Talk:Overexploitation

Description

I purpose modifying the description of overexploitation to "Overexploitation is an ecological term to describe one of the five main activities threatening global biodiversity. It is also extensively used in fisheries. Essentially, it means populations are harvested at a rate that is unsustainable, given their natural rates of mortality and capacities for reproduction. This can result in harvesting ‘to the point of diminishing returns’ and extinction at the population level and even extinction of whole species."

Any objections or additions?

Matt, I suspect you may be doing a little OR here. Your definition of overexploitation, as occurring when "populations are harvested at a rate that is unsustainable", seems to be equating overexploitation with unsustainablity. If that is the case, then we don't need this article when we already have one on sustainability. However, your definition does not mesh, at all, with the way the term is used in fisheries. In fisheries, as I have already spelt out in detail in the article, overexploitation can be perfectly compatible with sustainability. Indeed, the FAO had a recent international conference specifically looking at overexploitation and unsustainablity as contrasting concepts (cited in the reference section). The term is used more in fisheries than in other contexts, as you can easily check from Google. Also you haven't sourced the key statement you placed in the lead, that overexploitation is "a term used in ecology, as one of the five main activities threatening global biodiversity". For example, has this been explicitly stated by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment? Are are you sure they use the term "overexploitation"? Unless you can clearly establish that, in ecology and conservation biology, the term is used in a definitive and unambiguous way, and that the term is in fact a key term within those disciplines, then I do not think it is a good idea to demote the fisheries context to an afterthought. --Epipelagic (talk) 22:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

No, I am not doing original research. There are 13 references on this now. That's 5 more than on fisheries you added. If you read the journals or the books, it clearly states what i've written. I am an Ecologist, I was taught about overexploitation of many species, not just fishes. I also gave you additional material on my talk page. Here are easy to click links just from googleing '5 causes of extinction, overexploitation' there were 101,000 results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_planet#2._.22Why_Is_There_a_Crisis.3F.22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction#Causes

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1514.html

http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb310/lecture-notes/extinctions/node3.html

I understand why you might think overexploitation and sustainability are related. As stated in the article, the phenomenon of sustainability came from overexploitation, as did many other concepts. Sustainability is one of many solutions to overexploitation. In the same way water can be a solution to fire, but they are not the same. Sustainability is a conservation effort, overexploitation is an ecological observation.

I am not trying to demote or detract away from fisheries, there is extensive material there in Overfishing etc, and links to these articles on the page. Matt (talk) 00:10, 2 February 2010 (UTC)