A Friendly Reminder

When I heard the news that Forterra had helped conserve a Girl Scout camp in Grays Harbor County, I thought to myself, "I know that place!"

Sure enough, Camp Klahanee, for which Forterra recently purchased the conservation easement, is the camp I was invited to visit by my cousin's Girl Scout troop in 2006. The news of the purchase brought back memories of my trip to the camp and why I had been invited there in the first place.

In late 2005, at my cousin's request, my mom and I gave a presentation to the troop about Finland. It was a fun evening as we shared information about the country and our experiences there. The next summer, the troop invited us to Camp Klahanee as thanks for our presentation. Set in a forest, the camp is beautiful and quiet. We had a great time at the troop's picnic.

As the Forterra press release explains, "Klahanee" means "friendship" in the Chinook language. Thus, the news was a friendly reminder of some happy experiences from the past and of the importance of conserved land in providing space for community building. Through a partnership with the Polson Park and Museum Historical Society, Forterra has ensured that Camp Klahanee will continue to serve as such a space.

A reminder that our environment offers us opportunities to grow and connect is a great way to end one year and look ahead to another.

Something's Missing, Something's Wrong: A Fishy Situation

Something's missing in Washington state this year. More specifically, lots of fish are missing.

Historically low numbers of coho salmon and wild steelhead have returned to Washington's coastal streams in 2023. The Quinault Indian Nation reported low catch numbers for coho salmon in October. Then, on November 27, officials with Olympic National Park announced low numbers of wild steelhead in their rivers.

These numbers point to serious problems for both fish and people. As the runs of these fish continue to decline, they face the possibility of collapsing. At the very least, the low numbers from rivers that once teamed with salmon and steelhead indicate a distressed ecosystem. Such distress will impact people who depend on the fish for sustenance and their livelihoods.

In response to the troubling numbers, the Quinault Indian Nation closed its fisheries in Grays Harbor and on the Queets River. Olympic National Park took a similar step by closing the Queets, Salmon, and Quinault rivers to steelhead fishing.

With so many fish missing from Washington's rivers, something's definitely wrong in the Pacific Northwest.

How a Spider Says Goodbye

I've only seen two dead yellow garden spiders, but each one taught me some things about how to say goodbye.

The very first garden spider I ever saw built its web on my parents' front porch when I was 14. I thought it was cool, and I enjoyed seeing it there in the morning. However, I didn't realize how vulnerable it was to cold weather, so I was surprised and saddened to find it dead one chilly fall morning.

I never had the chance to say goodbye to that first garden spider, and I didn't see another until six years ago. Since 2017, I have seen a lot of garden spiders, but none of them built their webs near a house, so I didn't see them after they had died.

This fall, a yellow garden spider built a web on my house. It even placed its egg sack under the eaves. After laying its eggs, it remained on the house for several weeks. Then, late last week, the weather turned cold, dropping into the 30s and 20s at night. Because of my experience with the first garden spider, I knew what would soon happen to this one. After the first cold night, it was still alive, but it was moving slowing, so I decided to say my goodbyes.

As I looked at the spider's egg sack and then at the spider, I realized that the eggs were its goodbye. It had done what it needed to do to fulfill its life (maybe that's why it didn't seem distressed by what I'm sure it knew was about to happen). The eggs were protected under the eaves, promising more garden spiders next year.

I told the spider that she had done a great job securing her eggs, that I was glad she had chosen this house as the place to put them, and that I would look after them. Then, I said I would miss her and told her goodbye. The next morning, she was dead. I was sad, but this sadness was different than the kind I experienced when I was 14. Although I was saddened by her death, I wasn't unprepared this time. I knew that in our own ways, we'd both said our goodbyes. As a result, I felt a loss but not a total bereavement.

We can all learn something from how spiders say goodbye.

Five Months of Summer

Rain and cool temperatures returned to western Washington this week for the first time since April.

After falling in substantial amounts in April, the rain suddenly shut off when the calendar turned to May in the Pacific Northwest. Temperatures suddenly jumped up too with multiple 90-degree days recorded by the middle of May.

The usual rains of May and early June never materialized. It was as if summer had started two months early. Despite cooler temperatures in part of July, the dry spell continued. Even when rain was in the forecast, we hardly received more than a misting. Eventually, the summer weather reached nearly five months before real rain returned on September 23.

Together with the nearly four months of heat and dry conditions that stretched from July 2022 to late October of last year, this year's five-month summer meant that eight and a half of the last 15 months in western Washington have felt like summer conditions.

How much longer can summers like this go on?

Necessary Numbness

When reality becomes too overwhelming, a common response is to tune it out, and I think that's what is happening on the issue of global warming.

A friend of mine recently mentioned sitting in a meeting where attendees discussed how people seemed to no longer pay much attention to major environmental crises, particularly those connected to the larger issue of global warming. The flooding in California was an example of this apparent disregard. 

After I thought about what my friend had said, I suggested that the nonchalance about climate disasters was actually a false comfort and a coping mechanism. Polling shows that Americans believe global warming is a problem and that they want action to address it. However, they see a lack of response from their elected officials and feel discouraged about the possibility of change.

That feeling of discouragement grows into a feeling of being overwhelmed as the government fails again and again to address disasters. I noted for my friend how the failed government response and lack of concerned exhibited by the Biden administration in regard to the fires in Maui just before the California flooding was eerily similar to that same administration's response to the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio; the response to the pandemic under the Trump administration; and the response to Hurricane Katrina under the George W. Bush administration.

If people are faced with dire circumstances with no apparent way out and no help on the way, they are not likely to continue paying much attention to the warning signs about those circumstances.

Therefore, what we see when we see people ignoring the impacts of global warming is a necessary numbness.

The Best Waste of Time Ever

When Project Puffin began in 1973, it was called a "waste of time."

Fifty years later, the project has restored puffins to the coast of Maine. It has also provided a model for similar restoration projects around the world.

The National Audubon Society recently took a look back at the project's history and a look ahead at its future. Read the full article here.

Although Project Puffin still faces challenges, including the impacts of global warming, with a time-tested foundation in place, it seems ready to meet those challenges.

A 50-year legacy of species preservation with more to come on the horizon is certainly one of the best ways to waste time that I've ever heard of.

A Not-So-Hazy Connection

As I saw reports this week of Midwestern skies filling with smoke from the Canadian wildfires, I experienced the feeling of returning to that area in my mind.

Having spent five years teaching at the University of South Dakota, I remember when wildfire smoke turned the skies of Vermillion, South Dakota, orange-pink in the spring of 2016. That smoke was also from Canada though I think it was from the western part of the country. I remember thinking how wildfire smoke can provide a strong connection between people as we deal with the impacts of global warming.

This year's Canadian wildfires have been sending smoke far and wide for months. In early May, I looked out my window in western Washington and saw that familiar yet strange tint of orange-pink in the evening light. As it turned out, that color was courtesy of smoke from western Canada. Later, smoke from eastern Canada darkened skies on the East Coast of the United States.

When the smoke zeroed in on the Midwest, I felt like I was back in South Dakota. I could see myself looking up into the open, hazy sky of Vermillion. It was a powerful feeling.

Through its impacts on air quality and our senses and health, wildfire smoke provides tangible connections to global warming and between people who are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Gordon Lightfoot: The Voice of Co-presence

Some voices resonate with you from the first moment you hear them. For example, I still have extremely clear and vivid memories of singing along to Gordon Lightfoot's "Ode to Big Blue" as a child.

However, to me, Lightfoot and his music represent more than simply happy memories from childhood. I think "Ode to Big Blue" touched a tuning fork that had already been developing in me, and in doing so, it left a reverberating effect that's lasted to the present day. Although the song is not one of his most well-known works, it shares with essential Lightfoot hits like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzergerald,""Ghosts of Cape Horn," and "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" themes about human respect for and co-presence with the non-human parts of our environment. 

I would even argue that Lightfoot used his music to contemplate his place in the environment. Songs like "Triangle," "River of Light," "The House You Live In," and "Too Many Clues in This Room," while expanding out to address societal and existential questions, maintain a rooting in environmental elements. It's as if, like many artists, including William Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Hardy, and Willa Cather, Lightfoot needed environmental elements to help him process and articulate his ideas. If that was the case, I can certainly relate, and it helps explain why his music spoke to me in such a powerful way.

It wasn't just that Lightfoot sang about the environment though. The way he sang about it also struck a chord with me (probably before I even fully understood why). As a child, I knew I liked "Ode to Big Blue" because it was about whales, which were among my most favorite animals. What I discovered later was that Lightfoot's music emphasized the connectedness and co-presence of humans and non-humans in the environment. In his songs, human action is inextricably tied to environmental causes and effects. If the "lifeblood" of the Canadian wilderness supplied the means for that country's economic development in "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," then the avaricious whaling depicted in "Ode to Big Blue" demonstrated the impacts that such economic development has on the environment in turn. The emphasis on these connections challenges the typical Western understanding of humans being separate from nature. 

Just as importantly, Lightfoot never sugarcoated the connection between the human and the non-human, producing a sense that while often beneficial to humans, the environment demands respect. The personification of Big Blue demonstrates Lightfoot's sense that a whale exists on equal standing with a person. Meanwhile, the power of the natural world and its ability to wipe away human life in an instant runs through "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Triangle," and "Ghosts of Cape Horn," leaving a jarring lesson about taking the environment for granted. In some ways, this point of emphasis might reinforce the traditional Western understanding of nature as something to fear. Yet because Lightfoot also sings about co-presence and connection with the non-human, even the scarier non-human elements garner more respect than fear in his songs. If we are part of the larger environment, we must recognize the threats it can pose, but that doesn't mean we have to wage war on it as an adversary.

As it turned out, in my adulthood, my work as a scholar of environmental communication would explore many of the same themes Lightfoot's music did. I learned that he and I shared a worldview, and I gained an even greater appreciation for what he was saying in "Ode to Big Blue." In fact, an unmistakeable line of thought runs from the first time I heard that song to how I perceive and act within our environment today. 

Gordon Lightfoot died on May 1. I am very sad the world lost him, but I expect that his music and his voice will continue to influence the way we think about and interact with the non-human environment for a long time.

Goodbye, Gordon. Thank you for singing my song!

Howling Successes

The Washington Gray Wolf Conservation and Management 2022 Annual Report revealed some howling successes when it was released earlier this month by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).

First, the report showed continued growth in Washington state's wolf population. The state population grew to 216 individuals, an increase of five percent from its 2021 levels. This marks the 14th straight year of growth.

Significantly, despite the increasing wolf population, the number of livestock-depredation incidents was very small. Just seven packs (19 percent of the state's 37 packs) engaged in livestock depredation, and only three of those seven were involved in more than one incident. A total of 15 cattle and two sheep were confirmed to be killed by wolves. WDFW cites the "implementation of proactive, nonlethal deterrence efforts," including range riders, as a key to limiting depredation.

The formation of a pack in the southern Cascade Mountains represents another cause for celebration. It's the first pack in that region since wolves were driven to extinction in the state during the 20th century. Hopefully, it is an important step in the return of wolves to western Washington.

It's music to my ears to hear news like this report.

From Sacrifice Zone to Death Zone

Long before last month's train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that area qualified as a sacrifice zone, but the environmental toxins unleashed by the train crash and subsequent burning of leaking chemicals has transformed it into a death zone.

Sacrifice zones are areas that face environmental and/or economic hardships because of exploitative industrial activity, pollution, and disinvestment. These areas typically face abandonment by political leaders as well. In such zones, death flourishes as physical and mental health and economic well-being deteriorate, and people find themselves cut off from resources that could help them.

Once supported by various manufacturing jobs, East Palestine's economic fortunes and population have declined for decades. These trends mirror those in other areas around the country and particularly in the Midwest, marking East Palestine as one of many sacrifice zones in the United States.

Yet the February train derailment put the town in another class entirely: East Palestine almost immediately became a death zone. Within weeks, more than 43,000 animals had died because of toxins from the crash. Now, a new report has revealed alarming levels of dioxin, a known carcinogen, in East Palestine's soil. Dioxin is a byproduct produced by the burning of vinyl chloride, one of the chemicals the derailed train was carrying. While cancer risk from dioxin is present at 3.7 parts per trillion (PPT), the soil tested after the East Palestine derailment showed 700 PPT. Amazingly, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will initiate a site cleanup only in response to results indicating dioxin levels of at least 1,000 PPT, which is 270 times the threshold the agency itself set for a cancer risk.

As it turns out, people with the power to help will abandon death zones just as readily as they abandon sacrifice zones.

A Black Cloud of Apathy

The black smoke rising high above East Palestine, Ohio, looked ominous enough, but the cloud hanging over what has happened there since a train derailed on February 3, spilling hazardous chemicals, has only grown darker as the lack of concern from the rail company and government officials becomes increasingly apparent.

When the chemicals were burned off shortly after the derailment, a towering cloud of black smoke formed over the area. Even from the safe distance of news reports, the scene looked horrific. Then, animals began dying and residents started reporting symptoms of illness. 

How anyone could watch what was unfolding without feeling the strongest concern and sense of urgency is difficult to comprehend. Yet neither the company (Norfolk Southern) nor the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seem very worried about the situation. Residents, who had been asked to leave prior to the burning of the chemicals, were soon told it was safe to return.

After people began complaining of illness, Norfolk Southern hired another company to conduct tests for contaminants. That test, which outside scientists found "flawed," reported "no contaminants." It would seem that the point of the test was to quiet the complaints rather than to find out what was happening. Meanwhile, the United States EPA has yet to conduct any of its own tests.

The apathetic responses to the harm caused by these chemicals have darkened the cloud into a gathering storm of fear and distrust among the residents of East Palestine. As the rest of the country watches aghast, it appears likely that storm will reach far beyond eastern Ohio.

A Sad but Important Record

Unfortunately, in the world of bird-watching, not all sightings bring joy.

To those of us who love and watch birds, seeing a dead one elicits great sadness. While it might be something we would rather forget, recording bird deaths generates important data that helps other birds.

Many bird-watchers use eBird to track their sightings of living birds. On the other hand, dBird.org helps collect data on where dead birds are found.

An online tool from the Audubon Society, dBird.org collects information that can be used to mitigate bird mortality, especially deaths related to collisions with windows.

Although seeing a dead bird produces a sense of loss and powerlessness, reporting the sighting to dBird.org can be a powerful way of helping other birds.