Predators and Logic Models

In the morning, Dr. Dean Anderson spoke to the students about the problem of introduced mammals in New Zealand. Save for a few bat species, no terrestrial land mammals were historically found in New Zealand. One theory for why this happened is that New Zealand flooded several times after breaking away from Gondwana. As a consequence, the native flora and fauna are not adapted to browsing and predatory mammals that have been introduced by Maori and Europeans.

Dr. Anderson talking about predator control

Because of approximately 30 million brushtail possums in New Zealand and other mammals such as stoats, New Zealand has undertaken a broad control strategy of using poison and trapping. As a necessary strategy to keep native plants and animals, it is not without controversy. Dropping massive amounts of 1080 poison, vast areas are covered to keep possum populations down. As DOC states:

"Why do we use 1080?

The main threat to many of New Zealand’s native plants and animals comes from  introduced predators such as possums, rats and stoats. New Zealand has no native ground dwelling mammals so native species like birds, snails, lizards and insects are particularly vulnerable to these imported tree climbing predators.

1080 is very effective in controlling these introduced pests and well suited to New Zealand conditions. It can be safely applied by air and it is the most cost-effective method of providing landscape scale pest control over difficult terrain.

A fast, tactical knockdown of possums, rats and stoats is often needed in the spring to protect birds during the nesting season. This is especially important in ‘mast years’ when some native trees (especially beech) produce huge numbers of seeds. This abundance of food can lead to a plague of rats, which in turn leads to an increase in stoats – both of which eat vulnerable native birds, insects and lizards."

Ultimately, science is trying to find better methods to control mammals end reduce their reliance on poisons. Landcare Research is one such organization studying this problem.

Next, Dr, Will Allen gave a presentation about how to change (human) behaviors and evaluate the success of any program by using a logic model. He maintains a learning for sustainability site - http://learningforsustainability.net/http://learningforsustainability.net/. It is not easy to create a logic  model but essential to evaluate whether a program is successful.

Dr. Allen's presentation

As Dr. Allen states:

"The starting point for introducing challenging programmes that cut across many work groups and departments is to find ways to articulate and guide planned project activities, especially those intended to produce dissemination and utilisation outcomes. Many managers do not have the tools to easily set out, document, and communicate complex programme goals, activity strategies, and intended outcomes. Logic models can assist these goals by encouraging project staff to plan for results by envisioning a 'big picture' view of a project's scope of work and potential significance to various target systems. Other names for logic models include 'outcomes models', 'causal chains', or 'intervention logic models' (ILMs).

"Logic models are narrative or graphical depictions of processes in real life that communicate the underlying assumptions upon which an activity is expected to lead to a specific result. They generally illustrate a sequence of cause-and-effect relationships, i.e. a systems approach to communicate the path toward a desired result. The model describes logical linkages among programme resources, activities, outputs, and audiences, and highlights different orders of outcomes related to a specific problem or situation. Importantly, once a programme has been described in tenns of the logic model, critical measures of perfonnance can be identified. In this way logic models can be seen to support both planning and evaluation. A good place to start is with this introduction to logic models, and a more detailed introduction to outcomes."

The class gave it a go and developed two logic models:

Group 1's presentation on getting people to use natives in yards and neighborhoods

Group 2 presented a logic model on how to increase composting on the UF campus

We spent part of the afternoon entering species on NaturewatchNZ. To view entries, visit this link - http://naturewatch.org.nz/projects/university-of-florida-biodiversity-coursehttp://naturewatch.org.nz/projects/university-of-florida-biodiversity-course. We finished off the day with a swim at the Selwyn Aqua center. Sleep tight!  Dr. H