Group Sex and Porn

A repost from this blog from May 2007.

In mid-June horseshoe crabs start to roll up on to the beaches in the mid-Atlantic states. They continue to come on shore through July and a few can still be found in August.

The spawn of the horseshoe crab is the essential food of the Red Knot, which migrates from the Arctic to the tip of South American and back again every year -- one of the longest winged migrations in the world. And yet, without the horseshoe crab and its predilection for group sex -- sometimes a dozen males can be found shuffled up on top of a single female -- the Red Knot would not exist at all.

Group sex makes a lot of the animal world happen, from coral and salmon to penguins and ungulates such as deer, elk and buffalo.

What's going on here?

Well, it's not that the animals are just being kinky -- it's more essential than that. Mass spawnings, nestings, and calfing are one way that nature ensures that a lot of babies are born at once. A hundred cracked eggshells, a billion wriggling salmon roe, and two dozen elk calfs in a herd are all part of the same essential design -- to overwhelm predation with fecundity.

Group sex has another purpose within the animal kingdom as well -- a way of ensuring the characteristics of dominant males are passed forward. In many animal species, it is only the dominant male that mates with a "harem" of tag-along females.

For many creatures, this is the watch-spring of evolution -- the essential driver that results in gaudier peacocks and larger lions capable of predictably taking down more zebra and buffalo.

The thing that can give a species a competitive advantage, however, can also lead to its undoing. A classic example can be found in the life history of the Passenger Pigeon.

The Passenger Pigeon once existed in numbers that boggle the mind -- 5 to 6 billion birds with individual flocks commonly numbering in the millions, and some super aggregations stretching as long as 300 miles and estimated to have been populated by a billion birds.

A billion birds in a single flock! Yet today, not a single Passenger Pigeon exits. What happened?


The usual suspects are blamed: Deforestation, commercial market hunting abetted by the fact that Passenger Pigeons settled in enormous roosts where they could be netted, clubbed, poisoned, and shot by the scores of thousands. Even Newcastle's Disease may figure into the mix -- an avian disease that made its way to this hemisphere from Europe in the late 19th Century.

This answer is incomplete, however. A lot of birds were over-hunted in the 19th Century, and a lot of birds were negatively impacted by deforestation.

How was the Passenger Pigeon different from the others? How could it be that not a single Passenger Pigeon survives to this day?

The answer lies in a trait of the Passenger Pigeon that it shares (at a reduced level) with many other types of birds: a proclivity for group sex.

While pigeons and most other birds are capable of mating even if there are just a few birds present, many bird species do much better in social settings. Pigeon Cotes and Purple Martins houses, for example, reflect the fact that is is hard to get these birds to stay and breed if they cannot flock and nest together. In fact, some pigeon breeds are so hard to mate in pairs that breeders sometimes take to installing mirrors to fool the pigeons into thinking there are more of them in the roost than there really are. The same trick has recently been used on Mures in the wild.

This proclivity for gregariousness, which is present in most pigeon species, reached new heights with the Passenger Pigeon. The social structure of this bird was so highly tuned to the concept of group that the birds simply could not initiate courtship and reproduction unless many, many other birds were present. When large flocks were shattered, disrupted, and decimated by market hunters and deforestation, individual flock numbers fell below a critical threshold, and a population death spiral resulted. In the end, even though there were captive Passenger Pigeons in a few zoos and conservatories, they could not be made to mate and the species went extinct.

Today, of course, we know more about animals and we are willing to invest millions of dollars and decades of research into turning things around. And, of course, we are not averse to a little artifice.

In China, for example, the Chinese Tiger is being brought back from the brink of extinction with the help of Viagra -- a necessary thing since the only Chinese tigers still extent were, until very recently, a few ancient zoo animals that could no longer reliably "perform" any sexual function.

The good news is that Viagra worked, and today a few young Chinese tigers are in South Africa learning how to hunt on their own. Expect to see them trotted out just in time for the 2008 Olympics.

Pandas too have had their interventions, though in their case it was porn. It seems captive pandas showed little interest in sex. When two animals finally did get interested in each other, they often fumbled the job and coitus was never actually achieved.

Some bright perverted light at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Center had an idea, however: Showing them panda porn. Believe it or not, it worked. Now, when pandas reach sexual maturity, zookeepers show them panda sex videos as part of their initiation into the rites of being an adult panda.

The results speak for themselves -- a bumper crop of baby pandas.



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Where the Buffalo Roam -- Again

A repost from this blog, circa December 2004.

Thanks to Teddy Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, Gifford Pinchot, the American environmental movement, the Lacey Act, the Weeks Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Pittman-Roberts Act, the Conservations Reserve Program, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, and the Duck Stamp Act (to name just a few), America's wildlife is coming back.

All of this legislation has been supported by hunters who understood the value of the land and the wildlife on it. Environmentalists and hunter-anglers have worked hand-in-hand to bring back the wild turkey, to protect bear habitat, to preserve salmon spawning streams, and to shelter riparian areas.

For the terrier enthusiast, the result is plain to see in the hedgerow and forest: a record number of red fox, raccoon, possum and groundhogs spreading out into historically new territory.

Even species once pushed to the edge of extinction are now roaring back from the abyss -- alligators, bald eagles, beaver, Canada geese, wolves, and buffalo.

If the story of 19th Century America was about stripping the land and exterminating every species on it, the story of the 20th Century has been about bringing it all back.

Where the Buffalo Roam -- Again
San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2001

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Brian Meirs first noticed it a few years ago. The game was coming back.

It was subtle in the beginning - a few more sharp-tailed grouse along the section roads than usual, more deer peering from the margins of the hayfields at night. Then people started noticing there were larger numbers of pronghorn antelope than had ever been seen, and they were hanging around closer to town.

"Even 10 years ago, you never heard of mountain lion or elk around here," said Meirs, a state game warden who works the vast plains and mesa country around Buffalo. "Now they're pretty common. There are even occasional wolf sightings. It's like the wildlife was back there in the shadows, waiting for a change."

The change has been building for decades. The western Great Plains contain the country's greatest demographic anomaly: Its human population is emptying out. The trend, the 2000 census shows, has really gained force over the past decade with the drying up of the ranching economy.

But as people move away, wildlife is starting to fill the vacuum. In an unexpected way, a vision of the Great Plains as a wild commons is taking hold.

"It's funny - Buffalo Commons is really happening," Meirs said, as he sat in his truck on the main drag of Buffalo, a thoroughfare framed by abandoned storefronts. "Not like people thought it would. But it's happening."

The concept of the Buffalo Commons was floated by New Jersey sociologists Frank and Deborah Popper in 1988. The Poppers observed that agriculture had failed miserably on the Great Plains, and noted that the region would probably be almost wholly depopulated save for a few cities by the mid-21st century.

The highest and best use for the area, the Poppers argued, was in its pristine state: A restored prairie cleared of fences and abandoned ranches, reseeded with native bunchgrasses, teeming with wildlife. And foremost among these resurgent animals would be the emblematic beast of the Plains: the buffalo. Back by the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands. Plains residents, both white and Native American, would earn their money through ecotourism and franchise hunting, not punching cows and growing dryland wheat.

Because the Poppers' proposal was predicated in part on federal buyouts of private property, it kicked off a howling storm of protest from the Great Plains agricultural community. Ranchers saw it as the most sinister possible example of a federal land grab. Resistance was so great that the idea died aborning.

But that didn't change the reality of Plains demographics - a reality best apprehended from the air.

Fly in a puddle jumper from Denver to Bismarck, N.D., and look down. There are great tracts of Badlands and rolling prairie, huge expanses of "pothole country" spangled with ponds and marshes, entire square miles of dryland wheat and irrigated alfalfa, serpentine brown rivers lined with cottonwoods, the occasional road. Very few ranches, and fewer towns. No cities. The West and East coasts, the intermountain West, the Southwest, the Gulf Coast and the Deep South - they're exploding with development. Even the industrial Northeast, long a laggard in population growth,
is gaining new people.

But not out here where the buffalo once roamed. Nearly three-quarters of Plains counties - 322 of 443 - have lost population since 1930. According to the 2000 census, 272 of 443 of the Plains counties have experienced population declines since 1990.

Demographers estimate that rural counties of the Dakotas could lose an additional third of their population in the next 20 years. From eastern New Mexico through the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, to large portions of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana, the story is the same.

The depopulation affecting the region is nothing more than the dying of a dream. Or a scheme, at least. At the turn of the century, the western Plains were considered the globe's most promising emerging breadbasket.

Cattle had thrived on the rich prairie bunchgrasses after the subjugation of the Plains Indians and the elimination of the buffalo.

Now, decided the pols in Washington, D.C., the rich black earth beneath the virgin sod would grow the nation's wheat.

The late 19th century and early 20th century were fairly wet on the prairie, reinforcing a popular idea of the time that "rain followed the plow." But years of drought followed, and homesteaders began washing out. The ruins of their farms are all over the Plains, ranging from abandoned dugout hovels to derelict three-story houses that are home to nothing but bats and owls.

"Agriculture around here is changing so fast you won't even recognize it in 10 years," said game warden Meirs as he sat in his truck listening to the wind whistle down Buffalo's main street. "The cattle and sheep are going by the wayside."

Buffalo Commons, it seems, is destined to occur - no matter what it's called, no matter who loves or hates it. But the forging of the Commons isn't a completely passive process.

True, the great federal investment envisioned by the Poppers didn't happen, nor is that likely. Given general public sentiment against extravagant government spending programs, it's inconceivable that Congress would loosen up the purse strings to fund the purchase of tens of millions of acres of bankrupt rangeland.

Instead, Buffalo Commons is becoming a private enterprise. And leading the movement is media mogul Ted Turner, who appears to have made the North American bison his private totem. Turner owns about 1.7 million acres divided among several ranches scattered across the Plains, and that figure is growing.

"I heard tell that Ted Turner wants to be able to ride all the way from Canada to Mexico on his own land," drawled one Nebraska rancher. "And the way he's going, it isn't going to be too long before he can do that." Turner looks for a certain kind of property: One that's in grass rather than croplands, with natural contours intact. He wants good biodiversity - country that supports substantial populations of wildlife of numerous species. And when he buys properties, he more or less follows the same formula: Tear out all the cross fencing and replant pastures with bunchgrasses and other native vegetation. Bring in the buffalo.

Turner believes that ranching can be profitable on the Plains - but not necessarily by raising cattle. He's promoting the sale of buffalo breeding stock and meat, luxury big game and bird hunts and ecotourism tours as the economic saviors of the region.

Unlike many celebrity landowners, Turner isn't gate-happy, and doesn't seem to mind rubberneckers as long as they don't stop to shoot his buffalo. And there are plenty of buffalo to see. Under a sky crowded with lowering gray cumulus, a couple of hundred of the shaggy beasts grazed near a roadside. About a mile away, on the same vast tract of rolling prairie, a similar number fed.

A Lakota hunter could have witnessed precisely this scene in this same place 150 years ago.

And buffalo aren't the only animals thriving on Turner's property. Big coveys of sharp-tailed grouse fly unhurriedly out of the way at the approach of a truck. White-tailed deer bolt from every coulee. Stop to watch scores of blue-winged teal bank and swoop around a pothole, and you catch the eerie, wild yapping of two coyotes singing in antiphony in the distance. Although he is operating on the most ambitious scale, Turner is by no means the only New Age buffalo rancher on the Plains. Many of Turner's compeers don't necessarily share his wildlife habitat goals. But the wildlife is nevertheless reaping the benefits of their bison husbandry.

Kirk Budd, the proprietor of Freshwater Ranch in Nebraska's Sand Hills, has lived the quintessential hardscrabble Plains life. He raised cattle until "they just about starved me out." He was a bush pilot in Canada for years, and was a crop duster until a pesticide accident almost killed him. Things, in short, were looking pretty grim for Budd. He was in danger of busting out, losing his ranch.

Then a few years ago, he bought some buffalo.

"They were cheap then," recalled Budd, crawling out from under an airplane he was repairing at his ranch. "About $400 for a cow. So I figured what the heck." Budd gradually expanded his herd, keeping the heifer calves, selling the bulls. He now owns several hundred buffalo on three ranches totaling 11,000 acres. Many are verging on coal black, and all are huge - much darker and far larger than Turner's brown-and-russet buffalo. His bred heifers sell for about $4,000.

Although Budd doesn't believe bison will utterly supplant cattle on the Plains, he feels buffalo ranching will continue to grow. "The National Buffalo Association says the country's herds are growing at 12 percent a year, but I know it's more than that. I know a lot of people in this business, and everyone is keeping all their heifers. I figure the real figure is more like 40 percent a year."

And compared with cattle, buffalo have been good to his land, Budd notes. Cattle like to wallow in water, tearing up creeks and ponds and trampling vegetation. But buffalo associate water with predators. They all go down at once to drink, then get out right away to higher ground. The creeks stay vegetated, and the water stays clean.

Indeed, the Freshwater Ranch looks markedly different from neighboring properties where cattle are grazed. The forage is in better condition, and the streams and ponds are far more vegetated. A creek that runs by the ranch house looks like prime trout water, and Budd confirms it is full of
large brown trout.

And the ranch burgeons with wildlife. "A lot of critters like being with buffalo," Budd said. "They evolved with them. Deer, elk, antelope, wild turkeys. We even have bighorn sheep on one of our ranches. You can ranch buffalo, maybe even tame some you raise from a bottle. But they're basically wildlife. And you can see that reflected in the condition of the range on any ranch where they're raised."

As bullish as he is on buffalo, Budd doesn't think much of Buffalo Commons. "That will never, never fly out here," he said. "As soon as you start talking big government involvement, people resist. Also, a lot of this land is still irrigated, particularly to the east of the Sand Hills. It's growing soybeans, wheat, corn and alfalfa. "As a general policy, I don't think you should take all that food land out of production for a wildlife park. That's just not good for the nation."

While Plains farmers resist government intervention, they do understand - and appreciate - government subsidies. Federal payouts have been part of America's ranching and farming culture for decades, and although they have diminished in recent years, they're still relied on to make ends meet. Since the mid-1980s, many of those subsidies have been paid to cattle ranchers to conserve wildlife habitat on their lands. In the Dakotas, almost 500,000 acres of upland and wetland habitat have been preserved under these conservation reserve programs, benefiting a variety of species, but particularly migratory waterfowl.

The coteau region - a vast, hilly stretch of glacially carved potholes and ponds in the Dakotas, eastern Montana, Saskatchewan and Alberta - is a duck factory, explained Scott McCleod, a biologist with the northern Plains regional office of Ducks Unlimited in Bismarck. Ducks Unlimited is a conservation organization composed of primarily hunters that preserve wetlands and grasslands prairie. So far, it has saved 8 million acres of habitat essential to waterfowl in the United States and Canada.

"Sixty to 70 percent of the continent's major duck species breed in the prairie pothole region," McCleod said. "During the winter and spring migrations, the potholes serve as critical resting and staging areas for the birds."

The historic temptation for farmers, McLeod said, has been to drain the potholes to increase tillable acreage and plow the grass for relatively profitable crops like wheat, corn and sunflowers. "That's why we like to work with cattle ranchers rather than farmers," said McCleod. "Ranchers are
interested in the same thing we are - preserving the grasslands."

The restoration under way is not necessarily a process that will proceed smoothly and steadily. Federal funds for conservation reserve programs could dry up; a prolonged recession could make the buying of megaranches by conservation-minded billionaires like Turner a thing of the past. But nothing, it seems, will change the bedrock reality of the western Plains: They are not well-suited for agriculture or year-round human habitation.

Native Americans knew how to live on them - by passing through, by following the buffalo that peregrinated from horizon to horizon. The record of permanent settlement on the Plains, on the other hand, has been dismal. One way or another, the Plains will devolve to their earlier condition: To a sea of grass, where people are the transient visitors, wildlife the enduring residents.

Bison are generally considered the emblematic animal of the Great Plains, and reintroduction efforts for the shaggy beasts are almost universally popular. But there's another keystone Plains species essential to grasslands restoration - and it's not nearly as esteemed as the buffalo. Prairie dogs were once the most common mammal in North America. In the late 19th century, about five billion prairie dogs of five species inhabited the Plains from Canada to Mexico. The vast majority were black-tailed prairie dogs, a stocky, buff-colored rodent that weighs between two to three pounds. Their vast towns comprised complete ecologies in their own right: One in Texas measured 100 miles wide, 250 miles long and contained an estimated 400 million dogs.

Prairie dogs shaped the Plains as much as the buffalo, and a considerable array of wild species depended on the rodents for shelter and food. The prairie dogs' various diggings provide
shelter for a great many animals: badgers, foxes, burrowing owls and a tremendous variety of reptiles, amphibians and insects.

The huge quantity of feces and urine produced by the dog towns was a gigantic fertilizing mechanism for the Plains. Today, prairie dogs only inhabit about 1 percent of their former range; the black-tailed prairie dog is a candidate for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Their decline began shortly after cattlemen moved to the Plains. Seen as competitors with cattle for forage, the dogs were poisoned and shot out.

A coalition of environmentalists is agitating for a return of the dog. "Prairie dogs are decreasing in numbers across their range," said Jonathan Proctor, a program associate with the Predator Coalition Alliance in Bozeman, Mont. Proctor's group was able to secure a temporary ban on poisoning on federal lands through a petition to list black-tailed prairie dogs under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

But the dogs are still shot in large numbers, often for sport. Such activities are widely condoned by ranchers. "There's no shortage of prairie dogs," said South Dakota rancher Pat Clark, who said the animals compete with cattle for grass and endanger livestock with their burrows. "They're all over the place." But scattered families of prairie dogs are no indication of the general health of the five species, Proctor said. Despite the pressures facing prairie dogs, Proctor said he is guardedly optimistic about their future. Colorado recently banned sport hunting for black-tailed prairie dogs, and South Dakota and Montana are considering similar restrictions, said Proctor.

"Basically, they'll come back if we stop actively killing them," he said.

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Terriers at the Tar Pit

Dogs from the early 1980s were decidedly smaller than the Plummers seen today.

Like all working terriers, a Plummer Terrier is a composite animal. The Plummer is made mostly out of Jack Russell, with a strong dash of beagle (added for nose, voice and coat color), and bull terrier (added for toughness and head size). A fell terrier was mixed in to improve the overall appearance.

This strain of terriers, first created by Brian Plummer in the late 1970s and 80s, started out -- by Plummer's own admission -- as genetic wrecks with shot jaws, an ugly appearance, foul tempers, and a tendency to be mute.

For anyone with a lick of sense, a caution flag should now pop up: Who in their right mind begins to breed from such a canine mess?

Brian Plummer did.

After a long period of outbreeding and culling, obvious genetic problems were worked out of the breed, but a new problem worked its way in -- today's dogs are often too big for truly tight underground work. Perhaps that is not a problem if you are developing a dog just for ratting, but was a new ratting dog actually needed?

In fact, is any new terrier breed needed? Is it too much to ask people to simply preserve and work the terrier breeds we already have?

It is not a question Plummer asked, and now the point is moot. The dog that has been created is attractive, and they certainly have their fans. The question now is whether the breed will make it as a worker among workers, will remain a generalized ratting terrier, or will be pulled into the Kennel Club to be little more than another show-ring trotter.

If salvation is to be had, it is in the hands of those few genuine diggers and dedicated ratters that are trying to size down the breed and keep it working (to one thing or another) on a regular basis. A proper nod to such people -- they certainly exist even if there are not too many of them.

If doom is to rear its head, it is in the form of internecine rivalries between breed clubs, hump-and-dump breeders, and rosette chasers that do not work their own dogs.

In fact, this is a threat to all working dogs of all breeds, and the Plummer terrier is no different.

As for Brian Plummer himself, he is dead, and presumably not too concerned with critics of his dogs, his books, or himself.

His books live on, and continue to be very fun reads, and deserve their spot in the lexicon of terrier literature.

They are certainly no worse than any others, and quite a bit better than most.

There seems to be universal agreement that Brian Plummer himself was a little odd. He liked to bait others into intemperance, and he was known to lift stories from others and present them as his own. He wrote an entire book, under a pseudonym, in which he variously quoted and criticized his own books -- a decidedly odd thing to do.

Plummer suffered from both depression (a true illness) and very marginal finances, and cranked out Cavalier King Charles Spaniels for cash even as he dabbled in recreating "lost" breeds like the Lucas Terrier and the Alaunt -- breeds that had slid into extinction in generations past because they no longer had a rational reason for existence or preservation. Today Plummer's "Lucas Terrier" is a scruffy show ring dog, while his "Alaunt" appears to be little more than a variation of the pig-working pitbull so common in the American South.

While he was alive, Plummer was drowning in dogs -- Bearded Collies, Alaunts, Lurchers, Plummer Terriers, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, fell terriers, and White German Shepherds, to name just a few. He could not possibly have had time to work so many dogs, and those who visited his kennels reported they were often in a disgraceful state of upkeep.

That said, Plummer's books and dogs remain. Plummer terriers continue to rat and even work fox to ground if placed in the right hands.

The fact that some dogs do indeed work to ground seems to cause some distress to people that despised the man for his pretensions and slights. The fact that relatively few dogs work to ground, is similarly distressing to the other side. No matter. The dogs are what they are, same as the books.

The trouble ahead for the Plummer terrier appears to be a rush, by a foolish few, to usher the Plummer terrier into the tar pit of the Kennel Club, from which no other working breed has ever emerged intact and still working.

Tar pits look benign -- cool water tends to pool on top -- but nothing has ever come out of them but bones.

In the case of the Kennel Club, what has emerged, time and time again, are exaggerated dogs devoid of working instinct, nose, and common sense, with coats inappropriate for the job, and skeletal structures that are often inadequate for a day in the field.

No one who courses dogs looks to a Kennel Club dog to do the job, and the same is true for working sled dogs, herding dogs, cart dogs, pointers, setters, and retrievers.

Terriers are not an exception to the rule.

The key and recurring problem with working terriers drawn into the Kennel Club-- from Fox terriers to Sealyhams, Borders, Jack ("Parson") Russells to Fell ("Welsh") Terriers -- is size.

Why do working terrier breeds always seem to get too big in the chest after being listed on Kennel Club roles?

The answer is to be found in an inherent defect of the show ring, and a basic understanding of canine anatomy.

The essential elements of a working terrier are small chest size, strong prey-drive, a loud voice, a sensitive nose, and a clever kind of problem-solving intelligence.

Aside from size, none of these attributes can be judged at ringside.

In a judging field of 20 or 30 dogs, a selection filter of size alone does not provide the gradients required to articulate a reason for choosing a single dog or bitch as a winner.

The breed club solution has been to generate pages of cosmetic criteria which effectively devalue the only important attribute of a working terrier that can be judged in the ring — a small chest.

And it is no small matter that chest size is defined rather vaguely -- the span of a man's hand. Whose hand? Wilt Chamberlain's? In a world of micrometers, surely there is solid research on the true size of fox chests all over the world? Yet it is not used, because Kennel Club pretenders with hulking dogs find it easier to breed good-looking large dogs than small well-proportioned working dogs.

In the Kennel Club, head size and shape are deemed to be very important by theorists who assign a great number of points to this feature (see the Border Terrier for an example). It is head shape, after all, that gives each breed its distinctive look. It is the head that faces the quarry in the hole.

Surely the shape and size of a terrier's head is important?

In fact, when it comes to working terriers, head shape is only important to the extent that it leaves space for brains, produces a strong enough jaw to grip, and allows for unobstructed breathing.

Most crossbred mongrel terriers have heads shaped well enough to do the job.

As for size, in the world of working terriers, a bigger head is not necessarily better -- a point that is often overlooked by theorists who have spent far more time listening to show ring judges than they have their own dogs working their way through a tight den pipe.

Larger heads tend to be attached to larger chests — the latter being necessary to support the former. When terriers are bred for the "bully heads" that Kennel Club judges favor, the resulting dog is often large-chested as well.

It does not take too much gain in the chest for a dog to have quickly diminishing use in the field -- a point easily overlooked if you spend more hours at shows than you do with a shovel in the field.

Paths to destruction are often well-worn. The Plummer terrier is apparently sliding straight down the Kennel Club chute that so many other terrier breeds have gone down before.

The current rage is now to "out cross" Plummer terriers with bull terriers in order to "improve" and "strengthen" the head, which a few show ring breeders claim has grown "snipey."

Whatever.

It is their dog to breed and do with as they see fit. Each to his or her own, etc.

The fact that terrier breed after terrier breed has fallen into the Kennel Club trap of exaggerated heads and overlarge chests will not stop others from following on, any more than the predicament of a trapped Mastodon at the La Brea tar pits served as a warning to the Dire Wolf and Saber Tooth that followed.

Will the entire breed disappear into the tar pit? Time will tell. The tar is cunning, powerful and above all patient. It waits. Time will tell if it is fed.


A dire wolf and a saber tooth at the tar pit. "It looked like a good idea at the time."
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This post is recycled from April 2006.

Small Signs of Hope

1. Red Wolves are doing fine in North Carolina. The picture at top is your hero at a North Carolina road sign last week. Nearly wiped off the face of the planet, the last Red Wolves were trapped, bred, and released back into nature at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina where they have added to their own numbers and now seem to have settled down to a more-or-less stable population of just over 100. More Red Wolf introductions have been tried in other locations with less success (they need a big area without too many humans which is hard to find on the East Coast), but a small pocket of Red Wolves may have naturally shown up along the West Virginia/Virginia border (Shhhhh! Tell no one!). The Red Wolf, is a naturally occurring and stable hybrid of the Grey Wolf and the Coyote. If anyone tries to tell you stable hybrids do not occur in nature, tell them nonsense. Of course they do, and the Red Wolf is a perfect example.



2. Blue whales have been discovered singing off the coast of New York. The voice of a singing blue whale has been tracked just 70 miles off of Long Island and New York City. A second blue whale was also heard singing offshore in the far distance. There are only about 600 blue whales in the Atlantic and only about 15,000 across the globle.



3. Four Fish Stocks Rebound. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has reported to Congress that four stocks — Atlantic bluefish, Gulf of Mexico king mackerel and two stocks of Atlantic monkfish — have been rebuilt to allow for continued sustainable fishing.



4. New Jersey Shorebirds are Adding a Little Weight. Sanderlings, Red Knots and other shorebirds that depend on horseshoe crab eggs to rebuild body mass lost after long migrations from South America are finally making weight again in time to head North on a normal migration schedule. Overfishing of horseshoe crabs, which started about two decades ago, resulted in a near total collapse of the Redknot population. With restrictions on horseshoe crab harvests, however, the population of that ancient creature is just starting to rebound, and with it the food sources of migrating Redknots and others shore birds. We have a long way to go with the Redknot, but we may have reached the bottom of the decline.



5. Shad runs in the Potomac are inching back up. American shad populations in the Potomac River are on the rebound thanks to a successful shad restoration program launched by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. The numbers are still far, far below what they once were, but the fishing is pretty good just below my house, none-the-less.
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Punked by a "Cornell" Press Release

A taxidermied museum specimen.

It sounded like amazing news.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology reported that the long thought extinct, Carolina Parakeet has been REDISCOVERED in Honduras.

Long believed to be extinct,--the Carolina Parakeet, North America's only member of the parrot family -- has been discovered in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in the Mosquitia region of northeastern Honduras ... A full report is due to be Published in the journal Science in the April issue. The findings include multiple sightings of the long thought to be extinct parakeet as well as preliminary data collected from an male bird tracked through radio telemetry. The evidence was gathered during an intensive year-long search in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve (RPBR) involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working together as part of the Parakeet Conservation Partnership, led by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University and The Nature Conservancy.

"The bird we currently have in captivity, the individuals we have seen in the wild and the male we are tracking through telemetry are absolutely the Carolina Parakeet" said Hubin Tubbs, the Science article's lead author. "We know from historical data that the Carolina Parakeet was migratory to this general region. There must have been individuals that did not migrate and they have formed a small but viable non-migratory population all this time."

A few more minutes of research, and I discovered the sad truth -- the whole thing was (is) an April Fool's Day joke.

Which would be fine, if the damn press release was not still up.

Which it is.

And perhaps this is not such a funny joke.

You see, Cornell was complicit in the Ivory Bill Woodpecker fiasco a few years ago.

The "rediscovery" of the Ivory Bill in Arkansas now appears to be either: 1) a hoax perpetrated by folks trying to preserve land along the White Water River, or; 2) a genuine misidentification due to what the New York Times has referred to as "faith based ornithology."

Either way, it was (and is) a black eye for the Cornell Ornithology Lab.

So where does the April 1st press release come from?

No clue. It is up on a "Google Docs" account, which should have been my first clue that there was a problem with the story.

A genuine Cornell logo and a few email addresses from The Nature Conservacy and Cornell, plus a very straight-forward presentation of the story, had me fooled, however.

It all sounded plausible, and I wanted to believe. And, truth be told, I did not look at the date on the press release.

Too bad it's just another chain-pull that rips a hole in the heart.

Thanks for that, whoever you are....

• Related Posts
  ** Condors and Species Lost
  ** From Near Extinction to Common Pest in 50 Years
  ** Where the Buffalo Roam -- Again

Coffee and Provocation

Dogs More Like Us Than Chimps?
Are dogs more like us than chimps? Maybe. Jozsef Topal of the Institute for Psychology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences says so, in any case: "In my view, pet dogs can be regarded in many respects as 'preverbal infants in canine's clothing,'" he says, adding that many dog-owner relationships mirror human parental bonds with children. >> More here

Healthy Dalmatians?
Healthy Dalmatians? There's an idea! Here's the back story for those trying to keep up. Want to help set things right? Here's a start: an ipetition to the AKC asking them to allow backcross Dalmatians to be registered.

The Sibley Guide to Birds is Now Online:
Good news: the Sibley bird guides are now on line. Yes! Yahoo!

The Ironic Death of an Organic Farming Guru & Health Nut:
Jerome Irving Rodale was the founder of the organic food movement, the publisher and creator of Prevention magazine, and the author of a huge book on composting that my father used to own. In 1971, he told interviewer Dick Cavett that he'd live to 100. Moments later, the 72-year old Rodale slumped dead in his chair from a heart attack. That episode of The Dick Cavett Show was never broadcast.

Gouldian Finch:
There are now far more Gouldian Finches in captivity than there are in the wild. How many other animals is this true of? The Siberian Tiger, and most other subspecies of Tiger I think. The Hyacinth Macaw, I am pretty sure. Cotton-top Tamarins. Anything else??

Different Strokes:
The opening of the old TV show, with different music. Yes, music does make a difference!

50 Things Every 18-year-old Should Know:
Basic stuff we should all know. Now, what are the 50 things a 50-year old should know?

God Hates Figs!
Yes, you read that right. God hates figs. See Mark 11: 12-14 and Matthew 21: 18-20 and Jeremiah 29:17 for conformation. I am pretty sure God loves everything else, however!

First Gorillas, Now Orangutans:
National Geographic says a large population of over 2,000 Orangutans has been discovered in Borneo. This follows the new discovery of a very large (100,000) population of Lowland Gorillas found in the Congo last year.

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Rats Prevent Plague?

Rat collection station, Philadelphia, date unknown but shortly after 1900.

Whatever happened to the Bubonic Plague?

Like so much that is fundamental to history (Whatever happened to the Dust Bowl? Why did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor?), this question is sidestepped by most grade-school teachers.

The simple truth is that RATS ended Bubonic Plague pandemics in Europe -- an odd but true story that, no doubt has been suppressed by public health officials uncomfortable with such inconvenient truths.

First, a little history. Plague has probably swept through the Old World time and time again. Plague-like pestilences are mentioned in the Bible (the so-called “scourge of the Philistines”), and at least five great outbreaks are noted by historians.

For modern purposes, however, the "big plague" was the so-called "Black Death" that swept through Europe beginning in the 14th Century and carried forward, with fits and starts, until the middle of the 17th Century.

The first wave of this plague killed off one-third of the population of Europe within two years of its arrival in the port of Messina, Sicily in 1346.

The vector, or transmission agent, for this wave of Bubonic Plague was the black rat Ratus ratus, which was host to the black rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis, which in turn was host to the bacterium Yersinia pestis that actually causes the Plague.

Large-scale incidents of plague in Europe ended with the arrival of a very aggressive new immigrant -- Ratus norvegicus, aka the Brown or "Norwegian" rat.

In fact this rat is not Norwegian. It probably originated in Asia, and got to Europe through the Middle East, first arriving in England on a load of timber from Norway (hence the name given to it by the British)

The Brown Rat and the Black Rat look somewhat similar, but they have very different temperaments.

A Brown Rat is not only larger that its Black Rat cousin, it is also far more aggressive. When the Brown Rat arrived in Europe and began to multiply, it quickly pushed the smaller and more mouse-like Black Rat out of buildings, alleys, storage sheds and sewers. In fact, over time, it pushed the Black Rat almost totally out of existence in the temperate world.

Though fleas and lice are opportunists, they tend to gravitate towards, and specialize in, certain hosts. Different species of bird lice, for example, specialize in different species of birds. In fact, many species of bird lice can only be found on very specific bird species. The extinction of a bird species may, in turn, result in the extinction of one or more species-specific types of bird lice.

Many types of flea also gravitate towards, and special in, certain kinds of hosts. Though a species of flea may theoretically be able to draw a blood meal from a wide variety of mammalian hosts, most thrive on a specific list of hosts and generally fail to thrive if these particular hosts are not around.

So it is with Xenopsylla cheopis, the oriental rat flea, which is the flea most likely to be implicated in transmission of the Bubonic Plague.

The oriental rat flea thrives on a few species of rodents, and the Black Rat is far and away the most common of its rodent-host carriers.

With the rapid spread of the Brown Rat in Europe, the Black Rat was bullied and beaten into extirpation across most of the civilized world.

Today the Black Rat is commonly found only in the tropics. Even there it is most likely to be found high up (running along roofs and feeding at the tops of date palms) in order to avoid running into the neighborhood bully, the Brown Rat.

Bottom line: the Bubonic Plague was brought to Europe by fleas riding on Black Rats, while Brown Rats largely drove that species of rat out of Europe (and much of the rest of the world), thus eliminating the oriental rat flea and the Yersinia pestis bacteria that brought with it the Bubonic Plague.

• Related Links
  ** Sharing Death and Disease Across Species
  ** Apocalypse Dogs of San Francisco
  ** Whatever Happened to the Bubonic Plague?
  ** Tarvag for Dinner Again?
  .

The Last Thylacine

This is a combined reel showing all the film footage that exists of the last Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger.

The Thylacine was a marsupial wolf which weighed 40-70 pounds.

Its skull is remarkably similar to that of the modern wolf (click on picture at right to make bigger), though its lifestyle was quite a bit different, and it was generally lighter in weight as well.

Unlike the wolf, the Thylacine did not have a very good sense of smell, and seems to have relied on sight and sound to locate prey, most of which it caught by stealth and ambush.

In addition, the Thylacine was not nearly as fast a mover as the wolf, as its long stiff tail gave it a somewhat truncated gait.

Unlike wolves, Thylacines do not vocalize much -- a few growls and hisses are all that were ever heard, nor did they hold territory against other Thylacine interlopers. In short, the Thylacine may have looked a bit like a wolf, but it very much acted like a huge possum.

The Thylacine once lived on the Australian mainland, but went extinct there 2,000 years before European settlement due to hunting by humans and their feral dogs (dingoes).

The Thylacine hung on in more remote Tasmania until a decline in the Tasmanian Emu population (a major food source for the Tasmanian Tiger) helped push their numbers down. A general decline in Thylacine number was coupled with an intensive hunting program largely fueled by the misinformation that the Thylacine drank blood and was a threat to livestock. These twin rumors fueled a bounty-hunting campaign, which worked to reduce the Thylacine population to a mere handful.

The last few Thylacines were scooped up by zoos, but the animals were successfully bred only once, and the last living Thylacine died in the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Australia in 1936.

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Tastes Like Chicken

From National Geographic:

A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.

Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester's buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.

This is the best thing that has ever happened to this bird species.

Not only is it clearly not extinct, but it is rare bird that will now get protection and put into a captive breeding program as well.

God bless the klieg lights of publicity.

• Related Posts:
  ** Science Needs More Terriermen
  ** Dead Man's Curve
  ** Rat Poison and Wildlife Conservation
  ** Extinction of the Caribbean Monk Seal
  ** Non-Extinct Terriers & Other Mysteries
  ** Terriers at the Tar Pit
  ** Where the Buffalo Roam -- Again
  ** Condors and Species Lost
  ** Missing the Story on Quaggas and Extinction
  .

Otter Ironies

One of the ironies of wildlife management is that the very devices that pushed so much wildlife to the edge of extinction -- guns and traps -- are the very things that are now working to bring wildlife back.

The difference between today and 120-years ago is the rise of hunter-conservationists who understand the value of hunting seasons, the need for limits, and the necessity of wildlife habitat conservation and reclamation.

In earlier posts, I have detailed the history behind the return of the wild turkey which, in the space of 50 years, went from teetering on the edge of extinction to a population of 5.5 million birds distributed over a greater range than occurred even in pre-Columbian times.

Wild turkey hunting is now a billion-dollar-a-year industry, with 2.6 million hunters harvesting about 700,000 birds a year.

The article below is about the return of the river otter to Middle America. As Audubon magazine noted just a few years ago, "More than 2,000 river otters have been caught in legholds in the South and released virtually unscathed in Midwestern states where the species had been extirpated."

Back in the 1990s, when the river otter was being reintroduced in Ohio, Audubon was not only defending the use of leghold traps as necessary for the reintroduction of species like the river otter, but also for management of such species as the wolf and nuisance abatement of other species such as beaver, raccoon, and red fox.

For those interested in the foundation history of wildlife management in America, Aldo Leopold's book on Game Management is still in print more than 70 years after its first publication. Chapter 10 is on predator control. >> Click here to buy

January 21, 2005

Ohio wildlife officials consider allowing otter trapping after success of reintroduction programs

By: Carrie Spencer, Associated Press

_____________________

The wily and playful river otter was once on the verge of extinction in Ohio. Now they're thriving - and causing so much damage that wildlife officials are considering allowing hunters to trap them.

It's a situation other states have had with other animals. In Florida and New Jersey, it's the black bear. The Rockies and Alaska have the gray wolf. Nearly everywhere else, it's the white-tailed deer and Canada goose.

"In a human-dominated landscape, it's really tough to keep wildlife in the numbers we feel are appropriate," said Greg Butcher, a zoologist with the Washington-based National Audubon Society. "We have affected the environment so much that a lot of natural checks and balances are gone."

The otter's numbers have soared in just two decades - from 123 to about 4,300 - and Ohio wildlife officials are proposing a permit-only two-month trapping season. The Ohio Wildlife Council will vote on the proposal in April.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that wildlife causes US$1 billion ([euro]770 million) in crop and livestock damage each year, while deer collisions injure about 29,000 motorists a year and cost another $1 billion ([euro]770 million). Bird collisions cost the aviation industry $740 million ([euro]572 million) annually.

The otter's story is familiar. Fur trapping drove the native species from Ohio by the early 1900s, but their reintroduction - starting in 1986 and lasting seven years - has been so successful that farmers are starting to complain. A family of otters can eat half the fish in a privately stocked pond before the owner gets wind of their visits.

"If they find a nice trout farm, they're pretty happy with that," said C. Greg Anderson, assistant biology professor at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif.

Otters used to be in every U.S. state except Hawaii but were wiped out over 70 percent of their range, Anderson said. Reintroduction programs began in the 1980s in 21 states, all successes. Missouri, one of the first with 19 otters released in 1982, now has more than 10,000 and allows trapping, he said. Kentucky began its first otter season this winter, running through February.

Government-sanctioned hunting of all kinds of animals is proliferating across the country.

Starting in February, private landowners in Montana and Idaho won't need written approval to kill gray wolves harassing livestock, while Wyoming is suing the federal government to get its wolf management plan approved. From about 30 wolves introduced 10 years ago, 825 or more now live in the three states.

Florida wildlife officials reported a record number of sightings of threatened black bears in 2004 because of sprawling development and busier roads. The state is studying the bear population and could lift its protected status this year.

New Jersey's second annual bear hunt was called off this year amid a dispute over the state's management plan. New Jersey has more than 3,000 bears, up from fewer than 100 in the 1970s.

Hunting groups once feared the disappearance of white-tailed deer, but management encouraging reproduction worked too well. Last fall, the Cleveland suburb of Solon became the latest Ohio community to hire sharpshooters to cull the prolific landscape munchers.

Few success stories compare with that of the giant strain of Canada goose, which was nearly extinct in the 1960s because of hunting and lack of their preferred grassland habitat.

In the Midwest, restrictions on hunting coincided with the explosion of office parks with manicured lawns and lush golf courses. The birds, with their 6-foot wingspans, are now fouling picnic spots and hissing and nipping at golfers. States from North Dakota to Pennsylvania have expanded hunting allowances.

While some see overpopulation as triumph over extinction, the Animal Protection Institute sees it as failure on the part of wildlife officials. Reintroduction of a native animal requires planning to prevent an overrun, said Barbara Schmitz of the Sacramento, California-based institute.

"A lot of times, lethal solutions are looked at first," Schmitz said. "It is possible for them to become part of the balance of nature again."

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Non-Extinct Terriers & Other Mysteries

Many of the terrier breeds that people now lament the "extinction" of, never actually existed except in the minds of Victorian picture book makers.

In "The Welsh Terrier Leads the Way," Bardi McLennan recounts the relatively recent origins of the Welsh Terrier.

"In 1800 there were only 15 designated breeds of dogs, and 50 years later there were only 50."

That is of ALL dogs, not just terriers. As late as 1850, a lot of breeds were still not very distinct and several breeds were known by different names. For example, in 1851, the Yorkshire Terrier was also known as "the broken-haired scotch terrier." Only in 1870 was a Yorkshire Terrier firmly designated as a breed and breed name. Before then litter mates were often shown in different breed categories -- a situation that occurred with the first prize-winning Jack Russell, which had previously won shows as a "white Lakeland."

The Welsh Terrier and Old English Black and Tan" terriers were the same dog -- a type of rough-stock Lakeland dog used in Wales and in the North. These dogs had a fair amount of variation in terms of size and shape, but generally had more color than the "white foxing terriers" preferred in the South.

These rough-coated terriers existed without too much conformity in name or shape (as they still do in the working terrier community in the U.K.), but conformity and a brand name were essential characteristics of Kennel Club registration, and an intrepid history (however fanciful) certainly did not hurt sales.

With the rise of dog shows in the 1860s, the race was on to give every odd-looking dog a name and "improve" them, and terriers were at the top of the list.

One group of Kennel Club breeders decided to embrace a rather ponderous name and an incredible assertion for the brown and black dogs of the North: they were, they asserted, "the root stock" of all terriers in the British Isles, and that they were to be called the "Old English Broken-Haired Black and Tan."

The assertion that these dogs were the root stock of all terriers in the UK is rather laughable -- no one know what the "root stock" was, and in any case there probably was no single "tap root," but instead a fine net of "rootlets" that spread far and wide and included a lot of dogs that were not terriers at all -- dachshunds, whippets, beagles, and lap dogs, for example.

In any case, the Welsh were somewhat outraged to have the English bring down a few of "their" dogs and claim they were an "Old English" anything. These were Welsh dogs, and the welshmen moved quickly to establish that fact. The Welsh got organized quickly, and in 1884 they held the first dog show with classes just for Welsh Terriers in Pwllheli, North Wales with 90 dogs in attendance -- a rather impressive opening shot in this little "terrier war."

For their part, proponents of the "Old English Black and Tan" moniker could not seem to coalesce into a real club; in fact they could not even agree on a name for their supposedly "Old English" breed. Some called it the Old English Broken-Haired Black and Tan Terrier, some the Old English Wire Haired Black and Tan, some the Broken-Haired Black and Tan, and some just "Black and Tan" -- a color-descriptive name that had been used about as often as "white dog" or "yellow hound".

Whatever they might have called the dogs, this new Kennel Club "breed" was in fact a put-up job comprised of a mix of terrier types and they had difficulty breeding true.

In 1885 a survey of the winning dogs in the ring found that all of them were, in fact, first generation dogs, i.e. not Black and Tans out of Black and Tan sires and dams, but Black and Tans produced out of crosses with other breeds. For example, the winner of the first show in 1884 was a dog named Crib that was a cross between a blue-black rough terrier and a famous smooth fox terrier owned by L.P.C. Ashley called Corinthian.

In 1885, the Kennel Club took a Solomonic approach to the name and breed standard for the dog, featuring both dogs at their 1885 show. On April 5, 1887, however, because the English could not get organized, they were dropped from Kennel Club listings, and the new "Welsh Terrier" breed was born, perhaps propelled forward in popularity a bit by the rise of David Lloyd George, the son of a Welsh cobbler, who himself has risen from humble origins to stand should-to-shoulder with the gentry.

The "Black and Tan" terrier is not the only breed that either never existed (or still exists today, depending on how you look at it).

At the same time that one faction was pushing for the introduction of the "Old English Black and Tan Terrier" another faction was pushing for the introduction of the "English White" terrier which, it should be said, has nothing to do with the old English White molosser dog used as a butcher's dog 150 years earlier.

In fact this new dog was really a toy breed created by crossing a small smooth-coated white foxing terrier with some sort of lap dog, which left the resulting progeny with a propensity towards deafness and a bulging "apple head" like that of so many modern Chihuahua.

Both the "Black and Tan" terrier and the "English White" terrier live on in the fevered minds of the breed-obsessed thanks to a book by Vero Shaw entitled "The Illustrated Book of the Dog."

Printed in 1881, right in the middle of the "terrier wars," this book contains about 100 chromo-lithograph plates and engravings of dog breeds that were being put forth as distinct entities at that time. Shaw rather optimistically included the "Black and Tan" as well as the "English White," betting that the political machinations of English Kennel Club dog breeders would prevail.

He was wrong, which is how two "ancient" breeds of terriers, that in fact never exited, managed to appear on the scene for less than 20 years and then disappear altogether.
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The Spread of Tanukis (Raccoon Dogs)

The Tanuki or Raccoon Dog is an interesting animal that is hunted with terriers in Finland and, increasingly, in other European countries as well.

Originally from Japan and China, this 13-22-pound animal has migrated through Russia and into Finland (where it was imported for fur and sport), and is now found as far west as France. While some sources claim this animal was once hunted to near extinction in Japan, numbers there seem to have rebounded with a vengeance (if in fact they were ever low), as road impacts now are estimated to be in the range of 110,000 - 370,000 a year.

The secret to the Tanuki's success seems to be that it occupies an ecological niche that was heretofore unoccupied in Europe. The red fox specializes on small mammals (mice and voles), the raccoon dog on plant material (berries and seeds) and the badger on invertebrates (worms, snails and beetle grubs).

Though primarily a plant eater, the Tanuki is an opportunistic omnivore that will eat just about anything if given a chance, and is willing to live in a wide variety of homes, including old fox, badger and rabbit dens -- as well as under sheds, and in locations very near human residences.

Unlike the Raccoon, the Tanuki is a true canid ( Canus Nyctereutes procyonoides). The "procyonoides" species name is a tip of the hat to the genus name of the North American Raccoon, Procyon.

Where the Tanuki differs from other canids. is that it is fairly slow, and has a jaw structure that is too weak to take down larger prey. Like the raccoon, Tanuki will scavenge baby birds from nests and might catch an occasional mouse, but their weak carnassials and well developed molars mean they have a diet heavy in plant matter supplanted by eggs, lizards, roadkill, frogs, mice, insects and human refuse.

Like Fox, Raccoon, Possum, and Groundhog, the average Tanuki has a short life span, rarely living past three years in the wild.

Of course, as with any successful species with a short life span, reproduction rates are high. The average Tanuki litter is 5 to 9 pups born in a ground burrow after a gestation period of about 60 days.

The raccoon dog carries the highest average litter weight of any canid, with the mean weight of a litter being 24% of the weight of the female. Males stick around and help raise the young -- a good thing since the female Tanuki is no doubt exhausted from carrying her load!

Home ranges for a Tanuki are quite large (10-20 sq kilometres) and overlap, reflecting the seasonal nature of food sources. As food in one area declines, the Tanuki waddles off to another area where the berries, insects or seeds are in greater supply.
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David Sibley on Ivory-bills, Science and Priorities

Hawaiian birds, left to right: Kauai O'O (extinct); Kauai Akialoa (extinct); Kauai O'u (extinct) ; Kauai Nukupu'u (extinct); Puaioho (less than 200 left); Kamao (extinct)


The great wildlife illustrator, bird man, and field-book author David Allen Sibley writes of Ivory-bills, sound science and priorities:

I have been skeptical of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker reports since about two weeks after the announcement in April 2005. This view has only become stronger over time and is based on my thorough study of the published evidence, drawing on my 35 years of experience as a birdwatcher and student of bird identification, and on my experience reviewing countless similar rare bird reports.

I find this Draft Recovery Plan fundamentally flawed, as it presumes that there is an urgent need for action based on "convincing evidence of the species' existence" when in fact no independent review finds that evidence convincing. The 2005 claim of "irrefutable proof" was incorrect; and was based on ambiguous evidence misinterpreted through hope and desire (commonly called wishful thinking). The case for the bird's continued existence rests on a few seconds of extremely blurry video (shown to be consistent with Pileated Woodpecker), a handful of fleeting glimpses by observers steeped in expectations, faint audio recordings that more or less resemble Ivory-billed sounds (among other things), and a belief that all of these possibly suggestive bits add up to a compelling body of evidence (1). None of the evidence stands up to scrutiny; there is no proof. Most importantly, hundreds of thousands of person-hours of intensive search efforts since 2005 - which could have confirmed the sight reports - have not produced any confirmation at all.

Based on such weak and ambiguous evidence, the proposal to spend up to $27.7 million of a very limited budget on efforts to find and recover the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is unsupportable. Hundreds of other species with well-documented needs would be better-served by those resources.

Sibley goes on, in the comments section, to note that while attention (and money) is being slathered on "saving" the extinct Ivory-billed woodpecker, dozens of still-living Hawaiian birds are being pushed into extinction without so much as a peep from the public:

The contrast could not be greater between the Ivory-billed fanfare and the relative silence about Hawaiian birds.

Searching the Bird Life database for critically endangered or extinct birds in North America turns up 44 species, 36 of which are Hawaiian endemics! Twenty-two of those Hawaiian birds are listed as extinct, plus Hawaiian Crow which is extinct in the wild with only a few individuals surviving in captivity.

And what is killing off those Hawaiian birds? David Sibley does not mention it, but the main forces of destruction are avian flu and avian pox borne by mosquitoes, and to a lesser extent the predation of rats, and habitat destruction caused by pigs, goats, and humans with chainsaws and development platts. Added to the equation has been some competition with other species of introduced birds.

As odd as it may sound, though Hawaii may have lost more bird species than any other spot on earth it is also home to more introduced bird species than other place on earth, thanks to efforts of a "Bird Lovers Society" (Hui Manu) that began in the 1930s.

A final tip: check out David Sibley's main web site and blog. His field guides really are the best, in my opinion.
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Coffee and Provocation

Oppose California's Mandatory Sterilization Law:
California Assembly Bill 1634 would require the mandatory sterilization of most working dogs in California. Hard to believe, but true. If you live in California and have a working terrier, a lurcher, a bandog, or any type of breed not recognized by the AKC or the UKC, then the State is going to require that your dog be sterilized by the age of four months.

• To read the legislation
  
  
• To read about the legislation
  
  
• To take action to stop this terrible and poorly thought out legislation
  
  

• Overbreeding: Beware of Simple Answers -- Why I oppose mandatory spay-neuter laws, and why I hope you will too.

Deben Mark III for Sale:
A fellow in New Mexico is selling a Deben Mark III locator set for $150 (original cost was $300). It was used for ferreting, and is very good condition. Email Clint at >> cchisler@unm.edu to inquire and/or work out the details.

Jon and Roseann Hanson's New Magazine:
Jon and Roseann Hanson have come out with a new magazine called Overland Journal, which is dedicated to vehicle-centered expedition travel and exploration in North America and around the world. The premier issue features over 100 pages of expedition vehicles, travel stories, equipment reviews, and conservation news, and has a crack-shot group of writers and editors associated with it. All good and long may it prosper! A hat tip to Steve Bodio for pointing me to this one.

The End of Playboy Bunnies?
Hugh Hefner's bunnies are under threat. No, not the dim-brained silicon-injected automatons that Hugh Hefner shares his mansion with, but the real marsh rabbits that live on Big Pine Key in Florida and that were named after Hefner by a couple of scientists with a sense of humor. It seems feral cats on the island and a nearby airforce base threaten to make Sylvilagus palustris hefneri extinct. >> To read more

A Good Read on Canine Diet:
I'm tired of reading about dog food, but this essay was well-worth the time >> Are Dogs Carnivores? A hat tip to Teddy Moritz for this one!

The Monks of New Skete Use Choke Collars:
A while back I wrote a piece about television dog trainers who work with problem dogs, and that most use chain slip collars to teach basic commands. While watching Divine Canine, the new dog show about the dog trainers at the New Skete monastery, I noticed the use of chain skip collars once again. Of course they use choke collars. Why change what works?

Nothing Stays the Same

Out in the yard, sticks are beginning to give way to leafy green, and in the nearby woods paths are beginning to close in as bushes reach out and trees tower over like cathedrals.

All is good --- this kind of change is a comfort and welcome, for it marks the change of season. Give it two months, and it will be a jungle down by the river.

Other changes are not as comforting. A new sign has appeared at the edge of one of my farms -- the future site of a church it says. This is the second version of this sign over the last five years, and I am hoping it means fundraising is not going well. I have it on good authority that God would not approve of a parking lot going up on this land.

Near the bend in the road I notice a new plant nursery is going in, and down the road a ways, next to the old stone house, there is a sign advertising a subdivided plot. None of this is good. Though a great deal of land in this area is protected by conservation easement, I watch all signs of change with trepidation.

I suppose I am not alone. Like most environmentalists I am most comfortable with stasis: trees should probably not be cut down, dams should probably not be built, introduced non-native species should probably be extirpated, climate should not shift, and genetically-modified crops should be treated with some degree of skepticism.

I worry when I see any animal or plant species decline in numbers, but by the same token I am also a little alarmed if they dramatically increase in numbers. If a mountain appears to be "naturally' bald (as in the Smokies) I think it should probably not be allowed to reforest. I wonder out loud of two animals from widely different locations, such as two species of falcon or parrot, should be allowed to hybridize. I am not a fan of mining and I worry about aquaculture.

I realize I am stupid, unrealistic and silly. The world is not static and never has been. This planet has been terraformed by the plants and animals on it since the very beginning, from the oil sands of Alberta to the White Cliffs of Dover, from the stinking mess of the Sudd to the twisting corals of the Great Barrier Reef.

Yet I fear the current speed of change and the awesome power of modern technology.

But what is there to fear? The planet is littered with the remains of ancient civilizations that have disappeared, from Tikal to Stonehenge, and from Zimbabwe to Angkor Watt. Humans overshoot carrying capacity and common sense all the time, and when that happens God plays clean up and the world moves on. If New York and London sink into the morass, the same as ancient Rome and Athens, I will not be there to care. Get over it. Things change.

Besides, things may not get worse -- they might get better. While the ancients of Easter Island were captive to their own narrow set of experiences, the modern residents of Easter Island have access to three internet cafes and can glean information from other locations and other times. Not only can they download satellite maps of their own island, they can also import food and materials, to say nothing of ordering a few dozen copies of Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse" to tell them how it all ends.

One result of having so much information on hand is that we in the Modern World are much more careful than the ancients. Before Columbus reached out shores, stone age man, unaware and uninformed, pushed the giant mammoth, camel and sloth over the edge of extinction with nothing more than clovis points and a few flint rocks.

In the 500 years since Columbus arrived, however, not a single North American mammal has been pushed into extinction and only a few birds -- the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, the Passenger Pigeon, the Caolina Parakeet, the Eskimo Curlew, the Great Auk, and the Labrador Duck.

And while, by all rights, things should be getting worse, they actually seem to be getting better, at least by some common measures.

Today we have more forests in North America than we did 100 years ago. We also have more black bear, more deer, more elk, more wolves, more grizzlies, more turkey, more red fox, more Canada geese, more alligators, more raccoons, more groundhogs, more cougars, more coyotes, more bald eagles, more osprey, and more whales.

More land is under protection as wilderness than every before, and more land is protected as National Parks and National Forests as well. Millions of additional acres are protected as State Forests, Pittman-Robertson land or under conservation easements, to say nothing of the scores of millions of semi-protected acres under the Conservation Reserve Program.
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So perhaps my anxiety about the fate of the world is irrational. Maybe it's a medical condition that needs to be treated by something made by Pfizer or Glaxo.

All that is absolutely guaranteed in this world is that everything will change. Nothing we know today will be the same for our grandchildren, anymore than it is the same now as it was when our great grandparents were alive.

Things change. Get over it it. Easier said than done.