What Mercy ? (II)

Continued from the previous posting.

Africa is no stranger to the sounds of automatic weapons fire and it is also no stranger to poaching.   Elephants are high on the list of those species slaughtered for profit and this continual massacre is prompted by the desire of some religious adherents to possess religious icons carved from elephant ivory.  

In 2012, the Religion and Conservation Research Collaborative of the Society for Conservation Biology turned its attention to this issue following an article in National Geographic by Bryan Christy titled Blood Ivory.  Christy places the responsibility for the slaughter at the door of Catholicism and Buddhism, in some parts of the world. It is the hope of the Advisory Committee of the Collaborative and others that some influence can be brought to bear on religion at the institutional stage to speak out to their co-religionists to help stop the use of ivory for religious icons and thus reduce the number of elephant who fall victim to the poacher AK-47.

Thinking of the gunshot, deflated, desiccating carcasses of these magnificent and highly intelligent creatures while religious adherents  moan and chant over their extracted molars makes for dark meditation and yet another sobering  indictment of religion.

For additional information on the use of poached ivory as religious icons and the subsequent impacts on elephants go to http://www.conbio.org/policy/scb-statement-on-the-use-of-ivory-for-religious-objects

(Unless otherwise noted images courtesy of Google Images)

What Mercy ? (I)

In July of 2007 I was given permission by the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) to form an exploratory committee to look into the relationships between conservation and religion.  A handful of society members rapidly grew to several hundred and we were granted Working Group status by the SCB (http://www.conbio.org/groups/working-groups/religion-and-conservation-biology). Over the years the Working Group has involved itself in a number of tasks. Most recently those tasks have focused on a religious practice called mercy release and on the use of elephant ivory for religious objects.  I have served on the Advisory Committee for both efforts.

Fang sheng is a practice by Buddhists and Daoists for releasing captive wildlife as an act of compassion. According to SCB’s Religion and conservation Research collaborative, this type of animal release causes “…adverse effects on biodiversity including the spread of invasive species, genetic swamping, extreme animal suffering, competition, vulnerability to predation, disease, and human health concerns.”  The problem isn’t even very complex.  Animals are trapped with the usual high mortality, they are kept captive with the usual high mortality, they are inappropriately released (with the usual high mortality) with expectable impacts on existing wild populations.  All of this takes place in the name of mercy and some form of spiritual redemption.   Again, it doesn’t take great intellect to figure out that there is nothing good going on here…and not much mercy.  As usual, the animal traffickers involved in Fang shen are the only ones making  good on the deal.

For additional information on Fang sheng and SCB efforts to reduce the practice see http://www.conbio.org/science-policy/policy/religion-and-conservation-biology-working-group-policy-position-on-the-rele.

(Image courtesy of Buddhist Channel through Google Images.)

Continued in the next posting.

Playing In The Mud II

 Continued from the previous post

Although it can be fun playing in the mud by yourself, it is often as enjoyable to have friends and colleagues with you.  It was for this reason that in fall of 2012 I posted a message on a couple of scientific lists that I was looking for someone(s) to play in the mud with.  The response was quick and gratifying and within a short time I had gathered dozens and dozens of scientists and practitioners.  We call ourselves the Groundwater Wetland Study Group and I’m in very good company! The focus of the Study Group is on seeps, springs, bogs, fens, and other groundwater-dependent wetland systems.                                Our members are working on projects from thermal wetlands in the American deserts to perched lakes in Tasmania to projects in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The Study Group is an  international organization with members in Nigeria, Romania, Brazil, Vietnam, and The United Kingdom, among a number of other places. Our members represent government on several levels, business, environmentalists, independents, and the academic world.  The Study Group currently hosts a Yahoo Group, and is guided by a Leadership Cadre. 



For additional information on the Groundwater Wetland Study Group contact Tom Baugh at 
springmountain1@att.net.

Playing In The Mud I

Ever since I was a child I have enjoyed playing in the mud. I have played in the mud for six decades ranging from wetlands of various sorts on the West coast of the US to springs in the deserts of Nevada and California to the US Gulf Coast out into the Caribbean and to the mountains of the southern Appalachians. As my wife of 51 years can tell you, I still enjoy playing in the mud.  Now that I am no longer indentured to a 9-5 yoke, I can play in the mud whenever I want. I use the term ‘mud’ loosely. Perhaps playing in the water would better describe my professional interests.  Although there has been a lot of mud in the places I have worked, there have also been some pristine waters…crystal seeps and springs and streams still clear enough to look drinkable (not a good idea these days).

Several posts back I spoke of Bat Fork Bog Plant Conservation Preserve near my home in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina. No crystal seeps or springs there…just mud and a little water and an endangered plant species. My current work has me at the toe of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range in Northwestern Nevada several times each year where thermal springs bubble up from the Genoa Fault filling the air with the smell of sulfur before flowing down slope to help form a backwater wetland to the Carson River.  Water, mud, odors…ah, the stuff of life!

See the next post for information on the Groundwater Wetlands Study Group (springmountain1@att.net).

Coyote Stories II

(Continued from preceding post)

Like many mammals, coyotes like to play with things. The coyotes at the preserve not only liked to play with things but they had a playground in the field right in front of where their tunnel  through the brush opened onto the meadow.  And their playground was strewn with toys.  From somewhere they had, collected a very old plastic container that once held bar and chain oil.  Another favorite was a green soda pop bottle.  They also liked the plastic cap I placed over the shallow pvc well I had installed in one of the basins or ‘pans’  in the heart of the preserve.  I used the well to check the water depth in the shallow basins or pans that wander through the Preserve and the coyotes use the cap as a toy.  If I didn’t put it on securely I was likely to find it almost anywhere in the preserve with the tiny indentations of sharp little coyote teeth all around its perimeter.  (I tried to remember to put it on securely.)   

Another item that seemed to fascinate the coyotes was an amber plastic rain gauge.  I didn’t mind the well cap, after all, just as it was my responsibility to make sure the cap was securely fastened to the well pipe, it was the coyote's responsibility to try to remove the cap.  But the gauge was another matter.  You don't have a bog if you don't have water and you don't understand the bog if you don't understand  how water works in, on, and through the bog.  Consequently, I took weekly precipitation amounts at the bog.   After losing several weeks of data to the coyote's inquisitiveness I placed the rain gauge on a high pole.

The coyote's favorite toy, however, was a plastic yellow duck.  I first discovered this duck nestled among the reed canary grass. It wasn't until the staff began to remove the reed canary grass that the coyotes discovered the plastic duck.  This is not a small toy, nor is it light, so it must have taken some effort to carry it back to the playground and that is where I found it one day among the other toys...the green soda bottle, the black bar and chain oil container, some Styrofoam and the yellow duck, with its head missing.

The coyotes at the preserve were often a highlight of my weekly visits.   Always good for a chuckle and a smile, some times of tolerant frustration, I looked forward to seeing them, catching a glimpse of them as they followed behind me, and hearing them sing.  For some reason the coyotes left the preserve after I’d been there about a year and a half.  It wasn’t long after that I completed my work and moved on. The place just wasn’t the same without the coyotes.

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)

(Continued in the next post)

Bog Days II

(Continued from preceding posting)

 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].