Some Natural History and Some Gore

I feel very guilty, that I should put some natural history in this blog while I write so much about things about global warming that are not natural history, but I view global warming as the topic of our times and I find the new Gore book to be chock full of interesting tidbits on global warming.

I was at my camp at point 9648, named after an elevation, for some of the best times I can ever remember. I was their for 4 seasons between the end of June and early September, about 20 to 15 years ago. I would see an average of about 9 grizzly bears per evening. I would see moose every evening. I saw about 150 to 185 elk on most evenings. I saw black bears and coyotes commonly. I saw 2 wolverines and 1 mountain lion and several mountain goats. Lots of mule deer and a huge flight of raptors. There were yellow-bellied marmots. Pikas and Richardson Ground Squirrels chirped, and beeped seemingly everywhere. There were Golden Eagles, Ravens and a lot of Clarks Nutcrackes. There were numerous red squirrels, you get the picture, a lot of mega fauna.

The views were gorgeous. I escaped crackling lightning by going in my tent.

I have since learned that it rains a lot more in Florida but the lightning is more violent in Montana. It is funny but the most violent thundrstorm I have seen was in the state of Maryland, near Fredrick.

Up at point 9648 when whitebark pine, a productive stand near my camp, had a productive cone crop I saw 11 grizzly bears right near the camp eating white bark pine nuts. We had minimal impact on our camp area and did not scare the grizzly bears out of the area, and we made hardly any noise.

We got real good looks at grizzly/black bear interactions and grizzly bears digging up red squirrel caches to get at white bark pine nuts.

On another subject, the Gore Book, Our Choice, writes about new jobs created by building bolts for wind turbines. The company that makes bolts for wind turbines now made bolts for the Golden Gate Bridge and for the Statue of Liberty.

I live in Bozeman, Montana where they have a sixty three million dollar grant to build a large carbon dioxide sequestration demonstration project. I hear mixed reviews about carbon sequestration as a tool that alternative energy producers can use.

The Gore book writes that carbon sequestration demonstration projects have been too small to say whether, or not, this process will work on larger projects. Gore remains optimistic that carbon dioxide sequestration will work and that is good in a state like Montana.

The problem is that if sequestration works we might see a proliferation of coal use which is the way Montana has potential to go with its huge coal deposits in the state’s Southeast.

Which brings up an environmentally horrific practice that you see in state’s like West Virginia where entire mountaintops are lopped off in the quest for coal and stream waste is excerbated from this terrible practice which needs to be outlawed.

A lot of US coal goes over to China where 1 coal gasification plant is built per week. This definitely increases the climate changing polution of fossil fuels.

Trivia: I find “tar sand” production in places like Northern Alberta and lopping off West Virginia mountaintops as two of the most horrific human practices out there. These practices are up with Tiger Bone and bear part uses in countries like China and Shark fin soup. GO FIGURE.

Matt

Trivia: Large and Fast Past and Present Animals

The largest current terrestrial predacious mammal is the Kodiak Island brown bear. Perhaps the same size is the polar bear. They swim for food but I do not consider them a marine mammal. African elephants are the largest land mammal. Orcas are predacious marine mammals and they are the largest of all predators. I have seen them throw a 1,000 pound fur sea lion into the air like a soccer ball. I do not think a swimming polar bear has a chance against a pack of orcas intent on killing it.

There were many predators in our past. One that I have noted on this blog before was the giant short faced bear. This was a large and fast tremarctine bear of the Pleistocene. At the time this was the largest terrestrial mammal predator. There were large toothed Oligocene whales, like the Basilosaurus, that may have been the largest predators of their time.

Rhino like large mammals of the Oligocene were mammals like Balucotherium, which may have been larger than a wooly mammoth and Titanotherium, a three tonner whose skull and bones can be found in the central rockies. these were truely huge mammals of the past that easily outsised current mammals.

Just some more trivia, did you know the land mammal cheetah can run 70 mph and that peregrine falcons can stoop (dive) at 200 mph. These two are fauna with blazing speeds when you consider that the worlds fastest humans run about 20 mph. Trivia is just what the doctor orders on Sundays.

Matt

Climate Change and Yellowstone National Park

There is an opinion piece in today’s Bozeman Daily Chronicle. It is about the impacts of climate change on Yellowstone’s wildlife. The article is by Pam Mcleod, of the National Parks and Conservation Association. I agree with much about her opinion on what is happening in Yellowstone to it’s iconic wildlife.

The other evening, economist Ernie Nieme said, that most persons who study climate change and national parks like this author Pam Mcleod, think that the pine beetle infestation that is currently devestating Yellowstone’s pine based ecosystems is an artifact of global warming. I very much agree with this and cannot remember beetle devistation at this level. He, like she, mentions the end of Yellowstone’s whitebark pine , a major food source of Yellowstone’s grizzly. I can SEE this happenining as I write this post.

Yellowstone is wildfire country and I have seen wildfires of well over 100,000 acres change entire ecosystems as they rage in Yellowstone National Park and areas around the park. Pine bark beetles will leave huge swaths of pine snags that will further dry as this country drys out as a result of a warming planet. Wild fires will be an artifact of these drying snags and entire ecosystems of what was once forests will begin the desertification process.

If this happens in  places like Yellowstone, what will happen in drier ecosystems like the Great Basin or deserts like the Mojave? Mcleod writes about decreasing poulations of Yellowstone cutthroats, another bear food source. I see the end of the cutworm moth, another major bear food source. I see this happening soon and I can see an outcome, as Yellowstone warms, where food like the calves of elk disappear as a result of a warming climate. Bear’s will disappear soon after this for good in Yellowstone.

I want to be wrong about these outcomes but I fear that I am not.Yellowstone and we may survive the warming planet but I do not think any bear will and I do not see this park as the same without bears…do you?

Matt

P.S. Another typhoon is about to hit the philipines. Who is skeptical about global warming?

A Lot of Great News About Global Warming Boring

Secratary Chu is in the backdrop now talking…snore-and more snores-about the smart-grid for alternative energy.

Chu is talking about “nuts and bolts” technological solutions to key global warming problems and few people are listening. Chu is a definite “white hat” person but as a speaker “he aint no Obama” and he is tackling such a dry, impotant topic. You know smart grids are not huge ice shelves breaking off, glaciers melting nor polar bear cubs drowning but it is definitely an important global warming topic.

So how do you get people to listen to the Chu’s of the world as they talk about smart grids as the next beautiful polar bear cub dies? This subject (polar bear plight) brings tears to my eyes as I write about it but I know smart grids are in humanities future if we are to survive global warming.

Matt

BBC ‘bear man’ documentary explodes honey myth

 

Lynn Rogers is an interesting, complex man.

Matt

Bearwalker of the Northwoods reveals how US wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers’ extraordinary relationship with wild black bears has enabled him to explode numerous myths about the animals – and discover surprising new behaviour

 

Lynn Rogers and the black bears of the Northwoods. Following the fortunes of mother bear June and her three cubs over a year, the film reveals an intimate portrait of the lives of black bears. Photograph: Lynn Rogers

Lynn Rogers will be in a PBS film Wednsday evening, in a special entitled: The Bearwalker of the Northwoods. Indeed this man lives in the Northwoods of Minnesota. The film is just as much about Rogers as his black bear subjects.

Matt

Opinion:Global Warming Will Impact Some of the Species I Care About

This is the opinion of someone else, another person and so on. Bottom line: I think global warming is and will negatively impact most wildlife species we know today.

I really believe global warming will put grizzly bears, other brown bears and polar bears out of exsistance and this earth will be lesser for it. We do not know what will happen yet to birds as a result of global warming but it probably will not be good…there will be fewer birds and their sense of timing will be disconbobulated…I do not see birds adapting fast enough to a warming planet. I think there are fewer birds to see now, so even fewer well I view it as a travesty.

If one of the things happen like a disappearing Gulf Stream, an imploded Amazon Rain Forest, and a methane gas release from our sea floorand all bets are off and most species will implode. The extinction that will happen will be comparable to catastrophic extinction of the earth’s past…the extinction may exceed all extinctions…the scenario is definitely out there and unbelievably I either here a collective ho-hum from our kind about the prospects of global warming or I am accused of being a “chicken little” character one who clucks, “the sky is falling”. I do not feel wrong and I think the clock is ticking on these things now (at least that is what I am seeing), and it may be slow, but brown bears, polar bears and birds amongst other things will be gone by the centuries end.

Matt

Dinosaurs and Bears In Montana

There is no doubt that I love large predatory and scavenging things.

I will give you an example. I love bears. If given the opportunity they are tremendous predators. Ask any cow elk about grizzlies in the spring. I have watched numerous grizzlies run down calf elk in the spring.

Tyranosauus Rex was a huge bear-like (by niche, not looks or charecteristics) predator and scavenger of abou 64 million year ago. One of the eminant paleontologists, who has dug up and studied 10 of the T. Rex critters, thinks bears and T. Rex are both scavengers. I see bears as opportunist and a predator when they can be. Bears, and I have seen as many as 30 at a whale carcass in Alaska, are fast and have sharp canine teeth and an olfactory that will allow them to smell dead things from a long ways away, and they will come to food sources from a long ways away. They are both predators (inefficient) and scavengers (efficient).

Fourteen years ago I helped a friend dig out a predaory, smaller Tyranosaurid from the Rocky Mountain front in Montana.

This was a smaller, and I theorize, more predatory form of T. Rex and its name was Daspleatosaurus (walked on this earth about 75 milon years ago). This smaller Tyranosaurid lived just before T. Rex. It moved faster than T. Rex. and was probably less a scavenger and more a predator.

In modern times the individual wolf is a good analogy. Wolves are much smaller than grizzly bears and tend to give grizzlies a wide berth. Pound for pound the mountain lion is stronger than an individual wolf, but put the wolf in a pack and it is more predacious than bears and large cats. So size is not that important…efficiancy is. The major competitor of wolves, lions (African and North American) and bears is the hairless and small human.

Often times I found myself walking into bear habitat alone (Usually for work related reasons) .  As an individual bears made me very nervous,  but give me a gun (sawed off shotgun preferred), bear spray or 3 average to tall human beings and I was fealess in bear habitat. After running into two bears in knowhere Alaska at close range and with Dolley Varden Char hanging on my belt, going back to my camp…I made a lot of noise in bear country even when I percieved I was protected. Noise gave bears a chance to avoid an encounter and 99% of the time it worked (guess).

Iwould be at a loss to meet a Daspleatosaurus in the wild, although we know that is not going to happen.

A piece of trivia, bison  (non-predacious mammals) are frequent Yellowstone backcountry mammals. They are unpredictable, underestimated and more dangerous to your safety than any bear is on any day of the week, especially young frisky male bison. They can outrun you and they are unpredictable. Give them a wide berth if you happen to see one. It is better to be safe rather than in a hospital bed.

Mull on that. It is the kind of thing I used to mull on all of the time.

Matt

Global Warming Primer

Today I have to catch up on global climate change issues. On the policy level Coppenhagen looms as very important  especiallally for the Obama administration. Somewhat related is the Kerry-Boxer bill.Cap and Trade (especially the technology of automobiles) is at the heart of global warming. Then there are slowly (at least it seems that way) rising sea levels that I read about in journals like Scientific America. On the biodiversity front I will put two and two together. I hear a lot about the extinction of polar bears and melting sea ice. This is a very sad event but it also signals the end of ice seals and walruses. I think the melting ice will impact species like the musk ox, the barren ground and Perry’s  caribou, the arctic wolf and arctic fox. Then there are huge amounts of melting ice. This ice will break off and melt in ten years and this has potential to negativly impact the gulf stream. We have failed nations led by Somalia. If you want to read what a failed state is and it’s connection to global warming read Lester Brown’s, Plan 4.0. There is a lot in the journals and in the news about “drunken forests”, melting perma-frost and the dangers of methane gas release. There are persistant fires drought and a warming planet. Throw the destruction of the Amazon Rain Forest in and you have the ground cloth of a lot of trouble happening out there. Will we as a species survive this?

Matt

See the Arctic and It’s Fauna While You Can

This is a morbid view, but it is how I feel.

Matt

Closer than the Antarctic, the Arctic region is the up and coming destination for adventure travelers. Cruise North Expeditions runs regular cruises into the Arctic starting at locations just a few hours flight from very cosmopolitan Montreal.

Enjoy an experience of a lifetime, as recent fellow cruise members described it, to the land of Inuit, polar bears, musk ox, walrus, and, well only a few, mosquitoes. Inuit people prefer this name to Eskimo which means “eaters of raw flesh.” They are the only hunting culture left on the North American continent.

Recently we sailed aboard a Russian ice class ship, the Lyubov Orlova, which is named after a famous Soviet actress. The ship is leased by the Inuit owned company, Cruise North Expeditions. Indeed we spent some days cracking through ice covered seas while viewing walrus and seals on ice floes and polar bear and musk ox on small rocky islands. We even got to see rare white beluga whales.

 

Arctic Polar Bear, Montgomery photo

Different than the traditional cruise, an expedition cruise offers more opportunities for outdoor activities and attracts adventuresome people, age range from 10 to 85 years. Activities can range from easy walks and investigation of local Arctic flora to vigorous climbs in search of musk ox and the interesting thick billed Muure, a sort of small penguin that nests by the 1000’s on rocky ledges. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/murre.html.

Each day on board experts give interesting lectures on everything from wild life to Inuit games.
Zodiac expeditions take you to mostly uninhabited, except by Arctic wildlife and vegetation, rocky isles. An occasional tiny Inuit village welcomes you where you can meet local folks and often enjoy a performance of Inuit throat singing and even get a lesson in this unusual musical technique.

The food and service aboard the Lyubov Orlova are excellent and the cabins well appointed and comfortable.

 

 

Walrus on Ice Floe, Montgomery photo

One of the many admirable aspects of this Inuit owned and run cruise line is that they have an excellentapprenticeship program that recruits young Inuits from their villages to join the cruises. They work in various capacities as tour guides, expedition leaders, zodiac captains, and navigator trainees in preparation for future employment. As Dugald Wells, the President of the company, said to me: “These kids come to realize the outside world is interested in their culture and that opens up loads of possibilities for them they hadn’t dreamed of before

The Skeptics!!!!

Front page of the local paper said that greenhouse gas emmisions have increased in our area by 32%. We are near Yellowstone National Park.  What do you think that figure is in Phoenix, Arizona or Las Vegas, Nevada?

In the US Senate we have Senators like Coburn (from Oklahoma) who call global warming a hoax. Should we follow those fools over the cliff? I think not!

There is still so much we can do to mitigate some of the effects of global climate change. It all boils down to how hard do we want to fall as a species and one can hope that the energy lobby does not throw it’s weight against this as the insurance lobby seems to be throwing it’s weight against healthcare reform and where are the tipping points that we will not get beyond. I fear that polar bears and some brown bears have reached their tipping point and for that I am sad.

Matt