News Archives

Week of November 21, 2004

Something else I'm thankful for

All of you — everyone who bothers to drop by and read these words, and look at the pictures, and maybe now and then find something interesting or useful. So far this year, taking out the spiders and robots, more than 6000 separate people have landed at this page and looked around. A number of you come back again and again. Thank you for your concern for the earth, and your love of the living things around you. May your concern and empathy be reflected back to you ten times over.

Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, November 25 2004, 3:58 PM

Some things I'm thankful for

Gatineau Park in Quebec.

A baby porcupine.

Organ Pipe National Monument.

Sea star with red gorgonian coral.

Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, November 25 2004, 9:05 AM

Schwarzenegger ignores logging

One campaign pledge Arnold Schwarzenegger made to environmentalists was to fight attempts by the Bush administration to reinstate logging on 11 million acres of Sierra Nevada forest.

But last week Bush put the new logging rules into operation, and Arnold didn't say a word. In fact, he didn't even bother to appeal the original decision when it came up in January.

Environmentalists are incensed, charging that Schwarzenegger backed away from one of his central environmental campaign promises, and one of the few in which the then-Republican candidate directly disagreed with the Bush administration on an environmental issue.

``There was a lot of talk about upholding the Clinton plan,'' said Paul Mason, state forestry director for the Sierra Club. ``And when push came to shove, they didn't show up.''

The promise has since been removed from Schwarzenegger's web site.

So much for principle over politics. Arnold knows where the butter is.

Posted by Jennifer on Wednesday, November 24 2004, 7:09 PM

Environmental riders in the appropriations bill

I've been trying to find out whether the Biscuit logging rider and other anti-environment provisions made it into the final version of the appropriations bill, but I haven't found anything solid on that yet. Maybe no one knows. I hear the whole thing was rewritten right up till the moment the vote occurred. I can't believe that Congress votes things through without even taking time to read the bills, or at least have their staff read it. Anyway, if you know whether they passed the Biscuit rider, drop me a line. When I find out for sure, I'll post again.

Posted by Jennifer on Tuesday, November 23 2004, 5:31 PM

Dolphin defenders

Clearly animals have kinder hearts than many humans do. Because after all the dolphins we've abused and slaughtered, some of them still kept four human swimmers from being attacked by sharks.

Lifesavers Rob Howes, his 15-year-old daughter Niccy, Karina Cooper and Helen Slade were swimming 100 metres (300 feet) off Ocean Beach near Whangarei on New Zealand's North Island when the dolphins herded them -- apparently to protect them from a shark.

"They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us," Howes told the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA).

Howes tried to drift away from the group, but two of the bigger dolphins herded him back just as he spotted a three-meter (nine feet) great white shark swimming towards the group.

Posted by Jennifer on Tuesday, November 23 2004, 12:29 PM

River flows in the Grand Canyon

When you dam a river, there are several ecological consquences. One is that water emerges from the dam nearly free of sand and silt, because the sand and silt is usually deposited behind the dam where water is collected. This clear clean water has a great deal of energy, and depending on how it is released, it can gather up sand and silt for a long way as it travels downstream. So you always see some degree of streambed erosion at the mouth of a dam, and sediment deposition downstream changes from its natural pattern. This impacts riparian vegetation, much of which depends either on flood-cleansed sand or silty banks for reproduction, and also affects native fish such as the endangered humpbacked chub, whose young rely on the riparian roots as a refuge from trout and other non-native invaders.

For the Colorado River as it flows through the Grand Canyon below Glen Canyon dam, the dam has diminished the amount of sand that used to be deposited as islands and beaches. But this week the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has begun an experiment that it hopes will restore some of the sandy beaches and islands the Grand Canyon used to have. By releasing a large amount of water at once, much larger than the normal controlled streamflow, scientists hope to flush a large quantity of sediment from the confluence of the Colorado and Paria rivers.

An earlier attempt did not have as much impact as was hoped for, and scientists will be monitoring carefully to see whether this try works better. Getting enough water to move the sediment downstream, but not so much that you wash it away again, is a tricky business.

This is an area very dear to me personally, and an ecosystem of the type I used to study when I worked at The Nature Conservancy. I am hopeful that we can learn how to restore our Western rivers to at least some semblance of their former glory.

Posted by Jennifer on Monday, November 22 2004, 1:54 PM

Shhhhhhh!

We all know that the Bush administration is in deep denial about global warming and associated climate change, but it seems he doesn't want anyone anywhere to talk about it either. He's apparently "reprimanded" poor Tony Blair for "sounding the alarm over global warming and pressing for international action to combat it", and for putting global warming at the top of the agenda for next year's G8 meeting.

Ostrich, indeed.

Posted by Jennifer on Monday, November 22 2004, 7:46 AM

Forest Service is too often ignoring science

Apparently they're more interested in forests as a cash crop, than as living ecologies and wildlife habitat. At least that the story of these Forest Service employees, who tell some sad stories of old growth being sold off and forests overall suffering under mismanagement.

That the agency is so embattled may come as a surprise to a public that, understandably, confuses the Forest Service with the more environmentally benign National Park Service. To those who know the agency best, though, the Forest Service credo—"Caring for the land and serving people"—mocks the reality in our forests. The picture of the agency that emerges from such disparate sources as liberal environmentalists, conservative economists, academics, taxpayer advocates, the Congressional Research Office and the Government Accountability Office (the GAO, formerly the General Accounting Office), to name just some of the most visible detractors, testifies to the inherent weaknesses of big government: mismanagement, inefficiency, waste, ineptitude, the disproportionate influence of special interests. These characteristics might describe any large bureaucracy, but the Forest Service evinces them so glaringly that if you owned a forest and were looking for someone to care for it, due diligence would persuade you to banish the organization from your short list.

Posted by Jennifer on Sunday, November 21 2004, 4:31 PM

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