fieldnotes

National Defense
 Collision Course

This dogfight might seem like a monumental mismatch. The U.S. Navy's new Super Hornet attack jets weigh 30 tons, fly at nearly twice the speed of sound, and bristle with weapons. Your typical 15-pound tundra swan, in contrast, cruises along at 60 miles an hour and, frankly, doesn't pack much of a punch. Still, conservationists hope the birds can best the jets in a battle over a critical waterfowl refuge.

Each fall more than 100,000 waterfowl—including 20,000 tundra swans and 65,000 snow geese—descend on the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge near Plymouth, North Carolina, to rest in marshy waters and forage on surrounding farmland. Some migrate from as far away as Alaska, and biologists say the refuge is one of the swan's most important wintering grounds.

But a new flock may soon prowl the preserve. The Navy is eyeing nearby land for a new, 1.5-mile-long airstrip where Super Hornet pilots would practice as many as 500,000 landings each year, day and night.

Refuge advocates are urging the Navy to build elsewhere, saying protected birds and noisy, $57 million jets just don't mix. "This isn't a great spot to fly low and fast during practice landings," said Chris Canfield, executive director of Audubon North Carolina and an Air Force veteran, during a recent visit to the site, a 2,000-acre swath of fields that sits 3 miles east of the refuge. "There's a good chance you will lose plane and pilot in a collision with a bird." As if to prove his point, a flock of bulky swans suddenly appeared, zigzagging across the sky. "Imagine one of those sucked into an engine," added Joe Albea, who hosts a popular outdoors television show and who has helped organize statewide opposition to the strip.

The Navy agrees that birds are a hazard. In a draft environmental study released last year, it concluded that from October to April, pilots would face a "severe" risk of a bird strike. Plus, safety guidelines recommend that military pilots "avoid flying near wildlife refuges." Still, the Pentagon picked the Pocosin site as one of two finalists for the strip, saying it could take steps to reduce risks. Planting unappetizing crops on 58,000 acres of surrounding fields could help keep birds away, for instance, as could air guns and other noisemakers.

Critics, however, say such techniques have a mixed record and could even increase risks of collision by forcing flocks to travel farther to feed—which would put them more directly in harm's way. Whether such arguments will fly won't be known until later this year, when the Navy is expected to decide on a site.

Meanwhile, environmentalists worry that Congress may exempt the Defense Department from environmental rules that give the public a voice in such decisions. Lawmakers this spring began debating a Pentagon proposal to modify a half-dozen laws—including the Endangered Species and Clean Air acts—that military planners say interfere with combat training. But opponents argue the laws already provide flexibility for national security, and that pilots have already demonstrated that they can hone their skills without harming the environment.

—David Malakoff


Mountain Ecology
 Nasty Snowmelt

The high peaks of Glacier National Park cradle some of the last glaciers in the country. And when Dan Fagre, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), skis into this remote Montana wilderness, the landscape looks pristine. But the snow samples he and his research team dig from 18-foot snow pits and pack out for testing tell a different story.

The snow contains pollutants picked up in the atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest, then transported and deposited along the Continental Divide by storm clouds. The toxins include nitrate from fertilizers and fossil-fuel combustion, and ammonium from cattle feedlots. These chemicals accumulate in the alpine snowpack for eight or nine months. Then, in May and June, they are unleashed in a rush of snowmelt, giving soils and terrestrial and aquatic plants and animals a chemical bath.

"What concerns us in high-mountain ecology is that small increases in chemicals like nitrate—ions that act as excess nutrients or change the way plants metabolize nutrients—may have a disproportional effect on both soils and plants," says Fagre. "And that could alter the biodiversity of these areas."

Still, there is some good news, according to Fagre and his USGS associate Alisa Mast. Their most recent snowpack analysis, completed in late February, did not detect any persistent organic pesticides (POPs), like those found a few hundred miles north in Canada.

About five years ago a team of Canadian researchers discovered the presence of POPs, including DDT byproducts, in snow along the Continental Divide in British Columbia. Analyzing the jet stream, they determined the pollutants could have come from as far away as Southeast Asia. The volatile chemicals vaporize in warm temperatures and are swept across the Pacific Ocean by the jet stream, then fall with snow in Canada's mountains.

To monitor U.S. snowpacks for POPs and other pollution in western cold spots, the National Park Service has initiated the Western Airborne Contaminants Assessment Project, which will study the pollution data in high-altitude national parks. "All of these snowpack studies show how globally connected we are," says Fagre, "how things happening hundreds of miles away, and even on the other side of the world, can affect what chemicals show up in the snowpack of our western mountains or the fish in lakes in Glacier National Park."

—Sam Curtis


Bird Conservation
 Plovers Are Americans, Too

Every Independence Day, about five hours before the fireworks commence, hundreds of sentinels, walkie-talkies in hand, fan out across north Atlantic beaches, from Massachusetts to New York. Their mission: to keep holiday revelers from trampling the nests of piping plovers and least terns. "It's not enough to move fireworks away from the nests when scores of people descend on the beach after dark," says Scott Melvin, a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

The nest-protection effort began in 1986, a few months after the piping plover was first listed as a federally threatened species. Both plovers and terns lay their eggs on the open sand, leaving them vulnerable to the effects of human disturbance. For the past 20 years or so, nesting areas have been protected during the breeding season, mostly with fences and signs. Federal guidelines recommend creating a buffer zone of at least three quarters of a mile between the fireworks and the plover nests.

The need for even greater protection on big holidays became apparent at New York's Jones Beach State Park in 1995, when 273,000 visitors overwhelmed an underprepared park staff during the July Fourth fireworks display. The experience gave rise to a plan that would make an army general proud. Starting in January, George Kiesel, project coordinator for the statewide group Citizens Campaign for the Environment, recruits more than a hundred people to help guard the nests at Jones Beach. "Come July Fourth, we get the war room map out to plan our strategy," says Steven Mars, a supervisory biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Long Island field office, who helps coordinate the effort.

On the big day volunteers don bright-yellow T-shirts and reflective vests and receive flashlights and a barbecue dinner. As the sun sets, these avian sentries take their places along the blaze-orange barricade fences, spacing themselves evenly between radioed park staff; they stay at their posts until park police have cleared the beach after the show.

"The volunteers really gain an understanding of what the plovers need, and they become protective of the birds in a way that extends beyond one day," explains Annie McIntyre, supervisor of the Endangered Species Program at Jones Beach State Park. "We've shown you can have your fireworks and plovers, too."

—Christy Melhart


Doublespeak
Dirty Air Is Clean Air

illustration by Stephen Savage

When it comes to saying one thing on the environment and doing another, the White House is positively Orwellian. The administration has apparently taken its cue from a 12-page memorandum by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who advises clients to talk in "safe and healthy" terms when appealing to suburban soccer moms and swing voters. Luntz also suggests substituting conservationists for environmentalists and climate change for global warming, because they sound softer. And on some issues, like global warming, Luntz seeks to sow doubts in voters' minds: "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly," he writes in his widely disseminated memo. "Therefore you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." Below is the latest green doublespeak.

—Christy Melhart

Chart by Stephen Savage

Update
 Hope and Sorrow

Adult condor No. 8, known as AC-8, may have been the poster bird of successful but tenuous efforts to save wild condors. A matriarch of the captive-breeding program, she produced 12 chicks and 106 direct descendants, and taught survival skills to many of them. Last November, AC-8, believed to be 35, nearly succumbed to the form of poisoning that has proved so lethal to scavengers: lead bullet fragments the birds eat out of the carcasses of animals killed by hunters. After heroic efforts by the Los Angeles Zoo, AC-8 survived the highest levels of lead ever recorded in a condor and was set free two days before Christmas. "It was a beautiful sight," says Jesse Grantham, an Audubon biologist who worked on the program for six years and was on hand to watch the condor, with its nine-foot wingspan, soar off toward the horizon.

What no one bargained for was someone shooting and killing AC-8 three months later, in February. Just 81 wild condors now remain. Federal prosecutors in California are deciding whether to bring charges against a suspect fingered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which, along with the Kern Audubon Society, has offered a cash reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in the crime. Those with pertinent knowledge should call 916-414-6664.

The tragedy is tempered by the news that Audubon's story on condors (see "Project Gutpile," December 2002) has led a coalition of national organizations—many of them long at loggerheads—to launch a cooperative public-education program aimed at limiting condors' exposure to lead. Participants include the Fish and Wildlife Service, hunting groups (Safari Club International), gun groups (the National Rifle Association), ammunition manufacturers (Winchester and Barnes, represented by the National Shooting Sports Foundation), and environmental groups (Audubon).

Notices in hunting regulations in California, Arizona, and Utah, where condors have been released, will emphasize the danger posed by lead shot, and encourage hunters to voluntarily use nonlead ammunition or remove all lead fragments from the carcasses they leave. Hunters who are issued big-game permits will get a separate mailer. "This is an absolutely historic opportunity to have everyone working with a common sense of purpose," says Patrick Redig, coalition chairman and director of the University of Minnesota's raptor center.

"It's a new day," adds Bruce Palmer, who is the coordinator of the Fish and Wildlife Service's condor-recovery program. "We've had all the lead exposure we can tolerate."

—Jane Braxton Little


© 2003  NASI
 

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REPORTS
Illustrations by Ed Fotheringham

Stick to Prunes

A recent commercial for Metamucil, in which a "park ranger" pours a glass of the laxative into Old Faithful to keep it "regular," has Yellowstone National Park
officials steaming. "It may have been obvious to Procter & Gamble that this was not Old Faithful, but it may not be obvious to the public," vents Al Nash, communications officer with the National Park Service. Old Faithful is Yellowstone's most frequently erupting geyser, but it will likely stay that way only if visitors refrain from throwing objects into it. The park wages a continuous educational campaign to keep people a safe distance from the boiling-hot springs. After learning of the complaints, Procter & Gamble added a disclaimer to the Metamucil commercial: "Dramatization: Please Obey Park Service Rules."

—Christy Melhart

 

Avian Adultery

Australian scientists have turned back the covers on a new secret of superb fairy wren mating. Less studly males who can't find their own territory latch on with
nesting pairs in a seemingly innocent alliance. In return for a place to stay, these interlopers help feed the nestlings. But recent findings by Michael Double and Andrew Cockburn, biologists at Australian National University in Canberra, have found that in the wee hours of the morning, these helpful cads may secretly woo the already claimed females into illicit relations—apparently, with some success. According to DNA tests, these males father one-quarter of the fairy wrens' offspring.

—Christy Melhart

 

Watch Where You Climb!

Even the most agile rock climbers can wreak havoc on native plants. On the climber-choked limestone cliffs of southern Ontario, two Canadian biologists have found that the diversity of native plants drops dramatically near popular climbs. They've also discovered that the proportion of exotic plants is three times higher along established climbing routes than in less disturbed areas; the researchers speculate that exotic seeds have hitchhiked in on climbers' shoes and equipment. University of Guelph biologists Michele McMillan and Douglas Larson, who published their results in a recent issue of Conservation Biology, suggest that climbers can minimize damage to the slow-growing cliff forests by sticking to the well-traveled routes. The proposal has earned them plaudits from conservation-minded climbers—and a spate of angry e-mails from the climbers' disgruntled brethren who don't want anyone telling them where to climb.

—Michelle Nijhuis

 

High on Bats

In spring and early summer, when the night sky begins to darken outside of caves all across Texas, more than 100 million Mexican free-tailed bats emerge like an enormous
black cloud and spiral into the darkness. Gary McCracken, a biology professor at the University of Tennessee, uses Doppler radar, high-flying kites, and finally a hot-air balloon to track the bats to altitudes of 10,000 feet—and verify that they are eating insects at high altitudes. Each night the bats eat as many as 2 million pounds of corn earworms and tobacco budworms that migrate north on high winds from Mexico. "The insects alone cost U.S. farmers over a billion dollars annually," says McCracken, "and bats are our first line of defense."

—Michael Tennesen

 

Watching Out for Whales

Some ships rely on the detection of whale song to avoid often deadly (for the whales) collisions with the far-ranging mammals. But what happens when the whales remain silent for hours at a time? A group of

innovative scientists led by Michel André, a marine-mammal researcher at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, developed a sophisticated system that spots quiet whales and warns ship captains of their position. The Whale Anti-Collision System (WACS) uses a technique called ambient-noise imaging to help ships steer clear of whales. To do this, scientists set out lines of buoys with sensitive underwater microphones that pick up such sea sounds as breaking waves and shipping noise. Any whale approaching the area blocks this background noise, creating a detectable signal. The WACS software then displays a 3D-color map that shows the location of the whale and how fast it is moving. "It's just like a permanent underwater ear that makes images from acoustics and helps whale conservation," says André.

—Vivienne Caballero

 

A Gift to Birders

The Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity filed suit in 2001 to end U.S. Navy bombing exercises on the South Pacific island of Farallon de Medinilla after learning that the bombing was
killing scores of birds, including the endangered Micronesian megapode. The Washington Legal Foundation, in a legal brief the Navy used to respond, argued that mass killings benefit birders because "birdwatchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one." But the bombing not only violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had already denied the Navy permits to circumvent the law. Although the Navy lost the case in court, Congress effectively negated the ruling last fall with legislation exempting the Pentagon from the act. "Audubon strongly supports military preparedness training and the Defense Department's stewardship of natural resources," says Bob Perciasepe, public policy director. "We believe that exceptions from the law are not needed and issues can be resolved by the federal environmental agencies if they had the funding they need to do the job."

—Christy Melhart

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