| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Deep Space Naan | ||||
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And now that we've found water on the moon, surely the meddlesome US government must help California farmers grow rice there too! I'm sure the Indians will have set up some tea shops by then...
Agriculture in the American southwest has always been a risky business, and civilizations have gone bust here trying it well before Europeans arrived. Yet our hubris continues, bolstered by dam-and-canal-building, so we continue to grow rice in California's deserts. And what do republicans (lead by the likes of Sean Hannity) want in the face of the prolonged drought cycles forecast by the best climate models available? (Oh right... they don't believe in those climate models anyway.) More dams and canals and more water to be released by that big meddlesome federal government! Here's Jon Stewart reminding us of the meddlesome history of that meddlesome government in creating and sustaining what Marc Reisner so aptly named the Cadillac Desert:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Where the Riled Things Are | ||||
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History indeed...
Just watched Jon Stewart do a brief, brilliant segment on Sean Hannity's recent trip down into the prospective dust-bowl of California's Central Valley (i.e., my current neighborhood - yikes!) where the latter exhorted the president and government to "stop meddling and release the waters so that the farmers can do their jobs"!
That would be water from reservoirs that are at really low levels because of the ongoing drought.
Reservoirs that were built in the 1930s as part of the then government's stimulus spending.
Or, as John translated: "The government should stop meddling in the business of the farmers, who would actually still be living in a desert if not for government meddling!"
Of course!!
I'll share the video tomorrow when it becomes available. Meanwhile, look below the fold here for the Daily Show's take on last week's UN climate summit and how the Earth may be out to get us:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Cloudy With a Chance of Heat Balls | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Our Dead Planet | ||||
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Over the past week or so, in the Human Ecology class, we've been doing a rapid survey of human societies in terms of their cultural/ecological core, discussing the key elements of the main types of society and its governance of natural resources: hunter-gatherer, horticulturist, pastoralist, agrarian, and industrial. As a supplement to my lecture and the class discussions we've had (and because my throat didn't feel up to speaking for 75 min today), I also found three videos of TED Talks that take us through another sort of rapid tour through the trajectory of human diversity from when our first ancestors gazed upon the African savannah to the societal collapse that may soon be upon us if we don't get our own collective together and rethink ow we govern our natural resources.
First, we have Spencer Wells taking us through the population genetics of human origins. Next, National Geographic's Wade Davis takes us on a global tour of human cultural diversity at its peak, and laments the rapid loss of languages and cultures we've seen in the recent past. And to round things off, Jared Diamond speaks of the complete collapse of some earlier complex societies, and what lessons they hold for us as we rush headlong towards the cliff ourselves. Look below the fold for these videos.
For my friends in the Bay area, and those from the valley who might head that way this weekend: you may want to look in on this event I learnt about via River of Words:
Watershed 2009 Environmental Poetry Festival
Berkeley--Saturday, Sept. 26--12-4pm Free
Join Robert Hass, Mas Masumoto, and other poets, writers and performers for a day of poetry, music, dance, art activities, literary and environmental exhibitors and more.
River of Words youth poets will read at 1pm.
Please visit the River of Words booth to see our wonderful art, books, and say hi.
Civic Center Park, Martin Luther King, Jr. Way between Allston & Center. The Farmers' Market will be open, too!
And visit www.poetryflash.org for more information.
If you are seeking to escape the heat of the city this weekend, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive fall in the mountains perhaps, or to go splash in the San Joaquin - consider sparing some of your energy towards helping clean all these wonderful public lands we all get to enjoy throughout the US. For this saturday is National Public Lands Day:
National Public Lands Day began in 1994 with three federal agencies and 700 volunteers. Last year 120,000 volunteers worked in over 1,800 locations and in every state. Now, 8 federal agencies and many state and local lands participate in this annual day of caring for shared lands.
National Public Lands Day keeps the promise of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the "tree army" that worked from 1933-42 to preserve and protect America's natural heritage.
This annual event:
- Educates Americans about critical environmental and natural resources issues and the need for shared stewardship of these valued, irreplaceable lands;
- Builds partnerships between the public sector and the local community based upon mutual interests in the enhancement and restoration of America's public lands;
- Improves public lands for outdoor recreation, with volunteers assisting land managers in hands-on work.
A number of opportunities are available right around Fresno, as throughout the country, and you can find local options here.
While on the subject of Public Lands, note also that this weekend PBS will start airing Ken Burns' much anticipated "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" which I wrote about a few months ago. Setting aside large stretches of land in the public realm, safe from "development" so future generations get to enjoy it: what a wonderful socialist idea that is! Celebrate it, Americans!
I just found out a couple of days ago (not sure why no one in our department knew about this, but we do now!) that the National Parks Conservation Association (which has its Central Valley field office in Fresno) is organizing a forum to talk about climate change - and they're doing it on our campus in association with the College of Science and Mathematics' nascent Institute of Climate Change, Oceans and Atmosphere. Find out more about this forum on the NCPA website, and join in if you can. It'll be held from 1-5 PM, Friday, 25 Sep, in the Alice Peters auditorium in University Business Center right in front of our science building. You can also download a flyer here.
As the Darwin Bicentennial year winds down and we approach the Sesquicentennial anniversary of the publication of "On the Origin of Species" on Nov 21, we will get two promising televisual/cinematic treatments of the torment Darwin underwent while sitting on the horns of the dilemma of whether or not to share his theory with the world! The recent drama about whether the movie Creation was going to be distributed at all in the US has now been settled as we get word today that Newmarket, a small Indie company (whose previous hit, intriguingly, was "The Passion of the Christ"!!) has picked up the US rights for the film and plans a year-end release! Hooray - although some of us are apprehensive about how "even-handed" the film will be in trying to "balance" between religion and science! The National Center for Science Education's executive director Eugenie Scott (who has just accepted my invitation to speak at Fresno State this fall as well - but more on that soon!) liked the film, describing it in her early review as "a thoughtful, well-made film that will change many views of Darwin held by the public — for the good."
Meanwhile, NCSE also alerts us to another treatment of Darwin's Darkest Hour - a 2-hour television special airing on PBS stations next week courtesy of NOVA and National Geographic. Here's a preview:
The 12th edition of the science themed blog carnival Scientia Pro Publica is out for your reading pleasure at Lab Rat. Enjoy this relatively brief issue - especially since it also features one of my recent blog posts - thanks Lab Rat!
[These are my reflections on urban wildlife after participating as a guest commentator in a wildlife photography contest on Facebook last week. A version of this was also posted in that group's notes.]
For most people, the terms wildlife or nature will rarely conjure up images of animals in cities. And if people like us (i.e., those concerned about how we share this planet with other species, us conservationists and naturalists) do think of urban wildlife, the thought comes with many a dark foreboding. Cities, we tend to think, are bad places that any creature (except, of course, us) would want to shy away from. Species that remain there are likely to be stuck there, with few other choices, survivors of human onslaught on them and on their habitats, living off the crumbs we leave for them in the interstices of our ever-sprawling urban jungles. And a handful that are not stuck there, that are perhaps more numerous in cities, bumping into us all the time, are often dismissed as nuisances or resented for collaborating with us in driving out other, better species. Urban landscapes are not often discussed in terms of their natural beauty either. Nature and City are, in our minds, quite mutually exclusive conceptual categories. And this dark, dystopian vision of the city as a sort of purgatory for wildlife, with the artificial (i.e., human-made) elements driving out the last vestiges of nature, is prevalent not only among the lay public, but often among my ecologist and conservationist colleagues. The scientific literature in these fields, that small (but growing) fraction of it which addresses urban habitats, is quite rich with papers looking for, and often finding and documenting, the bad things that happen to good species in the city: habitat fragmentation, ecological traps, competition from urban generalists, loss of nesting sites, habitat disturbance, air pollution, water pollution, weeds, invasive species,... the list goes on. Oh, and don't forget the cats! The villainy of cats has been written about at great lengths - especially on the internets - and comes second only to our own selves among things that many a conservationist would like to rid this good planet of, for the greater good of biodiversity!
Why is it that we fear/loathe/resent/mourn/lament the place where most of our own species now prefers to live? By most accountings, humanity has passed the tipping point on that, with more than 50% of us now living in what we call urban areas worldwide. This is, then, shaping up to be the urban century, when cities are our primary habitat, with their effects cascading through the surrounding countryside into the very (few, dwindling) wildernesses of Earth. And I think it is fair to say that most of us involved in ecology and biodiversity conservation, be that within or outside academia, likely grew up ourselves as kids of the city; but took the first opportunity to run away from it, chasing after the diminishing frontier of real nature, where we could catalog biodiversity, study how it worked, photograph it, protect it, keep it safe from all that pesky human interference. And we continue to nurture the dystopian vision of the city, of human habitats, as sterile places devoid of any meaningful biodiversity. The city that nurtured and sheltered us, gave us the museums and universities that prepared us to appreciate nature; the city that provides better refuge to the poorest and most dispossessed among us than any other habitat; that very city, our birthplace, has become a symbol of everything that destroys what we now love - nature! Ah bittersweet cognitive dissonance... but lets leave the psychoanalysis for another day, shall we?
And let us also leave aside the other side of this metaphoric coin of the city: the many million more humans who may not quite share our apprehensions; who love the city for all its wonderful human artifacts and culture; who hate that pigeon for crapping on their cars, and resent that tidal flat and mangrove swamp for harboring mosquitoes and holding back human progress; who would rather pave over most of that pesky real nature and replace it with carefully manicured lawns and golf courses, dotted with hand-picked swans that can hold a pose for our cameras, and clean multi-colored pigeons we can feed; and in some parts of the world, a troop or two of well-behaved monkeys and an occasional snake we can worship during the appropriate holy season. Those people vastly outnumber us, but I'd argue that they too share the basic dichotomy of our vision, separating the city from nature; in that they remain our kin, even if we work at cross purposes,
The real trouble is: we are at a point where we can't keep nature separate from us, what we do, not really. Not when we know that the smoke from California's raging summer fires colors the dawn/dusk skies hundreds of miles away, and the burnt particles in that smoke may be deposited in snows atop mountains or in the arctic; not when the plastic garbage we throw out - whether in Baja or Alaska, Hawaii or Japan - ends up floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean, endlessly circling some hidden drain; and most definitely not when the fossil fuel we burn is changing the entire planet's very climate! So we begin to turn around, and take a good look at our own habitats, especially that city we love to hate, to try and see if we can find any nature still lurking in there, and perhaps to devise ways to bring nature back. And this too is happening, among amateur naturalists, conservationists, and even academic biologists like me who are turning the tools of our trades to focus on studying urban wildlife and habitats.
It is high time (perhaps even a bit late) for us to re-imagine the city, not as a metaphor for all that is bad in us, but for the possibility for good that also still resides in us. Instead of running away from the advancing city, trying to save the remaining wildernesses with our backs to the wall, it is time to advance, to charge back into the city and start reworking it in ways that make it a better place for more of us, and also more of other species, perhaps finding more common ground to work with the rest of the human horde that loves cities. And, most exciting for biologists like me: let's look at the city itself as a wonderful laboratory, with many different replicates, where we have set a number of evolutionary experiments in motion, altering behaviors and genetics in strange and exciting new directions! If you know my recent research, and my capacity to ramble on (exhibit A stretches back all the way from here to the top of this very page!), you know that I could go on (and on) about urban evolutionary ecology for quite a while - but I'll stop now!
Let me instead ask you to join me in celebrating one specific small shared enterprise: an exercise in reimagining the city by imaging some of the wildlife we do find in cities, and sharing them through the Weekly Wildlife, Nature and Photography Contest on Facebook. As I wrote last week, I was invited to participate in this social networking experiment as a guest commentator, or a friendly native guide of the urban jungle if you will - for the week's theme was "Creatures in the City"! I had a lot of fun viewing and discussing the 90-odd images that were shared in the group this week - so much so that I think it is rather a shame that most of the images and their attendant comment threads had to be deleted at the end of the week under the rules of the competition, leaving only a handful of "winners" and "special mentions" in the group's gallery! Rather a shame, and something the moderators of this wonderful social experiment might want to think about changing (perhaps by using Flickr or other social networking site with better options for managing networks around images).
For what a lovely array of images of diverse creatures were shared by this growing group of nature enthusiasts! We had vertebrates and invertebrates ("creatures" I suppose, precluding any plant life); the former group was well represented by birds (most frequent and diverse, not surprisingly), mammals (squirrels, bats, cows, macaques, langurs, an elephant, sea lions, and a moose), and reptiles (a couple of lizards and several snakes; but no amphibians?); and among the latter: spiders, butterflies, moths, caterpillars, bees, ants, a dragonfly, a millepede, a crab, and even a cockroach (half eaten) and a fly shot up close! While the diversity of species was (hopefully) eye-opening for anyone who may consider cities depauperate of living things, even more interesting were images capturing interesting behaviors and novel ecological contexts that had me scratching my head spinning hypotheses and calling up expert colleagues to shed further light upon! I'm sure I will keep thinking about many of these pictures, and some may even spark a research project or two. (Which is another selfish reason why I wish the pictures and attendant discussion could remain archived somewhere!) The winners will, of course, be archived and remain available, even if the discussion generated around them disappears (really?!), so let me recap pictures and themes that particularly struck me:
Birds were the most common and diverse group - not surprising given how conspicuous they are and how many people they recruit into nature watching. Lovely images of crows, pigeons and starlings (of course), a sunbird, kingfishers, parrots, gulls, pelicans, grackles, munias, a swallow and a bee-eater. But, surprise, surprise (and alarm?): no House Sparrow! Are we so used to this commensal, so inured to its charms, that no one thought to share an image? Even though this species is declining throughout most of its Old World urban range? We can't let it disappear from our collective imagination too! So let's hope it makes a come-back and rebuilds its numbers if we can lend it a hand - all it may need is the right habitat being left alone/rebuilt. May they come back like the Flamingoes have, to Mumbai's creeks, lending that dash of bright pink to the dark mangroves (recovering nicely in some parts despite urban growth) and grey concrete.
Many of the descriptions and comments were interesting too - but what got me thinking (and rambling on in the first half of this post) was that the majority of people were down on the city as habitat, despite the lovely evidence to the contrary seen in the very image they were commenting on! Yes, the city is sprawling, trampling over habitats everywhere, dirtying the air and water, and depriving most of us from meaningful contact with nature - but look at this natural beauty you have captured within cities? Surely not all these species are suffering! If anything (as my own research suggests) many actually like cities, and are thriving amid our enterprise! So the trick really is understand how they do it, what works for them, and figuring out ways to offer the same urban (or non-urban) life choices to other species too - and working on reducing our urban footprints on this planet too.
Can we, therefore and at last, really begin re-imagining, rebuilding, and reorganizing our cities in ways that let in more of nature's beauty and complexity while improving our own urban existence? For that is really at the heart of reconciliation ecology!
We scientists are always complaining about the quality of science reporting in the mainstream media, particularly in recent times when we've seen an alarming growth in anti-science movements in the US (be it creationism on the right or anti-vaccinationism on the left). You'll find my own rants on the subject in the archives of this very blog. In fact, the lack of quality science communication in the public sphere (i.e., outside the ivory tower) is the main reason some of us have jumped into science communication outside of our journals, e.g., by starting science cafes to reach our local communities, and blogging (coming up on 3 years of that for me!) for a broader audience. All taking time off from the research field site or lab bench so we could try to wrest that media megaphone from the jackanapes running newspapers (let alone TV newschannels) and journalism schools who don't give a hoot about employing people with any proper science education! The blogosphere has provided an excellent democratic medium for us to get the real science out directly, but its not exactly an alternative to a news channel, especially for smalltime bloggers like me. We have hundreds or thousands of science blogs now, many written by active scientists, but the effort is scattered across a similar large number of websites, which means most of our writing reaches mostly a fraction of those already motivated to read about science! Its not like someone is going to stumble upon my blog as they might if I had a column or even a letter in the Fresno Bee, is it? So we've had some blogging collectives emerge, the most prominent example being ScienceBlogs, which can attract more eyeballs, and keep them coming back for more (despite occasional outbreaks of distinctly odd non-science blogginess over there among the denizens of SB). This week a new portal has opened on the internets, with a more impressive pedigree: 35 top US universities have banded together to launch Futurity.org! Check out the impressive array of university logos on their about page which states:
Futurity.org made its debut as a beta site in March 2009 and formally launched on September 15. As an online research magazine, Futurity highlights the latest discoveries from leading universities in the United States and Canada.
Who is Futurity?Duke University, Stanford University, and the University of Rochester lead a consortium of participating universities (see list below) that manages and funds the project. All partners are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), a nonprofit organization of leading public and private research universities.
Futurity aggregates the very best research news. The content is produced by the partner universities, and submitted to Futurity’s editor (editor@futurity.org) for consideration. The site, which is hosted at the University of Rochester, covers news in the environment, health, science, society, and other areas.
So now you have one more excellent source for quality science news straight from the frontiers of discovery at the best institutions in the US. In addition to the web portal, you can also partake of all this future-y science-y goodness on Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube! How terrific is that?
I just wish they'd spent a little more time/effort coming up with a better name than Futurity!
You can read about them in academic journals. You could go on long, arduous, adventurous journeys all over the planet with no guarantees you'll actually see any (like I've done). You could get really lucky like me!! You could wait for Stephen Fry and Mark Cawardine to take you on a vicarious journey to visit the most endangered of them in the footsteps of the late Douglas Adams - depending on if and when BBC's "Last Chance to See" ever airs in your country. You can do all of those things. Or/and, you can sit right here on your computer, and let ARKive take you on a spin around Google Earth, as featured in Google's Outreach Showcase! You can traverse the spinning 3D globe, even dive into the oceans, looking for endangered species using ARKive's helpful signposts, with links to images, videos, and more information in a little window right here in this very browser tab, if you have the Google Earth plugin installed. But surely you already have the Google Earth application on your computer (if not, why on earth not?! Go get version 5 with the underwater views), so why not download the ARKive KML file instead, and enjoy the ride in fullscreen glory?
And if you need someone other than me to persuade you to try this out, who better than Sir David Attenborough himself, speaking here about marine endangered species?
Mary Travers, rest in peace, and may the hammer be picked up and wielded by a new generation...
Exasperating as it is for Chris Clarke (and me) to read Thomas Friedman's highly popular drivel about global warming in a flattening world etc., we have to admit, however much the words stick in our throats, that Mr. Friedman is actually - *gasp* - right about something for a change: he nails the key reasons why China and other countries are leaving the US behind in solar energy technology, even when the tech is invented in the US:
The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three perquisites [sic, although I think the correct word is prerequisite] for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.
The whole article is, in fact, well worth reading (and I didn't even need the usual barf bag...). So now will someone in the corridors of power start doing something about this?
Read more...Its not clear yet if and how the Darwin biopic "Creation" may ever get distributed in the US, even as it readies for a UK release next week. There was some scuttlebutt yesterday when the NCSE tweeted a Bay Area NBC affiliate station's report that their parent company was in a "bidding war" over the US distribution rights! And the juicy tidbit in that story was that apparently Mel Gibson (he who managed to get his graphic movie about a guy being flogged and tortured for hours shown in churches all over the US, without the help of any major Hollywood distributors!) had actually helped finance this movie (him being Catholic, and Catholics saying they don't have a problem with Evolution - that's how some people tried to explain it)! Wow - would that have blown some fuses in the heads of the church-going fans of Gibson's Passion in the American heartlands!! But, alas, that won't happen, because that news story has been retracted/replaced, with this caveat:
The original article confused the film's distributor, Icon Distribution, with Mel Gibson owed [sic] Icon Productions. The companies use the exact same logo and indeed Icon Distribution was once owned by Gibson. It is no longer. We regret the error.
Huh?! Alrighty then... and so American journalism continues its reverse evolution - but that disease apparently afflicts the British press as well, for the very same Telegraph that lamented the lack of a US distributor for this movie had, two days earlier, published a truly egregious piece of "balanced" reporting about evolution vs. creationism! As for the movie itself, I still haven't seen any official word on how that NBC affiliate's parent company is doing in that "bidding war", nor if indeed there is any such war at all. In fact, their own latest story has no mention of any bidding!! Scores of fans on the movie's Facebook page, meanwhile, are rallying around demanding it be shown here, but who knows if they constitute enough of a market for the bean counters weighing faith-based backlash vs. the box office appeal of a 19th century nerd wrestling with serious scientfic/philosophical issues! Last night, on another media outlet likely genetically linked to the Bay Area station, Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones had probably the funniest take on the saga:
These are strange and deeply worrisome times for democracy, science, and education in America, once the beacon of those very things which drew people like me from all over the world to its shores. From a global leader for science and free intellectual pursuits, how has America become a place where even one of the most significant scientists in human history is no longer welcome? Not even a biographical film about him! In a week when this country's very own democratically elected President was censored in the nation's public schools and heckled by a congressman, this news should come as no surprise, I suppose:
Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.
The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.
However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.
Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.
The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".
Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.
"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.
"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
"It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.
"Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn't saying 'kill all religion', he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people."
Creation was developed by BBC Films and the UK Film Council, and stars Bettany's real-life wife Jennifer Connelly as Darwin's deeply religious wife, Emma. It is based on the book, Annie's Box, by Darwin's great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes, and portrays the naturalist as a family man tormented by the death in 1851 of Annie, his favourite child. She is played in the film by 10-year-old newcomer Martha West, the daughter of The Wire star Dominic West.
Early reviews have raved about the film. The Hollywood Reporter said: "It would be a great shame if those with religious convictions spurned the film out of hand as they will find it even-handed and wise."
Mr Thomas, whose previous films include The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, said he hoped the reviews would help to secure a distributor. In the UK, special screenings have been set up for Christian groups.
And you thought the money-grubbing, amoral (or immoral), Hollywood movie business loved controversy and liked to make a buck off it whenever it could! Apparently not, if it might irritate a minority (I hope) of religious extremists, America's own Taliban. So a film about Darwin - a long dead and much celebrated scientist - seems much more dangerous to the fabric of this country than Borat! Sigh...
If you are on Facebook, you might want to check out a new conservation related social phenomenon there, started by my friends at the Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysore, India (and if you aren't already doing so, start reading their excellent new blog - eco logic, which even mentions reconciliation in their masthead!): the Weekly Wildlife, Nature and Conservation Photography Contest (the prize: fame, in having your image enshrined in the group's winners gallery). Now there are plenty of places on the intertubes, as you may rightly point out, for nature and wildlife photography, and many even have contests with real prizes - so what makes this so special? Apart from being on Facebook, where the group has rapidly grown to over a thousand members within a few weeks, the moderator is also experimenting with ways to make the experience richer than just eye-candy, and some oohs and aahs from voters in the comment fields. From the outset there has been a weekly theme, and some of them are unusual and intriguing, provoking some fresh perspectives on nature. Last week, they started a new feature: "expert" guest commentary from someone who knows a bit about the week's theme, with the intent to generate some deeper conversations where viewers/readers might delve beneath the surface of an image and explore its broader ecological context. And this week, with the theme of "creatures in the city", they invited yours truly to be said guest commentator! So I've been popping over there for a half hour or so every day, viewing the days submissions, dropping whatever pearls of wisdom are rattling around in my urban ecologist skull. Its been interesting - so much so that I forgot to mention it here on this blog! I will post a summary of my thoughts after the contest ends this weekend, but you might want to go check out the submissions before all but the winners disappear! So hurry on over there now!
And to start you off, let me share the image I posted there, with the following commentary:
Read more...Tourists (at least newcomers) visiting San Francisco's famous Fisherman's Wharf may be surprised to find that one of the docks on Pier 39 has been taken over completely by California Sea Lions! These large marine mammals started gathering at the dock exactly 20 years ago this month, and eventually persuaded (in collusion with conservationists) the human users of that dock to give up that prime roosting habitat. And in return, they've proved to be a significant draw for tourists from all over the world, giving a little boost to that segment of the industry. A fine example of reconciliation ecology, as I tell my students in that class. You don't find them at the docks all year round - they go to the Channel Islands during the summer breeding season - but they are here most of the rest of the year. You can read more about this population at the Marine Mammal Center website.
When Pavithra gave me a heads up about the theme of the competition here this week, and invited me to provide some commentary, I was excited. But then she also said I should submit one of my own pictures too! How can you ask an urban ecologist with pretensions of amateur photography to pick just *one* image to share with the world? Should I go with the hundreds of bird images I have? Or squirrels? What about spiders, butterflies, snails, and other small denizens of the city? And given that most of us live in cities anyway, surely this theme will bring a real deluge of submissions, no? There's over 40 already and its still Monday!
After browsing through my iPhoto library as well as submissions thus far, and pondering the theme of the week, I decided to go with this image because the wide angle captures something holistic about urban wildlife coexistence. What you are looking at is a group of Sea Lions dozing on the floating docks under that clear blue California sky, with the city of San Francisco rising up on the hill in the background. I probably have better - closer-up - images of these beasts taken that same day (you can see them on Flickr), but this one has become a favorite.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed me tweaking things here this week. Coming up on the third anniversary of this blog at the end of the year, I've finally settled in more comfortably. (And on the same day that my youngest starts her new preschool too!) Thus, after a relatively quiet (but productive in other areas; more on that here soon) summer, this blog is revived, with similar (and hopefully better and more) content as before, but in a new skin - and check out that url! Yes, we're in a new domain now, and I will soon bring more of my web activities under the reconciliationecology.org umbrella. Note the new Nature Blogs Network logo in the left sidebar too - for indeed this blog is now part of that community of nature bloggers.
Hope you like the changes.
Not that I want to make this blog much more autobiographical or self-indulgent (what the hell, its my blog!), but a recent thread on twitter and in the blogosphere, started by Andrew Maynard at 2020Science, with a follow-up by Steven Hill at Testing hypotheses... about how they were inspired to become scientists, has got me reminiscing again about my own sources of inspiration that led to this life in science. I also think my story might be worth sharing because of a background that is rather different from the others mentioned above - so allow me to offer a different view from another part of the world. Here, without further ado, is my list (in not strictly chronological order) of significant influences on the road to becoming a scientist:
Charles Darwin. Of course, my students might say, rolling their eyes - but that's not a cliched answer! It was not reading anything Darwin wrote that got me into biology, but the story of his life as novelized by Irving Stone in The Origin
Stephen Jay Gould's The Panda's Thumb
Libraries! A decent well-stocked public library is practically nonexistent in Indian towns, sadly. But Bombay offered alternatives, and me and my buddies, like so many others of our college generation, made the most of them, spending a lot of time in the very different libraries of the British Council (Darwin, Patrick Moore, Attenborough, Dawkins, and, of course, PGW), American Center (Gould, Sagan, Steinbeck, Asimov, Carson), and Soviet (yes - this was pre-perestroika! Engels, Tolstoy, Mayakovsky). These libraries opened up a whole world of science and wider literature that was largely unknown even to most of my college teachers (sad, but true).
Bombay's infamous local trains! If not for my daily commute from Ulhasnagar to Bombay VT (75-105 min each way depending upon whether I caught the fast or slow local), I never would have had the time to read all those wonderful books, nor ponder the mysteries of the universe!
The Institute of Science, a wonderful place not so much for my professors, but for its amazing library with a century-old collection of books and, more importantly, journals, actual science journals that we could blow the dust off of and marvel at (even if many subscriptions were no longer current). Here I was able to read not just about the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure, but the original Watson & Crick paper too!! The labs were pretty well equipped also with some real research ongoing - this is unusual again in the Indian context, where for most undergrads "science" is stuff you memorize from out-of-date textbooks and hand-me-down notes, rote dissections and lab "experiments" - not something you can, you know, get your hands dirty actually doing!! But this Institute (which, sadly, has walled itself off from undergraduate teaching once again) allowed a bunch of us ne'er-do-well undergrads to run around the labs tinkering with things, building telescopes, and generally having a ball learning to do science on our own.
Peers. And this is another one I want any students reading this to remember - your peers are perhaps the most important component of your learning, especially in science, so surround yourselves with curious, nerdy friends! Although I didn't have any truly inspirational (in the positive sense) science teachers until I reached graduate school, I was lucky enough to find a bunch of fellow-traveler-nerds with whom I shared a natural curiosity about the world and a growing love for science as a way to satisfy that curiosity. Vishy, Pradeep, Rajesh, Ravi, et al (and my sister Vaijoo) - if not for them, I might well have ended up a bank clerk or worse!
Finally, like Maynard, I must also tip my hat to all my school and undergrad science teachers who did their best to beat the curiosity and wide-eyed wonder out of me, to make science dull and tedious, to make me respect authority, to do well on standardized tests, and so help me get into medical school (my parents' ambition which I so utterly failed to fulfill)! And a special bow to the Head of the Biology Department at Ruia College (sorry I can't remember his name, this was in 1987) for taking a half hour of his valuable time trying to talk me out of joining the strange new MSc Wildlife program at the Wildlife Institute of India, to keep me from throwing a promising career away!! Thus, for my ability to withstand all that counter-programming, and persisting in this doomed business of science, I have to give another shout out to Mrs. Menon: thanks again, Ma'am!!
A note for those of you who've known me since graduate school days and may wonder why I haven't mentioned any influences past 1987: its simple - I was already on the path to becoming a scientist by the time I got to WII. This list is of the signposts that helped me find that path in the first place!
Now, dear reader, how about sharing your own story? How did you become a scientist?
Read more...If it were up to my younger self 20 years ago, I would not have been able to witness, let alone capture in pixels, such a magnificent sight at the Grand Canyon last month:
Young H2, peering down at me here on the rim of the Grand Canyon, was born-n-raised there over the past year! Offspring of captive-bred Condors, H2 hatched around April 15, 2008 in a cave in the Salt Creek area below Grand Canyon Village, and left her natal nest on Oct 16th. She was captured, along with her mom, late June this year, to be fitted with that wing-tag and radio transmitter you can see in my picture above. She's the only girl Condor to have hatched and fledged in the Canyon over the past two years (read more about the Grand Canyon Condors here). Here's a map of where H2 has spent her still short life (click on the bubbles for more info):
What's really remarkable is that both her parents were, before being released into the wilds of the Canyon, born in captivity (Dad in Los Angeles Zoo and Mom in San Diego Wild Animal Park) and were both raised by puppets! And yet they've managed to pair up in the wilds of the Grand Canyon, set up home in a cave, and fledge offspring - multiple times!
All of which would never had happened if it had been up to my misguided youthfully zealous druthers a couple of decades ago! Thankfully, no one ever put me in charge of the world!!
I first heard about the California Condor Recovery Program in 1989, as a graduate student in the brand new Masters in Wildlife Science program at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). I was a rather intense young man, quite strongly driven by idealistic notions of nature conservation and social justice - fellow students and colleagues may tell you I was quite the zealot about these things, to the point of being anti-social sometimes. The Condor program was introduced to us shiny-eyed grad students by some scientists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (I'm sorry I've quite forgotten the names of individuals involved) visiting WII to start new collaborations. There was a presentation about the Condor captive breeding program which had just recently begun in the San Diego Wild Animal Park. In the mid 1980s, with the California Condor teetering on the brink of extinction, San Diego Zoo had taken the extraordinary step of capturing all remaining (22) individuals from the wild and bringing them into a captive breeding program. The ambition then was to rebuild the population in captivity, and eventually reintroduce the birds back into their wild habitats. Fantastic! What an ambitious project, with strong application of biological science to save a truly charismatic megafaunal beast! That was indeed exciting to the young biologist in me! At least at first...
But wait, asked my inner socialist (still alive, I'm afraid, if a bit jaded!): what was it going to cost, this ambitious project of yours, Dr. American Scientist? In the millions of US Dollars?! To save just one single species? Are you out of your mind? Do you know how many species - nay, entire ecosystems - could be saved with that much money in India? Or other parts of the developing tropical world, where poverty might be the biggest factor driving habitat loss and species extinctions, not lead from hunters' bullets or conflicts with mega-ranchers? Oh the ego, the hubris of these Americans, I thought, to cause so much habitat destruction on the one hand, and to spend so much money saving just one of their own species! So typical!!
And so I got into a rather heated argument over the merits of the program with the American visitors. And I wasn't alone in raising the question - I think most of my colleagues there were taken aback by the scale of the project, and either shared my concern about the potential waste of resources for one species, or perhaps envy that the Yanks had the druthers to try something like this! Such is the dilemma that conservationists have always had to struggle with in the constant triage that is the business of saving endangered species with limited budgets: should we spend the money on saving one species, often a charismatic warm and cuddly one, or spread it out trying to save habitats and ecosystems with many species no one may care or ever hear about? Will the public support our efforts (with $$) if we don't have one of those charismatic flagship species on the banner of every project? These debates are, if anything, intensifying in the current times of economic recession, and nature conservation often takes a back seat to other pressing matters of human development, especially in the developing world. So it shouldn't surprise you to know that I wasn't too happy to learn about the California Condor Recovery Program 20 years ago.
And so, if I'd had my way, H2 would never have hatched in the cave overlooking the Grand Canyon, and my little girls never would have been able to see her up close (and some others of her tribe) soaring over the Canyon when we camped there for a weekend last month! And that would have been very sad indeed!
With my jaded hindsight, after two decades of living in America (it might amuse you to know that I migrated to San Diego for my Ph.D. the very next year after the Condor debate in WII, and availed myself of the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park to see many endangered species, including some I had sought, unsuccessfully, in the wild in India - but that's another story for another day) where do I now stand on the Condors? I am thrilled at being privileged enough to see, with my children, a wild-born Condor soaring freely across one of the natural wonders of the world! I am therefore glad that the Americans went ahead and spent the money to save this one magnificent species, and are now beginning to bring it back in the wild. I also know now (and this still astonishes me) that the California Condor wasn't really considered a charismatic species here - but was actively hunted because people thought this majestic scavenger killed their livestock!! So the Condor program was actually going against some popular opinion in trying to save the species. The program has had its share of other controversies too, including the continued use of lead shot by hunters in the release areas, and the decision to release them in the Grand Canyon where the species had gone extinct perhaps 10,000 years ago. Yet they've carried on, and have now rebuilt the population to around 362 animals, 76 of them in the Grand Canyon area! Birds are breeding in the wild, so there is increasing, but cautious optimism, that the species may truly re-establish into wild populations - and learn to avoid eating trash! So perhaps, in another 20 years, I hope my daughters will see many more of them in the American southwest: wild Condors with no tags or transmitters, untouched by human hand! Wouldn't that be something?!
Meanwhile, back in India, and indeed throughout Asia and Africa, other species of vultures have gone into precipitous decline over the past decade. For all the righteousness expressed by my generation of budding wildlife biologists in India, we completely failed to recognize the catastrophic decline of vultures throughout the subcontinent until it was almost too late! I'm sure you will find many other, better informed, accounts of this tragic story through other blog posts this International Vulture Awareness Day. And so, even as I chide my younger self for failing to recognize the tremendous potential for hope in saving the California Condor, not to mention the sheer thrill of seeing it in the wild, let me leave you today with these questions he would ask: Who will spend the many more millions of dollars to save all those other vultures now teetering on the brink? But, instead, of questioning the expense for a single species, I would now demand that humanity divert some of the money we spend in other expensive endeavours (oh, for instance, to kill each other in pointless wars) towards saving endangered species. And to my Indian colleagues: if the Americans, whom we want to ape in every other pop culture way, can do so much to save a species most of them don't even like, can we not, in that "ancient culture" that still worships so many animals, find the means to save our vultures (instead of, say, killing our siblings pointlessly on glaciers 5 miles high)? I hope you will ponder that on this International Vulture Awareness Day. Let me also leave you with another hopeful image from the Grand Canyon (please visit my entire Condor gallery on Flickr for more images), of a pair of California Condors, resting peacefully in the afternoon sun just out of sight of most tourists below Desert View Tower on the south rim:
PhD Comics has perfectly captured my work patterns, which should be familiar to anyone who has tried to collaborate with me, and noticed the time stamps on emails and documents I send (and blog posts too!)! Not to mention my students as well... but I had no idea that PHD Comics was also researching my work habits, and came up with this empirically supported optimal productivity curve! As good a fit as this is, I'm not sure I want to put it in my tenure file though... would you? :-)
[via PHD Comics: Peak Productivity]Read more...
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