An Intimate List

My 2020 birding list fell quite short of past efforts, but along with its abbreviated nature, it also carried an intimate feeling.

A Bewick's wren, one of three
wren species I saw in 2020.

After logging 118 species in 2019, 139 in 2018, and 120 in 2017, I only recorded 81 in 2020. Faced with COVID-19 restrictions, I never traveled far and didn't attend any outings with birding groups. Instead, I concentrated on my local populations. All that meant a smaller total of species for the year.

As it turned out though, I felt a special closeness to the birds I did see. They were around all the time, and I didn't have to work to see them. Of the 81 total species, 79 of them were seen in a four-mile radius, and the other two were within a 20-mile radius. What is more, I didn't add any species to my life list, and I saw all 81 in familiar spots. That might sound bland, but it wasn't. Rather, a bond developed: These birds and I shared the same habitat, and we could count on seeing each other. I think it gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation of life in my immediate area.

Even with a list full of the usual suspects, I can single out some highlights. I saw three very different owl species: the northern saw-whet, the great horned, and the barred. Also, I tallied five species of woodpecker, including the red-breasted sapsucker, the pileated woodpecker, the hairy woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, and the northern flicker. In the same field, I logged both a tundra swan and a trumpeter swan. I had opportunities to see Townsend's warblers and hermit warblers in my yard. These were among seven species of warbler I sighted. Additionally, I had three types of flycatcher in the area.

I may not have set any records or broken new ground with my 2020 birding list, but I certainly got to know my closest avian neighbors, and they are a big part of how I'll remember last year.

SW by Conservation NW

The time has arrived for southwest Washington to come out of the conservation shadows.

Long eclipsed by the Cascade Mountains, the Olympic Mountains, the Washington coast, Puget Sound, and the Columbia River Gorge, the interior of Washington's southwest region missed out on many important conservation designations. It lacks a snow-capped volcano, and the Chehalis River looks far less imposing than the Columbia, so instead of being set aside for protection, it was carved up by the timber industry.

A view of Minot Peak in the Willapa Hills
from the Chehalis River Basin.

Now, at long last, this region's important role in Washington's ecosystem has taken center stage because Conservation Northwest has launched its Cascades to Olympics program. At first glance of the title, the program appears to once again emphasize the state's charismatic features, but the less celebrated southwest region sits at the core of this project.

Cascades to Olympics prioritizes the future of the Chehalis River, the placing of wildlife crossings on Interstate 5 and Highway 12, and the commitment to conservation and restoration projects throughout the region. The key to all of this is the recognition of southwest Washington's ability to connect the Cascades and the Olympics. Such an approach takes a more comprehensive view of habitat, species movement, and ecosystems. All told, along with recent news about preserving parts of Grays Harbor County and stopping the dam on the Chehalis River, the Cascades to Olympics program indicates a new commitment to protecting an often overlooked part of Washington. For more information about Cascades to Olympics, click here.

As someone who hails from southwest Washington, I couldn't be happier that it is finally getting the attention it deserves from the conservation movement.

Birding Field Trips: A How-To Guide

"Field trip!" Remember those two magic words from school? 

Now, thanks to the Black Hills Audubon Society (BHAS), it's possible to recapture the power of field trips, and this time, you get to pick your destination. Meanwhile, you can experience some first-rate bird-watching. 

Because of the need to social distance during the pandemic, BHAS canceled all of its guided birding outings for the foreseeable future. However, the organization remained committed to giving people opportunities to see birds, introducing do-it-yourself (DIY) field trips. 

To foster DIY birding, BHAS began sending out scouts who report back from various birding locations in southwestern Washington. These reports give people all the information they need to know about how to access the locations, what to do while there, and which birds have been seen there recently. By taking the place of a human guide, the scouting reports allow people to continue birding the places BHAS frequents under normal circumstances. To access the reports, click here.

After you find a location you'd like to visit, you can even yell, "Field trip!" if you feel like it.

Ends to an End

Exciting conservation news came from both the east and west ends of Grays Harbor County in Washington state this year.

Part of the proposed Davis Creek Addition.

First, in February, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) announced that the Davis Creek Addition has successfully moved from the public-review phase to the funding phase. Last year, I wrote about the public review of this project in eastern Grays Harbor County and called on others to support it, so I am very happy to see it accepted for the next phase, which, according to WDFW, involves seeking grants to pay for the acquisition.

Further welcome news came this summer from Grays Harbor County's coast. As the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office announced via Instagram, Ducks Unlimited secured the full purchase of the Elk River Unit, which will be added to the Johns River Wildlife Area and managed by WDFW. Full of diverse and vital habitat, these newly protected 1,670 acres offer much for humans and wildlife.

The announcements about the Davis Creek Addition and the Elk River Unit have importance beyond their individual achievements. Since both constitute additions to existing protected areas, they represent the next step in conserving and connecting important habitat. Furthermore, these east-west bookends set a model for future efforts all over Grays Harbor County.

In the end, each piece adds up to a big conservation effort.

What the Flaws in "Macbeth" Mean for Environmental Communication

Macbeth isn’t “a tale told by an idiot,” but it does have a flawed understanding of the environment, and we must learn from those flaws to improve environmental communication.

A fundamental problem in Macbeth arises from William Shakespeare’s depiction of natural and unnatural. It’s a false dichotomy that perpetuates and expands on the flaws in science’s “laws of nature,” flaws highlighted by Yrjö Haila and Chuck Dyke in How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition. Having “laws of nature” requires the conclusion that when those laws are broken, something “unnatural” is done. In other words, these laws imply that a separation exists between what is natural and what is not natural. This is one of the main ways we end up seeing humans and nature as distinct from each other. 

In Macbeth, Shakespeare goes to great lengths to present the title character’s usurping of the Scottish throne as an affront to nature. He does this to protect the “divine right” of kings to hold power, a move intended to curry favor with James I. In this way, the King Duncan of the play and his line embody the “laws of nature,” which, when broken, throw Scotland into an unnatural state of turmoil. As Lady Macbeth’s doctor says, “Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”

For Haila and Dyke, nothing, including deeds and troubles, can be unnatural. Nature is simply the parameters of what is possible. As a result, they argue “that nature’s speech means nature’s presence in everything we humans do.” Killing someone, whether they are a monarch or not, is no more unnatural than not killing them. Humans have simply determined that killing, in most circumstances at least, is morally wrong, and that is where people who study environmental communication must pay special attention.

To argue that some action humans take is “unnatural” is an untenable position. It responds to a question of fact (whether something is true, if it exists, etc.), and that question has only an answer in the negative, setting up the person making the argument for failure. No matter how many human elements are involved in an activity, whether it’s hiking a mountain, emitting carbon pollution, clearcutting a forest, or producing chemical toxins, it can never be unnatural because the environmental parameters allowed for it.

We can still argue against certain actions because of their potential environmental harm, but we must avoid statements based in the issue of what is “unnatural.” For example, if we want to stick with questions of fact, we can argue that an action will create chaos in the environmental system or that such chaos will cause harm to the system. Unlike the claim about unnaturalness, these claims of fact have the potential of being proven as true. We can also examine questions of value (whether something is good or bad, moral or immoral, etc.), which is what Shakespeare seems to have tried to explore with the issue of unnaturalness in Macbeth’s actions. We can claim that some action we take within our environment is immoral (like driving other species to extinction). This, like the questions of fact about systemic balance, is also a question that can be investigated with the potential of the claim emerging victorious.

As compelling of a play as Macbeth might be, it represents a faulty line of thinking about the “laws of nature,” and if we want to improve our communication and understanding of our environment, we must choose lines of inquiry that diverge from the idea of unnaturalness.

Chehalis, Stay Free

During the last decade, the story of dams in Washington state has moved from "Elwha, be free" to "Chehalis, stay free."

Occurring during the removal of two dams on the Elwha River in Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, proposals to dam the Chehalis River in southwestern Washington carried no small amount of irony. Just as the follies of the Elwha dams fell aside under demolition, the state prepared to place the Chehalis under constraints similar to those that had strangled fish runs and sediment flows on the Elwha.

The surge plain of the Chehalis River.

Despite the trend of removing dams on rivers in Washington and around the rest of the country, calls to dam the Chehalis followed a series of major floods on the river. The floods, largely the result of unwise logging practices and continued development in the river's flood plain, caused extensive damage and cut off transportation routes like Interstate 5 in 2007 and 2009. A dam became the preferred way of dealing with the excessive flooding without addressing the root causes, and for a long time during the public debate, it seemed almost inevitable.

Several groups remained firm in their opposition to the dam, and their efforts recently paid off in an announcement from Governor Jay Inslee. For years, the Chehalis Tribe, the Quinault Tribe, and environmental groups like Conservation Northwest have emphasized how the dam would hurt fish runs and the overall health of the river, calling for alternative approaches to flood mitigation. During a public comment period in May 2020, the dam proposal met with heavy resistance. Then, in July, Governor Inslee ordered both the suspension of planning for the dam until at least January 2021 and the pursuit of non-dam options. This is the right decision and an important development in the life of the Chehalis River. For more information about it, read the news release from Conservation Northwest.

"Elwha, be free" became a key slogan in the push to remove the dams from that river, and it appears the desire to keep the Chehalis River free has swung momentum away from a proposed dam there.

Emily Brontë and a Reimagining of the Human-Nature Relationship

Emily Brontë

In How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition, Yrjö Haila and Chuck Dyke argue that Romanticism never achieved the transformative understanding of the environment it sought. I contend that Emily Brontë, borrowing from but augmenting Romantic concepts, did generate such an understanding, establishing ideas that can help us today.

Haila and Dyke say that Romanticism “viewed nature as a benign whole offering inspiration and advice to those humans who are open-minded enough to listen.” They go on to explain that the Romantic approach was intended as a counter to the growing emphasis placed on the supremacy of science and rationalism at the time. In their view, the problem for Romanticism originated in its failure “to get liberated from” a basic belief in the “laws of nature,” which were scientific constructs that people began to apply dogmatically to anything, including social phenomena. As Haila and Dyke correctly argue, the “laws of nature” might be fine for explaining things like gravity, but they are constraining as ways of understanding things that involve social construction like our notions of the environment.

When it comes to figuring out how to throw off constraints, particularly as they relate to the environment, looking to someone like Emily Brontë makes sense. I won’t presume to say what Brontë’s personal relationship with nature was. We know she had affinities for animals and walking her moors, but she was notoriously private and independent and never suffered others speaking for her. On the other hand, she grew into a fierce challenger of orthodox thought, and based on her writings, it is possible to examine how she thought about the world and use her way of thinking to further our understanding of our connection to the environment. An underrated philosopher of brilliant intellect, she could conceptualize complex ideas like the environment, and her exceptional abilities as a storyteller and poet allowed her to communicate those concepts effectively and with great impact.

Brontë also seems to have made pushing the boundaries of Romanticism a focus. Biographers and writers like Lucasta Miller, Robert K. Wallace, Margaret Homans, and Helen Brown have demonstrated the influence Romantic artists like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Beethoven had on Brontë. What is more, both Miller and Wallace note her tendency to expand on and go beyond Romantic principles. For example, Wallace talks about how she and Beethoven apply classical equilibrium to Romantic expression, creating the transcendency of Romantic equilibrium. Miller gives added weight to the contention that Brontë was a transformer of Romanticism, writing that Emily’s “poetry constantly questions and reformulates the Romantic model by which the imagination is able to ‘lift the veil’ of the phenomenal world.”

That Brontë expanded the possibilities of Romanticism does not necessarily mean she spoke to the human ecological condition Haila and Dyke talk about, but as it turns out, she anticipated them by more than 150 years. A central theme in How Nature Speaks insists that the environment is everything, including humans and whatever they produce. What humans think and do represent chosen responses to the possibilities and limitations imposed by environmental factors. Therefore, humans don’t really create anything; they might collaborate with the environment to transform their surrounds, but there is nothing that is purely human and separate from that environment.

Just as Haila and Dyke and the contributing writers in How Nature Speaks seek to obliterate the distinction between the human and the environment, Brontë explored the erasure of boundaries between individuals. The key to this, as Miller points out, was her use of imagination. Imagination was an important idea for many Romantic artists, but Brontë’s approach to it contains special relevance to Haila and Dyke’s human ecological condition. As Miller writes, “For her, the imagination and the self are altogether more protean and disruptive of the order of things than they are for” Emily’s sister and fellow author Charlotte Brontë, who also had links to Romanticism. To illustrate this, Miller tells of how Emily reported playing with Anne Brontë, the third famous Brontë sister. Emily and Anne had created stories of the imaginary land of Gondal, and on a train ride, the sisters played as though they were in that world. When she recorded it in her diary, Emily explicitly said, “we were” the characters, not that the sisters had pretended to be them. Miller argues that this anecdote shows that for Emily, “the imagination represented freedom from the confines of individual subjectivity as much as it represented liberty from external constraint.” Such a form of imagination strongly resembles the phenomenological notion of “experiencing the other.” In fact, Miller also says that Emily’s imagination seems to have been derived not from a sense of self but from a “sense of not-self.” Described like this, Emily Brontë’s imagination involves not just experiencing life as something else but being something else.

Importantly for Haila and Dyke’s understanding of the environment, Brontë’s use of imagination erased boundaries between people and surroundings as readily as it blurred the distinctions between individuals, and her Wuthering Heights, demonstrates this. In their critique of Romanticism, Haila and Dyke highlight the Romantic belief that nature provides “inspiration and advice” to people. This view of nature has drawbacks for anyone looking to transform the human-nature relationship. First, even though it promises a connection with the environment, it maintains a distinction between what is human and what is nature. Second, as Haila and Dyke point out, the offerings of inspiration and advice serve the same kind of function as science’s “laws of nature” just in a repackaged, more “benign” form. The inspiration is a product given to humans by nature. No co-creation takes places. However, Brontë’s version of imagination provides an important counterpart to inspiration. If, for her, imagination allows someone to be someone else or something else, no clear distinction exists between the ideas of one entity and those of another entity. Consequently, the act of creation (or more accurately, reforming) that comes with Brontë’s approach to imagination is a mutual effort. Our experience of our surroundings can inspire us, but our imagining of them makes the ownership of the inspiration (and anything produced or reformed by it) unknowable and irrelevant.

In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff embodies the power of imagination. His vision for what he wants to happen is a driving force behind the narrative, and its aim is the merging of his body and self with those of Catherine Earnshaw, who also expresses Brontë’s sense of “not-self” when she says, “I am Heathcliff.” Heathcliff’s single-minded determination to achieve his goal is his inspiration, a response to his surroundings that guides all his actions. His imagining of it is so powerful at times that he completely loses track of himself and his surroundings, staring off and melting into otherness, and eventually, it ends him, causing him to stop eating and die. It is necessary to emphasize that Heathcliff’s plan for his reunion with Catherine ultimately plays out in the earthy setting of the grave. He is buried next to Catherine, who has preceded him in death, and as he has planned, the adjacent sides of their respective coffins are removed. Both individuals will decompose into the soil as they fade into each other, erasing all distinctions of self, human, and environment; it’s all one. In Brontë’s brand of Romanticism then, we find a dynamic representation of human-nature existence.

The environmental consequences of human activity will increasingly demand our attention and reshape our relationship with our surroundings. However, the difficulty in making sense of those consequences comes with the struggle of finding working conceptualizations of the human ecological condition. Perhaps science and typical Romanticism fall short in providing those conceptualizations, but Emily Brontë’s use of imagination to know the “not-self” provides a valuable tool for improving our understanding of human-nature existence. It yields clues for reimagining our current approach to arranging our surroundings, pointing us toward alternatives that are more mutually beneficial to us and the rest of the environment.

A Simple Language with a Lot of Meaning

Actions don't just speak louder than words, in our communication with our environment, they are the words, and yes, they speak very loudly.

When I tell people I study environmental communication, I often get the same question (or at least, variations on it). "You mean, like talking to trees?" they'll ask. In return, I always say yes. I do so partly because I mean it, partly because I do talk to trees, and partly because I love watching the other person's reaction when I give their facetious question a serious answer.

After picking up How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition, a book edited by Chuck Dyke and Finnish professor Yrjö Haila, I think I'll have to adjust my response. In the introduction to the book, Haila and Dyke make the point that "human relationships with the rest of nature begin with deeds, not words." That struck me as a simultaneously simple and profound statement. It's simple because it gives people a concrete concept (their actions) that they know intimately to understand an idea that can sound as abstract and foreign as talking to trees. Haila and Dyke's idea is profound because it can unlock a series of deep and meaningful interactions that alter how we see and relate to our environment. As it turns out, we all talk to trees and our other fellow inhabitants of the environment all the time, and we can do it without speaking a word. 

To take the idea further, Haila and Dyke also explain that the environment and other species speak and respond to us as well. Just like with us, their language comes in the form of actions. My cat says thanks for food by curling up on my lap. On a larger scale, we call the release of methane by thawing permafrost a "feedback loop" to our own release of greenhouse gases and subsequent warming of the atmosphere.

The next time I get asked if I study people talking to trees, I'll probably ask the person what they have said to and heard from trees lately. Maybe then, we'll have a discussion of how actions, particularly in environmental communication, say so much.

A Deep Dive

Diving into Mark Ruffalo's Dark Waters left me gasping for breath at times, but ultimately, I appreciated its depth and forceful current.

The movie, which covers the case of DuPont using and dumping toxic chemicals in the process of making Teflon, hits hard at both the chemical company and the audience. A strong emotional current runs through the story, and the fact that it's based on real events makes it even sadder. Seeing Ruffalo's character struggle for justice was difficult because of the awful things DuPont had done. Watch the trailer below:

Despite not being a "feel good" movie, Dark Waters deserves a viewing. The subject matter, while emotionally jarring, has great importance and vital information people should know. It is also a well-constructed, well-acted movie. 

Following a theatrical release in November 2019, the film is now available for home viewing, so check it out because these dark waters are deep and need to be explored.

So Many, So Close

Some of the most rewarding journeys don't take us far from home.

Yesterday, I sighted a willow flycatcher. It was about 200 yards from my house, and it was my 70th bird species of the year.

Under normal circumstances, that number probably wouldn't be a big deal. In fact, it might have even disappointed me. After all, last year, I sighted my 70th bird on April 30, and by June 4, 2019, I had logged 98 species.

A Wilson's warbler, one of my reliable locals.

The COVID-19 coronavirus changed things this year though. With social distancing restrictions and the cancelation of group-birding events, my focus shifted to local birds. Those 70 species have all been sighted within a four-mile radius.

I have found different kinds of satisfaction in my 2020 approach to birding. First, it is relaxing to let the birds come to me. Second, some unexpected sightings (like a northern saw-whet owl and a hermit warbler) sparkled with additional specialness. Third, growing my species list with such constraints became at least as fun as the usual challenge of going out and finding as many species as possible. Finally, the local focus has helped increase my sense of home and place. All of the species I have seen this year are ones I've seen in the past. They are familiar faces because most are frequent visitors, so they help give my immediate area its character. Constraining my birding boundaries helps clarify what birds I can expect here, and in turn, those birds better define what home is. That's a very nice result.

Understanding home and our place in the world is a journey in and of itself.