BIODIVERSITY PAGE
This page is dedicated to fighting the good fight for animals and plants that can't fight for themselves. Biodiversity has become a very dear subject to so many well-meaning people. To the snail darter detractors and those who slight the spotted owl, biodiversity has become the poster child of extremist environmentalism. To us here, it's a sad subject because man's increasing influence on this planet means less room for those animals with a more tenuous grasp on what ever tiny niche in nature from which they are slowing being wrested.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~><((((((((()'>
The Winter That Wasn't 03.06.12
 Will winter’s wane = leaf-munching moths in May?
This New York Times piece capped a flurry of articles in NBN’s mailbox recently about the odd impacts from the warm winter and the lamb-like start to March. The article balances good economic news from The Winter That Wasn’t against a host of scientists forecasting uncertain doom from same. Before marveling anew at skeptics still standing their ground against the avalanche of evidence that the world is clearly getting dangerously warmer, there are a few things we have to keep in mind in reading an article such as this. First, there’s no escaping the fact that buying into global warming fears, and taking action according to them, means jobs security for the folks stoking those fears. It also means fewer jobs for coal miners, gas refineries, filling stations, recreational vehicle makers, luxury car companies, home builders and on and on. Let’s face it, taking action on global warming means draining the fossil fuel from the engine driving half the nation’s economy—NBN’s completely uneducated estimate. Any administration embracing polices that accelerated such shifts in the middle of a recession does so at their own political peril. Moreover, as the Time’s article linked above points out, there’s lots of good economic news coming out of The Winter That Wasn’t.
But a New England turtle expert NBN spoke with last week raised an interesting prospect. What would happen to wildlife in northern areas if hibernation season suddenly came to an end, a prospect New England came awfully close to this year. NBN has talked often about evolution’s ability to keep pace with global warming, could we be seeing the first serious tests of same in just a few years time? The Times article makes reference to squirrels, already robbed by an anemic 2011 acorn harvest, exacting revenge on garden flower bulbs this year. Will hungry black bears robbed of a full-winter’s sleep be wandering every farther afield this year in response to an earlier-than-expected spring wake-up call? What sort of egg-production will our vernal ponds see with virtually no spring snow melt and no clear delineation between winter and spring to trigger amphibian amorous ambitions. A couple of years of this sort of weather and who knows what will happen to the salamanders, turtles, frogs and fairy shrimp so dependent on these ponds. Are we heading for an amphibian Armageddon? At the very least, we’re heading for a very depressing vernal pond touring season.
|
PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS
Every one has a story to tell, now you can tell yours. The Story of Your Life, is the affordable, professional way to leave your loved ones a legacy. Email us to learn more: LIfestory@comcast.net
|
Rather than wringing our hands over The Winter That Wasn’t, NBN is rubbing its hands over this potential spring that won’t be sprung. Last year we reluctantly wrote a piece on the deadly spring tornadoes hurting most those most needing a global warming wake-up call: the red-staters most likely to oppose an aggressive shift away from the fossil fuels that their livlihoods clearly are more dependent on. In light of the increasing prospect that we’re seeing a 2012 repeat of that tornadic activity, the eco-chaos emerging from winter’s wane further north this year might take on greater significance. Is it possible the entire country this year will see firsthand that the price at the pump is just the tip of the melting iceberg of ecological and economic indebtedness this country’s addiction to fossil fuels has rung up? Is this the year the entire country gets a wake up call? All at a time when many feel we have the opportunity to make a decisive change in our national psyche? After a figurative financial meltdown helped elect the last president, will a much more literal meltdown elect the next president? One can only hope.
Please click here to add your two cents. Or two bits.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~><((((((((()'>
Salmon Return Spells Hope Amid Mystery 10.18.11
|
When NBN heard that Massachusetts' Merrimack River had a record run of Atlantic salmon this year, we thought we had a great story for. That’s because in 2009 the Lawrence Dam in the Merrimack River was repaired in a way design to increase the flow of anadromous fish like the Atlantic salmon past this ancient impediment. Was the record 2011 salmon run proof the repair is working? No, according to Joe McKeon, a fisheries expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Rather, the reason for the spike in salmon numbers counted passing through the dam’s tiny fish lift is somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean. That’s where the fish spends the first two years of its life after hatching in the freshwater retreats of the Northeast’s rivers and streams like the Merrimack and the dozens of tributaries, streams and rivers that feed it.
|
 Workman installing splashboards to improve fish runs |
 The Lawrence Dam fish lift is tiny compared to the river stretching behind it. |
Something changed in the Atlantic, McKeon said, that has caused salmon runs to spike from southern New England to Canada. While the record 2011 Merrimack run still just totaled 401 fish, the count in many Maine rivers jumped by several thousand salmon and Canadian Rivers are seeing even more robust runs. (Sadly, no change to report in Connecticut rivers.) There is a broad range of environmental factors in the Atlantic that can account for the increased survival of the salmon now seen in their return to these rivers. Not the least of these is ever tightening restrictions on commercial fishermen working the waters for other species and catching salmon by accident. (Atlantic salmon cannot be commercially caught.) Salmon have also been troubled by disease and an epidemic of sea lice believed to have spread from the many salmon farming operations along the coast of Maine and Canada.
|
It’s also feared the fish from those farms, a genetically weaker strain, escape and spawn with the wild Atlantic salmon producing young less able to live in the open ocean. Lastly, all anadromous fish struggle with increased pollution from road runoff which is degrading the watershed these fish depend on for spawning grounds.
|
This YouTube illustrates exactly the problem hobbling salmon runs in Lawrence and at other dams: water spilling over the top diverts salmon from the lift on the left. You can see salmon in the background attempting to jump up the dam. This problem was fixed in Lawrence in time to greet a record sun of salmon. |
In the face of all that, there has been a lot of talk of the Atlantic salmon going extinct. So it's resurgence this year is huge news. So much so it has NBN changing its thinking on this subject. It’s always seemed to us anadromous fish will never return to Northeast rivers as long as impediments like the Lawrence Dam are in place. The improvement of these fish runs is an oft-cited argument in what's becoming a nationwide program to remove them. Dams are coming out all over the place. Yet the growing interest in alternative energy like hydropower that these dams, even small ones, can produce is becoming increasingly attractive. For decades anadromous fish runs up and down the coast have been hobbled by dams. The number of salmon at the Lawrence dam dropped as low as 21, in past years. Yet 2011 shows the animal still bounces back. That's got us thinking maybe the Atlantic salmon could make a comeback even with the dams in place.
|
McKeon said the fish lift at the Lawrence dam will work en masse if there are fish there to use it. The repairs to the dam will only help as will other improvements constantly being made on behalf of anadromous fish runs in rivers across the country. Government scientists like McKeon have spent decades trying to bring these fish back to these rivers. Are they about to see their efforts rewarded?
<')((((((((><~~~~~~~~~~~~~~