Posts tagged with "Wildlife Conservation"
Wednesday, 17. June 2009, 18:27:53
Cultural Ecology, Wildlife Conservation
I was talking with Loku in the Comments to another post when somehow
the subject of Orca whales came up. I think what brought it to mind
were memories of the great ferry trips I took while on vacation over at
the San Juan islands in 2006 (it's been far too long).
The Puget Sound/Vancouver B.C. area is home to the J, K, and L pods of
Orcas, otherwise known as Killer Whales. There are pods of whales
worldwide, but nobody seems to know how many whales there are exactly.
Besides the pods, there are also whales known as transient whales that
travel outside of the normal pods.
One of the J Pod whales off the San Juan's is called "Granny" (J-2) and
is estimated to be something like 98 years old -- older than my
grandmother would have been if she were still alive. Unbelievable. But
as I mentioned in my vacation post it seems that once the Orcas get
past their teenage years that they have a pretty good chance of living
to a ripe old age.
I told Loku "Here are our whales," referring to the Puget Sound whales.
Then I remembered that hilarious line from Star Trek IV where Spock says
to the marine biologist "They are not the hell your whales."
Okay, maybe not. But they are our neighbors at least.
Orca distribution worldwide.
Saturday, 7. February 2009, 20:39:10
Wildlife Conservation
The Steve Irwin collides with the
stern of the Yushin Maru.
It may not receive as much attention in the news as Afghanistan and
Iraq, but there is another war being waged these days off the shores of
Antarctica -- one between Japanese whaling ships and environmentalists.
In fact the war has been going on for some time and is getting pretty
nasty.
This week, a ship sailing under the flag of the Sea Conservation Society,
the Steve Irwin, collided with the Japanese harpoon ship Yushin Maru off
the Ross ice shelf. It wasn't the first time the two ships had collided.
The collision was just one component of the battle. The Japanese ship
had been catapulting whale meat and blubber at the Steve Irwin and using
water cannon and LRAD acoustic weapons against the ship, while the
conservation ship slung bottles of butyric acid (rancid butter) at the
whaler.
Commercial whaling has been banned internationally since 1986. But the
Japanese continue to hunt whales under a loophole in the law that allows
catching whales for "research purposes."
Japan, who considers the environmentalists to be terrorists, has asked
the Australian government to stop the conservation ship. Which one
would think is not likely to happen considering the ship is named the
Steve Irwin.
Hey, here's an idea: close the damn loophole.
Wednesday, 21. May 2008, 23:22:50
Wildlife Conservation, Science
"So this is heaven, he thought, and he had to
smile at himself. It was hardly respectful to
analyze heaven in the very moment that one
flies up to enter it."
-- Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
A flying fish set a new record this week for
sustained flight. Caught by cameras off the
coast of Japan, the flying fish flew for 45
seconds at a speed of 20 mph (30 kph).
I think this is an amazing reminder that
evolutionary mechanisms aren't simply a
thing of the past, but are always at work.
Who knows, if this planet survives, oh,
another 500,000 years or so, we may very
well have fish flying all over the place.
(Just click on the Escher print above
to watch the fish on youTube.)
Tuesday, 29. January 2008, 23:22:35
The Four Seasons, Wildlife Conservation
The Costa's Hummingbird.
In the early 90s I was living up on the north side of Spokane. Sometimes
I would go out early in the morning and sit on the back step and drink
my coffee. And sometimes I would go out in the early evening and drink
a few beers. One day, as I was sitting on the steps, I heard this quite
unusual bird song. It's difficult to put bird songs into language, so I
can't really describe what it was like very well except to say the song
was very nice -- very soothing and poetic somehow.
Not knowing anything about birds, I had no idea what bird it was. I heard
the bird a few more times over the next couple of months, and then it went
away.
Years later, in 1999, I was up on lower South Hill at my friend Julie's
place. I had gone out in the morning to drink coffee on the front porch.
As I sat there I noticed a bird song -- the same song that I had heard
back many years prior. I got all excited and went in and told Julie all
about it. I really don't think she understood what all the excitement
was about. A number of days later I heard the bird's song again, this
time in the late afternoon.
At that point, the bird seeming like some strange but mysterious old
acquaintance, I dubbed the bird the Peachy Woo-Woo bird. I don't know
exactly why I called it that. That was just the name that its song
suggested to me and I ran with it.
I haven't heard the Peachy Woo-Woo bird since then. But the other night
I woke up and for some reason started thinking about the Peachy Woo-Woo
bird again. So the next day I got on the internet and decided to see if
I could find the true identity of the bird -- i.e. its species.
I checked out various sites that had online bird songs. I eventually
ended up with one that had a fairly lengthily list of bird songs and
calls. It was a laborious process. Having no idea what type of bird the
Peachy Woo-Woo bird was, I had to go through the lists and check out the
bird calls one by one.
And I have to say, I was amazed at all the different types of sounds that
birds can make. Some are very nice. Some seem a tad to the mechanical side.
And though I love nature as much as anybody, I have to admit that some are
just plain irritating or downright hideous. This is especially true when you
are listening to the songs at high volume through headphones. There was one,
the call of the Swainson's Hawk, that sounded like the most chilling, horror-
movie scream that I've ever heard.
This Swainson's Hawk
is really a screamer.
Going through the lists, I did come across one that I thought might be
the Peachy Woo-Woo bird. The song of the Costa's Hummingbird (Calypte
costae) seemed to me to be very similar. Trouble was, the sample had a
lot of background noise, and the volume of the song was low. This was in
spite of the fact that I was using headphones. There was also the problem
that it had been so many years since I heard the song. And we all know how
memory is sometimes.
I have to admit, I was surprised that it was a hummingbird -- if the
bird is in fact the same bird. I never realized that hummingbirds could
sing. Of course, I don't know much about hummingbirds. About the only
things I knew about them is that their wings beat incredibly fast and you
have to have a really fast shutter speed set on your camera to stop the
motion of them. I knew they were tiny birds. And I remembered from a few
photos I had seen that they could have very vivid colors around their
throats.
Doing some research on the Costas Hummingbird, I found out that it was
within the realm of possibility that it was the Peachy Woo-Woo bird.
Although the usual habitat for the Costa's is the Southwestern U.S., it
does have quite a broad range when it migrates North during the summer
months. There have been sightings in Southern Idaho and in Oregon. So
it's not impossible that it was the Peachy Woo-Woo bird.
But in the end, I just don't know. And maybe that's the way it should be.
I write books about a guy who investigates things, who finds things out.
And I am pretty much the same way. But I also think that life should have
some mystery to it also. It is mystery that keeps us questioning, searching,
wondering and filled with wonder at the universe.
So I might never know the answer. But that's okay. To me, it will continue
to be the Peachy Woo-Woo bird.
Monday, 28. January 2008, 21:44:57
Music, Wildlife Conservation, Beautiful World
(Just clic on the pic to watch the video on youTube.)
If you've ever been watching a nature show on television and asked yourself,
"Gee, why can't they show all of this stuff but put a soundtrack with some
scorchingly-hot Latin music in the background?" -- well, here ya' go.
I found this totally by accident while looking for some hummingbird videos
(uh, more on this later).
According to the guy who posted it, the song is "Ritmo Con Aché" by José
Mangual Jr.
And no, I'm not going to make a joke about Gitmo con ache. Ha!
Wednesday, 23. January 2008, 23:32:24
Wildlife Conservation, Spokane, Loon Lake
While I was on break, a big bull moose wandered up onto the ice on
Loon Lake, about 45 minutes north of me here in Spokane, and fell
through and got stuck. The resulting rescue of the moose was quite
something, and got some national and even international attention.
Since it was "my neck of the woods" so to speak, I thought I would post
some photos of the rescue efforts. These photos are all courtesy of the
Loon Lake Wildlife Gallery via KREM News Spokane.
We have moose wander into Spokane every once in while. They seem
mostly to come in during the Summers and inevitably end up in somebody's
swimming pool. I guess they just want to party. Then the wildlife people
are called and they chase them out of town.
And we have had the occasional bear wander in, too. That one usually
doesn't end up so good. For the bear, that is.
A decade or so back a mountain lion wandered into a Deer Park school.
Luckily it was Summer, and only the custodial crew was there. The cougar
eventually wandered back out and went on his way. Maybe he just wanted
to use the library?
Anyway, here are the Moose Rescue pics.
The bull moose trapped in the ice.
Some local Loon Lake people, finding the
stranded moose, took sledge hammers and an
axe to the ice to try to make a path for it
back to shore.
When that didn't work too well, they
brought in the chain saws.
Eventually a whole bunch of people
showed up.
Finally getting a path cut into the ice
back to the shallows, they encourage the
moose with paddles.
With firmer ground under it, the moose was
finally able to pull itself up onto the ice.
After 2-1/2 hours, safely back to shore!
The rescue team. All heroes!
Wednesday, 5. December 2007, 20:57:02
Culture, Wildlife Conservation, Brad Pitt
Architect's drawing for a new green home in
New Orleans. And by the way, is that a '63 Ford
in the driveway? Hmmm...should have been a Prius!
One thing I hate about government these days is the way it always seems
to make up all sorts of bullshit reasons why something or other can't be
done or why something wasn't done.
The conversion to new fuel and power economies is one of those issues.
My area is historical anthropology, not economics. But I think that
anybody who has taken a U.S. History class in high school knows that the
last great conversion of economies like that -- from the horse to the
automobile -- was relatively seamless and didn't cause the U.S. economy
to go through some sort of horrible seizure. In fact, the reverse was
the case: It opened up new industries and new jobs.
There is absolutely no evidence that a move toward alternative fuels,
building practices, etc. will have a detrimental effect on this economy.
Will it cost some money? Sure, it will. Start-up money is always
involved in new enterprises. But there's no reason to think that it will
cripple our national economy or send us into a recession.
Government makes all sorts of excuses as to why things don't get done.
Perhaps the best instance of that in recent U.S. memory is the residual
effect of the 2005 hurricane season in the Southeastern region, Katrina
and the three others of similar magnitude. Government talked the talk
with that one, but it didn't walk the walk. In fact the whole aftermath
was a logistic and financial nightmare. Federal, State, and local
governments, for the most part, just screwed the pooch.
After Katrina we saw a good number of the local and non-local musicians
get together and, as musicians normally try to do these days after some
disaster, hold a relief concert. I'm sure some money was brought in by
this concert, and that many Americans donated. But the concert was in
the main more psychological than anything else. At least there was some
sense that some people were trying to fix things.
But of course it wasn't good enough, not even close given the amount of
damage. Today, two years later, New Orleans is a mess and other gulf
areas still have similar problems.
Yesterday (from the date of this post) actor Brad Pitt et al. started
the Make It Right 9th Ward campaign. Evidently Pitt and others grew
sick of the lack of effort so far and decided that if nobody else would
do it, they sure as hell would. I'm sure this whole project took at least
a year to execute whether announced yesterday or not. Large projects like
this don't just pop into existence overnight. If you visit the web site,
you will see the care that has gone into all the details of the plan and
the money-raising effort.
Interestingly, all of the new homes for the 9th Ward will be green homes.
They will cost about $150,000 each. I don't know what the average property
value for the 9th Ward is, but I would say that sounds reasonable for a
brand-new green home. The homes will have some solar power and will be built
up off the ground to (hopefully) withstand another disaster such as we saw
in 2005.
I was also impressed by the number of architects that were brought in on
the project and the variety of designs. I was glad to see that some of
the designs included the traditional "shotgun" shape house that you find
in New Orleans in the French Quarter and elsewhere. Pretty cool, if you
ask me.
Today, just 24 hours after the beginning of the Make It Right campaign, we
see money for 7 homes out of the 150 already in the bank. This is do-able,
not some pie-in-the-sky dream. The American people are donating and the
thing is going to get done.
We are the government; we, the People. That is clear. All the politicians in
Washington these days care about is getting themselves into office. That's
what you are seeing on the news these days, politicians talking -- yet more
talking -- talking about themselves.
I applaud Pitt and Bing and the others on the Make It Right project. And
I applaud Leonardo DiCaprio and the 11th Hour Campaign. It's time we
just did this stuff ourselves and let the politicians go rot in hell.
As DiCaprio said, there are "a million things" that the average (i.e.
not wealthy) person can do to change the current economics. Drive less.
Walk or ride a bike or take the bus more. Put on a sweater and turn the
thermostat down two degrees. Take the old gas guzzler in and trade it
for a combined fuel vehicle. Government might do nothing, but we can
force a change ourselves: by simply...changing.
And by the way, I'm seriously considering a write-in vote for the next
presidential election -- how about Brad Pitt for President?
Saturday, 3. November 2007, 19:14:21
Wildlife Conservation, Jean Beasley, Animal Planet, sea turtles
Jean Beasley, Hero of the Year!
A few posts ago I mentioned that Jean Beasley, director of the Karen
Beasley Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation center, was up for Animal
Planet's Hero of the Year Award.
Well the award was given out November 1st, and last night I came home
from a night out with my BFF Julie to find an e-mail from Glen Pierce
telling me (get this!) that Jean had WON the award.
Great news! I thank everyone who voted for her (while the voting was
actually in place, that is). I don't know how much it helped but it
certainly couldn't have hurt.
I congratulate Jean and all the staff and volunteers of the Hospital. As
I mentioned earlier, Jean plans to use the prize money to lay the
cornerstone on the new hospital. And of course the real winners are
the turtles!
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