apes

When I was a kid, my all-time favorite books to read in the whole entire world were the Barenstein Bears. When my sisters and my brother and I got Barenstein Bears on VHS, that was the best thing that had ever happened to us. We watched it over and over again, and today I can vividly remember my favorite episode. Papa Bear took brother bear fishing, but they kept catching dirty old boots and disgusting trash. Brother bear got very concerned, and went to visit a whale (I think?? That sounds funny) The whale was really sick and could hardly breathe because the water was so polluted. WHen brother bear looked around, trucks were dumping trash into the water uncontrollably. He decided to help, and he got all kinds of people to clean up the lake. Miraculously, the lake became sparkly clean and the whale lived happily ever after.

This story probably makes me sound really lame, but when I read an article called “Plastics in Pacific: Activists survey the mess,” the first thing I thought about was the Bearenstein Bears.  Recently in the Pacific Ocean, Greenpeace activists have been on a ship collecting old toothbrushes, beach toys, golf balls, and all kinds of nasty things from a huge vortex of plastic trash in the water. THis trash threatens sea creatures because they could get tangled in it, eat it, or ride on it. Since plastic doesn’t break down like organic material does, ocean currents and tides have carried trash thousands of miles to an area between Hawaii and the West Coast, called the “swirling vortex.” The swirling vortex was designated as a protected U.S. national monument in June by President Bush. (why would bush want to protect something that’s holding all this trash???)

In a new report, Greenpeace said at least 267 species – including seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales and fish – are known to have suffered from this trash either by getting tangled in it or digesting it. The report said the debris comes from four main sources: tourism, sewage, fishing, and waste from ships and boats. THis report comes just days after the report about seafood collapsing due to trends in overfishing and pollution!

Here are some other problems with all this trash:

• invasive species (eh, eh??) can be carried thousands of miles by hitching rides on plastic debris.
• Plastic is hazardess to animals that think it’s prey and eat it (organisms who eat the plastic end up starving because their stomachs are filled by there’s no nutrients)
• lost fishing nets and traps can continue to catch fish when they are no longer in use

Apparently, an international agreement called MARPOL is aimed at ending the dumping of plastic debris at sea. But even total enforcement of this agreement wouldn’t eliminate the problem, because most debris orginates on land. I guess we will need a miracle like brother bear to stop all this pollution!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15590510/

photos courtesy of EPA:

http://www.epa.gov/owow/oceans/debris/trash_on_beach.jpg

http://www.epa.gov/owow/oceans/debris/scuba.jpg

Could you imagine life without fish sticks, salmon, shrimp, swordfish, crabcakes, or tuna? Actually, I can because I hate seafood, but it is possible that in the year 2050, seafood could only be a memory.

In a study published on Friday, ecologists and economists warn that if our current habits of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood could collapse in just a few decades. In class we have larned that even one species change in population could affect the whole entire ecosystem. Boris Worm of Dalhousie University enforces this idea: “

“Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems.”

Worm continues by describing how when ocean species collapse, it makes the ocean itself weaker and less able to recover from shocks like global climate change. But according to Andrew Sugden, the international managing editor of the journal “Science,” it’s not too late to act. A shift from single species management to ecosystem management is needed, but it requires a lot of political will to do it. Co-author Steve Palumbi said, “Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood.”

Four years was spent on this investigation. Scientists studied 32 controlled experiments, other studies from 48 marine protected areas, and global catch data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s database of all fish and invertebrates worldwide from 1950 to 2003. They also studied a 1,000-year time period for 12 coastal regions, looking at data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archaeological data.

“At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed — that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating,” Worm said. “If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime — by 2048.”

In order to fix this problem, researchers want new marine reserves, better management to prevent overfishing by large trawling fleets, and tighter controls on pollution. 48 areas worldwide are already protected, and they found that the diversity of species recovered dramatically. With that came an improvement in the ecosystem’s productivity and stability.

However, the The National Fisheries Institute (a trade association for the seafood industry) doesn’t see a problem.

“Fish stocks naturally fluctuate in population,” the institute said. “By developing new technologies that capture target species more efficiently and result in less impact on other species or the environment, we are helping to ensure our industry does not adversely affect surrounding ecosystems or damage native species.”

Seafood is a huge part of Americans’ diet. On top of that, worldwide fishing provides $80 billion in revenue and 200 million people depend on it for their livelihoods. A decline in seafood could be a serious disaster.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15532333/

photo courtesy of: www. cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fsirpoo3.html

Each fall semester, a professor of environmental studies at Whitman College in Washington takes his class on a 8,000 mile journey across a dozen western states! The students visit people with an interest in environmental policy in the west and conduct a class at each location. The program is called “Semester In The West,” and they basically study public land use. The professor wants the students to understand why the lands are here, what the history of the land is, and what’s happening on the lands today.

The class has a converted horse trailor with solar panels and a satellite dish on the roof to use computers in. Classrooms are a circle of camp chairs, sleeping bags, and tents in the middle of wilderness. This lasts the entire semester, regardless of the weather!

The students are called “westies” and they examine water issues, mining, logging, and development. The point of having the class is to be face to face with people on all sides of complex issues. For example, the class just met with John Marvel, who explained cattlegrazing. He wants to remove all cows and ranchers from public lands and restore the landscape to what it was before white settlement. The class gets pointed to land and streams severely damaged by cows.

Everything they study is seen firsthand, which is why this class is so cool. It’s important to get out of our sheltered world and see things clearly. If anybody’s thinking about studying environmental science for a career… you should go to Whitman college!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6443120

                        
Recently, our class has learned that forest fires help the process of ecological succession. So I was extremely excited when I found out that NPR had just done a broadcast on fires! Sarah McCammon reported on “Park Service Maps Great Plains Fire History” on November 2.

She emphasized that fire plays a critical role in a healthy landscape. Other than leading to ecological succession, fires:

• provide the heat needed to germinate seeds
• manage invasive plants

There is currently a Great Plains Fire History Project that is estimated to be finished in three years and costs a quarter of a million dollars. Garry Wilson says that the middle plains of the country tend to be overlooked in the study of fires. By looking at tree rings, Wilson is able to estimate when and how often fires once burned across the plains. Also going along with what we have studied, fires in Southeast Nebraska burn off exotic plants and make way for native grasses.

Richard Gaiett (sp??) states it perfectly:

“Understanding the natural role of wildfires will become increasingly important in the future as more fires result from global warming, drought, and more people living on the land.”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6421573&ft=1&f=1007

photo courtesy of Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Deerfire.jpg