Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
What are we doing out here?
"Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
What are we doing out here? We come in with big yellow machinery, excavators and bulldozers and trucks, and lay waste to what we call unnatural and bad, to create a new ecosystem that we call good and natural. The alternative is accepting ecosystem "replacement" AKA ecological succession. Who can weigh all the ramifications of change to decide what is good and bad? How can we attempt to control what we don't understand? Is invasive species removal worth it?
For most of the riparian areas in the Southwest, the invasive species of focus is tamarisk:
"Tamarisk can usually out-compete native plants for water. A single, large tamarisk can transpire up to 300 gallons of water per day. In many areas where watercourses are small or intermittent and tamarisk has taken hold, it can severely limit the available water, or even dry up a water source.
Tamarisk can grow in salty soil because it can eliminate excess salt from the tips of its leaves. When the leaves are shed, this salt increases the salinity of the soil, further reducing the ability of native plants to compete. Because of its ability to spread, its hardiness, its high water consumption, and its tendency to increase the salinity of the soil around it, the tamarisk has often completely displaced native plants in wetland areas.
From a wildlife point of view, the tamarisk has little value and is usually considered detrimental to native animals. The leaves, twigs and seeds are extremely low in nutrients, and, as a result, very few insects or wildlife will use them. In one study along the lower Colorado River, tamarisk stands supported less than 1% of the winter bird life that would be found in a native plant stand. Because of the tamarisk's ability to eliminate competition and form single-species thickets, wildlife populations have dropped dramatically." Source: White Sands National Monument
So is invasive species removal worth it? It seems that, in the case of tamarisk, the best available science says yes. So we come in with the big yellow machinery.
We're not against natural change but we are against destructive change, change that impoverishes rather than re-invigorates. According to David Brower, restoration is the opposite of trying to stop the hands of time; it is an effort to keep the clock running: "The business of making something better, getting something back in shape--helping Nature heal--should make us feel good. And it will probably make our children feel better about us if we spent more time trying." David Brower Wild Earth Interview, Spring 1998.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
What are we doing out here? We come in with big yellow machinery, excavators and bulldozers and trucks, and lay waste to what we call unnatural and bad, to create a new ecosystem that we call good and natural. The alternative is accepting ecosystem "replacement" AKA ecological succession. Who can weigh all the ramifications of change to decide what is good and bad? How can we attempt to control what we don't understand? Is invasive species removal worth it?
For most of the riparian areas in the Southwest, the invasive species of focus is tamarisk:
"Tamarisk can usually out-compete native plants for water. A single, large tamarisk can transpire up to 300 gallons of water per day. In many areas where watercourses are small or intermittent and tamarisk has taken hold, it can severely limit the available water, or even dry up a water source.
Tamarisk can grow in salty soil because it can eliminate excess salt from the tips of its leaves. When the leaves are shed, this salt increases the salinity of the soil, further reducing the ability of native plants to compete. Because of its ability to spread, its hardiness, its high water consumption, and its tendency to increase the salinity of the soil around it, the tamarisk has often completely displaced native plants in wetland areas.
From a wildlife point of view, the tamarisk has little value and is usually considered detrimental to native animals. The leaves, twigs and seeds are extremely low in nutrients, and, as a result, very few insects or wildlife will use them. In one study along the lower Colorado River, tamarisk stands supported less than 1% of the winter bird life that would be found in a native plant stand. Because of the tamarisk's ability to eliminate competition and form single-species thickets, wildlife populations have dropped dramatically." Source: White Sands National Monument
So is invasive species removal worth it? It seems that, in the case of tamarisk, the best available science says yes. So we come in with the big yellow machinery.
We're not against natural change but we are against destructive change, change that impoverishes rather than re-invigorates. According to David Brower, restoration is the opposite of trying to stop the hands of time; it is an effort to keep the clock running: "The business of making something better, getting something back in shape--helping Nature heal--should make us feel good. And it will probably make our children feel better about us if we spent more time trying." David Brower Wild Earth Interview, Spring 1998.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Restoration History: Hoedads
"In the middle of a clearcut, planting a tree is a spiritual act; doing it over and over is healing." Eugene Weekly.
Photo courtesy of www.dechene.com
The Hoedads were an organized cooperative of tree planters, named after their tool of choice, a sort of pickax used to plant trees. Mostly college graduates, these young men and women went "back to the land" in the 1970s to care for the earth and try to live out the ideals of the the 1960's, although by the time my father was a forester in Oregon in the 1980's only "drunks and guys who couldn't make it doing anything else" were left. It was brutal labor, a job the Oregon State Employment Service lists as “the hardest physical work known to this office.., one person in fifty succeeds the three week training period.” But the scenery was fantastic, and the art, music, and poetry of the movement continues to speak to us...
...especially to those of us who follow in their revolutionary footsteps, planting trees and caring for the earth. Today, reading about the idealism of the Hoedads, it is tempting to romanticize their work in comparison with our own. For example, both men and women Hoedads commonly worked shirtless, while today we rarely work shirtless and there aren't really many women on the crew anyway.
But, reading further history reveals trade-offs even in paradise. The Hoedads were exposed to sprayed herbicides and pesticides, while today we avoid using most poisonous chemicals (except petroleum products). Our work today, like the Hoedad's, is a product of our times. We drive trucks and eat processed food and doubt whether we can make a real difference, while the Hoedads confronted prejudice, exploitation, and chemical toxins with the fresh idealism of the 1960's. 40 years later it can be hard to see if much progress has been made (there are still so many forests and riparian areas to re-plant!), but perhaps the important fact is what has stayed the same: the dedication, hard work, and, yes, idealism to try to make a positive difference on the earth.
"God almighty! Why am I here, saying this, and not there, and not doing, and making the forest?"
Please read this great verse poem by Richard Bear eulogizing the Hoedads.
-
How to use a hoedad.
Photo courtesy of www.dechene.comThe Hoedads were an organized cooperative of tree planters, named after their tool of choice, a sort of pickax used to plant trees. Mostly college graduates, these young men and women went "back to the land" in the 1970s to care for the earth and try to live out the ideals of the the 1960's, although by the time my father was a forester in Oregon in the 1980's only "drunks and guys who couldn't make it doing anything else" were left. It was brutal labor, a job the Oregon State Employment Service lists as “the hardest physical work known to this office.., one person in fifty succeeds the three week training period.” But the scenery was fantastic, and the art, music, and poetry of the movement continues to speak to us...
...especially to those of us who follow in their revolutionary footsteps, planting trees and caring for the earth. Today, reading about the idealism of the Hoedads, it is tempting to romanticize their work in comparison with our own. For example, both men and women Hoedads commonly worked shirtless, while today we rarely work shirtless and there aren't really many women on the crew anyway.
But, reading further history reveals trade-offs even in paradise. The Hoedads were exposed to sprayed herbicides and pesticides, while today we avoid using most poisonous chemicals (except petroleum products). Our work today, like the Hoedad's, is a product of our times. We drive trucks and eat processed food and doubt whether we can make a real difference, while the Hoedads confronted prejudice, exploitation, and chemical toxins with the fresh idealism of the 1960's. 40 years later it can be hard to see if much progress has been made (there are still so many forests and riparian areas to re-plant!), but perhaps the important fact is what has stayed the same: the dedication, hard work, and, yes, idealism to try to make a positive difference on the earth.
"God almighty! Why am I here, saying this, and not there, and not doing, and making the forest?"
Please read this great verse poem by Richard Bear eulogizing the Hoedads.
-
How to use a hoedad.
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Day After Tomorrow
The movie "The Day After Tomorrow" is about the end of the world, and, unexpectedly, the cinematography is fairly good. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed seeing Los Angeles destroyed. New York is another matter: NY is destroyed every other weekend at the box office, and I've never lived there anyway, but I have lived near LA and I now believe that every good movie should destroy something important in your life.
Plus, the scientific side of the story was thought-provoking. Catastrophic (saltational) climate change can't be ruled out based on our present state of knowledge. The fossil record isn't precise enough to determine if past climate changes happened in 5, 50, or 500 hundred years. Also, the current level of Co2 is unprecedented for at least the last 400,000 years (the limit of our ice core data) and the rate of increase is likely unique in the entire history of the planet. We simply don't know enough from past experience to accurately anticipate how this is all going to play out.
The IPCC has issued a series of scenarios with likely average temperature increases, but a thorough understanding of the problems inherent in such models calls into question the precision of these averages. The most commonly cited average gives increases of of 2-6C over the next 100 years. But all of the models they currently use are inherently gradualist models (more on this below). One could be a skeptic whether these models are accurate at all, but their (retrograde) prediction of the cooling associated with the Mt. Pinatubo eruption convinced many of their validity. It is edifying to note the maturation of models that originally didn't even take into account atmospheric dust; this is certainly a new science and many problems remain to be solved, particularly the response of vegetation to increased CO2. (CF. McNaughton & Jarvis. Effects of spatial scale on stomatal control of transpiration. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 54, 279-301). There is a definite possibility that other, as yet undetermined, variables could play a significant role in future climate change.
But the problem with relying on IPCC averages as outer limits of possible climate changes goes deeper than possible 'out of left field' variables. A recent effort using contemporary day-to-day "matrix" models of weather (e.g. the kind that are used to predict the path of hurricanes) to predict long term climate change yielded slightly higher averages (up to 11C) than the IPCC,. But the most important result was buried in the calculation of these averages. It turns out that the researchers, like many other modelers, ran their simulation thousands of times and only averaged the results that seemed reasonable. A significant proportion of the models "crashed" to negative or positive infinity temperature. Obviously, these results could not be averaged with the simulations that "worked", but they instead point to the instability inherent in these equations.
The climate change models and the way they are interpreted are inherently biased toward gradualist results, but the real danger of climate change is unpredictability. A perfect storm probably won't jump-start a renewed ice age in a manner of days, as in The Day After Tomorrow, but more humble respect for the mysterious potentialities of nature may be wise. The hubris of those who calculate the economic cost of the IPCC predicted change are one example of what can go wrong in a cost-benefit analysis that doesn't factor in the possibility of catastrophes. Attaching specific temperatures to the future climate of the earth is an important undertaking, but it is not a perfect science. Nothing is.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
3 Fairy Tales
Their Own Minds
One morning when the sky was already full of sunlight, a young girl woke up and looked out the window at the beautiful rolling country and the beautiful shimmering river. She was a beautiful princess and she rode out with her prince riding in their kingdom over gently rolling hills of sagebrush until they came to the smooth river edged in channels within channels, braided like the hair of the princess. They rode slowly under giant trees along the bank of the beautiful river and were greeted heartily by everyone they met. So they wandered long over the land, pausing often to appreciate the beauty of each place; unique, humble, magnificent. It seemed they rode through a stained-glass universe in which every scene was perfectly arranged and proportioned. The soaring eagles, the tall grass, the limitless blue sky. their own youth and health. The day was so full of wonder and love that any conception of past or future disappeared.
In this enchanted state of mind they sat down to picnic on a sun-dappled river bank, soft, with high grass all around and trees shaded where the river came in to a deep pool and where it went out, so that only their own illuminated moment of deep and calm water existed. They lay there for a long time looking at the water until, later, the prince caught a small fish. It was fat and full of eggs but they ate it anyway. Each egg was a jewel of juice in their mouths, and when they ate the flesh of the fish their saw rainbows dancing in the water. The colors swirled around them and their blood became rainbows dancing in their hearts and they fancied they knew what it must feel like to be a fish.
As I said, they were enchanted. And so when they began to wonder where the water came from or where it went, their thoughts were not the usual human words and ideas, but rather, the slippery and adaptable thoughts of creatures who accept the water as eternal and incompressible...as life itself seemed. Where was there room for more? But still the river flowed. Was the water pushing up on the one side of the pool, or pulling away on the other side? How could the water on the one side know to move out of the way of the water on the other....or, alternately, how could the water on the other side know it needed to flow down and take the place of the departing water on the first side?
With these thoughts swimming in their minds it need scarcely be mentioned the need they felt to depart their human clothing and slip into the cool clear pool to experience their own smooth bodies, so smooth they forgot to breathe, so fishlike they forgot all about being a princess and a prince, and were finally fish with rainbows in their hearts, perfectly enfolded in the flow. Every effortless gesture transformed and became movement, a perfect fit in the perfect stained-glass world.
And that is how fish came to live in the water. But, oh reader, don't worry where that fish they ate came from... it came from their own minds, of course. From their own minds.
--------------------
--------------------
Torrid
There was a small town between the dry mountains and the sea, where a dark-eyed people lived peacefully and slowly. Slowly because they lived in a hot desert where the sun stood still every day, high in the sky, so they stayed still in the shade, taking the siesta. Every summer the heat came wavering down out of the barehills and the sun shown so mercilessly it baked the ground and their humble dwellings and their skin until everything became sunbrown leather and they looked out of sunbrown leather faces at their sunbrown leather houses. The people were healthy and happy because the sea was full of fish and it wasn't such a bad place in the winter, anyway.
But one year the winter didn't come. Or, it came, but it was as hot as the summer and the dark-eyed people peered out from faces of sunburnt leather and asked one another, if the winter brings no relief from the heat, what will happen come summer? They sheltered in the shadows fanning themselves and waited, as they did in the summer, for the winter, but since it was already winter they didn't know what they waited for. Every shimmering-hot day was hotter than the last, and they spoke in low voices as if they were suffocating, holding their breath with nothing to hold it for
Spring was still hotter, hotter than any summer they could ever remember before. The people grew afraid and looked with their dark eyes out of the sunbaked faces at their sunbaked town, at the dry plants and dead trees and the animals panting weakly. Only the fish were healthy and happy. The heat was incredible. It was impossible to lie down to sleep, impossible to move. The wind, when it did come out of the stifling hills, was like the blast of air from an oven. Nothing could stand the heat, rubber melted, paint peeled, everything dried out and turned to dust.
The sunblistered people camped along the beach, swimming to keep cool. They stuck poles in the surf and hung hammocks there to sleep, and swam and fished all day, and forgot about their former homes. Fires started spontaneously in the town, the land was so bright and bare it hurt to look at it, and it was impossible to walk on it.
Then summer came. When the sun rose over the water the sky exploded with a kind of oppressive brilliance, a red-hot wall of fire that seared everything it touched. The people gulped a burning breath and dived under the waves and held their breath as long as they could, and when they couldn't hold it anymore they quickly gulped another, and dived again to avoid the torrid surface. They kept breathing in gulps and eating fish and they were healthy and happy and it wasn't such a bad life in the summer, anyway... and today we call them dolphins and wonder why they don't build houses or sleep in beds....
One morning when the sky was already full of sunlight, a young girl woke up and looked out the window at the beautiful rolling country and the beautiful shimmering river. She was a beautiful princess and she rode out with her prince riding in their kingdom over gently rolling hills of sagebrush until they came to the smooth river edged in channels within channels, braided like the hair of the princess. They rode slowly under giant trees along the bank of the beautiful river and were greeted heartily by everyone they met. So they wandered long over the land, pausing often to appreciate the beauty of each place; unique, humble, magnificent. It seemed they rode through a stained-glass universe in which every scene was perfectly arranged and proportioned. The soaring eagles, the tall grass, the limitless blue sky. their own youth and health. The day was so full of wonder and love that any conception of past or future disappeared.
In this enchanted state of mind they sat down to picnic on a sun-dappled river bank, soft, with high grass all around and trees shaded where the river came in to a deep pool and where it went out, so that only their own illuminated moment of deep and calm water existed. They lay there for a long time looking at the water until, later, the prince caught a small fish. It was fat and full of eggs but they ate it anyway. Each egg was a jewel of juice in their mouths, and when they ate the flesh of the fish their saw rainbows dancing in the water. The colors swirled around them and their blood became rainbows dancing in their hearts and they fancied they knew what it must feel like to be a fish.
As I said, they were enchanted. And so when they began to wonder where the water came from or where it went, their thoughts were not the usual human words and ideas, but rather, the slippery and adaptable thoughts of creatures who accept the water as eternal and incompressible...as life itself seemed. Where was there room for more? But still the river flowed. Was the water pushing up on the one side of the pool, or pulling away on the other side? How could the water on the one side know to move out of the way of the water on the other....or, alternately, how could the water on the other side know it needed to flow down and take the place of the departing water on the first side?
With these thoughts swimming in their minds it need scarcely be mentioned the need they felt to depart their human clothing and slip into the cool clear pool to experience their own smooth bodies, so smooth they forgot to breathe, so fishlike they forgot all about being a princess and a prince, and were finally fish with rainbows in their hearts, perfectly enfolded in the flow. Every effortless gesture transformed and became movement, a perfect fit in the perfect stained-glass world.
And that is how fish came to live in the water. But, oh reader, don't worry where that fish they ate came from... it came from their own minds, of course. From their own minds.
--------------------
--------------------
Torrid
There was a small town between the dry mountains and the sea, where a dark-eyed people lived peacefully and slowly. Slowly because they lived in a hot desert where the sun stood still every day, high in the sky, so they stayed still in the shade, taking the siesta. Every summer the heat came wavering down out of the barehills and the sun shown so mercilessly it baked the ground and their humble dwellings and their skin until everything became sunbrown leather and they looked out of sunbrown leather faces at their sunbrown leather houses. The people were healthy and happy because the sea was full of fish and it wasn't such a bad place in the winter, anyway.
But one year the winter didn't come. Or, it came, but it was as hot as the summer and the dark-eyed people peered out from faces of sunburnt leather and asked one another, if the winter brings no relief from the heat, what will happen come summer? They sheltered in the shadows fanning themselves and waited, as they did in the summer, for the winter, but since it was already winter they didn't know what they waited for. Every shimmering-hot day was hotter than the last, and they spoke in low voices as if they were suffocating, holding their breath with nothing to hold it for
Spring was still hotter, hotter than any summer they could ever remember before. The people grew afraid and looked with their dark eyes out of the sunbaked faces at their sunbaked town, at the dry plants and dead trees and the animals panting weakly. Only the fish were healthy and happy. The heat was incredible. It was impossible to lie down to sleep, impossible to move. The wind, when it did come out of the stifling hills, was like the blast of air from an oven. Nothing could stand the heat, rubber melted, paint peeled, everything dried out and turned to dust.
The sunblistered people camped along the beach, swimming to keep cool. They stuck poles in the surf and hung hammocks there to sleep, and swam and fished all day, and forgot about their former homes. Fires started spontaneously in the town, the land was so bright and bare it hurt to look at it, and it was impossible to walk on it.
Then summer came. When the sun rose over the water the sky exploded with a kind of oppressive brilliance, a red-hot wall of fire that seared everything it touched. The people gulped a burning breath and dived under the waves and held their breath as long as they could, and when they couldn't hold it anymore they quickly gulped another, and dived again to avoid the torrid surface. They kept breathing in gulps and eating fish and they were healthy and happy and it wasn't such a bad life in the summer, anyway... and today we call them dolphins and wonder why they don't build houses or sleep in beds....
The Graph
The American West was colonized by Anglos during some of the wettest periods in the last 1,000 years, according to the February 2008 National Geographic. These abnormally wet years are depicted as mountains surrounded by valleys of drought in a graph of Colorado River Streamflow reconstructed using University of Arizona Lab of Tree Ring Research. The highlight denotes a 60-year drought that was consistently as severe or worse than the current (1998-2008) drought. Judging from the jagged oscillations of this graph, such droughts may be a regular and normal occurrence, although not for our modern water-spoiled civilization.See also National Geographic News, "U.S. Drought Could Be Start of New Dust Bowl"
Saturday, February 16, 2008
My Life in the Newspapers
High Country News, a biweekly newspaper "for people who care about the west" seems to be covering my life. No less than four front-page articles over the past five months have reported on major activities in my life in the Southwest.
I'd like to comment on some of these articles, grouping them into three major subjects: the "toilet-to-tap" furor in Tucson, fighting invasive species, and tracking Jaguars.
I'd like to comment on some of these articles, grouping them into three major subjects: the "toilet-to-tap" furor in Tucson, fighting invasive species, and tracking Jaguars.
Friday, February 15, 2008
I. Toilet to Tap
comment on Facing the yuck factor. How has the west embraced water recycling? Very (gulp) cautiously. Peter Friederici. HCN p.10 September 17, 2007
Americans are different from most people on the planet. We have indoor plumbing and can turn on fresh, drinkable water any time we want. But the combination of the two may be our undoing. We don't pay a quarter of our salaries and spend hours waiting in line to get potable water, and maybe because of that we have abused our privilege. Now that the rivers are drying up in the West, cities are looking to new sources of fresh water. But where?
Ironically, "San Diego has both a water-supply and a water-disposal problem." Why not use the water in need of disposal as a new supply? Maybe because the slogan is "Toilet to tap"?? Sustainability advocates in Tucson (myself included), recently tried to pass a ballot initiative (Prop.200) with just such a slogan. Our reasoning: if Tucson doesn't want "toilet-to-tap" we had better start limiting growth now, before that's our only option. The opponents of the measure (ie proponents of growth such as developers) argued that Tucson would never need to divert wastewater into drinking water. But, just weeks after Prop.200 went down in flames (after mafia-style threats from the developers), amid reports of more drought, the Tucson papers began suggesting that perhaps Tucson really does need to start looking into the idea, after all.
Of course, all water is recycled eventually. Tucson is currently "recharging" its aquifer with wastewater. As the wastewater seeps through hundreds of feet of sand the hydrologists claim it will be cleaned enough to draw back up a well for drinking water. Las Vegas uses an even more direct filtration approach: "Los Vegas alone discharges roughly 60 billion gallons of wastewater a year some miles upstream of its own water intake -- a feat of urban engineering that would seem to prove that most of what happens in Vegas really does stay there."
All of which just points up the rationale San Diego used in its (failed) attempt to utilize wastewater: "We can have a lot more monitoring and control if we oversee our own reclamation than if we're relying on a river with a billion gallons of recharge [in the Colorado River] from other sources every day." Bruce Reznik, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper. Just as no place is truly a wilderness "untrammeled by man" anymore, so too no source of "clear mountain springwater" is truly without some contamination, e.g. some "clear mountain streams" high in Colorado have enough man-made chemical estrogen mimics to feminize fish.
Friederici, a journalism professor, has written a great article that touches on some very deep issues in the interplay of science, technology, and society; E.g. the trust ordinary citizens place in their own biased perceptions versus the scientific analysis of professionals. The article suggests that that "perceptual shortfalls" in ordinary citizens might in fact be a reasonable, precautionary reaction to the belated discovery of the harms of rGBH in milk and endocrine disruptors in plastics. Without the ability to "see" contaminants that affect them ordinary people may have to rely on the history (story, narrative) of their water to determine quality rather than the quantitation (appeal to authority) of scientists.
-
A simple solution the article overlooked: *abandoning our water-treatment infrastructure* and giving in to the bottled water craze. This water crisis is caused by the average American household sending 150 gallons of fresh, drinkable water down the drain every day. If we could use untreated or sub-potable treated water for most domestic needs and bottled water for drinking and eating we would eliminate the source of the dilemma: overconsumption. However, if, in the end, the punishment for being spoiled Americans is drinking our own toilet water, perhaps there is some justice in this crazy universe after all.
Americans are different from most people on the planet. We have indoor plumbing and can turn on fresh, drinkable water any time we want. But the combination of the two may be our undoing. We don't pay a quarter of our salaries and spend hours waiting in line to get potable water, and maybe because of that we have abused our privilege. Now that the rivers are drying up in the West, cities are looking to new sources of fresh water. But where?
Ironically, "San Diego has both a water-supply and a water-disposal problem." Why not use the water in need of disposal as a new supply? Maybe because the slogan is "Toilet to tap"?? Sustainability advocates in Tucson (myself included), recently tried to pass a ballot initiative (Prop.200) with just such a slogan. Our reasoning: if Tucson doesn't want "toilet-to-tap" we had better start limiting growth now, before that's our only option. The opponents of the measure (ie proponents of growth such as developers) argued that Tucson would never need to divert wastewater into drinking water. But, just weeks after Prop.200 went down in flames (after mafia-style threats from the developers), amid reports of more drought, the Tucson papers began suggesting that perhaps Tucson really does need to start looking into the idea, after all.
Of course, all water is recycled eventually. Tucson is currently "recharging" its aquifer with wastewater. As the wastewater seeps through hundreds of feet of sand the hydrologists claim it will be cleaned enough to draw back up a well for drinking water. Las Vegas uses an even more direct filtration approach: "Los Vegas alone discharges roughly 60 billion gallons of wastewater a year some miles upstream of its own water intake -- a feat of urban engineering that would seem to prove that most of what happens in Vegas really does stay there."
All of which just points up the rationale San Diego used in its (failed) attempt to utilize wastewater: "We can have a lot more monitoring and control if we oversee our own reclamation than if we're relying on a river with a billion gallons of recharge [in the Colorado River] from other sources every day." Bruce Reznik, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper. Just as no place is truly a wilderness "untrammeled by man" anymore, so too no source of "clear mountain springwater" is truly without some contamination, e.g. some "clear mountain streams" high in Colorado have enough man-made chemical estrogen mimics to feminize fish.
Friederici, a journalism professor, has written a great article that touches on some very deep issues in the interplay of science, technology, and society; E.g. the trust ordinary citizens place in their own biased perceptions versus the scientific analysis of professionals. The article suggests that that "perceptual shortfalls" in ordinary citizens might in fact be a reasonable, precautionary reaction to the belated discovery of the harms of rGBH in milk and endocrine disruptors in plastics. Without the ability to "see" contaminants that affect them ordinary people may have to rely on the history (story, narrative) of their water to determine quality rather than the quantitation (appeal to authority) of scientists.
-
A simple solution the article overlooked: *abandoning our water-treatment infrastructure* and giving in to the bottled water craze. This water crisis is caused by the average American household sending 150 gallons of fresh, drinkable water down the drain every day. If we could use untreated or sub-potable treated water for most domestic needs and bottled water for drinking and eating we would eliminate the source of the dilemma: overconsumption. However, if, in the end, the punishment for being spoiled Americans is drinking our own toilet water, perhaps there is some justice in this crazy universe after all.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
II. The War on Invasive Species
comment on Bonfire of the Superweeds. In the Sonoran Desert, good intentions combust. FEATURE ARTICLE - August 20, 2007
...and A dustup over weed control. The BLM's plans to spray nearly a million acres with herbicides have some environmentalists fuming, but many biologists and land managers welcome the policy. WESTERN ROUNDUP - September 3, 2007
...and Beetle Warfare. What happens when an exotic bug is brought in to fight an exotic weed?
Invasive species are a huge problem in the Southwest and these articles highlight a number of the major culprits: Buffelgrass, Lovegrass, Cheatgrass, and Tamarisk. These interlopers cause upwards of $120 billion dollars of damage a year and are reason almost half of the species on the Endangered Species List are endangered (Pimentel, 2004).
In the Sonoran desert around Tucson, particularly the front range of the Santa Catalinas, I have witnessed the utter devastation that a climax-changing invasive can bring to native ecosystems. Where Buffelgrass grows it chokes out native Saguaros, and worse still, creates conditions perfect for wildfires. Since the grass is adapted to fire and the native Sonoran plants are not, this feedback cycle creates exponential growth of Buffelgrass at the expense of the former ecosystem.
I have also been witness to the seeming-futility of manual removal of Buffelgrass as a member of the Tucson chapter of the Arizona Native Plant Society. But what are the alternatives? The second article points up the contradictions of spraying herbicides to try to save the native ecosystem in a kind of logic akin to the Vietnam war's "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." There are certainly many benefits to chemical treatments, and it is not clear how to interpret the Precautionary Principle in this case of "damned-if-you-do, damn't-if-you-don't".
I am again confronted with the enormity and seeming-futility of manual removal in my work with Forest Guardians removing Tamarisk, a large tree that dries up rivers throughout the West, choking the native riparian ecosystem. We exhaust ourselves pulling up every piece of a plant that can propogate from bits of root just a few inches long. But what are the alternatives? I for one am personally glad Forest Guardians doesn't use chemical treatment, and there are many indications that chemicals, especially one-time applications, are not effective, either. The third and last article in this comment suggest the use of another invasive species. Invasive species are, by definition, species that have escaped the natural checks and balances of their native ecosystem. So why no bring some of those naturally evolved checks to give the Tamarisk a taste of their own medicine? But Jim Matison of Forest Guardians explains: 'Two species do not an ecosystem make.' According to Jim, introducing another non-native is just another example of our hubris replaying the same old mistake; believing that Science can predict all possible interactions and ramifications. In other words, playing God.
But, maybe, aren't we already playing at judge and jury when we decide which ecosystem (Buffelgrass vs. Sonoran, Tamarisk vs. Riparian) is good and which is bad, which plant lives and which plant dies?
...and A dustup over weed control. The BLM's plans to spray nearly a million acres with herbicides have some environmentalists fuming, but many biologists and land managers welcome the policy. WESTERN ROUNDUP - September 3, 2007
...and Beetle Warfare. What happens when an exotic bug is brought in to fight an exotic weed?
FEATURE ARTICLE - November 26, 2007
Invasive species are a huge problem in the Southwest and these articles highlight a number of the major culprits: Buffelgrass, Lovegrass, Cheatgrass, and Tamarisk. These interlopers cause upwards of $120 billion dollars of damage a year and are reason almost half of the species on the Endangered Species List are endangered (Pimentel, 2004).
In the Sonoran desert around Tucson, particularly the front range of the Santa Catalinas, I have witnessed the utter devastation that a climax-changing invasive can bring to native ecosystems. Where Buffelgrass grows it chokes out native Saguaros, and worse still, creates conditions perfect for wildfires. Since the grass is adapted to fire and the native Sonoran plants are not, this feedback cycle creates exponential growth of Buffelgrass at the expense of the former ecosystem.
I have also been witness to the seeming-futility of manual removal of Buffelgrass as a member of the Tucson chapter of the Arizona Native Plant Society. But what are the alternatives? The second article points up the contradictions of spraying herbicides to try to save the native ecosystem in a kind of logic akin to the Vietnam war's "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." There are certainly many benefits to chemical treatments, and it is not clear how to interpret the Precautionary Principle in this case of "damned-if-you-do, damn't-if-you-don't".
I am again confronted with the enormity and seeming-futility of manual removal in my work with Forest Guardians removing Tamarisk, a large tree that dries up rivers throughout the West, choking the native riparian ecosystem. We exhaust ourselves pulling up every piece of a plant that can propogate from bits of root just a few inches long. But what are the alternatives? I for one am personally glad Forest Guardians doesn't use chemical treatment, and there are many indications that chemicals, especially one-time applications, are not effective, either. The third and last article in this comment suggest the use of another invasive species. Invasive species are, by definition, species that have escaped the natural checks and balances of their native ecosystem. So why no bring some of those naturally evolved checks to give the Tamarisk a taste of their own medicine? But Jim Matison of Forest Guardians explains: 'Two species do not an ecosystem make.' According to Jim, introducing another non-native is just another example of our hubris replaying the same old mistake; believing that Science can predict all possible interactions and ramifications. In other words, playing God.
But, maybe, aren't we already playing at judge and jury when we decide which ecosystem (Buffelgrass vs. Sonoran, Tamarisk vs. Riparian) is good and which is bad, which plant lives and which plant dies?
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
III. Tracking Jaguars
comment on Cat Fight on the Border. Will homeland security concerns keep jaguars from returning to their native U.S. range? Maybe. p.9 October 15 2007 HCN Jeremy Voas.
The Jaguar is what is known as "charismatic megafauna" in conservation circles. This animal prowled the mountains overlooking Tucson less than 100 years ago, before it was exterminated by government predator control efforts. Today, its natural migration back into the Southwest is being hailed as a confirmation of improving ecosystems and attitudes. The network of wilderness preserves and conservation practices have begun to recreate the habitat these keystone species need. But they need more than land: they also need human understanding. Indeed, we would not even know about their return if not for the enlightened response of certain ranchers who chose to photograph, rather than shoot, these "illegal aliens".
The Border Patrol has also weighed in on the cat's fate, forging ahead and building a wall along the border without any kind of environmental impact research. The crisis of (human) migration across the border is dire and the idea of building a wall is understandably attractive, but many believe it will end up more effectively blocking wildlife migration than human.
Voas goes beyond merely reporting the facts in this article to unearth the complicated melange-a-trois politics between the conservationists, the ranchers, and the Border Patrol. If conservationists are going to save the Jaguar in the American Southwest, it may mean working, and yes, even accommodating, "multiple use". For example, most conservation organizations would like to expand wilderness areas, or develop other restrictions on land use such as Critical Habitat Designation (CHD) for the Jaguar. While these conservation "gold standards" are arguably best for the recovery of the Jaguar they may end up being "counterproductive by imposing limits on land usage, including grazing....[which would] enrage ranchers."
According to Emil McCain, a biologist for the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project, "A CHD is going to do far more harm than good for habitat...It makes enemies of the people you need to rely on." Michael Robinson, of the local conservation group Center for Biological Diversity is undeterred: "Our stance on grazing is that it should not preclude the presence of any native species, that it should not pollute waterways, and it should not cost the public any money. If the livestock industry is going to step up and meet those standards, it's OK with us."
But making such demands risks offending the owners of the very land Jaguars need. This is the old paradox of the Endangered Species Act, a paradox that is especially relevant in the almost lawless borderlands: CHD might encourage ranchers to kill an endangered animal rather than report it and face more rigorous regulation of their land or grazing allotment.
A similar dilemma for conservationists concerns the Border Patrol (BP) and the wall: whether to work with the BP and suffer the slings and arrows of their outrageous ecosystem disruptions, or to takes arms against what seems to be a rising sea of misplaced government intervention and lose any hope of compromise. As it stands the BP are cooperating with conservationists by maintaining and sharing open records of Jaguar sightings. Their cameras may play an important role in the badly-needed work determining Jaguar migration routes.
Of course, conservation organizations like the Sky Island Alliance, while working with all concerned parties, are also pursuing their own independent monitoring program. As a graduate of their Wildlife Tracking program I have helped monitor charismatic megafauna throughout the Southwest, and remain hopeful that the Jaguar will bring the different human tribes together, rather than tear us apart...
The Jaguar is what is known as "charismatic megafauna" in conservation circles. This animal prowled the mountains overlooking Tucson less than 100 years ago, before it was exterminated by government predator control efforts. Today, its natural migration back into the Southwest is being hailed as a confirmation of improving ecosystems and attitudes. The network of wilderness preserves and conservation practices have begun to recreate the habitat these keystone species need. But they need more than land: they also need human understanding. Indeed, we would not even know about their return if not for the enlightened response of certain ranchers who chose to photograph, rather than shoot, these "illegal aliens".
The Border Patrol has also weighed in on the cat's fate, forging ahead and building a wall along the border without any kind of environmental impact research. The crisis of (human) migration across the border is dire and the idea of building a wall is understandably attractive, but many believe it will end up more effectively blocking wildlife migration than human.
Voas goes beyond merely reporting the facts in this article to unearth the complicated melange-a-trois politics between the conservationists, the ranchers, and the Border Patrol. If conservationists are going to save the Jaguar in the American Southwest, it may mean working, and yes, even accommodating, "multiple use". For example, most conservation organizations would like to expand wilderness areas, or develop other restrictions on land use such as Critical Habitat Designation (CHD) for the Jaguar. While these conservation "gold standards" are arguably best for the recovery of the Jaguar they may end up being "counterproductive by imposing limits on land usage, including grazing....[which would] enrage ranchers."
According to Emil McCain, a biologist for the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project, "A CHD is going to do far more harm than good for habitat...It makes enemies of the people you need to rely on." Michael Robinson, of the local conservation group Center for Biological Diversity is undeterred: "Our stance on grazing is that it should not preclude the presence of any native species, that it should not pollute waterways, and it should not cost the public any money. If the livestock industry is going to step up and meet those standards, it's OK with us."
But making such demands risks offending the owners of the very land Jaguars need. This is the old paradox of the Endangered Species Act, a paradox that is especially relevant in the almost lawless borderlands: CHD might encourage ranchers to kill an endangered animal rather than report it and face more rigorous regulation of their land or grazing allotment.
A similar dilemma for conservationists concerns the Border Patrol (BP) and the wall: whether to work with the BP and suffer the slings and arrows of their outrageous ecosystem disruptions, or to takes arms against what seems to be a rising sea of misplaced government intervention and lose any hope of compromise. As it stands the BP are cooperating with conservationists by maintaining and sharing open records of Jaguar sightings. Their cameras may play an important role in the badly-needed work determining Jaguar migration routes.
Of course, conservation organizations like the Sky Island Alliance, while working with all concerned parties, are also pursuing their own independent monitoring program. As a graduate of their Wildlife Tracking program I have helped monitor charismatic megafauna throughout the Southwest, and remain hopeful that the Jaguar will bring the different human tribes together, rather than tear us apart...
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