Coyote Crossing

“If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me. It has the forms and lights and colors that I respond to in nature and in art. If there is a western speech, I speak it; if there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it; if there is a western culture in the small-c , anthropological sense, I have not escaped it. It has to have shaped me. I may even have contributed to it in minor ways, for culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone.”

— Wallace Stegner, from The American West as Living Space

6 comments on "The West"

From the Center for Biological Diversity:

Amargosa Toad Denied Protections Under the Endangered Species Act

LAS VEGAS— In response to a February 2008 scientific petition submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will announce tomorrow that after conducting a full status review it has determined that the Amargosa toad does not warrant protected status under the Endangered Species Act.

“The Amargosa toad is a species whose long-term survival has been of concern since 1977,” said Rob Mrowka, a Nevada-based ecologist and conservation advocate with the Center. “Since our petition in 2008, many new conservation measures have been instituted by the Amargosa Toad Working Group, and that’s encouraging. On the other hand, some very serious new threats have cropped up, such as groundwater development for solar facilities and the increasing impacts of a hotter, drier climate; these weren’t given adequate consideration.” 

The Amargosa toad is found only in a short segment of the Amargosa River in the Mojave Desert near Beatty, Nevada, where springs create ponds and riparian habitat required by the toad. It is isolated from all other toads by at least 35 miles, making it a unique species found nowhere else in the world.

“The proliferation of solar projects in the Amargosa Valley, and now proposed for the Nevada Test Site, are placing unsustainable demands on the ancient groundwater aquifers that feed the springs and seeps that are critical to the well-being of the toad,” said Mrowka.

The Nevada state engineer, in Ruling 4669, has found that there is a high degree of interconnectivity between groundwater and surface water in the Oasis Valley basin. The groundwater flow in this basin is connected to basins that are, or will be, under heavy demand for water to support solar developments, such as the large solar facility announced recently by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on the Nevada Test Site. Other solar facilities in the Amargosa Valley, while switching from wet- to dry-cooled technologies, will cumulatively place an increased demand on the groundwater flow as well.

In a recent report, the U.S. Global Change Research Program found it highly likely that the southwestern United States will experience significantly higher temperatures and reduced precipitation leading to “a serious water supply challenge in the decades and centuries ahead.” This, coupled with groundwater depletions, signals severe future threats for the toad. “Given the animal’s extremely small range and population size, the integrity of individual springs and seeps becomes a matter of life or extinction for the toad,” said Mrowka. “In its finding, the Fish and Wildlife Service has ignored that fact that the Amargosa toad is the canary in the coal mine with respect to climate change impacts.”

2 comments on "Amargosa toad denied ESA protection"

Last week the Mojave Desert got some good news for a change:

Development of the proposed Ivanpah Airport, considered crucial to Southern Nevada’s future just a few years ago, has been suspended indefinitely because of lower passenger numbers and planned improvements at McCarran International Airport.

The Ivanpah plan has been going through an environmental review, and studies already under way will be completed, said Rosemary Vassiliadis, deputy director of aviation for the Clark County Aviation Department.

There also will be continued monitoring of the site, on Interstate 15 north of Primm, in case other plans or developments would have an effect on the proposed airport, she said.

But with passenger counts at McCarran declining, it was decided that a new airport wasn’t an immediate need after all.

Between the airport proposal and the handful of giant solar facilities proposed for the area, the Ivanpah Valley has lately been Ground Zero for destructive desert projects. The solar facilities still threaten the desert, but the airport would have been the most intrusive, most peace-shattering use of the valley by far, permanently destroying the character of the entire Mojave National Preserve, a constellation of wilderness areas in Southern Nevada, and more distant National Park holdings from Lake Mead NRA to Death Valley National Park.

Putting the airport on hold is a huge victory for the desert. While developers have reserved the right to rescusitate the project should Las Vegas’ growth require it, water shortages will almost certainly permanently truncate said growth long before the first bulldozer arrives on the site.

The Ivanpah Valley is still threatened: almost every square foot of public land on the Valley’s floor and surrounding alluvial fans is slated for energy development. The Valley is in no way “saved.” But stopping the airport removes the most serious single threat to the velvet-black night skies above the Mojave National Preserve.

2 comments on "Fantastic news: Ivanpah Airport project suspended"

Left: Big galleta fills a wash in the Southern California portion of the Sonoran Desert.

[A preview of a piece I wrote for El Paisano, the newsletter of the Desert Protective Council.]

In April, Desert Protective Council staff and several colleagues undertook a brief survey of the site of the proposed Solar Two project near Ocotillo, CA. The project would obliterate a wonderful and largely intact swath of Colorado desert alluvial fan and wash habitat, with smoketrees and ancient creosote, and the DPC opposes the project for that and other reasons. A brief description of the trip can be found on our Desert Blog.

One of the most striking aspects of the Solar Two site was the site’s thriving, indeed almost exuberant stands of big galleta, a large bunchgrass native to the arid southwest.

Big galleta (Pleuraphis rigida, formerly Hilaria rigida) is a perennial grass, one of three species of Pleuraphis, the others being James galleta and tobosagrass (P. jamesii and P. mutica, respectively.) Among the genus Pleuraphis’ closest relatives are the desert bunchgrass genera Dasyochloa and Erioneuron, commonly referred to as the woolygrasses, and the odd Munroa squarrosa, also called false buffalograss. Under ideal conditions Pleuraphis rigida grows three to five feet tall, its clumps getting just as wide over time. It tends to thrive best below 5,000 feet in elevation in gravelly or sandy soil with excellent drainage, not doing nearly as well on clay soils. After it’s established it can achieve considerable age. One rephotography study near the Grand Canyon found that some individual clumps of big galleta lived for at least 120 years.

Like many native bunchgrasses, big galleta is an important primary producer in the desert food chain. It’s preferred browse for desert bighorn, and other animals from muledeer to pronghorn to jackrabbits eat their share of big galleta as well. Big galleta doesn’t set a lot of seed, and as a result is not of major importance as a food source for strictly graminivorous animals. Some habitual seed-eaters like the kangaroo rat do take advantage of big galleta’s lush green matter, and in any case thick stands of the grass do provide excellent cover for small animals, seed-eaters included.

In parts of the desert with both winter and monsoon rainy seasons, big galleta will go through two yearly growth periods. Big galleta begins flowering in late winter throughout its range, and responds enthusiastically to summer precipitation, often putting out new flowers and setting seed in a remarkably short time. In one California study, a stand of big galleta responded to a monsoonal storm on August 11 by flowering on August 30, with seed maturing by mid-September. Big galleta is well-equipped to take advantage of even a little precipitation. Of all desert plants, big galleta is one of the most adept at extracting water from the soil, and its efficient “C4” metabolism allows the plant to photosynthesize without losing much water to transpiration. Its root system can extend for many yards beyond the boundaries of the clump, and as a result big galleta effectively stabilizes desert soils, holding down dunes, in effect knitting the desert together.

That seed set doesn’t tend to result in a flush of big galleta seedlings. Seedling establishment is actually quite rare for the species: it may take 20–40 years for a stand of galleta to begin to revegetate a disturbed area, whether that disturbance is artificial or the result of a landslide, flash flood or other natural phenomenon.

The established clumps of big galleta do help other seedlings gain a foothold in the desert, however. Their dense hearts can provide effective nurseries for young cholla, protecting the cacti in their earliest, most vulnerable growth stages. Once a cholla has gotten itself established and outgrown its galleta grass nursery, its stems may help protect the bunchgrass from being eaten by larger herbivores. Pleuraphis rigida has also been found to provide nurse-plant services to barrel cacti and desert agave, and as a common understory plant in Joshua tree forests big galleta very likely harbors the occasional young Joshua as well.

Those larger succulents are often what comes to mind when someone thinks of desert plants, and rightly so: they are beautiful, unique, and well-adapted to their surroundings. Even veteran desert rats might pass by a healthy stand of big galleta without paying it mind. Pleuraphis rigida is a fascinating and beautiful plant and deserves a place in any desert fanatic’s list of favorites, but whether we notice it or not it will keep on doing what it does best: feeding animals, tending seedlings, and knitting the desert together.

4 comments on "Pleuraphis rigida: knitting the desert together"

PZ has a brief item up with a one-sentence review of books about how pets go to heaven, and Orac has a sad anniversary today, and both got me thinking about something I wrote that until now lived on only in the Wayback Machine Archive, which is kind of the Rainbow Bridge for dead blog posts. So I thought I’d play God and reanimate it through the judicious use of the sinister, Tesla-coil powered mad laboratory here in my computer. Of course I have no idea what I’m tampering with in doing so.

Context: this post went up at Pandagon the week Zeke died. In that week, Pandagon co-blogger Amanda Marcotte had come under fire from reactionary Catholic jerks for saying something hilariously obscene that was ironically utterly consistent with conservative Catholic dogma. She lost her job as a result. I posted this in the middle of the imbroglio.

Short version: those of you who try to comfort grieving people you don’t know with images of Heaven, Doggie- or otherwise, are insensitive jerks who kick people when they’re down in order to make yourselves feel like you’ve scored Jesus points.

Yes, I am still angry about this.

Tolerance for me and not for thee

Tolerance works in more than one direction.

This week has been an interesting object lesson in why that's important, at least to me. Because while my esteemed co-blogger has been raked over the virtual coals for past snark with regard to large religious organizations and their sometimes reprehensible politics, with attendant calls for greater tolerance of religious belief from progressives, I've had a markedly unpleasant experience in my personal life that has illustrated just how little that demanded respect is returned toward people with my religious beliefs.

The context: my dog died on Saturday. A supremely trivial matter in the global scheme of things, to be sure, but he was my dog and thus by definition the best in the world, a constant companion for 15 years, and I've spent the last few days alternately stunned and heartbroken.

And as I've written about Zeke at Creek Running North pretty much since 2003, he had a fan base, so I've gotten lots of very thoughtful notes from his internet admirers, for which I'm surpassingly grateful.

And I've also gotten some not so thoughtful ones.

I was raised Catholic. Like most real Catholics, I have a thick skin when it comes to insults or slights to my religious beliefs. (You think the stuff Amanda's being quoted over is offensive? Eavesdrop on the parking lot chatter of a Catholic high school sometime and Amanda will seem positively Immaculate by comparison. I mean, don't even get me started on the “Lamb of God” jokes.) I also like to think I'm respectful of people's personal spiritual beliefs. I've worked with the Berrigan brothers, sat respectfully through neighbors' funerals and weddings in fundie churches, sung along with homilies whose words I found abhorrent so that I wouldn't make a scene, nodded politely at Jehovah's Witnesses while hung over, broken bread gladly with people as they maintained that their indigenous North American ancestors came out of holes in the ground. I prize finding common ground where possible.

Is that enough qualification for the trolls? No? Oh well, sometimes there is no common ground. At least I tried. And I mean every word.

Here's the thing: I don't believe in an afterlife. What's more, in contexts like the one in which I live now, I find the whole concept of an afterlife to be profoundly unhelpful. No, that's not strong enough. It's like sticking a fucking corkscrew in my heart and yanking it out. After all, I'm not so completely rational that I don't succumb to the temptation to stand on his grave and talk to him. After years of indoctrination in Roman Catholic dogma, the reflex of imagining the Pearly Gates dies hard. But it's false hope, and both the glimmer of reunion and the fleeting thought that he misses us make me feel worse.

So I asked early on on my blog that people refrain from trying to comfort me with the Rainbow Bridge or Dog Heaven or what have you. The good news is, a lot of people respected that request, either by not invoking it at all or keeping their heaven talk well within the context of their own beliefs, which I don't have a problem with. It can be done! You can be devoutly religious without pushing your beliefs on someone when he's vulnerable, as witness this kind comment left by an evangelical blogger who, I think it would be fair to say, wears his religious beliefs on his sleeve:

Much love to you and Becky from a man, a woman, and six chinchillas in Pasadena.

One of my oldest blog pals, a devout Episcopalian who wrote a biography of Bishop Gene Robinson last year, has likewise offered much-appreciated solace without mentioning doggie heaven once. Some friends have offered religious beliefs cast as cultural stories or metaphor, and I'm all about cultural stories and metaphor, especially when written beautifully, so no harm there. Far from it!

But when people persist, in what they know is one of the worst weeks of a person's life, in telling that person his belief system is wrong and misguided as a way of ostensibly showing sympathy and compassion, that, my friends, is an example of religious intolerance. When people respond to a politely worded request to can the heaven stuff by ramping up the heaven stuff, that is an example of religious intolerance. When a person has to take time out from grieving to forgive people who've made him feel a lot worse, telling himself that he has to give them slack because they're upset over the death of his family member, that he has to remember they're just trying to make him feel better with promises of meeting again despite his express request, that is a symptom of religious intolerance.

When a person has to take the time out from his equivalent of sitting shiva to close comments on his blog because he is sick to fucking death of moderating all comments with the word “Rainbow” in them and then he starts getting email like “I saw you'd closed comments on your blog so I just thought I'd email you to tell you that Zeke will fetch sticks for you again in heaven,” when if the person had read word one that I'd written he'd know that Zeke never fetched a fucking stick in his life, that is religious intolerance in the smarmy sheep's clothing of intrusive missionary zeal.

And when it is assumed that the deeply held beliefs you've arrived at after a lifetime of soul-searching are something akin to a public costume, to be shed in favor of the “normal” dogma of a vaguely Christian veterinary afterlife at the first sign of loss or adversity, that is not just religious intolerance but a profound personal insult, and I do not give fuck one about your intentions in making that insult.

Here are a few basic ground rules for religious tolerance. Not everybody believes what you believe. This includes the existence of an afterlife, the existence of a soul, the existence of any gods at all much less one all-encompassing one. A person's failure to believe what you believe does not constitute disrespect for your beliefs. Failure to be obsequious in the face of your religion's central story does not constitute disrespect for believers in your religion. One can respect Christians as human beings and still opine aloud that the New Testament is a bunch of nonsense, just as one can respect traditional Hopi culture without writing in your Pleistocene paleontology paper that the ancestors of the Hopi emerged into this world from a sipapu in the Grand Canyon.

It's clear to most thinking people that Opus Donohue and his like aren't interested in tolerance at all, but in theocratic subjugation. What's apparently less clear to some? That subjugation rests on the assumption that everyone secretly believes in a Christianist god and heaven despite their pagan or atheist or pantheist poses. A tolerant ecumenicism, these people seem to think, consists of granting the possibility that the All-Powerful One God in an afterlife heaven might go by more than one first name. A little-considered fact about even the most strident atheists: they spend most of their public lives not challenging people's false assumptions about what they believe. Small wonder! A solecism about Christ's birth far tamer than some I heard emerge from the mouths of Jesuit priests can apparently derail a career, while grinding a grieving unbeliever's heart beneath your heel in the name of compassion is considered a consummate act of Christian charity.

Some tolerance.

3 comments on "The Rainbow Bridge ain’t nothing but a hunk of rock in Utah"

I was looking for a particular image by my friend Carl Buell so I Googlimaged him, and was slyly happy that his painting of me and my dog was in the first page of results.

And I then realized it’s been almost five years since Carl painted it and some regular readers may therefore not have seen it, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to air it out.

That’s me and Zeke and a Shasta ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis) in what looks very much like the environs of Death Valley, California about 12,000 years ago. Note the big honking Joshua trees growing among the Pluvial-era Xeric Conifer Woodland, with a freshwater lake* in the background.

Carl’s blog is gone, unfortunately, but an archived version of his post describing the construction of the image is here.

The Shasta ground sloth was the smallest of the ground sloths that lived in Pleistocene North America, running about the size of a cow or bear. (Carl confesses to having inflated this one’s stature by about 25% compared to the average for the species.) It’s in this painting because coprolite evidence from places such as Rampart Cave indicates that the Shasta ground sloth and Joshua trees may well have been intricately involved in each others’ lives. The trees provided big bunches of nutritious fruit atop tall and heavily armored stems, where smaller herbivores couldn’t get at them. The sloths provided a way for seeds in those fruit to disperse.

A few things have changed since Carl painted this. I’m significantly grayer around the muzzle. Zeke is dead. The ground sloth is extinct. (Admittedly that last happened somewhat earlier, and without the sloth the Joshua tree is not particularly effective in dispersing its seeds.) But there’s a certain timeless quality to the image, possibly because we’re all hiking in the friggin’ Pleistocene. Even though this painting does not, so far as I know, exist in physical form, it’s one of my most cherished possessions. And it’s generated a good story or two.

Thanks again, Carl.

*How do I know it’s a freshwater lake? I asked Carl, is how I know. Those of you requiring more than hearsay evidence can feel free to taste the appropriate spot on your monitor.

3 comments on "Googling Carl Buell"

Commenter Devonian wraps things up in the ScienceBlogs/Pepsi thread on Metafilter:

One of the most poisonous and destructive forms of paid-for content is advertorial: adverts disguised as editorial. It is something that is constantly - and I mean constantly - pushed at publications, even those who resolutely refuse to take it. Ad sales people are constantly offered large deals to get the stuff in, PRs try every trick in the book, and the smarter advertisers are adept at trying to slip it in by the way they design their collateral or asking for this or that ambiguous aspect to a deal.

Advertorial destroys trust. It is deceiving the readership. It taints the entire publication. It is, in my view, one of the worst things a publication with any pretence to objectivity can do.

You wouldn’t believe how much time and effort goes into stopping it, and how many shades of grey there are, and how differently those shades look from different parts of a publisher. I’m lucky in that I work for one that has support for editorial from the top down, and backs up editors that say no. But there is always, always pressure to give advertisers stuff. These are hard times, and it is hard to say no, we won’t do that, it deceives the readers.

Yet there are ways to take the advertisers money, be faithful to the readership, and be transparent about what’s going on, and SB didn’t get that bit right.

5 comments on "Advertorial: Poisonous and Destructive"