I now repent: caribou vs. development

Transnational networks of oil rush under our feet every day. Millions of barrels. Does the presence of pipelines affect activity above ground?

I'm writing an article about pipeline construction in my state, and I've been interested in that very question. Can pipelines can affect local wildlife in the long-term? Other than at large pumping stations, it shouldn't have a huge impact (unless that oil or gas surfaces, of course). But maybe so.

In order to inspect their lines, companies clear their right-of-way of brush. This is great for general pipeline safety (although in some wetland-type areas — like in the picture above — plants grow so fast they quickly cover the area back up), but it ends up fragmenting habitat and increasing the matrix, which certain species really, really don't like. My ecology professor just taught us how ovenbirds won't build nests near the forest edge, for instance. Now, does the 50-foot right-of-way like the one shone above really make a difference for wildlife abundance? The ovenbird would say yes. Does the ovenbird get a say?

In Vancouver, wildlife managers are faced with the question, "Caribou, wolves or development?"

Lizzie Wright Super Space Ship Strikes Again!

Lizzie Wright, who we have highlighted previously, has a new EP titled True/False. One review called it "Raw and naked, the lullaby of Lizzie Wright Super Space Ship drives the listener ever onward, tumbling and falling for the soft voice and simple supple melodies." We here at Bard Owls are inclined to agree. 

Source.

"A leaf is filled with chambers illuminated by gathered light."

Fern, Birmingham Archives & Heritage, U.K.

Robert Dunn's essay on leaves reads like botanical poetry. I wilted from the heat of it. You should read it in bed, in the morning, as the sun rises. That is all.

Who will stop the flood?

Missouri has tornadoes, which are conjured and over within half an hour. They also don't usually put 7 million people out of power. So hurricanes are cinematic, for better or worse, and I've been glued to the New York Times throughout this storm.

This op-ed on oysters and bank stabilization was a surprising nugget among the crisis coverage.

Just as corals protect tropical islands, these oyster beds created undulation and contour on the harbor bottom that broke up wave action before it could pound the shore with its full force. Beds closer to shore clarified the water through their assiduous filtration (a single oyster can filter as much as 50 gallons of water a day); this allowed marsh grasses to grow, which in turn held the shores together with their extensive root structure.

See also: this prescient, month-old article on New York City's "resilience strategy" for storm flooding.

Edward Abbey

I have no clue how I missed this speech by Edward Abbey. For anyone who has visited the Southwest or read one of Abbey's books this is a must listen. He strikes me in the video more like Hunter S. Thompson than I had ever realized before now, great Americans the both of them. Here Abbey talks about one of the subjects he cared most about, life before the Glenn Canyon Dam. The speech is in three parts.

Hills of My Home

I grew up listening to folk and singer-songwriter legends like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Harry Chapin. There is a certain limitation that comes with music made by one or two people and a guitar. I have always had the feeling that it makes the music a bit more genuine. It either works or it doesn't. When The Honey Dewdrops plays, it works. The band released their third album titled Silver Lining earlier this year. A highlight of the album was Hills of My Home. I have heard the band perform this song in concert and am happy to see it make its way to this album.The song takes on the topic of mountaintop removal mining in a way that makes it both personal and potent without being overbearingly political.


 

Lessons from West Texas

Jackrabbits being all spindly at the National Ranching Heritage Center.

 While in Lubbock for the Society of Environmental Journalists conference, I was delighted to see new wildlife and landscapes, namely:

1. Grackles are sassier in Texas.
2. Jackrabbits look like deer with long ears.
3. Palo Duro Canyon is especially impressive after driving two hours across flat, flat, flat brown plains.

Time-Lapse Photography

Just a friendly reminder of the beauty that exists in this world. Hat tip to The Daily Dish.

Very Little Stars from Timelapse, Inc. on Vimeo.

Jamie Scott

The Rewilding Debate: Debating the Extinct to Death

Image created by Sergiodlarosa

Since 2005, due in no small part to a commentary article published in Nature, Pleistocene rewilding has been a source of friction in conservation biology. Pleistocene rewilding generally differs from traditional conservation biology in its support for introducing extinct megafauna or a proxy species to positively impact ecosystems at the landscape scale.

In an edge.org discussion, Ryan Phelan attempts to justify rewilding because extinction primarily is caused by man.  She frames the issue as such:

"One of the fundamental questions here is, is extinction a good thing? Is it "nature's way"? And if it's nature's way, who in the world says anyone should go about changing nature's way? If something was meant to go extinct, then who are we to screw around with it and bring it back? I don't think it's really nature's way. I think that the extinction that we've seen since man is 99.9 percent caused by man."

Phelan’s questions seem to accuse Pleistocene rewilding opponents as being not only the cause of anthropogenic eradication of species but also apathetic to the possibility of reversing that same eradication. There are several underlying assumptions in her questions worth questioning.

1. When does one start the clock on which extinctions should be considered “caused by man”?
2. Does the fact that man caused an extinction necessitate the reintroduction of the extinct species? 
3. Even if we conclude that man has a duty to reintroduce all animals since the Pleistocene, how would one go about it?

Landscape Nostalgia, or, How My Brain Replicates Pulaski County Topography

Certain landscapes will never leave my memory: clouds hustling over the continental divide at Monteverde, cow-spotted pastures in purple-and-gold winter, and the welcoming bluffs on Stadium Boulevard. None, however, are so ingrained or so pure than my childhood world in Dixon, Missouri. Rivers and cliffs direct the curving roads. Foliage looks lusher, the fields more trim than any of their counterparts in my second home of Lebanon. There's the oak-walled house my great-great grandfather built and that little house on the hill where a nice farmboy once lived. There's the east edge of our field where the deer always appeared on misty mornings. The fallen log between two trunks that my cousins and I used as teeter-totter. The country was my playground.

I've returned lately with friends. Even places I had never seen, such as the view from above Riddle Bridge or panoramas across Maries County, strike familiar chords.

Nostalgia comes with some caveats. The drives remain beautiful, but the gas tab hurts (those rivers and bluffs keep good roads away; it would take hefty blasting jobs to change it, and frankly, the government doesn't have that kind of money for backwoods folks). Recently at a Dixon festival, I couldn't help but desire better food, different music and more culture. People gawked at my dreadlocked, colorfully dressed friends. Memories, meet Reality. Suddenly moving to industrial Lebanon when I was 10 years old seemed like a good move for the sake of culture. Thanks, grandparents.

But the landscape abides.

A View Through The Lens of DTC Photography

I recently had the chance to interview the head of DTC Photography, David Crabtree. After years of admiring his work it was great to get a peak into what drives his photography and the thoughts that go into each captured moment.

NM:It seems that a lot of your photography captures the areas between the built and the natural landscapes, are these areas you seek out?
DC:Built and natural landscapes have sort of become my comfort zone shots. I seem to do a better job with these scenes and so I am often drawn to them. I also see the comfort zone as challenge in which I must break out of that zone and try new things that I am unfamiliar with. Lately I have been experimenting with HDR photography and also some photos with more live and movement in them. As an amateur photographer, this can be a real challenge sometimes but hopefully the saying is true: "Practice makes perfect".

We Are Augustines: Somewhere Over The Mountain

What more is this blog about than great music recorded live at a beautiful location? The background alone makes me miss the West. A hat tip to NPR Music.

"Honeybee" at East Wind

Stumbling is fun. Donovan videos linked to a Rainbow Gathering video, which came from a brilliant documentary project called The Idiocratic Life, featuring lovely blog posts including one on the East Wind Community near Tecumseh, Missouri. Here's a song from a couple of their beautiful bards.

 

Water In the Desert

Few places in my travels have come to mean as much to me as the Great Basin. Several posts on this blog including Turning the Pages of a Mountain and My Own Finding Everett Ruess are about wonderings through some section in or around the Great Basin. Consequently, I took High Country News' post entitled "Las Vegas Bets Big On Rural Water" with a bit of heartache. Plans are made to allow the shuttling of water out of five basins of origin and into Las Vegas. What the impact could be on the people, plants and wildlife of the southeastern Great Basin is beyond my area of expertise to predict. The watersheds included in this plan are home to rural Nevada towns, Great Basin National Park and cattle pasture. The best I can do is share what the area affected by this plan looks like. It is my hope that through these images some greater understanding of what it has come to mean to me is better understood.

Great Basin National Park

Finding Truth in a False Idyll

nature: noun /ˈnāCHər/ a nebulous word that generations have struggled to adequately define.

The world's changing shape and humanity's increasingly complex relationship to it have only added to difficulty of this task. In this spirit of continuing the discussion, we're sharing our e-mails about False Idyll by J.B. MacKinnon.

from:		Nick
to:		Tina
date:		Sun, May 27, 2012 at 5:54 PM
subject:		False Idyll | J.B. MacKinnon | Orion Magazine

I thought I had found an interesting article for you but as it is from Orion I assume you beat me to it. What do you think of it? Come to Alaska. I can show you the not so nice part of nature.

"Wood Block" Prints

I'm really enjoying these "wood block" prints by Bryan Nash Gill from New Hartford, Connecticut. It's effortless, but beautiful.  Simple, yet thought-provoking.  What made the trees form in these ways?  Perhaps Nick will know.

In Search of the Frontier

Life in Crown King has been for me a search for a new frontier. In the past year I have been fortunate enough to live a life filled with moments somewhere between car commercials and national park highlight reels. On one coast, I have worked on a 30,000-acre National Wildlife Refuge. Somewhere in the Southwest I have dropped into canyons no wider than my extended arms. On my way to Crown King, I hiked the narrows of an ice-covered river. These were the stories that preceded my arrival to the town of Crown King, Arizona, located in the fourth state I have called home in less than a year.

The Beauty of Artistic Licence

In the 1920s if you wanted a photograph in color, it had to be colored by hand. Two artists took this approach and captured the beauty of the landscapes and wildlife around them. The first of which was Asahel Curtis located in the Pacific Northwest. NPR ran a story capturing the artistic licence he took with adding color.



The second was William M. Finley whose work helped create the west coast's first wildlife refuge.



Last but certainly not least in the worth a look and listen category is Lizzie Wright Super Spaceship's song capturing the soul of the Ozarks and the rivers that make it up in her tune Ozarkia.

At least we're not on Ellesmere Island

Yesterday, the weather in mid-Missouri felt like 70 degrees. Maybe it was. I went to Rocheport and watched the sun set over Moniteau Creek and the Missouri River.

Today the wind whipped hard enough to cause tears and dry out the thin-skinned, outside corners of my eyes.  Happy first day of class.  :)

To help me feel like a bit of a wimp, the New York Times ran this Arctic Adventure story. Granted, if I were Having An Adventure, weathering the cold would be more tolerable. And what a great lede:

To stave off a breaching 3,000-pound walrus from the cockpit of a small sea kayak, Erik Boomer recommends using the paddle. 

“Sort of like a Heisman stiff-arm, hit him in the face and try to feed him the paddle,” he said. “Then start paddling.”

The rest of the article reads quite newspaper-y for such an intense story. Of course, this is me being a snob. Of course, it is a newspaper. Of course, someone else can come along and write a book or a script from it. So thanks for breaking it, NYT.