Renewal, durability, adaptation

It's a late spring this year here in Portland, Oregon. We had sleet yesterday and expect frost again tonight. Nonetheless, green tips are poking up and now and then a song sparrow gets ahead of himself and hollers for love and territory. It's hard to be optimistic during our cold gray winters, easier now that the days are longer. I'm moved to show you a poem of hope, about how our fellow denizens can sometimes find ways to live with us without our encouragement or even awareness.

Let me know what you think.

ACCOMMODATION

Rabbits gone now, coyotes batten on dachshunds and cats
Nurtured in houses colonizing scalped hills.
How to explain these night nests of peculiar apes,
Proliferating absurdly, linked by hard black trails?

Inexplicable fauna, we trot down into gaping crevices
Where shrieking boxes halt and accept us.
Below the grimy platform, safe beside the third rail,
Flit grimy mice, salvaging hot dog scraps.

Twenty years ago Chernobyl slipped in our hand
And, bloodied, we dropped it and left.
Now black storks clack in the young forest
And half-poisoned wolves play with their cubs.

Podcast--The Apprentice Assassin

A radio station in Northampton, Mass., broadcast a short story of mine today. No zoo or animals in this one. Instead, it's from my "women victorious" series of wish fulfillments.

Take a listen if you wish: http://tinyurl.com/cct8on

A fortress for native wildlife

I blogged about New Zealand last time and I'd like to add a bit more before moving on. I've lived almost my entire life in the American West and I've been a conservationist/ environmentalist/ dirt-worshiping tree-hugger pretty much since middle school, which was a long time ago. Here in the western US, the modern history of the interaction between humans and wildlife has "predator control" as a major theme. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold talks about our success in extirpating wolves from the west with traps, poison, and shooting. We tried, and still try, to do that with coyotes, but they are far better at surviving our efforts. The consequences of our war on canid and other predators includes poisoned domestic animals, non-target wild animals, and humans. Livestock may benefit, but native grazers and browsers such as deer and elk do not necessarily benefit. In addition, fur bearing predators are trapped for market. Many consider leg-hold traps to be inhumane. All in all, your average wildlife advocate in the US is not likely to be a fan of either poisons or traps.

Not so in New Zealand. Major attitude adjustment required! New Zealand was devoid of mammals until we got there. OK, there were two species of bats and a seal, but that was about it until people deposited rats, cats, weasels, stoats, more rats, deer, chamois (!), goats, pigs, and on and on. The consequences to the native birds, who were often ground-nesters and otherwise inadequate to the challenge, are all too predictable. (Some of the native birds seem to fly like bricks--great hearty flapping turns out to be a jay-sized tui or saddleback, not the wounded condor it sounds like.)

So let's say you want to set up reserves for native wildlife, which, bless their enlightened hearts, those New Zealanders have done. The requirements are that you have some habitat (see previous blog) and that you get rid of the introduced predators. The photo at the top of this post shows the incredible fence at Kaori Sanctuary near Wellington. It is designed to keep out mammals as small as juvenile mice, burrowing pigs, jumping deer, climbing cats, and everything else. The reserve is encircled by this fence (you can see it on Google Earth). That is Step 1 and now here we are at Step 2, traps and poisons. Once the space inside the fence is cleansed of mammals, then tuatara, saddlebacks, and other wildlife can be released with a reasonable hope of survival. But it doesn't end there. The price of survival is eternal vigilance. A staff person said that if the fence is breached (such as a tree falling on it), the likelihood of a predator (feral house cat, rat, stoat) entering the sanctuary is about 80-90% in 24 hours. That is some pressure. So the staff have little boxes everywhere with bait in them to collect tracks. That way, they can tell what's gotten in and deal with it.

Mt Arthur on the South Island isn't fenced. I stood in one spot and rotated, taking pictures of different kinds of traps for different kinds of mammals. The reward for all this control was two wekas wandering around the trails, among a lot of other very cool birds.

Our relatives have kiwis on their property, far north on the North Island. The local trapper/poisoner keeps the Brush-tailed possum population low so that tree ferns and kiwis can survive.

I'm still getting adjusted to two realities: that wildlife can depend so utterly on our efforts and that our least-liked tools may be essential for the job.

Your thoughts? I would especially love to hear comments from people who know more about New Zealand conservation than I do.


Technorati Tags:
New Zealand conservation, Kaori Sanctuary, Mt. Arthur, predator control

A world safe for sheep

We returned a month ago from three wonderful weeks in New Zealand. We have pictures of hospitable, charming, generous friends and relatives in Wellington, Nelson, and Whangarei. We have photos showing us putting on sunscreen for Christmas dinner outside on the deck. Meanwhile, our house was buried in more snow than Portland, OR, has seen for years. It was great to be gone! But the point of this post has more to do with yet another lesson in what our human selves are capable of.

We drove (were driven, actually) almost the full length of the North Island. It was beautiful--green rolling hills, snow-capped mountains in the distance. Lovely lush pasture full of healthy-looking sheep, 40 million of them, I'm told.

But Jared Diamond talks about "landscape amnesia" that we suffer from, and so I asked around and read a bit about from whence cometh this sheep paradise. What was it like before it got all bucolic and full of livestock?

It was forest, is what it was. New Zealanders traded a depth of up to 50 meters of forest for 12 inches of grass.

New Zealand was one of the last land masses to be discovered. It didn't see much of us humans until sometime between 1150 AD and 1350 AD when the Maoris arrived. Europeans arrived in the 18th century and now it is is home to about 4 million people. People did what we generally do: cut and/or burned the trees down and converted the forest to farmland and pasture. The Maoris got it started and the Europeans accelerated the process considerably. The country went from 85% forest cover to about 23% today.

The consequences to the native wildlife are no surprise, with all 11 species of moa being only some of the extinctions.

Now this is not a cheerful realization. Forests change climate--what happened with that? Erosion is sending fertility into the oceans, which helps neither land nor sea. And give a thought to the amount of carbon that is no longer sequestered in the 17 million hectares stripped of forest.

If sheep farming becomes unprofitable fast enough, perhaps New Zealand can sell carbon credits for reforesting instead. (Note to self: investigate this fantasy).

I'd like to send a thank-you note to the New Zealanders who fought to save their remaining forests from the chainsaws. Go to the South Island to see the huge reserves there. And another one to the volunteers and staff of the various reserves we visited. The impression I have is that when government agencies and non-profits decide to establish a reserve, they know what they are doing (and they have the climate on their side). One example--Tiritiri Mantengi Island was a sheep farm for 120 years, with an old tree left here and there, 94% deforested. When the decision was made to turn it into a wildlife reserve, the sheep were removed, the rats poisoned, and volunteers planted over 250,000 native trees. That was in 1984-1994. The results are amazing. I am not a biologist and can't say how completely an ecosystem has been recreated, but it certainly looks like a forest, and it is full of native birds who are breeding. I don't think you could get that kind of recovery in just 25-35 years in a temperate climate such as I live in. More like 80 years, maybe.

Dr. Doug Talmany says that we tend to think, as we build houses on farm land, replace native vegetation with exotics, and let our garden sprays drain into the river, that "nature is happy somewhere else". Well, nature isn't happy much of anywhere these days. New Zealand was a lesson that we individually, pursuing our personal well being, can destroy an enormous swath of ecosystem. It also demonstrated how we can, with great effort and at considerable cost, restore what we destroyed.

I would love to hear from others who have visited this wonderful country and/or who know more than I do about its ecology and history. Add a comment below!

Technorati Tags:
New Zealand, sheep, forest, Tiritiri Matangi

On the road with Night Kill

My blogging runs toward two themes: conservation issues and the adventures of my first zoo mystery, Night Kill. Today's blog is on the latter. But I'll be traveling for the next couple of weeks and may stray into travelogue as well.

Yesterday, Saturday December 13, I had a signing at the Sacramento Zoo and it was really a blast. A tour from the zoo's director, Mary Healy, got me off to a wonderful start. Mary's knowledge, resume, and skills are impressive (amazing, actually), she knew several friends from my zoo days, the Sacramento Zoo has a wonderful collection, and even the weather was good. To say I enjoyed the tour is a massive understatement! Next time you're in Sacramento, go for the black and white ruffed lemurs, stay for the flamingos. And a fine cat collection, a breeding group of thick-billed parrots and and and...

Pam Williams, the developement director, and Eileen Rodriguez, the gift shop manager, were incredibly hospitable and considerate and made the tableing experience a delight. We sold some books, I talked to docents, staff, and visitors, and then a passle of my California relatives showed up. What a great experience! It was capped off by a late lunch at the wild and wonderful Tower Cafe, with all those relations.

I finished up the Sacramento leg of my trip with a visit to Elmer Aldrich, a 93 year old family friend who is a life-long biologist and conservationists. We chatted about his friendship with Ansel Adams, his award from Glen Olson, and his current (!) service with Save the American River. How impressive can you get?

Here's a few photos from the zoo, taken by my sister, Nancy Parker. Thanks, Sis!

Bongo with his Christmas tree and treats. He loved it!

Technorati Tags:
Sacramento Zoo, Night Kill, Ann Littlewood, zoo mystery
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Me and Ursula Le Guin

OMG! I signed my new book at the same table as Ursula LeGuin signed hers! Iiiiieeeeeeee! (teenage girly squeal).

Ahem. To put this coherently, in a mature sort of way: the Audubon Society of Portland held its annual Wild Arts Festival this last weekend. In addition to many wonderful artists, the event also hosts 30-odd writers. We book floggers sat at tables and authgraphed our books as people bought them. It was terrific for me. I sold out and got more books from my car and sold some of them, too. Signing at WAF (as we moss-back Auduboners call it) was a life goal and now my bucket list is happily one item shorter.

But it got even better! On Sunday, I was at the same table as Portland deity and literary lodestone Ursula LeGuin. I have pictures! Well, truthfully, she had her own table because she has so many books, and one author was between us, but still! She is a faithful Audubon supporter and we all remember the sad year she had a bad cold during WAF and couldn't come. It is wonderful to see this smart, talented, aware old lady surrounded by The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, Searoad, Earthsea Trilogy, and all the other fine books she has written. And if you are a person who thinks she is a science fiction writer and a person who sniffs that they do not read science fiction, wake up and smell the coffee. Try Searoad if you can't bear fictional planets. Those short stories are set on the Oregon coast in very real sand and rain. If you are willing to cultivate a taste for speculative anthropology, go for The Dispossessed and/or Lathe of Heaven. If only I were the stylist she is... If only I had that imaginative vision...

Four days of setting up the event, selling books, volunteering, and helping to take the thing down and now I am lying about eating aspirin and taking naps. But I've got this picture, see, and it was so worth it.

That's her! I am in the background in the blue sweater. Between us is Paul Gerald, a very pleasant fellow, who wrote Breakfast in Bridge Town, about where to find a great breakfast in Portland.

Saving Orangutans and Much, Much More

I recently stumbled on a program that is simultaneously addressing health care for impoverished people, deforestation, global warming, and orangutan conservation. That’s quite a gift basket for a conservationist who also cares about social justice. Listen up!

In October, Dr. Kinari Webb gave a talk here in Portland, Oregon, about a health clinic she runs in Indonesia on the border of Gunung Palung National Park. This park is home to a healthy population of orangutans. In case you haven’t been watching this species, conservationists are predicting that we will see the extinction of wild orangs in the next decade or so as Indonesia de-forests and converts natural landscapes to palm plantations and other agriculture. This massive deforestation, incidentally, is a huge contributor to global warming.
(http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/17975, http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/14/1175)

A national park is a safe haven for wild animals, right? Not necessarily. Setting up a “paper park” is often a feel-good exercise in public relations. Who, exactly, is going to prevent illegal logging and other detrimental activities? An under-funded park service going against well-armed profiteers? It’s no surprise that logging within Gunung Palung has been a huge problem. And when the trees go, so do the orangs and a thousand other benefits of undisturbed forest.

Here is what Dr. Webb is doing. She runs a small clinic under a program called Health In Harmony. The clinic serves the 22 villages that ring the park. She delivers quality health care to very poor people on a tiny budget. Patients pay in cash if they can. If they don’t have cash, they are not turned away, but neither are services given for free. They pay with labor, manure for the organic garden, baskets, or other trade items.

But she goes beyond medical treatment. She links health care to the environment.
* Illegal logging—Health In Harmony offers health care incentives to villages who go “green.” The Park Bureau classes villages as “red” or “green” based on ground and aerial surveys. Red villages show evidence of illegal logging within the park near their boundaries. Green villages don’t. Green villages get mobile clinic visits, low-cost ambulance service, organic gardening training and additional discounts at the clinic.
* Organophosphate poisoning from ignorant and excessive use of pesticides—clinic staff teach organic farming and practice it at the clinic vegetable garden.
* Underemployment—Health in Harmony is researching options for a program that would pay locals to reforest the logged portions of the park.

One of the characteristics of Dr. Webb’s approach that impressed me the most is that she asks the local villagers and their leaders what their priorities are. Are they open to alternatives to illegal logging? (Yes. Logging is dangerous and poorly paid.) What extra services would they want in exchange for green certification? (They wanted a mobile clinic, supplemental ambulance service, and—surprise—training in organic farming.) She doesn’t hand out what we or she think these people need. She asks them and melds their answers into broader goals. Let me add, that the Indonesian Park Service has become an important partner, or none of this would be possible.

The more she said about her program, the more enthusiastic I got and I ended up writing a check for more money than perhaps I should have, but no regrets!

Check it out and see if you don’t find this a wise, compassionate, and effective approach to multiple environmental and health problems: http://www.healthinharmony.org/index.html And then send these people some money. They are doing work we desperately want done.

More sites with information about orangutans and Gunung Palung.

Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program: http://www.savegporangutans.org/
Gunung Palung Orangutan Project: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~gporang/index.html
Gunung Palung National Park: http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/4466/palung1.htm
Tim Laman Photos, Orangutans: http://www.timlaman.com/main.php
A map of the park: http://encarta.msn.com/map_701581664/gunung_palung_national_park.html


Technorati Tags:
orangutan, health in harmony, illegal logging, Indonesia conservation, Indonesia, health care in the tropics
Add to: Technorati Digg del.icio.us Yahoo BlinkList Spurl reddit Furl