Groundhog Day on a Bicycle

I've been pretty committed to reducing my carbon footprint for a few years now, spurred by the scientific evidence that suggests that global warming is bringing about severe changes to the planet's climate even faster than we had expected.  I'm not someone who still needs convincing. But I still find that the gap between intention and action can be persistent and pervasive, requiring a large reserve of daily resolve to bridge.

I ride my bicycle to town to my office, and for many of my errands.  I have decided not to be dogmatic about it, allowing trips at night and trips to pick up heavy bags of dog food, livestock feed, or kitty litter to be made in the car. But I continually challenge myself to leave the car in the driveway, and take the bike instead.

I've made it easy on myself by riding a good bicycle, a touring bike outfitted for commuting with fenders, lights, and reflectors.  I've got good bike bags, and a nice rain jacket.  My commute is really a lovely short tour for much of the way if I choose a longer route, and bike lanes or bike paths exist on all but the first three-quarters of a mile of my journey.  The shortest distance to my office is just over five miles, and my office has great secure, dry bicycle parking and a place to hang wet clothing.  In sum, I've got the optimal situation for bicycle commuting.

Still, I find the walk from the front door to the bike shed past the car to be one of the most challenging twenty-five yards I've ever traveled.  The battle goes like this: I'm already behind schedule. It's raining. It's hot. It's cold. I'm really tired today.  I might be coming down with something. If I drove, I could do this errand that is not feasible by bicycle.  Everybody else drives.  Maybe I'm just a freak for caring so much.  Why don't I give myself a break today, and  I'm sure I can come up with a reason why I deserve one.  Meanwhile I'm trudging to the shed, pumping up the tires, and resolutely rolling my bike up the driveway.  Fortunately, I live at the top of a hill, because that easy launch helps overcome the last resistance, and off I go.

I've been surprised at the continual inner battle, despite what I know about the science, the consequences of continuing to carelessly emit carbon into the atmosphere, and the fact that I really do enjoy riding my bicycle.  It helps me realize how much greater the challenge must seem to someone who doesn't have such an ideal commuting situation, or whose job is less amenable to arriving at the office wet or sweaty, and needing to change, can't safely ride at all, or who perhaps doesn't see global warming as an immediate threat.

The daily inner battle has also taught me that I need lots of different arguments to help me push the bike out of the shed.  Sometimes, but not often, pure guilt is a motivator.  It typically doesn't work two days in a row. Who wants to feel guilty?  Of all emotions, I think we're best at managing to avoid this one.  I consider it a tool of last resort.

Sometimes I can get myself going by reminding myself of how much I usually enjoy the ride in to town.  This is true, but  the trouble is that I remember plenty of rides I didn't enjoy, when either bad weather, a negative interaction with a motorist, or too many dead deer carcasses on the side of the road ruined the fun.  Still, on the ride to town and back I have enjoyed some spectacular sunrises, encounters with friends, surprise wildlife sightings, and even fresh blackberries in season.  I almost always feel better after exercising.  This motivator works more often than any other.

I've also found I'm pretty reward motivated, and I'm not above personal bribery.  I keep a package of homemade chocolate biscotti in the freezer at work.  All right, I tell myself, biking burns calories.  Ride in today, carrying all of your gear and with full intention of stopping at the store to buy groceries on the ride home, and you can have TWO cookies on your coffee break.  On a bad day I might need three cookies.  I can always promise myself I'll pedal harder to make up for it.

The final motivator is highly personal, and I don't use this one if I'm already in a difficult mood.  I can remind myself of the latest rash of scientific papers filling in the lines of what we're in for as our atmosphere changes.  The danger here is this can make me angry, and too resentful of other people who don't seem to be spending their free time perusing the latest issue of Nature Climate Change or following Skeptical Science, RealClimate, or Climate Progress, but who might be driving their dog to the forest as I bicycle past them.  This is generally counter-productive.  First, resentment gets you nowhere.  Second, being angry at cars while you're riding a bicycle is very dangerous.

Instead, I have to apply all of this knowledge to view global warming as a direct threat to something I care very deeply about, something I don't want to lose or see destroyed.  I think of the glaciers I've seen that my nieces and nephews never will, or the high mountain forests now under threat from bark beetles and fire.  I think of my nieces' and nephews' future, which won't have the glorious biodiversity and take-it-for-granted planetary life support systems I enjoyed when I was their age.  Most often, I think of a small dune of sand that arcs up just above the waves in the far northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Hawaiian monk seal and pup, Laysan Island 1991. Photo: J.A. Gervais

It hurts to think of all that is going to be lost, parrotfish and monk seals, tropic birds and albatrosses and sea turtles.  I can at least act to prevent more damage, however mundane and humble and small that action might be.  This will get me on my bicycle even in very cold wind and rain.  However, it is also quite dangerous to ride a bicycle if you are upset.  I try the cookie motivator first. 

The little daily battle in the war on global warming has me thinking that although the action is happening in the atmosphere, the front lines are drawn by our smallest actions, held firm by whatever resolve we can muster. There won't be a conclusive confrontation, some  great climax that once and for all ends the war.  It's going to be a lot more like the movie "Groundhog Day" than D-Day.

I'll continue to engage in the fight with the daily trudge up the driveway, one small act of defiance over and over against too much loss to bear.

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Chocolate Biscotti (origin of recipe unknown)

Mix and set aside:
2 cups flour
0.5 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Cream together 1 cup sugar with 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) of butter.  Add two large eggs, beat together well.  Add 1/2 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped walnuts.

Combine sugar-butter-egg mix with the flour mix.  Divide the batter and pat each half into a log, roughly 2 inches wide, 1 inch high and 12 inches long.  Bake on greased cookie sheet for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F.  Let cool on wire rack completely.  Cut into 3/4" slices and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Make cookies while baking some other item to get the most from the electricity needed.

Metric version:
240 g flour
55 g cocoa powder
5 ml baking soda
5 ml salt
200 g granulated sugar
100 g butter

Red Hens and Wooden Eggs

We had chickens once before, until a persistent weasel and an interstate move together conspired to eliminate that first flock.  Starting another flock has been on the projects list ever since, and this spring Dan managed to borrow all the equipment necessary for starting chicks.  This led to the building of a sturdy little coop so all would be ready for the moment the as-yet unpurchased chicks grew large enough to need it.  The coop led our neighbor to help us acquire six yearling New Hampshire Red hens that had reached the end of their lives as research subjects at the local university's poultry program.

Dan's not-quite-finished coop.  Photo: D. K. Rosenberg.

Why wait five months for your chicks to mature just in time to stop laying as winter sets in?  We thought these hens would likely be solidly at the peak of their egg production, and the idea of rescue appealed to us as well.  New Hampshire Reds are known to be hardy birds with a proclivity for brooding.  This is handy if you have a rooster and a desire to keep your flock growing with some new broods of chicks occasionally.  A few days later six refugee hens came home in an assortment of cat and dog transport crates to begin new lives on our little farm.

The university raises chickens according to industry standards.  This means each hen had spent her days in a small cage just big enough for her to turn around in, with a sloped wire floor.  When an egg is laid, it rolls down into a collection chute.  It is possible that these hens never get to inspect an egg up close.  They also don't get to give their wings a good stretch, scratch and peck on the ground, perch, or engage in a lot of other typical chicken behaviors.  We wondered how they would adapt to a barnyard.

We kept the hens confined to the coop for several days to adjust to their new life as real, live chickens rather than industrial egg production machines. Our coop is small but it was still much more space than they'd had for most of their lives, and included a window with a view of the sheep pasture, branches to perch on, nest boxes, and a layer of shavings to scratch in.  It must have been a staggering change.

A whole new world... Photo: D. K. Rosenberg

Instinct, that knowledge we hold without thought or learning, is a powerful force.  A hen kept her entire life in an indoor facility under artificial lighting in a small cage still knows what to do when she's presented with a patch of dirt and grass.  The first day we opened the door, the chickens learned to navigate the ladder to the ground, and soon all were pecking, scratching, clucking, and interacting as if they had never been anywhere else.  Except for one crucial detail: they did not recognize their own eggs.

A challenge in backyard chicken husbandry is to prevent your chickens from ever learning what good food eggs can be.  If the shell cracks and a hen takes an exploratory peck, she'll enthusiastically eat the whole thing, shell and all.  Once she sees an egg in this light, there seems to be no going back.  We quickly discovered that our six hens had no idea what to do with eggs, laying them carelessly around the coop and outside in the mud.  Very soon after that, despite our constant checks to remove the eggs as quickly as possible after they were laid, at least one chicken took an exploratory whack.  We haven't gotten an egg since.

I tried to break the habit or at least prevent all the hens from learning it by stocking the coop with some wooden eggs I acquired from a craft store selling Easter supplies.  Unfortunately, the reward of hitting a real egg seemed too great to discourage a hen who simply came up with a jarring thud when she explored the possibilities of one of the wooden ones.  Dan watched one hen attack a decoy egg so savagely that she pushed it halfway around the coop.  Motherhood was clearly not in her future, nor in any other hen's future if the infanticidal chicken remained part of the flock.

Wooden eggs.  Photo: D. K. Rosenberg

Of all the instincts that constrictive captivity had broken, it was the one most critical to the long-term survival of the species: thou shalt not eat thine own children.  The drive to reproduce is so strong that many animals risk their lives to mate or defend their young, or push themselves to the point of starvation to provide for them.  It is sobering to think that we have managed to subvert the basic wiring of being a chicken to the point it cannot recognize its egg as its own.

This isn't the worst we've done.  Meat chickens are bred to grow so quickly that their legs sometimes become unable to bear their weight.  The feeding of corn to beef cattle during the final stage before slaughter is a carefully managed balance between initial weight gain on this highly unsuitable diet, and weight loss once the acidity of the rumen caused by the corn begins to dissolve the rumen lining.  Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, are notorious for the conditions in which individual pigs and other animals are kept, not to mention the significant issues of air and water pollution from the staggering amount of waste you get when you keep tens of thousands of animals in a very small space.

What do we owe the livestock we rely on for meat, milk, and eggs?

The backyard food movement is certainly driven at least in part by peoples' desire to take more control over how their food is produced.  This is a good thing in a culture that has become increasingly alienated from the life forces that sustain our own, even if the motivation is only rarely the welfare of the soil, plants, and animals.  In an increasingly crowded world, however, not everyone will have the luxury of space, good soil, and clean water plentiful enough to raise food of any sort.  We're still going to need large, efficient farms at some scale.

All the same, awareness will at least keep us honest in our obligations to the animals that feed us, to keep them fed, sheltered, and provide them with the opportunity to express the most basic essence of what they are: living beings.  At what price to our own humanity do we want cheap bacon?

Five hens still scratch and peck underneath the new coop, ignoring the sheep who come by every evening to take a look at them.  They may yet complete the transition into a hardy little productive flock for us; we'll give them more time to settle in to their new world.  Whether they provide us with eggs or meat, we'll be grateful for the gifts of their lives, sustaining ours.

Photo: D. K. Rosenberg

Road Kill

There are two more dead deer lying along the road that ends just a few miles from town.  One is a doe, probably pregnant, the other a young buck just out of rut.  Someone has stopped and sawn off the antlers of the buck but both carcasses remain in the ditch, apparently inaccessible to scavengers.  They are hardly visible from a car, and possible to overlook even from a bicycle, as the cold weather has prevented the usual tell-tale smell.

We think of roads as opportunities for our own rapid movement and convenience, if we think about them at all, not the ribbons of death that wind through the home ranges or migration routes of many animals.  Stand at a rest stop along a busy interstate and see how many seconds pass in which there are breaks in traffic from one side of the highway across all lanes to the other side.  Not surprisingly, research has shown that roads can be major obstacles to animal movement.

How much roads cut off movement depends on not only the traffic load but the animals themselves.  Some animals such as urban gray squirrels seem almost oblivious to the traffic despite the risk and frequent near-misses.  There are video clips of urban wildlife using crossroads and even apparently waiting for lights to change before they cross.  They include deer, gray squirrels, coyotes, and Japanese crows.  The crows, of course, can easily fly over the traffic, but it seems that some of them have figured out that if they drop nuts into the crosswalks, cars will run over them, and the cracked nuts can be retrieved when the light changes.  These animals have adapted to live in the new world we've created for them.

But the vast majority haven't adapted.  Desert bighorn sheep populations are already showing reduced genetic diversity in just four decades after interstate highways threaded among them, raising the risks of extinction for the now-isolated populations.  Cougars avoided two-lane paved roads although dirt roads did not deter them.  Both wolves and elk in the Canadian Rockies avoided roads and trails in national parks as their traffic increased, but elk were less repelled and actually used the areas near moderately busy trails as predator-free zones because the wolves appeared more sensitive to the disturbance.  There are gradients in responses, and consequences.

At the other end of the spectrum, freshwater turtles don't seem to recognize the danger.  Turtles moving between two wetlands in Florida were willing to attempt to clamber over a barrier made of plastic netting to cross the busy highway separating the wetlands; nearly all those that succeeded were killed.  Populations of turtles near roads have a sex ratio skewed towards males relative to populations away from roads. More dead  female turtles are found on roads than males because the females are driven to leave the safety of water to find nesting sites.

The biggest issue may not be just the body counts, as staggering as they may be (upwards of 350 million wildlife deaths per year in the United States).  The worst thing about road kill may be what it reveals about our own fundamental thoughtlessness.  We are the one species that seems able to contemplate killing in an abstract way, evaluating the moral and ethical consequences of taking another's life.  The vast majority of us would not describe ourselves as careless killers, and would claim to avoid causing senseless death when possible.  Then we get into our cars.

The speed limit on the road with the dead deer is fifty miles an hour.  Every branch of this winding road ends a few miles farther into the hills, serving an exurban bedroom-community development.  People claim to like living in the country because they enjoy nature, but nature had better not get in the way of easy access to town.  Of course, very few wildlife-vehicle collisions occur on purpose; after all, people are often also victims of severe injuries or death when large animals like moose are involved.  But nearly all animals that are hit die.

When animals die of natural causes besides predation, they tend to die in places where scavengers can get to them, so that the occasion of death is also an occasion for the continuation of other life.  One of the elements of roadkill is its wastefulness, because the traffic may prevent scavengers from at least cleaning up after our carelessness.  Worse, other animals may be attracted to the bounty then also die in traffic.  This is only one aspect of the particularly repugnant facets of road kill.  Another facet is its anonymity, with neither killer or victim aware of the other.  It is the ultimate in thoughtless take.

The vast majority of victims are not ever seen before being hit, especially if they are low to the ground and cryptic, like snakes, lizards, or salamanders.  It is easy to ignore the carnage if you never see it, easy to believe that you don't contribute to it, easy not to think about it at all.  What if we did think about it?  What if seeing a dead animal, even a snake or a slug, required a moment of reflection and grief?  We would have to slow down enough to see the corpses.  If we slowed down, there would be far fewer of them.  That would be one benefit.  The process of acknowledging the losses might have a far greater benefit, that of helping us recognize our own place in the scheme of life, the first critical step to salvaging our planetary home.

How many scientists does it take to change a light bulb?

Q: How many scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: They won't change it.  It's not their problem.

I noted something in the news a few weeks ago.  Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann made a statement about the potential side effects of a vaccine for cervical cancer.  The response from the medical and public health communities was swift: the statement had no supporting evidence behind it.  Vaccines may carry some risks and cost money, but they save lives.  The benefits clearly outweigh the risks in most cases (although not all doctors agree whether teenage girls should get the vaccine for various reasons).  The rebuke got plenty of coverage, and the misinformation was effectively countered.

Contrast that with the blatantly false statement by Texas governor Rick Perry recently, that global warming is a hoax.  I heard it repeated over and over on the radio news briefs, with no countering view presented whatsoever.  Maybe some of that stems from the media's own reticence to acknowledge that there really isn't any debate at all in the world of science over the reality of human-induced climate change.  But no news outlet I follow, not even the "liberal" ones, reported on any response at all from the scientific community.  It's possible I missed it.  It's also possible that there was an outcry, but the media didn't report it.  Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence that the media tend to overplay any climate change deniers' claims compared to the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue.  However, I really don't think that's what happened either, and an example of what makes me feel that way can be found in Hawaii in early November.

The Wildlife Society, the venerable professional society for wildlife ecologists and natural resource managers, is holding its annual meeting on the Big Island of Hawaii.  On their conference web site, the Society states that of all states, Hawaii "spotlights the most-pressing challenges that natural resource managers and conservationists face today—including the rapid spread of invasive species and the impacts of a changing climate."

The plight of the polar bear is probably the most widely publicized outcomes of global climate change.  Photo by Kathy Crane, NOAA Arctic Research Program.

 

Conference attendees won't be out solving those problems on the ground, they'll be attending paper sessions, networking, discussing the various topics of particular focus, and going on field trips.  The vast majority of them are going to have to fly to get there.  That adds up to a tremendous blast of carbon into the atmosphere, another blow to the goal of stabilizing emissions to try to limit the damage already underway.  That won't do much to help the highly endangered native Hawaiian ecosystems. The Wildlife Society meeting in Hawaii doesn't have a session on climate change. Presumably that will be discussed on the side.

Does The Wildlife Society really take climate science seriously?  One has to wonder.  Maybe this is why politicians and other leaders in our society go unchallenged far too often when they make blatantly ignorant statements about climate change.

Yellowstone fire. Photo by NOAA.

Unfortunately, this blind behavior isn't limited to wildlife biologists.  Virtually all of the scientific societies dealing with the biological sciences and even conservation biology hold national meetings and encourage their membership to attend.  Sometimes you can view presentations after the fact on the website, but no society to my knowledge allows members to attend remotely, or to view presentations in real time through skype, webinars, or other streaming technology.  Even the National Science Foundation expects the panelists charged with reviewing grant proposals for funding to fly in for a three-day meeting.  I found this out when I was invited to participate on a review panel.  When I asked if I could attend remotely, because the climate change science is very clear regarding the danger of carbon emissions, my email went unanswered.  Apparently not.

Individuals often do little better.  Most of us have changed our light bulbs, carry reusable grocery bags and coffee mugs, and occasionally carpool or use alternative transportation.  Very few of us have even begun to think about how we need to change the fundamental way we've begun to do business in the last few decades.  When I bring up climate change to another scientist, most often the answer is a shrug and a comment that the public is stupid, politicians are stupid, or we can't do anything about it anyway.  In short, it isn't our problem, we just do the science.

For people who profess to care about ecology and conservation, this is a travesty.  All of us need to recognize that we can either start planning how we are willing to be inconvenienced to limit the damage already in the works, or have far greater inconveniences forced on us without choice.  Not going to scientific meetings or networking in person is inconvenient.  There is a potential cost to a person's career.  But climate change and the horrendous damage that will follow from increased violence of storms, droughts, fires, and the fundamental chemical changes in the ocean and atmosphere will be far worse.

Wreckage of Hurricane Irene. Photo by Christopher Mardoff, FEMA

If we scientists, trained to evaluate evidence and respond accordingly, are unwilling or unable to take climate change seriously enough to alter how we do business, why should the reporter, the member of the general public, or the politician?

First, we have to own the problem, and be willing to recognize that we, too, are responsible both for the problem and its solution.  That is the necessary first step to being able to tackle the serious misinformation being presented by our society's leaders.  Changing a light bulb or restructuring a scientific society's annual meeting to encourage remote attendance won't save the planet all by themselves.  But if you walk your talk, people notice.  And when you also feel strongly enough about your science to call out those who would twist it to their own ends, people are much more likely to take you seriously. 

The Hawaiian honey creepers are counting on us.

'I'iwi, Vestiaria coccinea.  Photo by Jack Jeffry

Food Web

Buying a bag of dog food isn’t a big deal, if you’ve got a dog and a budget that allows you to look after your friend without making harsh choices about who’s going to get to eat in your household this week.  From the sales figures, most pet owners don’t have that misfortune, pet product sales being one of the most recession-proof industries in the last few years.  The figures aren’t all about dog food, either.  They include all the accessories you can possibly imagine, and unless you’re a dog owner, quite a few that you possibly can’t.  For many of us, our dogs are a major focus of our discretionary spending.

I never thought much about dog food until my young dog threw us a curve ball with his first grand mal seizure in the middle of a long night last winter.  After tests, our vet concluded that Raven has idiopathic epilepsy. At least he’s just a dog, as much as we love him, and not another human being.  For one thing, he only falls over from a height of two feet, not far enough to risk serious injury, and his thick fur helps pad the impact.  His life will not suddenly become much more difficult because he can’t drive a car, and he seems unburdened by the knowledge that he could unpredictably suffer another episode, something human epileptics must accept.  He’s still the same happy-go-lucky sweet goofball he’s always been, most of the time.  But each seizure is still a scary mess, and not something anyone would care to deal with if they don’t have to. 

I did some research, quickly learning that there is no consensus on how to best manage this condition other than with medication, which often doesn’t work.  Among the many tips unsubstantiated by any scientific research was the suggestion that feeding a high-protein diet without preservatives might alleveiate the seizures.  Diet changes had reportedly helped reduce seizures in children.  The lack of consensus in managing this disease may stem from the fact that lots of malfunctions in the brain lead to seizures; not knowing the exact cause, some cautious experimentation seemed in order.

This led to a trip to the local high-quality pet store.  I faced an entire wall of dog kibble, nothing compared to what I’d face at PetsMart but enough to be overwhelming.  After squinting at a half-dozen ingredients labels printed in size-three font, I sought the help of one of the store personnel, who in my experience have been pretty knowledgeable about what they sell.  I explained what I needed to an earnest young woman wearing round wire-rim glasses.

She pointed me to a bag of kibble that not only contained the requisite high protein content and no preservatives, it was made with regional meats including salmon, wild boar, and bison.  It cost $80 for a 30-pound bag.  They’re human-grade ingredients, the young woman at the store told me proudly.  Your dog will love it, she said. 

I’m sure he would.

We choose to share our lives with animals, and the benefits can be legion.  Part of the compact we make in return for their love is food, water and shelter.  Dogs happen to be carnivores, and although it is possible to feed a generalist carnivore like the domestic dog a diet made up of protein that is not meat-based, it is not easy and mostly not recommended.  My dog may eat more meat in a month than I have in my entire adult life. 

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I struggled to explain that even without the sticker shock, I couldn’t feed my dog this food in a world that is rapidly becoming ever more crowded with people, with fewer resources to go around.  A lot of pet food is made from the scraps that those of us who can afford to be picky would prefer not to eat; in any case, the industrial food system pretty much renders them inedible to people and marginally edible for pets.  Feeding a dog is not necessarily synonymous with starving a person.  A bag of dog food doesn’t represent much against world hunger in any real sense.  Reformulating the entire company’s line of dog food into something not only human grade but human palatable wouldn’t make much of a dent.  However, even very small acts can build to major consequences.  And something within me balked at feeding my dog the flesh of a fish swimming against extinction in much of the Pacific Northwest.

Let the fish stay wild in the rivers.  I don’t like my dog eating the waste from the slaughterhouse floor and a staggering list of preservatives whose chemical names I can barely pronounce, but there has to be a middle ground, somewhere.  There has to be a way to restore some sanity to a world where the affordable food may not be safe or nutritious, and the safe food is the prerogative mostly of the obsessed or the wealthy.  Unfortunately the problem isn’t just limited to pet food, or pet ownership.

That led to a second dilemma for me, as I had to ask myself how much of my income I was willing to spend on my dog, and therefore not on helping other people.  The bills associated with owning my dog have soared, with twice-daily medications, regular blood tests, a somewhat less fancy but high-quality kibble, and other expenses.  There’s less money to donate to the food bank, the animal shelter, or to conservation.

Raven is not aware of issues of social justice, let alone concerned about them.  That’s not why we invite dogs into our households.  They’re there to give love, make us laugh, and maybe to offer us the opportunity to express the best parts of ourselves now and then.  These needs fall right behind the basic need of being fed.  Hopefully the people around us meet these needs, but it doesn’t always work that way, and many of us just find great joy in our relationships with our animals.  Those relationships are clearly worth a great deal, but how do we balance the choices with the obligations we hold to each other, let alone the other beings on this planet?

How will we navigate a world where increasing scarcity may force even more choices between who eats and who does not, where the shortages are not just political?  What exactly should go into a bag of dog food?

Unintended Consequences

She kicked hard, flailing her sturdy legs madly, just missing my restraining hands.  She didn't have much of a range of motion because of her shell, but that didn't stop her from trying, stretching her neck around to snap at my fingers.  Once her hind leg kicked my wrist, and I was startled by how strong she was.  I had a good grip, however, and what happened next was my decision, not hers.

The turtle in my hands was a red-eared slider.  Like me, she was a native of the eastern half of the country.  I had come west a quarter-century ago, seeking broader horizons, while she had arrived here thanks to the pet trade. Whether she had once been released by a well-meaning but misguided pet owner who no longer wanted her, or had been born wild herself, I couldn't tell.

Red-eared slider, Trachemys scripta, basking in non-native waters.

It's against the law in many states to release non-native pets, and red-eared sliders are not even legally sold in Oregon in the first place.  But they're here, and they have found Oregon's waters to be enough like home to settle down and raise large families.  We don't really know all the potential consequences of this, although there is evidence that the native turtles don't do well once they're forced to share their space with this new arrival. 

My scientific permits specify that I cannot release any non-native turtles if I catch them.  This is meant to help remove the invaders, and give the native species a better chance of survival.  It isn't about just the individuals, or even individual species, but the sum of all the plants and animals, and the unique communities they form.  These communities can affect how water flows, how frequently and severe wild fires will burn, and whether soil will be swept away before the wind.  These processes are of fundamental importance to our well-being, if not our very survival.

I hold another set of permits, this set from the university.  These specify how I must handle individual animals in order to reduce any pain or suffering.  I have stated exactly how I'll keep any sliders I catch, and for how long, before delivering them to the state veterinarian for what amounts to their execution.  Under those conditions, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee gave me permission to proceed.  This set of permits is not at all concerned about ecological processes, but it is deeply concerned with the welfare of individuals.

There are very good reasons for both permits.

Turtle trap with red-eared slider inside.

Personally, I happen to really like animals.  I happily share my house with two dogs and a geriatric cat and there would be more if it didn't mean serious strife with my husband.  We raise sheep and goats, and the fact we slaughter our own meat makes us acutely aware that living beings are individuals, each with their own perspective and purpose.  I do not take killing lightly.

As a professional, I am only too aware to how careless introductions have changed everything from the composition of trees in the forests in much of the country to the soil dynamics beneath my feet.  I don't know if red-eared sliders will end up being the biological equivalents of neutron bombs in Oregon's aquatic systems, although they will have impacts.  I suspect probably not, although other invasive species may deserve the comparison.  However, I am not a policy maker, and it is not my call.  The law, and my permits, are clear.

Yet it is amazing how the ancient instructions for life have adapted these turtles to an utterly new place, one dominated by humans.  Sliders are doing fine here, and may do better still as the Pacific Northwest climate shifts to warmer and drier weather.  At some point, we may need to choose based on what can exist in the future, rather than what existed in the past.  The changes we're bringing about on our planet are so great that asking these questions is no longer only the business of theoreticians.  What do we want our future world to look like, given our past actions, and the choices we now have?

That is the big picture.  The small picture is me, holding this turtle, next to a drainage ditch near the airport, on a cool overcast windy day.

It isn't the turtle's fault.  She was only following the instincts that have carried her kind forward for millions of years before she swam into the trap baited with overripe sardines.  I personally didn't bring her here.  All that matters now, however, is that I have caught her, and what happens next is solely my decision.

I do what I must, based on what I know and what I have agreed to do, and she goes in a plastic bin filled with an inch of ditch water.  I wish her a quick and painless death as I look out over the landscape she won't see again.  I lug the sloshing bin to the truck.  It is a good deal heavier than a five-pound turtle, a gallon or so of water, and the container.  I am also weighed down with the ethical costs of undoing what never should have been done in the first place.

Lost in Space?

I was scanning the pages of a scientific journal one evening and fell upon a guest editorial that made me fall out of my chair. Two scientists from a respectable institution suggested, with all apparent sincerity, that the best way to avoid the extinction of humanity would be to colonize outer space. 

This immediately brought to my mind the image of the interstellar community frantically deploying some kind of cosmic germ killer to deal with the infectious blob spinning off from our mortally wounded biosphere.  What have we done here to deserve welcome anywhere out there?  Our record of stewardship is not good.  We have not been kind to any life forms that have had the misfortune to be present when we have colonized new territory- not even members of our own species.  Those of us left behind could only hope that any life forms out there would not have a view of epidemiology that included going after the source of the incipient infection.

Venus bus probes, image from NASA.

 

Humor aside, there are some very troubling aspects to this argument.  I was surprised and disappointed that such a view could be espoused in an ecological journal.  Ecologists, of all people, should appreciate the intricate, invisible bonds that tie us to the biosphere of this planet.  The history of the evolution of this biosphere is inseparably bound within us, from the micro nutrients we need, our bodies' metabolism, and the bacteria that live in our digestive systems to our circadian rhythms, set by the sun as we move around it with our planet Earth.  We have proven we can survive, briefly, out of the context of our world, but do we really have the arrogance and hubris to believe we can recreate everything we need somewhere else, when we have only the shallowest understanding of the interrelationships here that sustain us?  Ecologists should know better.

Home Sweet Home

View of Earth from Apollo 17. Image from NASA

There are even more disturbing aspects to this argument.  Who's going to get to go? There are nearly seven billion people here.  Do we really think there can be a morally justifiable process to pick those few?  What traits would we choose?  There is a saying regarding China- if your talents make you one in a million, there are ten thousand people just like you. That would mean seventy thousand just like you throughout the world. Are we willing to deliberately condemn most people to linger on a dying planet while we pour the last of our scarce resources into flinging those few into space?  How could those few live with that decision?  Even worse, what if they could? What would that say about the values and ethics that we chose to propagate beyond our planet's boundaries?

It would take a tremendous investment of resources, including non-renewable ones, in order to succeed.  Even if we decide that we do not care about the moral implications of allowing billions of individuals of our own species, not to mention all the rest of the life forms, to suffer slow death on a ruined planet, why do we think those condemned masses would allow the chosen few to despoil the remaining resources of the planet in order to make their getaway?  And again, the fact that a few might be willing to ruin the futures of so many also says nothing good about the values and attitudes we would be broadcasting into the cosmos.

Unfortunately, this really isn't a hypothetical situation.  There are a chosen few who are already busy destroying the futures of the many, apparently without a single second ethical thought.  Our goal is not to colonize the final frontier, but simply to espouse a lifestyle that happens to extend far beyond our ecological means.  Ironically, it is a lifestyle that frequently leaves us frenetic, sick, and miserable in addition to creating a tremendous delayed cost that our children will have to bear.  The chemistry of our atmosphere, oceans, and even the soils are changing rapidly.  They are not changing in ways that will enhance our survival.  It is sad indeed that ecologists are not at the forefront of sounding the warning, and leading the way in reinventing our society so that we are not committing an act of genocide whose victims will include all of us and our children.

View of Earth from the moon. Image from NASA.

I can imagine that little space capsule spinning out of the Earth's orbit, carrying the seed of incipient disaster to new worlds blissfully ignorant of the fate that awaits them. Out the little window, a message forms in the clouds over the small planet they leave behind:

Do not enter. Toxic dead zone.

Surely we can do better than that.