Reasserting a Prehistoric Tragedy of the Commons: Reply to Lyman

Jones, Terry L.; Hildebrandt, William R.

doi:10.1006/jaar.1995.1004

Cited by 64 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(13 reference statements)

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“…Whether related to pa leoclimatic events (San Clemente Island is very poorly watered, and modest de creases in frequency/amount of rainfall could easily render all or parts of the is land uninhabitable) or some other phe nomenon, this hiatus may have given ma rine mammal populations a chance to recover from earlier exploitation, and re newed occupation brought with it heavy exploitation of rookeries. This scenario is similar to the one advanced by Jones and Hildebrandt (1995) to explain an apparent rebound in non-terrestrial breeder popu lations on the northern Channel Islands ca. A.D.1200 when so-called "Medieval droughts" (Graumlich 1993;Raab and Larson 1997;Stine 1994) disrupted settle ment on the more poorly watered islands (Arnold 1992b).…”

Section: Patterns Through Timesupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Quantified data from southern California were largely limited to findings from the breeding colony on San Miguel Island, and were more equivocal, as terrestrial breeders initially declined, but later showed some signs of a population re bound. Jones and Hildebrandt (1995) sug gested that prolonged droughts during the early centuries of the present millen nium (see Graumlich 1993;Stine 1994) may have forced humans to abandon some or all of the more poorly watered Channel Islands, giving marine mammal populations opportunity for both short and long-term recovery.…”

Section: Alternative Perspectives On Marine Mammal Exploitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In two papers Hildebrandt and Jones (Hildebrandt and Jones 1992;Jones and Hildebrandt 1995) suggested that hunting of fur seals and sea lions along California and Oregon shores approxi mated a prehistoric .. tragedy of the com mons" in which rookeries of terrestrial breeding sea lions and fur seals were overexploited, necessitating pursuit of smaller, more elusive taxa (harbor seals and sea otters) that breed at sea and can only be caught through the use of sophis ticated maritime weaponry and boats. In opposition, Lyman (1995) suggested that prehistoric hunting of marine mammals was more conservation-oriented, that some mainland rookeries persisted into historic times aided by selective culling of herds, and that the potential for rapid population recovery mitigated short-term decimation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Jones and Hildebrandt (1995) ar gument for a tragedy of the commons in the northeastern Pacific was based on a large suite of zooarchaeological data from California and Oregon uninten tionally weighted toward the late Holo cene and spatially toward northern and central California. While faunal collec tions representing human predation on marine mammals extending back to the early Holocene and ultimately to the era of initial human colonization are neces sary to fully evaluate the overexploita tion model, such data simply were not available from the northeastern Pacific until more recently.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Trans-Holocene Marine Mammal Exploitation on San Clemente Island, California: A Tragedy of the Commons Revisited

Porcasi

Jones

Raab

2000

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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Occupied from ca. 7040 B.C. to AD. 1400, the Eel Point Site (CA-SCLI-43) on San Clemente Island, California represents one of the longest sequences of near-continuous marine resource exploitation on the west coast of North America. Faunal remains suggest transitions from heavy exploitation of fur seals and sea lions during the early Holocene, to increased hunting of cetaceans at mid-Holocene, to a focus on sea otters and fish during the late Holocene. These trends are consistent with patterns of overexploitation and economic intensification on the California and Oregon mainland, but they also suggest watercraft-based hunting earlier on the island than elsewhere. Fur seal and sea lion bones mainly represent females and juveniles, indicating that exploitation of island rookeries was guided more by self-interest than by principles of game conservation. Two intervals of temporary site abandonment, ca. 6150-3970 B.C. and AD. 1020-1400, were both followed by periods of increased marine mammal exploi tation and may reflect intervals during which marine mammal populations rebounded. Broad scale diachronic trends in the zooarchaeological remains do not correlate with flux in paleo-sea temperatures and are best interpreted as products of overhunting and increased use of water craft over time.With the increasing application of opti ample, is commonly envisioned as a mal foraging and/or economic intensifica strictly natural or climatic phenomenon tion theories to models of hunter-gath routinely accommodated by simple adap erer subsistence (see Beaton 1991; Basgall tive adjustments and/or migrations by hu 1987; Broughton 1994, among others), mans (see Moratto 1984). These models long-standing cultural ecological interpre portray human/environmental relation tations of forager prehistory are coming ships as largely unidirectional; culture is under renewed scrutiny. Based on a perceived as being influenced by the nat premise of relentless human adaptation, ural environment, but there are often no many traditional cultural ecological inter catastrophes or violence and little consid pretations emphasize a limited rela eration of the possible impact of humans tionship between humans and their envi on their surroundings. In models in which ronment. Environmental change, for ex-the influence of hunter-gatherers on nat

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Section: Patterns Through Timesupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Alternative Perspectives On Marine Mammal Exploitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Trans-Holocene Marine Mammal Exploitation on San Clemente Island, California: A Tragedy of the Commons Revisited

Porcasi

Jones

Raab

2000

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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“…Some workers attribute the decline to climate change (Glassow 1993;Colten and Arnold 1998); others blame predation by aboriginal hunters (Hildebrandt and Jones 1992;Jones and Hildebrandt 1995). If climate change were responsible, it must have been transient, as northern fur seals maintained island rookeries in the region into historic times.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene changes in the ecology of northern fur seals: insights from stable isotopes and archaeofauna

et al. 2001

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The remains of northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) are among the most abundant of pinniped elements recovered from mainland coastal archaeological sites in both California and Oregon. This is surprising as all contemporary northern fur seals breed exclusively on offshore islands, primarily at high latitudes, and the species is otherwise pelagic. The vulnerability of these animals to human predation suggests that either humans were foraging much further offshore than has been presumed or alternatively that the ecology of these animals has shifted during the late Holocene. We used isotopic and archaeofaunal analysis of the remains of pinnipeds from the middle to late Holocene of central and northern California to clarify the breeding and foraging behavior, and migration patterns of these ancient animals. The carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions of ancient northern fur seals reveal that these animals fed as far offshore as they do today, and that they remained at middle latitudes throughout the year. From an archaeological site at Moss Landing, California, we identified 16 skeletal elements from at least 12 very small northern fur seal pups. From another site near Mendocino, California, we identified the remains of at least 6 pups. We estimate the size and age of 5 of the young animals using sex-specific regressions of body length on the short dentary length derived from measurements of modern specimens. Our estimates indicate these ancient pups were substantially smaller, and therefore younger, than modern 3-month-old northern fur seal pups from similar latitudes and their nitrogen isotope compositions suggest they had not been weaned. As present-day northern fur seals do not leave their rookeries until they are at least 4 months old, we consider it highly unlikely that these ancient pups swam to these mainland locations from some distant island rookery. While there are numerous nearshore rocky outcrops along the Mendocino Coast, which may have supported small breeding colonies, the Moss Landing site is centered on a 40-km-long sandy beach, and is more than 120 km from what at the time were the nearest offshore islands. We conclude that northern fur seal adult females, subadults, and pups whose remains were recovered at the Moss Landing archaeological site must have been taken at a mainland rookery. Evidence that northern fur seals once bred on the mainland at this central California location suggests that the abundant remains of these animals at numerous other archaeological sites along the California coast also reflect the presence of nearby mainland rookeries. Based on the relative abundance of their remains in ancient human occupation sites and the widespread distribution of sites where their remains have been found, it appears that northern fur seals were once the predominant pinniped throughout a region where they now only rarely occur. Furthermore, their presence along the central and northern California coasts appears to have once severely limited the distribution of other pinnipeds, which are now ...

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Predator recovery, shifting baselines, and the adaptive management challenges they create

2019

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Recent species recoveries following historical depletion have been widely celebrated as conservation success stories. However, the recovery of highly interactive species, particularly predators, generates new management challenges that arise from their potential for wide‐ranging effects on local ecosystems and their poorly understood ecology. In marine systems, many pinniped species share parallel histories of depletion, recovery, and human conflict. Recovering from post‐exploitation populations of small size, these pinnipeds have returned to their present abundance from a largely absent, or severely reduced, recent role in many coastal ecosystems. To address the challenges arising today from real or perceived overabundance of protected pinniped species, we evaluate the prehistorical, historical, and contemporary abundances of six pinniped species that breed in the contiguous United States. This review highlights gaps in current knowledge that limit the implementation of ecologically grounded approaches to adaptive management of protected species in a time of shifting, or lifting, baselines. To address these gaps will require a diverse cadre of natural and social scientists as well as stakeholders to tackle the questions of how we define recovery at a species or ecosystem level, and when we have reached this point, how we move forward in a way that does not repeat a history of depletion, conservation, and recovery. Doing so will require an understanding of what role highly interactive species play in their ecosystems and how this role shifts with changes in ecological context, as well as the sociological and economic impacts of species restoration to humans. This knowledge is integral to the ongoing transition from a focus on preventing species extinction to new, and often unanticipated, challenges arising from the functional implications of species recovery.

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Reasserting a Prehistoric Tragedy of the Commons: Reply to Lyman

Cited by 64 publications

References 5 publications

Trans-Holocene Marine Mammal Exploitation on San Clemente Island, California: A Tragedy of the Commons Revisited

Trans-Holocene Marine Mammal Exploitation on San Clemente Island, California: A Tragedy of the Commons Revisited

Holocene changes in the ecology of northern fur seals: insights from stable isotopes and archaeofauna

Predator recovery, shifting baselines, and the adaptive management challenges they create

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