Author: todayinconservation

All our environmental and conservational laws are important, but one that would make the playoffs for the super bowl of greatest laws would be the one enacted on this day in 1973.  Two years after President Richard Nixon made his case to Congress for stronger protection of endangered species, he was able to sign into law the “Endangered Species Act of 1973.”

            Protection of endangered species had begun much earlier.  In 1940, a law was passed to protect Bald and Golden Eagles because the national symbol had declined to the brink of extinction in the continental U.S.  A more general endangered species act took effect in 1966 and was strengthened in 1969.  But the protections were still insufficient to curtail the decline of many species.  President Nixon addressed Congress on February 8, 1972, stressing “that even the most recent act to protect endangered species … simply does not provide the kind of management tools needed to act early enough to save a vanishing species.”  He asked congress for a stronger law.  Then, in early 1973, an international conference in Washington, DC, established the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a global commitment to protecting biodiversity (learn more about CITES here).

            Congress listened to Nixon and responded to the CITES challenge in the summer of 1973.  They drafted the law that put in place a broad mechanism for protecting endangered species.  Despite several later amendments, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) contained all the basic aspects of today’s law:

• Assigned responsibility for administering the ESA to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (for terrestrial and freshwater organisms) and the US Marine Fisheries Service (for marine and anadromous organisms)
• Defined the meaning of “endangered” and “threatened” and the mechanism for “listing” species
• Extended protection to plants as well as animals
• Added protection for “critical habitat”
• Defined “taking” of endangered species to include a broad set of actions well beyond actually killing individual plants or animals
• Required federal agencies to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service before undertaking new projects that could harm listed species
• Implemented CITES for the United States

Unlike today, support for environmental laws was bi-partisan and broadly popular.  The draft bill passed the Senate unanimously (92-0) and the House of Representatives by a 390-12 margin. 

            The Center for Biological Diversity calls the ESA “the strongest law for protecting biodiversity passed by any nation.”  The list of protected species now includes about 1600 species.  Although fewer than 100 species have been removed from the list over time (a fact often cited by critics of the law), 99% of listed species have avoided extinction and most are recovering substantially from their lows.  The Bald Eagle, for example, has rebounded from a low of about 400 breeding pairs in the 1960s to over 7,000 today, and the national symbol has been de-listed.

            And protection for endangered species remains wildly popular.  The Center for Biological Diversity reports that in a 2013 poll, two-thirds of Americans wanted the ESA strengthened or kept the same.  They also report that more recent polls show 90% of Americans want the ESA to remain strong.

References:

Ballotpedia.  History of the Endangered Species Act.  Available at:  https://ballotpedia.org/History_of_the_Endangered_Species_Act.  Accessed January 16, 2020.

Center for Biological Diversity.  The Endangered Species Act:  A Wild Success.  Available at:  https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/esa_wild_success/. Accessed January 16, 2020.

US Fish and Wildlife Service.  Endangered Species Act—A History of the Endangered Species Act of 1973.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/endangered/laws-policies/esa-history.html. Accessed January 16, 2020.

It’s a few days after Christmas, and some of the fortunate among us are escaping the winter for cruises to the Caribbean.  On this date—December 27—a different sort of cruise began in 1831.  That cruise lasted 1742 days, and the results changed the entire way civilization viewed the world.

            The vessel conducting the cruise was His Majesty’s Ship Beagle.  HMS Beagle was one of more than 100 built in the design of a “10-gun brig-sloop.”  It was relatively small (90 feet 4 inches long), with two masts.  Launched in 1820, Beagle’s task was to scout for larger ships and convoys and to transport letters and other light materials from place to place (learn more about the ship here) .  A few years later, Beagle was refitted with a small third mast (making it a “bark”), a small cabin and some additional features for more extensive journeys. 

            And so, in 1826, HMS Beagle embarked on its first major journey.  The task was to survey the coasts of South America, taking hydrologic and cartographic measurements. Two years into the voyage, the original captain became depressed and shot himself.  The second-in-command, Lieutenant Robert Fitzroy, took over as captain.  The voyage ended in 1930, after four years exploring the South American coast.

            The first voyage just whetted England’s appetite for information about South America and the lands and waters of the Pacific Ocean.  So, Beagle was given another make-over—the deck was raised one foot, the hull was made two inches thicker, 22 chronometers and much scientific equipment were put on board—in readiness for its second major voyage.  Fitzroy was re-appointed the captain with a similar but larger challenge—resurvey all the coasts of South America, then traverse the entire southern ocean to survey the complete latitude of the earth. 

            There was also a secondary task of “collecting, observing, and noting, anything worthy to be noted in Natural History.”  At the time, natural history meant not only living plants and animals, but also geologic materials and fossils.  Fitzroy realized he needed help—and that he needed a gentleman peer to accompany him as an equal, to provide companionship (he didn’t want to end up like Beagle’s previous captain).  After some false starts, he eventually settled on a 22-year-old graduate of Cambridge who planned to be a clergyman but was also an amateur naturalist eager for an adventure.  That man was Charles Darwin.

            After several months of delays, HMS Beagle left Portsmouth, England, on December 27, 1831, commencing a five-year voyage that covered nearly 40,000 miles. The early voyage wasn’t pleasant for Darwin.  He wrote, “The misery I endured from sea-sickness is far beyond what I ever guessed at.”  The ship was so crowded that he slept in a hammock suspended over the small table in the main cabin.  But things got much better after the ship reached South American.  In February, 1832, he caught his first glimpse of the rainforest in Brazil, noting, “Here I first saw a tropical forest in all its sublime grandeur…I never experienced such intense delight.”

            Darwin’s job was to explore the lands the ship encountered.  He understood that this was an extraordinary opportunity, noting that “[N]othing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in a distant country.” So, he went off on expeditions for much of the voyage, tramping some 2,000 miles in all.  He spent only 18 months aboard Beagle during its five years at sea.  He made good use of his time onshore, collecting 5,000 specimens of plants, animals, minerals and fossils and filling dozens of notebooks with his observations.  Throughout the journey, he sent his specimens back to England where they could be examined by experts.  Most of the specimens were new to science, and, consequently, Darwin’s reputation as a naturalist grew while he was on the voyage, and he returned home in 1836 as a well-established scientist. 

            Darwin kept working on his specimens and his theories, eventually bringing us natural selection, evolution and, really, ecology (learn more about Darwin’s work here). The Beagle, however, wasn’t so fortunate. It took one more significant voyage, to survey the entire coast of Australia.  By 1845, however, the ship had outlived its usefulness.  The masts were removed and it was moored in the estuary at Essex, England, as a lookout for smugglers.  The ship’s name changed to Watch Vessel 7.  And in 1870, it was sold for scrap. 

References:

American Museum of Natural History.  A Trip Around the World (Part of the Darwin exhibition).  Available at:  https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/a-trip-around-the-world.  Accessed January 15, 2020.

The HMS Beagle Project.  HMS Beagle’s Second Voyage.  Available at:  Accessed January 15, 2020.https://hmsbeagleproject.org/the-timeline/hms-beagles-second-voyage/.

Thomson, Keith S.  Beagle.  Encyclopedia Britannica.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Beagle-ship. Accessed January 15, 2020.

Tietz, Tabea.  2015.  The second Voyage of the HMS Beagle.  SciHi Blog, 27 December 2015.  Available at:  http://scihi.org/second-voyage-beagle/ Accessed January 15, 2020.

Tripline.  The Second Voyage of the HMS Beagle.  Available at:  https://www.tripline.net/trip/The_Second_Voyage_of_the_HMS_Beagle-5024671157051002B40CB47E6691EAB3. Accessed January 15, 2020.

On this date in 1996, the world’s nations began implementing the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.  We all grew up learning about the southward spread of Africa’s Sahara Desert, but that “poster-child” representation of desertification is insufficient, at best, and misleading, at worst.

            The world’s concern about desertification began long before 1996.  The UN first developed a plan to fight desertification in 1977, but a later analysis showed that conditions had only gotten worse since then.  So, at the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, participants ordered the UN to get serious about fighting unsustainable land-use changes, and in 1994 the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was passed, to take effect when the 50^th country ratified it.  That occurred on December 26, 1996.

            The UNCCD defines desertification as the degradation of drylands.  The spread of deserts is one dimension of the problem, but loss of productivity in a range of other drylands is the real culprit—and target.  Drylands are defined as deserts (6.6% of global land coverage), arid lands (10.6%), semi-arid lands (15.2%) and dry sub-humid lands (8.7%).  Altogether, these lands comprise 41.3% of the earth’s surface (without deserts, that’s about one-third of the earth).  Dryland covers about two-thirds of Africa and 70% of India.

            And big chunks of the world’s dryland are suffering, about 25 million new acres annually.  The causes are many.  Drought, made worse by climate change, is a primary cause of desertification in the driest regions of the world (much of northern Africa).  Irrigation is used on a majority of dryland crops, but inappropriate irrigation (too much or using salt-laden water) can cause salt to build up in soils, thereby reducing productivity.  This is a major issue in India, which today is experiencing the most dramatic degradation of its cropland productivity.

            Overgrazing and overharvest of fuel wood also spur land degradation, as soil looses plant cover that once slowed erosion.  Vast dryland areas that once grew perennial grasslands have been turned into agricultural lands growing annual crops.  The loss of year-round ground cover increases erosion, reduces soil moisture and generally reduces production.  Because these trends occur largely in the world’s poorest countries, nearly one billion people are at risk of early death from famine, infant mortality and other factors.  Biodiversity loss is also a concern, but little is known about the overall biodiversity in dryland ecosystems.

            The UNCCD is the world’s strongest tool with which to fight desertification.  It is a legal treaty, signed by 197 parties (including the U.S.).  The approach to fighting the problem is a commitment to “land-degradation neutrality” by 2030, as prescribed in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (specifically, goal 15.3).  This means that any losses in dryland productivity will be balanced by gains on other lands.  So, fighting desertification means stopping loss, but also improving the conditions of all lands.  More than 120 countries have committed to setting targets to achieve land-degradation neutrality so far (the U.S. is not one). This approach requires developing and implementing technical improvements to combat all the specific causes, but more importantly connecting people with the landscape to develop community-based solutions that pay attention to local conditions and opportunities.

            So, when you think about desertification in the future, don’t just think about encroaching deserts.  Think about—and act to reverse—the degradation of nearly one-third of the earth’s dryland surface.  And, for that matter, productivity losses wherever they occur.

References:

DownToEarth.com.  2019.  Desertification setting in across a quarter of India.  Available at: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/environment/desertification-setting-in-across-a-quarter-of-india-66407. Accessed January 13, 2020.

Physics.org. 2018. New World Atlas of Desertification shows unprecedented pressure on planet’s resources.  Available at:  https://phys.org/news/2018-06-world-atlas-desertification-unprecedented-pressure.html. Accessed January 13, 2020.

Rafferty, John P. and Stuart L. Pimm.  Desertification.  Encyclopedia Britannica.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/science/desertification/Rain-fed-croplands. Accessed January 13, 2020.

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.  About the Convention.  Available at:  https://www.unccd.int/convention/about-convention.  Accessed January 13, 2020.

United Nations.  United Nations Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification.  Available at:  https://www.un.org/en/events/desertification_decade/whynow.shtml. Accessed January 13, 2020.

Now here’s a Christmas present that we wish the Grinch would steal and never return—the bunny rabbit.  At least that’s the way Australia feels about rabbits.  The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is not native to Australia, but they may be the most abundant mammal in the country today and certainly the most tragic.

            It’s all because of a wealthy English immigrant, Thomas Austin.  Austin lived in a rural town in the Australian state of Victoria (in the southeastern corner of the country, where Melbourne is).  He missed his native England, including his hobby of hunting small game.  He had a good idea, and wrote to his brother asking him to send some rabbits, hares and partridges to release on his property.  Austin reasoned that “[t]he introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting.”  His shipment arrived, and Austin released his rabbits on December 25, 1859.

            He was right about one thing—they sure did provide some hunting.  The few rabbits he released (12-24, reports vary) reproduced like, well, rabbits.  In 1866, just 7 years after the release, Austin and his friends were harvested 14,000 rabbits, just from his property!

            And the population kept on growing and spreading.  Australia was perfect habitat for rabbits.  The loose soil allowed easy burrowing of underground dens, called warrens.  Sparse tree cover allowed ample growth of ground plants and seedlings, all of which the rabbits devoured with enthusiasm.  The rabbits had few native predators, and the mild climate allowed them to breed several times each year.  By 1900, rabbits lived up to 3000 miles beyond the release point, and by the 1940s, the total population had reached 600 million (that’s the most conservative estimate; some say the peak was 2 to 10 billion!).  Today, rabbits live in all but the most desert-like parts of the country.  The invasion of Australia by rabbits is the fastest colonization by any mammal in history.

            But Austin was wrong about another thing.  Rabbits could cause harm—and have, lots of it.  Overgrazing by dense rabbit populations has reduced vegetation on the land, as the voracious herbivores ate virtually all shoots and seedlings of grasses, shrubs and trees, putting several native species on the path to extinction.  With the vegetation gone, soil erosion increased.  Other herbivores couldn’t compete with the huge rabbit population, causing several native bird and mammal species to decline precipitously.  All of these changes, along with direct grazing by rabbits on agricultural crops, is said to cost Australia about $200 million annually.

            Australia has tried about everything to control rabbits.  Hunters tried, but they couldn’t keep up with the rabbit’s ability to reproduce.  Next came fencing.  In the late 1800s, building rabbit-proof fences was a national priority.  The longest fence ran about 2,000 miles, north to south, to protect Western Australia from invasion (it didn’t work).  At one time, there were nearly 200,000 miles of rabbit fences in Australia.  Fences, however, are imperfect barriers, expensive to build and requiring constant maintenance.  Another physical attack has been digging up active warrens, destroying the nesting and sheltering ability of rabbits

            Next came biological control.  Scientists introduced myxomatosis, a virus that targets rabbits, in the 1950s.  It worked well, but rabbits quickly developed immunity (about half of the population remains immune).  A second virus—rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus, or calicivirus—took over in the late 1990s.  It has been highly effective, but resistance has cropped up in recent years.

            Altogether, these tactics have reduced the rabbit population to about 200 million individuals.  That’s still a lot of rabbits, but Australia is a big place.  The reduction has allowed several species of small mammals to resurge, especially in the driest regions.  With fewer rabbits, introduced feral predators such as cats and foxes are also declining.  The dusky hopping mouse, plains mouse and crest-tailed mulgara—all sensitive species that had declined—are now thriving.

            Nevertheless, the lesson is clear:  just because a species is tasty, cuddly or pretty back home doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to take it along when you move.  Better to let nature, not nostalgia, make those judgments.

References:

Australian Government.  Feral European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).  Available at:  https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/7ba1c152-7eba-4dc0-a635-2a2c17bcd794/files/rabbit.pdf.  Accessed January 9, 2020.

Goldfarb, Ben.  2016.  A virus is taming Australia’s bunny menace, and giving endangered species new life.  AAAS Science, Feb 17, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/virus-taming-australia-s-bunny-menace-and-giving-endangered-species-new-life.  Accessed January 9, 2020.

National Museum of Australia.  Rabbits introduced.  Available at:  https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/rabbits-introduced.  Accessed January 9, 2020.

Oster, Grant.  2014.  Thomas Austin and His Rascally Rabbits.  Hankering for History.  Available at:  https://hankeringforhistory.com/thomas-austin-and-his-rascally-rabbits/.  Accessed January 9, 2020.

Rabbit Free Australia.  Controlling Rabbits.  Available at:  http://www.rabbitfreeaustralia.com.au/rabbits/controlling-rabbits/.  Accessed January 9, 2020.

Today there is a tree in our lives.  Not just any tree, but the Christmas tree.  That beautiful evergreen is standing in the corner, decorated with reminders of Christmases past , with a pile of presents under its lowest boughs. Ever wonder how that tree got there?

            Let’s start with a little—a very little—history of the Christmas tree.  People have been cutting down evergreens and displaying them indoors for a very long time.  Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Hebrews and Chinese brought in evergreen trees to represent longevity.   Since then, decorated and undecorated trees have popped up in all sorts of cultures, most notably in Scandinavia.  Sorting out which came first is a fool’s errand, so I’ll not take it.

But the unofficial start of the modern Christmas tree comes out of Germany, where medieval homes sported “paradise trees” on December 24, the Christian feast day of Adam and Eve (and, hence, why I chose this date to discuss Christmas trees).  They decorated the trees with apples to represent the one plucked by Eve in the Garden of Eden.           

Christmas trees “went viral,” however, because of England’s royal family.  In the mid-1800s, Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, set up evergreens on tables, one for each member of his family.  He decorated them with all sorts of ornaments and placed presents under each tree. Because Queen Victoria was so popular, British families adopted the practice with enthusiasm, and a new Christmas tradition swept the continent.

            The Christmas-tree tradition followed along rapidly in the U.S.  German immigrants had brought the Christmas-tree idea with them to America, and by about 1850, they were all the rage on the eastern seaboard.  President Franklin Pierce put up the first tree in the White House in 1856. The first Christmas tree lot appeared in New York in 1851, and the first Christmas tree farm was planted in Mercer County, New Jersey, in 1901.  Its trees hit the market in 1908, selling for $1 each.

            The Christmas tree industry has grown like a fertilized balsam seedling since then.  In the U.S., virtually all commercially available trees now come from Christmas tree farms.  Tree farms occur in all 50 states, numbering as many as 4,000.  Oregon grows the most trees, followed closely by North Carolina, with Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin completing the list of the top five producing states.  Most tree farms are small, family-run operations.  The approximately one million acres under cultivation contain about 350 million trees.

            The most popular species is the Fraser fir, which is North Carolina’s primary Christmas-tree crop and serves the eastern U.S.  Second is the Noble fir, grown mostly in Oregon and decorating Christmas homes in the West.  About 32.8 million living trees were sold in 2018, a record number.  The average price was about $75, making the total live tree market worth about $2.5 billion.

            However, most Americans today have an artificial Christmas tree.  A whopping 80% of all fake trees come from China. About 23.6 million were sold in 2018 (also a record).  Because artificial trees last on average about 5 years, the math means about 80% of American homes put their presents under fake trees.  Artificial trees are more convenient, of course, but which is more environmentally sustainable—live or artificial?

            The live Christmas tree industry wants us to believe that living trees are the best choice, for several reasons.  First, live trees aren’t made from plastic and shipped halfway across the world.  A representative of the National Christmas Tree Association said it was “fall-off-your-horse simple that a tree made out of oil, turned into PVC plastic in China and shipped over on a boat, cannot be better than growing a real tree.”

            Second, live trees are grown on farms, just like other crops.  So, no natural forests are harmed by their harvest. For the 5-7 years between planting and harvest, those trees absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.  When the trees are harvested, growers re-plant new trees, beginning the process over again.  Christmas-tree farms stay in business, absorbing carbon dioxide, because people buy them.  A North Carolina grower encourages folks to buy real trees “so we keep the local economy strong and we don’t have to sell the land to rich people from New York City to make condos.”

            Third, discarded trees have many uses that keep them out of landfills.  Ground up, old Christmas trees make great mulch; New York City features a “mulchfest” every year, using the resulting mulch in the city’s parks.  Trees sunk in lakes and ponds provide habitat for fish and other aquatic organisms.  Trees are also used to stabilize eroded lands, especially along lake shores or river banks.  And while they are growing, the trees improve local water quality and provide wildlife habitat.

            And finally, there is something truly magical about putting a live tree in your home for the holidays.  Said a representative of live tree growers, “There’s this wonderful family experience that’s just not parallel to dragging a dusty box out of the attic.” (we’ll forget that we drag dusty boxes full of ornaments out of the attic anyhow…).

            So, Merry Christmas, whatever your taste in trees.  Spruce or fir, plastic or aluminum, enjoy your tree with all the love and good-tidings of the season. 

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Christmas tree.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/plant/Christmas-tree.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Pick Your Own Christmas Tree.  2020 Christmas Tree Statistics, Facts and Trends.  Available at:  http://www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/christmas_tree_statistics.php.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Pick Your Own Christmas Tree.  The History of the Christmas Tree and Other Christmas traditions.  Available at:  http://www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/traditions.php.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Statista.  Christmas trees sold in the United States from 2004 to 2018.  Available at:  https://www.statista.com/statistics/209249/purchase-figures-for-real-and-fake-christmas-trees-in-the-us/.,  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Zraick, Karen.  2018.  Reavl vs. Artificial Christmas Trees:  Which Is the Greener Choice?  The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2018.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/business/energy-environment/fake-christmas-tree-vs-real-tree.html.  Accessed January 7, 2020.

Bad news is never welcome.  But at Christmastime, bad news is particularly dreadful.  On December 23, 1982, the town of Times Beach, Missouri, got the worst kind of bad news:  The entire city was contaminated by a highly toxic chemical—dioxin.  In a few years, the city was wiped off the map.

            Times Beach, Missouri, was designed to be a recreational paradise.  The site is just a few miles southeast of St. Louis, along the route of the  historic “Route 66.”  The St. Louis Times newspaper owned a small tract of land on the shore of the Meramec River, and they decided in 1925, as an advertising gimmick, to sell small lots for a negligible price ($67.50) to new six-month subscribers.  Soon after, the new land owners formed the town of Times Beach.  It never developed as a major recreational destination, but it did become a modest middle-class town, with 2,500 residents living in about 800 homes.

            The town never had much money, so when the dusty roads became an issue, they turned to a low-cost solution.  They hired a nearby company to spray used crankcase oil on the roads, a common practice in rural communities.  For four years, from 1972 to 1976, the company sprayed the used oil on Times Beach’s roads.  Unknown to the town and its residents, however, the company had mixed other industrial waste into the oil.  That industrial waste contained one specific chemical in high concentrations—2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, also known as TCDD, or simply as “dioxin.”

            This particular species of dioxin is one of hundreds of forms of the chemical.  Dioxin is found in nature, and all of us have some dioxin in our bodies, just from being alive.  But in the post-WW2 era, dioxins were manufactured in large quantities for use in new products.  Today we known that dioxin is a highly dangerous compound, capable of causing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, developmental problems, reproductive problems and others.  TCDD is the deadliest of the various formulations.

            People around the Times Beach area began to notice health problems in the late 1970s, along with other communities, farms and livestock arenas sprayed with the used oil.  As news of the problems began to leak out, the federal government began testing soils.  The EPA took samples in Times Beach in 1979 and again in early December, 1982.  A few days later, on December 5, a massive flood hit the area, inundating Times Beach (flood stage on the Meramec River was 18.5 feet—the river crested at nearly 43 feet).  Townspeople fled the flood waters, and they were just moving back into town as Christmas approached.

            Then the hammer came down.  The Centers for Disease Control issued a report on December 23.  Samples from Times Beach contained 100 parts per billion of dioxin, a hundred times higher than the level considered hazardous.  The CDC’s recommendations were catastrophic:

“Non-emergency cleanup activities in the Times Beach area should cease….Residents who have been temporarily relocated are discouraged from moving back into the area. Resident who have already begun to move back into the area are encouraged to leave. It is recommended that these measures be observed until more extensive post-flood soil sampling and analysis are completed.”

Warning signs went up around the area, and government agents blocked the river bridge that was the main road into town.

            Further samples and analyses confirmed the story.  Times Beach was horribly contaminated by dioxin, to the extent that the town was no longer habitable.  In February, 1983, The EPA director came to Times Beach to announce a buyout.  Over the next decade, the U.S. government relocated all residents, buying their homes and subsidizing new homes elsewhere.  At Times Beach and another 26 sites around Missouri, the EPA destroyed all structures and dug up and burned the contaminated soil, 265,000 tons in all.  The total cost reached $250 million.

            Times Beach is now gone, a victim to an era of unregulated use of new, untested chemicals that promised great benefit but instead caused great harm.  Every cloud has its silver lining, however.  The tragedy of Times Beach was a primary stimulus to the creation of EPA’s Superfund Program, that identifies and rehabilitates the worst contaminated sites in the nation.  And where Times Beach used to be, you’ll now find “Route 66 State Park.”  And in one corner of the visitors’ center, you’ll find a display dedicated to the town that once was and is no more.

References:

History.com.  Chemical contamination prompts evacuation of Missouri town.  History.com, Nov 13, 2009.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/road-contamination-prompts-evacuation-of-town.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.  Dioxins.  Available at:  https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/dioxins/.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

Powell, William.  2012.  Remember Times Beach:  The Dioxin Disaster, 30 Years Later.  St Louis Magazine, December 3, 2012.  Available at:  https://www.stlmag.com/Remember-Times-Beach-The-Dioxin-Disaster-30-Years-Later/.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

Reko, H. Karl.  1984.  Not An Act of God—The Story of Times Beach.  Available at:  https://books.google.com/books?id=7oAVAAAAIAAJ&dq=dece+23,+1982+CDC+statement+on+times+beach&source=gbs_navlinks_s.  Accessed January 6, 2020.

History credits Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and, perhaps, Richard Nixon as America’s great conservation presidents.  But what about the other predominant member of a president’s team—his wife.  Without question, the most important conservation presidential wife was Lady Bird Johnson.  Known as the country’s “environmental first lady,” Mrs. Johnson (as her organization’s website refers to her) was the impetus for much of the modern environmental movement.

            Claudia Alta Taylor was born in Karnack, Texas, on December 22, 1912 (died 2007).  A friend said she was “as purty as a lady bird,” and she was known from then on as Lady Bird.  She grew up roaming the woods, fields and waters of eastern Texas.  “My heart found its home long ago,” she wrote, “in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.”

            She earned a journalism degree from the University of Austin, Texas.  Soon after, she met a young politician, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ, as we know him), and soon became Lady Bird Johnson.  She bought a failing radio station in Austin and built it—doing everything from planning the programming to cleaning the floors—into a thriving broadcasting enterprise that included radio and television stations and a cable television system.  As the wife of an influential Texas congressman and senator and then vice-president, she became a part of the Washington, DC establishment.

            Her life changed on November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy’s assassination vaulted her husband into the presidency and her into the role of first lady.  She decided that she would be a “doer” as first lady, and the things she sought to do mostly involved the environment.  Her work took on the moniker of “beautification,” but her idea was not just to make the world pretty.  She said, “Though the word beautification makes the concept sound merely cosmetic, it involves much more: clean water, clean air, clean roadsides, safe waste disposal and preservation of valued old landmarks as well as great parks and wilderness areas. To me…beautification means our total concern for the physical and human quality we pass on to our children and the future.”

            She worked closely with the president to move environmental matters to the top of the political and societal agenda.  Together, they pushed for—and accomplished—legislation that protected the landscape of federal interstate highways (the 1965 Highway Beautification Act is commonly known as “Lady Bird’s Bill”), created scores of national park units, provided permanent funding for protecting high priority conservation sites, and rejuvenated the city of Washington, DC.  Lady Bird’s Bill is why interstate highways have wide rights-of-way and are not littered with billboards, junkyards and other scars of the industrial age.  At the end of his presidency, LBJ gave his wife a large plaque which held 50 pens he had used to sign 50 environmental measures into law.  The plaque read, “To Lady Bird, who has inspired me and millions of Americans to try to preserve our land and beautify our nation.  With love from Lyndon.”

            She found many ways to inspire others.  She led excursions to many national parks, usually with politicians and national media in tow, to demonstrate the importance of natural places to the nation’s physical and mental health.  Back in Texas, she led the drive to build a 10-mile trail around a lake in Austin—the lake is now named for her.  On her 70^th birthday, she founded what is now called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Just outside Austin, the center covers 279 acres and displays more than 650 native plant species. 

            Speaking to an audience of architects in 1968, Johnson summarized her philosophy.: “Too often we have sacrificed human values to commercial values under the bright guise of progress. And in our unconcern, we have let a crisis gather which threatens health and even life itself … Today, environmental questions are matters for architects and laymans alike. They are questions, literally, of life and death. Can we have a building boom and beauty too? Must progress inevitably mean a shabbier environment? Must success spoil nature’s bounty? Insistently and with growing volume, citizens demand that we turn our building to a sensible, human purpose. They are asking, literally, for a breath of fresh air.”

            When you breath that fresh air, one of the folks you should thank is Lady Bird Johnson, our Environmental First Lady.

References:

Benepe, Adrian.  2015.  How the White House Went Green:  The Environmental Legacy of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson.  The nature of cities, 1 November 2015.  Available at:  https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2015/11/01/how-the-white-house-went-green-the-environmental-legacy-of-president-lyndon-b-johnson-and-lady-bird-johnson/.  Accessed December 12, 2019.

Gould, Lewis L.  2012.  The environ;mental legacy of Lady Bird Johnson.  Houston Chronicale, August 3, 2012.  Available at:  https://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/The-environmental-legacy-of-Lady-Bird-Johnson-3761366.php.  Accessed December 12, 2019.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  The Environmental First Lady.  Available at:  http://www.ladybirdjohnson.org/biography.  Accessed December 12, 2019.

December 20 is the earliest date on which the winter solstice can occur (more commonly on December 21 or 22, but we need a topic for December 20).  It is the shortest day of the year, and consequently has had special meaning to humans throughout our history (people today celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge in England, but ancient people celebrated the winter solstice there).  The winter solstice is variously called “mid-winter” or the first day of winter, depending on the country and custom.

            But that doesn’t matter for our purposes—suffice to say that when the winter solstice comes around, never feat—it is winter!  And nature knows this all too well, so let’s reflect a bit on how animals in the far north respond to winter.  Scientists have categorized the general ways of surviving winter into three strategies, exemplified here by a champion of each.

            The first is to “get out of Dodge,” or in this case, winter.  Many animals migrate to escape the rigors of winter.  Birds, of course, are the most obvious, and the grand champion is the Arctic tern.  Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea) spend the summer in the Arctic, where they breed, but head south for the winter, really far south.  They fly to Antarctica and back, an round-trip of about 24,000 miles!  In fact, they are avoiding two winters each year, one in the north and one in the south.  Other animals make less dramatic migrations.  Elk, for example, move from high mountain elevations in summer to lower elevations in winter, where the snow isn’t so deep and forage is more available.

            The second strategy is to hunker down and pretend winter isn’t happening, saving energy by going dormant.  Different animals utilize various levels of dormancy, from simply digging dens and filling them with food, to the official state of hibernation.  The yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris), a high elevation relative of the squirrel, is the champion.  It hibernates for as many as 200 days each year, from September or October through April or May, depending on the habitat.  A colony of 10-20 individuals digs a common burrow that they line with grass.  They fatten up in the fall and then cuddle together in the marmot version of grandma’s feather bed.  A hibernating marmot reduces its body temperature as low as 41 degrees Fahrenheit, slows its heart to as low as 30 beats per minute (compared to 180 when not hibernating), and breathes only about twice per minute.

            The third strategy is to just make do.  Humans throw on another layer, insulated gloves and hats—and wild animals do the same.  Mountain goats and many other grazing animals sport heavy undercoats made up of hollow hairs that insulate their bodies.  The pika, a small rodent, has tiny ears and tail, proportioned to reduce heat loss.  Many northern animals shed their brown summer coats for white fur or feathers, including ptarmigans, Arctic foxes and hares, giving them camouflage as either prey or predator. The snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) is the champion, however, with thick stiff hair covering its large paws, allowing it to travel easily across deep snow on namesake “snowshoes.”

            Nature has perfected these amazing responses to winter over a very long time.  And that leads to the compelling question of sustainability:  What will happen with global warming?  We can imagine all sorts of bad impacts—like species coming out of hibernation too early and then falling victims to late winter storms.  Less Arctic ice means shorter hunting seasons for polar bears—and we’ve seen the sickening photos of starving bears. The survival of prey animals, like ptarmigan and snowshoe hare, is also compromised because their molting from brown to white coats is triggered by day-length, not temperature.  In a warming world, a white ptarmigan on bare ground is, figuratively, a sitting duck.

References:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Arctic Tern.  Available at:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Arctic_Tern/overview#.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

Elischer, Melissa.  2015.  Animal adaptations for winter.  Michigan State University Extension, December 10, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/animal_adaptations_for_winter.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

National Park Service.  Marmot, Rocky Mountain National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/romo/learn/nature/marmot.htm.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

National Park Service.  Snowshoe Hare.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/articles/snowshoe-hare.htm.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

National Snow & Ice Data Center.  All About Snow – Snow and Animals.  Available at:  https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/snow/animals.html.  Accessed December 9, 2019.

Peterson, Christine.  2018.  How Climate Change Affects Winter Wildlife.  The Nature Conservancy, December 06, 2018.  Available at:  https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/idaho/stories-in-idaho/winter-animal-adaptations/.  Accessed December 99, 2019.

November 30 sports a number of events that relate to conservation.  The Welland Canal first opened in 1829, allowing all sorts of environmental chaos to travel past the natural barrier of Niagara Falls.  Australia experienced its hottest November ever in 2014, a tribute to climate change.  The Paris Climate talks began on this date in 2015 (see the results on December 12, the day it ended).

            But I’ve chosen to highlight Mark Twain’s birthday on November 30, 1835 (died 1910).  Mark Twain needs no introduction.  He was born in Missouri, lived most of his youth in the Mississippi riverbank town of Hannibal, and is most notably associated with the river and its immediate surroundings.  The world loves Twain for his humorous homespun stories, from The Adventures ofTom Sawyer to Huckleberry Finn to The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.  Beyond humor, however, his writing was often satirical and sometimes cynical, about life and human nature.

            Twain was an adventurer as well as a writer.  He spent many years tramping, as he would say, around the U.S. and the world.  He travelled to Hawaii and across the American West, working as a travelling correspondent for various newspapers and magazines.  He wrote a collelction of stories of his western adventures in Roughing It. He spent years as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and recounted his experiences in his book, Life on the Mississippi.  He also travelled around Europe and the Middle East.  His time in England was the basis for his magical tale of A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

            Let’s enjoy a few of the ideas that Mark Twain left us regarding nature and our relationship to it. 

“This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit.  To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, …is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.”

“Architects cannot teach nature anything.”

“The laws of Nature take precedence of all human laws. The purpose of all human laws is one — to defeat the laws of Nature. This is the case among all the nations, both civilized and savage. It is a grotesquerie, but when the human race is not grotesque it is because it is asleep and losing its opportunity.”

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

“Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces-and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.”

“To one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.”

“Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.”

References:

AZ Quotes.  Mark Twain Quotes About Nature.  Available at:  https://www.azquotes.com/author/14883-Mark_Twain/tag/nature.  Accessed December 3, 2019.

Mark Twain Quotes.  Nature.  Available at:  http://www.twainquotes.com/Nature.html.  Accessed December 3, 2019.

Quirk, Thomas V.  2019.  Mark Twain, American Writer.  Encyclopedia Britannica, Nov 11, 2019.  Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain. Accessed December 3, 2019.

Coffee rationed.  Imagine that.  No longer could you just get a cup of coffee whenever you wanted.  No double French vanilla latte with skinny cream!  No senior decaf with three sugars! 

            But, it was World War Two, and the U.S. was rationing everything—food, gas, clothing.  So, no reason that coffee shouldn’t be added.  Interestingly, the rationing occurred not because coffee was scarce, but because shipping it up from South America endangered merchant ships being targeted by German U-boats.  Thankfully, the rationing only lasted one year, freeing Americans to resume their coffee habit (and get to work on time and not growl at their loved ones).

            Since then, the world’s coffee habit has exploded  Coffee is now the second most traded commodity worldwide, surpassed only by oil.  About 22 billion pounds of coffee are produced per year, filling the daily demand of about 750 million cups.  The biggest producers are Brazil (by far the biggest), followed by Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia.  And although Americans aren’t the biggest per person consumers of coffee (rank 22^nd among countries; Europeans drink a lot more per person than Americans), the U.S. does lead the world in total consumption (about 2 billion pounds), as we do for almost every materialistic stat.

            Coffee was rationed during the war, but we might just need it again in the fight for sustainable lifestyles.  Your daily cup of coffee (or three or four cups) can have a devastating impact on the environment.  Traditionally, coffee was grown in the shade, under a canopy of tropical forest trees.  Individual farmers tended small farms of coffee bushes in a sustainable manner that required little fertilizer, pesticides or water, and kept the soil intact and fertile.  But in the 1970s, increasing demand for coffee caused a revolution in growing strategy.  Small shade-grown plots were combined into co-ops, the overhead forests were cleared, and plantations of coffee bushes were planted.  The new style required all the inputs of modern agriculture—fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation.  Recent statistics show that at least 2.5 million acres of forest have been cleared for coffee production in Central America alone.

            The change to large plantations was particularly hard because of the environment where it occurred.  Coffee grows in tropical areas, where forests created habitats for a diverse fauna.  The shade-grown coffee farms have been called the second most favorable habitats for biodiversity in the tropics, right below undisturbed forests.  But the sun-grown coffee plantations are monocultures with no place for native biodiversity.  Sun-grown coffee also impacts soil fertility and erosion, because clearing removes the trees that previously fed and stabilized soil.

            Thankfully, coffee production has a chance to become sustainable again.  Environmental groups, such as the Rainforest Alliance, have developed certification programs based on a return to shade-grown coffee.  Other groups have developed fair-trade certifications that assure better returns to farmers and investment sin local communities.  Starbucks has led the way, now serving almost entirely shade-grown coffee.  This process has a long way to go, however, with only about 25% of all coffee now grown under shade, almost all from Central and South American sources.  Asian countries have begun consuming and producing more coffee, with Vietnam now the world’s second largest producer.  Asian countries grow almost all their coffee in the sun.

            Want to do your part winning the war for sustainability?  Fill your cup with that wonderful elixir brewed from certified shade-grown and fair-trade coffee. And maybe just have one cup today!

References:

Blacksell, George.  2011.  How green is your coffee?  The Guardian, 4 Oct 2011.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/04/green-coffee.  Accessed December 1, 2019. 

Caffeine Informer.  Caffeine (Coffee) Consumption By Country.  Available at:  https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-what-the-world-drinks.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

International Coffee Organization.  Trade Statistics Tables.  Available at:  http://www.ico.org/trade_statistics.asp.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

Moore, Victoria.  2013.  The Environmental Impact of Coffee Production:  What’s Your Coffee Costing The Planet?  Sustainable Business Toolkit, January 31, 2013.  Available at:  https://www.sustainablebusinesstoolkit.com/environmental-impact-coffee-trade/.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

National WWII Museum.  Coffee Rationed.  Available at:  http://www.nww2m.com/2012/11/coffee/.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

Rainforest Alliance.  2016.  Rainforest Alliance Certified Coffee.  September 24, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/articles/rainforest-alliance-certified-coffee?utm_campaign=cy18aware&utm_source=18vvaawarecomms&utm_medium=cpc&s_src=ADK18VX&s_subsrc=18vvaawarecomms&gclid=CjwKCAiA5o3vBRBUEiwA9PVzalPEMLPr1ousUqeggUN95pjQ8B-dhDTIV7cKNyvfCbK1xfkIDXUQzRoCjVsQAvD_BwE.  Accessed December 1, 2019.

Wernick, Adam.  2016.  Can coffee become the world’s first 100 percent sustainable agricultural product?  PRI, March 20, 2016.  Available at:  https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-20/can-coffee-become-world-s-first-100-percent-sustainable-agricultural-product.  Accessed December 1, 2019.