"Daddy, what were glaciers like?"

“Generations know Mount Hood as a landmark for the ages, with an icy crown of gleaming glaciers that supply the streams we drink from, catch fish in and grow food with,” writes Michael Milstein in The Oregonian this Sunday. “It is our playground, retreat and beacon on the horizon. It is Oregon.”

Unfortunately for all Hood-lovin’ Oregonians, the volcano is rapidly shedding its cloak of glaciers—the seven largest glaciers on her flanks have shrunk nearly 35% since the beginning of the 20th century due to global warming. And the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group believes the Pacific Northwest will heat up as much in the next 20 years as it did in the past 100.

Bad news for salmon, for skiers, for the Hood River farmers who depend on the mountain’s glacial fresh water run-off in the summer to water their crops of apples, pears, hops and grapes. The glaciers gush somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 billion gallons of water a year, feeding irrigation, keeping creeks and rivers cool for fish and creating hydropower that provides electricity for the entire region.

Other interesting facts in Milstein’s “Mount Hood Meltdown” report:

* “Pacific Northwest glaciers have contributed about 17 percent of the icemelt outside Greenland and Antarctica that is credited with raising ocean levels from 1961 to 2003.”

* “Sandy Glacier, on Mount Hood's west slopes facing Portland and a headwaters of the Sandy River, covers about 60 percent less ground than it did a century ago.”

and

* “The past decade in the Northwest was the warmest on record. Average low temperatures at Eliot Glacier have been above freezing during at least six of the last 12 years -- more than any such period in the last 110 years.”

Milstein also points out the painfully obvious: “There is wide agreement among scientists that human burning of fossil fuels has driven greenhouses gases to their highest levels in at least 600,000 years, warming the Earth especially during the last few decades and speeding the glaciers' demise.”

Some scientists predict Hood will be glacier-free in as little as 180 years, “leaving Oregonians a view of slick, gray rock.” If you’ve got the stomach for bad news, read the rest here.

Elsewhere in Ish River Country, while King George and his lil’ cowpokes in the Capitol cluelessly fiddle (“Global warming? What, me worry?), Seattle is aggressively pursuing the goals of the Kyoto Treaty in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, joining 218 other US cities that, in the face of federal inaction, are taking the lead on the issue. A report, commissioned by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels and crafted in part by Earth Day founder Dennis Hayes and retired Starbuck’s CEO Orin Smith, recommends “spending millions more on transit, building more compact neighborhoods, encouraging energy efficiency and using more fuels from plants rather than petroleum.” You can find out more about Seattle’s visionary goals in this article in the Seattle Times. Al Gore was just in the Jet City to help hype the plan—commentary on his impressive powerpoint (and oratory) skills here in the Cascadia Scorecard blog. The official City of Seattle strategy is here.

And finally, a fascinating photographic survey of retreating glaciers and other visible effects of global warming can be found right here.


global warming
glaciers
Mt. Hood
Seattle

more poop on tundra swans

I've got lots of responses to the Skagit swans post, and so for the curious have found a website with lots more detailed information and illustrations on the tundra swans here.

It has information on differentiating tundras from trumpeters and includes apt poetic descriptions like "Visitors flying over the swan's tundra nesting grounds readily spot them, as they appear as miniature icebergs adrift on the numerous lakes and ponds dotting the landscape" and "Seeing a flock of swans migrating on a cold, clear night looking like graceful ghosts with translucent wings against a full moon is a truly memorable sight."

The art above is by the amazing Salt Spring Island wildlife painter Robert Bateman.

Damn dams

The Seattle Times published a great story on the Snake River Dams and the ongoing, endless debate on economy versus the survival of salmon. it is told with passion, balance and skepticism here.

collaborative swan poem

The Skagit geese are on the move.

The birds are going
the other way now.
And geese fly back &
forth across the valley
getting ready.

It all rolls into one.
There is no pain,
you are receding.

A distant ship smoke on the horizon---

And now it turns its dark eyes,
it rearranges
the cloud of its wings

it trails an elaborate webbed foot,
the color of charcoal.

Lordy, I'm made of blood & bone.
Oh, what will I do, what will I say?


--Christafari, Robert Sund, Jerry Garcia, Roger Waters, Mary Oliver & Neil Diamond

Parks fee update

Washington State Parks director Rex Derr told the AP that his
department considers the recent legislation that eliminated the user fee as
unofficially effective immediately.
 
“Derr said patrons may continue to pay for the rest of the
month if they wish, but rangers won’t expect it,” writes the AP. “Parks will
begin taking down pay-to-park signs…’We want people back,’ Derr said.”
 
The article adds that park attendance was down by eight
million people last year.
 

“’I’m happy,’” Derr said. “Parks are there for everyone and
we love people being able to use their park system.”
 
So, the natural world is free once again, and awaiting your
ramblings and explorations. Good bye to the “pay-for-nature” fees, and good
riddance!

parks
washington
trails

State park fees, RIP

On Monday, March 20, Washington governor Christine Gregoire signed a bill that officially killed the reviled State Parks fees. Beginning April 9, state rangers will no longer have to grovel for people to pay $5 to park their cars, and my friends and I will no longer have to park illegally to avoid tickets or feel troubled when we shred the tickets we got anyway.

I’ve always felt strongly against charging citizens money to be able to go hiking, walk the beach or play with their kids in the woods and fields. They are public lands after all, which means we already own them. We already pay state taxes to support them too. This double-taxation was a lousy sleight-of-hand to underfund environmental budgets. Nearly a third of the revenue generated from this program went to funding the administration and enforcement of the program, meaning a good chunk of the fees were going towards the collection of more fees.

When I talked to rangers about the fees in our local Larrabee State Park, the oldest one in Washington, they likewise hated it. “Turns us into a bunch of parking attendants,” one growled to me. “People shouldn’t have to cough up five bucks to enjoy the outdoors,” said another, there’s just something wrong about that.”

A study by a WWU grad student found that the fees were driving down attendance at local state parks. Almost 40% of the people contacted in the study said they “visit some places less often than they used to because of the fees,” 36% said they “avoided fees by going to another park that didn't charge fees,” and 37% admitted they had “avoided paying user fees by parking outside official parking lots.”

(Oddly, even with this substantial resistance, 49% thought it just fine to charge entry fees for parks and public lands. Huh?)

Next to go ought to be the National Forest trailhead fees, which I think are likewise wrong-headed, inefficient and ineffective. All of this reminds me of a fantasy I had out on the Olympic Peninsula about a candidate running in 2008 as a “Parks President” with plans to inject substantial funds into our ailing national, state and local parks. But that’s a post for another day….

parks
washington
trails

Cascadia heating up

Global warming will bring disastrous consequences to the rainy, danky Pacific Northwest. As temperatures creep upwards, all sorts of funky things will happen to the balance of the various interconnected hydrological cycles the land depends on here. We can expect receding glaciers, shrinking snowpacks, thirsty rivers and rising sea levels in the Puget Sound.

Obviously, once these major forces get thrown out of whack, everything else will likewise be thrown into chaotic transition. For us H. sapiens, food growing seasons, drinking water, hydropower generation and irrigation will all take a hit.

For the rest of Cascadia’s inhabitants, it will likewise be dire. The imperiled salmon cycles will be severely impacted, which will throw off almost everything else, from orca whales to bald eagles, forest health to the oceanic food chain, not to mention the impacts on the soul of Ish River if the salmon were ever to take leave of us and our mess.

Oregon State University recently released a study that looks at some of the particular changes we can expect in Washington and Oregon. It does not bode well. For example, as Eric de Place explains in his Cascadia Scorecard blog, “By 2040, if warming trends continue as predicted:

*About 3,600 square miles of low-elevation terrain usually covered by snow during the winter would be dominated by rainfall.
*Nearly 22 percent of the snow-covered areas of the Oregon Cascades and 12.5 percent of the snow areas of the Washington Cascades would shift to a rain-dominated winter climate.
*More than 60 percent of the Olympic Range's snow-covered area would have rain-dominated winters.

That last factoid is a killer; for various reasons, the coastal ranges will get hit the hardest. What this will do to the Olympic Rainforest— mossy place that is so near to my heart—is uncertain.

You can read more about the OSU study in the Seattle Times, who, for some weird reason, chose to focus on the impact global warming will have on Northwest ski resorts, which seems to be the very least of the problems we’re facing. Another perspective is over at the Casacadia Scorecard blog.



global warming

Words on the Web II

If you like books, and you like the Pacific Northwest, and you particularly like books about the Pacific Northwest, I have an ongoing column of reviews over at the Tidepool website that you may find edifying. Link to the most recent posts here and here. Hope you find something you like...

Skagit geese on the move

this morning, driving south to work in Sedro Wooley, through the Chuckanut mountains and down into the Skagit flats, I saw several flocks of swans heading northbound.



they were most likely Trumpeter swans, though the valley is full of the smaller Tundra swan as well. whichever, today's big birds moving north in sqwonking Vs were clearly early signs of the impending migration back to Alaska. They arrive noisily in big groups throughout the fall and hunker down in the Skagit Valley for most of the winter. While here, according to one internet naturalist, the swans "spend their winter days in sociable groups in old corn, potato and carrot fields, and their nights out in Skagit Bay, Clear Lake, and Bay Slough." I took these photos last February down near Stanwood; the Olympics are the peaks off in the haze. Indeed.


she continues, "because Trumpeter Swans weigh about 25 pounds and have 8-foot wingspans, they are easy to see against the muddy ground, and just about anywhere else. Trumpeters have a call like a trumpet, with the same tonal quality as badly-played bagpipes. Its smaller cousin the Tundra Swan has a higher-pitched honk. Swans greet each other with musical wing-waggling and head-bobbing displays."


Then I found another cyber-naturalist who countered with "The voice of the Tundra Swan is soft and melodious...They have a mellow, rich bugling call. "

I really like this particular writer's attention to details, both subtle & precise: "As flocks pass overhead, the leader often utters a high note like "who-who-who," which is immediately repeated by flock after flock, producing a high-pitched whistling sound. The call is pitched lower than a whistle and more closely resembles a blowing or tearing sound and can be heard for up to six kilometres.

"The Tundra Swan breeds in the Canadian North in the tundra areas of Hudson's Bay west to Alaska and winters in the Chesapeake Bay marshes of the United States." (You can read more over here.)


March 6. Geese heading north, again. Wind from the south. Length of Day: 11 hours and 19 minutes. Tomorrow will be 3 minutes and 36 seconds longer. Thought you should know.

Hoh!

Just back from the Olympic Peninsula....





More on that lonely trip later!