Reconnect With Nature Blog

Plight Of The River Dolphins

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a guest post by Randall Johnson, who has been a frequent contributor to the Reconnect With Nature Blog and the Dog Behavior Blog.

 

Not long ago, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine who has dedicated almost 30 years of her life to protecting a large tract of the Amazon rainforest outside of Iquitos, Peru. She told me that in the early part of May, six pink river dolphins, or 'botos', Inia geoffrensis, had been found dead on the Ucayali River and evidence suggested they had been victims of commercial fishermen who had recently passed through area. Having spent a lot of time in that region in the early '90s, I felt a twinge of sadness and regret because I remember how that part of the forest used to be relatively unspoiled.

LAGOA DA PRATA BOTOS (Photo Credit: Randall Johnson) Photographed in a clearwater lake in Brazil, this boto, Inia geoffrensis, displays its long beak, small eye, a paddle-shaped flipper, and dorsal ridge. Because their cervical vertebrae are not fused together, as in marine dolphins, botos can bend their necks to an angle of 90° to its body, downward or sideways, and some of this flexibility can be inferred by the neck folds. Although their eyes appear small, in the skull they are just as big as those of marine dolphins and their eyesight is surprisingly good, with aquarium-held animals having proved capable of recognizing people by vision alone. In murky waters, however, they rely on a highly-developed echolocation system to navigate and find food and there is some evidence that they may be capable of stunning prey fish by using sonic bursts produced by their melon, a separate organ on their foreheads (visible in the photo), the shape of which can be altered at will.

LAGOA DA PRATA BOTOS (Photo Credit: Randall Johnson) Also known as the "pink dolphin", botos that spend a lot of time in clearwater lakes or tributaries tend to be uniformly gray, which is thought to be the skin's reaction to more constant exposure to sunlight. In murkier waters, adults often display some degree of pink coloration, ranging from completely pink to pink swashes and patches, with the rest of the body a medium to light gray. The boto pair in the photo, identified as male and female, typifies that most Inia sighted in the wild are single individuals or pairs, usually mother and calf. Although little is known about the social lives of these animals, their social organization seems to be intricately linked to the seasonal rising and falling of the water level, with dolphins dispersing during the high water, or flood, season and regrouping during the low-water, or dry, season. Coordinated fishing has been reported, sometimes involving tuxuxi dolphins and giant river otters, and the author of this post has also documented that botos practice food-sharing.

 

This latest report of river dolphin deaths may seem insignificant at first glance, but it drove home the point that the world's freshwater dolphins are the most endangered cetaceans, with their populations in decline, mostly as a result of human activities and impacts on their habitats.  In fact, one species, the baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, was declared 'functionally extinct' when an international team of researchers failed to find a single dolphin during a 2006 survey expedition.

At about the same time, an ambitious two-year-long river dolphin census was getting underway in South America, involving 13 rivers and covering five nations and 3,600 km of rivers. Led by Fernando Trujillo, scientific director of the Omacha Foundation (Colombia) and financed by WWF Switzerland and WWF LAC's Freshwater Program, the census recorded 3,188 botos and tucuxi dolphins, Sotalia fluviatilis.

"This census gives us a baseline population for these species and gives us an insight into the state of the ecosystems they inhabit," said Trujillo. "These results also provide the foundation for designing an evaluation and monitoring program for South American river dolphins."

A new method for surveying river dolphins, developed for the purpose of this census, was certified by whale experts from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and eighteen professionals were trained in it before getting started.

The survey confirmed the major threats faced by these dolphins: pollution from farming, industry, and mining; hydroelectric development; boat traffic and disturbance; prey depletion due to over-fishing; and incidental mortality in fishing nets.

A relatively new and particularly serious threat was also identified: in parts of Peru and Brazil, botos are being deliberately killed and their decomposing carcasses are used as bait to attract a variety of catfish (mota fish), making it easier to catch this commercially valuable species. For instance, between 800 and 1,200 pounds of mota fish came be captured in two hours using a two-meter long boto.

This practice is growing at an alarming rate and hundreds of dolphins are being killed each year in Peru and Brazil for mota fisheries alone. It now represents a serious threat that needs to be addressed to prevent unrecoverable damage to the affected dolphin populations.

In the past, Amazon River dolphins were protected by a body of legends and beliefs that accredited them with magic powers. There is, for instance, a widespread belief that the boto is a shape shifter, or encantado, who transforms into an irresistibly handsome young man and seduces young women. [Children born with certain birth defects are believed to be the offspring of a boto and women who conceive while their husbands are away can blame the dolphin.]

Many locals don't kill or eat dolphins because they are believed to carry the souls of the dead. In other locations, dolphins aren't killed because to do so would bring bad luck or misfortune.

And the tucuxi dolphin is thought to be a kind of "brujo", or wizard, which is either feared or revered, depending on the tributary. [I know this to be true based on personal conversations I had in Peru.]

However, commercial fishermen come from areas that don't share these beliefs. Their bottom line is profit-driven, so they aren't deterred by the dolphins' legendary powers.

Sadly, even local fishermen are now killing botos because they see them as competitors for a diminishing supply of fish, even though there is only a small degree of overlap between the species of fish eaten by dolphins and the species of fish eaten by humans.

According to the IUCN's 2008 Red List, we are facing an "extinction crisis", with almost one in four [mammals] at risk of disappearing forever. The study showed that at least 1,141 of the 5,487 known mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction and the world's remaining river dolphins are prominently featured among them.

Given that they are top predators in their ecosystems, river dolphins are not only visible indicators of the overall health of the rivers in which they live, but they are essential to  maintaining the delicate balance of the entire ecosystem. Removing top predators---something our species is quite adept as doing--can set off the eventual collapse of the ecosystem they occupy with disastrous results that ultimately affect human populations. How many times do we need to learn this lesson before it finally sinks in?

RECONNECTING WITH NATURE…THROUGH AESOP’S FABLES?

This is a post from Guest Author Randall Johnson, who has contributed a number of guest posts and comments to this blog.

Reconnecting with nature may take some unexpected twists and turns along the way, but who would have thought Aesop’s Fables would turn out to one of them? That’s right. The ancient Greek story-teller credited with collecting such timeless fables as “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, each with a moral lesson at the end, may also have been a keen observer of bird behavior.

In “The Crow and the Pitcher”, a thirsty crow comes across a pitcher with water at the bottom, beyond the reach of its beak. After failing to push the pitcher over, the crow drops in pebbles, one by one, until the water rises to the top, allowing the bird to drink. (The moral of the story: Necessity is the mother of invention.)

Well, it turns out that this is more than just an old fable. Researchers Christopher Bird of the University of Cambridge and Nathan Emery of Queen Mary University of London have reported in the current issue of Current Biology that rooks, another corvid and a relative of the crow, are able to use stones to raise the level of water in a plastic container to reach a floating worm.

Bird and Emery experimented on four rooks by presenting them with a clear tube partly filled with water and a worm floating on top, and a nearby pile of stones of varying sizes. The birds spontaneously dropped stones into the water and seemed to estimate how many stones would be needed. They also quickly learned bigger stones worked better than smaller ones.

Although some species of crows have been proven to use tools in the wild, rooks do not. They don’t have to as they have easy access to food, like carrion. But in an experimental situation like this one, they easily figured out how to use the stones to reach the worm.

Says Mr. Bird, “It was a remarkable combination of some understanding of the task with really rapid learning.”  In the summary of their published paper, Bird and Emery state, “This behavior demonstrates a flexible ability to use tools, a finding with implications for the evolution of tool use and cognition in animals.”

The more we take time to watch animals, the better we see how much we share in common with them, including brain power, and how this common thread firmly and solidly connects us to the natural world that supports us all.

Now, I seem to recall Aesop also told a story about the goose that laid golden eggs. Well, if such a fabled fowl should also exist and find its way to my door, that’s one story you won’t read about in Current Biology. I’ll keep that one all to myself.

Wild Hearts, Free Spirits

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a post by guest author Randall Johnson, who has been a frequent commentator on this blog, as well as a frequent guest author and commentator on the Dog Behavior Blog.

Finding a way to reconnect with nature can take place on a grand scale by walking through a tropical rainforest and feeling, rather than seeing, the immense variety of life it supports, swimming with free-ranging dolphins, or, say, coming face-to-face with a great whale. However, more often than not, it’s the everyday, seemingly mundane, events happening around us that have the power to call us back from our artificial steel-and-concrete world and ‘ground’ us, as it were, in the natural world.

A few years back, my wife and I bought a weekend / vacation home in her hometown, Lagoa da Prata, a small town in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.  At the time, we were living in Belo Horizonte, the state capital, working as teachers and translators and coping with the all the stress that goes along with big city life.

The house was part of a new development on a large tract of land that used to be part of the town’s biggest dairy farm and the setting clearly reflected its past: a long stretch of dirt road ran in front of the house led to the colonial-style farm house and then into a patch of dense forest. On one side of the road, there was a wide expanse of open meadow and on the other side, behind the house, a huge fenced-in cow pasture.

 Shortly after buying the house, we were ‘adopted’ by a scrawny little street dog with short dull gray fur that my wife decided to call Suzie. Following a couple of days of eating kibble and drinking fresh water, Suzie  underwent an amazing transformation:  her gray fur was replaced by a glossy, uniformly black coat.  (She was later identified by a friend of mine as a miniature pinscher, although with a non-standard color pattern.)

We soon discovered Suzie had a friend—a short scruffy male who looked a bit like Toto from The Wizard of Oz , except his fur was dirty-white. After trying several names, including Toto, we settled on Toby.  Unlike Suzie, though, Toby showed no interest in being adopted.  He hung out with us while we were at the house and we gave him food and water.  Sometimes, he took an afternoon nap inside the house, but he rarely slept there at night.

Anyway, my wife and I got into the routine of taking a walk down the dirt road early in the morning and again in the evening, right before sunset. Suzie and Toby invariably accompanied us.  

As we strolled along, I watched Suzie and Toby as they ran through meadow, Suzie leaping through the tall grass like a gazelle. Toby was less graceful, but he kept up as they chased after butterflies and small birds. Sometimes it looked as they were running for the sheer joy of it.  Once in while, they teamed up to harass the cows on the other side of the road, yapping and lunging at them, and then they’d take off again. It looked like a pleasant diversion (from their perspective, not from the cows’), maybe even a kind of adrenalin rush, because if a bull happened to be nearby, he wouldn’t hesitate to charge after them.

These were moments of boundless exhilaration. They were being themselves, having fun, unfettered by other worries or concerns, enjoying the “here and now”, which is something we 21^st century humans often have trouble doing, even in small, rural towns. They were wild hearts and free spirits, very much part of the world we share together, but more viscerally attuned to it.  

Walking down that country road was one way of seeking a reconnection with nature, but the active ingredient, the ‘bridge’ that made the connection real, was watching Suzie and Toby’s innocent, high-spirited capers as they gave me a glimpse of a purer, more primal connection that I myself cannot feel with the same intensity. Still, occasional glimpses have been enough to keep me grounded, and by reminding us that we are, first and foremost, products of the natural world, our companion animals may yet have another useful service to offer us.

--Randall Johnson

 

Watching Harry Potter Is Like Watching Paint Dry

Last night I went to see Harry Potter and found the movie to be completely boring. I had read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince when it came out in 2006, so I had some idea of the story. A couple of friends who came with me to the theater had never read the book, found themselves clueless, and left half-way through (perhaps that’s where the Half comes in).

Even though I knew the general story line, I found the progression of the scenes to be tedious. I guess I expect a movie to actually have a story that takes the viewer through from beginning to end, and not just a collection of scenes that are a trip down memory lane.

Even with knowing the general story, I found it hard to figure out why one scene followed another. Gone was the richness of plot found in the original book. Gone were some of the interesting characters. Gone was a sense of action and vitality.

But since this is a blog about reconnecting with nature, I started to think about the parallel between this film and watching nature. For some, watching nature can be excruciatingly boring. For others, it can be very exciting. Same thing with the Potter film.

So why is watching nature really exciting for me, while watching Potter was extremely boring?

My answer is simple. In my opinion, movies are supposed to have a story. I don’t go to movies to watch a bunch of unconnected scenes that flash across the screen. I expect to have an organized plot, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that resolves the problem or situation posed at the beginning.

Watching nature is completely different. There is no plot that we can see. There may be a beginning, a middle, and an end, but we don’t know what it is. There may be a plot, but again we have no idea what it is.

Animal and plant lives are shrouded in mystery. Same for the weather. Same for the earth. We can describe animal and plant species and identify them by name, and we can describe ecological, geological, and climatological processes, but that doesn’t always give us a complete picture of what is happening around us as we sit and watch nature at work.

I know nothing about the bee that comes to collect pollen from a flower. Yes, I can often tell you the scientific name of the bee and the scientific name of the flower, but I know nothing about the rest of their lives. Where does this bee live? What does the bee do all day? What challenges does the plant with the flower face from other species of plants? These are all mysteries.

And so I can watch nature in the “Now” moment, observing what is going on without any expectations. Being in the “Now” moment allows me to be at peace with my surroundings, and witness without criticizing what I am seeing.

On the other hand, when I go to a Harry Potter film, I expect to be entertained by a plot, and I criticize when I am not. I still consider myself a Harry Potter fan, so I’m going to look forward to the next film after this one, but in the meanwhile I find watching nature much more interesting and engaging.

As Below, So Above

For several days now, as I have been taking my dog for a walk around a pond at the local state park, I have been assaulted by a deer fly (family Tabanidae). The fly always starts buzzing me in the same 30 meter (100 feet) stretch of path, where the acacia trees provide some shade and the winds blow gentle puffs of air.

The fly seems to have a very circumscribed territory. Once I get out of that 30 meter stretch, he breaks off his attack and disappears, only to reappear during my next circuit on that path.

I try to put myself into the world of this fly. I am guessing that his world is encompassed in a plot of land that has a diameter of 30 meters. This is all that he knows. This is all that he sees. At random unpredictable times, potential meals move into range, triggering a hunger response. Outside that range, potential meals vanish, as if they never existed.

With my superior vision, I can see the whole pond, and I can think that it is very quaint that the fly cannot realize that simply going outside his 30 meters would give him more potential meals. He is limited by his perception, in ways that I am not.

But then I think, how much are we humans limited by our perception? Many years ago, I met a farmer who had not traveled more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) from where he had been born 70 years previously. Now many of us travel around the globe fairly effortlessly, and we can use electronic means of perception to see what is happening anywhere in the world.

But our solar system is huge, our galaxy is larger, and our universe is larger still. We can’t see anything of what is happening there, with a few paltry exceptions of Hubbell telescopes and rockets sent to other planets.

Like the fly, our world is circumscribed. We can see much more than the fly, but in the larger scheme of things, our perception does not extend out much more than his, in terms of cosmic distance.

To paraphrase a Hermetic saying, “As below, so above.”  We and the fly have much in common. We both can only see a very small portion of reality. And as we delve into quantum physics, we are not very sure what really is reality. Perhaps there are intelligences greater than ours who think that it is very quaint that we cannot realize that by simply going beyond the limits of our current perception we can see a greater reality. Or perhaps not.

I don’t know if the fly worries about such questions. Current scientific thought would suggest that he is not capable of such thoughts.  And perhaps we too are not capable of thoughts that would transcend our reality, allowing us to see a larger world.

So what to do? In my case, I am simply going to enjoy my moment in Nature, and even though the fly wants to suck my blood, I am going to enjoy his buzzing, even as I wait for my steps to take me out of his range.

Living Harmoniously

For the past two years, I have been greeting a house spider (Kukulcania arizonica) who has been living in my garage. She has taken up residence in a crack in the frame of the door leading into the house, and every evening as I go into the garage to get a can of food for my dog, I say “Hi Spider!” She usually responds by scuttling away into her crack, probably because of the vibrations of my voice on her web.

Sometimes, however, when she has caught something, she sits on her web eating, oblivious to my presence. Then I can crouch down to within a few centimeters of her and study her in detail. She is a satiny black, with long legs and a somewhat bulbous abdomen. Although she usually comes out only at night, when she is lost in her food she can keep feeding into the daylight hours, engrossed in sucking out every last scrap of fluid as if she did not know where her next meal was coming from.

The last winter was pretty cold in the garage, and I would see her sitting on her web night after night, waiting patiently for some unwary insect to stumble in. But there were no insects out in the cold. She seemed to shrink in size as the months passed, causing us to worry about her. I thought of trying to feed her, but then decided that I should let nature take its course and let her survive by her own efforts. Fortunately, she made it. Now that it is summer, insects are in plentiful supply, and many evenings I see her munching on a cricket or a beetle that she has snared in her web.

She is the longest animal resident that I know about, but there are many other animals who share our house. Little black ants (Monomorium minimum) have a nest somewhere underneath the foundation, and occasionally make their unwelcome presence known by marching in long columns through the kitchen in search of food when there is nothing to eat outside. Tree Lizards (Urosaurus ornatus) run around on the outside walls, retreating into crevices and spaces under the roof as the cold of winter sets in. An Ash-Throated Flycatcher family (Myiarchus cinerascens) nests in a hole under the eaves, with the parents faithfully bringing back an astounding number of insects for the hungry nestlings. Paper wasps (Polistes) have nests in places where the eaves have slightly come apart. I am sure that there is a plethora of other animals who live in the house without my seeing them or knowing that they are there.

Our houses provide habitat for whole communities of animals. Most of the time, everyone lives in relative harmony, until and unless the population of a particular species grows out of control, much like a disease infecting a person. Then things get out of balance for a while, but the community regains its equilibrium in relatively short order, and harmony is restored.

And when you think about it, our bodies have the same kind of function for a variety of organisms. We have a number of bacteria living in our guts and elsewhere. We have fungi occupying various parts of our bodies. We have mites living in places such as our eyebrows. Most of the time, we are not aware of any of these residents, unless the population of a species using us for food or shelter spirals out of control. Then our immune system kicks in and restores the harmony of coexistence in our bodies.

Just like my house, my body provides food and shelter for lots of different organisms. We all live in harmony, sharing the natural world.

Watching Snake Behavior

Doug Von Gausig (see previous post and comment), who is an accomplished photographer and nature recordist, sent me a video of a patch-nosed snake (Salvadora hexalepsis) excavating a burrow (watch the video).  In this video, you can see some fascinating behavior.  The snake goes into the burrow, apparently loops its body around some sandy soil, emerges holding on to the soil with a coil of its body, and releases the soil away from the burrow.  This is an elegant solution to excavation. I have often wondered how snakes manage to dig burrows without having hands. Now I know.

As I was watching the video, I was reminded of watching Sphecid wasps (genus Ammophila) excavating burrows. A wasp would go into the burrow, apparently use its legs to scrape up some dirt, put the dirt between the coxae of her hind legs, back out of the burrow, fly up into the air for about one meter, and release the dirt, which blew away in the wind as a fine plume. The wasp would do this over and over, making sure that no dirt was piled up at the entrance to the burrow as a tell-tale sign of activity for predators and parasites to notice.

I tried to photograph this activity. I found a wasp that was just starting to dig her nest and set up my camera. After a few of her forays in dropping the dirt, I realized that I had a better camera angle if I moved around to the other side of the burrow. I set up the camera again and waited for the wasp to emerge. She did, and instead of flying back, she flew around on the other side of me and started searching for her burrow. At first I was puzzled, but then I remembered the classic Tinbergen experiments with wasps and pine cones. She was using me as a landmark to find her burrow, and did not realize that the landmark had moved. So she was completely disoriented. Needless to say, I moved back to my original position, and she promptly found her burrow.

But back to the patch-nosed snake. I found it very interested that after emerging, the snake spent some time looking around, apparently watching for potential predators. Digging burrows must be a dangerous activity for snakes. A predatory bird or mammal could sneak up on the snake when its head was inside the burrow and grab it before it had a chance to react.

Watching animals like this is an excellent way of reconnecting with nature. Not only do you get a sense of what their behavior is like, but you also can get a sense of what might be important in their lives. And then you can ask yourself the question, are similar problems important to your life?

Watching Beetles

I was walking my dog around our local pond when I noticed two people, a man and a woman, peering down at something on the path. I stopped well behind them to give them space. At the same time, I tried to see what it was that they were observing. At first, I could not see anything. Then, suddenly, I noticed a black dot moving on the path. Now I knew what had captivated their attention.

They were looking at a Tenebrionid darkling beetle (Eleodes longicollis, family Tenebrionidae). This beetle is black, completely flightless, and about 26 mm long (a little longer than one inch).  As they would get close to the beetle, it would do a headstand, lifting its butt up into the air and standing very still. After a while, sensing no movement, the beetle would lower its butt down and start to move along the path, Fascinated, the people would move closer, casting their shadows on the beetle, which would stop and raise its butt up again. Clearly, the people were engrossed in watching this behavior.

I thought of coming up to them and telling them a few facts about these beetles.

I wanted to tell them that these beetles have defensive secretions, made up of quinones and hydrocarbons, that they squirt out of glands near their anus at predators who try to eat them. This is a great defense against predatory birds and small mammals. However, it doesn’t work against the carnivorous Grasshopper Mouse (Onychomys leucogaster). Experienced mice come up to a beetle that is doing a headstand defensive display, grab the beetle with their front paws, turn the beetle around, and stick the beetle’s butt into the sand. With the beetle’s defenses immobilized, the mouse chews off the beetle’s head, and then proceeds to eat at leisure down to the level of the defensive glands. Some mice go on killing sprees. Sometimes you can find a row of 10 or more beetles stuck with their butts into the sand, positioned like telephone poles, all with their heads chewed off but otherwise uneaten.

The defense doesn’t work against Striped Skunks (Mephitis mephitis) either. When a skunk comes across a beetle doing its headstand display, the skunk first sniffs the butt end of the beetle. If the skunk detects the odor of defensive secretions, he then starts to roll the beetle around in the sand with his front paws. Meanwhile, the beetle is releasing its defensive secretions. Periodically, the skunk will stop the rolling and take a small taste of the beetle. If there are still defensive secretions present, the skunk will shake his head vigorously several times and then continue rolling. Once the beetle has exhausted its supply of secretions, the skunk proceeds to eat it.

However, the beetle’s secretions work well against Harvester Ants (Pogonomyrmex rugosus). The ants have a disk-shaped area around their nest opening, onto which foraging workers drop seeds and bits of vegetation that they pick up anywhere within about 100 meters (300 feet) of the colony. Other workers emerge from the nest, pick up these seeds and droppings, and take them down inside.  The Tenebrionid beetles come into these disk-shaped areas and feed on the seeds and vegetation that the ants have brought. If the ants try to sting or otherwise attack them, the beetles spray minute quantities of defensive secretions, with great accuracy, at the approaching ants, causing them to immediately stop, curl up into a C-shape, and start cleaning themselves. On days when the ants are particularly aggressive, you can see a beetle leisurely feeding while perhaps 10 or more ants are frantically cleaning themselves nearby.

I wanted to tell these people all of that. But I didn’t. Instead, I waited until the beetle left the path completely and was lost in the surrounding vegetation, and then I walked past them, merely saying Hello.

Sometimes, there is a place for lots of information. Other times, there is a place for simply watching and appreciating what nature has to offer.

Saving Prairie Dogs

Moving the rattlesnake (see previous post) brought to mind the issue of transplanting prairie dogs. There are 5 species of prairie dogs in North America. Of these, one is considered threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act, another is considered endangered, and environmental groups are petitioning the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the remaining three species as either threatened or endangered.

Once upon a time, there were about 5 billion prairie dogs in the grasslands of the American West. These small groundsquirrels form the backbone of the western prairie ecosystem. By digging burrows and clipping vegetation, prairie dogs change the landscape of grasslands, providing homes for a variety of other vertebrate and invertebrate species. Some 200 species of vertebrates either depend on prairie dogs or are associated with prairie dog colonies. Many species of insects and invertebrates use the prairie dog burrows for shelter.  The social structure of prairie dogs is complex, with animals occupying territories that they defend against other prairie dogs in nearby territories. They have a sophisticated system of alarm calls to predators that borders on being a language.  In many respects, they are similar to people: They live in colonies called towns, they have a rich social and family life, they spend a considerable amount of time kissing each other to reaffirm social bonds, and they communicate a complex amount of information about the world around them. Along with the bison, the prairie dog is one of the icons of the American West.

In many states, prairie dogs are considered pests and vermin, and are regularly poisoned and shot.  Today, we have perhaps 1-2 percent of their original numbers left. Because prairie dogs eat grass, they are commonly thought to compete with cattle for forage. Never mind that in historical times prairie dogs nicely coexisted with bison, whose diet is similar to that of cows. Their burrows are thought to regularly break the legs of cattle and horses, although finding someone whose horse or cow actually broke a leg in a prairie dog burrow can be difficult. And they are susceptible to bubonic plague, a disease that people introduced into animal populations in the American West in the early 1900s. Plague kills almost 100 percent of the prairie dog colony that succumbs to it, and is a major source of mortality for these animals, along with poisoning and shooting.

Throughout the American West, prairie dog colonies are being destroyed by development. Their towns are often in flat places that are perfect for the construction of subdivisions. Along the Front Range of Colorado, there were once grassy valleys with many prairie dog colonies between Denver and Boulder. Now there are subdivisions popping up all over, so that soon Denver and Boulder will be contiguous, with only signs telling the casual visitor that he or she has left one city and has entered another.  As other cities throughout the range of the prairie dogs expand, the colonies either wink out of existence or become urban islands surrounded by a sea of houses.

A few citizen groups are trying to save prairie dogs by transplanting them to more isolated sites, away from urban areas.  This is backbreaking and often heartbreaking work. The number of sites where prairie dogs can be transplanted is very limited.  In a state like Colorado, prairie dogs cannot be transported across county lines without the express permission of the county commissioners. In other states, landowners can be fined huge amounts of money if prairie dogs migrate from their land into the land of their neighbors. When transplant sites can be found, moving the prairie dogs involves countless hours of work, trapping the animals, digging new burrows, moving everyone, and providing food at the new site until the prairie dogs become adjusted to their new surroundings.

While transplanting offers an immediate solution to saving animals who would otherwise be killed, we need a long-term solution to the rampant destruction of our environment and our wildlife. As our human population expands, so do the cities and suburbs. This is affecting our grasslands. Currently, there are 55 grassland species that are listed as threatened or endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act and more than 728 species are candidates for listing. The consequences of human expansion are world-wide. Prairie dogs are among the almost 20% of all mammal species on earth today that are currently under threat of extinction. Estimates have suggested that we lose about 4 species of plants and animals per hour, or about 100 species per day, or 36,500 per year, primarily in the tropical forests.  Human beings are responsible for the biggest number of extinctions since the dinosaurs died out some 65 million years ago.

The expansion of human population currently seems to have little room in it for the prairie dogs. Yet, ironically, as prairie dog colonies and natural grasslands are destroyed in the name of development, the reason that many people move into newly-minted subdivisions is to escape the crowding and lack of nature found in inner cities. People enjoy the very same natural surroundings that developments often obliterate.  Small parks in the middle of subdivisions are sometimes poor substitutes for nature.  After a subdivision levels the surrounding landscape, the first thing that most residents do is plant trees, bushes, and grass, and set up bird feeders and ponds to attract some of the wild animals that inhabited the place. Some developers capitalize on this and build subdivisions that have a non-intrusive footprint set into the natural landscape.

And here is one key to saving prairie dogs.  From a pragmatic economic standpoint, developments set in natural surroundings often command higher prices than developments that are in barren, sterile and featureless landscapes.  If prairie dogs can be seen as an economic attraction, they might have a chance to survive the tide of urbanization.  Prairie dog colonies are fun places to watch animals. They are one of the few mammals who are active in the daytime. Unlike prairie dogs, most North American mammals only come out at night. And a prairie dog colony is a constant hum of activity. Animals chase one another.  Pups kiss each other, and kiss their moms.  Dads and moms stand at alert, watching for predators.  Something is always going on in a prairie dog colony. In fact, zoos have found that prairie dogs are often their most popular exhibits.

Rather than destroying prairie dog colonies, cities, suburbs, and exurbs can develop watchable wildlife sites, where people can go to view the prairie dogs.  This can give people a sense that they can reconnect with nature, and can provide an outing for both adults and children. It can also be a source of tourist dollars, where tourists can come to watch the prairie dogs and stay to eat at local restaurants and spend the night at local hotels. And developers can charge higher prices for homes around such watchable wildlife sites, much the same way that houses near golf courses command higher prices.  Golf course houses create the illusion that the house is set amid a sea of green and abundant nature. Watchable wildlife sites can create the same illusion.

Also, before it is too late, we need to establish large reserves where animals such as prairie dogs and all the attendant plants and animals can live in safety.  Following up on the economic theme, developers can be encouraged to build hotels and concessions at the periphery of these reserves, and tour companies can take ecotourists through the reserves on nature rides, much the same way that tourists now view large animals in Africa. Although many people have the prevailing view that we have plenty of open space, we have merely to look at the growth of the human population in states like California to see that open space is rapidly dwindling. At our current growth rate, the time is rapidly approaching when we will no longer have much open space available for wildlife.

Finally, we need to continue to use legal and educational means to persuade public agencies to conserve the animals that they are charged with protecting.  There are a number of citizen and environmental groups who are working very hard to ensure the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act and the dissemination of educational materials about the importance of prairie dogs and grassland ecosystems. Many of these groups operate through donations from like-minded supporters.

While in theory just knowing that we are saving a piece of our heritage should be sufficient in itself, in practice it is economics that will determine how much of our heritage of plants and animals will remain for posterity.

All Life Is Special

A few days ago, a story on NPR said that college students were more narcissistic and self-centered than they were in the past.  A recent study (see link) found that students’ scores have consistently risen on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory test since 1982. The study suggested that this might be due to teaching children that they are special, and further suggested that children who think that they are special will have less empathy for others. 

Not having seen the actual study, I cannot comment on the details. However, it seems to me that having children think that they are special should not be a problem.  After all, every human being on this earth is special, in that no one has exactly the same genetic makeup. Each individual is unique, and in that sense is special. No one has exactly the same talents, beliefs, motivations, and appearance as any other human (identical twins perhaps come closest to this).

However, forgetting that each individual is unique, we often make broad generalizations about people and their behavior. At the extreme of this is the categorization of people into stereotyped groups or populations.

This kind of thinking carries over to the way that some people view animals. Some wildlife managers and other biologists think of animals not as individuals, but as populations.  I have had biologists tell me that individual animals do not matter, that it is the population that matters, so there is no point in trying to save or rescue single animals.  On this basis, some people feel free to “cull” animals to preserve the population, or to exterminate groups of animals as long as the populations are not seriously affected.

But whether they live or die matters to individual animals. Just as all humans are unique, so is every animal.  And all life wants to live.

People thinking of themselves as being special might be a good trend. Rather than having less empathy, perhaps children who are raised feeling special about themselves might have more empathy for others who are also special. If they think of themselves as special, perhaps they will realize that all living things on this Earth are also special, and deserve to live.