Revelations?

Is the sudden flurry of recent news reports on the "aflockalypse" keeping anyone else awake at night? My eco-insomnia started on New Year's Day with a chilling story of 5,000 blackbirds falling from the Arkansas sky, and it seems like every time I turn on my TV nowadays, there's another report of mysterious mass wildlife deaths. We're barely a week into this new year, and already we've got reports of species turning up dead in Kentucky and Arkansas and Sweden, in numbers of Biblical proportions. And it's not just birds; dead fish have washed up on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, dead crabs were found littering a beach in Britain... what (or who!) is next?

So what's going on here? Is our civilization being punished once more with a series of plagues? Did the Mayans correctly predict the coming of the end of days? Or is there something to the many conspiracy theories floating around, warning of covert government operations and chemical/biological warfare testing and the like?

Even though I'm exhausted, my judgement isn't clouded enough to buy into any of these crazy conspiracy theories, and I suspect that the day after the Mayans say the Earth will end will be remarkably similar to January 1st, 2000 (judgement day for Y2K); surprisingly uneventful despite all the hype. Nor do I entirely believe the reports that are telling us not to worry because scientists have decided that the blackbirds in Arkansas were literally scared to death by New Year's Eve fireworks the night before. I am worried, and I don't think the real answer is as simple as the (sometimes conflicting) news reports would lead us to believe!

I resolved not to spend another sleepless night speculating about the disturbing events of recent days, but to instead try and find a more logical explanation. So I turned on the Internet, set my common sense filter to "high", and started searching reputable biological and environmental sites. And here is what I found: sudden mass wildlife deaths are nothing new, nor are they uncommon. The U.S. Geological survey actually keeps a running tally of all reported die-offs here. In fact, scientists believe the species-specific deaths are more common than even this chart shows (as they think most die-offs go unreported) and that the media coverage (not the deaths themselves) is the only thing that has changed in recent days.

In reading through this chart, I see that most of the species on this list are birds, but that the suspected causes of death vary. While trauma is listed quite frequently, so are a number of various diseases. And I know (even from my limited training in biology and ecology) that toxins/pollutants and loss of habitat are other contributing factors. That in itself should give us plenty to worry about; I read somewhere else that as many as one in six species of birds are in danger of becoming extinct!

What's more, animals often succumb to disease, pollution, and other environmental factors long before humans. Some scientists suspect that these dead animals are the "canaries" in our proverbial coal mine, and it's high time we stop and listen. Just as animals can predict and detect severe weather and instinctively know when to take cover, many human diseases start in wildlife populations (bird flu, swine flu... these aren't just cute names!). If we want to stop their problems from becoming our problems down the road, we need to work to protect the environment we all share; humans are not immune!

The beauty of biodiversity is that every creature plays a vital role. We may not know what purpose each species serves in relation to our own existence, but we don't want to find out after they're gone... Sweet dreams!

Climate Change Exhibit

I practically skipped down to the Museum Campus last week to take advantage of one of the Field Museum's free days, which means reduced-price admission to their normally pricey special exhibits! I've been meaning to go see the Climate Change exhibit (as well as the robotic dinosaurs, which were very cool) all summer, as I'd heard so many good things about it that I wanted to see it for myself.

In my excitement, I arrived at the museum shortly after it opened, and had the entire Climate Change exhibit practically to myself. So I took my time meandering through the aisles, crammed floor to ceiling with historic facts, photos, meteorological diagrams, and flow charts, reading both the interest-piquing tidbits and the heavier scientific evidence behind the findings presented.

Of all the information presented, my only beef with the presentation was with the giant stuffed polar bear picking its way over a mound of garbage. I found the display to be apocalyptic and over the top; the present facts are scary enough, there's no need to make wild predictions about the future.

Although the subject matter was still alarming, it was not alarmist by any means, and I was pleased as punch to see no partisan politics in play whatsoever (which, in my opinion, is exactly as it should be!). The exhibit did exactly what exhibits do best, and that is to present the facts in a clear and concise manner. It's funny, but without partisan rhetoric and cliche talking points, skeptics have a much harder time arguing with the facts!

And the fact is that our planet is getting warmer. The all-encompassing takeaway I left with is that, while the rising temps may be due in part to the natural cycle of the Earth (take heart, skeptics!), our habits and actions as a society certainly aren't helping matters and may in fact be making things worse (hug a tree, hippies!). The exhibit left visitors with a sense of hope, detailing how a few small actions by many could change the trajectory of our future, because the health of the environment and the health of all species (humans are not immune!) are inexorably linked.

Stearns Quarry Wetlands

I learned of this ecological gem while waiting on the Roosevelt el platform, of all places. The CTA has TV screens at some of the larger stations that encourage passengers to explore different areas of the city by mass transit, by showcasing certain attractions near different el stops. Advertised as being just steps from the Halsted Orange Line station and bus hub, I hopped a train to the south side and spent a morning wandering through one of the Park District's newest open areas and wetlands restoration sites.

The site of this abandoned stone quarry lies just southeast of the Stevenson Expressway, but despite its proximity to such a major vehicle thoroughfare, the quarry is surprisingly tranquil. The topographical variation itself is reason enough to visit; the mound of unused land left by the site's previous industry is now a grass-covered hill, criss-crossed by paved pedestrian walkways, and the mining pit has been filled with water and stocked with native fish and aquatic plants.

The walkway into the park is lined with large stones, a reminder of what the land was once used for, and the water's source is at the site of the quarry's old well. It circles the well in a growing spiral trench until it reaches the edge of the pavement and meanders down the hill into the quarry pit below. Sedges and tall grasses have already taken root in the fertile soils lining the newly formed stream, and should be completely grown in by next summer. Although the fishing area is not yet open to the public, residents are already taking advantage of the open space; runners were tackling one of the largest hills in the city and families were picnicking atop giant boulders.

After I toured the wetlands, I briefly considered continuing south on Halsted to lunch in (and explore) the Bronzeville neighborhood, but was skeptical of the neighborhood that lay in between, so I (somewhat reluctantly) hopped back on the train and made my way north. Kudos to the Park District and the Transit Authority, however, for enticing me to visit a part of the city I wouldn't otherwise have considered!

Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk

With the end of summer looming, I packed my camera, field guides, and water bottle and headed down to Lincoln Park to see the Nature Boardwalk, which opened in June. The park's South Pond had been under construction for more than a year, with bulldozers and backhoes tearing out the old and making way for the new, native ecosystem. About the only wildlife remaining from the old pond is a colony of endangered herons (in fact, construction was scheduled around their breeding season), as all of the non-native fish that had once called it home had to be destroyed (because it's illegal to release non-native species into local waterways).

The pond was filled and surrounded by regional vegetation and stocked with native minnows, bluegill, turtles, and other wildlife. Filtration systems were installed in the pond to keep the water's pH as close to a naturally formed pond as possible. An island in the middle of the pond and ledges under the bridges were meant to

encourage swallows and other non-aquatic species to take up residence as well.

As much as I enjoyed my stroll around the pond's perimeter, I think the habitat will be far more impressive in a couple of years.

The newly transplanted sedges, grasses, and wildflowers will need time to take root and grow tall enough to cover the ground, and once the vegetation is established, even more species will come to settle in this ecological sanctuary. It was definitely worth the el fare, though!

Dawn Saves Wildlife

Reason #37492751 to read the fine print: buying Dawn dish washing liquid in and of itself does not save wildlife like the cute little otter pictured on the front of these bottles. Consumers have to enter the long numerical code (printed in white on the lower back side of each bottle) and place of purchase at the web site listed in microscopic lettering underneath the claim that $1.00 from each purchase will go toward saving wildlife.

Once I finally sat down to claim my $2.00 in donations to this timely and worthwhile cause, it only took a minute, but it made me wonder how many people take even that much time to follow through on this extra step, or if they read the fine print at all.

I've been fighting an overwhelming urge to take my Dawn dish washing liquid, along with my pink-and-brown plaid Wellies, yellow rubber gloves, and an animal carrier down to the Gulf shores, and to just start catching and cleaning oil-covered animals. As much as I would like to be fighting the good fight on the front lines-- from the marshlands of Louisiana to the once-white, sandy beaches of Florida-- it's simply not a feasible option at this time. Entering a product code into a web site, however, is.

Living Downstream

Sandra Steingraber, ecologist, cancer survivor, and fellow Illinois Wesleyan (and U of M) alum, made the University's news page today because a documentary has just been made about her book, Living Downstream. I took a May Term class with Steingraber back in 1997, right after her book had been published. The ecology class focused heavily on her area of research, which linked environmental contamination (toxins that include chemicals, heavy metals, and industrial and agricultural wastes, to name a few) to cancer. And, quite frankly, it was fascinating.

Steingraber first became interested in the environmental causes of cancer when, as an IWU student, she was diagnosed with a rare bladder cancer at age 20. Casual onlookers could attribute her disease to bad genes, because her mom developed breast cancer in her 40s, and an aunt had died of the same type of bladder cancer with which Steingraber was diagnosed. But she was adopted; genetics had nothing to do with it.

When Steingraber began researching this book, she collected a great deal of already-recorded data, which had just been made available to the public under the newly passed Right-To-Know Act, and started connecting the dots. She grew up in central Illinois, just like I did, but she lived in a rural town along the Illinois River. With her home town being as small as it was, it seemed like a disproportionate number of its citizens had some form of cancer. So she made her way "upstream", so to speak, and identified industrial waste dumps, agricultural run-off sites, chemical incinerators, and coal-burning facilities as the sources of the toxins that wound up in the water of her town downstream. Because none of these things are unusual to find in the Midwest, further research revealed just what she suspected: her town was not unique.

Yes, her book is full of the names of various chemicals and contaminants that have found their ways into our food, water, air, and soil. But by intertwining this scientific data with her personal story of cancer and survival (as well as a clear and concise writing style), she makes years of intense research (or scientific gobbledy-gook, to us non-brainiacs) not only palatable, but relatively easy to understand. Critics, doctors, and environmentalists alike have hailed her book as "the Silent Spring of our generation", but let me assure you... having read both, Steingraber's novel is a much more enjoyable read.

On the first day of class, Sandra Steingraber used a parable to depict the backwards way in which we are going about treating cancer patients. She told the story of residents in a small town who noticed more and more people getting caught in the current of a nearby river and drowning. The townspeople invented all of these pricey and elaborate ways to rescue and resuscitate the drowning victims, but no one thought to venture upstream to stop whoever was pushing these victims into the river in the first place. And so it is with environmental contamination.

More than a decade later, the specifics of this class are a bit fuzzy in my head, but I know for certain that Steingraber's passion and enthusiasm for her work is what first got me interested in matters of nature and the environment. I also remember learning about Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs), or the amount of each chemical that is allowed to remain in our drinking water. Anything at or under these levels is considered to be safe... more or less. There was an MCL Cafeteria in my hometown at the time, which I thought was a surprisingly inappropriate name for a restaurant. If any of those stores still exist, do yourself a favor and eat somewhere else... unless you know for a fact that MCL stands for something else. Yikes!

My take-away from this one-month course, which involved more reading, studying and research than any other class I had taken before (or have taken since), was that we can greatly reduce the number of "suspected carcinogens" (cigarettes were "suspected carcinogens" for decades before the Supreme Court passed their definitive ruling on the matter, which has upgraded them to plain old carcinogens) in our environment if-- and only if-- we make a fundamental shift in the way in which we dispose of our waste and operate our businesses, both in the industrial and agricultural fields. Regardless of what the news tells us, we can't avoid these environmental contaminants just by individual lifestyle changes; change has to come from upstream.



Here is the schedule of upcoming screenings of her film. If it comes to your area, I strongly encourage you to go see it. You can thank me later!

Asian Carp Video

Guess what, everybody? I finally figured out how to upload video content to my blog! Huzzah! This is a short clip showing just how gross and nasty these Asian carp can be, which I tried to include in a previous post but failed. So watch the video now, and remember to watch your head the next time you're out on the river-- yuck!

Seeding the Clouds

When we woke up to a veritable snow storm on our last day in Beijing, having enjoyed pleasant 70-degree weather just the day before, I was baffled. I later learned that the clouds had been "seeded" earlier in the week, which supposedly induces rainfall. I didn't know what that meant. In fact, I hadn't even heard of this practice until it backfired on the first of this month, spoiling our last day of vacation, and causing an international stir by creating one of the earliest Beijing snowfalls on record. But it turns out that cloud seeding is nothing new, and when it comes to the controversial practice (to say the least!) of messing with the weather patterns, China is leading the way.

In one 2006 report, the Chinese government spends about $50 million (USD) a year in their attempts to control the weather. (Current estimates are as high as $90 million!) It is estimated that China sends cloud-seeding aircraft on roughly 700 missions per year, loaded with a comparable number of rockets and artillery shells that are filled with chemicals such as silver iodide and mixed with dry ice. These rockets are then shot into the atmosphere in hopes that the chemical particulates released will aid in the formation of water vapor, which will then fall to the Earth as rain.

Although China has had a moderate amount of success with this practice, bringing much needed rain to drought-stricken areas and helping to extinguish raging forest fires in remote regions of the country, the path that they are heading down is a slippery slope indeed. Rumor has it that they made attempts to ensure sunny, favorable weather for the Summer Olympics, which were held in Beijing just last summer, by using this practice to coax rainfall out of any potentially moisture-rich clouds headed toward Beijing, inducing the rain to fall prematurely so as not to ruin their moments in the spotlight. I couldn't find any proof of whether this worked, though, or if it's even true. The skies were sunny, sure, but Beijing has been suffering from a nearly decade-long drought, so the scientists' claims may be more arrogant than they are accurate.

So arrogant, in fact, that they've done it again; created an unseasonal snowstorm that has, according to an article published today, already killed 40. In China's defense, they're not the only ones trying to outsmart Mother Nature; weather modification experiments have been going on in Europe, Asia, and even the U.S. for more than 50 years. Proponents of this practice argue that the main chemical components of the rockets-- silver iodide (which is found in iodized table salt) and carbon dioxide (found in the atmosphere)-- are harmless. Everything has a toxicity level, though-- even water! And who's to say what the long-term effects may be from prolonged exposure to these chemical rains?

The Chinese, however, are unapologetic in their cloud-seeding efforts. It seems to me that they plan to advance their civilization as rapidly as possible, and will only deal with the consequences when they (inevitably) arise. I'm all for scientific breakthroughs and development, but there's a fine line between weather modification and playing God; if it's not done responsibly, they'll have to answer to Mother Nature in the end, and she's quite a force to be reckoned with.

Silent Spring: A Summary

Like any good tree hugger, I decided over the summer that I needed to read Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's "explosive bestseller" about the devastating effects of the chemical pesticide programs used during the 1950s and 1960s. I hear it referenced so often that I assume it's mandatory reading for entomologists, biologists, ecologists, and environmentalists alike. So I picked up a musty, crumbling paperback copy in a used book store one day and dove right in. I motored through the first couple of brief chapters pretty quickly, intrigued by Carson's answer to her own rhetorical question:

"How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and even death to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for reasons that collapse the moment we examine them." (p. 20)

After that, however, things began to get very technical, very quickly. The book is structured as a commentary on a number of case studies done during the height of the indiscriminate chemical spraying era, from the late 1940s up to the early 1960s (when the book was published). Even though the jargon is kept to a minimum and most of the data is presented in layman's terms, it is a tedious and laborious read and I couldn't mentally process more than ten pages at a time. I aimed to get through one chapter per sitting, but with so much data crammed onto each water stained page, not even the chapters' blatantly incendiary titles (such as "Elixirs of Death", "Needless Havoc", and "No Birds Sing") could help me to maintain my focus.

As I slogged through the meaty middle chapters, I began to get an eerie feeling; it was both a sense of foreboding and deja vu. In case study after innumerable case study, while the locations, pests, and sometimes even the chemicals changed, the inevitably disastrous result was almost always the same.

When DDD was sprayed at Clear Lake in California to kill the gnats, the swan grebes died. When the hop growers of Washington and Idaho sprayed heptachlor to kill the strawberry root weevil, their crops died and the land remained unusable for years. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture sprayed dieldrin over Iroquois County, Illinois, to "eradicate" the Japanese beetle, the song birds of the region were wiped out within a matter of days. When DDT was sprayed in East Lansing to kill the gypsy moth and prevent Dutch Elm disease, the robins died. The list goes on and on, but the message is clear: saturating the country with chemical pesticides is bad... very bad. Got it.

Scientists came to discover that these poisons were stored in higher and higher concentrations as it worked its way up through the animals in the food chain. The initial spraying might not have killed a bug, for example, but it probably sickened an earthworm or a fish that ate several bugs, and in turn almost instantly killed a bird that ate several earthworms or fish. The birds that didn't die instantly were either rendered infertile or endured a long, drawn-out illness before the twitching and agonizingly painful convulsions set in that, after much suffering, ultimately killed them. And-- perhaps worst of all-- the programs didn't even work long-term.

What these short-sighted chemists and government officials failed to realize was that it's nearly impossible to eradicate a single species of pesky insect; those that survived not only reproduced at a much faster rate than their natural predators, but they became resistant to the pesticides more quickly as well, rendering subsequent sprayings ineffective. Without a healthy bird population to keep these insect populations in check, the pests' numbers can exceed pre-spraying levels in a matter of years (and sometimes months!) As Carson explains:

By their very nature chemical controls are self-defeating, for they have been devised and applied without taking into account the complex biological systems against which they have been blindly hurled ... (p. 218)

She continues:

"The really effective control of insects is that applied by nature, not by man. Populations are kept in check by something the ecologists call the resistance of the environment: The amount of food available, conditions of weather and climate, the presence of competing or predatory species, are all critically important ... [The second neglected fact it] the truly explosive power of a species to reproduce once the resistance of the environment has been weakened ... (p. 218)

Thankfully, the sprayings eventually stopped, but not before our soil and groundwater was heavily contaminated. I know many of these same pesticides are still in use today, albeit in much smaller concentrations. Still, the best way to fight a force of nature is still with nature itself. For in her final paragraph, Carson issues a harsh admonishment, warning that:

"The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man ... It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the [E]arth."

Basil Bug?

Someone's been eating my basil, and it's not just me! I've been trying to harvest more basil as of late, but someone (or something) else has been getting to it first. The big leaves have huge holes chewed out of them, and some of the smaller ones have been sheared off altogether. Harrumph.

Well, when I was out watering today, I finally identified the culprit:

Can you see him? How about now?

I have no idea what type of insect this is, but he blends in so perfectly with the leaves of my poor basil plant, he's probably been there all along! As far as bugs go, it's really quite beautiful; leaf shaped and with an iridescent sheen that catches the sunlight. He's so cool-looking, that I couldn't bring myself to flick him off of the plant, so I guess I'll have to settle for sharing my bounty. Surely there's enough basil for us both... right?

(By the way, if any of you do know what type of bug this is, I'd love to find out!)

South Pond

I was walking through Lincoln Park today, and smelled something awful. The stench seemed to be coming from behind a large, makeshift fence, and after a block or so, I stumbled upon this sign, which explained the odor.

Basically, they are transforming the southern pond into an "urban ecosystem", returning native species of fish, plants, birds, frogs, and the like back to the area. I vaguely remember seeing something about the project on the news earlier in the spring; they had to kill off a number of the non-native plants and critters that were inhabiting the pond before the renovation, which made me sad, but I'm all for restored wetlands and furthering the native species and the like.

I'm not quite sure how I imagined they would go about "restoring the natural habitat", but I certainly was not expecting to see this:

Cranes and bulldozers and idle construction workers, oh my! I guess I never figured they'd have to do a complete demolition to make a natural restoration; I expected them to just make improvements to the existing pond. Not so. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product, which the sign assures me will be "an outdoor classroom for students of all ages", I just find their restoration methods a bit ironic.