Saturday, May 31, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Trespassing on the Rio Puerco
Trespassing on the Rio Puerco
[at 120 CFS]
We put in just before the large culvert. Its top was filled with a colony of mud swallows' hanging igloo nests.
Guerrilla Rafting: n; Risking Life and Limb to Reinhabit your Local Wilderness.
Its simple. Find your local watershed and see how far it will take you. Dreams of floating to the sea? Forget it. Few undamned and diverted rivers remain. But you'll be surprised at what you can cover in a day. Here's a sample from our kayak on the Rio Puerco, through backyards and jungle thornbush.
big falls ... portage or run it?
Strainers.
picturesque views: Spiders showered down on us when we shook low branches. Squirrels scurried from branch to branch, flycatchers, tanagiers, and orioles...
The 'Sloppy Rapids' portage
Photos of Rio Puerco (from Cabezon Peak)
[at 120 CFS]
We put in just before the large culvert. Its top was filled with a colony of mud swallows' hanging igloo nests.
Guerrilla Rafting: n; Risking Life and Limb to Reinhabit your Local Wilderness.
Its simple. Find your local watershed and see how far it will take you. Dreams of floating to the sea? Forget it. Few undamned and diverted rivers remain. But you'll be surprised at what you can cover in a day. Here's a sample from our kayak on the Rio Puerco, through backyards and jungle thornbush.
big falls ... portage or run it?
Strainers.
picturesque views: Spiders showered down on us when we shook low branches. Squirrels scurried from branch to branch, flycatchers, tanagiers, and orioles...
The 'Sloppy Rapids' portage
Photos of Rio Puerco (from Cabezon Peak)
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Unincorporated Kitsap County
"Your discussion of ecological assessment caught my interest, too. Environmental
historians--those practicing in history departments, not science
departments--often pay special attention to the language folks use to describe
nature: "enhanced" or "degraded" for whom? This impulse mostly derives from
historians' understanding of the entwined relationship of colonialism and
science, of which there is a large scholarship. As you might imagine, Native
people could lose out when colonial scientists helped categorize, map, and
explain landscapes in the American West for settlers. Terms like "healthy
landscape" meant healthy for settlers, not Natives. Historians always stress
the human dimension--otherwise we'd never get tenure!"
"But I do see that even twentieth-century language--"enhanced," "degraded"--is
falling by the wayside. What sort of language is cutting edge these days? Any
good references?"
Since restoration is often interdisciplinary, the language we use is sometimes more intuition than institution.
"We define river restoration as assisting the recovery of ecological integrity in a degraded watershed system by reestablishing hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecological processes, and replacing lost, damaged, or compromised biological elements."
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005WR003985.shtml
What all of this is pointing at is a very intuitive concept: health. There are also various ways and tools for evaluating health. But the general concept of ecosystem health is not really in question any more than is health for the individual human. While there are different systems of medicine (Ayurvedic, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Osteopathy) they all share core values. Healthy bodies, like healthy ecosystems, are easy to recognize, yet hard to define.
A general definition of health might be linked to integrity, or functionality, productivity (of green biomass, AKA carbon sequestration) or sustainability (of soil and water resources). For example, we look at how an ecosystem provides services: how it adds to life and measurable values that rely on life: water, air, recreation, hunting, resource-production.
The whole gamut of ecosystem services, from pollination to producing oxygen, clean water, and climate control. The recent efforts to attach price tags to these services has the important goal of revaluing natural systems in our capitalist economy. In the past the price of a tree was the sale of a tree, but now we can enumerate the costs in that transaction, the detriment to the salmon run, to clean air and erosion control, to endangered species and multiple-use, sustainability, functionality, productivity, sequestration, elasticity (ability to buffer e.g. climate change)
The notion of ecosystem health in the professional sphere is supported by factor analysis. Perhaps, as in other sciences like Quantum Mechanics, there are only equations: a relationship between numbers and variables. You could as well call the primary factor "oogly-boogly" as "impairment" or "health". But I don't think that is quite right, either. The math is logically constructed to conform to and confirm the consensus in the scientific and resource management community.
That consensus is one of the biggest untold intellectual ideas of the last hundred years: that ecosystems, like people, can be intrinsically healthy or unhealthy. The history of the American conservation movement, from the transcendentalists "preserving" sublime landscapes to environmentalists' campaigns to save the whale, eco 'hot spots' of "diversity" (watch out for that Chimera), and now landscape-level Resource Management, charts the emergence of a unified scientific consensus about what constitutes and is necessary for a healthy ecosystem. Thanks to Science, Technology, and Society scholars such as Kuhn, I needn't argue that we've progressed to a final understanding; there are certainly many technical difficulties in applied ecology/restoration, e.g. measuring "productivity". But I do want to argue that there is a progression; scientists understand ecosystem health in more and better ways than we used to, e.g. new wolf recovery plans take into account advances in theoretical genetics...
Unfortunately, public perception hasn't kept pace with the new consensus in Ecology and our society remains, arguably, the most ecologically illiterate ever. But this gap is understandable when you consider the leaps and bounds that ecology has made in the last 50 years. It is as if, up to about 50 years ago, we lacked the germ-theory of disease and today ecologists are embarked on projects that exceed, in scope and application, the Human Genome Project.
Unfortunately, public perception hasn't kept pace with the new consensus in Ecology and our society remains, arguably, the most ecologically illiterate ever. But this gap is understandable when you consider the leaps and bounds that ecology has made in the last 50 years. It is as if, up to about 50 years ago, we lacked the germ-theory of disease and today ecologists are embarked on projects that exceed, in scope and application, the Human Genome Project.
Maybe a better investigation of these concepts than I can provide would do something to alleviate the profound misunderstandings perpetrated and perpetuated by human ignorance on the Earth. It is as if basic laws of physics, such as gravity, were widely unknown and people routinely attempt to violate them. I say attempt, because, when people "cheat" nature, they always end up loosing. (e.g. : tamarix removal without native replanting fails, plowing windbreaks and conservation reserve grasslands creates dustbowl conditions, fire severity increases even as we spend more and more to control it, etc)
As someone astutely pointed out, sustainability isn't just a value, its a law of of physics (conservation of energy). It seems to be a law of healthy ecosystems, too. I'll let you know more as I figure it out. That factor analysis is especially vexing. I can't tell what their null hypothesis was...this discussion pokes at the undefined underbelly of restoration, which is in its infancy as a professional field. Perhaps that wild west character is why I'm attracted to it. I can work with restoration professionals in the field who are every bit as scientific as scientists in the University's' laboratories, without all the latter's emphasis on paradigm jargon and professional status. I'm sorry I can't think of any sources that focus on defining the concept superstructure of health in ecology and restoration.
historians--those practicing in history departments, not science
departments--often pay special attention to the language folks use to describe
nature: "enhanced" or "degraded" for whom? This impulse mostly derives from
historians' understanding of the entwined relationship of colonialism and
science, of which there is a large scholarship. As you might imagine, Native
people could lose out when colonial scientists helped categorize, map, and
explain landscapes in the American West for settlers. Terms like "healthy
landscape" meant healthy for settlers, not Natives. Historians always stress
the human dimension--otherwise we'd never get tenure!"
"But I do see that even twentieth-century language--"enhanced," "degraded"--is
falling by the wayside. What sort of language is cutting edge these days? Any
good references?"
Since restoration is often interdisciplinary, the language we use is sometimes more intuition than institution.
"We define river restoration as assisting the recovery of ecological integrity in a degraded watershed system by reestablishing hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecological processes, and replacing lost, damaged, or compromised biological elements."
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005WR003985.shtml
What all of this is pointing at is a very intuitive concept: health. There are also various ways and tools for evaluating health. But the general concept of ecosystem health is not really in question any more than is health for the individual human. While there are different systems of medicine (Ayurvedic, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Osteopathy) they all share core values. Healthy bodies, like healthy ecosystems, are easy to recognize, yet hard to define.
A general definition of health might be linked to integrity, or functionality, productivity (of green biomass, AKA carbon sequestration) or sustainability (of soil and water resources). For example, we look at how an ecosystem provides services: how it adds to life and measurable values that rely on life: water, air, recreation, hunting, resource-production.
The whole gamut of ecosystem services, from pollination to producing oxygen, clean water, and climate control. The recent efforts to attach price tags to these services has the important goal of revaluing natural systems in our capitalist economy. In the past the price of a tree was the sale of a tree, but now we can enumerate the costs in that transaction, the detriment to the salmon run, to clean air and erosion control, to endangered species and multiple-use, sustainability, functionality, productivity, sequestration, elasticity (ability to buffer e.g. climate change)
The notion of ecosystem health in the professional sphere is supported by factor analysis. Perhaps, as in other sciences like Quantum Mechanics, there are only equations: a relationship between numbers and variables. You could as well call the primary factor "oogly-boogly" as "impairment" or "health". But I don't think that is quite right, either. The math is logically constructed to conform to and confirm the consensus in the scientific and resource management community.
That consensus is one of the biggest untold intellectual ideas of the last hundred years: that ecosystems, like people, can be intrinsically healthy or unhealthy. The history of the American conservation movement, from the transcendentalists "preserving" sublime landscapes to environmentalists' campaigns to save the whale, eco 'hot spots' of "diversity" (watch out for that Chimera), and now landscape-level Resource Management, charts the emergence of a unified scientific consensus about what constitutes and is necessary for a healthy ecosystem. Thanks to Science, Technology, and Society scholars such as Kuhn, I needn't argue that we've progressed to a final understanding; there are certainly many technical difficulties in applied ecology/restoration, e.g. measuring "productivity". But I do want to argue that there is a progression; scientists understand ecosystem health in more and better ways than we used to, e.g. new wolf recovery plans take into account advances in theoretical genetics...
Unfortunately, public perception hasn't kept pace with the new consensus in Ecology and our society remains, arguably, the most ecologically illiterate ever. But this gap is understandable when you consider the leaps and bounds that ecology has made in the last 50 years. It is as if, up to about 50 years ago, we lacked the germ-theory of disease and today ecologists are embarked on projects that exceed, in scope and application, the Human Genome Project.
Unfortunately, public perception hasn't kept pace with the new consensus in Ecology and our society remains, arguably, the most ecologically illiterate ever. But this gap is understandable when you consider the leaps and bounds that ecology has made in the last 50 years. It is as if, up to about 50 years ago, we lacked the germ-theory of disease and today ecologists are embarked on projects that exceed, in scope and application, the Human Genome Project.
Maybe a better investigation of these concepts than I can provide would do something to alleviate the profound misunderstandings perpetrated and perpetuated by human ignorance on the Earth. It is as if basic laws of physics, such as gravity, were widely unknown and people routinely attempt to violate them. I say attempt, because, when people "cheat" nature, they always end up loosing. (e.g. : tamarix removal without native replanting fails, plowing windbreaks and conservation reserve grasslands creates dustbowl conditions, fire severity increases even as we spend more and more to control it, etc)
As someone astutely pointed out, sustainability isn't just a value, its a law of of physics (conservation of energy). It seems to be a law of healthy ecosystems, too. I'll let you know more as I figure it out. That factor analysis is especially vexing. I can't tell what their null hypothesis was...this discussion pokes at the undefined underbelly of restoration, which is in its infancy as a professional field. Perhaps that wild west character is why I'm attracted to it. I can work with restoration professionals in the field who are every bit as scientific as scientists in the University's' laboratories, without all the latter's emphasis on paradigm jargon and professional status. I'm sorry I can't think of any sources that focus on defining the concept superstructure of health in ecology and restoration.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Trusted Conservtion Organizations
NRDC
EarthJustice
Community Watershed Alliance
Sagebrush Sea Campaign
National Public Lands Grazing Campaign
Nature Conservancy
Wildlands CPR
Local Southwest:
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Quivira Coalition
Arizona Conservation Science (Nature Conservancy)
Sonoran Institute
Sky Islands Alliance
Arizona Wilderness Coalition
EarthJustice
Community Watershed Alliance
Sagebrush Sea Campaign
National Public Lands Grazing Campaign
Nature Conservancy
Wildlands CPR
Local Southwest:
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Quivira Coalition
Arizona Conservation Science (Nature Conservancy)
Sonoran Institute
Sky Islands Alliance
Arizona Wilderness Coalition
Friday, May 16, 2008
Limestone Canyon Volunteering with NMWA
"I'm looking forward to the Service Project in Limestone Canyon over the May 16, 17, 18 weekend. This is our second project to this area. We liked it so much last year that I asked the Forest Service for a repeat. It is about 2.5 hours from ABQ to the campsite. Gene Tatum, President of the ABQ Wildlife Federation, Michael Scialdone, 'Scial' of NMWA ,and Dave Heft, FS Biologist, will lay out the project. For Saturday, we will build structures to aid in the restoration of the streambed." "
Why Volunteer?To those who don't know the joy of volunteer work, who only work for the almighty dollar and take wages as the official readout of society's values and adopt said values wholeheartedly, it can be difficult to explain. But to those who know it, the reasons are manifold. To share a cause with others who are equally free and yet driven, the camaraderie. The freedom of choosing something to care about. And yes, the relief from the obnoxious obsession of needing to accomplish something, that ingrained appreciation for hard work that, whether it be rational, is part of our psychological makeup, entrained, and undeniable. And the payment received for volunteer work is often quite beyond the ability of ordinary remuneration. Access to a 10,000 acre ranch for a couple weeks work. Friends. A sense of ownership of an entire landscape, and an understanding of a way of life and the people who live it. A home.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Backpacking on Mount Ellinor
(Quotes from Jesse Wolf Hardin, Gila, NM)
Even now, enshrouded in a crust of asphalt and concrete, the Earth is wild, willed, directed and empowered by its own inner nature rather than some conglomeration of outward ideas. Gaia is faithful to its natural processes .. those rhythmic patterns of impermanence and change, mounting waves of their own fertile heat, then birth and death of Gaia's varied parts, the flex and pause of Earth's heart muscle pumping new life through arteries in time.
And as integral extensions of Gaia, we too are originally wild: deeply willed, and willful. For safety, certainty n d comfort we may try to deny our wildness, sacrificing our will as we seek shelter in the certain and the tame. Yet in spite of all the artifice and constraint of our times we remain instinctual, visionary beings. We are mirror made of dancing flesh, interterrestrial sensors, activated nerve endings extending from the gaian ganglion into the evershifting universe.
The human spirit dies when it is tamed, and the human species cannot long survive the deliberate unraveling of contextual Nature. Rational mind, government and science cannot alone cure the environmental crisis, which is first and foremost a crisis of value and character. By recognizing perception as the instrumental element in our kind's estrangement and resulting destruction behavior, we have the option of participating in the inevitable cure. The return to balance spoken of by most "primitive" cultures requires a deliberate shifting of the total weight of human perception in the direction of relationship, wildness, and love.
Without a doubt, we ignore the attentions of the animal world at our own peril. One by one the shrinking ponds cease to ring out with the glad croaking songs of frogs. One by one they are hushed by the weight of our presence and by what we, as lovers of this Earth have yet failed to do. The moonless nights may soon be as still as stone. In the face of such a final silence, we should be "all ears": attentive, concerned, and vigorously responsive.
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego
and when we escape like rats
turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in
and passion will make our bodies
taut with power
we shall tamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will
curl up like burnt paper
D.H. Lawrence
The domesticated animals, like the wild, are a set of messages. Living in a world which, at the level of the senses, is heavily man modified, congested, and polluted, the spavined horse, land scalping goat, and pea brained sheep are important signals. The pathos of the over fat pig, white rat stripped of nuance, and dog breeds with their congenital debilitation signals to us an aspect of the human condition.
Paul Shepard
Even now, enshrouded in a crust of asphalt and concrete, the Earth is wild, willed, directed and empowered by its own inner nature rather than some conglomeration of outward ideas. Gaia is faithful to its natural processes .. those rhythmic patterns of impermanence and change, mounting waves of their own fertile heat, then birth and death of Gaia's varied parts, the flex and pause of Earth's heart muscle pumping new life through arteries in time.
And as integral extensions of Gaia, we too are originally wild: deeply willed, and willful. For safety, certainty n d comfort we may try to deny our wildness, sacrificing our will as we seek shelter in the certain and the tame. Yet in spite of all the artifice and constraint of our times we remain instinctual, visionary beings. We are mirror made of dancing flesh, interterrestrial sensors, activated nerve endings extending from the gaian ganglion into the evershifting universe.
The human spirit dies when it is tamed, and the human species cannot long survive the deliberate unraveling of contextual Nature. Rational mind, government and science cannot alone cure the environmental crisis, which is first and foremost a crisis of value and character. By recognizing perception as the instrumental element in our kind's estrangement and resulting destruction behavior, we have the option of participating in the inevitable cure. The return to balance spoken of by most "primitive" cultures requires a deliberate shifting of the total weight of human perception in the direction of relationship, wildness, and love.
Without a doubt, we ignore the attentions of the animal world at our own peril. One by one the shrinking ponds cease to ring out with the glad croaking songs of frogs. One by one they are hushed by the weight of our presence and by what we, as lovers of this Earth have yet failed to do. The moonless nights may soon be as still as stone. In the face of such a final silence, we should be "all ears": attentive, concerned, and vigorously responsive.
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego
and when we escape like rats
turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in
and passion will make our bodies
taut with power
we shall tamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will
curl up like burnt paper
D.H. Lawrence
The domesticated animals, like the wild, are a set of messages. Living in a world which, at the level of the senses, is heavily man modified, congested, and polluted, the spavined horse, land scalping goat, and pea brained sheep are important signals. The pathos of the over fat pig, white rat stripped of nuance, and dog breeds with their congenital debilitation signals to us an aspect of the human condition.
Paul Shepard
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