother bias that we have to be
very, very careful about. Andit's one that both economics and
conservation have to learn moreabout in order to get the truth
out to the public.
Brian Czech (19:05):
Right. So the 53 thinking errors, most of them
are biases of one type oranother. Is that the case?
Chris Haney (19:15):
They are. Both of these are cognitive biases, but
I also included some of the morefrequent logical fallacies. One
of my, I guess pet peeves withthe ivory-billed woodpecker is
something called the argumentfrom ignorance. The argument
from ignorance is aphilosophical fallacy, a logical
(19:36):
fallacy, basically goes likethis -- it tries to prove a
point by the absence of data. Soin the case of -- you know where
this is going in theivory-billed...
Brian Czech (19:51):
It's going to fake news, I guess.
Chris Haney (19:53):
Yes, indeed. So the ivory-billed is extinct, because
we cannot prove that it's alive.
And of course, the absence ofevidence is not evidence of
absence. And this is a commonerror with conservation biology
and declarations of extinction.
Because it's very, verydifficult to prove a negative.
(20:16):
It's very, it's quite difficultto demonstrate even with high
statistical significance that ananimal or plant isn't there,
that's hard to do.
Brian Czech (20:27):
Well, you know, the list of 23 species that fish and
wildlife proposed for delisting,and once again, they'd all be
delisted, due to real orsupposedly extinction. Now, 11
of them are from the contiguous48 states, almost all in the
South and the other 12 are fromHawaii, which of course, is
(20:49):
ecologically messed up with allthe invasive species especially.
But you know, what stood outabout the ivory-billed
woodpecker to me, Chris, is thatwhen Fish and Wildlife Service
described the causes of itsendangerment, it listed only one
cause -- and that was logging.
For all the other 23 species,there are multiple causes
(21:10):
identified like agriculture,mining, road construction,
urbanization, industrialdevelopment, reservoirs, and
even outdoor recreation. Doesthis honing in on logging give
us any kind of insights into thebiases committed on behalf of
the woodpecker?
Chris Haney (21:30):
Well, yes, it does, in both directions. And what I
mean is that we don't actuallyhave strong evidence that
logging harmed the woodpecker.
We've made some inferences thatthat's the case. We've made some
deductions, we've made someindirect conclusions. But the
woodpecker was nomadic, it was avery strong flyer, and most
(21:51):
woodpeckers, including thesmaller ones, can move away from
areas that get logged, and justgo to other places. So that's
kind of a strange thing. I wasalso amazed that the declaration
of presumed extinction forivory-billed did not mention
direct persecution, shooting,hunting, collecting.
Brian Czech (22:14):
Right.
Chris Haney (22:15):
Many people believe that was a strong contribution
to the woodpeckers scarcity. AndI don't know why that
information was left out, quitehonestly.
Brian Czech (22:27):
Maybe a little bit of explanatory value for that as
that ivory-billed was from thatclass of 1967 -- you know, that
was the first group of specieslisted pursuant to the
Endangered Species Act, and thatincluded 14 mammals and 36 bird
species, 6 reptiles, 6amphibians, and 22 fish species.
(22:52):
And I was wondering if you foundany patterns, or if you looked
at the list of 23 that wasrecently proposed for delisting,
several of them were from thatclass of 67. And they probably
had back then, well, moresimplified, simplistic, even I
suppose approach to describingthe causes of impairment.
Chris Haney (23:16):
Yes, I -- what stood out to me is that in the
case of the island birds, thosethat were found -- there was one
bird, I think, from Guam, andthe rest were from Hawaii, with
two exceptions, the ivory-billedwoodpecker, and the Bachman's
warbler. And then there wereseveral freshwater clams or
mussels, which are, in somecases, were or are restricted to
(23:39):
a single watershed, a singleriver system. When an animal or
plant has that local adistribution, they're already
uncommon or rare to begin with,just due to the fact of such a
highly restricted range. And so,first of all, it's easier to
show that they're not there --I'm not saying that this was
satisfactorily demonstrated ineach of those 23 species cases
(24:03):
-- but it's easier to tellsomething isn't there, say in
one mountain range on oneisland. The problem with the
ivory-billed woodpecker is itoccurred across a dozen states
in its original range. And theFish and Wildlife Service's
recovery plan show just between2000 and 2010, 26 sighting
(24:25):
reports across about 7 or 8states. And it's very much
harder to safely conclude that aspecies isn't there when the
range is that large. So I wouldsay if I looked at all of those
23 species in the recentproposal to delist, I would say
that this one is the headscratcher. This one is the one I
(24:49):
believe is more problematic. Itdoesn't mean that the other ones
are extinct. It just means thatthe absences for sighting
reports for these other animalsis probably longer, and they
have smaller ranges. Soextinction would be more likely
just on those grounds. Butthat's the big difference I see,
is that we had two birds in thatlist, the Bachman's warbler and
(25:12):
the ivory-billed woodpecker thathad large ranges. And here's
another interesting thing,Brian, we do not have 100
sighting reports of Bachman'swarbler since the 1940s. But we
do for ivory-billed, and thatpuzzles me. I don't see a good
reason for that. Except thatmaybe one of them isn't really
(25:32):
dead.
Brian Czech (25:33):
Well, yeah, of course, those warblers. They're
so alike and hard to spot a lotof times, whereas -- what about
the pileated? You suppose someof these ivory-billed sightings
may have just been pileatedwoodpeckers?
Chris Haney (25:46):
Well, I would say that the likelihood of that
happening is high. But here'sthe other puzzle, a conundrum,
enigma. We've been demanded to-- sort of say -- all cases of
ivory-billed woodpeckers wereexpected birdwatchers, who went
out, and we're finding what theyset out to see and they really
(26:08):
saw pileated. There's manyproblems with that. One is we've
only allowed the similarities ofthese two big woodpeckers to run
in one direction. We're expectedto have people confuse pileated
for ivory-billed. But where arethe warnings about confusing
ivory-billed for pileated. Wedon't even have those. The other
thing is that the expectationfor the last 70 or more years is
(26:32):
the bird is dead. So peopledon't knowingly go search for
dead birds. And then you havepeople that have seen them that
have spent 6 or 8, 10 in somecases, 20 or more years looking.
And it becomes ratherimplausible to say that if
somebody is impetuous and hasty,why spend 20 years proving that?
(26:56):
You know what I mean?
Brian Czech (26:56):
There's sort of a synergy of these cognitive
biases, it sounds like.
Chris Haney (27:00):
Exactly, exactly.
And so what I discovered in mybook is that there's actually
something -- a predisposition tonot report, the ivory-billed
woodpecker. One, is it's dead.
Two, let's protect it. I don'twant anybody to disturb it.
Three, if you're a hunterfisherman living in the South,
(27:21):
you wouldn't know who to reportthis to. You're disconnected in
social space from scientists andso forth. These and other things
predispose us if the woodpeckeris still there to actually
under-report it, notover-reported.
Brian Czech (27:39):
Yeah, that makes sense. I do want to acknowledge
that our very last guestactually on the podcast, Ann
Vileisis, who you probably knowas the author of that
outstanding book on wetlands inwetland loss, discovering the
unknown landscape. She wrote atlength, and we discussed it a
little bit in the episode aboutthe wipeout of bald cypress
(28:04):
swamps in the South. Andcertainly that was sort of the
top habitat in the broadest ofterms -- top, you know, canopy
cover and feeding tree andnesting tree, you know, habitat
at large for the ivory-billed,so. The logging would have been
very important. But yeah, youalmost have to wonder if there
(28:27):
were some policy implicationsthat were coming into the
picture when that was listed.
Chris Haney (28:35):
Yes. And it's interesting, if you go back and
read what some naturalist saidin the 1950s, they were not as
pessimistic as everyone else.
And they said, you know, it'strue, the heavy logging at the
end of the 1800s and in theearly part of the 1900s kind of
created a bottleneck. It really-- I think the big unanswered
(28:59):
question is whether theivory-billed woodpecker could
have gotten through that loggingbottleneck without going
extinct. I don't know theanswer. I really don't write.
But if it did, it might actuallybe facing a Southeast United
States that might have beenslapped. That is slightly better
(29:19):
shape today than it was that.
Brian Czech (29:23):
Right. Well, that's true. Well, I still I just have
to ask you if you were forced toa gambling table in Vegas, and
all these cognitive biases andmental mishaps aside, you with
your scientific chops, wherewould you place the odds of
extinction? Extinct per se.
Chris Haney (29:44):
You're putting me on the spot here, Brian. I would
first seek to avoid Bayesianconservatism, a lack of Bayesian
caution. And I would run awayfrom 100% or 0% on either one.
Okay. So I would allow that theprobability is not 100%, but not
(30:10):
0, either. For either extinctionor survival, it's somewhere in
the middle. And I -- if I wereto ask myself, Chris, if you
could actually know the truth,which one would surprise you
more? To really learn that thebird was dead? Or that the bird
was still alive? And so I thinkI would probably say, it would
(30:31):
surprise me just slightly moreto learn that the bird was
extinct. So maybe, let's say, myodds of survival would be 55%
survival, 45% extinction, whichis that's not that's not quite
50-50. But it's close. Andthat's because I can explain
(30:51):
most of the nuttiness aroundthis bird -- the contradiction
due to cognitive bias, I can --by the fact I can -- explain all
of it to myself, you might notbe convinced, but I am. On the
other hand, because I'm apopulation ecologist, or I'd
like to be one, we've never hadgood numbers for the bird. So I
could believe that anyone thatshows up would be the last one.
(31:15):
You know, there's no way ofknowing.
Brian Czech (31:17):
Right. One of the main points you've made, though,
I think, all along is that --well, extinction is forever, of
course, but an extinctionlisting is pretty much forever
as well, it closes a lot ofmanagerial and policy doors. And
that's one of the biggestproblems with the types of
(31:37):
outcomes from these cognitivebiases.
Chris Haney (31:40):
It is. And I wish we would adopt the standards of
the International Union for theConservation of Nature, BirdLife
International. And we'd havethis in between category, which
is highly imperiled, presumedextinct. It's not quite final,
but it's right at death's door.
And elsewhere around the globearound the planet, that kind of
(32:03):
category is where we park --birds and mammals and plants,
fish and so forth -- where wedon't know. I think that's a
more logical and more cautiousand a more reasonable place to
put our uncertainty.
Brian Czech (32:20):
Well I think that gives us a nice follow up
episode. How does that sound,Chris?
Chris Haney (32:26):
Sounds great to me, Brian.
Brian Czech (32:27):
All right. Well, thank you so much for being on
the show today, and we'll talkto you down the road a bit.
Chris Haney (32:33):
All right. Thank you, Brian. Good to be here.
Brian Czech (32:51):
Well, folks, that about wrap her up. We've been
talking with Dr. Chris Haney,Founder and President of Terra
Mar Applied Sciences. What aunique and exceptional journey
he's taken us on, exploring someof the depths of human folly.
You know, it's hard to find asilver lining in an extinction
announcement, whether it'scorrect or not. But given such a
(33:14):
sour ecological lemon, we got tomake some kind of lemonade
bittersweet as it might be.
We've got to take thisannouncement of the ivory-billed
extinction, as yet anotherwarning to humanity. That's the
closest thing to a silver liningwe'll get. So we'd better take
it. Each one of these species inthe USA and in the world upon
(33:35):
its extinction gives us one morechance to stop and reflect. In
addition to being a beautiful,evolved, priceless creation in
its own right, each one of thesespecies is like a canary in the
coal mine. Or maybe we shouldlook at it like a feather of the
(33:56):
canary in the coal mine. Howfewer feathers can that canary
take? And where does that leaveus? I'm Brian Czech, and you've
been listening to the SteadyStater podcast. See you next
time.
From the Center for the Advancement of the Steady
State Economy, this is TheSteady Stater, a podcast
dedicated to discussing limitsto growth and the Steady State
Economy.
Brian Czech (00:17):
Welcome to the show. I'm your host Brian Czech,
and our guest today is Dr. JamesChristopher Haney, President and
Founder of Terra Mar AppliedSciences, an ecological and
economic research companydevoted to science-driven
solutions for land or sea. Chrishas been a Pew Marine Fellow at
Woods Hole, a wildlife facultymember at Penn State, and a
(00:40):
forest ecologist at theWilderness Society. But I met
Chris somewhere around 2002,when he was in Washington, D.C.
as the Chief Scientist forDefenders of Wildlife. I know
Chris to be a creativescientist, who happens to be an
outstanding communicator, atalented administrator, and a
great mentor to students andearly career professionals.
(01:03):
Chris Haney, welcome to TheSteady Stater.
Chris Haney (01:06):
Thank you, Brian.
It's good to be here.
Brian Czech (01:09):
It's great to have you in. Hate to do this, but I
want to put you on the spotright off the bat. Which of
those places the Woods Hole,Wilderness Society, or Defenders
of Wildlife? Which one was yourfavorite?
Chris Haney (01:22):
Well, there's without a question. It was Woods
Hole, because I love the sea.
And not only was my office ablock away from the ocean, I
lived in a small cottage thatoverlooks Sippewissett Marsh and
a beach. So you know, I wasaround the sea every day for
three years. And it was prettyhard to beat that.
Brian Czech (01:43):
Oh that sounds wonderful. A lot of our
listeners have some familiaritywith government agencies, and
nonprofit organizations, andcolleges, and universities. I'm
guessing that far fewer knowmuch at all about consulting
firms, and especially the typeof firm you run. Let me read the
first sentence from your website-- Terra Mar Applied Sciences,
(02:06):
LLC, conducts ecological andeconomic research in the public
interest, then applies itcreatively using principles of
civic responsibility andenvironmental stewardship. You
guys almost sound like a federalscience agency with a statement
like that. But give us someexamples of what you actually
(02:27):
do, Chris?
Chris Haney (02:28):
Sure. Well, we work very, very closely with federal
agencies. In fact, our coresuite of projects encompass
advising and sometimes fieldresearch on behalf of such
agencies as the Bureau of OceanEnergy Management, the US
Geological Survey, US Fish andWildlife Service and the
(02:49):
National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration. So we do this
often in partnerships thatinvolve other entities besides
the federal government, but weinclude them and also may
include such things asuniversities and research
institutes. So it generallymeans that the public interest
(03:09):
aspect of our portfolio means wedeal with environmental issues
that are largely driven by whatthe public can benefit from, not
necessarily what privatebusiness benefits from.
Brian Czech (03:23):
Okay, well, one thing I know about your career
is that you've been able to melda good deal of ecological
expertise and economic insightinto the programs you've run.
And now you've got a new bookhot off the press called Woody's
Last Laugh - How the ExtinctIvory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us
Into Making 53 Thinking Errors.
Chris, before we delve into thecontents of this very unique
(03:48):
book, I'm really curious, whatwas the impetus for taking this
on? And who is your targetaudience?
Chris Haney (03:57):
Well, you know, I'll start with my target
audience, Brian. It's almostanyone who wants to think more
clearly, who wants to makebetter decisions, and who wants
to be less -- I guess --influenced or biased by one's
own mind, but also the attemptsof others. So it's really
(04:17):
something for almost everyone.
If you're interested in Americanenvironmental history, if you're
interested in conservation,biology, wildlife biology,
science, I think it will alsointerest you. How did I get
involved in it -- it was it wasa rather long path. I became
fascinated in 2004 by how crazy,nutty, confrontational, and
(04:40):
downright mean people were aboutthis bird, especially after its
putative discovery andrediscovery in 2004 and 2005, so
that was part of my interest.
The other thing that piqued myinterest was it seemed like
there were contradictions aboutthe basic life history of the
(05:01):
bird. And these two things,pulled me in and hooked me. And
I couldn't make sense of ituntil -- I remembered some time
that I spent with economistsback in my fellowship days at
Woods Hole. And they used toteach me about heuristics, about
these mental shortcuts that wetake. And so I started an
(05:22):
exploration into cognitivepsychology, reading books that
might be standard in economics,like Kahneman's Thinking, Fast
and Slow. But these ideas arereally not so well-known inside
natural science. And as Idiscovered conservation biology,
and especially aboutivory-billed woodpecker, we make
(05:43):
lots of little mistakes.
Brian Czech (05:46):
Well, you definitely took a deep dive into
human reasoning and cognitivebias and the use of those
heuristics. Actually, let'sstart with that. Because the
word and concept of heuristictrips a lot of people up I
think, so please tell us, Chris,what exactly is a heuristic?
Chris Haney (06:05):
Sure, Brian.
Heuristic is simply a shortcut,a mental shortcut that we take.
And when we do, they help usmake decisions quickly. And so
that's the good side of them.
The bad side of heuristic, or ashortcut, is our decisions are
often inaccurate, incomplete, orbiased in a particular
(06:27):
direction.
Brian Czech (06:28):
So what would be an example of a heuristic that's
commonly used in wildlifeconservation, then?
Chris Haney (06:35):
Well, there are lots of them in biology,
unfortunately. One of the onesthat I've been most worried
about stems from our neglect ofprobability. And in the case of
wood, claiming extinction forvarious wildlife or plants, we
often err on the side ofdeclaring a species gone or dead
(06:56):
too soon. That bias comes fromsomething called base rate
fallacy. That is to say, weignore a background rate in
nature that we ought to payattention to. And we think that
our reasoning is infallible,that we know the answers all the
time, and we simply don't.
Brian Czech (07:15):
And that base rate fallacy, is that what leads to
this type of error that youwrote about the Romeo error? And
why is it why is it named Romeoerror?
Chris Haney (07:25):
Yes, exactly. So Romeo error is named for the
Shakespearean tragedy, in whichJuliet wakes up to see that
Romeo has already killedhimself, because he thought she
was dead. And then when she seeshim dead, she takes her own life
as well. So it's almost a doubletragedy here. And so in
(07:46):
conservation biology, when wedeclare an animal or plant gone
too early, we might back awayfrom protections, we might back
away from conservation practice,we might stop any kind of
protection that might have beenin place, and that can lead to
even further tragedy. So it wasgiven the name Romeo error in
(08:08):
the early 1990s. And it's kindof stuck.
Brian Czech (08:12):
It's a lose-lose.
Do we have any clues about theprevalence of this Romeo error?
Chris Haney (08:18):
We do. A paper about -- oh I guess almost 10
years ago now -- found that inthe last century and a quarter,
we have refound somewherebetween 350 and 400 species of
animals that were thought to begone, but were rediscovered.
Brian Czech (08:37):
Wow.
Chris Haney (08:38):
Yeah, it's a large number. In fact, that number is
just increasing. So we'reactually getting an acceleration
in the rate of theserediscoveries. Those animals and
plants that are refound arecalled Lazarus species. Because
they can that -- from adistance, it looks like they
were dead and then resurrected.
Of course, we know that's notthe case. But it's prevalent in
(09:01):
mammals, birds, reptiles,amphibians, and fishes, as well
as lesser known invertebratesand plants.
Brian Czech (09:11):
What other kinds of mental pitfalls influence our
beliefs about wildlifeextinctions? And does that mess
up our approach to the economicsof conservation, too?
Chris Haney (09:22):
Yeah, so let me try to draw a direct parallel
between wildlife conservationand economics. Suppose that we
have a belief about howsomething affects our economy,
just like we have a belief abouthow it might affect a species
prospects for survival orextinction. If we fail to
(09:42):
incorporate new information whenit comes in -- that is to say we
stick rigidly to our originalbeliefs -- we fall to a bias
called Bayesian conservatism, or-- put another way -- a lack of
Bayesian caution. In otherwords, we become anchored --
that's called an anchoring bias.
Your listeners might recognizethis when they go in and lease a
(10:05):
car, buy a car, and the carsalesman tries to anchor you on
a higher price that you don'twant to pay. And then when they
come down 1000 or 2000, youthink you've got a bargain. But
when we don't move our beliefsenough, we're guilty of two or
three biases, includinganchoring and Bayesian
conservatism.
Brian Czech (10:29):
What's the one where -- I think you talked a
little bit about if a species ismerely out of sight, yet we call
it gone forever? Isn't that likewhat babies do? And their mother
leaves the room, they concludethat she's gone for good?
Chris Haney (10:44):
Yeah, exactly, Brian, and this is one of the
most fascinating ones for me,and it's ubiquitous with the
ivory-billed woodpecker, andfrankly, other birds and some
mammals that disappear from oursite. We are like young
children. When a species isgone, we declare it extinct just
because we can't see it. Thatbias is a cognitive one that
(11:08):
usually we grow out of asinfants. It's called lack of
object permanence, meaning thatif something isn't there, we
think it's gone forever. Andthat -- object in constancy is
another term -- is moreprevalent in some of us as
individuals than others. That isto say, you might have less of
this problem than I would. So itvaries among individuals, but it
(11:32):
is a contribution to why wedeclare animals and plants
extinct too soon.
Brian Czech (11:38):
Okay, well, we've got some more questions for you
here. But first, we need to takea short non-commercial break
with James Lamont. And whilewe're on break, Chris, I wonder
if you can track down an audiorecording of an ivory-billed.
Meanwhile, take it away, James.
James Lamont (12:01):
Hello, listeners, we hope you're enjoying our
conversation with Dr. ChrisHaney, President and Founder
Terra Mar Applied Sciences. Weat CASSE just want to take a
moment to thank everyonelistening for their support
during 2021. We also want towish you all a safe,
sustainable, and steady-stateholiday season. And if you
should bump into Santadelivering lumps of coal, show
(12:22):
him our position statement oneconomic growth. It would surely
make his Christmas a lot lessstressful. And now, back to the
show.
Brian Czech (12:30):
Welcome back to the show. And you know what? We
built people's expectations upfor a sound file of the
ivory-billed. What did we comeup with there, Chris?
Chris Haney (12:40):
Well, I just sent you a file... [sound] ...and it
sounds much like a tiny tinhorn. And it's not a very loud
(13:06):
sound for such a large bird. Butit is the only recording that we
have from a known ivory-billedwoodpecker ever in history, is
just this one. And it was takenin the late 1930s by James T.
Tanner and a Cornell team ofacousticians in the singer track
(13:27):
of Northeast Louisiana.
Brian Czech (13:29):
The famous clip, yes. And to me a lot of
woodpeckers sound like they'relaughing and so, you know, your
book is loaded with not justmetaphors alone, but all kinds
of figures of speech. And I'mthinking well is that have a
little bit to do it to Woody'sLast Laugh title, but. Now,
Chris, how did you react to thatrecent proposal by the US Fish
(13:52):
and Wildlife Service to delist23 plants and animals as
extinct, including theivory-billed?
Chris Haney (14:00):
Well, Brian, I laughed.
Brian Czech (14:03):
You laughed!
Chris Haney (14:04):
I did. Because you know, we've been declaring this
bird extinct since 1913. So formore than 100 years, we've been
declaring this bird is gone. Andyou know, the bird just doesn't
get the memo. It just keepspopping up after long intervals
of apparent absence. And I laughbecause we are much like the old
(14:27):
cartoon strip that you mighthave heard of from the 1930s and
40s. With Woody the woodpecker.
We are Wally Walrus, we get setup again and again by Woody the
Woodpecker, and Woody tricks usover, and over, and over again.
Brian Czech (14:44):
Hey, well, you must have had a number of different
titles in mind for this bookbefore you settled on this one.
Chris Haney (14:52):
I did. They weren't nearly as good, you know. This
is actually -- Brian -- I feltthis way myself. Can I share a
story of how I felt I wastricked?
Brian Czech (15:04):
Yeah.
Chris Haney (15:05):
So as a young boy, my grandfather would give me old
1900s -- or late 1800s, early1900s books about birds. And
from reading them, I justassumed that the ivory-billed
was extinct. And, you know, Ididn't think much more about it,
it just put it away, filed itaway, and went on. And when the
(15:26):
US Fish and Wildlife Servicecompleted their recovery plan
for the ivory-billed woodpeckerin 2010, I raced over to the
appendix. And believe it or not,in its Appendix E, I tallied 100
incidents of people seeing thisbird since the 1940s. That was
(15:48):
when it was supposed to do havedied off.
Brian Czech (15:50):
Oh.
Chris Haney (15:52):
And I thought, this is not how an extinct bird
should behave. And so you know,what is this? What kind of trick
is being played here? And Ireally did feel pranked. I was
kind of annoyed, actually.
Brian Czech (16:07):
Well, Chris, what makes us so eager to declare
this bird gone, then?
Chris Haney (16:11):
Well, I think one is that we let a cognitive bias
called anchoring fixate us onthe birds extinction. And so
there are a couple of piecesthat go into this anchoring. One
is that the story of itsextinction has been repeated so
often. And that constitutes anavailability cascade. That is to
(16:32):
say -- you repeat somethingoften enough, and people will
believe it's true, even if itisn't. That's one thing that
sort of predisposes us towardsextinction. And another one --
and this one really fascinatesme. It's called the negativity
bias. And we're not aninstinctually optimistic
species, that is to say, ourbrains, our minds, don't just
(16:57):
naturally go into a kind ofhappy, cheerful optimism. And so
if we're presented with death,and life, death has a whole lot
more salience -- that is to say,it's a lot more available to our
mind, we will fixate on it. Andof course, death is a bit more
serious than life. And so it hasa greater power to kind of
(17:20):
influence us. So these thingscontribute to -- it's really
hard for us to get out of themindset that this bird may not
be extinct.
Brian Czech (17:31):
Well, that's very interesting in it -- in a way it
resonates. And yet, we have thisoptimism, that's -- I would say,
plagued the conservationcommunity for decades now,
because it's a false optimism. Ithink, you know, what I'm
talking about the win-winrhetoric, you know, there is no
(17:52):
conflict between growing theeconomy and protecting it, we
expose that all the time on TheSteady Stater. And that's been a
political tool, I guess, runningin the face of that tendency
toward negativism.
Chris Haney (18:07):
Well. And actually this problem that you point out
-- this picture that the economycan just continue to grow
without there being any kind ofserious consequences -- that's a
framing effect, Brian. It's sortof, it's a way of anchoring the
the listeners or the viewersexpectations about a topic in
(18:28):
advance, and creating a story, anarrative that's hard to get
away from, because it's sort ofput out there first. And I am an
environmental science, not aneconomist. But I do believe that
this idea that economic systemscould continue to grow came
first. And so it's hard for usto undo that. And that's a
(18:49):
framing effect. And that'sanother bias that we have to be
very, very careful about. Andit's one that both economics and
conservation have to learn moreabout in order to get the truth
out to the public.
Brian Czech (19:05):
Right. So the 53 thinking errors, most of them
are biases of one type oranother. Is that the case?
Chris Haney (19:15):
They are. Both of these are cognitive biases, but
I also included some of the morefrequent logical fallacies. One
of my, I guess pet peeves withthe ivory-billed woodpecker is
something called the argumentfrom ignorance. The argument
from ignorance is aphilosophical fallacy, a logical
(19:36):
fallacy, basically goes likethis -- it tries to prove a
point by the absence of data. Soin the case of -- you know where
this is going in theivory-billed...
Brian Czech (19:51):
It's going to fake news, I guess.
Chris Haney (19:53):
Yes, indeed. So the ivory-billed is extinct, because
we cannot prove that it's alive.
And of course, the absence ofevidence is not evidence of
absence. And this is a commonerror with conservation biology
and declarations of extinction.
Because it's very, verydifficult to prove a negative.
(20:16):
It's very, it's quite difficultto demonstrate even with high
statistical significance that ananimal or plant isn't there,
that's hard to do.
Brian Czech (20:27):
Well, you know, the list of 23 species that fish and
wildlife proposed for delisting,and once again, they'd all be
delisted, due to real orsupposedly extinction. Now, 11
of them are from the contiguous48 states, almost all in the
South and the other 12 are fromHawaii, which of course, is
(20:49):
ecologically messed up with allthe invasive species especially.
But you know, what stood outabout the ivory-billed
woodpecker to me, Chris, is thatwhen Fish and Wildlife Service
described the causes of itsendangerment, it listed only one
cause -- and that was logging.
For all the other 23 species,there are multiple causes
(21:10):
identified like agriculture,mining, road construction,
urbanization, industrialdevelopment, reservoirs, and
even outdoor recreation. Doesthis honing in on logging give
us any kind of insights into thebiases committed on behalf of
the woodpecker?
Chris Haney (21:30):
Well, yes, it does, in both directions. And what I
mean is that we don't actuallyhave strong evidence that
logging harmed the woodpecker.
We've made some inferences thatthat's the case. We've made some
deductions, we've made someindirect conclusions. But the
woodpecker was nomadic, it was avery strong flyer, and most
(21:51):
woodpeckers, including thesmaller ones, can move away from
areas that get logged, and justgo to other places. So that's
kind of a strange thing. I wasalso amazed that the declaration
of presumed extinction forivory-billed did not mention
direct persecution, shooting,hunting, collecting.
Brian Czech (22:14):
Right.
Chris Haney (22:15):
Many people believe that was a strong contribution
to the woodpeckers scarcity. AndI don't know why that
information was left out, quitehonestly.
Brian Czech (22:27):
Maybe a little bit of explanatory value for that as
that ivory-billed was from thatclass of 1967 -- you know, that
was the first group of specieslisted pursuant to the
Endangered Species Act, and thatincluded 14 mammals and 36 bird
species, 6 reptiles, 6amphibians, and 22 fish species.
(22:52):
And I was wondering if you foundany patterns, or if you looked
at the list of 23 that wasrecently proposed for delisting,
several of them were from thatclass of 67. And they probably
had back then, well, moresimplified, simplistic, even I
suppose approach to describingthe causes of impairment.
Chris Haney (23:16):
Yes, I -- what stood out to me is that in the
case of the island birds, thosethat were found -- there was one
bird, I think, from Guam, andthe rest were from Hawaii, with
two exceptions, the ivory-billedwoodpecker, and the Bachman's
warbler. And then there wereseveral freshwater clams or
mussels, which are, in somecases, were or are restricted to
(23:39):
a single watershed, a singleriver system. When an animal or
plant has that local adistribution, they're already
uncommon or rare to begin with,just due to the fact of such a
highly restricted range. And so,first of all, it's easier to
show that they're not there --I'm not saying that this was
satisfactorily demonstrated ineach of those 23 species cases
(24:03):
-- but it's easier to tellsomething isn't there, say in
one mountain range on oneisland. The problem with the
ivory-billed woodpecker is itoccurred across a dozen states
in its original range. And theFish and Wildlife Service's
recovery plan show just between2000 and 2010, 26 sighting
(24:25):
reports across about 7 or 8states. And it's very much
harder to safely conclude that aspecies isn't there when the
range is that large. So I wouldsay if I looked at all of those
23 species in the recentproposal to delist, I would say
that this one is the headscratcher. This one is the one I
(24:49):
believe is more problematic. Itdoesn't mean that the other ones
are extinct. It just means thatthe absences for sighting
reports for these other animalsis probably longer, and they
have smaller ranges. Soextinction would be more likely
just on those grounds. Butthat's the big difference I see,
is that we had two birds in thatlist, the Bachman's warbler and
(25:12):
the ivory-billed woodpecker thathad large ranges. And here's
another interesting thing,Brian, we do not have 100
sighting reports of Bachman'swarbler since the 1940s. But we
do for ivory-billed, and thatpuzzles me. I don't see a good
reason for that. Except thatmaybe one of them isn't really
(25:32):
dead.
Brian Czech (25:33):
Well, yeah, of course, those warblers. They're
so alike and hard to spot a lotof times, whereas -- what about
the pileated? You suppose someof these ivory-billed sightings
may have just been pileatedwoodpeckers?
Chris Haney (25:46):
Well, I would say that the likelihood of that
happening is high. But here'sthe other puzzle, a conundrum,
enigma. We've been demanded to-- sort of say -- all cases of
ivory-billed woodpeckers wereexpected birdwatchers, who went
out, and we're finding what theyset out to see and they really
(26:08):
saw pileated. There's manyproblems with that. One is we've
only allowed the similarities ofthese two big woodpeckers to run
in one direction. We're expectedto have people confuse pileated
for ivory-billed. But where arethe warnings about confusing
ivory-billed for pileated. Wedon't even have those. The other
thing is that the expectationfor the last 70 or more years is
(26:32):
the bird is dead. So peopledon't knowingly go search for
dead birds. And then you havepeople that have seen them that
have spent 6 or 8, 10 in somecases, 20 or more years looking.
And it becomes ratherimplausible to say that if
somebody is impetuous and hasty,why spend 20 years proving that?
(26:56):
You know what I mean?
Brian Czech (26:56):
There's sort of a synergy of these cognitive
biases, it sounds like.
Chris Haney (27:00):
Exactly, exactly.
And so what I discovered in mybook is that there's actually
something -- a predisposition tonot report, the ivory-billed
woodpecker. One, is it's dead.
Two, let's protect it. I don'twant anybody to disturb it.
Three, if you're a hunterfisherman living in the South,
(27:21):
you wouldn't know who to reportthis to. You're disconnected in
social space from scientists andso forth. These and other things
predispose us if the woodpeckeris still there to actually
under-report it, notover-reported.
Brian Czech (27:39):
Yeah, that makes sense. I do want to acknowledge
that our very last guestactually on the podcast, Ann
Vileisis, who you probably knowas the author of that
outstanding book on wetlands inwetland loss, discovering the
unknown landscape. She wrote atlength, and we discussed it a
little bit in the episode aboutthe wipeout of bald cypress
(28:04):
swamps in the South. Andcertainly that was sort of the
top habitat in the broadest ofterms -- top, you know, canopy
cover and feeding tree andnesting tree, you know, habitat
at large for the ivory-billed,so. The logging would have been
very important. But yeah, youalmost have to wonder if there
(28:27):
were some policy implicationsthat were coming into the
picture when that was listed.
Chris Haney (28:35):
Yes. And it's interesting, if you go back and
read what some naturalist saidin the 1950s, they were not as
pessimistic as everyone else.
And they said, you know, it'strue, the heavy logging at the
end of the 1800s and in theearly part of the 1900s kind of
created a bottleneck. It really-- I think the big unanswered
(28:59):
question is whether theivory-billed woodpecker could
have gotten through that loggingbottleneck without going
extinct. I don't know theanswer. I really don't write.
But if it did, it might actuallybe facing a Southeast United
States that might have beenslapped. That is slightly better
(29:19):
shape today than it was that.
Brian Czech (29:23):
Right. Well, that's true. Well, I still I just have
to ask you if you were forced toa gambling table in Vegas, and
all these cognitive biases andmental mishaps aside, you with
your scientific chops, wherewould you place the odds of
extinction? Extinct per se.
Chris Haney (29:44):
You're putting me on the spot here, Brian. I would
first seek to avoid Bayesianconservatism, a lack of Bayesian
caution. And I would run awayfrom 100% or 0% on either one.
Okay. So I would allow that theprobability is not 100%, but not
(30:10):
0, either. For either extinctionor survival, it's somewhere in
the middle. And I -- if I wereto ask myself, Chris, if you
could actually know the truth,which one would surprise you
more? To really learn that thebird was dead? Or that the bird
was still alive? And so I thinkI would probably say, it would
(30:31):
surprise me just slightly moreto learn that the bird was
extinct. So maybe, let's say, myodds of survival would be 55%
survival, 45% extinction, whichis that's not that's not quite
50-50. But it's close. Andthat's because I can explain
(30:51):
most of the nuttiness aroundthis bird -- the contradiction
due to cognitive bias, I can --by the fact I can -- explain all
of it to myself, you might notbe convinced, but I am. On the
other hand, because I'm apopulation ecologist, or I'd
like to be one, we've never hadgood numbers for the bird. So I
could believe that anyone thatshows up would be the last one.
(31:15):
You know, there's no way ofknowing.
Brian Czech (31:17):
Right. One of the main points you've made, though,
I think, all along is that --well, extinction is forever, of
course, but an extinctionlisting is pretty much forever
as well, it closes a lot ofmanagerial and policy doors. And
that's one of the biggestproblems with the types of
(31:37):
outcomes from these cognitivebiases.
Chris Haney (31:40):
It is. And I wish we would adopt the standards of
the International Union for theConservation of Nature, BirdLife
International. And we'd havethis in between category, which
is highly imperiled, presumedextinct. It's not quite final,
but it's right at death's door.
And elsewhere around the globearound the planet, that kind of
(32:03):
category is where we park --birds and mammals and plants,
fish and so forth -- where wedon't know. I think that's a
more logical and more cautiousand a more reasonable place to
put our uncertainty.
Brian Czech (32:20):
Well I think that gives us a nice follow up
episode. How does that sound,Chris?
Chris Haney (32:26):
Sounds great to me, Brian.
Brian Czech (32:27):
All right. Well, thank you so much for being on
the show today, and we'll talkto you down the road a bit.
Chris Haney (32:33):
All right. Thank you, Brian. Good to be here.
Brian Czech (32:51):
Well, folks, that about wrap her up. We've been
talking with Dr. Chris Haney,Founder and President of Terra
Mar Applied Sciences. What aunique and exceptional journey
he's taken us on, exploring someof the depths of human folly.
You know, it's hard to find asilver lining in an extinction
announcement, whether it'scorrect or not. But given such a
(33:14):
sour ecological lemon, we got tomake some kind of lemonade
bittersweet as it might be.
We've got to take thisannouncement of the ivory-billed
extinction, as yet anotherwarning to humanity. That's the
closest thing to a silver liningwe'll get. So we'd better take
it. Each one of these species inthe USA and in the world upon
(33:35):
its extinction gives us one morechance to stop and reflect. In
addition to being a beautiful,evolved, priceless creation in
its own right, each one of thesespecies is like a canary in the
coal mine. Or maybe we shouldlook at it like a feather of the
(33:56):
canary in the coal mine. Howfewer feathers can that canary
take? And where does that leaveus? I'm Brian Czech, and you've
been listening to the SteadyStater podcast. See you next
time.
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