Some Thoughts on Public Lands (from a kayak on a bayou)

(photo by Tom)

On the eighth day of the government shutdown, we went fishing....or rather, Tom did. I took along pen, paper, a book about bees (A Sting in the Tale, by Dave Goulson), and a camera. Although we thoroughly enjoyed our approximately nine miles of leisurely paddle, Tom didn't catch anything worth keeping, and listening to NPR on the drive back home, we learned that Congress hadn't passed a continuing resolution to keep last year's budget, and the country was still heading toward default on the debt. But at least we had spent a pleasant day paddling in our kayaks on Bayou Lacombe. I drifted for a while and wrote the following (slightly edited):

We headed to Bayou Lacombe some little time before 8 a.m. and set in at the Main Street boat ramp in Lacombe, south of US 190. The morning was cool and bright. Our plan was to paddle upstream toward the back door of the Bayou Lacombe Centre, the headquarters of the Southeast Louisiana National Wildlife Refuges. Because of the shutdown, the front doors were closed, but the waterway is state land, open to the public. We weren't going to go on the refuge--just peek in the back door from the bayou.

Bayou Lacombe

The first lesson we learned is one we knew but hadn't heeded sufficiently--bayous are twisty and tricksy. We got all the way up to a low bridge on US 190 before we realized we had been traveling a tributary. The bridge was not only too low for us to go under it easily; the water on the other side was not our destination. So we turned back and paddled almost to the boat ramp, finding the branch of the bayou we needed to get to our destination. The US 190 bridge over the main tributary has a much higher clearance, and we made our way under. We still found ourselves going in a circle, as we circumnavigated an island just north of 190, near a house we had looked at when we were house-hunting in 2010. However, the signs of the national wildlife refuge soon appeared. Tom found a shady spot in which to cast his fishing line, and I paddled upstream, taking photos. Kingfishers flew ahead of me, skimming the surface of the bayou. I startled up some mallards, and several anhingas crossed overhead, their necks taut with alarm.

Bayou Lacombe

I am writing this now while in my kayak, drifting. Tom is still trying to catch some fish, though he isn't having much luck. He caught a couple of sunfish that he threw back. It's probably near 1 p.m., if not a little after. We aren't too far from I-12 [we were actually farther than I thought; the bayou twists and turns through the landscape], as I hear traffic in the distance, as well as heavy machinery on the cleared land we passed. I wonder if that's the site of the new waste transfer facility that local people tried to prevent being located too close to this waterway. [still not sure what the cleared area is]

On Bayou Lacombe, one is never far from the sounds and impact of "civilization," but the lands of the refuge provide a respite from the crowd-weary and a haven for wildlife. It's in places such as this, I think, that one can really see the benefit of public lands, lands that are easily accessed by people living in urban areas not so far away. Kids of the middle-class, working class, and working poor in New Orleans can attend the educational events at the Bayou Lacombe Centre. The waterway is accessible to them and not just to the rich folk with their pleasure boats and huge yachts tied up to their docks downstream.

Big boats and little boats on Bayou Lacombe (photo by Tom)

 Wilderness has its pleasures for those with the leisure, modes of transportation, and camping gear to access the backcountry, but wild life refuges at the back door of urban areas provide access for those with limited resources. This is one of the true purposes of public lands--beyond the purpose of maintaining wild areas for the native flora and fauna that would otherwise disappear under the heel of unchecked development. Without these public lands, only the wealthy and well-connected could enjoy the beauties of land kept undeveloped with their monied interests. Every scenic view would be occupied by those who could pay dearly for the privatized pleasure.

Bayou Lacombe

Those who support the radicals in their pursuit of a government shut down and debt crisis don't seem to understand this. They complain about major monuments and national parks being closed yet do not appreciate the human power that maintains those public spaces, from the person who cleans the toilets at the visitor centers to the person who manages the staff who conserve and care for those lands.

duck box and its reflection on the edge of the refuge

During this shutdown, many people have complained about government websites that have been shut down, too. Well, I think every government website should be shuttered as long as the shutdown lasts: those websites are created by content experts as well as computer technology. Those content experts are federal employees, scientists and educators whose expertise is made available to the public. Without adequate funding this expertise would not be shared so readily. Let the public see how our lives would be greatly diminished without these resources, without these public lands, without the government funds that pay federal employees  . . . .

One of the casualties of the shutdown, cancellation of an event that thousands of people look forward to every fall at the Bayou Lacombe Centre

Michele Bachmann has been on the  radio talking about how these are the "End Times," and how we should be happy--"Maranatha, thank you, Jesus," she says. It is very disturbing that people such as she are eager to shut down the U. S. government and not raise the debt limit. Chaos just brings them closer to heaven. Is it any wonder that far-right Christians are anti-government? They don't really think they need to examine the long-term consequences of their actions. They think Jesus will rescue them from their folly in clouds of glory. [I grew up in a similarly End-Times-infused culture, so I know about its power and appeal.]

illuminated cypress and its reflection on Bayou Lacombe: what's up and what's down?

Having written down some of the thoughts that had been swirling around in my head, I finished the paddle in a more optimistic frame of mind, despite the less than cheerful news we heard later on the radio and read online. We pulled our kayaks out of the bayou around 3:30 p.m. Tom caught only a gar and several undersized sunfish. But it was a good day.

Tom showing off the gar he caught; he let it go.

The New Oil

If you have money enough in Austin, Texas, you can have your own water well drilled into the Edwards Aquifer, at a cost of $18, 000 to $32, 000 within the city limits, and ignore the city water restrictions. According to the Austin American-Statesman:

As plummeting lake levels triggered drastic watering restrictions during the drought, homeowners drilled 47 new water wells in Austin last year — more than doubling the 19 drilled the year before, according to data from the Texas Water Development Board. More than 150 new wells have been drilled since 2006 — the number also jumped during droughts in 2006 and 2009 — and nearly all of those wells are in West Austin neighborhoods such as Pemberton Heights, Tarrytown and Balcones, where many homes boast lush, carefully manicured landscaping.

The owners of these homes, with an averaged assessed value of $2 million, claim that they are helping to conserve water by not taking city water--the use of which is regulated in drought-prone Austin--to water their lawns. Others see the increased use of aquifer water from private wells differently:

• Daryl Slusher, an assistant director at the Austin Water Utility, is more concerned with how the drilling of private water wells and the use of that water in drought will affect people's attitudes toward water. The first effect is on the attitude of the folks who have paid lots of money to have their well drilled. Not only do they have little incentive to conserve water, they also may feel that "the more water they pump from the aquifer, the faster they can recoup their investment." The second effect, he thinks, will be on the attitudes of folks who see their neighbors with a "lush green lawn" in times of drought. That attitude may cause those folks using city water to conserve less themselves.
• Others are concerned that folks fail to realize that aquifers aren't an endless supply of water, either.  John Dupnik, a senior regulatory compliance specialist for the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, says that because it's difficult to measure the unregulated withdrawal of water from an aquifer, the end result could be an aquifer depleted by "a thousand cuts." Jason Hill, spokesman for the Austin Water Utility says that "'just because it's groundwater and not surface water doesn't mean it's an infinite supply. We do hope that customers (using wells) still are prudent and mindful of water use.'"
• As John Dupnik also points out, the use of privately drilled wells, especially in these times of drought when city water is being regulated, emphasizes the difference between the haves and have-nots. A recent Texas Supreme Court decision also throws that difference in a new light in its ruling that landowners own the water beneath their land, just as (some) land owners own the mineral and oil rights to their land.

Water is the new oil.

When the Pest Becomes the Pollinator

I think this is an Eastern Black Swallowtail on my zinnia

Because I planted lots of flowers and vegetables this spring, I am especially interested in all the pests that are competing with me for the food and with the pollinators that are insuring that the fruit matures. Getting rid of pests, however, is a delicate balance because some creatures are pests at one time in their development and beautiful pollinators at another, such as butterfly caterpillars. Some are more voracious than others in their caterpillar stage, destroying one's fruit or vegetable crop within days if not exterminated.  For instance, the adult moth (Helicoverpa zea) of the tomato fruitworm is a pollinator, but the caterpillar stage of the moth has been a constant problem this spring and summer. We have used Bacillus thuringiensis to combat the caterpillars, but they return, and by the time I see them (for they start out very small), they've done some damage to the fruit and leaves of an individual tomato plant.

According to Wikipedia, the tomato fruitworm is prolific in the wild,  eats many different kinds of agricultural plants, and is variably susceptible to Bt.  It's called the cotton bollworm when it feeds on cotton and the corn earworm when it feeds on corn, but it eats more crops than these. Because the tomato fruitworm is so voracious and because it eats the summer vegetable we love the most--tomatoes--I have become its sworn enemy this season.

caterpillar of Eastern Black Swallowtail eating my dill this morning

But I'm not consistent when it comes to killing caterpillars that eat my herbs, flowers, and vegetables. This morning, as she was leaving for work, my daughter called my attention to one of my dill plants. "There's a caterpillar on it, Mom!" she said. I know, however, that the larval stage of the Eastern Black Swallowtail can often be found on dill and other plants related to the carrot family. Sure enough, there was the caterpillar of a black swallowtail chomping on my dill. I couldn't bring myself to kill it. The dill is heading now and will soon seed, and while dill is one of my favorite herbs, I also love to see butterflies in the garden. This year, I planted three dill plants, but next year, I'm planting many more in a flower bed that I will devote to butterflies. I plan to remove humanely any butterfly caterpillars from the plants I don't want eaten to the butterfly garden where pollinators can chomp to their heart's content.

closer look at the front of the caterpillar

It is also possible that the Bt that Tom sprayed before the rain of last week might still be viable, especially in the flower heads of the dill, which the caterpillar is now eating. I will be saddened, however, to see another dead caterpillar of the Eastern Black Swallowtail on my dill. I found some earlier after Tom had sprayed the nearby zinnias, trying to get rid of the tomato fruitworms which seem to love zinnia leaves as well as tomato leaves.

Although I have gardened all of my life, for years I didn't pay much attention to pests or pollinators, beyond remarking on the beauty of a butterfly or on the ugly results of the pest. We would sprinkle a little Sevin dust on our plants and go on our way. Sevin is the pesticide that my father used on our tomatoes, too, when I was growing up in Southeast Texas. But Sevin has its issues. Sevin, Bayer's trade name for the active ingredient carbaryl, is very effective, but it's a pretty nasty chemical and will kill honeybees just as quickly as tomato fruitworms.

Sevin is used so often and for so many purposes (to kill bugs in the garden, to kill mite infestations on chickens, etc.) that it's probably safe to say that it is over-used and probably not used carefully. The ecological description on TechPac's "Material Safety Data Sheet" is enough to convince me not to use it:

This product is extremely toxic to aquatic and estuarine invertebrates. For terrestrial uses, do not apply directly to water, or to areas where surface water is present or to intertidal areas below the mean high water mark, except under the forest canopy and use on rice. Discharge from rice fields may kill aquatic and estuarine invertebrates. Do not contaminate water by cleaning of equipment or disposal of wastes. This product is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues on blooming crops or weeds. Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the treatment area.

C'mon, does anyone really think that folks who use Sevin are following the advice in that last sentence?

Back to squishing the tomato fruitworms and using biological controls on pests.

Leaving the untilled edges

at the edge of my yard

A few days ago, Tom and I were talking about gardening practices, and he remembered a story that one of our pastors told in a sermon years ago when we were young and still attending the Baptist church. This preacher used a farming story as an analogy for sin. He said that early Norse farmers had a practice of leaving the edges of their fields in weeds; they did not till up to the edges of their fields. Now, Tom didn't know how true this story of Norse farming was, and in several minutes of searching on the Internet, I couldn't find any reference to Norse farmers leaving the edges of their fields untilled. However, that's the story the Baptist preacher told; he probably got it out of a book of illustrations for sermons.

 So, what, according to this pastor, was so bad about leaving the edges of one's fields untilled? Weeds would flourish there, seed, and then disperse throughout the tilled land, infiltrating the harvest. A field with untilled edges is like a person who leaves just a little bit of sin in her life, the pastor said. That little bit of sin will spread its seed and poison the pure actions of a Christian. The Christian should be careful not to follow the practices of pagans; sin must be weeded out of every area of one's life. That Norse farmer would have a better harvest if he pulled out every plant not associated with the fruit of his harvest. 

This story struck us because it emphasizes a worldview that is inimical to any kind of chaos, that prefers an authoritarian control, that categorizes everything as good or evil, black or white, sin or innocence (and innocence is suspect). It's a worldview that preaches "dominion" over the earth, as if humans are the ultimate arbiters in and over Nature.  And it's a worldview with devastating consequences.

When every bit of arable land is pushed to the maximum in farming practices, the natural world suffers. Habitat is destroyed, and the creatures that depend upon that habitat are diminished as their habitat is diminished.  According to a comprehensive survey of American bird life in a report titled "The U.S. State of the Birds,"

[m]ore than 97% of the native grasslands of the U.S. have been lost, mostly because of conversion to agriculture. As a result, grassland bird populations have declined from historic levels far more than any other group of birds.

You see this worldview of authoritarian control over nature in suburban yards, where all the grass is one species, poisoned and pummeled to punish any plant that dares to raise its inflorescence above the height required by neighborhood lawn control. An unholy number of lawn and pest control products enable suburbanites to become little dictators to nature: herbicides and weed killers, fungus and disease control, algae and moss control, animal repellents (deer, rabbit, snake, mole, bird, bat, goose, cat and dog repellents), pest controls of all kinds. According to a 2002 fact sheet of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Americans use more than a billion pounds of pesticides each year to combat pests on farm crops, in homes, places of business, schools, parks, hospitals, and other public places." (my emphasis)

Everyone knows that our addiction to pest and weed control is hurting us and the planet, and yet we continue to slather the stuff on our lawns and public spaces. It just goes to show how powerful a metaphor can be: the American lawn is a stand-in for the soul--weeds and pests are the dark stain of "sin." Untidy lawns, the untilled edges of a field, are indications of moral failings.

So let's exterminate the metaphors that equate the natural world with sin.

 And leave the edges of the field untilled.


note:
Advice for creating a healthy yard, from Audubon

Save the pollinators! (Guess who cares)

bumblebee covered with pollen (I took this photo in Georgia)

In today's divisive political climate, government programs receive a lot of criticism just for existing; they are targeted as if they are monstrous ships of some threatening enemy. The work that they do, the people (citizens of this great country) who do that work, are collateral damage, not considered worth discussing. Instead, the focus is on "big government" and money, subjects all taken out of context in order to make the target easier to hit, in order to desensitize--and propagandize--the public over what will be the real consequences of destroying the target. Everyone complains about government programs until they realize that they benefit. I know people who have complained about welfare recipients, and then they discover their own need for government help in a financial crisis. Suddenly, the rules regarding governmental aid are too stringent; they need their money now and their loved ones provided for.

One of the recent targets of "big government" critics is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as I have discussed in a previous post about one of the Service's marshland reclamation projects. When I was ruminating on the disappearance of pollinators in a post yesterday, I discovered a web page of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that is devoted to pollinators. On that page, one can learn about all of the Service's programs dedicated to protecting pollinators, about the non-governmental organizations (private and non-profit) that partner with the Service to create a web of projects around the country to protect pollinators, about the status of pollinators and the importance of those creatures to the life of our planet--to our lives.

When I get ready to plant that butterfly/pollinator garden I mentioned in my previous post (and I'm planning already), I can go to this U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's web page for advice and information: "Pollinators: What You Can Do to Help."  That page also includes links to web videos and to other sources for information. If my children were young, I could connect them to the "Neighborhood Explorers" page, with its educational videos and suggestions for outdoor activities. (Though I know a couple of young adult artists, writers, and computer programmers who could add something to the art and animation of some of these programs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to hire them when they complete their graduate degrees!)

An important goal of such government programs is educational outreach, and since these services are public services, paid for by us, with our taxes, that means education for us, the public. Local offices and refuges of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provide activities for folks in those areas. For example, one of the big events here in Southeast Louisiana is the "Wild Things" event, held every October at the Bayou Lacombe Center, in Lacombe, Louisiana. I attended that event last year and was very impressed with the hands-on activities available for the hundreds of children who showed up with their parents for the day-long event.

Young participant in "Wild Things 2011" shows us what she discovered in an owl pellet

Children learn about what birds eat at the "Wild Things" event

The Bayou Lacombe Center of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also has a butterfly garden on its grounds and other flowering plants throughout to attract pollinators. On the U. S. Fish and Wildlife pollinator page, visitors can locate pollinator gardens on the refuges in the areas where they live, too: "Pollinator Gardens & Trails." And if they don't find such a pollinator garden on a refuge near them, they can get in touch with the refuge office nearest their home to ask about other services available and, perhaps, to get a community group involved in starting a pollinator garden in partnership with their local U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office.

One of the many free educational programs that the Southeast Louisiana division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offers for school groups is the "Incredible Insect Pollinators" classroom interactive presentation for 3rd and 4th graders.

So, yeah, I'm glad that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is one government agency that cares about protecting birds, bees, butterflies, bats, and other creatures that pollinate nearly 75% of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables that we eat, and I'm happy that my taxes help pay for all of the associated programs. And I don't apologize for my support.

Now I've got to get back to planning my own pollinator garden.

Where are all the little pollinators?

mountain mint flowering in my backyard

Years ago, my family and I lived in Harris County, Georgia, on approximately 24 acres of land, much of which was mixed pine and hardwoods--hickories, oaks, loblolly pine. We lived there for almost seven years before we decided that we should move back to Texas (which turned out to be not such a great move for my career, but that's another story). On those almost twenty-four acres of land we raised a few chickens (most of which eventually fell prey to the local wildlife) and planted several garden areas. One of our friends, a professor of environmental horticulture with the University of Florida, brought us some mountain mint one year, and we planted it at the edge of our lawn, where it flourished. The plant was rather unassuming, three or four feet high, with inconspicuous flowers, but to our delight, it attracted the most interesting and diverse pollinators. We had never before seen so many different bees and wasps. When we returned to Georgia several years later, we purchased more mountain mint at a local native plant garden and then, a couple of years later, transplanted a plug of that mint at our new home in Louisiana.

The mountain mint is now blooming here where we have planted it at the back of our property near pine trees. However, I have yet to see any pollinators on the mint. I am waiting for those fascinating and diverse bees and wasps to show up. Will they come?

mountain mint flowers

I thought that our vegetable, herb, and flower blooms would be covered with pollinating wasps and bees. In the spring, I left a large patch of white clover in the yard for the bees, expecting to see huge numbers of bees buzzing the oval blooms. Maybe five or six bees seemed to be in the patch at one time. When I go outside in the mornings to check on my vegetables and flowers, I see a few bees and wasps among the tomato vines, in the squash blossoms, and among the hydrangeas, but not the numbers I expect. Where are all the little pollinators?

Have they all gone the way of the honeybee? In 2006, there was a honeybee crisis as bee keepers experienced huge colony losses. Lots of reasons were advanced for what became known as colony collapse disorder: modern transportation (airplanes carrying pathogens and diseases to new territory); drought, which made bees more susceptible to diseases and pathogens; a fungus, nosema ceranae, which is believed to have been introduced into the United States in 2007; pesticides; varroa mites; among others.

More recent studies indicate that pesticides play a bigger role in honeybee decline than companies that manufacture pesticides would want us to know--most specifically, "a new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids." Neonicotinoids were developed in the 1990s

as a relatively less-toxic alternative to pesticides that seriously harmed human health, [and]... soon became the world’s fastest-growing pesticide class and an integral part of industrial agricultural strategy. In the United States alone, neonicotinoid-treated corn now covers a total area slightly smaller than the state of Montana.

Like earlier pesticides, neonicotinoids disrupt insects’ central nervous systems. But unlike earlier pesticides, which affected insects during and immediately after spraying, neonicotinoids spread through the vascular tissues of plants. They’re toxic through entire growing seasons, including flowering times when bees consume their pollen. ["Controversy Deepens Over Pesticides and Bee Collapse," an article by Brandon Keim in Wired, 6 April 2012.]

The chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer manufactures neonicotinoids,  marketed as imidacloprid, an additive to many products, including flea control products, termite control products, roach bait gel, aerosol sprays for bedbugs, rose and flower food, and on and on and on.

As with the diminished menhaden that I described in my previous post, the primary reason for the disappearance of pollinators is ..... really, our inability or lack of will to connect the dots that demonstrate the interconnectedness of the choices we make to control pests and to grow our food. As Rowan Jacobsen, who has written a book about the honeybee crisis, reminds us:

Honeybee health is inextricably linked to the health of the entire environment, including our own. If we can create systems of domestic food production that take their cues from the cycles of nature, and let honeybees play the roles they evolved to play, then the system will take care of itself. But if we continue to push the system farther and farther out of equilibrium by relying on chemical shortcuts and fossil fuel intervention to fix the inevitable breakdowns, then we will never get off the crisis treadmill. [quoted in The New York Times'  article: "Saving Bees: What We Know Now," 2 September 2009]

Of course, we all want to control the pests that eat our plants and that bite and infect our pets. But at what cost? We use Frontline Plus on our cats to control fleas and mites. I just looked at the description of the product that we keep in a kitchen drawer; Frontline Plus contains fipronil, a pesticide that seems to work similarly to imidacloprid, if I can take Wikipedia's description at face value. Fleas that bite our treated cats die because their central nervous system is affected by the pesticide. Fipronil is also poisonous to bees and other wildlife and has been associated with colony collapse disorder. I'm not putting fipronil on my roses, so I doubt that pollinators are being affected by my cats' flea treatment, but, again, I am reminded of how each of us makes decisions every day that have consequences we least expect. Were I to choose to control the pests on my flowers and herbs with one of these pesticides, I would also be destroying the pollinators that visit those blooms.

Leaf-foot (stink) bugs on my tomato stakes

We have had a terrible recurring infestation of catepillars eating the foliage of our vegetables and flowers. To control them, Tom applied Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) on the plants. Bt is a bacterium that is considered an environmentally-friendly control for caterpillars. However, it does kill all caterpillars, and that includes the caterpillars of our most beautiful butterflies. I was distressed to discover two dead Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on the dill that grow near the zinnias that were treated. Also, food crops have now been genetically modified to contain the Bt gene, and the consequences of these modifications might be enormous: the monarch butterfly, for one, has been greatly affected, and some studies suggest other detrimental effects that merit further study.

These are the consequences of the choices we make to control pests, and I am becoming increasingly aware of how my own individual choices are part of those global effects. When I found those dead Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on my dill, I decided to grow a butterfly garden next year in which I will allow caterpillars to munch to their hearts' content. I've gotten over some of my squeamishness about directly targeting pests and squashing caterpillars with my fingers. I just returned from my garden with fingertips covered with green caterpillar guts. I've even been catching stink bugs with my own hands (ugh) and crushing them with my gardening shoes. And this morning I actually took out the shop vac and hoovered up an entire clump of leaf-foot stink bugs that were hanging out together on the top of some of the tomato stakes. Now that must have been a humorous sight.

Of course, farms that grow huge quantities of vegetables cannot afford to send out scores of folks every day to pinch bugs from their plants, but we have got to find a way to achieve balance in how we control the bugs that compete with us for our food.

Will there always be fish in the sea?

....not if there are no small fish for bigger fish to eat,
 not if one industry dominates a fishing culture,
not if politicians reject regulations and refuse to recognize the science that demonstrates the interconnectedness of life in the sea and the consequences of ignoring that interconnectedness.

In her article "A Fish Story: How an Angler and Two Government Bureaucrats May have Saved the Atlantic Ocean," Alison Fairbrother charts the decline of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay and demonstrates how one tiny fish can have a tremendous impact on recreational fishing, industry, conservation, and politics. Her "fish story" also reminds us how one or two engaged and focused individuals can start a chain of events that could result in remedying careless and unprincipled predation.

Like so many of the creatures we take for granted, menhaden were abundant when European colonists first stepped ashore in the New World. Fairbrother writes that: "early pioneers described [menhaden] as swimming in schools twenty-five miles long or more, packing themselves into bays and estuaries where they came to feed on dense schools of phytoplankton...," and in 1608, John Smith described the menhaden in Chesapeake Bay as "'lying so thick with their heads above the water, as for want of nets we attempted to catch them with a frying pan.'"

I'm envious of those early descriptions of the teaming flora and fauna early explorers described: the millions of bison thundering across the Great Plains; the prairie grasses that grew as high as a horse's belly as far as the eye could see, undulating in the wind like a mighty ocean; the great number of whales that came so close to shore that early pioneers of Nantucket could kill all they needed without going out of sight of land. That abundance is gone forever. Instead, we have fish stories such as Alison Fairbrother's,  in which we learn that "80 percent of the menhaden netted from the Atlantic are the property of a single company" (my emphasis).

In this fish story, the corporation is Omega Protein. Go to the corporation's website, and you can read how the company cares a lot about sustainability, about how the Atlantic menhaden are not overfished, and about how the company is "certified sustainable by Friend of the Sea, an organization dedicated to the preservation of marine resources." You can also read how the company takes those small, unassuming fish and turns them into products for

• animal nutrition ("for the nutritional needs of all animal species"),
• human nutrition (The product here is OmegaPure, which is "a highly refined, long-chain omega-3 fish oil specifically formulated as a food ingredient." The fish are extensively processed to be used as supplements or additives in various foods: dairy products, baked goods, margarines and spreads, etc.)
• plant nutrition (fertilizer)
• industrial applications (rust inhibitors, water repellant, additive to paint)

Wow! Menhaden--the Fish that Lay the Golden Roe!

Only the story doesn't end there....and the story isn't all that golden.

Alison Fairbrother describes how the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), a part-time board of regulators, had been using a seriously flawed formula to determine safe fish stock levels.  She shows how interest groups have manipulated that "science" to achieve the outcomes they want. And she demonstrates the short-sightedness of a computer formula that doesn't take into account all the species that depend upon menhaden for sustainability. Instead,

[T]he agency is guided by an older and more utilitarian doctrine that is commonly characterized as “single-species management,” in which the primary concern is to determine how much of a particular species can be removed from the ocean without undermining that species’s ability to reproduce.

The ASMFC has a complicated formula and computer model that takes into account the amount of fish that Omega captains have caught and are required to record, the number of eggs that menhaden historically spawn, an estimated number of menhaden that are killed by fishermen and predators, an estimate of the current spawning potential of the fish, among other variables.

More importantly, however, ASMFC's computer model doesn't take into account all the other fish that depend upon this little fish to maintain their own healthy numbers--the striped bass, the blue fish, the weakfish, and other fish--and fishing birds, such as the osprey. (In Virginia, where osprey feed heavily on menhaden, "[s]urvival of osprey nestlings in Virginia had fallen to its lowest levels since DDT was first introduced to the area," and that decline has been connected to the osprey's diminished diet of menhaden.)

By 2009, science had revealed that "the number of menhaden swimming in the Atlantic had declined by 88 percent since 1983." Research also indicated that "menhaden had been subject to overfishing in thirty-two of the past fifty-four years."

Of course, economics and politics are entwined in this fish story. Although recreational fishing (all those sport fish depend upon menhaden for survival) has a much higher economic impact on Virginia and Maryland, the Omega Protein corporation donates large amounts of money to politicians in those Atlantic states ("almost $60,000 to the current governor [of Virginia], Bob McDonnell") and thus has some pretty powerful allies.

This great fish story reminds me--I don't know about you--about the importance of the smallest creature in the Great Chain of Being. The hierarchy isn't all that evident, though. We're all interconnected and interdependent in ways we have only begun to understand. Too bad our public policies too often fail to reflect that wisdom.

----------------------
Read the entire story here: "A Fish Story." There are other implications to this story, too, such as why menhaden are processed to create fish food for farm-raised salmon, an activity that's pretty much an ecological disaster.