Coyote Stories I

The coyote, Canis latrans has been as much a part of my family life as my brothers and my sister.  I spent my childhood in Southern California during and following the Second World War.  Early in my Middle School years my family relocated to the San Gabriel Valley at the base of the San Sierra Madre Mountains.  Things were much different in the LA Basin at that time.  There were fewer of us and much more open land.  From the back of our bright new post-war home to the base of the mountains were hundreds of acres of orange groves and thousands of acres of oak scrub and brush.  There were dove and quail, and rabbits and raptors.  There were also the coyotes.  I learned to listen for these little wolves and to watch for them along the sides of the dirt roads that, at that time, still crisscrossed the fields and orchards of Southern California.  During high school others things captured my attention, and imagination, and I didn't think so much about the coyotes.   But they were never far away and I would hear the yips and howls of what author Jack Couffer calls the Song of Wild Laughter on my way to an early morning college class or to my job washing dish and bussing tables in a small, local restaurant.   

My work with federal natural resource management agencies brought me East and along with me came the coyotes spreading across land they have once occupied.  From Washington, DC, to Florida, to Georgia, and now to North Carolina, this ubiquitous little wolf has only been a walk at first light, a full moon, or a shadowy glimpse away.  

For several years I served as Steward at Bat Fork Bog Plant Conservation Preserve,  a small native plant preserve almost in the center of Hendersonville, North Carolina.  It did not take me long to realize that coyotes were among my companions at the preserve.  The Preserve is located only a kilometer, possibly a bit more, from downtown Hendersonville and only a few blocks from the main fire station.  The coyotes liked the fire station; they especially like the sound of the sirens as the large red trucks lumber out of their barn-like shelter and roar-off on their missions of mercy.  The coyotes often accompany the sirens with their high-pitched howls.  I remember one of the neighbors living on the high ground to the west of the Preserve asking me if I was afraid of coyotes.  I told him I wasn't and he said "good, cause you sure have a lot of them in there," gesturing toward the boggy lowlands below us. 

(Image courtesy of Google)

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Bog Days II

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 Another thing I spent quite a bit of time on at Bat Fork Bog was developing an understanding of how water worked in the Preserve.  This turned out to be a fascinating experience that involved the bog in times of drought and in times of flood Only two places on the Preserve retained water throughout the year.  We dug test ‘wells’ throughout the Preserve to find water during drought but, with the exception of the two locations noted, it was not there or it was down so far as to be useless in increasing habitat for the bunched arrowhead. In fact, water was mostly a feast or famine thing at the Preserve. When it was feast it was, literally, a movable feast because during those time of exceptionally heavy rainfall, water would flow into the bog from the surrounding uplands and adjacent Bat Fork Creek would overflow discharging hundreds of thousands of gallons into the shallow bowl of the Preserve and putting otherwise fairly dry land a meter or two underwater.  We published a preliminary hydrological study of the Preserve in Natural Areas Journal.  

Poison ivy was ubiquitous at the Preserve and I felt like I had that itching irritation going on some part of my body at least half of the time I sloshed around in those wetlands.  On the other hand, the Preserve had delightful surprises.  One of the most enjoyable of these surprises was the family of coyotes that lived in an embankment along one of Preserve boundaries.  These curious, melodic creatures would howl almost every time the siren at the nearby fire station cut loose.  They, especially the young ones, would also follow my travels around the Preserve, sometimes just moments behind me and I would see them poking their curious noses out of the thick grasses watching me.

Bat Fork Bog Preserve and other places like it may be small but they can offer exceptional opportunities for the study of specific aspects of the natural history of the vanishing wet places of our world.

Publications

Baugh, T. and R.E. Evans. 2011. Restoration of a Southern Appalachian Mountain Bog Phase II-Hydrology. Natural Areas Journal  31(1)501-504.

Baugh, T., R.E. Evans, C.J Stewart, and S. Artebane. 2011. Restoration of a Southern Appalachian Mountain Bog: Phase I. Reed canary grass removal. Ecological Restoration 9(1):13-14.

Baugh, T. and K. Schlosser. [In press]. Management considerations for the restoration of bunched arrowhead Sagittaria fasciulata. Natural Areas Journal [January 2013].

Bog Days I

In 2010 I became the first Preserve Steward in the developing 
North Carolina Plant Conservation stewardship program.  All of my work for the program was undertaken in the increasingly rare mountain wetlands of Western North Carolina and a majority of it at Bat Fork Bog Plant Conservation Preserve, not far from my home in Henderson County.  My tenure at Bat Fork Bog was one of the more enjoyable field experiences I have had in a number of years.

Bat Fork Bog Plant Conservation Preserve is located in Henderson County in the mountains of Western North Carolina just outside of the County Seat of Hendersonville and only about 20 minutes from our home, Hidden Springs, on a rocky, forested ridge west of town.

 The Preserve is a remnant swamp-forest-bog complex that was purchased by the State of North Carolina in 1996 to protect several relatively rare plant species including a small, essentially nondescript, emergent species known as the bunched arrowhead (Sagittaria fasciculata).

The bog was, essentially, divided into two halves.  One half was forested and one half had been cleared of trees and shrubs and given over to a pasture-like area covered in reed canary grass.  Also, the reed canary grass had invaded an old canal, part of which hosted the only bunched arrowhead population on the Preserve.  Along with employees of the State of North Carolina, I spent a considerable amount of time during 2010 applying and monitoring an herbicide approved by EPA for application to aquatic sites.  

My first task was to become familiar with the Preserve.  I spent days wandering around the property rough-mapping distinguishable features and noting the location of plants of interest.   For a number of reasons, there had been very little interest in Bat Fork Bog over the preceding decade and most of that was focused on the one population of bunched arrowhead plants in the canal along the northern boundary of the Preserve. 


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Ecofantasy II

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The influence of Christianity is apparent from Quinn’s “fundamentally flawed” (is that original sin, Ishmael?) humanity to Berry’s new creation.  You can restate the thread developed in this thinking and see a humanity created in the image of a God, passing through cataclysm, transcending its sinful nature, and becoming part of a developing universal (or multiversal ) consciousness. 

The question has been raised so we have to ask, is it possible that humanity has arrived at a point in the human project so transformative that past patterns of behavior will be outgrown and we will find ourselves stepping toward a special era such as Berry’s Ecozoic?  These authors and their followers are  asking a lot of a species that has never demonstrated anything near this capacity and exhibits no substantial tendency to move in that direction now.  This is speculative thinking dosed liberally with hope and salted with a bit of bourgeois panic that has become a myth in its own time.  We are, however, what we demonstrably are.  We have a very long history of being us.  We need to encounter that reality and not hope for a mystical transformation.  If we’re going to survive what’s coming we’re going to have to start thinking about who we are and not who we wish we were. 

There is nothing particularly  magnificent or transcendent about humanity.  We are, however, a capable species and it is long past time that we apply those capabilities to reversing the environmental shambles we are creating.  Ecofantasy is not going to stop Ecocaust (1) , only difficult decisions and very hard work.

1. Ecocaust is a term reportedly coined by Mark Budz in his dystopian novel Clade.

Ecofantasy I

Those on the political Right, especially Christian conservatives, have for some time complained that various environmentalisms are actually religions.  They arrive at this conclusion through a variety of theological contortions that I have always rejected.  I still reject the contortions but a recent experience with an unfortunately mediocre and sadly outdated  university graduate seminar has caused me to wonder if the Christian radicals are correct about some of this. 

The seminar had a handful of required readings.  Included among those were Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, David Suzuki’s The Sacred Balance, and Thomas Berry’s The Great Work. The students began with Quinn, then Suzuki, and finished with Berry.  All three authors stress their reliance on the thinking of aboriginal spiritual guides.  One didn’t have to look too hard to see white bourgeois ‘wannabees’ strutting around in loincloths, something that, although rejected by the mainline devotees of these gurus, has actually happened.

In terms of the seminar, if one applied a bit of deconstructive analysis a pattern began to reveal itself.  Quinn’s construct, the gorilla Ishmael, hints at a possibly transcendent humanity.  Suzuki  proposes a flawed but “magnificent” humanity.  Berry confirms that a magnificent, transcendent humanity is quite capable of creating a future history that will take us into a kinder, gentler, greener world.  Read in sequence, one author builds on another until we arrive at a proposed Great Work capable of implementing a new creation or a re-creation of the original creation. Where have we heard that story before? We have heard it from religious leaders throughout history. There is nothing new about this story.

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Life Is Tough II

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Several subspecies of the Desert pupfish (Cyrpinodon nevadensis ssp.) are located in small spring-fed ponds in Ash Meadows. Some subspecies occupy pools about the size of a small living room and this may be the entire habitat for this fish…the only place on Earth where they live-out their precarious existence.  These pools may hold from several hundred to several thousand of these little fish.  It doesn’t take much to make most of these fish ‘happy;’ just a little water with the right chemistry and temperature range and they seem to do quite well.  I cannot tell how many times I have watched the little male pupfish in their blue nuptial colors claim a spot the size of a hand, a scoured-out depression made by a passing feral horse or burro, hold it against other males, attract a female with his colorful ‘dance,’ and spawn.  The entire genetic history of the species is replicated in a depression not much bigger than a small sauce pan, if that big.

I recently saw a television special on the habitat and wildlife surrounding the Chernobyl  nuclear reactor.  Depending on who you listen to, biodiversity is either recovering or on the wane in that radioactive area.   Regardless of what the data show, there does seem to be a robust population of some species. Humans are not allowed to spend much time in the area around Chernobyl.  Is it the absence of humans that makes for the presence of other species? It is ironic to think that biodiversity may be able to exist with exceptionally high radiation counts but not with the human population counts that existed before the reactor meltdown. 

For additional information on some of the species mentioned refer to:

Baugh, T. 1981. Observations on the courtship and reproduction of the desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius. American Currents 7(3):15-18.

Baugh, T.M. 1981. Adapting Salt Creek pupfish (Cyprinodon salinus) to fresh water. Western North American Naturalist 41(3).

Baugh, T.M. and J. E. Deacon. 1983. Daily and yearly movement of the Devil’s Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis Wales in Devil’s Hole, Nevada. Great Basin Naturalist 43(4):592-596.

Baugh, T.M. and J.E. Deacon. 1983. Maintaining the Devil’s Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis Wales in aquaria. J. Aquariculture and Aquatic Sciences 3(4) :73-75.

Baugh, T. M. 1984. In search of the Salt Creek pupfish. Part 1. Freshwater and Marine Aquarium 7 (5): 34-35, 44-45.Baugh, T. M. 1984. In search of the Salt Creek pupfish. Part2. Freshwater and Marine Aquarium  7 (6): 31-33, 54, 56.

Baugh, T.M. and J. E. Deacon. 1988. An evaluation of the role of refugia in conservation efforts for the Devil’s Hole pupfish Cyprinodon diabolis Wales. Zoo Biology 7:351-358.

Life is Tough I

There is more and more being said about the almost continuous discovery of other planets in our galaxy and the number of them that might be able to support life.  I have never doubted that there is life on other planets and have attributed the doubt of others to our human arrogance.  Life on Earth itself is tenacious and resilient.  We find life inhabiting near boiling water in many places, at depths with incredible pressure around the Black Smokers in the deep ocean canyons, and to the near airless regions at the outer edges of the atmosphere

Those of us who have worked in the more difficult and demanding climes around the world know about life’s resilience and tenacity.  Although I have been involved in conservation work with manatees, mangroves, and, most recently, mountain bogs, much of my early work in conservation biology was in the deserts of Utah, Nevada, and Southern California where the nights can be very cold, the days hot as blazes, and fresh water sources few and far between.  What was even more amazing to my friends and relatives was that I was working with fish; small, even tiny fish there in the deserts from the Salton Sea in Southern California, up through the springs and creeks of the mountain valleys of Northern Nevada and Utah, and down to the floor of Death Valley hundred feet below sea level. 

One of these systems, Salt Creek originates in a low range of hills on the floor of Death Valley.  This is the only place in the world that one finds the appropriately named Salt Creek pupfish (Cyprinodon salinus) in a spring-stream complex with water temperatures that reach over 112F in the summer, with salinities much in excess of sea water and with a spring that pumps enough Lithium out to keep a manic-depressive happy for a long time. 

(The comments will be continued in the next posting.)