Backpacking Destinations – Paradise Found — An excellent, reasonably balanced article on Glen Canyon and Lake Powell from Backpacker Southwest Editor Annette McGivney. Drought has reduced water levels 100 feet so “that it’s suddenly possible for backpackers to explore arches, alcoves, and Anasazi art that has been underwater for a generation.”
Link via Ah, Wilderness!. Thanks!
are needed “to recoup the shortfall from a bone-dry March” in Colorado according to a report from the Denver Post.
From Wired News:
Today, more than 4,400 GPS-toting travelers have participated in the Degree Confluence Project, covering nearly all the easily accessible points in the United States and Western Europe, and putting a sizeable dent into other populated portions of the globe.
In recent months, hard-core trekkers have ventured to remote areas from Antarctica to the jungle of East Timor to Svalbard, an Arctic territory bordering on the Barents Sea.
In all, project coordinators estimate that about 3,000 confluence points — the intersection of whole-number latitude and longitude lines — have been visited, out of a total of 16,000 global confluence points located on land and meet the goal of the project. If one includes intersections of latitude and longitude lines at sea, about 64,000 confluences exist worldwide.
Always interesting, Dahlia Lithwick discusses Monday’s Supreme Court hearing on Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Of all our bizarre advertising conventions, perhaps the oddest is this: Whether one has just purchased a new Ford Explorer, Volkswagen Touraeg, or a Jeep, the good folks in Advertising Land would have it that the first thing one does is high-tail it to the desert, careen up the side of a red rock canyon, and park that now-filthy new vehicle on a precipice overlooking the Utah sunset. True, most of us just choose to celebrate the purchase of a new car with imprudent sex in the back seat. But as far as American advertisers are concerned, we are sexier, thinner, and happier when off-roading it in the vast western wilderness.
I mention all this because today’s Supreme Court case ostensibly concerns the effects of off-road vehicles on potential wilderness areas. Which sounds like it might make for some glorious, wind-blows-through-your-hair oral argument. But this case is ultimately just about statutory construction, and the only thing blowing through your hair at the high court today is the sound of Justice Antonin Scalia’s infinite follow-up questions. I also mention all this because—try as I may—I can’t understand the appeal of buzzing around the wilderness in an ATV, digging up the fragile cryptobiotic crust, eroding the delicate soil, and polluting the rivers. But someone will enlighten me, I am sure.
From The Arizona Republic, some new thoughts on the Tucson mountain lions. An excerpt:
Ironically, the source of the problem isn’t animal behavior. When people in urbanizing areas near the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area began feeding the wildlife, it led to an unusually large prey base compared with similar habitats that are not sliced by the urban edge, say Game and Fish biologists.
The prey attracted the lions that became a problem, and new lions will move down the mountain to replace any that are removed – unless people stop feeding prey animals, such as javelina.
It’s the people who need to be managed and, unlike the old Game and Fish constituency of anglers and hunters, these people do not have an outdoorsman’s understanding of wildlife. Nor do these city folks foot the bill. Game and Fish is funded almost entirely through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and federal excise taxes on sporting goods.
of the Good Friday Earthquake, a magnitude 9.2 quake in south central Alaska. It was the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history.
Canyon View Elementary School…and Esperero Canyon Middle School…remained on alert for lion problems Thursday – students were not supposed to walk on campus alone and physical education classes are being held indoors.
Read all about the mountain lions terrorizing officials and entertaining residents near Tucson from The Arizona Daily Star.
From the Billings Gazette:
Five bison dropped dead in Yellowstone National Park apparently after being overwhelmed by toxic gases in a geothermal area.
The bison carcasses were found March 10 along the Gibbon River near Norris Geyser Basin. It’s likely the animals were killed by hydrogen sulfide or carbon dioxide trapped at ground level by unusually cold and windless weather, according to a report on the incident released Tuesday.
From The Salt Lake Tribune —
In less than two months, Utah will no longer allow capital defendants to choose to be shot to death and will not execute condemned inmates on certain days.
Gov. Olene Walker has signed two pieces of legislation passed by Utah lawmakers — one to end the state’s firing squad and another to prohibit executions on Sundays, Mondays and legal holidays. The first bill was signed Monday by the governor, and the second was signed Friday.
The reason for the execution-free days — to keep overtime costs down.
From the Santa Fe New Mexican:
Pam Beach has seen grizzly bears, black bears and wolverines, but one large predator had always eluded her.
“I had never seen a mountain lion,” Beach said Friday. “And I never expected to see one on Marcy Street.”
She was one of many to spot a mountain lion walking around downtown Santa Fe Thursday night and Friday morning.
A receptionist at the Santa Fe New Mexican, Beach said the lion walked in front of The New Mexican shortly after 8 a.m., then bolted across Marcy Street and disappeared.
“Poor little guy. He was scared,” she said, describing the animal as small — perhaps 100 pounds — and probably young. “I hope he finds his way home.”
As far as wildlife officials could tell, the lion might have done just that.
From The Arizona Daily Star:
Arizona wildlife managers feel they have to shoot first and ask questions later, says the lawyer who defended the state in a lawsuit that resulted in a $2.5 million settlement for a Tucson girl mauled by a bear on Mount Lemmon.
That settlement and a more recent $3 million jury award for a Tucson man injured when he hit an elk with a vehicle affected the decision to order a mountain lion hunt in Sabino Canyon, said Tucson attorney Mick Rusing. “It is the real driving force behind the scene,” Rusing said.
“The default position of Game and Fish is now, ‘When in doubt, take it out,’ ” Rusing said. “If the courts and the Legislature are not going to protect these agencies and the people who make the decisions, that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Attorney Ted Schmidt represented Anna Knochel, the 16-year-old girl who was mauled by a bear in 1996 during a 4-H campout in the Santa Catalina Mountains. He agreed with Rusing that liability concerns are influencing decisions on the mountain lions, but said the concerns are justified.
He said Game and Fish knows it has nonyielding mountain lions in Sabino Canyon and knows that such animals can attack and kill. “I would expect any wildlife expert would tell you that’s a pretty serious problem. If anything were to happen, you might very well be able to make that case against the state of Arizona,” he said.
Read the latest on plans to kill up to four mountain lions in the foothills near Tucson from The Arizona Daily Star:
Since the fall, the lions have reportedly growled at visitors, stalked people twice and lost their natural fear of humans, officials have said.
State and federal officials announced Tuesday that they would keep Sabino Canyon closed to the public for up to two weeks out of concern that a lion attack on humans is imminent. They also said professional trackers would be sent in to hunt down and kill the lions.
Read more detail on the lions here.
Good article on the Yellowstone wolf pack from the Los Angeles Times. It begins:
A grim chorus of howls shattered the predawn stillness. As darkness gave way to dim light, a wolf emerged in a clearing.
He was charcoal gray, with a splash of black fur marking his snout and eyes. He sat up tall, his head thrown back in a long, desolate moan. His hot breath froze when it hit the air, leaving shards of ice dangling from his muzzle.
Two miles to the southwest, two other wolves howled excitedly from the crest of 9,000-foot Specimen Ridge. Their calls were answered by another group whose voices echoed from the direction of Tower Junction, near the Yellowstone River.
“There are three packs out there,” said wildlife biologist Greg Wright as he watched the animals through a high-powered lens. “You don’t usually hear this much howling. It could be a territorial dispute, but I’m not sure what’s going on.”
Soon, it would be clear. The gray lady — the Cinderella wolf — was missing.
From Space.com:
All five planets that can be visible to the naked eye will appear together in the evening sky later this month in a viewing opportunity that won’t be matched for 32 years.
Going in order from West to East, the cast of planetary characters will be Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. All but Mercury are already visible. The winged messenger is the most elusive of the five, being so close to the Sun that it never gets very far above the horizon, and always only near dawn or dusk.
By late March, Mercury will be about as high as possible at dusk for viewers at mid-northern latitudes, setting the stage for a memorable few weeks of easy-to-do backyard skywatching.
Where to look
Mercury will hover above the setting Sun in the West. Higher up, brilliant Venus already dominates the stage, outshining all stars and planets. Mars, much dimmer than it was last summer, is high in the southwestern sky. Saturn is nearly overhead now at dusk and to the south. Jupiter, now stunningly bright, is king of the eastern evening sky, rising just as the Sun goes down.
The story continues, telling us that this is the best viewing of all five naked-eye planets at dusk until 2036.
Venus has been extraordinarily beautiful of late.
The March/April 2004 Sierra Magazine features several essays on Wild America. The articles include the usual Sierra Club calls to action, but essays by Rick Bass on the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and Gary Paul Nabhan on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, among others, include more than environmental politics.
Consultants to the Pentagon last year produced a report on climate change that suggested possible drastic scenarios. The Oakland Tribune has a good summary of the report and the commotion surrounding it.
In a dire look at a hypothetical hothouse world, consultants for the Pentagon see nations warring over water, food and whom to blame for greenhouse warming. (Hint: It’s you and your sport utility vehicle.)
“Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” two Emeryville-based futurists concluded in a report late last year for the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment.
Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall were drafted for an unclassified, worst-case look at climate change. But the echo chamber of Internet news and opinion transformed their thought exercise into a top military secret or the ultimate comeuppance for a fossil-fueled executive or a Bush conspiracy to hide the WMDs of the natural world.
As if the report itself wasn’t fantastic enough….
“There’s nothing secret about it, there’s nothing Pentagon about it and there’s no prediction in it,” Randall said.
It’s full of predictions, actually, but all start from a premise of abrupt climate change that is highly uncertain and outside the consensus of mainstream scientists.
Greenpeace has posted (as a pdf file) the complete report: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.
The Executive Summary of the consultants’ report:
There is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century. Because changes have been gradual so far, and are projected to be similarly gradual in the future, the effects of global warming have the potential to be manageable for most nations. Recent research, however, suggests that there is a possibility that this gradual global warming could lead to a relatively abrupt slowing of the ocean’s thermohaline conveyor, which could lead to harsher winter weather conditions, sharply reduced soil moisture, and more intense winds in certain regions that currently provide a significant fraction of the world’s food production. With inadequate preparation, the result could be a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth’s environment.
The research suggests that once temperature rises above some threshold, adverse weather conditions could develop relatively abruptly, with persistent changes in the atmospheric circulation causing drops in some regions of 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit in a single decade. Paleoclimatic evidence suggests that altered climatic patterns could last for as much as a century, as they did when the ocean conveyor collapsed 8,200 years ago, or, at the extreme, could last as long as 1,000 years as they did during the Younger Dryas, which began about 12,700 years ago.
In this report, as an alternative to the scenarios of gradual climatic warming that are so common, we outline an abrupt climate change scenario patterned after the 100-year event that occurred about 8,200 years ago. This abrupt change scenario is characterized by the following conditions:
- Annual average temperatures drop by up to 5 degrees Fahrenheit over Asia and North America and 6 degrees Fahrenheit in northern Europe
- Annual average temperatures increase by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit in key areas throughout Australia, South America, and southern Africa.
- Drought persists for most of the decade in critical agricultural regions and in the water resource regions for major population centers in Europe and eastern North America.
- Winter storms and winds intensify, amplifying the impacts of the changes. Western Europe and the North Pacific experience enhanced winds.
The report explores how such an abrupt climate change scenario could potentially de-stabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints such as:
1) Food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production
2) Decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions due to shifted precipitation patters, causing more frequent floods and droughts
3) Disrupted access to energy supplies due to extensive sea ice and storminessAs global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbors, may initiate in struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy. Unlikely alliances could be formed as defense priorities shift and the goal is resources for survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor.
This scenario poses new challenges for the United States, and suggests several steps to be taken:
- Improve predictive climate models to allow investigation of a wider range of scenarios and to anticipate how and where changes could occur
- Assemble comprehensive predictive models of the potential impacts of abrupt climate change to improve projections of how climate could influence food, water, and energy
- Create vulnerability metrics to anticipate which countries are most vulnerable to climate change and therefore, could contribute materially to an increasingly disorderly and potentially violent world
- Identify no-regrets strategies such as enhancing capabilities for water management
- Rehearse adaptive responses
- Explore local implications
- Explore geo-engineering options that control the climate.
There are some indications today that global warming has reached the threshold where the thermohaline circulation could start to be significantly impacted. These indications include observations documenting that the North Atlantic is increasingly being freshened by melting glaciers, increased precipitation, and fresh water runoff making it substantially less salty over the past 40 years.
This report suggests that, because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change, although uncertain and quite possibly small, should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.
From the Los Angeles Times a report on the opposition to drilling for gas on southeast New Mexico’s Otero Mesa — “an unusual alliance of ranchers, environmentalists, hunters and property-rights activists” lead by Governor Bill Richardson.
“I am a lifelong Republican. I was a fundraiser for President Bush, and I never thought I’d be saying what I am today,” said Tweeti Blancett, a sixth-generation rancher from San Juan County in northwest New Mexico, where the landscape holds 35,000 wells. An additional 10,000 are planned.
“Our ranch has been devastated by drillers, our water is poisoned and so are our cows,” Blancett said. “These oil companies are getting away with murder, ruining the land, and no one is stopping them.”
Orcas off Port Aransas including photos and a video.
From the Fairbanks News-Miner
A cold air mass that settled over the Tanana Valley late last week from the Yukon Territory resulted in bitter cold temperatures throughout much of the central Interior. The temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero on Friday and stayed there for most of the next four days, though it did climb up to 38 below on Saturday at one point.
The coldest temperature recorded in the Interior was 57 below at Dry Creek, on the Alaska Highway between Delta Junction and Tok, and sub-50 below temperatures were reported from several other Interior communities. A low of 55 below was recorded at Circle Hot Springs and Manley Hot Springs. It was 52 below in Central, Eagle, Nenana and Tok.
The lowest temperature recorded at the Fairbanks International Airport, the official recording site for the weather service, was 46 below on Sunday, but a low of 52 below was recorded in North Pole. Two Rivers reported 51 below.
From the Anchorage Daily News
Mid-January temperatures in Bethel, ALaska, normally hover around zero, according to the National Weather Service. Last week, a chill set in that bottomed out at minus 30 Sunday morning, though winds were light all weekend.
Monday was a different story. With the temperature at 29 below, northeast winds gusted to nearly 40 mph, driving the wind chill below minus 60….
Jan. 19 is also the day Epiphany is celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church, a holiday that celebrates the baptism of Christ. At St. Sophia church in Bethel, parishioners usually chop a hole in the Kuskokwim River ice and dip out water for the Rev. George Berezkin to bless.
Not this year. Too cold, said subdeacon Nick. In a typical year, parishioners must remove their hats during the service, he said, and the priest dips a cross into the river three times during the ceremony, then holds the dripping cross while reciting long prayers.
“Without hats and gloves, their hands would freeze right on the cross,” Nick said. He’s seen that happen, though the power of the Holy Spirit prevented the people from suffering frostbite, he said.
This year, George blessed water inside. He gave it to parishioners Monday, after getting a ride to church. His car wouldn’t start, he said.
Sonja Olofsson was ready for the restorative powers of running after waking Monday morning to frozen pipes. The taps worked all weekend but slowed down, then stopped.
A veteran of a dozen Bethel winters, Olofsson said she’s used to cold snaps. “This is about normal around here,” she said. “Unfortunately.”
From the Los Angeles Times
A bike rider was attacked by a mountain lion as she rode through a popular Orange County wilderness park Thursday, and the body of a man, who may have been killed by the same animal, was found nearby.
The saguaro is the largest cactus in the United States, commonly reaching 40 feet (12 m) tall; a few have attained 60 feet (18 m) and one was measured at 78 feet (23.8 m).
The saguaro’s range is almost completely restricted to southern Arizona and western Sonora. A few plants grow just across the political borders in California and Sinaloa. Saguaros reach their greatest abundance in Arizona Upland. Plants grow from sea level to about 4000 feet (1200 m). In the northern part of their range they are most numerous on warmer south-facing slopes.
A tap root extends downward to more than 2 feet (60 cm). The rest of the extensive root system is shallow, as is the case for most succulents. Roots are rarely more than 4 inches (10 cm) deep and radiate horizontally about as far from the plant as the plant is tall.
In the Tucson Mountains, which averages 14 inches (355 mm) annual rainfall, a saguaro takes about 10 years to attain 1½ inches (3.8 cm) in height and 30 years to reach 2 feet (61 cm). Saguaros begin to flower at about 8 feet tall (2.4 m), which takes an average of 55 years. Compare this with 40 years to first flowering in the wetter eastern unit of Saguaro National Park (16 inches, 406 mm, average annual rainfall) and 75 years in the drier Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (9 inches, 230 mm).
Saguaros may begin to grow arms when the plant is between 50 and 100 years of age (in the Tucson Mountains), usually just above the stem’s maximum girth at about 7 to 9 feet (2.1 to 2.7 m) above-ground. The number of arms and overall size of a plant seem to be correlated with soil and rainfall. Saguaros on bajadas with finer, more water-retentive soils tend to grow larger and produce more arms than do those on steep, rocky slopes. A few saguaros have been observed with as many as 50 arms; many never grow arms. Saguaro arms always grow upwards. The drooping arms seen on many old saguaros is a result of wilting after frost damage. The growing tips will turn upwards in time. There is a myth that arms are produced so as to balance the plants, but research shows arm-sprouting to be random. Many saguaros can be found with several arms all on the same side of the main stem.
The chief agent of mortality of mature saguaros in the Arizona Upland is freezing temperatures. The saguaro is a tropical cactus with limited frost tolerance, and it reaches the northern, coldest limit of its range in Arizona Upland….It is difficult to determine the lethal temperature for a saguaro or other plant. The seasonal timing and duration of freezing temperatures are at least as important as the minimum temperature. Healthy middle-aged saguaros have survived 10ºF (-12ºC) for a few hours in mid-winter, while 12 hours of 20ºF (-7ºC) in late fall have caused widespread damage and death.
The imminent demise of the saguaros is a recurring rumor dating back several decades. Its most recent incarnation began in the early 1990s and refuses to die, despite having been soundly refuted….The saguaro doom story first surfaced in the 1940s; at that time little was known about saguaro ecology. Saguaro National Monument was established in 1933 east of Tucson. That bottomland area was chosen because it had a tremendous population of giant old saguaros. (It had few young or middle-aged saguaros, due to the effects of livestock grazing and the cutting of potential nurse trees since the late 1800s.) But there was a catastrophic freeze in 1937, and during the next decade the giant forest was suffering massive mortality from bacterial necrosis. The Park Service bulldozed and buried thousands of rotting cacti in the hope of stopping what it mistook as a new, virulent disease. These efforts failed, and the alarm over the presumed fate of the saguaros became a factor in the establishment of the West unit of Saguaro National Monument on the other side of Tucson in 1961. This location in the Tucson Mountains did not have a cohort of giants so the impact of the freeze of 1937 was less evident, or according to the view of that time, the bacterial necrosis disease had not infected this population. (The western unit had mature stands of giants by the mid 1970s; this cohort was devastated by the freeze of 1978.) This first misinterpretation of the ecology of saguaros had a positive outcome—it engendered the preservation of another tract of splendid desert. Both units of the National Monument were designated Saguaro National Park in 1994.
So are saguaros declining? The answer is, yes, most of the time. So are most species of desert plants and animals—that’s the nature of this ecosystem. In most years there is slightly higher mortality than recruitment (the successful establishment of new individuals), so populations decrease. In years of severe droughts or freezes the mortality can be dramatic. In the occasional wet years mass recruitment reverses the trend of decline with a reproductive boom. In the case of saguaros these episodes of net recruitment seem to occur less than a half-dozen times per century in Saguaro National Park (west), and less often in the drier regions.
In September, author Michael Crichton spoke to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on “what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind.” He had “a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda.” Crichton has some intriguing and provocative ways of thinking about the environment and environmentalism.
The grizzly is a symbol of the American wilderness and one of the nation’s most beautiful and imposing creatures. Lewis and Clark found a healthy grizzly population when they explored Idaho’s Bitterroot Mountains in the early 19th century. As the nation expanded westward, grizzly numbers plummeted due to unchecked hunting and trapping. The grizzly is now “threatened” in the lower 48 states.
To restore grizzlies to the Selway-Bitterroot ecosystem, NWF developed the innovative Citizen Management Plan. Despite widespread support, the plan was recently abandoned by Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
From Writers on the Range at High Country News: “Living with bison at the edge of Yellowstone” (March 17, 2003).