Local orcas head south

Why are Ish River's orcas traveling all the way to central California this winter? Dozens orcas from Puget Sound have been spotted recently in Half Moon Bay and around the Farallon Islands. Scientists have identified them as belonging to the "K" and "L" pods, and the obvious answer as to why they are so far out of their historic range has to do with their appetites: salmon are more plentiful in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River systems than they are in the ailing Puget Sound. "They are extending that far to try to keep everybody fed," said David Bain, research director for Global Research and Rescue in Seattle. "It's a bad thing, in that whales ought to be able to make a living locally."

Spotting them so far south "extends their range 1,000 miles," according to one researcher, which brings to mind questions about the lengths to which animal species can adapt their behavior in response to human-caused disruptions in the ecosystem and about the long, winding, mysterious pathways of evolution.

By the way, orcas can travel at 3 miles per hour, and cover 75 miles a day. Thus, it would take them something like 10 days to two weeks to move from Ish River country to San Franciso.

Informative articles in the San Francisco Gate here and Seattle Times here

orcas
puget sound

Skagit Sunday Sund

Don't cry geese,
in this floating world
it's the same anywhere you go.

--Issa (1763-1827), translated by Ish River poet laureate Robert Sund.

photo from "planetphotoman."

Spare Change?

--By Pultizer-winning cartoonist David Horsey at the Seattle P-I.

Mount Rainier Gutted (or, The Restoration of America's National Parks)

Well, the mountain itself is doing fine, but most of the human paraphernalia surrounding the mighty volcano -- roads, visitor centers, bridges, campgrounds, trails -- have been utterly demolished in the floods of November. For the first time in its' 108 year history, the national park is closed. The destruction is awe-inspiring, and I recommend you check out the web slideshow at the park's website to witness the raw, unforgiving power of Mother Nature.



The slideshow is here -- it takes a second to load, but will drop your jaw -- or you can enter this page for the full menu of videos, galleries and other depictions of destruction.



The demolition of Mt. Rainier National Park's assets presents a perfect opportunity to rally behind a campaign to provide more funding for our national parks. This is a huge passion of mine -- to raise park budgets instead of diminishing them by a thousand tiny cuts, to invest time, energy and federal dollars in to repairing and updating park facilities, which are in a woeful state from decades of benign neglect. I believe that our national parks (and other public lands) are this country's true treasure. Our protection of them -- North Cascades, Canyonlands, Yosemite, Glacier, the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain -- is our gift to the rest of the world, those of us among the living as well as for the generations to come.

Mt. Rainier National Park could serve as the poster child for our park's desperate need for investment. It is a well-loved, heavily visited park and nobody is going to argue against its' repair. Its' catastrophic destruction serves to dramatize our parks' plight, though honestly, most probIems are more invisible to the casual visitor -- leaking septic tanks, crumbling trails, air pollution and less and less staff to do behind-the-scenes work.

I hope that in the next presidential election there will be a candidate (calling Al Gore!) that takes on stewardship of our public lands as an issue and makes their restoration a plank in their campaign. It would be great to have this issue brought out in to the limelight so that, at the very least, awareness of the problem would be heightened.

I know, I know -- the current administration has messed up everything damned thing it has touched so severely that national parks will seem to most to be way down on the list of priorities. But a campaign to protect and restore our parks could be included in a more general campaign to incorporate sustainability in to the federal government and its'/our assets. Think of it -- national parks could be remade in to living laboratories of new sustainable technologies, a place where the public could experience "green living" and see how "normal" it can be, and a place for experimentation and study. I see no reason why the parks couldn't go off the grid and be energy sustainable on their own -- solar power at Zion, geothermal at Yellowstone, wave power at Olympic -- not too mention composting toilets, the removal of asphalt, mass transit for employees and visitors and LEED-certified structures.

And let's not forget that the root of the term "conservative," which Bush, Kempthorne & Co. claim adherence to, is "conserve," which my dictionary defines as to "protect something from harm or destruction" and to "prevent the wasteful or harmful overuse."

Could We The People make the restoration and stewardship of our public lands and parks a patriotic cause? Or are my political and populist dreams, like the photo below, a dead end?



Mount Rainier
national parks
sustainability

Bald Eagles on the Skagit

I spent all of last Saturday (1/6) watching bald eagles on the Skagit River with a North Cascades Institute field seminar led by local eagle guru Libby Mills -- we concentrated our search between Rockport and Marblemount on Highway 20 and had great success throughout the day. (We were lucky enough to not only stay dry, but also get some rare sunshine.) Dozens of eagles were easily viewable from the highway at the Rockport turn off, and our class found a prime viewing spot on the opposite side of the river where we stopped counting white heads after 100! One solitary big-leaf maple tree on the river's edge held between 30-40 eagles. Both adults and immatures were actively feeding on chum salmon carcasses that were washed-up on gravel bars. Our group also saw large steelhead jumping out of the water near the Marblemount hatchery (and the attendant fishermen, on shore and in drift boats), though the eagles weren't hunting them, probably because the chum carcasses were so plentiful. Libby reported seeing over 400 bald eagles (!!!) from one vantage point on the Skagit earlier in the week; she thinks she must've got lucky by showing up in the middle of a migration coming down from BC.



North Cascades Institute, where I work, has Eagle Watcher volunteers stationed up and down Highway 20 every weekend in to early February. They are out there rain or shine with spotting scopes, field guides, info on good viewing sites and lots of enthusiasm and good cheer. If you want to learn when and where the Eagle Watchers are located, please visit their webpage. There you can also find out info about the Bald Eagle Interpretive Center in Rockport, the Bald Eagle Festival in Concrete and more.


My favorite part of the outing came at the end of the day, when our group watched the eagles fly away from the riverbanks and disappear into the snowy mists on Sauk Mountain as they headed to their night roosts. Wish I would had a zoom lens to get better photos...

Skagit River
eagles
birding