Environment/Climate Crisis archives - Page 9 of 9

Ecosystems at Risk, #4: Death Valley

March 17, 2016 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Acres of “Desert Gold” (Geraea canescens)

Over the weekend of March 12-13th, I visited Death Valley National Park in California for the spring bloom, which was considered to be especially impressive this year. I tagged along with a 2-day plant walk set up by the California Native Plant Society. The event was well-organized by a gentleman who knows the area well and scouted out prime locations ahead of time. I enjoyed the presence of botanists because I got positive IDs on everything we saw. They had their books and would key-out anything they couldn’t name off the top of their head, and they corrected each other on newer names.

One male-female couple on the trip had not been to Death Valley in three decades and the woman joked that they only visit every 30 years, and that she looked forward to coming again in another 30, when she’ll be 96. I was not part of the conversation so didn’t mention that its doubtful that all the flowers and plants we were seeing would still be there in 30 years, at the rate that the climate is changing. Even scientifically-minded people are not giving much thought to Climate Change.

Ecosystems at Risk, #3: The Snag Forests of Olallie Lake

November 2, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Snag forest and ponds at Olallie Lake, Oregon

In July of 2014, I was traveling in Oregon’s Cascade Mountain Range with a friend, looking for someplace to camp for a few days where we could enjoy good berry-picking. Looking over our gazetteer, we spotted a place labeled, “Olallie Scenic Area.” What we saw on the map intrigued us; the area was dotted with dozens of lakes, resembling a piece of Minnesota more than anywhere in Oregon that either of us knew. Neither of us had been there, so we decided to go check it out.

The Olallie Scenic Area is located in a bowl-like “saddle” on the ridge of the Cascadess where the Mt. Hood and Willamette National Forests come together. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through it. To the west, the land rolls down in wooded (and clear-cut) foothills to the lush Willamette Valley and on the east tumbles into the arid high desert of the Great Basin. To the south is Mt. Jefferson, known as “Seekseekqua” to some Native Americans. The elevation of the area is about 5000 feet above sea level.

We didn’t know what to expect and were very pleased to find extensive snag forests.

Love Letter to a Dying Friend: Joshua Tree Country

September 22, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Sunset in Joshua Tree Country

I first visited Joshua Tree Country on a Spring Break college road trip in 1990. Two buddies and I camped out for a few days in a tent, cooked our meals on a Coleman stove, and spent our days climbing the famous rock formations and our nights staring with wonder at the multitude of stars, making a game of picking out the satellites. No plant life caught my eye on this visit other than the iconic Joshua Tree itself which at the time we all associated with the recent U2 album of the same name. Though our journey had started in Northfield, Minnesota, and had exposed us to countless sights of beauty and wonder, the desert made the biggest impression on me.

Nearly a decade later, in 1999, I had not forgotten Joshua Tree Country and I returned on another road trip, this time with a girlfriend and from further away yet: Boston, Massachusetts. We camped for a couple days near the Cottonwood Springs entrance of what was then still Joshua Tree National Monument, again in a tent with a Coleman. As in 1990, the Joshua Trees were the only flora that got my attention.

Skip ahead to 2015 for visit number three, which turned into a stay of nearly four months. This time I was accompanied by my farming partner of the last few years and we stayed in a rambling house on the edge of the village of Joshua Tree. The large windows featured a grand view of the hills on the north side of what was now Joshua Tree National Park and of the Creosote Bush scrub rolling away to the east where it met a blurry seam of mountains on the horizon. Over the past ten years, I had been supporting myself as a farmer, herbalist, and seedsman, so on this visit all the plants seized my attention, not just the Joshua Tree.

As when one falls in love and is intrigued by every detail of a new lover’s body and being, I was entranced by the flora and fauna of Joshua Tree Country.
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Only Revolution Can Mitigate Climate Change

August 27, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Young tree growing after a forest fire in the Oregon Cascades

Fred Hampton, the assassinated Black Panther, once famously said: “School is not important and work is not important. Nothing’s more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

That quotation has been running through my mind lately as I have been reading news about Climate Change. Replace “fascism” with “Climate Change” and you have a spot-on description of the state of the world today. Things have gotten that dire.

Before you accuse me of misappropriating Hampton, let me point out that Climate Change is fascism: fascism made manifest ecologically at the global scale. And actually, I would expand Hampton’s scope so that “us” includes all the non-human life on earth, its ecosystems, and even the soil beneath our feet. The amazing web of life — made up of “all our relations” as the Native Americans put it — is the “us” that fascism-induced Climate Change is stopping.

This is not a “doom and gloom” essay. Instead, I will picture what meaningful action would look like.
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Ecosystems At Risk, #2: The Lava Beds of Eagle Lake

August 2, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The effects of global Climate Change are felt everywhere, and all ecosystems are “ecosystems at risk,” but this series of irregularly-posted photo-essays focuses on ecosystems that are unusual, rare, or simply little-known.

Smoky Mariposa Lily

In early June, a friend and I were traveling through California and we stopped to camp in the lava beds on the west shore of Eagle Lake, in Lassen County. Eagle Lake is one of many bodies of water in California that have been shrinking in size during the drought. Along the shore, docks stand on dry land with grass growing around their piers, the water hundreds of feet away or more. When a body of water sinks, so does the surrounding water table, which inevitably affects neighboring habitat.These photos were taken near our campsite, less than a mile from the original shoreline. Since this was my first visit, I don’t know if the diversity or density of flora and fauna is noticeably different than in the past. But I am providing a record, even if only in snapshots, that shows something of the area’s status this season.

The landscape is rugged, with black lava rock throughout. The clayey soil is red. Certainly, the ground is rich in minerals to uptake for those plants that can take root there. Flowers and shrubs grow out of cracks in the rock and grasses and ephemerals spread out across the clay. Pines and Junipers stand singly or in scattered groves of just a few trees. The beauty of the place is somewhat austere, but not stark.

Most spectacular, though, was not what we saw but what we heard.
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A Day of Tears: Report from the “sHell No!” Action in Portland

July 31, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

As has been well-documented, Royal Dutch Shell has plans to drill for oil in the Arctic, despite their knowledge that such extraction will exacerbate Climate Change (see here, here or here). President Obama has given these plans his blessing, as could be expected of a politician beholden to the extraction industries. In order to commit such an ecocidal act, Shell has to transport many different resources to the area by ship, and activists have attempted to slow the process by blocking, if only temporarily, a couple of these key transports. In Seattle, kayakers delayed the departure of a Shell oil rig in June.

In Portland, the Fennica, a Shell ship carrying a key piece that is required on site before drilling can legally begin, docked for repairs about five days ago, giving local activists scant time to put together a response. Another kayak blockade was quickly planned, and to the surprise of most locals, Greenpeace pulled a surprise action a little after 3:00 a.m., early on the morning of July 29th. Thirteen people with climbing equipment lowered themselves off the St. John’s Bridge, downriver from the Fennica, and positioned themselves in harnesses about a third of the way down, with ropes strung between themselves. This simple, even elegant, set-up made passage of the Fennica impossible without injuring the climbers. They were provisioned with enough food and water to stay there for days.

Ecosystems At Risk, #1: The Belly Plants of the Pebble Plains

April 18, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

A tiny geological treasure can be found in the San Bernadino Mountains of southern California: the “Pebble Plains.” Located near the famous ski town of Big Bear Lake, this 92 square-mile area exhibits a soil type found nowhere else in the world, a combination of clay and quartz fragments left behind by a glacier lake that existed during the Pleistocene Era. Over the last 10,000 years, these ingredients have been subject to repeated swelling and shrinking from the freezes at that altitude (6000-7500 feet) and the sun’s heat at that latitude (34° North), resulting in a unique composition.

Tiny botanical treasures are also found there, collectively called, “Belly Plants” because they are so small you have to get down on your belly to see them. About a dozen of these plant species are found nowhere else in the world, having evolved there in isolation, adapting to the unique soil.

Like many other ecosystems worldwide, this one is at risk from the effects of Climate Change.
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Your Money or Your Life: Can We Afford to Work for Peanuts?

March 16, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The author, with the giant peanut of Orick, California. Photo by Nikki Hill.

In Orick, California, there is a giant wooden peanut – over twelve feet long, six feet tall and weighing nine tons – carved from a single chunk of old-growth redwood. It was sculpted by local loggers in 1978, during the Carter administration, and brought to Washington, D.C., to protest the proposed expansion of Redwood National Park. Their message: “It may be peanuts to you, but it’s jobs to us.” To the loggers’ chagrin, the peanut was ignored and the Park expanded anyway, removing 48,000 acres from the reach of their axes. Now the rough-hewn sculpture sits unceremoniously at the south end of town, steadily wearing away under the effects of vandalism and the elements. No plaque tells its story; you have to know what you’re looking for, and even what you’re looking at.
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Refugees Without Legs: How Climate Change Leaves No Room for “Invasive Species” Theory

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Common Holly (Ilex species)

In the Summer of 2012, I met a Shoshone-trained elder named Finisia Medrano. (The story of that meeting is told in “Postcard from Eastern Oregon: When Planting Food is Illegal”). She has spent decades following the routes and practices of the ancient migratory “Hoop” of the Great Basin Native Americans, harvesting and cultivating wild food seasonally. In so doing, she has safeguarded vanishing knowledge and made invaluable observations of the ecosystems in an area spanning several states. Over that time she has witnessed the undeniable effects of Climate Change.

“Refugees without legs:” this is the phrase Finisia uses to describe the status of many species of native plants which were traditional staple foods for indigenous Americans that are now threatened in their current ecosystems by the effects of Climate Change. Temperature extremes, atypical rainfall patterns, and disturbances in seasonal patterns are all taking a tangible toll, disrupting cycles of sprout, flower, seed and root growth which had been stable for millenia. And at a rate that is fast and getting faster. Finisia insists that if these plants are going to survive – as viable species and as food sources – that they will need to be relocated to different areas, further north and/or to higher elevations, and that people will need to do the relocating. We, humans, have made them refugees, and we, humans, must be their legs so they can flee. The speed of Climate Change has already outpaced the ability of plants to migrate on their own as they might have in response to previous, more gradual shifts.

“Refugees without Legs”: This phrase, and its implicit call to action, has been rattling around in my head since I first heard Finisia use it. Indeed, humans have induced Climate Change, and I agree that with that culpability comes responsibility. Creatures are suffering who had no role in the destruction we are wreaking. If we are going to attempt to mitigate the change that has already occurred and try to prevent further change – as daunting as these tasks are – then what we must change first is our own minds; we need to adopt new ideas and practices, and discard those that have become irrelevant and counter-productive. One such idea and practice that we must now reject is that of so-called “Invasive Species.”

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