Binoculars and the state of the Wild

This is a fresh newspaper column from me:

My first Zeiss-brand binoculars were so good they could pick up – in sharp focus – clumps of purple loosestrife growing in narrow marshlands on the shore of the Susquehanna River below the Council Cup promontory. From where I stood atop the rocky point, the distance was a good half mile.

It was the chance to see migrating raptors – birds of prey – that attracted me to the big rock pile a couple of miles upstream of Berwick. After all, Council Cup was much closer to home – Conyngham – than the very well known Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.

And there they were: Broad-winged hawks, American kestrels and peregrine falcons in September, bald eagles and ospreys in October and red-tailed hawks and other species in early November.

It was loosestrife that I thought of today, though, when I picked up my just-acquired copy of the new book Invasive Species and Global Climate Change.

Invasive, exotic (i.e., non-native) plants are, in themselves, bad enough for the future of our natural heritage. But we’re making things much harder to fix with our unrelenting burning of gunk fossil fuels.

Even folks who care only about the dollar bill and related economic matters should care and support efforts to take action. Here’s why: Non-native invasive plants and animals are taking over ecosystems in every state, crowding out habitat for native species and costing billions of dollars in control efforts and lost productivity. In the case of just one invasive – loosestrife – the effects of its invasion are long-lasting.

It destroys wetland habitat. Period.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offers this assessment: “The impact of thriving non-native species can be devastating to the environment. Non-native plants that propagate and become invasive can have tremendous negative impacts—both ecologically and economically.  An estimated 5,000 alien plants exist in the United States, displacing native species. One example is the European purple loosestrife. It has been spreading at a rate of 115,000 hectares a year and has been blamed for reducing the biomass of 44 native plants and endangered wildlife, including bog turtles and several species of ducks that depend on the native plants.

“Loosestrife now occurs in 48 states and costs $45 million per year in control costs and forage losses.”

Our planet’s changing climate (again, don’t confuse the daily weather with “climate”), is hastening the spread of invasive plants and animals to places where they are invaders, not natives.

The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the agency that looks after our state parks and other public lands, says this: “Climate change adaptation is preparing for and responding to the impacts of climate change. While reducing greenhouse gases, a process referred to as mitigation, is essential, it won’t prevent the inevitable changes resulting from to the greenhouse gases already in atmosphere. Consequently, we need to begin developing strategies to deal with both the direct and indirect effects of climate change.”

A Google search turned up scores of papers and other documents discussing how warmer temperatures will aid and abet the spread of weedy invasive plants. One that looks at what is happening in the mid-Atlantic region can be read at www.fws.gov/northeast/climatechange/conference/pdf/235pm_dr_lew_ziska.pdf

In all-day hikes across Pocono wild lands in the late 1990s, finding a clump or more of loosestrife and other invasive species like Japanese knotweed was a no-brainer. These and other alien plants take quick advantage of human activities like road-building and other development.

What can nature-watchers do to help?

-        Learn to identify invading plants and animals;

-        Take care not to spread them into new areas;

-        Report invaders to a land manager;

-        Volunteer to assist with removal or control programs.

Finally, tell the person who represents you in state and federal governments to take positive action, not to kowtow to moneyed special interests.

Climate change helping invasive plants spread

My own field observations, recorded in field notebooks for three decades, bear this out. Read about the invasive species onslaught and how our changing climate is helping them spread. This purple loosestrife photo was taken right down the street from my home.

Vermont lawmakers take on issue of forest fragmentation

I wrote this column earlier this summer

The wildlife-unfriendly issue of “forest fragmentation” just went before the Vermont Senate in Montpelier in the form of legislation to stop it in the Green Mountain State.

Too bad, though, for the state’s natural heritage that in the end corporate powers won and the legislation was tabled.

But, the very fact that proposed legislation focused on the issue is remarkable. The Vermont Senate may have set a “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” record as the first state legislative body anywhere in the U.S. to address the issue.

“A proposal to limit forest fragmentation was thwarted by developers who oppose using the state’s land and development laws as a tool to keep woodlands intact, according to the lead sponsor of the bill that was gutted on the Senate floor Wednesday,” the Web-based news magazine VTDigger reported March 19.

“There’s nothing ‘complicated’ about stopping forest fragmentation,” one Vermonter commented. “This is just another episode of legislators kow-towing to the corporate interests that make campaign contributions.”

State Sen. Peter Gailbraith wrote, “The Audubon Society points out that Vermont has the most diversity of bird species of any state in the continental U.S., and the reason is our large inter-connected forests. The (Gov. Peter Shumlin) administration has itself identified fragmentation as the number one threat to biological diversity in our forests, and yet neither the administration nor the legislature is willing to do anything to prevent it. This is a tragedy.”

Galbraith also noted that the legislature’s nod to “study” the issue is only cover. “A study is the legislature’s way of killing a proposal while pretending to the voters that it is concerned about the issue.”

The bill would have required development already undergoing the Act 250 review process to maintain forest integrity, VTdigger reported. “If development must alter forests, the developer could purchase a conservation offset at another site to balance the impact.”

Act 250, a state Website explains, is “Vermont’s development and control law, established in 1970. The law provides a public, quasi-judicial process for reviewing and managing the environmental, social and fiscal consequences of major subdivisions and development in Vermont through the issuance of land use permits.”

Converting large, continuous forests into smaller woodlots (islands) has many negative impacts, especially on bird species whose reproductive success plummets in fragmented landscapes.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology: “Forest fragmentation occurs when large, continuous forests are divided into smaller blocks, either by roads, clearing for agriculture, urbanization, or other human development. Ornithologists suspect that fragmentation harms many woodland birds by increasing their susceptibility to predation and nest parasitism.
“Predators such as jays, crows, raccoons, and cats, as well as the parasitic Brown-headed Cowbird, typically are not abundant in extensive forests. But when a forest is fragmented, predators and cowbirds gain more access to the woodland. The importance of large areas of continuous forest for maintaining forest-interior bird species has been demonstrated in the eastern United States during the past 15 years.”
The chopping (literally) of forests into smaller blocks is a top cause behind population declines of many native North American birds. They include the state bird of Vermont, the Hermit Thrush.
“Forest fragmentation remains an important conservation issue for many species of wildlife, including the Hermit Thrush, which prefers large tracts of forests,” wrote ornithologist Douglas P. Kibbe in “The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds of Vermont.”
The rate at which fragmentation is occurring is substantial greater in Pennsylvania. I know there are some folks in Harrisburg who understand the threat to the commonwealth’s natural heritage. But I’d bet that none sit in the legislature or statehouse.

An invasive species horror story

Call them whatever you want: Grass carp, Asian carp, etc. Biologists in the 1970s argued then against their very presence, saying it was only a matter of time before they escaped. And now they really are everywhere. Read about them here.

Asian fungus felling trees in Everglades ecosystem

The fungus detailed in this article is a bigtime invasive. And it's spread on the backs of invasive beetles. Another disaster unfolding and human actions are responsible.

Plant a tree ; better yet, more than one

All the way back to my days as a college student in the early 1970s, I pondered Americans’ love affair with the lawn – the greenest, purest, most dandelion-free turf that money (and lots of chemicals) could produce. Earning my tuition by mowing turf farms (a k a city parks) for the city of Pocatello, Idaho, just helped solidify my mental picture of it all.

In two-plus years of living in an on-base house on Robins Air Force Base, Ga., 1980-82) I finally formulated a more pleasing-to-the-eye scene: Urban trees as places liked by fellow creatures of Earth. In the case of that residential duplex, the Georgia wildlife the live oak tree attracted was enough to generate page after page of notes in an early field notebook that still has a prominent place in my home library.

Field naturalists are big note takers, recording a lot more than just the day’s high and low temperatures, but also signs of Wild Nature like the first day of swelling buds, the first early-spring appearance outside its winter burrow of the local woodchuck, and new signs of the spread of kudzu, the non-native vine that ate the South.

By planting trees native to our region of the continent (and the list of plants native to Pennsylvania alone is exhaustive), the homeowner can take pride in accomplishing many objectives.

Trees in the home yard do these things and a whole lot more:

- Trees release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide to freshen the air.

- They trap dust and dirt, and remove pollution particles from the air.

- Trees increase property values. (Read a Wall Street Journal article about this at http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303722604579113230353966564)

- They provide shade in the summer, protection from wind in the winter.

- Trees give us leaves to make the best compost.

- Trees provide habitat for birds.

-        Trees make your neighborhood a more beautiful place.

-        Trees whose spring flowers show off for humans also offer food to native pollinators.

-        Neighborhoods and homes that are barren are known to have a greater incidence of violence in and out of the home than their greener counterparts. Trees and landscaping help reduce the level of fear.

The organization Tree People (treepeople.org) notes on its Web site: “Average temperatures in Los Angeles have risen 6 degrees F in the last 50 years as tree coverage has declined and the number of heat-absorbing roads and buildings has increased.
“Trees cool the city by up to 10 degrees, by shading our homes and streets, breaking up urban ‘heat islands’ and releasing water vapor into the air through their leaves.”
Most importantly in this age of Earth’s changing climate, trees do this: “Global warming is the result of excess greenhouse gases, created by burning fossil fuels and destroying tropical rainforests. Heat from the sun, reflected back from the earth, is trapped in this thickening layer of gases, causing global temperatures to rise.
“Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major greenhouse gas. Trees absorb CO2, removing and storing the carbon while releasing the oxygen back into the air. In one year, an acre of mature trees absorbs the amount of CO2 produced when you drive your car 26,000 miles.”
You can read, and ponder, the top 22 benefits of trees at www.treepeople.org/top-22-benefits-trees
So this spring, let’s plant a tree, or, better yet, a whole bunch of trees. You can learn about Pennsylvania’s native trees from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources at www.dcnr.state.pa.us/cs/groups/public/documents/document/dcnr_003489.pdf

Science takes on two silent invaders

The invaders - Zebra mussels and Quagga mussels - are just two among many hundreds of invasive species that are major ecosystem degraders across North America. Here's a nice feature-length look at how one scientist is going after these two mussels.

Nutria: Invasive species is a marsh-killer

I recall gawking at a dead marsh within Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland, in the 1990s. The marsh was nearly all open water and the culprit behind its disappearance was the exotic nutria. Read about it here.

Will the cold snap of January take out invasive insects?

That's the theme of this NY Times article. My reply: Perhaps, at least in the short term, but long-term invasions are still on. Thirty years ago it was nothing for me to go tromping through hay fields and meadows of perennials in search of native butterflies. It would be chancy to do so now, though, as Lyme disease-carrying ticks are expanding their range northward, thanks to climate change.

What killed invasive Asian carp In Missouri River?

That's the big question these days for fisheries professionals in Iowa, Nebraska and elsewhere, both so they know what works to rid the river and its tribs of the invasive Asian carp and what impact it's all having on native fish. Read about it all.

Oklahoma is now a wild hog state

The feral critters are now running in packs in all 77 of the Sooner state's counties. I'd bet that my old neighborhood just north of Norman, Okla., is a hog place now. And I used to marvel at the Scissor-tailed
Flycatchers. Read about the hogs here.

When one man's pest is another's 'game' animal

Same old, same old. As politicians and nut cases debate an invasive species debacle under way (the invasion of the wild boar), more and more native habitat for native species is destroyed in the name of sprawl, "industrial" development, road building and other scourges of the "growth" machine. Here's a feature on the boar, now almost ranging coast to coast.

A New Biological Management Option against Cheatgrass Raises Hope of Western Land Managers

A strain of naturally occurring soil bacteria tested on national wildlife refuges and other western lands may soon offer rangeland managers a safe new way to manage cheatgrass, an aggressive plant pest. Read more.