Hot Enough

Now that we've turned the Pacific Northwest into Nevada with temperatures in the 110s and chronic, widespread drought, I wonder if it might be a good idea to address global warming.

Just a thought.

Go North, Young Fisher

The effort to reintroduce fishers to the North Cascades achieved a major milestone last month.

For the first time since the species was eliminated from Washington state in the middle of the 20th century, a female fisher was recorded with kits in the North Cascades on April 18.

Reintroduced to the area starting in 2018, fishers appear to be thriving in their northern surroundings. Watch a video of some of the fishers being released in 2019:

Hopefully, the recently born fishers flourish in the North Cascades just like their parents did and continue bolstering the local population.

Climbing Back to Forever

The destruction of orangutan habitat in Sumatra can't be undone overnight, but the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS) has forever in mind as it replants a crucial forest.

In 2018, I wrote about the SOS campaign to buy a palm-oil plantation. The organization planned to restore the land to rainforest. Happily, the campaign succeeded, and the restoration process has begun at what is now called the Forever Forest.

Along with replanting the area, the restoration project builds relationships with local people to ensure the communities in the area can help protect the forest into the future. Check out a video of the progress so far:

The Forever Forest project involves many positive aspects. Besides the restoration of a rainforest destroyed by palm oil, the securing of orangutan habitat, and the sound strategy of forming relationships with local people, the overall plan helps protect an adjacent national park and gives many species threatened with extinction an expanded area to call home.

Forever might seem like a long time, but forests and projects like this one should have all the time in the world.

A Radical Book

For those interested in communication about the environment, Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World by Jonathan Bate is pure poetry.

When I first read William Wordsworth's poetry as an English major in college, it clicked with me. I understood what he was saying, and beyond that, I recognized a perspective on the world that meshed with mine. My mind couldn't help but attach green colors to his words and images. As a result, when I found out about Bate's biography of the poet, I bought it instantly.

Along with focusing on Wordsworth's most revolutionary work, the book revisits earlier definitions of the word radical to expand our sense of the poet's impact. In particular, the definition of "implanted by nature" contains great importance for students of environmental communication. The biography certainly gives a sense that much of Wordsworth's power as a poet sprang from his feelings of connection with the environment.

Bate makes clear that among the other radical tendencies and sentiments exhibited and expressed by Wordsworth in his early poems, the way in which the poet depicted the environment became his most revolutionary and lasting effect on the world. Wordsworth didn't just challenge dominant understandings of our relationship with the environment, questioning portrayals that granted people power over nature or separated them from it entirely; he prompted us to see connections to all aspects of the environment, no matter how small or obscure. In Bate's estimation, the poetry set the groundwork for movements that promote animal rights and conservation, including the creation of national parks.

By tracing today's language about the environment back to Wordsworth and through the people he influenced such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir, Bate lends great support to his contentions about Wordsworth's importance to the modern environmental movement. He goes so far as to argue that national parks, which have long been called "America's best idea," were actually Wordsworth's idea, and the case Bate builds for this claim is compelling.

I would argue that Bate could have gone even further in establishing Wordsworth's impact on environmental communication. More than simply generating the language to advocate for national parks as basic conservation, Wordsworth preceded the later discussion of national parks as places of ecological importance, which has only gained momentum in recent decades. In addressing the role of every single part of the environment, including the elements we don't typically think of as grand, charismatic, or influential, Wordsworth pushed us to think on a larger scale, and his pen strokes can probably be seen in things like the studies showing wolves' impacts on stream bank erosion in Yellowstone National Park.

Bate might also have extended the discussion of Wordsworth's radical repercussions by examining the poet's influence on Emily Brontë. Scholars such as Stevie Davies and particularly Edward Chitham have shown how Brontë read heavily from Wordsworth's works and often took up his themes. In analyzing the epitaph Wordsworth wrote for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's son Berkeley, Bate looks at language that echoes in Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Describing someone in a grave, Wordsworth writes, "No motion has she now, no force / She neither hears nor sees / Roll'd round in Earth's diurnal course / With rocks, & stones, and trees!" The imagery brings to mind Brontë's depiction of Catherine Earnshaw in her grave, and the words are strikingly similar to those used by Catherine when she compares her love for Heathcliff to "the eternal rocks beneath." Given the argument I made last year about Brontë using imagination to turn the grave imagery into a transformative experience of the connection between people and their environment, I have to conclude that Wordsworth's poetry planted some seeds for such ideas from a woman who arguably surpassed him in radicalness.

Even though I wish Bate would have taken up the points about Brontë and the ecological aspects of the national parks, his biography of Wordsworth is very good, and anyone interested in the environment should check it out. To borrow some popular 1980s language, it's radical!

More Birds of a Feather

Facebook pages of bird-watching groups don't have followers; they have flocks. And the flock following the page for the Black Hills Audubon Society (BHAS) grew a lot last year.

In 2019, I started managing the BHAS Facebook page. As I reported last year, the page saw some encouraging results in the first eight months.

I am happy to report that the trend continued in 2020. From February 1, 2020, to February 1, 2021, the number of followers went from 472 to 619, an increase of 31.1 percent. Furthermore, from my first day back on May 22, 2019, the followers have increased 70.1 percent. Page likes show similar trends, increasing 29.5 percent (417 to 540) from February 1, 2020, to February 1, 2021, and 57.4 percent overall from May 22, 2019.

Despite having fewer birding events in 2020 because of COVID-19, the BHAS Facebook page continued attracting attention. I am proud of the results and look forward to continued growth in 2021.

I'll do my best to keep people flocking in.

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.