Some words in defense of Public Lands

This is a newspaper column I just wrote.

I felt this sentiment many times during my two decades as a Pennsylvanian.

And it recurred earlier this decade while holding down a homestead in Vermont. (Actually, it was a condo).

I first experienced this feeling as a youthful hiker, camper and angler in New Mexico. Then the Gregory family moved to Idaho, which is blessed to have big, wide-ranging public lands.

And then came the three years that then-Air Force Capt. Alan Gregory spent in far upstate New York State and took hike after hike in the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, more than half of which is now owned by New Yorkers.

I write about the gift that such public land offers Americans. It’s a legacy for our children and grandchildren.

To find and experience it, just take a walk into and across a wild place; a place that Nature still holds onto despite all that the boosters of using up “natural resources” have done to break it, pave it, pollute it and build on it.

Walking into the woods on public land brings with it the means of experiencing the kind of solitude and grace and sense of belonging that only a natural landscape can offer.

For me in Pennsylvania, there were hikes along Nescopeck Creek in what became Nescopeck State Park. And the three-mile loop hike on public land atop the high ground overlooking the Lehigh River and Jim Thorpe across the valley below.

The hike in Hickory Run State Park to a cliff overlooking that river was also special. Exploring nature there once yielded the discovery of a nest in progress of Cedar Waxwings.

Across the country, though, opportunities nowadays to see and feel the land as it was shaped by Wild Nature are increasingly hard to come by. All Americans – once the booster hat of “development” is tossed aside – know this.

 That thought was amplified many times for me while living in Pennsylvania. In one instance (there were many case-studies), a butterfly census took me to the remnants of a Pocono cranberry bog, fragmented and degraded when subdivided into housing lots. The ecological heart of that natural place was forsaken to make way for a cluster of trophy homes and McMansions.

(I forget the name of the development, but it’s not far from Long Pond).

These thoughts came rushing back as I stood on public land (our public land!) in southeastern Oregon earlier this June.

Conservationist and friend Dave Foreman calls it the Big Outside. You know you have reached the Big Outside when you stand still for a moment and see only Wild Nature – the flora and fauna that Nature put there – for as far as your eyes, binoculars and telephoto lens can see.

My watching post was next to a U.S. Bureau of Land Management sign bearing the words “your public lands.” Less than a yard away was a grand-daddy Big Sagebrush, a characteristic native plant of the Great Basin Desert. Thousands and thousands more dotted the landscape all the way off to the horizon.

And the crowning touch to that viewscape: No sign anywhere of a human activity. Just Wild Nature

Lay people ask this rhetorical question whenever the topic of the public owning natural land comes to the fore: “But what good is it?”

There are a host of “good things” that come with public land: Open space, hunting and fishing, a good quality of life and sense of community, clean water and air, and the chance to reconnect with Wild Nature in this era of growth for the sake of growth and “progress.”

But this notion comes first: Because that land is part of the foundation for all the life – flora and fauna – we share the planet with.

The more natural land held in public ownership, the better for Wild Nature.

And the better for our natural heritage.

Science, the public good, and integrity

Dear Alan:

Weeks into his presidency, Barack Obama pledged to end the blatant practice of the Bush administration rewriting scientific documents, on topics ranging from climate change to contraception, to suit its political agenda.  President Obama directed all science-based agencies to adopt rules to prevent political alteration or suppression of science and to adopt safeguards protecting scientists from retaliation. 

He put his White House Office of Science & Technology Policy in charge of ushering in these new rules.  But OSTP dithered for months and ultimately produced “guidance” so mushy that it in essence let agencies do whatever they wanted. 

The predictable result is a mish-mash of differing policies, some incomplete, others so vague as to be largely useless. Take the EPA, for example, which adopted its Scientific Integrity Policy back in February 2012.  Today, however, there are –

• Still “no formal processes for receiving or resolving allegations” of policy violations, according to the program’s latest annual report.  Yet without any procedures, EPA has resolved more than a score of complaints – largely by dismissing them, as others languish for months.  To date, EPA has yet to substantiate a single instance of “loss of integrity”;

• Still no clearance procedures so EPA scientists know when they are allowed to publish scientific works or present posters at scientific conferences; and

• Still no media protocol spelling out when scientists may respond to press inquiries or interview requests or publicly discuss findings, despite numerous journalist complaints. Instead of clarifying access rules, EPA Public Affairs has added five new staff.

These missing elements are not mere details – they are the guts of the policy without which it is just an empty promise.  At least EPA is not as bad as USDA which uses its Scientific Integrity Policy as a tool to gag scientists and forbid them “from making statements that could be construed as being judgments of or recommendations on USDA or any other federal government policy, either intentionally or inadvertently.”   

Perhaps the worst is the Interior Department.  After scientists’ complaints of fraud within the Fish & Wildlife Service were validated, Interior then gutted its policy to make such embarrassments far less likely. As a result, these new guarantees of scientific integrity are about as laughable as the Obama claim to operate “the most transparent administration in history.” 

At PEER, we are concerned because these policies are often the only legal protection for the integrity of scientific work as well as those specialists who create them.  So, we are –

• Providing free legal assistance to win legal protection for embattled scientistsworking on cutting edge issues; 

• Going to court to force the details of these fraud investigations into the light of day; and 

• Fighting agency-by-agency to strengthen their policies. 

Government agencies should not be allowed to fabricate their own set of facts and bury inconvenient truths.  Help us wage and win this fight.

Sincerely,

Jeff Ruch

Executive Director

A walk, a kestrel and a cop'straffic stop

Seeing the American kestrel pumping its tail up and down while perched on a high desert tree just down-slope from I-84 a few days ago spurred lots of good memories of the many times Monica and I spotted kestrels during our time afield on the Bloomsburg Christmas Bird Count.

They were all special.

I was exercise-walking on the Mountain Home Pathways System at the time of my latest sighting. Point-and-shoot camera in hand, I studied the bird as truck traffic roared by on Interstate 84 just 25 or so yards away.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology: “North America’s littlest falcon, the American Kestrel packs a predator’s fierce intensity into its small body. It's one of the most colorful of all raptors: the male’s slate-blue head and wings contrast elegantly with his rusty-red back and tail; the female has the same warm reddish on her wings, back, and tail. Hunting for insects and other small prey in open territory, kestrels perch on wires or poles, or hover facing into the wind, flapping and adjusting their long tails to stay in place. Kestrels are declining in parts of their range; you can help them by putting up nest boxes.”

I once tried doing just that on a friend’s farm in Butler Township. Just seconds after I anchored the box to a 25-foot utility pole, European starlings flew to it in hopes of making the box their own nest site. So that was that.

Walking, not driving a car, made the sighting possible. For one thing, the Mountain Home Pathways System is for walkers and people who chose to burn calories, not gasoline, by rollerblading, running, jogging, walking or cycling.

It’s fun, most importantly. But it’s also the best and most productive way to explore one’s community and its natural areas. I look forward to each day’s trek with that, more than anything else, in mind as I head out.

America, though, is very much a car-centric place. An incident this past Thursday brought that point home – again.

This is what I wrote in an e-mail to friends and family: “Filled with energy, my afternoon fitness walk took me out American Legion Boulevard and to the trailhead for the Mountain Home Pathways System. While crossing (n the crosswalk, of course) North 8^th Street I was nearly taken out by a motorist turning left off American Legion onto 8^th. I was about two-thirds of the way across the street when a motorist cut in front of me, perhaps four feet from my knees. Too bad for her that a city police officer was right behind her and pulled her over.

“I continued walking (now on the sidewalk of 8^th) while hoping that the cop had indeed stopped the motorist for violating the traffic code (not yielding the right-of-way to a pedestrian in the crosswalk). Eventually, just as I was walking past the golf course clubhouse, the officer stopped her cruiser to chat. She had indeed stopped the motorist for a right-of-way violation.

“I thanked her and she wished me a safe walk. And that was that

“In my life, I’ve been taken to the ground three times by motor vehicles (the tally does not include the time a man opened the driver’s-side door of his parked car just as I was passing on my bicycle. That happened in Pocatello, Idaho, while, as a working college student, I toiled for the city parks and recreation department. Painfully hurt, my father, than a professor at Idaho State University, rescued me.

“One of those three resulted in a traumatic brain injury.

“I’ve been in lots of close calls as well: One in Vermont, one on Langley Air Force Base, Va. (in front of the officers’ club) and another in Oklahoma.

“The walk began at 3:15; I was home at 6.”

A follow-on word: In my years of covering state and local police work in and around Hazleton, I learned early on that most police officers really do like to known as “cops.”

It’s now two minutes past 1 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time) on the following Saturday and the sun is out. With yesterday’s incident tucked away in my daily journal, I’ll be out again in another hour; most likely trekking on the same route.

Why walk when one can drive a car? Because a long walk is the best time of day in which to do some good thinking. It’s also the prime time to watch nature and learn about our world.

And one never stops learning.

Anyone for a long walk? Hey, there might be a kestrel out there.

Neb. court ruling removes hurdle for Keystone pipeline

The Cornhusker state appears to not care about its natural heritage, nor that of the country, never mind planet Earth. Read about the legal eagle debacle.

FWS studying pssible listing for Monarch

This just in from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced it will be conducting a status review of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Service has determined that a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Dr. Lincoln Brower to list a subspecies of monarch (Danaus plexippus plexippus) presents substantial information indicating that listing may be warranted. 

Monarch butterflies are found throughout the United States and some populations migrate vast distances across multiple generations each year. Many monarchs fly between the U.S., Mexico and Canada – a journey of over 3,000 miles. This journey has become more perilous for many monarchs because of threats along their migratory paths and on their breeding and wintering grounds. Threats include habitat loss – particularly the loss of milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s sole food source – and mortality resulting from pesticide use. Monarch populations have declined significantly in recent years.

The Service will now conduct a status review to determine whether listing is warranted. To ensure this status review is comprehensive, the Service is requesting scientific and commercial data and other information through a 60-day public information period. Specifically, the Service seeks information including:

• The subspecies’ biology, range and population trends, habitat requirements, genetics and taxonomy;
• Historical and current range, including distribution patterns;
• Historical and current population levels and current and projected trends;
• The life history or behavior of the monarch butterfly that has not yet been documented;
• Thermo-tolerance range and microclimate requirements of the monarch butterfly;
• Past and ongoing conservation measures for the subspecies, its habitat or both;  and,
• Factors that are the basis for making a listing determination under section 4(a) of the ESA;

The notice will publish in the Federal Register December 31, 2014, and it is requested that information be received by March 2, 2015. To view the notice and submit information, visit www.regulations.gov docket number FWS-R3-ES-2014-0056.

For more information on the ESA’s petition process, visit http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/listing-petition-process.html.

Thoughts on water and how humans waste it

In years of walking (for fitness and exploration of the surroundings) in Conyngham borough, Pa., passing by a water-wasting activity was a given each summer. While house-hunting in southwestern Idaho last summer, I again saw such waste.

A first thought then andc now was always: I wonder how Californians would think if they could see this?

That “this” was the watering of concrete sidewalks and the adjacent asphalt street; almost as if watering such an impervious surface would, ultimately, cause it to grow. (The little pellets of lawn fertilizer scattered across the asphalt/concrete would also help matters – and roots – along.)

Another water-wasting activity: Watering an already-green turf farm (aka the lawn) at the height of a summer day, prime-time for evaporation.

Here are some water facts published by the Lake Champlain Committee of Burlington, Vt.:

-        While 75 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, less than one percent is available for human use;

-        More than one trillion – yes “trillion” – gallons of water are wasted each year in the U.S. alone due to east-to-fix leaks in homes;

-        Letting a faucet run for five minutes uses about as much energy as keeping a 60-watt light bulb on for 14 hours (something I see daily in my Idaho neighborhood);

-        Fifty percent of the water used for watering gardens and lawns (aka turf farms) is wasted due to over-watering;

-        The average American uses 100 gallons of water each day, enough to fill 1,600 glasses with drinking water.

A phone chat yesterday with a longtime friend and fellow naturalist who lives near Nescopeck borough included this observation: The Colorado River, from which Las Vegas, southern California and a whole lot of the urban Southwest get their water, is drying up. The bathtub rings of the (fake) Lake Mead, the reservoir created by Hoover Dam, continue dropping further and further downhill as the water level continues receding.

No other substance, it’s easy to argue, has greater importance to Wild Nature than does water. The Wood Ducks I spotted with binoculars in my first visits in the 1990s to what became Nescopeck State Park were present on the floodplain of Nescopeck Creek because of water and quality habitat.

And birding on Christmas Bird Count teams near Bloomsburgh and Tunkhanock and Wyalusing were always more fruitful, fun and exciting when the quiet water of ponds and the flowing water of the Susquehanna kept both Bald Eagles and wintering waterfowl present in good numbers.

The sad ethos of the green all-American lawn calls for massive infusions of water and chemicals. The city in Idaho where I now live even warns homeowners to watch our for and remove the first weeds that might show themselves in Spring.

One more thought: Wasting water also wastes energy. The biggest use of electricity in many municipalities is supplying water and cleaning it up after its been used (aka “consumed”).

A lot of energy is used to collect, transport, treat and deliver water and wastewater. Water must be pumped from its source to its end use in homes, apartments, businesses and institutions like schools then collected again for post-use treatment.

Reducing water use and fixing leaks saves money and lessens demands on the energy-intensive systems that deliver, treat and heat water

There would be no Wood Ducks – or a lot of other wildlife and flora – were it not for clean water.

Just what is 'available' land?

Western states like Idaho, which I now call home, are rich in public lands.

And they’re a heritage today’s older generation ought to be protecting at all cost – 100 percent – as a legacy for future generations.

Americans who remember the first Persian Gulf War ought to remember the late Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf. A recent visit to the land/water/nature shop operated in Boise by our federal land management agencies yielded a copy of a wonderful poster titled “Wildlife and Wildlands.” It’s focused on quotes and ideas from the historic Army leader on the safe enjoyment of public land and the wildlife that lives on it.

The poster rightly focuses on the Pacific Northwest, but I’ll paraphrase the general, for his words and thoughts apply equally well to public lands in Pennsylvania and the rest of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

Our wildlife in the Northeast – from the Jersey and New York shores across the Delaware and Hudson rivers and on into and beyond the Allegheny Mountains – is a heritage for which we are responsible.

As my Nescopeck-area friend Autumn has reminded me, “wild land is a treasure, not a ‘resource’.”

Schwarzkopf: “I encourage each and every one of you to practice and share with others the responsible stewardship techniques listed on this poster to help make your outdoor activities rewarding and safe for both you and our precious wildlife.”

That wildlife is not represented by just the always-diminishing population of grizzle bears in and around Yellowstone National Park. It’s also the woodland salamanders, wood frogs and American toads and red-eyed vireos of forest environs protected in places like Nescopeck and Ricketts Glen state parks.

Wildlife, though, pays no heed to the artificial boundary lines written on the land by human things like property deeds and the lines of incorporation created by the formal governmental standing of boroughs, townships and cities.

The slogan that appears on many states’ wildlife license plates – “Conserving Natural Resources” – ought to instead read: “Conserving our natural heritage.”

Long-distance walking and hiking are great times to think and ponder. That’s how it was the first time I trekked – both to burn calories and get out and explore a bit – out of Conyngham borough on East County Road.

And it’s the same notion that spurs me to go for long fitness walks today across local sections of the Great Basin Desert at Mountain Home, Idaho.

Among the questions I’ve considered on recent forays is this: What do folks think about as they carve out a new road, driveway and housing pad in what, until a bulldozer showed up, was wild land replete with native flora and fauna?

It would take many an interview and an armful of questionnaires to get anywhere near the point of answering that question.

But it remains something that not only borough council members and township supervisors should consider and think through before blessing more “development” of land that real estate posters describe as
“available.”

"The things I feel very strongly about are education, the war on drugs, the environment and conservation and wildlife,” the general once told People magazine.