February 25, 2010

Esteros del Ibera—Buenos Aires, Argentina

By Biodiversivist | Posted February 25, 2010

To get to this wildlife preserve from Seattle, fly for about 15 hours to Buenos Aires. Rent a car, load it with your family and drive North toward Brazil for a day or so to a small town called Collinia Carlos Pellegrini where you will find a dirt road. Drive down that dirt road for three hours. Cross a rickety one-lane wooden bridge.

February 17, 2010

Rusties

By Jason M Hogle | Posted February 17, 2010

Crossposted from xenogere

What happened to all the rusties? I’m speaking of rusty blackbirds (Euphagus carolensis). While no one was looking over the past 40 years, the entire population declined 85%-99% throughout North America. That’s a catastrophic collapse.

January 28, 2010

‘The birding community’ hates birds: Pishing and Tape-Luring - Part 2

By Jason M Hogle | Posted January 28, 2010

Crossposted from xenogere

Energy cost, increased conspecific and intraspecific confrontations and interactions, and disruption of normal activity. These mean one thing: forced stress and aggression. That represents the combined general impact on individual birds when they respond to pishing or tape-luring. Any call used to bring birds out of hiding must elicit the same natural responses that would coincide with the call were it issued by another bird. For example, alarm calls must produce stress and aggression along with the correlative hormones that define those states. A challenger call would likewise produce the same physiological response. In truth, any call utilized must produce a physiological response in every bird that hears it regardless of whether or not they respond to it in person, and those who do respond to it must likewise take part in a compulsory meeting with other birds who respond. That is a meeting we can scarcely predict or control. Also, birds reacting to the calls must expend energy and must stop engaging in natural behavior in order to respond. So let us then turn to the existing science with hope of understanding how these practices can produce, in Professor Daniel J. Mennill’s words, “longlasting and far-reaching effects on individual fitness.”

January 11, 2010

‘The birding community’ hates birds: Introduction

By Jason M Hogle | Posted January 11, 2010

Crossposted from xenogere

In 2009 I made a dedicated effort to participate actively in “the birding community.” This is something I had not done before. Though I am one of the most successful birders in Texas—by statistics alone, I saw and photographed more than 430 species in 2009, a number that easily ranks as the second-best birder in the state—I had never before opted to report my sightings, to send rare bird alerts to those who might be interested, or to seek out and participate in local, statewide, national and international forums and groups.

November 10, 2009

Stop the NRA’s assault on condors

By Chris Clarke | Posted November 10, 2009

Crossposted from Coyote Crossing

Photo by Just Chaos

The National Rifle Association is gunning for America’s largest and most endangered bird—the condor.

Calling us “extremists” for trying to stop the poisoning of condors by lead bullets — inside a federal national monument, no less — the NRA is pitting its multimillion-dollar legal team against our lawyers in a showdown that will determine whether condors survive or disappear forever.

October 27, 2009

Biodiversions: Quaking Aspen

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted October 27, 2009

Crossposted from Yips and Howls

This time of year, I’m one of many throughout the West enthralled by – and worried about - one of our most striking fall color trees: Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides ). Utah and Colorado have acres and acres of aspens. In northeast Oregon, we have smaller groves dotting the more prevalent bunchgrass slopes and ponderosa pine forests.

October 9, 2009

“Worst Salmon-Killing Dam on Rogue River” Completely Removed

By Chris Clarke | Posted October 9, 2009

Rogue River returns to original streambed for first time in 88 years

Oakland, CA — The last pieces of the Savage Rapids Dam, widely regarded as the worst fish-killer on Oregon’s Rogue River, are being removed today. The river will be restored to its natural bed for the first time in 88 years, just in time for the Fall run of coho salmon.

The demolition is the direct result of a lawsuit Earthjustice attorneys Mike Sherwood and Claudia Polsky participated in on behalf of WaterWatch of Oregon. WaterWatch waged a two-decade campaign to remove the dam. Removal of the dam opens access to 500 miles of spawning and rearing habitat for Rogue River salmon.

October 3, 2009

Faking the Indian Wars Again

By Chris Clarke | Posted October 3, 2009

Crossposted from Coyote Crossing

There’s a lot of superficial reporting coming out of Indian Country in northern Arizona this week, with headlines like “Hopi to Environmentalists: Keep Out” emblazoned upon them. The immediate reason is that the Hopi Tribal Council has specifically disinvited the Sierra Club, the NRDC, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Grand Canyon Trust from the Hopi Reservation.

September 30, 2009

Court Rules That Southern California Forest Plans Violate Federal Environmental Laws

By Chris Clarke | Posted September 30, 2009

Crossposted from Calitics

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal district court judge ruled late Tuesday that U.S. Forest Service management plans for four Southern California national forests did not adequately protect those forests’ wildest landscapes.

In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel agreed with seven environmental groups that the Forest Service failed to assess cumulative damage to those national forests that would be caused by piecemeal road building and other development in most of the forests’ roadless areas, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

February 4, 2010

Obama Administration Denies American Pika Endangered Species Act Protection

By Chris Clarke | Posted February 4, 2010

Today the Obama administration denied Endangered Species Act protection to the American pika, a small mountain-dwelling mammal that is on the frontlines of global-warming-driven endangerment. The decision, issued by Interior Secretary Salazar, comes in response to a scientific petition submitted in 2007 by the Center for Biological Diversity, represented by Earthjustice.

January 21, 2010

‘The birding community’ hates birds: Pishing and Tape-Luring - Part 1

By Jason M Hogle | Posted January 21, 2010

Crossposted from xenogere

In Fiji’s Pacific Harbor, tourists hold their noses as dive boats pour hundreds of pounds of discarded fish scraps into the ocean. This “chumming the water” as it’s called brings in sea life from miles around, including various kinds of sharks. And sharks are precisely what the tourists have paid to see. Yet biologists the world over state time and again that this constant activity will no doubt have an impact on normal shark behavior, and that the conditioning will lead the sharks and other wildlife into a downward spiral of abnormal activity. But one thing the tourists pay for is results, and unloading all that smelly refuse into the tank definitely brings in the sharks.

But was has this to do with birds? That answer rests in two activities: pishing and tape-luring. Together or apart, they represent the birding community’s equivalent of chumming the water.

November 20, 2009

Biodiversions: Western Larch

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted November 20, 2009

Crossposted from Yips and Howls

It was hard to leave our yurt in northeastern Oregon with Western larch (Larix occidentalis) at peak color. But when the flanks of the mountains there blaze with what looks like a procession of candles, it’s time to get ready for a harsh winter or move to lower elevations.

November 3, 2009

Montreal’s BIXI Bike System: 1 Season, 1 Million Rides

By Beth Adams | Posted November 3, 2009

Crossposted from The Cassandra Pages

For me, the bike represents both exercise and freedom - it’s so wonderful not to have the hassle of a car, having to find parking spots, and then being tied to that spot rather than able to roam around freely. We’re going from owning two cars to one that we use fairly infrequently, and saving substantial amounts of money as well as feeling like we’re doing our bit for greenness. In spite of being a city where cycling is difficult or impossible for four months out of the year, Montreal does a great deal to support and encourage it, extending bike paths and this year starting the BIXI program for short commutes, and I’m grateful.

October 26, 2009

Remiss and remorse

By Jason M Hogle | Posted October 26, 2009

I have been remiss. A dereliction not so much because I stopped caring, but more because I cared too much. About myself. About my family. About my future.

Does a mother with skin cancer stop the world from needing protection? Does unemployment mean I can no longer tend the flock of biophilia? Does a father’s battle with tumors and failing health, both circling him closer to the flame, somehow relieve me of the beauty I need share and the call to action I need sound?

Nay, I have been remiss. In a depression once reserved for the fate of our planet due to uncaring masses, I let myself become lost in pity. Pity for me. Pity for family. Pity for my cares and needs. But no more.

October 7, 2009

Suit Filed Over Bighorn Sheep Habitat

By Chris Clarke | Posted October 7, 2009

Crossposted from DesertBlog

SAN DIEGO, Calif.— Conservation groups today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for slashing critical habitat protections for the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep. In April 2009, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reduced its 2001 habitat designation of 844, 897 acres to just 376,938 acres – a more-than 55-percent reduction. The flawed designation is unsupported by the agency’s own science and was made to accommodate urban sprawl. Today’s lawsuit challenging it was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Desert Protective Council, Desert Survivors, and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society.

The Clade’s Twitter machine works again.

By Chris Clarke | Posted October 3, 2009

Just a note to contributors. If you didn’t know The Clade had a twitter feed, it’s at twitter.com/theclade. This site should now post an alert to Twitter when you post a new entry— as long as your title isn’t very long.)