2008
2008 Fall. Delta
Blues. By Barry
Yeoman, OnEarth. Excerpt:
On this brisk, cloudless day, Tom Zuckerman
and I are driving to his duck-hunting
club on Rindge Tract, one of the
low-slung rural islands that form
the nucleus of California's Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta....The delta serves
as a vast switching yard for much
of the state's water supply, including
drinking water for 23 million people
from the Bay Area to San Diego....
For all its value and beauty, though,
the delta is also on the verge of collapse.
Much of its land is kept artificially
dry by 1,100 miles of jury-rigged levees
that are inadequate to withstand a
litany of growing stresses. First there's
global warming, which could push sea
levels two feet higher, or more, by
century's end. Add to this the risk
of flooding -- also linked to climate
change -- as a result of increased
rainfall and quicker snowmelt in the
mountains. Finally, there's the growing
chance of a devastating earthquake.
Any of these phenomena could trigger
a chain reaction of levee breaches,
inundating farms and communities, displacing
thousands of people, and sucking salt
water deep into an already overstressed
system. That, in turn, could leave
Californians scrambling for freshwater
for agriculture and residential consumption.
In 2005 a respected study by the geologist
Jeffrey Mount, director of the Center
for Watershed Sciences at the University
of California, Davis, and the environmental
planner Robert Twiss added up the combined
risks posed by earthquakes and floods
and calculated a 64 percent chance
that up to 20 levees will fail simultaneously
within the next 50 years.
...A more immediate crisis has already
beset the delta, one that shows how
deeply its ecological health and human
welfare are entwined. Native fish populations
-- salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, smelt
-- are declining at such an alarming
rate that the entire ecosystem appears
to be in peril. Among the many culprits
are the two pumping stations, which
not only suck the fish into their machinery
but also alter the region's underlying
hydrology....
...There is no "single silver
bullet" to solve the problems
of the delta, says Barry Nelson, director
of NRDC's Western Water Project. "We're
going to need a portfolio of responses." Scientists,
environmentalists, water managers,
and farmers all favor the creation
of managed floodplains -- chunks of
agricultural land that seasonally collect
excess floodwater, taking pressure
off levees and reducing the risk of
breaches. Not only do these "bypasses" lower
flood levels, but they also make exceptional
habitat for fish like salmon and steelhead.
Farmers can still plant seasonal crops
-- the flooding typically occurs in
the winter -- and they get paid for
accepting some risk of crop loss. ...
2008 November 10. Marine
invasive species advance 50 km
per decade, World Conference on
Marine Biodiversity told. EurekAlert. Excerpt: A rapid, climate change-induced
northern migration of invasive marine
is one of many research results announced
Tues. Nov. 11 during opening day presentations
at the First World Conference on Marine
Biodiversity, Ciudad de las Artes y
las Ciencias, in Valencia.
Investigators report that invasive
species of marine macroalgae spread
at 50 km per decade, a distance far
greater than that covered by invasive
terrestrial plants. The difference
may be due to the rapid dispersion
of macroalgae propagules in the ocean,
according to Nova Mieszkovska, from
the Marine Biological Association of
the U.K.
The international conference ... will
gather over 500 scientists from 45
countries.
Says CSIC scientist Carlos Duarte,
co-chair of the Conference: "Overwhelming
evidence of an accelerating deterioration
of the oceans has provided the ímpetus
to call the marine biodiversity scientific
community together in this first World
Conference."
...Almost half of the 450 communications
at the Conference will address the
loss of marine biodiversity and its
consequences, whereas the rest will
cover the exploitation of marine living
resources, as well as exciting discoveries
of novel ecosystems in extreme ecosystems,
particularly in the deep sea....
2008 October 13. Thinking
Anew About a Migratory Barrier:
Roads. By Jim
Robbins, The New York Times. Excerpt:
SALTESE, Mont. — ...The mountains
in and around Glacier National Park
teem with bears. A recently concluded
five-year census found 765 grizzlies
in northwestern Montana, more than
three times the number of bears as
when it was listed as a threatened
species in 1975. To the south lies
a swath of federally protected wilderness
much larger than Yellowstone, where
the habitat is good, and there are
no known grizzlies. They were wiped
out 50 years ago to protect sheep.
One of the main reasons they have
not returned is Interstate 90.
To arrive from the north, a bear
would have to climb over a nearly
three-foot high concrete Jersey barrier,
cross two lanes of road, braving
75- to 80-mile-an hour traffic, climb
a higher Jersey barrier, cross two
more lanes of traffic and climb yet
another barrier.
“It’s the most critical
wildlife corridor in the country,” said
Dr. Servheen, grizzly bear recovery
coordinator for the federal Fish
and Wildlife Service, of the linkage
between the two habitats.
...Some experts believe that habitat
fragmentation, the slicing and dicing
of large landscapes into small pieces
with roads, homes and other development,
is the biggest of all environmental
problems....
Fragmentation cuts off wildlife from
critical habitat, including food,
security or others of their species
for reproduction and genetic diversity.
Eventually they disappear.
...Vegetation communities here are
projected to migrate north, which
means grizzlies will need to be able
to follow. “Shrub fields where
berries are is a good example,” Dr.
Servheen said. “If dry weather
wipes them out, the bears need to
go elsewhere.”
The problem is they might not be
able to follow. “We’ve
boxed them in” with roads,
he said....
2008 September 29. Harsh
Review of Restoration in Everglades. By
Damien Cave, The New York Times. Excerpt:
MIAMI — The eight-year-old,
multibillion-dollar effort to rescue
the Everglades has failed to halt
the wetlands’ decline because
of bureaucratic delays, a lack
of financing from Congress and
overdevelopment, according to a
new report.
The 287-page study by the National
Research Council, a biennial review
required by Congress, warned that
South Florida’s stunning
river of grass was quickly reaching
a point of no return. Without “near
term progress,” the report
said, more species will die off “and
the Everglades ecosystem may experience
irreversible losses to its character
and functioning.”
William L. Graf, chairman of the
committee that wrote the report,
put it more simply. “There
is no other place like this,” Mr.
Graf said. “It’s existed
for 5,000 years this way, and we’re
in danger of losing it for our
kids and their kids.”
...“The bottom line,” said
Mr. Graf, a professor of geology
at the University of South Carolina, “is
I don’t think we can wait
and see what happens.”...
2008 Sep 8. Friendly
Invaders. By
CARL ZIMMER, NY Times. Excerpt: New
Zealand is home to 2,065 native plants
found nowhere else on Earth....
When Europeans began arriving in
New Zealand, they brought with them
alien plants - crops, garden plants
and stowaway weeds. Today, 22,000
non-native plants grow in New Zealand.
Most of them can survive only
with the loving care of gardeners
and farmers. But 2,069 have become
naturalized: they have spread out
across the islands on their own.
There are more naturalized invasive
plant species in New Zealand than
native species.
It sounds like the makings of an
ecological disaster: an epidemic
of
invasive species that wipes out the
delicate native species in its
path. But in a paper published in
August in The Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, Dov
Sax, an ecologist at Brown
University, and Steven D. Gaines,
a marine biologist at the
University of California, Santa Barbara,
point out that the invasion
has not led to a mass extinction
of native plants. The number of
documented extinctions of native
New Zealand plant species is a grand
total of three.
..."I hate the 'exotics are
evil' bit, because it's so unscientific,"
Dr. Sax said.
Dr. Sax and his colleagues are at
odds with many other experts on
invasive species. Their critics argue
that the speed with which
species are being moved around the
planet, combined with other kinds
of stress on the environment, is
having a major impact.
There is little doubt that some invasive
species have driven native
species extinct. But Dr. Sax argues
that they are far more likely to
be predators than competitors.
...Biological invasions also set
off bursts of natural selection.
House sparrows, for example, have
moved to North America from Europe
and have spread across the whole
continent. "Natural selection
will
start to change them," Dr. Sax
said. "If you give that process
enough
time, they will become new species."
"The natives themselves are
also likely to adapt," Dr. Sax
added.
Some of the fastest rates of evolution
ever documented have taken
place in native species adapting
to exotics. Some populations of
soapberry bugs in Florida, for example,
have shifted from feeding on
a native plant, the balloon vine,
to the goldenrain tree, introduced
from Asia by landscapers in the 1950s.
In five decades, the smaller
goldenrain seeds have driven the
evolution of smaller mouthparts in
the bugs, along with a host of other
changes.
In Australia, the introduction of
cane toads in the 1930s has also
spurred evolution in native animals....
2008 June 17 .Tiny,
Clingy and Destructive, Mussel
Makes Its Way West. By John
Collins Rudolf, The New York Times. Excerpt:
LAKE MEAD, Nev. — Kneeling
at the edge of the dock, Wen Baldwin
began hauling on a length of nylon
rope that disappeared into the
depths of Lake Mead. One after
another, an odd assemblage of objects — a
water bottle, a chunk of concrete,
a pair of flip-flops, a steel anchor — emerged
from the emerald-green waters.
A living blanket of tiny, striped mussels covered each one.
"The conditions here are ideal for these things, absolutely
ideal," said Mr. Baldwin, 70, a retired design engineer
and a National Park Service volunteer.
The mussel-coated debris is unmistakable evidence of an event
occurring silently and largely out of sight — the colonization
of the Colorado River by the quagga mussel, a fingernail-size
Eurasian bivalve with an astonishing sex drive and a nasty reputation
for causing economic and ecological havoc.
Like the closely related zebra mussel, the quagga can cling tenaciously
to hard surfaces, like the equipment of the many hydroelectric
and water-supply plants along the lower Colorado. "They're
going to be all over the pipes, all over the intakes," said
Gary L. Fahnenstiel, senior ecologist with the Great Lakes Environmental
Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "It's
going to be devastating."
Dr. Fahnenstiel ought to know. The quagga has carpeted much of
the Great Lakes, largely displacing the better-known zebra. Its
invasion of the Colorado, presumably after crossing the Rockies
on recreational boats hitched to trailers, foretells major disruptions
not just for utilities, but also for the entire ecology of the
lower river. By stripping nutrients and microorganisms from the
water, the mussel could do grave damage to a wide variety of
species, including small invertebrates, fish and birds. "This
is one bad hombre," Dr. Fahnenstiel said. "It's almost
your worst-case scenario for affecting the entire food chain.
2008 Spring. Are
Bay Seals Facing a New Chemical
Health Threat? by
Lisa Owens Viani, Terrain Magazine. Excerpt:
etween globs of oil, six-pack rings,
used condoms, and discarded sippy
cups, harbor seals have plenty of
hazards to dodge in San Francisco
Bay. But some potential threats to
their health may be more insidious.
An "emerging contaminant" found
circulating in blood samples from
harbor seals is perfluorooctane sulfanate
(PFOS), a persistent compound used
in Scotchgard, fire extinguisher
foam, and other stain-resistant and
water-repellent coatings.
2008 May 6. Mangrove
loss 'left Burma exposed' By Mark Kinver, Science
and nature reporter, BBC News. Excerpt:
Destruction of mangrove forests in
Burma left coastal areas exposed
to the devastating force of the weekend's
cyclone, a top politician suggests.
ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan
said coastal developments had resulted
in mangroves, which act as a natural
defence against storms, being lost.
At least 22,000 people have died
in the disaster, say state officials.
A study of the 2004 Asian tsunami
found that areas near healthy mangroves
suffered less damage and fewer deaths.
Mr Surin, speaking at a high-level
meeting of the Association of South-East
Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore,
said the combination of more people
living in coastal areas and the loss
of mangroves had exacerbated the
tragedy.
2008 Feb 29. Invasion
of the Alien Creatures. by
Molly Webster, OnEarth (NRDC).
Unwelcome guests Tainted ballast
water brought zebra mussels to
the Great Lakes. Excerpt:
Ecologists estimate that every
six months a new invasive species
begins carving out a spot for itself
in the Great Lakes ecosystem. Many
arrive as stowaways on shipping
vessels that travel up the St.
Lawrence Seaway, hiding out in
ballast water until it's discharged
for cargo--leaving the aquatic
invaders free to move about the
continent. In 2006, one of the
most lethal infectious diseases
affecting fish populations, viral
hemorrhagic septicemia, killed
tens of thousands of fish in Lake
Erie. Scientists believe it might
have arrived in ballast water.
Such losses are ruinous in a region
that takes in $5.7 billion a year
through the sport and commercial
fishing industries. In the absence
of federal rules to curtail tainted
ballast discharges, in 2007 Michigan
began requiring that ships treat
their ballast water before releasing
it in state waters. The shipping
industry challenged the law in
court; NRDC joined Michigan's case,
arguing that states have the right
to enact their own standards. The
case was dismissed in August, but
NRDC is prepared to defend against
the shippers' appeals.
2008 February 28. Requiem
for a River. By Tim Folger, OnEarth. Excerpt:
Snake Valley, Nevada
[Elevation 5,300 feet]
...The demand for water here, exacerbated
by the growth of Las Vegas, has never
been greater. Las Vegas, built in the
middle of the Mojave Desert, gets 60,000
new residents-and four inches of rain
-- each year. To secure the water it
needs to maintain that growth, the
city plans to build a $2 billion pipeline
to pump groundwater from the valleys
of northern Nevada. Baker and his fellow
ranchers believe the pipeline will
be a disaster, not just for them but
for the Great Basin ecosystem, which
is one reason we've driven to Needle
Point Spring. If a single farmer can
suck a spring dry, what will happen
when a city of nearly two million starts
pumping groundwater here?
The remote Snake Valley is but one
of the many fronts in a battle for
water rights that will play out in
the decades ahead across the entire
Southwest... With the onset of global
warming, an already bad situation is
likely to get much worse. Some climate
scientists suspect that the current
drought is not an aberration but the
start of a transition to permanently
drier conditions in the fastest-growing
-- and most arid -- region in North
America...
Late last year, the seven states that
share the Colorado River's water --
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada,
New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming -- agreed
to new federal guidelines for managing
the river that should prevent the drought
from morphing into a full-blown catastrophe.
But that agreement won't end the region's
water wars...
...The crisis facing
the Southwest isn't so much due to
any lack of water-even in the driest
years the Colorado River can satisfy
the needs of millions. The real crisis
is a demographic one. Is urban development
a goal to be pursued at any cost? Or
as Cecil Garland, the rancher in tiny
Callao, Utah, put it, do we want lawns
or lettuce? Craps or crops?
2008 January. The
Invaders: Weapons of Choice.
By Laura Paskus, Forest Magazine,
Winter 2008
Excerpt: For almost four decades,
Doug Parker worked for the U.S.
Forest Service, initially with pesticides,
then with herbicides. But
just days shy of his thirty-ninth
anniversary with the agency, he was
fired, charged with misconduct and
not following orders-in particular,
not certifying enough employees in
the use of pesticides and improperly
formatting a progress report. But
Parker, who was the pesticide coordinator
for the Southwestern Region until
his dismissal two years ago, believes
that he was fired because he sounded
the alarm about the agency's strategy
for dealing with invasive species,
and because he refused to authorize
spraying a campground with insecticide
in 2003. Parker has filed a lawsuit
against the agency. His claims that
the agency is ill-prepared to deal
with the growing problem of invasive
plant and insect incursions-and with
citizens' groups who oppose the use
of herbicides and pesticides on public
land-illustrate the complex issue
that forest managers are facing as
invasives gain a foothold on national
forests....A quick look around the
Southwestern Region reveals a dramatic
trend within forest ecosystems: Russian
knapweed chokes northern New Mexico
roadsides, while Dalmatian toadflax
infiltrates the banks of the Rio
Grande. On the Lincoln National Forest,
musk thistle is spreading across
the ground, while inchworms defoliate
conifer trees.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, bark beetles
have destroyed hundreds of
thousands of acres of pine forests
as well as plants such as honey
and velvet mesquite, and buffelgrass
and fountaingrass are outpacing
the Sonoran Desert's native plants,
including the iconic saguaro
cactus....
2008 January. The
Invaders: Fodder for Fire.
By Alice Tallmadge, Forest Magazine,
Winter 2008. An
aggressive invasive from Russia
has emerged as a significant factor
in the wildfires that rolled through
much of the West this past summer,
and several western states have
decided it's time to get serious
about eradicating the ubiquitous
cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum). The
governors of Idaho, Nevada, Utah
and Wyoming are developing a strategy
for rehabilitating thousands of
acres of scorched rangeland by
reseeding with native and nonnative
grasses before cheatgrass can take
hold.
2007
2007 December 17. Oceans'
Growing Acidity Alarms Scientists. By
Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON - Seven hundred miles west of
Seattle in the Pacific at Ocean Station
Papa, a first-of-its-kind buoy is anchored
to monitor a looming environmental catastrophe.
Forget about sea levels rising as glaciers
and polar ice melt, and increasing water
temperatures affecting global weather patterns.
As the oceans absorb more and more carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases, they're
gradually becoming more acidic. And some
scientists fear that the change may be irreversible.
At risk are sea creatures up and down the
food chain, from the tiniest phytoplankton
and zooplankton to whales, from squid to
salmon to crabs, coral, oysters and clams....
2007 December 16. National
Park Plans to Cull Its Herd of Elk.
By KIRK JOHNSON, NY Times. Excerpt:
DENVER - The elk population that roams and
sometimes rampages through the delicate
landscape of Rocky Mountain National Park
is out of control and will be reduced through
a program that will use sharpshooters to
cull the herd, park officials said last
week.
The plan, which is expected to receive final
approval by the National Park Service next
month, would involve killing up to 200 of
the animals each year beginning in 2009.
The herd, believed to be descended from
a tiny transplant community brought down
from Wyoming during World War I, has become
a major tourist attraction - and a severe
problem for park managers. The animals,
which can weigh up to 700 pounds for a full-grown
bull, feed
on fragile aspen and willow stands. In some
places the stands have been devastated by
the herd's growing numbers. Rocky Mountain
National Park, which straddles the Continental
Divide and holds the headwaters of the Colorado
River, is one of the most heavily used national
parks, about 90 minutes northwest of Denver.
And the majestic, slow-moving elk, numbering
upwards of 3,000 in some past years, have
become one of the park's signature photo
opportunities, even as their environmental
impact has grown. Park officials say a sustainable
population is about 1,600 to 2,100 animals.
...A park biologist who led a management
study of the elk, Therese Johnson, said
... that for several reasons, the park's
elk population had recently fallen a bit.
About 700 were killed by hunters outside
the park last year, one of the highest numbers
in years. And more of the animals appear
to be spending time in forest areas outside
park
boundaries.
She said that if the trend continued, there
might be years when no animals needed to
be killed. She also emphasized that the
culling program would be scientifically
based. The shooting would be done in winter,
...with a goal of mimicking as much as possible
how natural predators like wolves would
reduce a herd, by taking out the old, the
weak and the ill....
2007 November 12. Border
Fence Work Raises Environmental Concerns. By
RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, NY Times. LOS ANGELES. Excerpt:
The Department of Homeland Security is ahead
of schedule in building some 700 miles of
fencing along the Mexican border, but some
environmental groups, elected officials
and local Indian tribes say too little attention
is being paid to the environmental consequences
of the barriers. ...Opponents say the 12-to-15-foot-tall
steel fence and its construction will disrupt
the habitat of jaguars, pygmy owls and other
sensitive fauna in the wildlife refuge,
and encourage illegal immigrants to use
more remote, ecologically delicate terrain.
Three times, including twice this year,
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
has exempted fence construction along the
border from environmental reviews normally
required for such projects, saying the waivers
avoid legal delays that threaten speedy
completion.
..."This is another example of the
federal government riding roughshod over
America's treasured lands and legal process
in its rush to complete a highly ineffective
and controversial border wall," said
Matt Clark, the Southwest representative
for Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group.
Federal officials have defended the land
swap and the environmental waivers, saying
speedy construction of the fence will help
lead to control of the border and reduce
trash and other environmental damage generated
by illegal immigrant traffic....
2007 October 16. Oriental
Beetle Discovered in Indiana. Associated
Press Excerpt:
WEST LAFAYETTE - An invasive beetle that's
native to Japan has been discovered in Indiana
for the first time as the plant-munching
insect edges further into the Midwest. Purdue
University entomologist Doug Richmond said
a graduate student recently found an unusual
beetle in Tippecanoe County and identified
it at a Purdue lab as an Oriental beetle.
...The beetles, which are similar in size
to Japanese beetle, arrived in the United
States in the 1920s and have caused devastating
infestations across much of the Northeast.
To date, the insect has been found as far
south as South Carolina. ...In the larval
stage, the beetles feed on roots of turf
grasses, perennial plants, weeds, nursery
stock and potted plants. After the adult
beetles emerge, they feed on flowers from
May to August, favoring the petals of daisies,
phlox and petunias....
Fall 2007. A Fence Runs Through It. Forest
Magazine. Excerpt:
The cost of the proposed 700-mile fence along
segments of the border between the United
States and Mexico will likely be higher than
the $1.2 billion Congress approved when it
passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006.
Much, much higher, say members of environmental
groups who advocate for the hundreds of
acres of national wildlife refuges, forests
and monuments that straddle the border.
...What concerns them are the impacts a
two walled fence will have on desert ecosystems,
water flow and wildlife species--from jaguars
and desert pronghorn to the flat-tailed
horned lizard.
...According to [Jenny] Neely [with the
Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson], the Marine
Corp, which is responsible for managing
the range on the ground, planned to install
vehicle barriers along the border it shares
with Mexico.
This three-foot high, "permeable" fencing
allows people and wildlife to pass through,
but prevents the passage of cars and trucks.
Similar barriers ahve been constructed in
the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
east of the range...and the Tohono O'odham
Nation also had approval to construct vehicle
barriers.
"The world came downthat the bombin range was going to
get a [double] fence...in contradiction to what every manager
out there wanted."
2007 June 18. Caverns
to Remove Exotic Fish From Pond. Associated
Press. Excerpt:
State Game and Fish officials will help
staff members at Carlsbad Caverns National
Park remove exotic fish and amphibians from
the pond at Rattlesnake Springs. The effort,
which starts Sunday, is aimed at restoring
native species, including the roundnose
minnow and greenthroat darter. Non-native
species that will be removed include the
green sunfish, the largemouth bass and the
bullfrog. ... Park officials will pump water
from the pond for one week. When half to
two-thirds of the water has been removed,
biologists will separate live fish in holding
tanks - one for native fish, the other for
non-natives. Native fish will be returned
to the pond and non-natives will be released
into another water system managed by the
Game and Fish Department. ...
2007 June 12. Battling
a Nasty Green Invader From the Deep.
By LISA W. FODERARO Excerpt:
SCHROON, N.Y. - Nosing into a shallow bay
on Schroon Lake, Steve LaMere peered over
the side of his pontoon boat. He was on
an unusual reconnaissance mission, looking
for signs of an aggressive aquatic invader.
The plant he was after, Eurasian watermilfoil,
is not new. First found in the United States
in the 1940s in a pond in Washington, D.C.,
it has since spread to almost every corner
of the country, endangering swimmers, boaters
and other aquatic plants. Since the 1970s,
its growth - along with that of many other
invasive plants and animals - has exploded.
Like other invasive species, Eurasian watermilfoil
is spread from continent to continent by
ballast water from ships, and locally by
recreational boaters and fishermen who unwittingly
introduce plant fragments to clean lakes
from infested ones. Eurasian watermilfoil
is now in more than 45 Adirondack lakes,
including giants like Lake George and Saranac
Lake. It threatens their biodiversity by
muscling out native plants and can grow
so thick that it becomes entangled in boat
propellers and the limbs of swimmers.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent
each year to remove watermilfoil. In July
and August, teams of scuba divers descend
to hand-harvest plants, which can grow up
to 15 feet tall. Where the watermilfoil
is too dense for that approach (scientists
have found as many as 300 stems per square
meter), divers fasten huge sheets of plastic,
called benthic barriers, to the lake bottom
to blot out the sun.
Another method, known as biocontrol, uses
nature - in the form of insects and fish
- to fight nature. At Augur Lake, where
Mr. LaMere was hired to combat its Eurasian
watermilfoil infestation, hundreds of sterile
grass carp were released several years ago
to eat the plants. For now, the watermilfoil,
which had cloaked 10 percent of the lake,
is still there, but is less of a nuisance.
In 2005, an Invasive Species Task Force
appointed by former Gov. George E. Pataki
issued a 146-page report, with a dozen recommendations
and a call for the state to budget from
$5 million to $10 million annually to address
the issue. To illustrate how quickly invasive
species spread, the report said that since
the task force convened in 2004, at least
six new ones have arrived in the state.
They include the European crane fly and
Brazilian elodea, a popular aquarium plant
discovered last year. Michael P. White,
the commission's executive director, said
the additional state money would mean more
divers this summer. "The state funding
will allow us to expand our operations more
on a scale that's appropriate to the challenge." While
some lakes in New York are choked with Eurasian
watermilfoil, the early efforts on Lake
George paid off. Of 1,800 acres of lake
bottom where watermilfoil could conceivably
take root (generally the shallower fringes),
only about 10 to 12 acres have dense growth.
2007 April. Lush
Yards with Less Water. Union of Concerned
Scientists - Green Tips. Excerpt:
About one-third of all residential water
use goes toward lawns and gardens, according
to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Unfortunately, much of this water is wasted
through runoff, evaporation, overwatering,
or inefficient landscape design. Reducing
water use in your yard does not mean resorting
to rock gardens-by adopting some simple
landscaping techniques known as "xeriscaping" (from
the Greek xeros, meaning dry) you can create
a beautiful lawn or garden that uses up
to 60 percent less water, requires less
fertilizer and pesticides, and saves you
time and money. ... In most cases, native,
non-invasive plants are best because they
are naturally adapted to regional temperature
and rainfall patterns. Grouping plants that
have similar water needs can also help minimize
the need for supplemental watering....If
there are areas of your lawn that go unused,
consider replacing the grass with less water-intensive
plants such as trees, shrubs, flowers, or
low-growing ground covers. ...Mulching around
plants with coarse compost, wood chips,
shredded leaves, or straw further reduces
the need for supplemental watering by keeping
the soil cool and moist. ....
2006
11 December
2006. In
Kansas, a Line Is Drawn Around a Prairie Dog
Town. By FELICITY BARRINGER. Excerpt:
RUSSELL SPRINGS, Kan., Dec. 6 - On Wednesday,
the prairie
dog poisoners stayed home. ...The Logan County
commissioners want the prairie dogs dead. But
two ranchers, Larry Haverfield and Gordon Barnhardt,
and their allies in two environmental groups
want the 5,500-acre colony on their property
to flourish, for the good of the land and for
the eventual delectation of black-footed ferrets.
The ferrets, an endangered mammal, thrive on
a diet of prairie dogs. The ranchers' defense
of prairie dogs prompted bewilderment then anger
in this county of about 3,100 people. ...Mr.
Haverfield, who is 70, and his wife, Betty,
71, are perfectly content to have neighbors
and friends shoot some of the thousands of prairie
dogs for sport. They just do not want them poisoned
en masse. ...The Haverfield way of ranching
- rotation grazing, a rarity in this region
- is designed to mimic the patterns of bison
grazing. By moving the cows from pasture to
pasture quickly, he said, he can accommodate
both cattle and rodent, improve the soil and
the grass and promote the return of those species
drawn either to prairie dogs' abandoned holes
(such as burrowing owls and badgers) or to their
flesh (foxes, rattlesnakes, hawks and eagles).
...A few miles north, Byron Sowers, a neighbor
of Mr. Haverfield's, ... says ..."It's
devaluing my property," ...Mr. Sowers argues
that his 900-acre property bordering Mr. Haverfield's
had only 10 acres of prairie dog town when he
bought it. Now, he said, despite annual poisonings
costing $2,500 or more, the colony covers 500
acres. He blames Mr. Haverfield's rodents. ...the
tendency of prairie dogs to seek new territory
is well-established - although so is the tendency
of the remnants of a poisoned colony to multiply
quickly.... ...Jonathan Proctor, a prairie dog
specialist with Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental
group, is fond of asking why this native of
the Great Plains, which once numbered in the
billions, cannot be allowed a few thousand acres.
... federal biologists in the early 20th century
fattened their budgets by joining the farmers
and cattlemen in a huge prairie dog eradication
campaign ...lasted more than half a century
and killed billions of prairie dogs. In 1901,
Kansas passed a law giving county governments
the right to send poisoners onto private land,
at the owner's expense, if neighbors complained.
That law is at the root of the current stalemate.
...Ron Klataske, the executive director of Audubon
of Kansas, suggested the Haverfields offer their
land to federal officials as a site for black-footed
ferrets. ...That news inflamed an already tense
situation. The Endangered Species Act's prohibitions
against intentionally harming an endangered
animal conjured up fears that a dead ferret
found on someone's property could be turned
into a federal case, literally....
December 2006 (Winter 2007). The
Little Mouse That Got in the Way. By Sharon
Levy, OnEarth [NRDC]. Why
an obscure, three-inch rodent holds the future
of the Endangered Species Act in its tiny
paws -- a tale of science and politics. Wyoming
Attorney General Patrick Crank once argued
that Preble's meadow jumping mouse was no
more real than the jackalope, that taxidermist's
fantasy -- half jackrabbit, half antelope
-- that adorns bars and gas stations throughout
the West. Populations of meadow jumping mice
are scattered over half the continent, from
the Carolinas to Alaska. Preble's, a three-inch
beast with outsize feet and legs that leaps
like a miniature kangaroo along streamsides
and over wet grasslands, lives at the southwestern
edge of jumping mouse territory, in an isolated
patch of habitat between the foothills of
southeastern Wyoming and the eastern edge
of the Rockies in Colorado.
The fate of this obscure little creature has
enormous implications for the new science
of conservation genetics, the pace of development
of the Rocky Mountain West, and the future
integrity of the Endangered Species Act, which
has been so vital in protecting iconic species
such as the grizzly and the bald eagle. At
the heart of the dispute among developers,
politicians, scientists, and environmentalists
is a simple question: Does Preble's mouse
deserve federal protection, either as a unique
subspecies or as a small, isolated group within
the broader jumping mouse population?...
26 November 2006. City
Says Its Urban Jungle Has Little Room for
Palms. By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, LOS ANGELES
JOURNAL. Excerpt:
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 25 - The palm tree, like
so much here, rose to fame largely because
of vanity and image control, then met its
downfall when the money ran out. ...The Los
Angeles City Council, fed up with the cost
of caring for the trees, with their errant
fronds that plunge perilously each winter,
and with the fact that they provide little
shade, have declared them the enemy of the
urban forest and wish that most would disappear.
The city plans to plant a million trees of
other types over the next several years so
that, as palms die off, most will be replaced
with sycamores, crape myrtles and other trees
indigenous to Southern California. ...Of the
various varieties of palms, none is really
indigenous to Los Angeles. In the mid-20th
century, land barons relocating to Los Angeles
and Hollywood from the East decided that palm
trees denoted the easy life, and began planting
them at their homes and offices, said Leland
Lai, the president of the Palm Society of
Southern California, a research group that
supports keeping the city lined with palms.
Hotels and housing subdivisions came next,
and the state's transportation authority planted
the trees on public parkways "because
they decided they were easy, fast growing
and don't need a lot of water," Mr. Lai
said. But as it turns out, palm trees, particularly
Mexican fan palms, feature big, spiky fronds
that fall off the trees in the Santa Ana winds
that sweep through in winter. The palms clonk
cars, and occasionally pedestrians, said city
officials, who also say that palm trees do
not clean as much carbon monoxide from the
air as do shadier trees. ...Many of the trees
planted in the 1950s "are getting toward
the end of their lives," Mr. Lai said. "Some
are 80 to 100 feet high and 70 years old,
and these are not self-cleaning palms," which
means they need maintenance to remove old
fronds. Last year, the city removed nearly
8,000 cubic yards of dried palm fronds from
the public right of way, Mr. Sauceda said....
29 October 2006. With
Hands and Hounds, Stalking Feral Hogs in Texas.
The New York Times. By TIM EATON. Excerpt:
ASPERMONT, Tex. ...A lot of people in rural
Texas catch wild hogs, which can grow to several
hundred pounds ...It has also become lucrative
as Europeans and an increasing number of Americans
clamor for wild boar. Mr. Richardson said
he made $28,000 last year selling live feral
hogs. "I think it's a great health-conscious
niche market," said Dick Koehler, one
of Mr. Richardson's customers and the vice
president of Frontier Meats, based in Fort
Worth. "It has real potential for growth." ...The
animals were introduced to North America as
a food source in 1539 by the Spanish conquistador
Hernando de Soto, said Billy Higginbotham,
a wildlife specialist with the Texas A&M
Agricultural Research and Extension Center
at Overton. During the 1800s and 1900s, escaped
domestic pigs became feral, sprouted tusks
and grew coarse black hair. They crossbred
with Russian boars, brought to North America
for food and sport. The resulting hybrid wild
boar has spread across the country, increasing
in number to an estimated four million in
39 states, Mr. Higginbotham said. ...Wild
hogs can bring new problems. In Texas alone,
the aggressive, omnivorous and razor-toothed
animals cause nearly $52 million in damage
a year to farmland, livestock and pastures,
according to the Texas Cooperative Extension.
Jerry Eddins, the owner of the 10,000-acre
J. Duke Ranch where Mr. Richardson hunts,
is a serious quail hunter. Every year, he
spreads grain to feed the birds, but hogs
eat the bird food, along with whatever quail
eggs they come across. "They eat anything.
They really don't have a natural predator," Mr.
Eddins said....
10 October 2006. Gone
for Decades, Jaguars Steal Back to the Southwest.
SANDRA BLAKESLEE. New York Times.
Excerpt: SANTA
FE, N.M., Oct. 9 - Using
the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers,
male jaguars are crossing into the United
States from Mexico. Four of the elusive
cats have been photographed in the last
decade - one as recently as last February
- in the formidable, rugged mountain ranges
of southeastern Arizona and southwestern
New Mexico. And while no one knows exactly
how many jaguars are here, or how long
they hang around before sneaking back
to their breeding grounds in Mexico, their
presence has set off repercussions on
both sides of the border. Jaguars once
roamed much of the Southwest, but when
ranchers took cattle to the region in
the last century, the jaguars were trapped
and hunted to extinction in the United
States. The last known resident female
was killed in 1963 near the Grand Canyon.
Females tend to stay local, whereas male
jaguars have wanderlust, said Dr. Alan
Rabinowitz, a leading jaguar expert at
the Wildlife Conservation Society in New
York City. Males will migrate up to 500
miles, he said, spreading their genes
as they go. But the jaguars in northern
Mexico are at the utmost edge of the animal's
natural range, Dr. Rabinowitz said. The
ones coming into the United States look
like transients, which means it would
be "foolish" to call them a
resident population, he said. An environmental
group based in Tucson, however, the Center
for Biological Diversity, does not think
enough is being done to protect the jaguar.
When the United States Fish and Wildlife
Service announced in July that it would
not declare parts of New Mexico and Arizona
critical habitat for jaguars - arguing
that the animals do not breed there -
the group filed an intent to sue. The
matter rests in federal court. Of course,
if the Border Patrol built an effective
barrier in the mountains where jaguars
cross into the United States, "it'd
be all over," said Jon Schwedler
of the Northern Jaguar Project.
29 May 2006. Unto
the City the Wildlife Did Journey. By
ANDY NEWMAN. NY Times. Excerpt:
And the great beasts came down from the mountains
and crossed the seas and descended upon the
cities - the hind and her fawn, leaping fences
in the southeast Bronx; the black bear, stout
but fleet of foot, stealing through the streets
of Newark; the seals of the harbor sunning
themselves by the score upon the hospital
ruins of Staten Island. ...And the coyote
prowled the West Side and took up quarters
in Central Park. And the dolphin beached itself
on the Turuks' sandy yard in Throgs Neck.
And the she-moose, 21 hands high, strayed
within 30 miles of the city gates. And the
wise men stroked their beards and scratched
their heads, and they finally declared, "This
is not normal." Bill Weber, a senior
conservationist for the Wildlife Conservation
Society, said that the other day. He was talking
about the bears that have lately taken to
wandering New Jersey's urban core. ..."I
think we're just seeing the growing trend
of population sizes with some of these animals,
and the adaptation to survive and, or at least,
venture into more progressively more urban
areas," said Gerry Barnhart, the wildlife
director at the New York State Department
of Environmental Conservation. ...Related
articles:
A Coyote Leads a Crowd on a Central Park
Marathon (March 23, 2006)
Police
Kill a Bear Cornered at Urban New Jersey
Home (May 11, 2006)
A
Picturesque Visit to the Bronx Turns Horrific for 2 Deer (May
12, 2006)
28 May 2006. Plan
for Sharpshooters to Thin Colorado Elk Herd
Draws Critics. By KIRK JOHNSON, The New
York Times. Excerpt:
ESTES PARK, Colo., May 25 - ...Estes Park
is on the edge of Rocky Mountain National
Park. ... The park's biology has been skewed
by elk overpopulation, which biologists say
is squeezing out even butterflies and beavers,
both of which need the aspen groves that the
elk herd of perhaps 3,000 animals decimates
in its search for food. The town itself has
become an elk playground as well. ... Park
administrators have proposed a 20-year program
of herd reduction and management that would
involve shooting hundreds of elk, mostly at
night in the park, using sharpshooters with
silencers. Critics of the plan advocate either
bringing back wolves to control the population,
or recreational hunters or contraception.
...Estes Park itself, meanwhile, is bracing
for the elk themselves to react and adapt
by moving even more into the community than
they are now. ... in Rocky Mountain National
Park, natural is a tough thing to pin down.
The elk certainly do not qualify. Their tame
behavior, with no predators to keep them wily,
is utterly unelklike to a wildlife biologist.
They are not native. Most of the herd is believed
to be descended from elk brought to Colorado
in 1913 and 1914 from Wyoming after the local
herds were driven to near extinction. ...The
aspen groves, by contrast, which propagate
by cloning one individual through shoots,
are thousands of years old, dating from the
end of the last ice age, and are uniquely
connected and adapted to the specific life
history of the park's lands, said Therese
Johnson, the park's lead biologist on the
elk issue....
23 May 2006. Home
on the Range: A Corridor for Wildlife.
By CORNELIA DEAN. NY times. Excerpt:
LAKE LOUISE, Alberta - One day in April, a
zoologist named Paul Paquet found himself
at the tiny railroad station here, in the
middle of Banff National Park. ... "This
park,"
he said. "It's a national disgrace." Sure
it's beautiful, he said, and, yes, it is one
of the last places where grizzly bears can
roam and wolves can hunt the elk and bighorn
sheep that are their prey. "But there
is a highway through the middle of the park,
and development associated with it,"
he said. As a natural environment, "it's
a disaster."
Dr. Paquet, who works for the World Wildlife
Fund ... is part of a collaborative group
of researchers, conservationists, government
officials and others hoping to ... create
a sustainable environment for wildlife from
the Yukon to Yellowstone, even as people move
ever deeper into the Rocky Mountains of the
United States and Canada. Participants in
the collaboration, called Y2Y, have designed
and monitored overpasses and underpasses to
help animals cross highways safely. They have
negotiated limits on access to golf courses
and ski slopes so animals can traverse them.
They have encouraged the creation of wildlife
corridors around or even across towns. ...
they call this goal
"functional connectivity," said
Michael Proctor, a zoologist and postdoctoral
researcher at the University of Alberta. ...
2005
22 April 2005. When
Nature Assaults Itself. NY Times. By ALAN
BURDICK. LATE one
afternoon not long ago, I stood on the bridge
of an Alaska-bound oil tanker, trying to divine
our ecological future from the encircling
horizon: a gray band of haze separating an
overcast sky from the slate-gray sea. One
key element of this future lay not in the
surrounding sea and sky but several decks
below my feet: the countless plants and animals
- from single-celled diatoms and dinoflagellates
to microscopic, shrimplike copepods, larval
mollusks and crustaceans - thriving in the
million-odd gallons of ballast water the ship
had taken on in San Francisco Bay and would
eventually deposit north of the 48th parallel,
in Valdez. In recent years marine biologists
have documented that an astonishing range
of living organisms is inadvertently carried
in ballast water to ports around the world,
threatening our economies and our health and
diminishing the biological diversity of Earth
as a whole. ...At any given moment some 35,000
ships large and small are at sea, bearing
our wants and needs - petroleum, corn feed,
wood chips, automobiles - from one port to
another. Ballast water is essential to that
motion. Taken on to aid stability and propulsion,
ballast water does for the modern cargo ship
what sandbags do for a hot-air balloon. Unfortunately,
it can also carry comb jellies from the East
Coast to the Black Sea, Japanese sea stars
to Australia, and voracious green crabs from
Europe to San Francisco Bay. Many, perhaps
most, of the organisms do not survive their
odysseys. But with so much ballast water in
motion around the world, many organisms inevitably
do. And even one can inflict profound changes
on its new habitat. The Eurasian zebra mussel
reached Lake St. Clair via ballast water in
the 1980's; it now lives throughout the Great
Lakes, down the Mississippi River to New Orleans,
and in more than 350 lakes and ponds. No larger
than a pistachio, it thrives in such dense
profusion that it has sunk navigational buoys.
It crowds out native species and hogs the
nutrients that other organisms require....
2004
August 2004. The
National Aquatic Invasive Species Act. (Union
of Concerned Scientists) Since
its passage in 1990, a single law has been
the nation's chief protection against new
aquatic invaders, especially those that arrive
in ballast water. That law-the National Aquatic
Nuisance Prevention and Control Act of 1990-was
revised in 1996 and Congress is considering
a second revision now.
2002
2002 January 17. Tracking the Ecological Overshoot of the Human Economy. By Mathis Wackernagel et al., PNAS. Abstract:
Sustainability requires living within the regenerative capacity of the
biosphere. In an attempt to measure the extent to which humanity
satisfies this requirement, we use existing data to translate human
demand on the environment into the area required for the production of
food and other goods, together with the absorption of wastes. Our
accounts indicate that human demand may well have exceeded the
biosphere's regenerative capacity since the 1980s. According to this
preliminary and exploratory assessment, humanity's load corresponded to
70% of the capacity of the global biosphere in 1961, and grew to 120% in
1999.
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Articles from 2002–2008
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