Regulatory end-runs

Although I've been blogging almost daily about our owl research project, I haven't been updating this blog - though there's lots to report.

As I and a lot of other conservationists predicted some months ago, we've seen a blizzard of so-called midnight regulations from the Bush administration, trying to leave an still-more-permanent (and damaging) stamp on the environment before they leave office. Their attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act, which I wrote about in August, has been joined by moves to open millions of acres of western wilderness to energy production, loosen air-quality standards for national parks, and much more.

Most of these regs, which do not require Congressional approval, were fast-tracked to be on the books more than 60 days before the end of the administration, a move designed specifically to prevent the incoming Obama administration from simply reversing them, as Bush did to many of Bill Clinton's last-minute regulatory changes. Any rule finalized by Nov. 1, the administration believed, would be safe from an easy Obama reversal.

But, as Politico.com reports here, the Bushies made a mistake -- they overlooked the 1996 Congressional Review Act, a little-known rule passed by (oh, the irony) the GOP-controlled Congress angered by Clinton's rule-making.

In a nutshell, the CRA allows any rule passed within 60 days of Congressional adjournment to be reviewed - and overturned - by a joint resolution of the new Congress.

"In other words, any regulation finalized in the last half-year of the Bush administration could be wiped out with a simple party-line vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress," Politico.com writers Erika Lovley and Ryan Grim report.

John Podesta, who is co-directing the Obama transition, has said that the new administration would make reversing Bush's last-minute rules a priority, but even with legislative help, it isn't easy. The Politico.com piece reports that Bush repealed only 3 percent of Clinton's rules, and amended 15 percent. Clinton did a better job on rules imposed by Bush's father -- 9 percent repealed and 48 percent amended.

Now, if we could only make sure Bush doesn't pardon any more poisoners of bald eagles...

Switching blogs

Banding volunteer Phil Witmer with a saw-whet owl. (©Nate McKelvie)

I've been away from the blog for a shamefully long time, but hardly idle; we just launched our 12th season of saw-whet owl research, and for the next two or three months, I'll be maintaining a near-daily blog here about our activities. Look for news soon about regular podcasts, too. (And posts here from time to time.)

Let the fire sale begin

For those of us committed to conservation, the Bush administration can't end soon enough -- but to the immeasurable damage they've already caused to the environment, the worst may be yet to come.

Many of us have been expecting that the final months of the administration will see a fire-sale approach to eviscerating environmental protections, particularly the two months between the general election in November and the inauguration, when the political damage to the GOP will be minimal.

But that doesn't mean they can't get a start on that pesky fall housecleaning, as this story from the AP makes clear.

An internal draft of proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act, obtained by the AP, shows that the Department of the Interior wants to scuttle the process under which federal projects - mines, highways, dams - that could harm endangered species and their habitat are subjected to an independent scientific review.

Instead, federal agencies could decide for themselves whether a project would be harmful, whether or not that agency has such expertise, or even has wildlife biologists on staff. Furthermore, it would significantly restrict what constitutes "harm" to threatened species, and would set a short, 60-day limit for comment by wildlife experts - on the off chance they're actually consulted.

The current system requires consultation with either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. Although projects are rarely disallowed because of reviews, the process often results in changes that help protect endangered species habitat.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said the move, which would take effect after a 30-day comment period, and without Congressional review, will prevent the use of the ESA as a "back door" attempt to regulate greenhouse gases.

In fact, of course, it's a back-door means of achieving what many conservatives have long sought but failed to get legislatively -- gutting the Endangered Species Act.

And unfortunately, we'll be seeing a lot more of these administrative end-runs around environmental protections in the months to come.

Kasatochi memories

Sunlight streams through storm clouds near Fenimore Pass in the Aleutian Islands (©Scott Weidensaul)

More about the Wales Writing Workshop presently; but I saw a small news item today that took me back to one of the most remote and beautiful places I've ever been. "Biologists rescued from remote Alaska island after volcano erupts," read the headline on an AP story in the Fairbanks News-Miner yesterday. (I'm indebted, as is often the case, to Lou Carpenter's bird-news site littlebirdiehome.com for posting the report.) "ANCHORAGE (AP) — Two federal biologists were rescued from a volcanic island just before it erupted, sending a 35-thousand foot ash plume into the air. "The biologists, who were studying birds, were rescued from volcanic Kasatochi Island in the Aleutians on Thursday. They were rescued by a local fishing boat. "Official said the escape allowed the unnamed biologists to escape burning flows of gas, steam and ash that reportedly enveloped the island. “ 'If they had been there, they certainly could have died,' said Stephanie Prejean, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory." In the summer of 2005, I was lucky enough to hitch a ride to Kasatochi on the M/V Tiglax (pronounced Tek-la), the research vessel of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which protects most of the Aleutian Islands chain. Kasatochi is a miniature Mt. Fuji, a perfect volcanic cone rising from the frigid Bering Sea waters, green with grass and cupping a deep lake inside its caldera. The Tiglax, which had picked up me, field guide author David Sibley and several folks from The Nature Conservancy the previous day on Adak Island, 50 miles to the west, crossed the chaotic waters of Fenimore Pass as bright shafts of low sunlight pierced the storm clouds, illuminating rugged island shorelines. Laysan albatrosses followed our wake, and the boat stirred up flocks of thousands of rare whiskered auklets, which David had come to see – one of the last North American birds he hadn't seen in the wild.A Laysan albatross crosses the wake of the Tiglax near Kasatochi Island. (©Scott Weidensaul) We arrived at Kasatochi at 11 p.m., in the dim twilight of an Alaskan summer evening. Two young women, bio-technicians working for the refuge, were living for the summer in a tiny cabin perched on Kasatochi's slope, and while the crew off-loaded supplies for them (including a new stove to replace their broken one, so they could again cook hot food), we watched one of the most amazing wildlife spectacles I've ever seen. In the gathering dusk, several immense clouds of crested auklets had gathered in the air around the island, waiting for the couple of hours of true darkness, around 2 a.m., when they could safely land without risking attack by gulls and falcons. The birds whirred in dense masses hundreds of thousands strong, forming ever-shifting shapes like Möbius strips, smoky ribbons becoming balls becoming tendrils, rushing down the water, then swooping high in the air, wheeling and wheeling endlessly while the sea lions roared and the surf boomed. One of the huge flocks, evading a passing peregrine falcon, swooped low toward the water and engulfed the boat, a roar of rushing wings that gave me, for a minute or two, a sense of what a passenger pigeon flock must have been like. Even after they passed, the air was heavy with the cloying citrus smell of tangerines, a characteristic of crested auklets. Once it was fully dark, the vessel was kept in black-out conditions, because any light would disorient and attract the birds, with disastrous results. (One fishing boat, unaware of this, famously almost sank under the weight of confused seabirds piling onto the decks by the thousands; you can read a journal article about it here.) The scientists aboard the Tiglax needed to catch a few birds to collect blood samples, though, so the crew turned on a few dim lights, and we scurried around the decks scooping up Cassin's and whiskered auklets, ancient murrelets and gray, fluttering fork-tailed storm-petrels, which puked up little gobs of pink crustaceans when we carefully lifted them.A whiskered auklet from Kasatochi, caught on the Tiglax for a quick blood sample and then released. (©Scott Weidensaul) Kasatochi was almost certainly the most remote and empty place I've ever had the privilege of visiting. Sitting in the pilothouse of the Tiglax, Capt. Kevin Bell pointed on his chart to the tiny speck that was Kasatochi. "Draw a circle 500 miles wide, with Kasatochi at the center," he said. "There probably aren't more than a few hundred people in that circle, almost all of them on Adak or a couple of fishing boats." Kasatochi is the third Aleutian volcano to erupt this summer, along with Okmok and Mt. Cleveland. It gave no warning, going from dormant to full eruption in about 24 hours, the U.S. Geological Survey said.The Tiglax anchored at Ulak Island, near Kasatochi. (©Scott Weidensaul) A helicopter that was supposed to rescue the biologists developed mechanical problems, according to AP story. A Fish and Wildlife Service boat – presumably the Tiglax – was too far away to help, the AP reported, and calls for fishing boats went unanswered. Finally, fishermen from Adak raced the 50 miles of rough seas to pluck off the biologists, who said the island was shaking violently, and the air smelled like sulfur. And a little bit like tangerines, I'll bet.

So far West it's almost East

The Bering Strait at midnight.(©Scott Weidensaul)

Look closely at that photo. Yes, it's a beautiful sunset, but the important thing is that you're looking into tomorrow. Quite literally. That's an uncommonly tranquil midnight sunset on the Bering Strait, taken from the beach at Wales, Alaska – the westernmost point of the North American mainland, where it all but kisses Asia. How close? The small "island" to the right is East Cape, the tip of the Siberian mainland. The larger "island" on the left is really two landmasses in one – Little Diomede, part of the U.S., which lies about 25 miles from land, and a mile beyond that is Big Diomede, which is Russian. The International Date Line runs between them, so while it was Saturday where I was standing, it was Sunday over in Big Diomede. As I said, tomorrow. I'm just back from spending a week in Wales, one of the most remarkable places I've ever visited. An Inupiat village at the tip of the treeless Seward Peninsula, it has been home to humans for at least 10,000 years, and the sense of history is palpable, whether it's the finely worked artifacts like harpoon tips and net frames that one can find along the beach; the countless seal, walrus and whale bones that erode out of the bluffs, speaking of feasts millennia old; the pre-Christian human burials scattered on the rocky hillsides above the village; or the huge wooden cross that marks the mass grave of hundreds of victims of the Spanish influenza in 1918.Walrus bones erode from the bluff above Wales, where people have been living for 10,000 years. (©Scott Weidensaul) The hundred and fifty or so people who live in Wales today retain a traditional, subsistence lifestyle. Almost every house has musk-ox, polar bear and bearded seal skulls lying about outside. In the middle of the village, the huge curved jaws of a bowhead whale lie next to the dirt street. I was in Wales at the invitation of Anchorage artists Joe and Catherine Senungetuk, to join them in leading a writing workshop for both villagers and those from outside. Joe, who was born in Wales in 1940, is a noted Inupiat artist and the author of an autobiography about growing up Native in Wales and Nome, while Catherine is an accomplished watercolorist originally from California.Wales, Alaska, on a quiet evening. (©Scott Weidensaul) This was the second year they'd conducted the Wales Writing Workshop, and of the dozen participants from outside the village (most from Anchorage) there were several veterans of the 2007 venture. We were also fortunate to welcome villagers like Winton Weyapuk, an accomplished poet and prose writer, who joined as their schedules allowed. Our base of operations was the village community center, which houses a large multi-use room and several tribal offices; some of group spread their bedrolls on the floor, while others bunked with families in the village. Worried that if I snored I'd keep people awake, I pitched a tent just outside, in the lee of the building and a large metal shipping container where supplies are stored – the winds that roar through the Bering Strait can be ferocious, and I figured I'd need the extra shelter. The community center sits at the north end of the village, hard against tundra and marsh. Dunlin, dowitchers, red-necked phalaropes and western sandpipers were almost always visible foraging in the sedges, and pairs of red-throated and Pacific loons shuttled back and forth from the nearby ocean to their chicks in shallow freshwater ponds just inland.A red-throated loon splashes into the air. (©Scott Weidensaul) Up the hill toward Cape Mountain, and the weird, jagged hill known as Razorback, we could often see herds of musk-oxen grazing, forced close to the village by grizzlies. The semi-domesticated reindeer herds the village manage, however, had moved off to their summer grazing range – although one generous villager dropped off a reindeer roast for our dinner one evening. Over the following days, we alternated between writing, roundtable sessions at which we shared our work, and hands-on instruction by noted master bookmaker Susan Share as we learned to fold, cut, stitch and decorate small but increasingly complex books. But the evening of our arrival was gorgeous – tranquil, with low, golden sunlight bathing the peninsula. At 1 a.m., the village was busier than at noon, with guys reroofing homes and teens playing basketball. Up here, you don't waste a nice day, and this was the first sunshine, they told me, in three weeks. The fact that it was midnight sunshine, barely south of the Arctic Circle as we were, didn't matter. Some of the workshop participants combed the wide sand beach, which runs for more than 30 miles north of the village along Lopp Lagoon, and onto which storms had cast millions of sea stars, or chatted with villagers trying to catch hundreds of pink salmon jamming the entrance to Village Creek – something the elders said they'd never seen before. I walked south along the rockier part of the shore, watching king eiders, common murres and pelagic cormorants in the surf, and yellow wagtails and snow buntings feeding on insects by the tide line. Then I headed up onto the flanks of Cape Mountain, staying a cautious distance from the notoriously touchy musk-ox. Inupiat kids play on "Arctic Arc," a sculpture mirrored by another on the Russian mainland, almost 60 miles west. (©Scott Weidensaul) As the sun came close to the horizon, a couple of kids were playing on a huge sculpture of an open hand releasing a bird, which dominates the hill above town. A joint project by Michigan sculptor David Barr, who did the hand, and Joe Senungetuk, who did the bird, it mirrors a similar sculpture across the strait on the Russian side - a symbol of friendship between two countries often at odds. We knew the weather couldn't last, and it didn't – but it was a glorious way to start our time in Wales. * * * * * If you're curious what the weather's like in Wales right now, you can take a look via the Wales StraitCam, mounted in a front window of the Kingikmiut School in the village and looking out past the playground onto the Bering Strait; on a rare clear day you can see the Diomede Islands, but don't count on it most of the time. (The webcam is mostly used by villagers now living in Nome and elsewhere to monitor snow depth and sea ice in winter, to judge when best to come back home to hunt marine mammals.)

An incredible gift for birds

The boreal forest, a 55 million acres of which of which will be protected in Ontario (©Scott Weidensaul)

One of the biggest conservation stories ever emerged last week, but received relatively little press here in the States. The premier of Ontario has pledged to set aside half of the province -- about 55 million acres, an area the size of the entire UK -- for permanent conservation, with requirements that industry work with First Nations and the government to craft sustainable development plans for the rest. Given that the boreal forest is the great bird factory of North America, producing billions of migratory songbirds, waterfowl, shorebirds and raptors, this is arguably the single biggest win in history for bird conservation. Anyone who enjoys the seasonal flow of warblers, thrushes, sparrows and other migrant songbirds passing through in the Lower 48 - and I'm guessing that's most of us -- owes a huge debt of gratitude to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty for his visionary move, which is part of the larger Boreal Forest Conservation Initiative, a collaboration of conservation groups, First Nations and industry that aims to protect at least half of the 1.4 billion-acre Canadian boreal forest. Here's how my good friend Jeff Wells of the Boreal Songbird Initiative put it on his blog this week, sending an open letter of thanks to McGuinty: Jeff Wells (©Scott Weidensaul) "I don’t know if you have ever heard the soft flutely song of a Swainson’s Thrush," Jeff wrote, "but try to imagine three million of them singing at once. That’s the sound emanating into the sky on a June morning from the number of Swainson’s Thrushes that would be found in the 55 million acres of northern Ontario’s Boreal that you have just announced will now be protected. Even better yet, imagine 4.5 million renditions of the “Oh-sweet-Canada-Canada-Canada” song of the White-throated Sparrow echoing across the Boreal." As Jeff went on to point out, the land that Ontario will permanently protect from timbering and mining is home to 5 million juncos, 4 million magnolia warblers, 3 million palm warblers and 2 million Tennessee warblers, just to name a few species. The Boreal Forest Conservation Initiative is sweeping in its scope - but so is the forest its is so effectively protecting. The Canadian boreal is the largest intact forest left on the planet, bigger even than the Amazon. And while its southern fringes have been impacted by logging, roads and other development, most of it is still whole and functioning, home not only to birds but to grizzlies, wolves, caribou, moose, wild sheep and hundreds of Native communities. (The boreal, of course, also covers much of Alaska, where a significant portion is protected federal land.) Two years ago, I had a chance to see some of the best of the boreal along with Jeff Wells, Pete and Linda Dunne, and National Geographic writer Mel White. We traveled up through the Northwest Territories, flying for hours across lake-studded muskeg forest, knowing that every one of the thousands of ponds we saw was home to scoters, loons, grebes and scaup, that every glance out the window of the small plane encompassed the territories of thousands of blackpoll or yellow-rumped warblers. It was staggering. Déline at daybreak (©Scott Weidensaul) At the small Sahtú Dene village of Déline, on the shores of Great Bear Lake, we watched an incredible dawn procession of birds pouring out of the north - Pacific loons, Arctic terns, shorebirds and sea ducks of a dozen species, and waves of warblers and sparrows in numbers beyond counting. At one point, a parasitic jaeger chased a lesser yellowlegs across the immense lake, only giving up when the smaller bird took refuge in the underbrush almost at our feet. The Northwest Territories is also undertaking a protected area strategy of its own, as part of the boreal initiative, with First Nations communities setting aside huge chunks of environmentally and culturally sensitive land before a new natural gas pipeline is built through the region. Other provinces are taking note; this week, Manitoba's meager efforts were called "shameful" by conservationists there, who are hoping Ontario's leadership will spark equally significant moves elsewhere in the boreal region. You can find a story from the Toronto Star about the Ontario land deal here. You can also read a piece I wrote in 2007 for The Nature Conservancy on the Boreal Forest Conservation Framework here. And finally, you can send a note of thanks to Premier McGuinty via BSI's website -- something every American birder who reaps the benefits of the boreal forest should take a moment to do.

Hog Island memories

Lobstermen get a foggy start off Hog Island (©Scott Weidensaul)

The posts have been few and far between the past couple of months, because I've generally been far from a computer. Case in point: I just wrapped up two weeks of teaching at the historic Hog Island Audubon Center on the midcoast of Maine, one of the prettiest spots on the planet, and a place where one can walk in the footsteps of giants like Roger Tory Peterson and Allan Cruickshank while watching blackburnian warblers and listening to loons. I try to teach several sessions at Hog Island every year, including adult field ornithology – a week-long immersion into all things avian, from taxonomy and evolution to behavior and field ID. I've been blessed over the years to work with a stellar bunch of fellow instructors – Dr. Sara Morris from Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., one of the leading experts on migratory stopover in songbirds; Greg Budney, the curator of the Macaulay Library (formerly the Library of Natural Sounds) at Cornell; and Peter Vickery, grassland bird expert and one of Maine's top birders. (Field guide author Kenn Kaufman usually joins us, but couldn't make it this year.) For a week, we took the 37 participants from inland forests and bogs full of warblers, thrushes and flycatchers, to offshore islands where we watched puffins, storm-petrels and even a handful of rare razorbills. But the highlight of my time on Hog Island this year was the second week when, along with Maine state wildlife biologist Judy Camuso, I was an instructor for Coastal Maine Bird Studies, an ornithology session aimed at teen birders. We had 13 terrific teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 17, and from all over the country – New England, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana and New Mexico. And beyond - one young man came from Chile, where his parents are working. Some were avid birders; Cole leads Audubon field trips back home in New Mexico, and Jack, the fellow living in Chile, regaled us with stories of birding across South and Central America. Others, like Maine resident Karl and Pennsylvanian Kelsi, were absolute beginners wanting to know more. All were eager to learn, and had enough energy that they made it hard for a certified old fart like me to keep up. (I'm not posting any photos of the kids, by the way, out of respect for their privacy.) We started with an all-day land trip, beginning in the fog at the village of Medomak, where Peterson and Cruickshank laid out a walking route through forest, meadows and marsh back in 1936, which Hog Island campers have been revisiting ever since. We watched a Baltimore oriole pair feed their chicks, listened the subtle differences in the trilled songs of swamp sparrows, pine warblers and juncos, and admired the newly opened flowers of hundreds of rose pogonia orchids. Later, we ate lunch overlooking meadows along the Damariscotta River, where bobolinks displayed and sang, and beat the afternoon thunderstorms on Clarry Hill, a huge blueberry barrens where we found vesper and savannah sparrows, but struck out on upland sandpipers. A fledgling bald eagle buzzes the wildflower meadow (©Scott Weidensaul) The next day we had great looks at Canada warblers, northern waterthrush and nesting yellow-bellied sapsuckers on the mainland (including a recently fledged bald eagle that all but buzzed us), but the real treat came in the afternoon. Transferring from the camp's smaller boat Osprey III into a traditional cod-fishing dory, we rowed ashore onto Ross Island, a major nesting colony for gulls. It was a tricky, wet landing in the lively surf, but for the next hour and a half, we carefully moved through the colony, observing active nests and examining chicks, discussing the behavior of herring and great black-backed gulls nesting around us by the hundreds. A herring gull family on Ross Island (©Scott Weidensaul) >

It was a terrific opportunity to hash through the advantages and disadvantages of coloniality, and to review the impact that humans have had on seabirds – the way gulls were almost exterminated for the feather trade a century ago, for example, but now are so numerous (because of the abundance of food we inadvertently provide) that they impede the recovery of terns and other rare seabirds.

The teens had an object lesson in this the next day, when the camp's larger boat, Puffin V, pushed through dense fog to Eastern Egg Rock, which lies on the outer edge of Muscongus Bay, nine miles from shore. Here, biologists have spent decades reintroducing Atlantic puffins, and building up a large nesting colony of common, Arctic and endangered roseate terns that they must safeguard from gulls. We saw no razorbills that day, but the fog kept the nesting birds close to the island, and the teens were thrilled with close-up views of dozens of puffins – as well as a single black tern, a real rarity out there.

A black guillemot takes off at Eastern Egg Rock (©Scott Weidensaul)

July 4 found us in Acadia National Park, which was swarming with holiday tourists. We managed to find some of the hidden, less-visited jewels of the park, and although high winds made the birding pretty slow, we had some thrills, including fine views of a female gray seal hunting around a lobster boat – a life mammal for almost everyone in the group. The last day, though, was one of the best. Under a glorious blue Fourth of July sky, we headed back out into the bay to visit Wreck Island, home to a large great blue heron colony. With us was Birdchaser blogger Rob Fergus, with the National Audubon science office. We again eased ourselves into the dory, rolling in the low swells, and first mate Eric Snyder nosed her among the rockweed-covered boulders. Forming a human chain over the treacherous rocks, we moved everyone up onto the cobblestone beach, speaking only in whispers, then headed into the woods in complete silence. Entering the forest on Wreck always make me think of stepping back to a Cretaceous jungle – the heavy ammonia smell in the air, the riot of brambles and gooseberry under the trees, and most of all the weird croaks and clatters filling our ears. Looking up, we could see dozens of nests all around us, with gangly heron chicks, just a week or two from fledging, staring back at us. We communicated with hand signals, or an occasional comment whispered directly into an ear. But mostly we just stood and watched, drinking in the spectacle. Adult herons flew in, their bellies heavy with fish to regurgitate to the chicks – and we also found the remains of chicks that had fallen (or been pushed) from the nest, becoming prey to great horned owls whose feathers we found snagged in the underbrush. Judy found a fresh owl pellet, which when opened revealed the skull of a Leach's storm-petrel – a swallow-sized seabird that nests on these outer islands, coming and going under cover of darkness that protects it from gulls, but not owls. Eric brings in the dory at Wreck Island (©Scott Weidensaul) Reluctantly, we doried back to the Osprey III, the silence this time among the kids the result of reflection rather than my warning. But once the engines kicked on, it was as though someone had flipped a different switch, and all 13 of the teens started talking at once, trying to express the remarkable experience they'd just had. (Click here if you're interested in more information about the Hog Island Audubon Center. A few spaces for the Sept. 14-20 bird migration and conservation session for adults remain.) I'm going to be out of touch again for a while, but should have some great material when I get back (think Inupiat, the Bering Strait and polar bears).