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Tag Archives: conservation
A Wilder World: a review of The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
The rain has come and gone; you close your eyes and listen for birds. You hear one, maybe two, no—three distinct songs. And if it weren’t for those gas-guzzling metal canisters rumbling so indiscreetly by, you could be in The World Without Us, as Alan Weisman imagined it in his 2007 book. Weisman visits some of the most urbanized (New York City) and pristine (the forests of South America) sites on earth, as he explores our planet’s origins and imagines its future free of our domineering presence.
In thoughtful and intricate prose, Weisman takes us on a journey around the globe to show how our planet might react (or really, recover) if we were all to suddenly depart this pale blue dot. From the already progressing wild takeover at Chernobyl to the erasure of the Panama Canal, Weisman introduces us to our monumental, but fleeting legacies that barely manage to resist the oncoming wilderness. Such a detailed study of our planet could read like an encyclopedia, but in Weisman’s deft hands and diction, the story comes alive both tragically (“Eventually, coming full circle, we returned, so estranged from our origins that we enslaved blood cousins who stayed behind to maintain our birthright.”) and comically (“It was at least 10,000 years old, but unmistakably a turd.”).
“Duck, duck, goose!” Tilden Park is a hotspot for fun in winter
Tilden Park is one of our under-appreciated East Bay treasures. While it may not be prime barbeque weather, there is still plenty of fun to be had at Tilden. And quite a bit of it is family-friendly fun for all ages! To start with, they have a miniature ridge-top steam train. Nowhere else in the Bay Area lets you take an afternoon and ride a tiny train that goes, well, effectively nowhere. Steam trains, of course, are what our country was built on. BART, Caltrain, and Amtrak are all electric, but steam trains are where the real history is. The train runs on weekends and holidays.
If you prefer something more natural and picturesque, the Botanic Garden is the place for you. Home to a variety of endangered plants, the garden also boasts the largest collection of native California plants in the world. Some deciduous trees are still dropping leaves, and the cacti are greener than ever.
An unfinished chapter in the sad story of Deepwater Horizon
Given my ties to the good old Crescent City, I have to mention a sad (but not shocking) discovery that has recently been made off of the Gulf Coast. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig earlier this year led to one of the most disastrous oil spills of all time. Oil spills been relatively frequent over the last few decades, and while each one is an incredible affront to nature, this spill following was particularly bad because it came directly from the oil well, rather than a separate container.
Immediately after the spill, pictures began to surface of wildlife covered in black muck, struggling to stay alive (see Rachel Bernstein’s post on the fate of the brown pelican). At that time, there were not yet any signs of massive destruction to entire ecosystems near the oil spill. It was regarded as pure luck that we managed to escape this situation without damaging the environment even more seriously. Now it seems that what we’ve seen thus far may be just the tip of the iceberg.
Researchers on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship recently discovered large portions of dead underwater coral that appears to be a direct result of the recent oil spill.
Elephant seals: It’s baby-making time
Last January, I visited Año Nuevo State Park for a ranger-guided nature walk of the elephant seal rookery. Thousands of elephant seals were sprawled along the beaches of the park. The largest males frantically attempted to guard their massive harems, while outcast males, who had lost the earlier territory battles, repeatedly tried to sneak in from the water’s edges.
Just as the ranger explained that male elephant seals can grow to the size of a Suburban, he guided our group across a path that looked like it had been carved by the dragging of a very large, heavy sack. Just 20 feet away lay a basking, multi-ton male.
Monterey Bay Aquarium will tickle you pink
Yet another thing I love about October: it’s breast cancer awareness month, so it is also the national month of pink. One pink thing we can all celebrate is the Hot Pink Flamingos exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This is just one of several new works at the Aquarium; others include a sea turtle tank, an informational wing about how global warming affects ocean life, and a small flock of sea birds rescued from an oil spill. These energetic little birds are really enjoying their temporary stay in the kelp forest exhibit, which features hand feedings by divers twice daily.
Flamingos is centered around the idea that even our seemingly small daily choices impact our lives substantially in the long run. Take the example of food: for birds, their diet creates the vivid colors of their feathers, and for us, how we grow our food has substantial impacts on energy consumption and environmental health, among other things.
Brown pelicans and the oil spill
As of November 2009, Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican, was not an endangered species. The pelican population had dropped to a low of 10,000 birds in 1970, mostly due to the use of pesticides like DDT that weakened the eggshells so that they couldn’t support the embryos to maturity. But when the numbers rose to an estimated 650,000 birds last year, they were taken off the endangered species list. This was a conservation success story of the type that we rarely hear.
Now, in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, the web is flooded with pictures of oil-logged brown pelicans, and conservationists fear that all their hard work will be wiped away by this one catastrophic event.