~jg3

Aerial Wolf Hunting

September 4th, 2008

I’m not much of a “sportsman.” I don’t hunt. I respect the rights of people who do (responsibly), and I think that responsible management of natural resources includes some measure of culling.

However, I’m not at all cool with irresponsible use of natural resources. I expect that for some people, hunting wolves and bears could be really fun. Presumably those are people who really enjoy a bear-meat sandwich or wolf steak. And I support the right of those people to do so. This country is big enough to set aside large areas of land where that can take place.

Somewhere in the realm of responsible management of natural resources, it becomes necessary to kill a few top predators to keep an ecosystem in balance. With that in mind, and in consideration of the fact that there are relatively few people to manage some very large swaths of land, aerial hunting might be useful. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what the Federal law allows.

But this is not, in my mind, hunting by any sporting definition. A hunter is already at a substantial advantage because they are using a gun. Chasing from the air also makes a hunter faster and from that angle the animals have no ability to hide. And without firing a shot you could chase an animal around for a little while (scaring the bejeesus out of it with a roaring motor) wait until he gets tired, then land. Walk right up to him an *pop* … bearskin rug.

But in Alaska, the issue keeps showing up on the ballot.

What makes this a controversial issue worthy of repeated public referendums? Because there are people who want to leave home bound for adventure in an exotic and far away country, send some postcards, and then return home with a bearskin rug and a story about the bear they shot. And some of those people would pay good money to do so in a way that assures them of making a kill. Sporting-ness be damned, they want to have the appearance of being a big game hunter. So there’s that. There’s also the fact that people will pay good money to hunt other big game, but top predators like wolves and bears keep the number of moose and caribou in an ecosystem down. Subtract some wolves and you can get more rich hunters to pour money into your state’s tourisim economy. That might not be okay if it didn’t require throwing the ecosystem out of balance to do it. It might also be okay if the people trying to do this sort of thing did not also keep trying to take away the ability of the public to control it. Certainly that is a different issue, but it is related and creepy.

So, all of this might only be of passing interest if the governor of the state where all this is taking place were not nominated to be vice president.

To restate: I’ll support your right to have ridiculous firearms, I’ll support your right to hunt sportingly, but I will not support efforts to circumvent the political process or disrupt it with big money so you can exploit our shared natural resources and disturb a carefully managed environmental balance.

No matter how pretty you are.

Filed under: enviro, Politics

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SECORE update

August 23rd, 2008

It seems that things are going well for Mike and the team down in the Puerto Rico. The tropical storm largely missed them, just gave them some overcasty days. They are reporting 1.5 million coral babies and that the spawning and diving part of the trip is over for this year.

Check out the SECORE weblog for more information and photos and even a little quicktime movie of what spawning elkhorn look like. As an aside, I’d just like you to ponder what the egg collectors are doing: SCUBA diving is quite an adventure. Doing it at night you can lose spatial perception easily. Diving near coral, especially in the shallows, requires care that you don’t get scraped against the reef. Now, while doing all that, hold the camera still and take video. Nice.

Now that they’ve collected all this, the real fun work begins.

Filed under: adventures, enviro, Real Life

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SeCoRe

August 12th, 2008

So the problem, essentially, is genetic diversity and the solution is get ‘em while you can. Mike is being a go-getter.

The planet’s coral reef’s are under an immense amount of stress at the moment and much of them are collapsing and bleaching for various reasons, not the least of which is pollution. [Note: I should come back and update this paragraph with links and figures so you don't think I'm just blathering. For now just believe it, Earth Is Going Nova]

Key to building a reef are the large, hard corals that create the foundation that support the soft corals and build a permiable shelter for reef animals that current and waves can flow through. One of the primary species of these large, hard corals is the Elkhorn. Only, these guys are retreating with a quickness. They’re dying off and collapsing all over the place and that’s bad for them, the other corals they support, the animals that they support, and the animals that they support. Follow this far enough it leads back to you, bucko.

So, in the event of a thourough collapse what are you going to do? Propagate what is growing in the tanks of aquariums and zoos worldwide and re-start this population. Sure. Only, reef-heads are some of the most conservative (in the environmental sense of the word) people out there, so they don’t go grabbing chunks from the seafloor very often. They typically propagate corals from chunks broken off in friends’ tanks (or stores’ tanks). That’s great, but that means that what’s floating around in the hobby and trade has very little genetic diversity. So how to you increase genetic diversity without breaking off chunks of the small percentage of remaining elkhorn? Besides, elkhorn is a challenge to species to manage in captivity. Adult fragments — in addition to not wanting to disturb an already stressed ecosystem — also have a dismal survival record. Most fragments die shortly after arrival to the aquarium. So, establishing a captive population with adult frags really is impractical.

Easy, you gather fertilized Elkhorn coral eggs and raise them to adulthood. Wait, easy? Not quite.

Elkhorn spawn just once a year. At night. In the water (duh). So collecting eggs is slightly more difficult than climbing up a tree and stealing them from a nest. And once you’ve collected them you’ve got a whale of a problem with keeping them alive until they decide to settle out and start growing.

So Mike is participating in the SECORE project again this year, going down to Puerto Rico to do all that. You can follow the action on the SECORE blog and read about the science behind all this in much more detail over on their website. Go get ‘em Mike!

edit: misspelled propagate; expanded on the difficulty of managing adult elkhorn. Thanks, Mike!

Filed under: enviro, Real Life

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No more Lohachara island

December 26th, 2006

The Independent is reporting that an Island in India that was once inhabited is now completely and permanently underwater. This is no longer a case of the waves breaking closer to the Marriott, this is measurably less land on Earth presumably due to melted polar ice. Ten thousand people used to live on this island, now zero do. With the warnings of climate scientists and environmentalists ringing in our ears, our ankles are lapped by waves.

Filed under: enviro, Real Life

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We all live downriver

August 16th, 2006

Every once in a while, usually while heading somewhere to go snowboarding I pass a sign that says “continental divide” and I think about watersheds. The problem is that I’m always in a watershed but I rarely think about it. Today, while cleaning out my $HOME I ran accross this image which details the local watershed I live in and how it relates to the slightly larger world around me. And if you didn’t already know it, the Potomac is said to be dying quickly.

Props to D. who passed this image along to me many moons ago.