"Earth's Internet" attempts to document, reference as much of the natural world networking abilities and strategies as possible. Such Scientific findings are at odds with industrial scientific approaches maintaining our planet. Be warned. If your learning approach it based on Memes with short clever quips, you may be disappointed here.
The photograph above was used by science writer, Chris Clark, of Yucca Valley/Joshua Tree high desert fame, who was providing a list of some wonderful Nature Preserves & Reserves to visit in and around San Diego County. It was written back in 2015 and I believe the photo by Scott Davenport was either 2013 or 2014. Wow what a contrast when you look at the other photograph below. Scott Davenport has also taken numerous photos of this same location since which reveal the now dead Torrey Pines. Other people have also, it's a most popular tourist spot. It should be noted that the above photo is usually the only photo which generally is used toadvertise and promote Torrey Pines. What you won't see is today's reality on the ground in a photograph, even from the Torrey Pines State Reserve. Of course it's understandable as to why. For example photographer Phillip Colla took this photos here below.
To be honest, from this angle things look totally dead, but I believe on the other side of the geological formation you can see from a different angle that there is still one live Torrey Pine. What struck me most by the three photographers I'm referencing here, but also all other photographers I've Googled on the net , none of them ever make mention of the dead trees or the changes that have taken place. Their conversation is always about the light, the clouds, the sunset or the sunrise, the geological patterns in the bluffs etc. But nobody says anything about the very trees for which this reserve is named after, Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve.
I must admit, I had special hopes from this photgrapher of Broken Hill, Bodhi Smith, who gave this area shot the title, "Broken Emotions." I thought finally someone who was moved not just by the magnificence of the geological patterns, but actually touched by the decline of the native Torrey Pines here at the Reserve and elsewhere which must surely have served for the inspiration behind this photograph's title. Unfortunately, this was not the case. He was entirely on a different track. Beautiful photo though. Take a look at a couple of quotes I extracted from his description:
"I have been trying to catch a special image of this spot for close to one year now, having shown up to this place numerous times only to go away empty handed. But alas, finally last evening I was able to capture something worthy of my own liking."
"I have just been patiently waiting for the right conditions (clouds, sunset, springtime)...so when I got to Broken Hill, I did not need to figure out where I was going to set up for my shot..."
Here's a special plea to all photographers out there who photo things in Nature. First of all, please date them, especially when taking pictures of the same location year after year. Second, while I understand stand the complexities of that photograph shot setup which requires a measure of concentration, patience and tunnel Vision, please consider a peripheral view of things. None of the photographers that I could find who had taken photos of this spot ever commented on the decline in vegetation, in this case Torrey Pines, which if were a rattlesnake, you would have been sent to the emergency room. Kidding of course, but you know what I mean. Your photos are important for ecological documentation reasons although you may be totally unaware of this. Interestingly however, even the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve is not interested in today's scenic view. In fact they continue to use an older photograph of "Broken Hill" on the Home page. It's a public relations thing. Go Figure! 😎
Other Locations with Bad News -> North Loop - "The Guy Flemming Trail"
Photo courtesy of Ken Blackford. Copyright Ken Blackford. San Diego, Ca.
Who hasn't visited Torrey Pines State Natural Preserve and stepped off of the old narrow asphalt road where the sign says in bold letters, "North Loop," then right under that, "The Guy Fleming Trail." I've done this many times since the 1960s. This was one of the better and easiest trails to hike and actually get inside of the Torrey Pine forest. Most other trails are broken up with chaparral, but this is forest. Other areas of dense Torrey Pine forest you can only see from a viewpoint distance to protect them. It's also not especially steep or challenging and it takes you right next to the viewpoint of Torrey Pines State Beach overlook. Interestingly the woods at the end of the trail are like the stunted growth of common chaparral we call, "Elfin Forest," because they are windswept by the ocean breezes which have sculpted them this way. Often the signage will comment on the grotesque and/or picturesque shapes and explain the natural phenomena of the windy salty air that created these shapes. But something's changed here as well. As you continue to on ahead walking down a little further in the photo above, you can see in the distance that something has gone terribly wrong here too.
Courtesy of Jeremy Spath, of Spath Gardens, for landscape design and installation in Southern Ca.
Peter Jensen 2017
Almost three years after the green forest photos above were taken, the bark beetles have taken their toll here as well. In actual fact almost everything in the way of older Torrey Pines are dead. This photo at right is provided by the Torrey Pines Association which was founded in 1950 with Guy Fleming as it's first President. The article which accompanied this picture on the right explained why this trail has been closed for a year. Clearly things had to be upgraded from wooden post railings to steel and newer younger trees had to be planted to replace the dead ones. Apparently funds were made available by the Scripts Foundation to complete trail repairs and rehab some of the main attraction ecological features. It will be decades before people we begin to see a glimpse of the beauty that one existed there before. Below here is an except from the article with link by Peter Jensen.
"Poor High Point! A good number of trees have died here in recent years, victims of the drought, and the old railing made of peeler poles was usually in a state of falling-down disrepair. But this trail is finally on the “come back."
To be honest, when my wife and I visited back in 2014, we noticed not much of anything living was doing very well. Take this example photograph of how poorly even the normally tough and resilient chaparral was doing within the Torrey Pines Reserve boundaries. Not good. 😕
So is the obvious answer Global Warming ??? 😵🌄
The obvious popular answer of course is climate change and the last five years of drought. Add to that higher than normal temperatures and less rainfall and those are ideal conditions for pine bark beetles to do their dirty work. If conditions are normal as far as the soil's mositure content sense, then Torrey Pines should be able to manufacture enough sap or pitch to ooze into those bore holes drilled by a pine bark beetle who wants to lay eggs and hatch young. The sap or pitch would drown out any of the beetle larva. So in normal average rainfall years, San Diego and Del Mar average around 10 or 11 inches of annual rainfall, but of course for the past five years they have only received half that amount or less and have had to endure much higher than average Temperatures. So that sounds reasonable as to a cause, but something's just not jiving next door at the Torrey Pines Country Club and Golf Course.
Image - yourgolftravel.som
Photo by Jacob Sandoval
One of the puzzling anomalies regarding the death of torrey Pine trees are the loss of trees at the world class Torrey Pines Golf Course. Now as understandable as it is to see Torrey Pine trees dying at the State Reserve which is the neighbour to the north because of drought, it's tough to phathom what's really going on next door at the golf course. Even "IF" there is climate change, drought, less than average rainfall, none of those things should matter at the golf course which is loaded with massive amounts of water availability. After all, Golf Courses use more water than anywhere else, especially in the drier climates of the southwest or you don't get green grass. Plus there are the other factors of normally hotter months like May & June being cloud covered here with what they term "May Gray" or "June Gloom." Temps at their hottest here are generally in the 70s Fahrenheit or 20s Celsius. And yet take a close look at this photo of a dead tree in the middle of green wet grass taken by Jacob Sandoval. I'm always telling people who want to plant natives which prefer things a little on the dry side, don't plant next to or in lawns because this is comparable to things like a lakes or bogs when it comes to constant available water. Watch this video below.
This video below was done by San Diego resident, Dale Williams, who argues that aluminum, in combination with acid fog, weakens Torrey Pine trees and was the primary cause of their die-off in 2014-16. Frankly, I'm not altogether sure, but here is Dale William research take on the subject.
This photo above the video are the bark beetle pheromone traps used to attract and capture these little pests that are killing the trees. The link below the photo is from News 8 (CBS) in San Diego which aired back in January 2016. The second video is from ABC 10 News just a couple of months later. Take note however that in both videos, we're not talking drier areas like Torrey Pines State Reserve, but rather trees inside green lawns in both the gold course and city of Del Mar. The news reporters said that the traps should help save the trees until winter rains come, but that's nonsense since these trees have incredible access to water already, plus Torreys have always been subject in Nature to drier habitat locations. Former Nature Film producer, Jim Karnik (no deceased as of earlt last year 2017), also provided a good video on this very subject. It's a pity that many environmental groups paid little attention to Jim's passing away. In fact this video below which appears to be his last, only received 55 views EVER. I guess non-profits are more interested in donations and membership drives.
For a very long time now I have wondered if maybe the underground microbiology could itself be in decline in many areas as well. Most humans only have in their minds things that we can see. The underground microbiome is completely out of sight and therefore out of mind. Think of the forest as a sort of an amusement park like Disneyland. The tourists only see the beaty colour and glitter of the theme part, but they never see the behind the scenes sophistication of the machinery, computer systems, staff, security, etc, etc, etc that make it all work and function smoothly. Many nature lovers assume that nothing could possibly harm that tough microbiological community. That's why when I've suggested people inoculate plants at time of planting, even in the wild, the typical sarcastic response I have gotten has been, "You don't need to inoculate because fungal spores are just everywhere out there in the air." Not a very scientific take, but more of a blind faith affirmation. Human beings have so radically changed nature's surroundings, that past normal behaviours of the natural world are not responding and functioning as they once did. Yes, mycorrhizal fungal spores are no doubt well populated within many healthy wild soils like the large population of fungal spores taken from a soil sample in the photo above-right by Soil Scientist & Mycorrhizal Fungi Specialist, Dr Wendy Taheri.
But she also sampled industrially maintained agricultural soil from somewhere in the Midwest in which a big commercial farmer had followed the recommended agricultural practices as recommended by biotechs and agro-chemical corporations. The difference is stunning and not what you think when you look at both sample photos side by side. The picture here with less spores has far less than you think. Those really tiny white looking spores are not mycorrhizal fungal spores at all, but rather soil Nematode pest eggs which attack plant roots. So it's still puzzle as to the gold course and Del Mar city properties which are well water. But they are also industrially maintained through science-based synthetic chemical regimens. This is what I question and focus on. After all this blog is about underground soil networks mainly dealing with mycorrhizal fungi networks and plant root system infrastructure. Hence, "Earth's Internet." Not to mention the other fascinating phenomena associated with both. This is why I wrote back on July 2014 about not finding specific truffles of Pisolithus tinctorius mycorrhizae in my favourite collecting locations in the San Jacinto Mountains anymore. (See Here)
Photo is mine from
My photo 2016
(Pinus sabiniana) in Ranchita
Prior to the missing mushrooms or puffballs, the Coulter and Jeffrey Pines just above Anza Valley within the Table Mountain area had been in major decline. Trees everywhere were dying, but I had first noticed that the puffballs or truffles were now missing when previously there were always 100s of them after a summer monsoon Thundersstorm or even in their Springtime crop appearance. Everything to do with mycorrhizal fungi shut down and then next the trees went. Oddly enough I found other valuable collecting locations in the forests and chaparral biomes south of the gold mining town of Julian in San Diego county. The picture above is the truffles I found south of Julian. In the year 2014, I remote planted a Foothill or Digger Pine (Pinus sabiniana) on some of his wild acreage far away from any irrigation sources in Ranchita, California in eastern San Diego county above Borrego Springs. I planted this foot tall one gallon container tree you see here in the photo in between the native chaparral (next to a scrub Oak). My brother watered them that first summer (we planted in summer with temps at 104 F) clear thru to winter, he didn't need to water thereafter. The tree as you can see here is now about three to four foot tall as of 2016. He recently told me it's much bigger now. My point here is that the microbiome is important and it may be in decline like everything else we see. I've successfully remote planted Torrey Pines in a low elevation mountain range around El Cajon, Santee and Lakeside. Most locals know it as Rattlesnake Mountain. Here is a link to my successful experience in this hotter than coastal conditions with Torrey Pines which proved far healthier than those along the coast and in drought conditions. But even these important components may be in decline at Torrey Pines State Reserve and explain far more than just hotter temps and lack of rainfall. These trees have been here for 1000s of years and I've certainly not seen the serious problems there in my lifetime like we have now.
Wild Torrey Pines on Rattlesnake Mountain in between the cities of El Cajon and Santee
You should know that now the Torrey Pines on Rattlesnake Mountain no longer exist. They were all between 25' to 30' high. Biggest ones were actually starting to produce cones, but the Sky Ranch Housing Development residents took offense the the presence of the Torrey Pines and chain sawed every one of them down. When I came back for a visit I found them all missing. The neighbours all saw me and came out yelling what I was doing back there. I told them I was photographing Coast Cholla colonies and the Torrey Pines but they were gone. I was informed that the Torrey Pines were a fire hazzard and actually caused fire (which was an ignorant thing to say and poor excuse for killing them). Then I was told that the police were being called because I was trespassing on Rattlesnake Mountain Conservation Area preserve. So I left and never came back. I got in contact with the Center for Natural Lands Management and the Naturalist in charge of the area's oversight and he feigned ignorance about the trees ever being there. This was an untruth because when Sky Ranch Construction began, a survey of all plants and animals was done well ahead of time and conservation sensitive area tape was all around this huge area. So I figured the chainsaw activity had his organization's blessing. Doesn't matter, they weren't native, wasn't my land and it's not worth the hatred I incurred by the residents. The destruction took place in 2013.
This photo is mine from 2018, Table Mountain 4,500' elevation east of Anza CA
Some important info you should know about these Torrey Pines and my experience with planting them as small seedlings back in 2005. Climate is much more radically different than along the Del Mar coast where the seed originated. The early and middle 1980s were rough years freezing termperature-wise. Back then every years for about five years we experience a northeastern high winds which brought frigid arctic air down from Canada. The Coachella Valley lost numerous grapefruit citrus orchards. These Torrey Pines at six foot tall experienced temperatures down to 6- below 0 Fahrenheit which is 21- Celsius. We experienced terrible Santa Ana high winds with gusts 60 to 70 miles per hour and through it all these trees survived. Only real damage was from the tips of all needles back one half an inch the needles turned brown. However, also during those years in summers, the trees all grew over three to four foot in height. When I experimented with outplanting seed in wild areas of the property, they germinated and emerged pushing up through the snow in March which is early for most native Pinyon, Coulter & Jeffrey pines trees up there, but apparently no visible signs of damage. It was an amazing experience and there is still so much more to know about these amazing trees. You should know that other Anza area residents have also grown huge Torreys, but down in the valley at 4,000' elevation.
Stop the dams – Irrigate the oceans – Courtesy Steve Hunter
Leave it to Beaver ? No way, says Salt Lake County in the State of Utah
(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Just when nature awareness and education movements finally after decades of long hard work actually get the average rural citizen interested and excited about Nature on their own perperties and how to better nuture and maintain it, then the Authorities &/or Corporate entities under the guise of an eco-green cloak, later on say, "Nah, that's really not such a good idea after all." Here was a story that should have had a happy ending. This entire valley where a natural drainage of Big Willow Creek winds and meanders across numerous properties, everyone is on board with excitement. As you well know, many properties owners have traditionally at times dislike such natural obstacles which they perceive may impede what they had originally intended to use the property for. If that was the case here, then people later on changed their minds. This photo above and to the right is Kelly McAdams walking across a beaver dam in his back yard to remove a bucket that was caught on the top of the dam on Thursday, April 6, 2017. Salt Lake County officials are pressuring McAdams and his neighbors to remove the beaver dams from Big Willow Creek where the stream flows across their properties. They insist the dams have been there for years and should remain because they are natural and provide wetland habitat, but officials say they pose a flood hazard. When is the last time you heard of a group of property owners wanting to quietly get together on their own without the invite of a group of radical monkey-wrenching eco-activist groups to create and protect an ecological wetland area ???
Draper, Utah • Big Willow Creek bends and meanders behind Kelly McAdams' Draper home and her backyard steps down into an urban wildlife preserve.
Thanks to a string of beaver dams, the creek pools into wetlands teaming with life. Ducks and geese nest on the banks lined with cattails; herons and pelicans visit to dine on the 18-inch carp and catfish. Neighborhood kids also fish the ponds.
But where McAdams, his wife, Kris Burns, and neighbors on Dunning Court see an ecological sanctuary, Salt Lake County sees "unauthorized modifications to a countywide drainage facility."
The county Division of Flood Control has ordered them to remove the dams or face a $25-a-day fine, even though federal wildlife officials say these dams enhance the water quality, hydraulics and riparian habitat of an impaired segment of Big Willow Creek.
"The dams have been here for at least 20 years," said McAdams, who moved in five years ago. "It is unfair they are coming in and destroying the area when there are alternatives."
Along with neighbor David Dustin, McAdams is fighting the county's dam-removal order, saying it misapplies the county's flood-control ordinance by ignoring the proven benefits beaver dams provide and ways to reduce their risks.
But county officials say they have a legal obligation to keep waterways open and safe. Should high water push the beavers' tangle of branches and creek debris downstream, the material could back up the creek onto someone else's property or obstruct culverts, and the county would be liable for the damage, according to Rick Graham, deputy county mayor for operations.
"The waterways and channels need to be clear and run and serve their purposes. There is a balancing act," Rick Graham said. "The county has demonstrated many times it balances wildlife habitat on creeks and waterways as they run through the city."
Graham has overruled McAdams' appeal, which is slated to go before an administrative law judge on April 26. Generations of Westerners have battled beavers because their dam-building clogs irrigation ditches and backs water into inconvenient places. The federal Wildlife Services, the animal-killing arm of the Department of Agriculture, kills about 22,000 beavers a year and many more nuisance beavers are relocated by states.
For land managers and ecologists, however, beavers are miracle workers when it comes to restoring damaged landscapes, and wildlife agencies encourage property owners to accommodate the animals whenever practical. Beaver dams help control floods, slow water flows when they're high, connect water tables to floodplains and create wetlands and wildlife habitat, said conservation biologist Allison Jones.
"You have all these ecosystem services that keep the entire stream corridor functioning as it should," said Jones, with the Wild Utah Project. "Many other municipalities across the county are starting to allow beavers back to perform this critical engineering service."
McAdams, whose one-acre lot has s360 feet of creek frontage, agrees. Without the dams, the creek channel would narrow to about 2 feet and dry up in late summer, making it impossible for him to pump irrigation water when he needs it most.
"They want to take this wetland and turn it into a trench," McAdams said. "I'm afraid I might end up in jail over this." On one dam he installed a flexible 10-inch pipe — a device known as a "beaver deceiver" — allowing water to pass through and help equalize levels on either side.
The county began raising concerns about the dams two years ago and homeowners above and below McAdams and Dustin have agreed to let the county pull them out by hand, according to Graham. He hopes to remove all Big Willow dams at the same time to minimize disturbance.
There are literally tonnes of practical application we can glean by observising nature regarding Beavers, Alluvial Floodplains, the meandering pattern of water courses like rivers, streams etc. I have two links at the bottom of this post which will illustrate what many non-scientists out there have accomplished with a passion for biomimicry to prove Nature's worth at inspiration as opposed the tradition view of nature being so badly designed that scientists have the answer for fixing the imaginary flaws. The links will be provided at the end of this post at the bottom. Now let's report on the importance of slow meandering water courses as opposed to the opposite proposed by Industrial Business who claim to be backed by ecological science.
Slow Water Movement ??? vrs Corporate Monopoly for the Natural Resource ???
Image - Coca-Cola Company
"USFS Deputy Forest Supervisor Rachel Smith and Patrol Captain Alberto Ortega walk through the brush near the Big Tujunga watershed, a large cluster of the non-native, invasive plant species (Arundo Cane) behind them."
Back on April 22, 2017, I stumbled upon this article about Coca Cola Company's seemingly altruistic concern for Nature and their plans to eradicate the evil Arundo Giant Reed or Cane which is a plague of many Southern California riparian floodplain corridors. At first glance that seemed okay, because I dislike what both non-native invasive plants, Arundo and Tamarisk, have done to take over native riparian habitats throughout the entire west. However, I then watch a (Coca Cola Company video) titled, "Coca Cola and the US Forest Service Tackle Invasive Plants to Replenish Water," which is supposed to be about their honorable proposal to eradicate invasive water gulping plants to allow free flowing water supply to reach Los Angeles from the San Gabriel Mountains like the photograph you see they provide on the above right. Sounds like a noble cause until you watch the video where he explains this and you realize that other giant corporate entities besides Coca Cola like Nestle and others have had ambitious water schemes for years to create a drinking water supply monopoly and sell this same water back to the public by means of bottled water. The Coachella Valley's main newspaper, The Desert Sun, carried an article exposing all these schemes back in March 2015. The article was titled:
"If the restoration project is about actually restoring habitat, I think that's a noble thing. If it's just to have greater water flow coming down from the Station Fire area, I'm not sure that that actually heals the wounds that have occurred in that landscape."
Then there was this little tidbit of collaborationcollusion with a Mr. Roger C. Bales, a hydrologist tied to Industrial Agricultural irrigation business interests in the San Joaquin Valley and believe it or not The Nature Conservancy, which is another one of those environmental organizations who have caved into the corporate business interests deands which in turn has greatly increased their funding and donations. They seemed to have sided with Bales' unproven ideological worldview here with regard the stream hydrological scheme on their own properties in the unscientific assumption that logging and thinning water hogging trees will magically make more volume of water appear in streams to fill reservoirs at lower elevations. UC Merced's Roger Bales' association with Industrial Agriculture in the Central Valley and even the Nature Conservancy association with the water bottling companies who have donated money to them makes a person take pause. Either way, these unholy alliances expose the modern day environmental movement's hypocrisy for funding being masked behind a cloak of eco-green. And that's really sad because years ago I liked the work they did. But like other phony so-called ecology non-profits, I've pulled away from them. This is yet another one of those lying, "necessary evil for the greater good" justification schemes. Just so that folks know and understand something about these tree thinning/removal schemes mention by Roger Bales and the Nature Conservancy, it has been totally debunked and found to be untrue. California's four or five year drought along with the bark beetle loss of over 100 millions trees has not produced more water in streams or rivers to fill downstream reservoirs.
Let's change the subject back to why 'Slow Water Movement' is far more important than what Municipalities & Big Business Interests!
Image - Bureau of Land Management
Image - acegeography.com
Many people think of floodplains as something negative which ruins and destroys vaulable property. The reality is they have always provided an abundance of resources for many living things. Mankind as a rule has had economic interests in floodplain soils for farming which have a build up of nutrient rich soils created over thousands of years. But floods still continue tp be an annual occurence and they aren't exactly conducive to the type of neat organized plans farmers, cities and industries prefer nor can they be tolerated. So science has come up with several various technology strategies to prevent this from happening, with the most popular being dredging and straight channelizations of water courses whether a river or a creek. But even this can many times be more problematic than beneficial. In the Southern California view of things, rainwater is something meant to be rapidly transported on it's way towards oceans and away from human habitats and their livelihoods. And yet they'll spend million on importing water 100s to 1000s of miles away to be utilized as drinking water. This same drinking water they use for watering their landscapes. But the meandering slows the water down, doesn't prevent water from going back to the sea, but allows many things to benefit from it's presence along the way. But it's this slowness of meandering floodplains that prevents the rapid transport of water which should be replicated through biomimicry to water various city landscapes and home gardens by means of rain harvesting infrastructure. Without revealing what type of infrastructure, I'll post a couple of links I've already written on the subject which will point out where such respect for water has allowed inventive people to engineer some pretty amazing projects, which allow both water to be harvested and less destructive volumes of water ending up in creeks and rivers which can create unnatural flooding. Watch this three minute video on why rivers curve and meander.
This meandering part of the stream or river which looks very much like an elbow or bend in the river is known as a oxbow. In the photo of the floodplain further up, you can see older oxbows where the river once ran and changed course which allowed curved lakes to remain as part of the greater floodplain. The animation above demonstrates over time just how oxbows develop and become cut off from the main river channel. But again, industrial and urban storm drainage infrastructure could be used to slow this flooding and racing to the ocean way down and syphon much of this polluted street water from entering creeks and streams where high volumes can do the most damage. So much wasted street water like the example below of a Los Angeles street corner that floods, often with very little rainfall.
Image via Sterling Davis / Curbed LA flickr pool
Then we have example of smart curb-side and Parkway median landscaping where rainwater harvesting is taken advantage of which is saving cities fom using their municipal drinking water for irrigating public and private homeowner landscapes. I'll provide some links below this picture below which illustrate many of the designs intelligent creative people have made.
Beavers can help battle ongoing Drought in desert-like places in Elko, Nevada
(Photo credit: BLM, Elko District - 1980)
(Photo by Bryce Gray)
This is an area about Beavers in which the average human being who likes nature has no clue about the incredible variety of habitats beavers can adapt to and improve. Like the documentary I linked to at the very top of this post, most films depict beavers familes living in a so-called pristine ecosystem loaded with birch, aspen, cottonwood and willows. But take this habitat above. In the west when Europeans arrived, they have attempted to raise livestock like they did previously in the wetter habitats of central or northern Europe and eastern United States. These plants do not respond the same way to herbivore disturbance the same way other plants in wetter climates do. Rather than four seasons, most lower elevation habitats in the west have only two, a wet & a dry season. So grasses and other plants do not recover quickly. Below is an article from Northwestern University which deals with climate change and how beavers can be used as an incredibly beneficial tools to improve the environment which has been ruined through human stupidity as land stewards.
BALANCING BEAVER AND BEEF
The rebound of Susie Creek and Maggie Creek in the adjacent watershed began in the early 1990s, when Evans approached ranchers leasing BLM land along the waterways with a proposal to improve grazing practices and restore the riparian habitat, primarily for the health of local fisheries.
“A lot of it was done for the reintroduction of Lahontan cutthroat trout,” Evans said, referencing Nevada’s state fish, which faces an uphill battle to survive in the face of climate change. Evans said that the area is predicted be out of the species’ temperature range within the next couple decades.
Fences were put in to restrict cattle access to riparian corridors, enabling vegetation to reclaim the creek bed, trapping sediment and building a floodplain. By 1996, a number of willow saplings had taken root, and by 2003, beaver recolonized the creeks as an unintended consequence of the restoration effort.
“I didn’t know it would turn out the way it did,” said Evans, noting that throughout the BLM’s Elko District there has been a “build it and they will come” relationship between rehabilitated habitat and beaver. Although Evans does not know precise population data, beaver are now found in a number of regional streams, including an 11-mile stretch of Susie Creek and approximately 16 miles of the Maggie Creek basin.
Beaver are hardly newcomers to the area. In colonial times the species used to be nearly ubiquitous throughout North America before their pelts ignited a fashion craze that fueled exploration of the continent and eradicated them from much of their historic habitat range. Besides humans, beaver are perhaps the animal that exerts the greatest influence on the natural environment, and the wide-scale elimination of the species had a profound impact on water resources.
From the early 19th century to the late 20th century, an estimated 48-64 million acres of American wetlands were converted to dry land, with much of that habitat loss linked to the simultaneous decline in the beaver population.
“Look at those numbers in terms of water that’s being held,” said Dr. Suzanne Fouty, an Oregon-based hydrologist who works with the U.S. Forest Service and has visited Susie and Maggie creeks. Fouty likened that water storage system to savings accounts.
“In the West, you want to make sure that when you get a windfall of water, your savings accounts are ready to take it in,” she said “Those savings accounts are essentially empty right now.” But beaver habitat can change that, she said. “Instead of (water) racing downstream and flooding, it’s slowed down and stored and you have all these areas of savings accounts being filled up.”
And those “savings” influence more than just surface water, as they can percolate through soil to become groundwater and recharge aquifers. At Maggie Creek, a one- to two-foot rise in the water table has been observed, even during drought years.
Evans said that beaver habitat has such tremendous water storage potential because the species essentially converts a watershed into “a slow-moving lake” progressing through a staircase of beaver ponds, instead of as a gushing torrent. She believes that’s how the area’s streams once flowed in their original state, since soil profiles still show the traces of long periods of standing water in the valley bottom.
“I’m sure the beaver were a large mechanism in that,” Evans said. “They were such an important part of the ecology of the system. You see how prevalent they can be.” But grazing, too, can change the landscape. Dan Gralian is the general manager of the 400,000-acre TS Ranch, bounded to the east by Maggie Creek. He acknowledged that generations of abusive ranching practices hurt the land where trappers left off. “If you remove the stability of the land – the plants and the root structure – that’s what holds the land together,” said Gralian.
“If you remove that, it becomes vulnerable to erosion. And that did occur over a large area of the West and this is one of those areas.” That destructive legacy is still evident from the old, dry irrigation ditches sitting 10-15 feet above the present level of Susie Creek, where beaver and cattle are attempting to coexist as unlikely neighbors. “This is the story of the West,” says Evans. “When you have poor grazing practices and beaver together, it's totally not sustainable.
(Photo credit: BLM, Elko District - 2011)
(Photo by Bryce Gray)
Here in the photo above is that same location as the one in the 1980 of Maggie Creek that you saw of how dry and eroded the area once was, this 2011 image shows the stream’s wetter transformation. But also take close note of a freshly chewed Silver Sagebrush stump which is a sure sign of beaver activity along Susie Creek. Hardly no one would ever appreciate this from watching all those Disney type documentaries over the past several decades. Who would ever associate Beaver with such dam construction materials ? Even food sources and diets of beaver can change from riparian trees. In addition to willow and cottonwood, beavers will eat cattail roots, blackberry vines, fennel, pondweed, and various scrub plants. But cattails can often overwhelm a pond and crowd out open water, here is a video showing how beaver can even help keep that under control through summer feeding on this aquatic plant.
This video is only about 25 seconds long, but well illustrates how well they can maintain small ponds and lakes. We already know how things go without their presence if cattails are not manually (even chemically) dealt with to maintain open water for fish and other creatures. Below here the Northwest University article continues:
TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPES AND LIVELIHOODS
Whether beaver can be used on a broader scale to help the West conserve dwindling water resources remains to be seen, but the recolonization of streams in northern Nevada provides a hopeful snapshot of their climate change mitigation potential.
“Nevada is so water-limited, if beavers can transform this landscape, they can do it anywhere,” said Fouty.
Similar projects have taken root in other parts of the West. In Washington state, Forest Service officials are using reintroduced beaver to increase water resources for coho and Chinook salmon. In Colorado, “nuisance” beaver are being relocated from population centers to habitat where their ecological services will be less disruptive. And in Idaho in the 1940s, the state Department of Fish and Game launched a stranger-than-fiction campaign to parachute beavers in crates into the backcountry.
Whatever role beaver ultimately play in the future of the West, they will need their significant environmental footprint to find a balance with ranching and other land uses. But if the BLM’s Elko District is any indication, that’s certainly possible.
“We didn’t recognize that we have similar goals,” Griggs said, noting that ranchers like him have quite a bit in common with their aquatic neighbors.
“I have a lot of respect for beaver. They’re probably the hardest-working things in the animal kingdom. We just needed to figure out a way to have them work for us.”
I loved that read and the setting for which it was referencing. Again, it gives folks a different take on the variety of habitats that Beavers can sustainably benefit. Also interesting was the reasons for reintroducing the Beaver. While they had to convince the ranchers of improvements to the grazing habitat, the other reasons were just as important. Remember, "restore the riparian habitat, primarily for the health of local fisheries." And of course the prime subject was reintroducing the Lahotan Cutthroat Trout. This reminded me of other important fisheries which could benefit from a natural meandering floodplain being restored for the benefit of juvenile fish like the native fish of the Colorado River and Salmon of California.
Photos by Jacob Katz
The top photo is from a program started to reintroduce juvenile Salmon back into floodplains of the Yolo Bypass in Northern California where much of it is farmland. With cooperation with one farmer, the fish were proven to grow faster and fatten up better than if they were forced to stay within the main river channel where there is less food and more predators. The very things they dealt with here are identical to challenges faced by native Colorado River fish like the Razorback Sucker, whose juveniles also benefit from floodplain nurseries. Anyway, both stories of the two fish were fun and interesting and highlighted the value of floodplains
This last topic below hits close to home for me because the beavers of western Riverside County in California were prospering wonderfully, until some official experts decided they weren't the original inhabitants of the landscape (this is a flat out lie) and they mandated that they be killed or moved. The other bogus story was beaver were destroying the habitat of an endangered songbird. Another rumor was that drinking water officials viewed them as fouling the water. And yet another lie.
Success and Failure in Western Riverside Californa with regards Beavers
Image - Pail Mason - Lake Skinner Temecula Ca
This first link below is to a post by Duane Nash of Ventura who has a passionate love for everything to do with Beavers and follows their historical and present locations within the state, but especially Southern California. Duane touches on the Santa Margarita River canyon southwest of the city of Temecula where Beavers have even dwelled within the city's Murrieta Creek. The second post is mine comparing human dams to Beaver dams. But I also touch on the tragety that happened to this Lake Skinner you see here in the photos above and below. The other excuse for removal was that these beavers were destroying the Least Bell's Vireo & Southwestern Willow Flycatcher habitat who need willows. This is a sham because beaver actually expand riparian habitats creating more resources for other creatures. In an ironic twist, when the beaver ponds dried out after the beaver were removed and dams destroyed, the invasive Tamarisk moved in and took the place of willows.
"There are three things that are never satisfied. There are really four that never say, ‘I’ve had enough!’ These things are the cemetery, the childless mother, the land that never gets enough rain, and Fire that never says, ‘I’ve had enough!’
Proverbs 30:15-16 (International Children's Bible)
David McNew / Getty Images
I used a children's simplified wording in the above text to help readers understand what was written centuries ago was not only true back then, but even more so today. It describes a reality of certain realities in lifes faced by human beings which are inescapable. You don't even have to accept the bible to agree with what is clearly stated. The common grave of mankind is always hungry and never satisfied for more occupants. Child barreness would be a welcome circumstance to those obsessed with scientific population control by means of eugenics. In a later text at Luke 23:29, a future time of distress is foretold, and the “barren women” it states would be happy, relieved, not having the anguish of seeing their children suffer. I suppose that would be true of our times. Today drought and lack of rain are plaguing many lands all around the globe and the problem is growing and growing as if it's never satisfied. And of course we are experiencing a time of extreme wildfire which is worse today than at any time in the past and fire's hunger (figuratively speaking) seems to never be satisfied. But focussing on the last two subjects, drought (land with no rain) & wildfire, is there really a connection ? Wow, who knew ? Earlier this year, Jennifer Balch, a wildfire ecologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and other researchers published findings that 84% of wildfires are now started by humans as opposed to natural causes (lightning, volcanoes, etc). But wait, it gets worse folks. They also emphatically said this:
"In California, the eastern United States, and the coastal Northwest, people are behind more than 90% of wildfires. And, by starting so many fires, humans are essentially lengthening the fire season, into times of the year when natural causes—such as lightning—don’t play a major role."
Really, the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington & British Columbia) is at 90% human caused wildfires ??? 😕
During these past four or five years, the world's fire ecology experts have been making connections between these furious wildfires and severe droughts which they insist are making wildfires even worse. Droughts can occur in any climate, whether it's hot or cold, dry or humid. So is that true or false ? Yup, it's true. Same thing is true of wildfires. But have you ever noticed in the literature when these two words are almost always surgically linked together by the fire ecologists, that the word "Drought" almost always preceeds the other word "Wildfire" ? The idea conveyed here being that the droughts are responsible for causing the extreme wildfire events we experience today. But you might be interested to know that surprisingly the words should really be in the reverse. Some of NASA's latest research finds that it is most likely the wildfires and diliberate prescribed burning that have helped to bring on the droughts. On the surface, to average folks it might seem only logical that the higher temperatures & lack of rainfall brought on by climate change are expected to increase the amount of moisture that evaporates from land, vegetation and lakes (basically sucking everything dry), which would also cause rainfall patterns to shift to more drought conditions. Hot temperatures coupled with dry conditions would also seem to increase the likelihood of more extreme wildfires. But now the reverse seems to be the cause and folks should not be surprised. Earlier this year, January 2017, some researchers from NASA provided proof that it's the Wildfires, especially those whose origin has a human causasation are responsible for less rainfall, hotter temperatures & Climate Change.
"A periodic temperature shift in the Atlantic Ocean, known as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, plays a role, as does overgrazing, which reduces vegetative cover, and therefore the ability of the soil to retain moisture. By replacing vegetative cover’s moist soil, which contributes water vapor to the atmosphere to help generate rainfall, with bare, shiny desert soil that merely reflects sunlight directly back into space, the capacity for rainfall is diminished."
"Another human-caused culprit is biomass burning, as herders burn land to stimulate grass growth, and farmers burn the landscape to convert terrain into farming land and to get rid of unwanted biomass after the harvest season."
Now this I have found fascinating, the idea of herders burning the land to stimulate grass growth to increase grazing productivity for harvesting the animals for food. Where have we heard this before ? One of the major justifications often cited for prescribed burns is that the ecological Native Americans (considered by many experts as the original environmentalist) burned the landscape to create better grazing for animals they made a living off of. But in view of the new information we've received from NASA, are we to believe this was still a good thing environmentally in view of the consequences referenced below as we continue reading ?
As with overgrazing, fires dry out the soil and stymie the convection that brings rainfall. Small particles called aerosols that are released into the air by smoke may also reduce the likelihood of rainfall. This can happen because water vapor in the atmosphere condenses on certain types and sizes of aerosols called cloud condensation nuclei to form clouds; when enough water vapor accumulates, rain droplets are formed. But have too many aerosols and the water vapor is spread out more diffusely to the point where rain droplets don’t materialize."
Yup, even in the Earth's great oceans, microscopic organisms, along with other organic particles and salt, are thrown into the atmosphere every time an ocean wave breaks. Identifying the chemical composition of sea spray sheds light on how there is an ocean-cloud connection, and how ocean biology may impact how clouds form and the climate. So too with the natural volatile organic compounds given off by vegetation. Disrupt any of the natural components which enrich our atmosphere with organic compound particles which act as nuclei for water molecules to form droplets and we get less rainfall and more drought. That apparently is what too much fire does.
For example, in years that had more than average burning during the dry season, measurements of soil moisture, evaporation and vegetation greenness—all of which help to trigger rain—decreased in the following wet season. Even within dry seasons, the amount of water decreased in areas with more humid climates as the burning became more severe.
Illustration - ScienceDirect.com
Back during the early 1980s in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern California when we had the heavy winter rainfall seasons caused by the El Niño & Hawaian Pineapple Express moist wind jet stream, I noticed that cloud formation during the following Summer's monsoon season was exceptionally heavy and complete. The main reason was heavy moist ground sturation on the surface from winter storms which lasted for months. It was a very green period where nothing turned brown or dry. After this time with normal or drier winters, summer monsoon cloud formation was more isolated as opposed to solid formation over all land mass. The areas where cloud formation was consistent had to do with an untouched area from development and contained old growth vegetation whether it was forest trees or solid old growth chaparral shrubs. The fragrance of aerosol release was also more powerful in those areas as well. Knowing what we do about aerosol importance as a nuclei particle for droplet formation, it makes perfect sense how mechanical or wildfire removal of such natural biological mechanism would stifle cloud formation and rainfall and if large enough effect, create droughts. If enough localized and regional droughts around the globe come together, then we get climate change. But in all the ideological debates we are fed out there by Climate Change champions, almost no one mentions what the NASA folks have provided here as evidence for climate change. Such information just never seems to be mainstream, but always on the fringes. It's much more sexy talking about factories and Coal/Oil in order to score some political points against one's political enemies, than telling the truth by providing a more complete picture of the present situation.
“The removal of vegetal cover through burning would likely increase water runoff when it rains, potentially reducing their water retention capacity and invariably the soil moisture,” Ichoku said. “The resulting farming would likely deplete rather than conserve the residual moisture, and in some cases, may even require irrigation. Therefore, such land cover conversions can potentially exacerbate the drought.”
The illustration above has been adapted from Luiz E. O. C. Aragão's, “The rainforest’s Water Pump” which teaches us that like many ecosystems where much of the rainfall over tropical forests comes from water vapour that is carried by the atmosphere from elsewhere like oceans and falls over land during the rainy season, there is also a large component of mositure which is ‘recycled’ after the rainy season has passed. During what would normally be the dry season, rainwater is pumped by trees from soil into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration. This water exits the forest trees as evapotranspirated vapour infused with aerosols are pumped into the atmosphere where cloud formation is able to take place and again fall as rain in monsoonal thunderstorms. So the water sources does not necessarily have to come from oceans, but rather the land itself. The atmospheric transport of water vapour into the forest is balanced by the exit of water in the form of vapour and run-off. It has been discovered that the world's present mechanized deforestation reduces this important evapotranspiration and inhibits this water recycling. This decreases the amount of moisture carried away by the atmosphere, reducing rainfall in regions to which the moisture is transported. Decreasing evapotranspiration also leads to increase localized run-off and raises river water levels which increases water loss back to the seas.
Some of us (like me for example) generally take certain things for granted until some excellent responsible research comes along and shakes us out of our soft warm and fuzzy blanket comfort zone of ignorance. I always thought drought made fires worse and climate change makes droughts worse. But clearly (& this makes total sense) humans have brought on the very the climate disruptions and severe drought conditions through their incessant agricultural burning (not to mention the stupidity factor in causing wildfires) and irresponsible land stewardship in general that are the result of healthy old growth vegetation removal. BTW, for a long time now, many trees in the western United States have been putting most of their resources into defensive measures to just survive. Very little offensive strategy has been employed into putting available resources into the production of seeds. But that's the way it is with any organism. When times are good for food & water, then we have population explosions. When times are bad, it's all about survival. Oddly enough regions further north have been experiencing what has happened in Southern California since the 1990s. I used to collect seed and back in the late 90s, many pine nuts were hollow. In recent years researchers have noticed after most of these major fires, very little in the way of pine seedling reappearances were observed after these fires.
“It is alarming, but we were not surprised by the results given what you see when you hike through these areas,” said Rother, who earned her doctorate from CU Boulder in 2015 and works as a fire ecologist at Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee, Florida.
Among the most barren sites were those of the 2000 Walker Ranch fire in Boulder County and the 2000 Bobcat Gulch fire in Larimer County, where approximately 80 percent of plots surveyed contained no new young trees.
“This should be a wake-up call, that under the warming trends associated with human-caused climate change, significant shifts in forest extent and vegetation types are already occurring,” said Veblen. “We are seeing the initiation of a retreat of forests to higher elevations.”
Previous research has suggested that hotter, more severe fires make it harder for the forest to bounce back by killing mature trees and reducing seed stock. But the study found that even after lower-intensity fires, presumed to have had less effect on mature trees and seed stock, seedlings were still scarce. Hotter, drier areas at lower elevations or on south-facing slopes had the fewest seedlings.
The prevailing paradigm in fire ecology within the Scientific Orthodoxy reminds me of those evil stepsisters from the story of Cinderella where they tried cutting their toes off to fit in that Prince's glass slipper. They insist their narrative version must be true despite what the data says to the contrary. As a general rule, what data they do present for their case is often theory ladened, which means that any claimed observations have been inffected by the theoretical presuppositions held by the fire ecology investigator. There's no shaking the blind faith of a determined fire ecologist who insists life evolved in such and such a way through it's Creator fire or that fire is a kind of hallowed tool used by Indians (Native Americans) who are often considered the ultimate in ecosystem conservation. Facts are Native indigenous peoples of the past and their descendents today were and still are equal in every way to the Europeans they first encountered. This includes not only the capacity for love and goodness, but also the inherited tendency towards flaws and imperfection common to every human on the planet. Yes they used fire. A few may have used it as a type of conservation tool, but they had no more control over it than we do now. There is evidence that they also misused and abused fire for war against their bitter enemies (other Natives, not white men), used fire for hunting down prey chasing 100s of them over a cliff at a time, unattended campfires etc. They also used it for agriculture on a smaller scale which brought about localized or regional droughts centuries ago which doomed some ancient empires in Central and South America (Nazca, Maya & Aztecs). Now take a look below at some satellite photos of cloud formation which clearly exists because of the presence of healthy vegetation, no matter what the plant community ecosystem it is. But seriously, note where and over what the clouds form. Trees & Shrubs!
Image - scantours.net
The photo above is Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. This at one time was a true desert (in the true sense) island with almost most no vegetation other than some mosses, lichens, ferns, and small annuals and/or perennials. I reprinted parts of an article about Ascension Island which came out in 2013 by journalist, Fred Pearce, from Yale Environment 360, where he wrote about how a true desert island was basically transformed by19th cebtury British Sailors who brought in plants for gardens and escaped into the wild and by a Bristish Colonial Botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker, who wanted to actually terraform the island and infuence the increase for rain which was almost zero and provided no water supply. That's all changed now as rainstorms come in and even heavy clouds of mist precipitation provide water for natural ponds and streams.
Image - islandholidays.co.uk
Incredibly, not everyone has been pleased with this islands amazing transformation. The political activist environmental group, Center for Biological Diversity, is strongly opposed to such terraforming because the claim of invasive plants taking over and destroying the tiny native ferns and lichens would be wiped out. This has been proven false. I have kept in contact with the island's conservation officer, Stedson Stroud, who has provided photographs of these rare ferns and lichens actually doing much better by growing on the braches and trunks of this non-native vegetation. The non-native have created a healthier environment which has caused such specimens to grow bigger than they did previously on the desert island environment. People on this planet are going to start questioning who and what so-called non-profit organizations they are putting their trust and money into. Here are two links for which I have written about this remarkable island and it's turn around which has valuable climate change solution teaching lessons for us.
Image - Yann Arthus-Bertrand Orinoco River near the Esmeralda, Amazonas region, Venezuela
Image: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
The various aerial and satellite images over the past couple of years have fascinated me as to how vegetative land surfaces encourare cloud formation as opposed to bare land or even seas. The picture above shows cloud formation over forest, but not the river. The picture to the right shows cloud formation over these Indonesian islands, but not the surrounding sea. Back in the 1980's a brazilian physicist, Eneas Salati, proved that the rainfall in the Amazon had consequences that are felt across the globe. Only 20–30 % of the rainfall actually stays in the region. Mostly, it evaporates back to the air to be carried by currents to regions such as the Andes, the Atlantic, and the South Atlantic towards South-Africa through phenomena such as cloud formation. If you've followed the news over the past few years, countries bordering Brazil have lost rainfall because of the forest deforestation which has resulted in the dismantling of these cloud formation mechanisms. When large areas are deforested or the forest becomes fragmented, the system of cloud formation breaks down. Put simply, no cloud formation, no rainfall, no rainforest or any other type of vegetated ecosystem.
Then there's always that one anomalous Ponderosa Pine discovery somewhere out in Nature observed giving live birth to a Sapling that throws all those sacred Fire Ecology Paradigms out the window & into a tailspin
Image - Jennifer DeMente Okay I'm only kidding 😆
I'm not exactly keen on this obsession with celebrating fire or justifying it because the Indians (Native Americans or other non-white indigenous peoples) did it. Like modern humans today, they may have responsibly used some fire, but they also misused and abused it which makes them equal to human beings today. I was corrected by a scientist when I referenced my sadness about what has happened with all the human caused fires throughout the mountains surrounding Tucson Arizona. Her response was puzzling as she parroted the modern day secular religious paradigm of all fires being natural. This planet is clearly in trouble if the present failed leadership continues.
Who hasn't visited Torrey Pines State Natural Preserve and stepped off of the old narrow asphalt road where the sign says in bold letters, "North Loop," then right under that, "The Guy Fleming Trail." I've done this many times since the 1960s. This was one of the better and easiest trails to hike and actually get inside of the Torrey Pine forest. Most other trails are broken up with chaparral, but this is forest. Other areas of dense Torrey Pine forest you can only see from a viewpoint distance to protect them. It's also not especially steep or challenging and it takes you right next to the viewpoint of Torrey Pines State Beach overlook. Interestingly the woods at the end of the trail are like the stunted growth of common chaparral we call, "Elfin Forest," because they are windswept by the ocean breezes which have sculpted them this way. Often the signage will comment on the grotesque and/or picturesque shapes and explain the natural phenomena of the windy salty air that created these shapes. But something's changed here as well. As you continue to on ahead walking down a little further in the photo above, you can see in the distance that something has gone terribly wrong here too. 
