The remarkable story of the Himalayan Snow Partridge in Nevada

A Himalayan Snowcock (Tetraogallus himalayensis) in the Ruby Mountains in Nevada. Picture from www.BackpackingintheRubyMountains.com

Via the American Birding Association comes a remarkable, ancient, video about the introduction of the Himalayan Snow Partridge (as the film refers to it, although the actual species is the Himalayan Snowcock) into the mountains of Nevada by the Nevada Fish and Game Commission's Exotic Game Bird Introduction program, a sustained effort to populate what they thought were "game-deficient" areas of the state. Astonishing to a modern conservation biologist to see how cavalier, nay gung-ho, government agencies were about moving species around in those days (the snowcock was brought over in the 1960s), well before introduced/invasive species became bêtes noire for conservationists. But that program was successful and there is now a small but established population of these snowcocks in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada! Check out the video on the ABA website.

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The vast conspiracy behind the global warming hoax...

... is laid bare in 4 minutes by the atmospheric chemist (turned whistle-blower?) Rachel Pike in this TED talk! And, I mean, isn't it astonishing the lengths to which these thousands of scientists from all over the world go, to perpetrate this "hoax"? Staggering... see for yourself:

[From Rachel Pike: The science behind a climate headline | Video on TED.com]

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How do you not, in the wild, bite these people's faces off?

That was Jon Stewart asking Jane Goodall about her remarkable equanimity and balance in the face of extremism - from animal rights activists criticizing her birthday cake in this instance. It is remarkable that the person who has inspired so many to care about animals, dedicating her life to understanding chimpanzees and to wildlife conservation, herself remains so down-to-earth and rational about it all. What a beacon of sensibility in an irrational and increasingly extremist world!

Here's the entire interview:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jane Goodall
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

[From Video: Jane Goodall | The Daily Show | Comedy Central]

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Fresno Audubon talk tonight: Avian Ecology of Oak Woodlands

Fresno Audubon's series of public lectures, which unfortunately has become less frequent (going down from monthly to every other month!), returns this evening with a local ornithologist speaking about birds in the oak woodlands, which includes this yellow-rumped warbler above that I captured at the Sierra Foothills Conservancy's McKenzie Preserve last spring. Here's Fresno Audubon's blurb about tonight's talk:

November 10: Rodney Olsen, "Avian Ecology of Oak Woodlands"

Biologist Rodney Olsen will present on the avian ecology of oak woodlands. In this exploration, we will discuss the importance of oak woodlands to bird reproduction, feeding, and migration. We will also explore current threats to oak woodland communities and local conservation efforts.

[via Fresno Audubon Society: Programs]

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Al Gore lays out Our Choice to Jon Stewart, extendedly

You may have heard that Al Gore has a new book out about the climate crisis and what we need to do about it, titled "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis" (and as I discovered in adding that Amazon link just now - there is even a young reader edition!). His book tour brought him to The Daily Show last week for a fairly interesting interview, with Jon Stewart asking some typically insightful questions, including about whether the constant doom-n-gloom in books like Gore's may be turning off ordinary people from a message they really ought to hear. Gore argues that "we have all the tools to solve the global warming crisis except for political will." But is the message getting through to generate that political will? It seemed a couple of years ago that "An Inconvenient Truth" played some part in (or coincided with) turning public opinion around on accepting the reality of global warming in this country. Recent polls, however, suggest that the fickle American public has shifted again and global warming has lost some ground as an issue of concern in the US. Will Gore's new book help stem that erosion again?

Anyway, here are two parts of the extended interview which obviously didn't fit into the usual 22-min time-frame of a Daily Show episode, but which is available on their website in its entirety:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Al Gore Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Al Gore Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

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The PEST solution is the best solution for conserving biodiversity!

My friend the tropical rainforest ecologist and eco-restorer T R Shankar Raman of the Nature Conservation Foundation shares this wonderful news of a brand new approach to conserve biodiversity by focusing significant economic resources to incentivize nations to protect evolutionary processes! Here's an excerpt from TRSR's blog post on this market based initiative at eco logic, the NCF's blog:

In what is being heralded as one of the most visionary efforts in recent times to stem the extinction crisis, a collaborative effort by ecologists and economists from India, Brazil, and the USA has developed a novel solution for biodiversity conservation. Announcing this amidst great excitement today at a packed press conference at the Carneghee Lemon Hall at Park Avenue in Washington, D. C., senior scientist of the Natural Conservation Fund, Dr Ramon Gonsalves, said, “This is the solution. With this, the great wave of extinction will soon be behind us.”

[via The PEST solution | eco logic]

You simply have to go read the rest of this! NOW!

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A Kinglet for Furlough Friday

I caught (in pixels) this Ruby-crowned Kinglet at Lost Lake Park just north of Fresno last weekend, when we spent an afternoon there with visiting friends (including the biology colloquium speaker last week). Kinglets (Regulus spp.) are among my favorite warblers in north America, revealing my Old World bias - for they are the closest relatives on these shores to the Phylloscopus Leaf Warblers I spent almost a decade chasing during graduate school. Indeed, Regulus were classified as within the same family, Sylvidae, as the Phylloscopus, but now have their own family Regulidae. I first encountered the Kinglets' Asian congener cousins, the Rubycrest and Goldcrest among the forests of the Himalaya where I strove to catch a glimpse of their "crests" and learnt to listen to them to tell them apart from so many other little green jobs flitting about restlessly among the dense foliage often high up in the canopy! That was over 20 years ago, and I'm still fascinated by the lives of these wee creatures (although I haven't studied them formally for a while - maybe its time to resume?). For wee they may be, indeed (weighing a mere 6 grams or so!), but they are quite capable of long-distance flight! Like so many of their Sylviid cousins, these Ruby-crowned Kinglets are also migratory, breeding all they way up north from Alaska to Newfoundland, and down into the conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada in California, and wintering at southern latitudes and lower elevations across north America. Around here in the San Joaquin Valley, they just showed up a couple of weeks ago and will hang around until April or so, in all kinds of tree-filled habitat, ranging from the "natural" riverine forests to urban parks to backyards, and even parking lots (see image below!).

I like having them around, and thought I'd share the above and a few more images below the fold with you on this friday when I'm off campus on furlough for the day!

Caught in flight at Lost Lake Park

A shy Kinglet - this is how you glimpse them most often!

But not too shy of taking on a challenge! Although this one is unfortunately boxing at shadows we throw up in our strange habitats! I found this bird in a parking lot in Los Banos a few years ago.

Finally at rest atop the conquered foe!

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