"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Peter Houser of Living with Birddogs visited China earlier this month and caught a glimpse of the future:

[N]early all of the enviroment that I saw was horribly damaged. During the entire time in country I saw only a handful of songbirds, a few magpies, no rodents, no hawks. Certainly no game birds. Anything that looks green is under mono-species cultivation. Most of the country is covered by a cloud of smog from the coal-burning electric plants. 5,000 years of human occupation have left a mark on the land and the animals that will not disappear until the next ice age. So, get out your checkbook and send some money to your favorite environmental advocate group. This trip really brought home to me how much we stand to lose if we do not learn to live in a balanced relationship with our environment.

Peter is just one of a number of fine hook-and-bullet bloggers to sound an alarm. Check out Chad Love here and here and here [and, heck, just nab Chad's RSS feed. He's good].

And don't miss Hal Herring's great editorial in Field & Stream, and Bob Marshall's special report, here.

Maybe you saw the April 15 NY Times article: G.O.P. Push in States to Deregulate Environment. [Alternate link via Google.] Quote:

In the past month, the nation’s focus has been on the budget battle in Washington, where Republicans in Congress aligned with the Tea Party have fought hard for rollbacks to the Environmental Protection Agency, clean air and water regulations, renewable energy and other conservation programs.

But similar efforts to make historically large cuts to environmental programs are also in play at the state level as legislatures and governors take aim at conservation and regulations they see as too burdensome to business interests.

If we hope to save our country from the big oil billionaires business interests that control so many of our politicians, we better get busy. Don't wait until the next Ice Age. Get busy now.

That fresh hell in the photo at the top of this post? Not China. It's Canada. And it kills me to think of it, but that toxic landscape used to be a boreal forest. Did I mention that Canada is the #1 supplier of oil to the US? Countless wildfowl die in those tailing ponds. The air, the rivers and the people — the men, women and children — who live nearby are being poisoned. But we mustn't burden the business interests! Oh, no, mustn't do that.

See also:
Boreal Songbird Initiative
Contact Elected Officials Seriously: they are public servants. They work for us.
iLoveMountains.org Because mountaintop removal mining is in a horror category of its own.

Jonah 2010

Found this at Aquafornia, where you can watch the wide-screen version and be even more depressed impressed.

Now with "Spillcam"

Related:

Gulf oil spill: 'Top kill' procedure begins

Live feeds from remotely operated vehicles

Love your mother

Snowy Plover, by Jim Urbach for Audubon. [Click for big, and get the screensaver here.] In its report Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Ten Animals at Risk, National Geographic writes that the Snowy Plover "has been identified by the National Audubon Society as one of the species most vulnerable to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Snowy plovers risk not only direct contact with the oil but might also be poisoned by eating small invertebrates and oysters tainted with oil."

Updates on the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico:
Workers on Oil Rig Recall a Terrible Night of Blasts

BP suffers setback in attempts to stem Gulf of Mexico oil flow. “I wouldn’t say it has failed yet,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said at a news conference in Robert, La. “What we attempted to do last night hasn’t worked.”

Learning to Love the Sea, Then Torn From It. The Gulf oil spill "has stalled, and possibly ruined, the livelihoods of thousands."

Regulator Deferred to Oil Industry on Rig Safety

Gulf Coast Fishermen Fear That They Will Be Left With 'Crippled Industry'

Sabotage! Conspiracy! And Other Ways to Spin the Oil Spill. I laugh to keep from crying.


Happy Mother's Day!

"The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is seen from a helicopter." Photo by Rick Loomis for the Los Angeles Times.

International Migratory Bird Day

Above: Cerulean Warbler, Rufous Hummingbird, American Redstart. Below left: Wood Duck, American Oystercatcher, Puffin, Whooping Crane. All by Robert Petty for EFTA's Bird Day 2010.

Truth be told: every day is bird day here in Southern California. OK, every day is [or should be] bird day everywhere, but especially here. From the mountains to the sea [as a SoCal news icon used to say each evening] there are beautiful local birds and cool migratory birds everywhere you look.

International Migratory Bird Day "highlights and celebrates the migration of nearly 350 species of migratory birds between nesting habitats in North America and non-breeding grounds in Latin America, Mexico, and the Caribbean," and to quote from the essay Coming together to protect birds, "IMBD is not only a day to foster appreciation for wild birds and to celebrate and support migratory bird conservation; it is also is a call to action." We celebrate Bird Day [every day] by working toward:

• Protecting and managing green space.

• Landscaping with native plants in backyards and parks.

• Adopting architecture and lighting systems that reduce collisions.

• Making our communities hospitable to breeding, wintering and migrating birds that seek safe places to spend time and find food.

"Birds can save the world," writes Dr. John Fitzpatrick, Director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell:

[B]irds represent our most accessible and sensitive indicator of environmental health and ecological change. Today, thanks especially to the Internet, individual citizens have unprecedented opportunities to provide real data that answer important questions about bird populations at continental scales. Humans literally are beginning to serve as worldwide biosphere sensors. The question is, do we also have the will to self-correct? Birds present us with numerous motivations to do so, and an excellent barometer for measuring our successes and failures.

The real data Dr. Fitzpatrick is talking about can be viewed and explored at eBird, which is quite possibly the coolest data-gathering program of all time [and I'm not just saying that because I'm one of this year's top 100 eBirders in my county. Though I am]. To see just one example of eBird's citizen scientists at work, check out the eBird Gulf Coast Oil Spill Bird Tracker. The gadget displays recent sightings of ten focal species — data provided by a dedicated army of eBirders, citizen scientists providing "a real-time snapshot of the region’s birdlife, helping conservationists and researchers understand where, when, and how many of each species are currently occurring on local beaches and wetlands."

Wild birds embody the wonder and beauty of nature, its mystery and its miracles. The challenges wild birds face are challenges that sooner or later will confront us all. We owe it to ourselves, if not to the life of the skies, to celebrate Bird Day as if our future depended on it — because odds are, it does.

Related:
George Divoky's Planet. "This is a story about global warming and a scientist named George Divoky, who studies a colony of Arctic seabirds on a remote barrier island off the northern coast of Alaska. I mention all this at the start because a reader might like to come to the point, and what could be more urgent than the very health and durability of this planet we call Earth? However, before George can pursue his inquiry into worldwide climate change; before he can puzzle out the connections between a bunch of penguinesque birds on a flat, snow-covered, icebound island and the escalating threat of droughts, floods and rising global temperatures, he must first mount a defense -- his only defense in this frozen, godforsaken place -- against the possibility of being consumed, down to the last toenail, by a polar bear while he sleeps. He must first build a fence." A hands-down, must-read classic, even more important now than when it was first published back in 2002.

Media helicopters force Gulf birds to abandon nests. Holy crap, news people.

The know-how and materials already exist. We need to do the right thing

Efforts under way to douse nighttime lights on downtown Cleveland skyscrapers, saving millions of migrating songbirds


H/T to Mike McDowell for the JSOnline link.

News Flash

Click for big.

Climate change is [hello, Congress] still real. California's essential water/politics blogger Emily Green reported this week that 255 of the country’s leading scientists, including 11 Nobel laureates, are doing what they can to get the message across:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Read:
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE [pdf]
Lead Letter Published in Science magazine, May 7, 2010
From 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences

In related news, California has some of the greediest and most dangerous initiative-pushers on earth. Rule by initiative is the first two or three thousand reasons my poor state is in such bad shape these days.


Image above: Carbon Dioxide Concentration [screen grab] from NASA's Global Climate Change website.

"a commentary on our own culpability"

canary 2, 2008, by Kate McDowell.

Artist Kate McDowell's statement about her work begins:

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. – C.S. Lewis.

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones.

You can view Kate McDowell's portfolio here. Her work, as she says, is "a painstaking record of endangered natural forms and a commentary on our own culpability."

Cuckoo. [In case it's needed, here is some context.]

Related:
Urgency increases as oil spill grows
How oil affects birds
Birds, Sharks, Whales, Sea Turtles, and Other Wildlife Threatened By Oil Slick Nearing Coast -- with information on "some of the birds and other wildlife experts are most concerned about."

Dead zone

"An oil-soaked bird floats dead," victim of the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay, 2007. SF Chronicle photos [above and left] by Michael Macor.

Gut-wrenching: the Gulf Coast oil spill "could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades."

"The terrible loss of 11 workers may be just the beginning of this tragedy as the oil slick spreads toward sensitive coastal areas vital to birds and marine life and to all the communities that depend on them", said Melanie Driscoll, an Audubon bird conservation director, who is monitoring the situation from her base in Louisiana. "For birds, the timing could not be worse; they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore." [Source.]

From a must-read post, Complete and Utter Disaster:

We’re in the midst of spring migration, a time of year when hundreds of thousands of neotropical migrating songbirds are teeming onto our continent from parts south, many of them taking a route that famously leads them to jump the Gulf of Mexico in one swoop. It’s a flight that can take up to 20 hours and leaves birds completely famished and exhausted. To say that it’s difficult is an understatement. It’s one of the truly amazing behaviors in the natural world. And now at the peak of migration, for those birds taking a path straight across the gulf with a bullseye on, perhaps, crucial bits of coastal habitat like Alabama’s Dauphin Island or Florida’s St. Mark’s NWR, the last stretch of migration has to be through a sooty, black curtain of oil smoke several thousand feet high.

Updates at the International Bird Rescue Research Center's blog.

All links in this post via the most excellent Mike McDowell, who wrote on Facebook that "everyone who voted for "Drill Baby Drill" [should] start heading down to the gulf coast to help clean oil off of critters."

As old and jaded and cynical as I am, I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that we [consumers, voters, Americans] allow this sort of disaster to happen. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't be happening.


Commenter Bill on Coyote Crossing writes: "For all of you out there who care please lessen your use of the oil based economy, and, at the very least, don’t do business with BP."

Tonight: new wildlife series from the BBC, Discovery Channel

"African straw-coloured fruit bats in flight, Kasanka National Park, Zambia." Photo by Kieran Dodds for Discovery Channel / BBC.

This Sunday, from 8-10pm ET/PT on the Discovery Channel, catch the premiere episode of Life.

From the NY Times review:

Fans of programs like “Nature” on PBS are already aware of just how exquisite the best wildlife filmmaking is these days, thanks to ultraportable gear and high-definition video, but the wealth and variety of material in “Life” may surprise even those viewers. (“Life” was made in partnership with the BBC, as was an earlier series, “Planet Earth.”)

The scale is among the most striking things. We’ve long been used to seeing big cats run down antelopes, and there are plenty of large animals here. But there are also insects, hummingbirds, fingernail-size amphibians. Who shot the rollicking images of an inchlong pebble toad rolling like a small stone down a mountainside in Venezuela? Someone with a heck of a lot of patience, that’s who.

Honestly, what kind of person is following inch-long pebble toads as they go rollicking down mountainsides in Venezuela? Funny you should ask. Here's a NY Times profile of The Calm Men Who Bring You Exotic Animals.

Amarok

Random news articles from the RSS feed:

Idaho hunter takes 180-pound wolf, via The Oudoor Pressroom. Head and skin to the left, from an image by Shawn Gust for the Coeur d'Alene Press.

Sea Wolves are not Sea Dogs, by Heather Houlahan over at her Raised by Wolves blog: hands down the best thing I expect to read on the trainer-killed-by-orca tragedy.

As they say, read it and weep.

Paging Jonathan Safran Foer

Maybe the authors of the study should get back to us once they've given everything they own to the poor and have subsisted on nothing but fallen fruit for a few years. I keed. But the suggestion that pariah dogs are "better for the planet" than companion dogs? That's just messed up. Click to embiggen.

Are dogs really worse for the environment than SUVs?

I keep a bunch of them [dogs, not Land Cruisers] and I beg to differ. Children are worse for the environment than SUVs, not that I'm advocating shipping all kids to Mars, because then I'd be out of a job. Companion dogs make the world a better place. We need more of them.

Stray and feral cats, though, are another story. And no, I'm not just saying this because neighborhood strays are busy hunting wild birds in my backyard [or would be, if it weren't for my dogs]. I'm saying this because of a bug that kills sea otters and other marine mammals. I'm saying this because outdoor and feral cats generally have short lives marked by contagious disease and infection, and miserable deaths.

Inside cats: wonderful! My Gus [formerly feral, from the local pound] was a super terrific cat [an inside-only, non-declawed cat, for the record].

Outside cats: bad news. Feral cat colonies: don't even get me started. Best solution: trap, neuter, and adopt them out or send 'em to a sanctuary. And let me make this as clear as I can: feral cats themselves are not to blame for the problems they cause and the countless ills they suffer. That blame falls squarely on people who believe that feral cat colonies must be maintained at any cost, environmental and public health concerns be damned.


Also: if Jonathan Safran Foer ever saw what a combine does to wildlife [I've seen it], he'd never eat wheat or oats or barley again. Eating fallen fruit from native plants is the only way to go. That, and hunting.

Best idea ever

Heaven on earth: the Santa Rosa Plateau, much as it looked 200 years ago. Before the Gold Rush, a Spaniard wrote that it was possible to ride from one end of the San Fernando Valley to the other and never be out from under the shade of a giant oak. [Click for big.]

In the top ten of best ideas ever, at any rate: bulldoze sprawl, return suburban blight to nature. MacArthur Genius Grant for Maria Streshinsky, please!

How’s about a stimulus-started plan to buy up the nation’s foreclosed and empty McMansions and hire out-of-work construction workers to deconstruct them? It’s an idea that could keep giving and giving. Aside from the obvious benefits of employment as the deconstruction took place, de-developers could offset costs by selling used housing materials (recycle!) or donating us able building materials to low-income- housing renovation projects (help the poor!).

De-developers could then restore the housing lot to the area’s original native-growth environment (employ out- of- work landscapers, help the native critters!), have it designated as a conservation easement, and donate it to, say, the Nature Conservancy. Or perhaps the local community could take the lot over for the construction of playgrounds or the planting of victory gardens.

Sounds absolutely perfect to me.

Related:
US Government May Bulldoze 50 Cities; Create More Green Space
US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive
Bulldozing America’s Shrinking Cities

Lame-duck Bush to planet: "Drop dead"

What was once Kayford Mountain, West Virginia. [Source: Julie Zickefoose.]

Just how much harm would the Bush/Cheney administration like to inflict on the environment before a new [and, one hopes, vastly better] administration takes office? A world of hurt:

The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines [see photo above] and farms [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations].

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.

Par for the course, I guess:

"And [Bush] said, ‘History,’ and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’”

More Sadness for Appalachia

Shameless: The Bush deregulatory Free-for-all

Bush’s Last-Minute Rule Making Has Environmental Implications

iLoveMountains.org [Plugged in my zip code and discovered that Southern California Edison - my provider - buys coal from companies engaged in mountaintop removal. In every sense, this concerns me. It concerns all of us - so let's do something about it.]

Yes. We. Can.

Midnight blogging frenzy, with an update on that giant inflatable poo

Remarkably, the giant poo story has nothing to do with California's AB 1634, the forced spay/neuter bill, but more about that shit later — first, the craptastic news from Washington. Just when you think they can't possibly screw things up much more than they already have:

The Bush administration is proposing to let federal agencies decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants, according to a draft of planned rule changes obtained by The Associated Press.

The proposed regulations, which do not require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews that government scientists have been performing for 35 years.

Big hat tip to the most excellent Birdchick — and as Sharon says, it's no time for apathy. This proposal goes beyond stupid and beyond greedy and is barreling towards evil at a speed exponentially greater than that of a giant inflatable turd. Call your people in Washington and raise hell.

Nathan Winograd has written about the stench in Los Angeles, where Ed Boks and Judy Mancuso first put their heads together and came up with the disastrous AB 1634. Back on August 5 the Unleashed blog reported on "Workshops to explore "no-kill" policy at L.A. animal shelters":

The Los Angeles Department of Animal Services on Wednesday evening is holding the first of 11 scheduled workshops to look at how the city shelters can achieve a "no kill" policy. All meetings are open to the public.

Every municipal animal shelter wants to arrive at a "no-kill" policy. Essentially, that means that no healthy animals -- like the young pooches pictured above in the city's South L.A. shelter in January -- will be euthanized for lack of space. Being able to do that is a challenge.

The Humane L.A. Workshops will look at what is being done and what could be done better. "We want to get input from stakeholders in our community," says Animal Services general manager Ed Boks, who will attend the Wednesday workshop.

Depressing to think of the animals that might have been saved if Boks and Mancuso hadn't been so busy promoting the spectacularly divisive, impossible to enforce, medically risky and profoundly dishonest "Healthy Pets" Act. The rewritten version is nasty, brutish and short: there is no due process, no appeals process, anonymous complaints are accepted and there are no exemptions. No exemptions for working dogs. No exemptions for dogs whose health would be at risk. Three anonymous, unproven complaints and your dog is toast.

Gina and Christie at Pet Connection have done a yeoman's job fighting this awful legislation. Gina writes:

Forced spay-neuter kills more pets. That may seem counter-intuitive to many, but that’s the reality.

But much as I don’t want more pets to die as an unintended consequence of a piece of sound-bite legislation — and they have and will, everywhere these bills pass — I really don’t want what Lloyd Levine represents now to be what our government is all about.

Which is why as an an animal-lover and a citizen I’ll be calling and faxing today.

It's heartening to see that even the great Caveat up in Canada is spreading the word, as if she weren't busy enough fighting stupid Canadian politicians. All we can do is write the truth, and hope that enough people give veterinarians and other authentic experts more credence than they give a retired game-show host.

*************

In other news: it isn't everyday that you see a headline in the Telegraph with the words "giant inflatable turd," or a story that begins, "A house-sized dog poo has wreaked havoc after a storm picked it up," or a jibe about "American cultural imperialists busy spreading their crap culture" etc, etc. A really big hat tip to Moira at Dog Art Today for the scoop. ["Scoop"! OMG, I kill me.] Photo from Flickr.

"Alpine murder mystery: Are sheepdogs being poisoned to save the grey wolf?"

Transhumance festival in the foothills of the French Alps.

As Capt. Obvious would say, people have strong feelings about wolves. Ranchers despair over livestock and pets lost. Environmentalists, who are sometimes ranchers as well, want some protection for large predators. Politicians want news coverage; hunters want wolfskins; animal rightists want attention, etc.

Livestock guardian dogs are familiar to anyone who raises sheep in North America, and in Europe shepherds have turned to flock guardians as well ["returned" might be a better word, since many livestock guardian breeds were developed in Europe]. Now, in a strange twist, dogs guarding flocks on the border between France and Italy are being killed — not by wolves, but by human predators.

The French have an expression – entre chiens et loups– between the dogs and the wolves. It is a fanciful way of describing the twilight, the mysterious and uncertain time between day and night.

In the beautiful summer pastures of the Maurienne region of the French Alps, something mysterious, and wicked, has been happening in the twilight hours. The events are uncertain but one thing is clear. This is, literally, a story about dogs and wolves.

Since the start of the year, 17 sheepdogs have been poisoned in the mountains of the Maurienne range, which rise to more than 9,000ft, just inside the French frontier with Italy. The dogs have often died in great agony. They include several of the Patou or Pyrenean mountain breed – enormous, white, misleadingly cuddly-looking dogs, which are trained to give their lives, if necessary, to defend sheep from wolves.

In related news [huge suckage, this], some of the livestock guradian dogs are attacking tourists, and shepherds are being sued in the wake of ruined holidays:

Jean-Luc Renaud was on a mountain-walking holiday when he saw a bloodstained Belgian tourist staggering towards him. “His shorts were torn and he had been bitten badly in both buttocks,” Mr Renaud told The Times. “He was in a state of complete shock.”

The Belgian had fallen victim to a notoriously ferocious breed of mountain dog brought into the French Alps to defend sheep from wolves.

The attacks are driving holidaymakers away and are splitting the community against a backdrop of controversy over the reintroduction of the wolf in France. To add to the row, shepherds have been taken to court by wounded holidaymakers and 17 dogs have been poisoned in the Maurienne region of the Alps.

Read the full account [with comments] here.

Planet of the apes: [non-human] primates in the news

Yay us!

The good news is that there are a whole lot more lowland gorillas than we thought. The bad news is that other non-human primates are disappearing fast.

NEW YORK (AUGUST 5, 2008) – The world’s population of critically endangered western lowland gorillas received a huge boost today when the Wildlife Conservation Society released a census showing massive numbers of these secretive great apes alive and well in the Republic of Congo.

The new census tallied more than 125,000 western gorillas in two adjacent areas in the northern part of the country, covering an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 square kilometers). Previous estimates from the 1980s placed the entire population of western lowland gorillas, which occur in seven Central African nations, at fewer than 100,000. Since then, however, scientists had believed that this number had dwindled by at least half, due to hunting and disease. [Link.]

The NY Times has a related article and photo gallery here.

Meanwhile, 48% of primate species are in deep trouble.

A global review of the world's primates says 48% of species face extinction, an outlook described as "depressing" by conservationists.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says the main threat is habitat loss, primarily through the burning and clearing of tropical forests.

More than 70% of primates in Asia are now listed as Endangered, it adds.

The findings form part of the most detailed survey of the Earth's mammals, which will be published in October.

Nation with the highest percentage of threatened species: Cambodia, with a whopping 90%.

[T]hreats include hunting of primates for food and the illegal wildlife trade, explained Russell Mittermeier, chairman of global conservation group IUCN's Primate Specialist Group and president of Conservation International.

"In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction," he warned.

"Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact."

Quotes are from the BBC's good report — read it here.

Wildfires at home and abroad

Waiting for the flames: firefighters prepare to make a stand in Big Sur. SF Chronicle photo by Kurt Rogers.

How brave do you have to be, and how good at what you do, and how much faith must you have in your plan, your equipment and your colleagues, to stand on a narrow road in the middle of a tinder-dry forest and try to stop a firestorm from jumping that road? It seems impossible, but I've driven on roads where it's been done. I heart wildland firefighters.

I live in a region that is supposed to burn — that's the way the chaparral ecosystem works. Mike Davis's essay Let Malibu Burn: A political history of the Fire Coast is a classic read on the consequences of residential development in the fire ecology of Southern California. Written in 1996, it seems prescient now.

This past week the L.A. Times ran a five-part series, Big Burn, about the growth and cost of wildfires in the West. The surprise of this series, for me, was learning about the role of homeowners in wildfire management in Australia:

It was brutally hot, 108 degrees, and the wind was howling. Bushfires were raging in the hills, making their way inexorably toward the Baker farmstead at the foot of the Brisbane Ranges.

John and Carlene Baker had moved here to get away from the hurly-burly of the city. They lived with their two children and a cast of orphaned animals on a 60-acre spread they called Foxford.

Now, all of it was threatened. Embers were falling around the house. The animals were growing restless. The Baker property sits deep in a box canyon, a mile from the main road. The couple knew there was little or no chance firefighters would reach them.

Southern Californians might respond to such a predicament by packing the car and evacuating. The thought never entered the Bakers' minds. Instead, they did what they had been trained to do: stay and fight.

Fire is a pervasive danger in Australia, just as in much of the American West. But Australians cope with the threat in a manner difficult to envision in the U.S.

Americans expect firefighters to protect their lives and property. Australians in rural communities view that as their own responsibility.

U.S. authorities are quick to order mass evacuations during wildfires; they prefer to get civilians out of the way so professionals can douse the flames. Australian officials are more likely to hand homeowners shovels and put them to work.

People here live by the principle of "stay or go" during fire season. Residents who can't or won't battle an advancing fire are advised to get out early. Those who stay are expected to defend their homes. It's a policy driven by pragmatism: There simply aren't enough firefighters or firetrucks to protect far-flung rural homesteads.

The "stay or go" policy, adopted state by state beginning in the mid-1990s, has sharply reduced losses of life and property in wildfires, statistics show. In 1983, a year of widespread conflagrations, 60 Australians lost their lives in bushfires, not including firefighters, researcher Katharine Haynes reported. In the equally severe fire season of 2003, bushfires caused just six deaths.

The "stay or go" approach so far has found little acceptance in the United States. But as wildfires become more severe and costlier to fight, some U.S. officials say the Australian model deserves a serious look.

"We need to push this concept and push it hard," said Bodie Shaw, wildland fire director for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which fights fires on reservations and other public lands. "The onus and responsibility need to shift to you as a property owner."

In Australia, sheltering at home does not mean simply waiting the fire out. It means confronting the menace with hose, mop and shovel.

"Let's be honest: It is scary," said John Valcich, captain of a volunteer fire brigade in the rural community of Mansfield. "We're not telling you that you have to stay. But [if you leave] you will lose your house. And don't blame anyone. What's it like to stay? It's like standing at the back of a jet plane when it's revving up. I try to tell people what to expect. But it comes as a hell of a shock when it hits."

Big Burn was written by Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart. Excerpts above are by Julie Cart, from the fifth article in the series. "Residents in the path of bushfires are told to evacuate early or stay and fight. A family that chose to stick one out endured a frightening test of endurance and determination." No kidding. A good read — check it out.

R EARTHQUAKE. LET ME SHOW U IT.

We rock, yay us. More seismic activity than almost anyplace and we use more gasoline than China. By God, I'm proud to be a Californian.

The animals didn't do anything. [Thanks for the early warning, chuckleheads, and after all I do for you...!] Here are some snaps by Rick Loomis [Kmart in Diamond Bar] and Irfan Khan [Pomona City Hall], both photos from the L.A. Times:



Security cameras at Incycle in San Dimas caught the P-wave/S-wave thing: in the first video you can see the customers' reaction to the initial jolt [watch the man on the right] and what happens when the shaking starts a moment later.






There are bazillions of earthquake articles in the L.A. Times, but my favorite coverage was at Gawker. "Seriously, though, who wants to save an Earth that does crap like this? Die, dirtball, die. I'm going to go dump motor oil into a pristine watercourse." Oh, and the phones went down, too, but email still worked and Twitter scooped Associated Press by nine minutes, and there were no major injuries [and only eight minor ones], so it's all good. I love you, California...!

From rare plants to orca poop, these dogs can find it

On the left: wildlife ecologist Dave Vesely and Rogue locate a Kincaid's lupine. [Photo by Melissa Jansson.]

Did you know scientists were using dogs to locate whale poo, endangered plants, northern spotted owls and the scat of individual grizzly bears? Am I the last one to hear about this? I believe I am.

Check out this terrific article [with photo gallery] by Lily Raff for the Bend Bulletin:

In the last decade, scientists have started using dogs — and their sensitive noses — to locate hard-to-find plants and animals. Just as some dogs are used to sniff out drugs, bombs and cadavers, others are trained to sniff out rare plants and animals.

Among scientific techniques, this one is still considered new. But the dogs already are proving so successful that many scientists — including some in Central Oregon — are eager to enlist canines in their own research.

Only a small percentage of dogs are cut out for detection work. Researchers are always on the lookout for more detector dog candidates.

Trainers say they often acquire detector dogs from shelters. Many were brought back to a shelter after a family couldn’t handle them.

“The thing that makes them a really good dog for detection work kind of makes them a horrible pet,” [biologist Alice] Whitelaw said.

“Very, very, very, very tiny things give off scent. Just because we’re all going, ‘Oh, no!’ doesn’t mean the dogs can’t do it.” So far, in fact, dogs have sniffed beyond scientists’ wildest expectations.

Professor Sam Wasser is the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington and a pioneer in the use of dogs for this sort of detection work. According to the article, "Wasser’s lab just finished constructing a 143-acre training and kennel facility for more than 25 species-detector dogs."

For every 1,000 dogs that he tests, Wasser said one to four will meet his criteria to enter training for detector dog work. Wasser said he looks only at big dogs because they have the stamina to cover long distances during a day of work. Many detector dogs are mutts.

“We look for ability and drive rather than a particular breed,” he said.

Wasser won’t adopt pit bulls even though they often seem like they would make great detector dogs.

“I suspect pit bulls would work very well but … many of the airlines won’t let us ship them. It’s really frustrating because sometimes we go through one of our searches and we find two or three pit bulls and no other dogs that meet the criteria. But if you can’t transport the dog to the job, it defeats the purpose.”

How sad is that.

I'm terribly sorry that pit bulls are blacklisted, but I'm totally stoked that dogs are doing this sort of work, and I'd love to give it a shot with my pups. Hmm... rare plants near Big Bear Lake...

NatGeo's "Animals Adrift"

National Geographic posted this memorable image by photographer Joe Raedle, who must have been in a boat. Check out the galleries [Animals Adrift (June, 2008); New Orleans People, Pets Flee Flood (August, 2005); California Fires Force Animal Evacuation (October 24, 2007)] here. From the link:

In recent days heavy rains and failed levees have fueled the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years, killing 24 people and claiming an unknown number of pets, livestock, and wildlife.

Over at Pet Connection, Christie posted links for those wishing to donate and/or volunteer to help flood victims. [Wise, if cynical, remark in the comments section: "I would caution everyone to employ the utmost skepticism about any individual’s or organization’s self-accounting of their own disaster heroics. Especially when done in the vicinity of a PayPal button."]

Edited to add: The Boston Globe online has a great new blog called The Big Picture: News Stories in Photographs. The editor is Alan Taylor, who has a keen eye for the indelible photo. You can check out some mind-boggling shots of the Midwest floods here.