The Field

How we can beat weeds

A method occured to me the other day about how we could actually win the battle against weeds (and other invasive species) if we really wanted to.  All we have to do is restructure our economy, so that instead of being built to serve humans, the economy is focused on serving nature.  Then IPM would be a major industry, employing tens of thousands of people in the Denver area alone, and instead of a few small weed crews watching in frustration as weeds take over even as they battle valiantly to stem the tide, we'd see weeds steadily cut back, until, a few generations from now, they wouldn't be a problem at all.

Let Trapping Die

Sunday’s Denver Post featured a picture of an old man wearing a dead coyote’s skin on his head and an accompanying article about current attempts by trappers in Colorado to get permission to trap minks, martens, long-tailed weasels, short-tailed weasels (ermine), swift foxes, grey foxes, opossums, ringtails, and western spotted skunks.  These are all illegal to trap in Colorado because the Colorado Wildlife Commission ended the commercial harvest of them in 1995 and Coloradans voted to ban trapping in 1996.  Leg-hold traps, lethal body-gripping traps, snares and poisons were all banned, but not baited cages, “box traps,” a loophole that, along with provisions for “nuisance” animals, has allowed trapping to survive, and coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and others are still trapped. 

Trapping was the white man’s first industry in Colorado, with beavers providing the raw materials for stylish hats back east, and the trapper in the article, whom the article identifies as a “wildlife biologist” says the animals, “are flourishing.  There’s no reason we shouldn’t trap some of them.”  Isn’t there, though?  Trapping bottomed out in the 1830’s because beavers were nearly extinct and the hats went out of fashion.  Good riddance.  Romantic allusions to mountain men aside, the reason we shouldn’t do it now is because it’s cruel and unnecessary.  “I believe in utilizing wildlife,” he says, and that’s the problem – trapping and skinning animals reduces them to a resource, something to be used, like oil or aluminum (not that the landscapes that those come from should simply be seen as resources either).  Talking about the high demand for beautiful bobcat fur – 12 are needed for a single jacket – ignores the fact that these animals have lives of their own, and trapping would take their lives for nothing better than the trapper’s enjoyment of killing and for someone’s vanity. 

Furthermore, there are only 350 members of the trapping association – such a minority should not be allowed to overturn an amendment approved by the majority of Colorado voters.  An interesting observation reported by the article is the trapper's belief that killing with traps is no crueler than hunting elk with a rifle.  Yes, if killing cruelly with traps for fun and ego are wrong, perhaps killing cruelly with rifles for fun and ego are wrong also.  Perhaps it is a sign of moral progress that sport hunting is declining in popularity.  Trapping, for that matter, has been fading in Colorado for 175 years.  Let it die.

Response to “The Unjust War against Population”

In this essay Jacqueline Kasun argues that the popular belief that human population growth endangers human wellbeing is overblown, that the arguments for it are irrational and not supported by evidence, and that, in fact, population growth is a good thing.  She says that contrary to dire predictions, economic growth and standards of living have only increased as the population has increased, and that mineral and energy resources are essentially unlimited, not growing scarcer.  She says that arguments for population control are socialist in nature, and that market economics provide a better way of dealing with scarcity.  She also chides those who fear increasing populations for being misanthropic – rather than too many people, “what the population alarmists really mean is that there are too many other people for their tastes, or for those who prefer solitude.”  Hunger is not a serious problem and the earth is capable of supporting many more people – 35, or 40 billion, perhaps 100 billion on a Japanese diet.  Human labor and ingenuity are resources that increase with population, and the economy benefits in many ways.  If natural resources are limited, “The limits are so far beyond the levels of our present use of resources as to be nearly invisible.”  Not only is there no problem, things are going great, and will only get better.

Kasun’s essay is provocative, and lays out the Cornucopian argument well.  If she’s right, then there’s really no need for me to attend my Environmental Ethics class or have any concern for the environment because everything is just going extremely well.  More people equal more resources for generating wealth, so things couldn’t be better!  The problem I see in the cornucopian view is in the economic abstraction of its argument.  She talks about absolute volume of humans versus absolute volume of resources on the earth’s crust and sees no problem.  Everyone could fit into Texas, or even have standing room in an area smaller than Jacksonville, Florida.  But what does that mean?  Does a figure like that have any relevancy whatsoever?  I know I’m not moving to Texas.  We spread out, and we affect a much larger land area than we actually occupy – resources are extracted from unoccupied lands, the disturbance from building a road extends over a much broader area than the road itself; our pollution travels through the air and across the world’s oceans, currents carry our trash to the shores of uninhabited islands, etc. 

The rosy prediction of preserving nearly half the world’s land area while supporting a population of 35-100 billion does not say which lands would be preserved or used.  It would seem the protected 50% would have to be the most unproductive and uninhabitable regions – Antarctica, Greenland, the Sahara (regions which also happen to support the least biodiversity) because that many people would require most of the world’s tropical and temperate land for settlement and agriculture.  Would there be any forests or grasslands remaining?  True, there is enough coal that we could burn it for another thousand years or more.  But burning coal throws mercury, among other things, into the atmosphere, which ends up on the land and in the water and accumulates in animals – there’s already so much of it in fish that eating certain species has become inadvisable for children and pregnant women. 

Kasun’s argument (and the cornucopian viewpoint in general) doesn’t even mention endangered species, because doing so would mean admitting that we are causing real problems, that population growth is creating habitat destruction and over exploitation of many species, and that their purely anthropocentric model would lead to the extinction of most of the worlds endangered species (if not most of its animals and plants in general) many of whom require large, relatively undisturbed wildernesses to survive.  And what quality of life could humans expect in such a world?  A maximum agricultural output across the globe might be able to sustain that many people, but at what standard of living?  Having lost most of the beauty and diversity of nature, would people be happy with SUV's and iPods, and could such items even be produced for so many without creating such an overload of pollution and environmental devastation that even the people of the global megalopolis would not be able to survive? I think the question is not so much whether we could generate 100 billion humans, but whether we should want to. 

In defense of the bladderpod

The Dudley Bluffs bladderpod is a small plant endemic to the Piceane Basin in Rio Blanco County, Colorado.  It was only discovered in the early 1980's and listed as endangered around 1990.  Its existence is now threatened by the expansion of oil and gas exploration in Colorado's Western Slope. 

...Who cares?

The Dudley Bluffs bladderpod is a small plant, not cute or lovable except perhaps to a botanist or extreme naturephile.  It does not appear to be a keystone, umbrella, or indicator species for its ecosystem; its presence is not of overwhelming importance to its environment or many other species.  It has no known economic or medicinal value.  A careless hiker might step on one without even noticing, and the fact that it wasn't even discovered until the 1980's is a testament to its relative smallness and insignificance.  Why bother trying to protect it?

Here's why.  For one thing, it is noble and good to defend the small, innocent and defenseless.  The bladderpod is all of those things.  In fact, the best reason to protect the bladderpod is precisely that it is useless.  What "good" is the bladderpod?  None whatsoever.  It doesn't do anything for us.  It has no economic value now, and probably never will.  You could buy and sell them for a penny, but why would you, they're worthless.  But -- and here is audacious nobility -- we want to save them anyway.  Because they don't need to do anything for us to be valuable.  Because they are a little beauty of their own, whether we recognize it or not, and we ought to protect beauty everywhere.  Because they're a part of Colorado's natural heritage.  Because they're a unique bit of life, a part of life on earth, and they deserve a fair chance at existence. 

The Dudley Bluffs baldderpod could become a flagship species for arguments for the intrinsic value of life.  Arguing these sorts of things before decision makers with money at stake might not yield funding, or stop drilling pads from being constructed.  The bladderpod might go extinct.  But what if you made such a ruckus along the way that it turned a few heads, got a few people thinking about nature in terms other than how they can make money off of it?  What if the bladderpod's legacy were to start the ball rolling toward evolving our outlook on nature, toward a majority of people recognizing and genuinely considering the intrinsic value of life?  In some Utopian future, there might be an odd looking granite monument in Denver somewhere, inscribed, "Here lies the Dudley Bluffs bladderpod, a little plant that changed our philosophy."

Long live the bladderpod!

At the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

On the way to the museum for an Arctic and Alpine Ecology field trip Sunday, my professor noticed the same 100+ acre development that's been bothering me lately.  He said that when he first drove from Denver to Boulder in 1969, there was nothing between, no development.  I've seen so much of it in my short memory that I think I can almost imagine that. 

The museum was amazing.  I hadn't been there in years (why hadn't I been there in years?).  There's nothing like walking in the doors and being confronted by a raging tyrannosaurus about to step on you.  I've always wanted to be a dinosaur.  We looked at the many wildlife exhibits -- North America, Colorado (alpine Colorado animals and arctic animals were our focus, of course) Africa, South America and elsewhere.  Dozens of beautiful dioramas.  Prof said these are some of the best in the world, and I believe it.  The foregrounds are busy with intricate detail, creating a wilderness scene of plants and animals in addition to the main animals, and the backgrounds are painted with photographic detail.  The 3-D effect is almost disorienting; it's like looking out a bay window into the actual places.  And the animals are right there.  Elk, deer, sheep, goats and other ungulates of various species (the hartbeast (if I remember the name correctly) in the African exhibit has one of the most strangely shaped heads of any creature I've ever seen) and all sorts of gorgeous carnivores.  There were lots of bears -- black, brown, grizzly, and polar, including the incredible "glacier blue" black bears and white "Kermodes" black bears -- lynx, wolverines (where else will you see a pair up close?) mink, martens (very cool; one of them looked like a little bear!) lions, maned wolves (which are more like giant, cool looking foxes) and wolves.  They have lots of marine mammals -- sea lions, seals and walruses.  The walruses and elephant seals are enormous.  Bull elephant seals apparently get up to 8000 pounds, about a ton heavier than a hummer (probably get better gas mileage, too).

I could stare at the wolves for the better part of a day.  They're in hilly, snowy tundra, with glaciated mountains in the background.  In the distance, a small caribou herd can be seen, and the pack is clearly intent on them.  They're so beautiful.  At the lion diorama, one of my mature, undergraduate colleagues had a small outburst, declaring to the class how when she was a kid she wished to be a lion when she grew up, and if she could be anything she'd be a lioness, and she wishes she was a lion.  I felt the same, staring at the wolves, and might have made a similar declaration if I were less shy.  (Of course, if I got my wish I'd probably be shot to death, along with the rest of my pack, after being run to exhaustion by a helicopter, in order to artificially increase the elk heard so that the human hunters would have more to shoot at, but that's another issue.)  It's too cheesy to suggest that the museum makes you feel like a kid, but if you love animals how could you not be excited? 

This comes to the troublesome part.  The animals, wolves, bears and all, are dead, shot and stuffed and put on display.  If you love animals, how could you not be sickened?  I've decided that these museum displays are not morally offensive, at least not as much as their nearest analog, zoos.  Most of these dioramas, the prof pointed out, were made in the 1920's, and they generally aren't made any more because they're so expensive and time consuming (it can take years to prepare one, shaping and painting thousands of blades of metallic grass and such).  So the museum display gives the same benefit as the zoo -- that is, education and getting up close to the animals, making them more "real" to people and instilling a greater sense of value in their existence -- while sacrificing only a relatively small number of animals, and only once, to do so.  The zoo will sacrifice generation after generation of animals, making them live in unnatural conditions in small enclosures.  The museum animals do not suffer this indignity.  They would if forced into sensational, bear-rug poses, but they are not.  They are all done very tastefully, displaying a frozen image of natural beauty that only the most fortunate of people will ever see in the wild (this is almost surprising, given their age; I'd expect the wolves to be portrayed as snarling, red-eyed monsters, but fortunately they are not). 

Zoos can claim the further benefit of captive breeding programs to propagate endangered species and the fact that watching a live animal is probably slightly more enlightening than studying a dead one, but at the museum you are guaranteed to actually see the animals, which are often out of view at the zoo, and to see them much closer than you would at a zoo.  In either case, the fun of the experience is undeniable.  Maybe they're both necessary evils.  So long as the museum doesn't make a practice of using rifles to collect more "specimens" I can recommend it wholeheartedly and enthusiastically.  I still have mixed feelings about zoos.  Besides, zoos don't have dinosaurs.  Yet.  When they do, I'll be there, ethics of cloning/time travel procedures be damned. 

On our way out, we got to walk through the Prehistoric Journey exhibit.  I tarried so long I was left behind and became momentarily lost (another "kid" experience).  Luckily the group didn't leave without me.  Mommy, I want to be an Allosaurus when I grow up. 

Lost fields

I saw a fox at the Broomfield park-n-ride the other day, trotting through the tall grass near the parking lot.  He might have been chased up there, since the bulk of the local habitat, a hundred acres or more, is now being ground up for some big development.  That land made a nice buffer between Westminster and Broomfield, and was home to prairie dogs and more.  From the park-n-ride on the hill, I watched the earth movers follow each other around in big circles; the grass is ground to dirt, soon to be covered with asphalt and concrete.  This is the latest of a number of fields that have been destroyed/developed recently within a few miles of my house, including a 20-30 acre area near Standley Lake and an equally sized area a half mile to the east.  Both hosted prairie dog colonies.  A few years ago I'd be enraged, but it's easy to feel helpless and resigned after a while.  A few places get protected, others get bulldozed.  It kind of sucks.

Introduction

Subtle hills – long, tan, grassy – rippled out from the foot of what would be called Colorado’s Front Range.  It was the western edge of the Great Plains, and the field was as unresolved as any drop in the sea, as any few acres in that ocean of grass.  Bison may have grazed here; wolves and blond grizzlies may have loped through.  That would have been wholly unremarkable before this place became a speck on a map, before there were any maps, before the place was defined.

Now, it is a field.  A roughly 25 acre stretch of land along an artificial creek, surrounded on every side by urban development, crisscrossed by trails and sporting more weeds than native grasses.  Its southern border is defined by a short, steep hill and the fencing on top – people’s back yards, and the chain link fence of an elementary school.  On the west, down the hill, the creek is squeezed by little league baseball fields, while uphill sits the neighborhood park and swimming pool.  The north boundary is 106th Avenue.  The east is defined by more back yards, a developed park, and a high school.

As an ecosystem, it’s about as disturbed as one can get, an infinitesimal fragment isolated from a hugely fragmented whole.  No bison will ever set hoof here again.  Instead, scores of people every day stroll, walk dogs, ride bikes, or head to school and back.  It exists for recreation, and to provide a handy shortcut to one school or the other, one park or the other.  And it does those things very well.  Yet it still manages to support a few beautiful vestiges of nature.  Songbirds perch on the cattails.  Hawks come through in season, looking for lunch from a small colony of prairie dogs.  Bats dance in summer evenings, gobbling mosquitoes.  A family of foxes dens on the hill, feeding on field mice and prairie dogs.  There are a few great old cottonwoods, probably some stealthy raccoons, and even a transient coyote or two.  Did I mention the prairie dogs?

My stake in the area is both emotional and intellectual.  It’s a part of my home, my backyard, and part of my psyche comes from there and resides there; I love it and the animals and plants that live there; I find beauty there.  I’ve also come to see it, by what people have done to it and do to it – by people’s relationship with it – as a microcosm of larger socio-environmental issues in which I am interested. 

So I feel compelled to observe the place and record those observations, and I have for several years.  My journal’s first entries were very brief, “fox tracks in fresh snow; raptor,” for instance, but have grown increasingly detailed.  I’ll recount all my previous entries to bring things up to speed, and go from there.

The Field

If I hop my back fence, I'm in the field.  When I was a kid, this was the vast, wild frontier.  My frontier.  My kingdom. 

Since then, the frontier's gotten smaller and I've been demoted.  Nowadays I'm relegated to the position of official trash collector.  I'm not the king anymore, but maybe the new job comes with a new and better title: Steward.  That's what I want to be -- a steward of the land.  I love this little field.

This log will chronicle my experiences in the field, and maybe some thoughts on related ecological subjects. I've also got all these pictures I've taken, and I'll try to scan and upload some.  It's only a small field, but a lot can happen there.