Trevor Herriot's Grass Notes

Fallen Giants: Haig-Brown Legacy

2012-01-15T19:57:00.000-08:00

a circle of firs growing on the Haig-Brown property

This morning on Michael Enright's Sunday Morning (which is one of the best things on CBC radio), he hosted a discussion on Leo Tolstoy. His two guests, academics who have studied Tolstoy's life and writing, spoke about his family land, Yasnaya Poliana, where he lived most of his life and wrote his great books. They made the point that Tolstoy's writing and life were greatly enriched by dwelling where his family had lived for generations, and that today we have trouble understanding the influence of such a relationship.

Here, where conservationist and writer Roderick Haig-Brown lived and wrote his 25 books during the mid-twentieth century, the larger community of Vancouver Island people, as well as fly fishermen, and environmentalists from all over the continent, have come to see the property as a spiritual home.

Lesley, a naturalist friend who knew Ann Haig-Brown and lives north of the river, told me today that when she lived in the house for a year she would often run into American fishermen while she was walking along the river trails. "I'd see them casting into the Line Fence Pool. They'd come all this way just to have the experience of fishing in this little pool in the river because it was in all of his [Haig-Brown's] books."

The Line Fence Pool

This town has had a couple generations of passionate defenders of salmon and the Campbell River all following Haig-Brown's example. Every creek has its committee of volunteers and there are brass plaques everywhere along the river in honour of people who gave their time and resources to protect and restore salmon habitat.

Here is one on the bridge at the outlet of Kingfisher Creek, which itself runs through the Haig-Brown property and was restored by volunteers in the decade after Roderick died.

During a walk on the property today, Lesley showed me where the great tree Haig-Brown called "the Big Fir" blew down many years ago. It was a Douglas Fir, which people here tell me is not a true fir, not that I would know a true one from a false one. In the late 1940s. Haig-Brown wrote lovingly of the great tree in the August chapter of Measure of the Year:

The Big Fir is slowly dying. It is dying because it is old, because it has a disease woodsmen call conk, and probably another disease called stump rot.

Then he talks about it being spared by the first generations of woodsmen, about people advising him to cut it down, and why he does not listen to their logic.

My guess is the tree has another fifty years of dying ahead of it, or somewhat more than I have. So long as any part of it is green I want it to stand.

The Big Fir was a good-sized tree before Hamlet was written and has managed to hold not only identity but life far longer than Hamlet's author held either. More human identities have been lost in every year of the tree's life than the tree itself has shed seeds. . . .If it were young and vigorous, I think I should not een resent its permanence. It is only just mortal, it is also only just living. But its enormous substance, lasting so long, yielding so little, seems to emphasize how short a time there is to look at things, to feel and know and think things.

But it did fall before Haig-Brown did. A winter storm took it down years before a heart attack laid Roderick on the earth not far away.

Here are two images showing all of the life growing from the nurse log formed by the Big Fir. In its death it is nourishing dozens of trees and shrubs all along its 130 plus feet. Large maples now reach for the sun, their roots feeding on the nutrients being released from the old fir.

How many writers and defenders of this good earth have been and will continue to be nourished by Haig-Brown's life on this land, his own time of standing tall here with "enormous substance. . .yielding so little," feeling, knowing, and thinking things?

Birds of Christmas: Haig-Brown House, Campbell River

2012-01-05T19:24:00.000-08:00

Hooded Merganser on a side channel of the Campbell River

On the 2nd of January my wife Karen and daughter Maia and I had a chance to join some new birding friends here in Campbell River to take part in the Christmas Bird Count for the city and surrounding area. Kim, Lesley, and Vicki are responsible for counting birds in the area north of the river's estuary and then the side of the river from the Haig-Brown House on Campbell River Rd up to the dam.

We were lucky with the weather. It was a bit windy, but warm and no rain. During the day I got my best looks ever at Golden-crowned Sparrows coming to the feeder of a friendly old gentleman who enjoyed our stopping by and especially the hug from Kim.

We ended the day with a race against darkness to see if we could locate at least one American Dipper on the upper river. We looked at all the usual spots near the dam and the bridge and were heading back to the car when Kim spotted on sitting on a metal platform at the base of a stairway. I took this photo of a dipper singing in the same general area a few days earlier.

Other highlights included great flocks of siskins buzzing overhead in the hundreds, and good looks at hooded mergansers.

But for me the highlight was here on the Haig-Brown property when we found a bird who, to me embodies the contemplative, insular spirit of this place. We were making our way through the brambles on the eastern side of the property, and looking at kinglets. We had just counted 20 Golden-crowned and a single Ruby-crowned flitting through the mid to upper storey of the woods, when I came across a lone bird that looked much like another Ruby-crowned, except that it was moving very slowly and sitting still for a few seconds at a time. The broken eye ring looked different and it did not have the dark patch below the bottom wing bar that Ruby-crowned Kinglets show. But the thicker, vireo bill was the main feature that cinched the ID--a Hutton's Vireo.

This odd little bird has caused some confusion because after being vocal and easy to find all spring and summer it goes all quiet and solitary in winter, leading naturalists to assume originally that it was migratory.

Here is a note from an account of the vireo in an online atlas of B.C. fauna:

This species is generally more common than records suggest due to its quiet and retiring nature throughout much of the year, especially during the winter and in mid-summer when it is particularly difficult to detect.

Once people learned its call notes and how to separate it from the kinglet hordes, the Hutton's Vireo was established as one of the more interesting resident species of Vancouver Island.

In fact, the island has its own sub-species, vireo huttoni insularis. It is one of only four endemic birds on the island.

Kim, Lesley, and I stood transfixed as this quiet little greenlet foraged through the blackberry and rose brambles a few feet away. He was in no hurry to move on and in that moment seemed to me a wise forest hermit and I wanted to ask him what he knew of this place, this mid-winter of rain-drenched leaf and mossy branch.

I didn't have the camera with me, but made this drawing when I got back at the end of the day.

It was a fun Christmas Bird Count, and we recorded 48 species in our area alone, as well as this Red-throated Loon just outside our area.

Photo Album: Winter Birds at Campbell River

2011-12-18T19:39:00.000-08:00

A pool in Kingfisher Creek on the Haig-Brown property in Campbell River

I have had some great luck with weather since arriving here in Campbell River to work on this new book. I take an hour or two each Sunday to walk the beach and look for birds, and the last three Sundays have been warm and sunny. Here are a few of the birds I've been able to photograph (there were lots more I couldn't get a shot of:

This flock of mostly male Surf Scoters was near the shore at dusk where the Oyster River runs into the sea.

Lots of cormorants here--I have seen Double-Crested and Pelagic. This Double-crested looked like he was surfing on a piece of flotsam just below the surface.

Harlequin ducks are easy to find in the bays right in town.

I've seen all three merganser species here, but Commons are most abundant of the three:

I had some fun following a couple of Black Oystercatchers around a rocky beach along the sea walk in Campbell River.

These little Northwestern Crows here are real characters--always on the waterfront looking for a meal. It is actually a separate species from the American Crow.

One of the best parts about being here in the Pacific Northwest is to see all of the Great Blue Herons--they seem to still be in good numbers in this part of the world. This one was near the outlet of the Oyster River at the end of the day.

The Haig-Brown Legacy

2011-12-10T11:42:00.000-08:00

A portrait of Ann Haig-Brown, hanging on the walls of the Haig-Brown House

There are many genial spirits in this house, but the one I feel most clearly is Ann. I do most of my writing in her kitchen, watching the birds come to the branches by the window as they would have for her.

I was told that Ann was with Roderick when he died. He was in the yard working. Ann called him in for dinner. He turned and collapsed from a heart attack.

steam rising from the cedar fence on a cool morning on the Haig-Brown property

The Haig-Browns were both known for their compassion for people in trouble. Ann would open their home to battered women using it as an informal transition house. Today, the transition house in Campbell River is named after her.

Roderick, meanwhile, took his job as a country magistrate very seriously. He was thought of as being perhaps too lenient by some people--going easy on a teen caught with a small amount of marijuana--but he would always look at the whole context around the infraction that came before him, see the person and their life before making a decision.

Sometimes young men brought before his bench received sentences that included coming to the Haig-Brown farm once a week to learn about fly-fishing in exchange for some farm work. There were days when, between Ann and Roderick's social reform efforts, the perpetrator and the victim of the same crime would be on the property, a man out in a field with Roderick and the woman in the garden with Ann.

Roderick told one man who appeared in his court that if he stopped drinking and changed his ways he could live in the cabin on their property as long as he liked. He took up the offer and was living there when Roderick died and in fact remained in the cabin three or four years after Ann's death in 1994. The cabin was torn down just last year.

There are stories too of their bond as a couple. Roderick appreciated Ann's intelligence and would always consult with her on things that arose in his life as a writer, a conservationist, and a magistrate.

One story comes from someone who accompanied Ann to the airport to pick up Roderick after one of his many trips away from home in later years. Their reunion kiss, was reportedly altogether much too long for people of their age.

As I move through the shadows of this house alone and walk the trails on the property, I think of the two of them, the love that bonded them to one another and to this place. Exemplary people can live in cities far from any contact with nature, and people who live in the country can be coarse and heedless. Even so, when I hear of people like the Haig-Browns, their generosity of spirit and untiring service to the world, I cannot help thinking that it comes from a maturity of soul that can only be engendered by what Roderick called "participation in the world's real life, of steadily increasing intimacy" with nature.

Every day I learn more of their legacy here in Campbell River and in the conservation of river habitat all over the Pacific Northwest.

(No, the snow only lasted a couple of days.)

Fisherman's Fall

2011-11-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

Roderick Haig-Brown

Living and writing here in the Haig-Brown House in Campbell River has been an immersion into the life and spirit of one of the Twentieth Century's great writer-naturalists. At an open house on the weekend for local people in the writing and conservation communities to meet the new Writer-in-Residence, I was welcomed by many who knew the Haig-Brown family well. All spoke of Roderick and Ann with great reverence and admiration.

Here he is in 1950, explaining what it means to be a conservationist:

I have been, all my life, what is known as a conservationist. It seems clear beyond possibility of argument that any given generation of men can have only a lease, not ownership, of the earth; and one essential term of the lease is that the earth be handed down on to the next generation with unimpaired potentialities. This is the conservationist's concern.

(Roderick Haig-Brown. Measure of the Year. p. 26).

And last night, visiting the home of a man who has the definitive collection of Haig-Brown's life and works, I had the privilege of reading a limited edition of one of his diaries. Here is the entry from July 29, 1928:

A real day’s fishing on the Nimpkish at last . . . God, but it’s wonderful to stand in the middle of a wild river with the stream tugging at your knees, joy singing in your heart & the line shooting out into the boiling water . . . .

Finally, here is a film called "Fisherman's Fall" made by the National Film Board in the inimitable style of the old NFB I grew up with. You have to view it in two parts:

And here is part two:

Photo album: Birds of the Haig-Brown House

2011-11-22T21:17:00.001-08:00

One of the delights of being writer in residence here at the Haig-Brown House in Campbell River is the birdlife. Hate to admit it, but the birds here are just more colourful than the common farm and urban birds you see in Saskatchewan.The Golden-crowned Kinglet (shown above) is probably the most common bird on the property. They rove in mixed flocks through the trees, moving rapidly all morning. Mixed in with them are their cousins the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet.

(Apologies for the blurry images--my camera and I, more accustomed to birds of the open prairie, are having trouble catching fast-moving birds in a shadowy forest landscape.)
Here is a series of the second most common species--the Chestnut-backed Chickadee. They come to food outside my windows every morning.

I see groups of Varied Thrushes every day.

With them there are often Stellar's Jays--but this one was coming to food outside the window.

Flickers here, the Red-Shafted have a slightly different tone to their calls. I love the crimson flash you get when one flies by.

Another shot of the Golden-Crowned Kinglet--blurry but at least it shows the fiery gold colour.

The last shot is of the first bird I saw on waking this morning. A young Bald Eagle hanging its wings out to dry for several minutes in the first sun we have seen after two very wet days.

Campbell River photo album

2011-11-18T20:34:00.001-08:00

Salmon die like leaves falling from the trees. This one was on the edge of the Campbell River on the Haig-Brown grounds.

Here are some salmon still alive. I took this from a bridge on the river, where I could see hundreds coming through the inter-tidal zone upstream. I think these were Chum or Dog Salmon--perhaps still numerous because they are not as marketable as other types. These fish will likely be dead within two weeks.

Here are a few more salmon shots.

The gulls, mostly glaucous-winged, come to the river in great numbers to feast on dying salmon.

A couple of fishermen were plying the river as well.

Common mergansers and bufflehead were further downriver in the estuary.

I'll show some shots of the Haig-Brown property and birds soon.

Measure of a Day

2011-11-14T18:04:00.000-08:00

I took a break from writing here while I made the transition to Campbell River for the winter. From now until mid-April I will be the Writer-in-Residence at the Roderick Haig-Brown House on the northwest edge of Vancouver Island's Campbell River.

The lead photo in today's entry shows a view of the house from the 17 acre property, with its trees in fall colours.

Roderick Haig-Brown (1908-1976) was one of Canada's best naturalist-writers, a fly-fisherman, and a strong voice for conservation in the twentieth century.

In my first day here in the house where he lived for fifty years, raising gardens, farm animals and a family of four with his wife Anne, I feel at ease in his presence, the unmistakable genius of a place long-tended with love and humility.

One of his most popular books covers a year on the land, observing his stretch of the Campbell River a mile or so above the estuary where it empties into the sea.

Measure of a Year is a rich and wonderful book, published in 1950, an early back to the land narrative about subsistence gardening and a life well lived in nature.

This is the spine of the copy I found in the room where I have begun writing my next book.

. . . And here is the title page.

The first day is ending and I am feeling a mix of excitement over the prospects of experiencing the river Haig-Brown fished and the ecology of the Pacific Northwest while I immerse myself in a new manuscript.

In the next few days I'll try to post a photo album showing some of the landscapes and birds I'm finding here, but I'll end this entry with one more shot--a picture I took of the large photo portrait I found in a hallway of this house, showing the man who loved this piece of the earth best, fishing in the river that right now is bringing Chum salmon upstream one hundred feet from where I sit.

Photo album: fall at Cherry Lake

2011-10-25T13:56:00.000-07:00

Upper Indian Head Creek Valley, above Cherry Lake

The warm, sunny days this fall have made up for the cool, wet spring, giving us some wonderful weather for walking the valley and prairie from our weekend community at Cherry Lake. The beavers have made six or seven lodges in the creek upstream of the lake, and you can see places on the valley walls where they've knocked aspen down in pick-up sticks piles. Late on Saturday afternoon we saw five bald eagles heading up the valley to their evening roost site, which they seem to use in late October as they migrate through the area.

As we walked to count eagles, a group of five ravens played on updrafts. Two moved in almost perfect tandem. I have trouble taking ravens seriously. The way these two moved, I swear they were not so much courting as teasing or putting on a mock ballet.

"One of those ravens is an eagle," Karen said, looking through her binoculars at the other three birds near the pair flying in tandem. I pointed the camera's big lens and took a shot, thinking it was a bald eagle, but when I got it onto the computer later I realized it was the much less common golden eagle. Only our second record in six years at Cherry Lake, it was a sub-adult, which you can see from the white areas limited to the base of the primary wing feathers and the tail.

The other identifying feature is the projection of the head compared to the tail. A bald eagle appears to be bigger in the head and shorter tailed.

As we approached the springs and pond at the head of the tributary where the eagles roost, we slowed down and kept quiet, but still flushed five eagles from their roost. All bald eagles, three were adults. The following shots show an adult that flew across the valley toward us and overhead into the fading sun.

The next day I took some shots of the valley hillsides and the marsh end of the lake.

looking up the valley from the end of the lake

the tawny grass in the foreground is Little Bluestem

The curled "prairie wool" of Blue Grama grass in fall

looking down on the lake and valley from the rim--you can see how the beavers have kept this part of the valley hillsides cropped short.

The people shown in the right middleground are digging up some of our last potatoes from a new patch in our upper alfalfa field.

Premier Redford makes good on her promise

2011-10-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

16,000 acres of Alberta Crown grassland is safe. . . for now

The 16,000 acres of provincially-owned grassland that was put up for sale this fall in Alberta (see the "Potatogate" postings here and here) will not be sold. During the controversy that ensued, people opposed to the sale, in particular, the Alberta Wilderness Association, managed to secure a committment from Conservative Party leadership candidate, Alison Redford, to suspend the sale. Now that she is Premier of Alberta, Redford seems to be following through on her promises. Here is a news release quietly issued yesterday by Alberta's "Sustainable Resource Development" ministry.

It mentions "impact on water and on the ranching community," and says that concerns about "public consultation and water use and availability" were the reasons the RFP was cancelled. Not surprisingly, no mention of endangered species or important habitat.

A victory, but as we've seen with this piece of land, the pressure to plough it under does not go away. Once Alberta completes its land use planning process for the South Saskatchewan River Basin (the South Saskatchewan Land-Use Framework), the government may consider selling this parcel and others like it. And the legislative mechanism for arbitrary decisions to sell Crown land remains in place.

Here is a Winnipeg Free Press report of the cancellation, with some words from Nigel Douglas, spokesman for the AWA.

Giving thanks for the prairie blessings that remain

2011-10-07T14:31:00.001-07:00

Upland Sandpiper--it was a good year for this species in Saskatchewan

I had an experience this summer that helped me see with fresh eyes the blessings that remain in the prairie world, urging me to be grateful for the wild creatures who continue to enliven our pastures, fields, and sloughs.

A friend I know from volunteering a couple of times at Regina's Marion Centre asked me if I would take her and a visiting member of their apostolate for a bird outing.

Doreen is a sweet soul, open-hearted and full of spirit, so I knew it would be fun to show her some birds. Her friend, Charlie, was from Maryland originally and wanted to see some of our landscape and birds before he left.

I took them for a slow drive east along my favourite road out of the city one evening. Just an average, mid-summer evening: warm light coming from behind us, and a typical mix of birds. What transformed the trip, though, was the way Doreen and Charlie responded to each bird sighting, whether it was a meadowlark in breast-swelling song or a gang of cowbirds on a fence line.

We got a few looks at the Bobolinks and Common Yellowthroats who breed in an Agriculture Canada research field, a pair of Western Kingbirds, a couple of Swainson's and Red-tailed hawks on power poles.

Western Kingbird--a common sight along prairie roads

"Oh my, how beautiful," Doreen would say as each bird showed up in her binoculars. Sometimes it was just a small sound of delight. Both she and Charlie received the birds that came our way with a fresh welcome and complete gratitude for the gift manifest in feathers, song, wings.

I found myself relaxing and happier than I am sometimes when I am alone and grumbling in lament for all that I know is missing from the landscape. An Upland Sandpiper whistled and I felt my heart lift. Looking up, we found it flying with rapid, stiff wingbeats before landing on a power pole.

Moments later, we watched a Solitary Sandpiper and a group of six American Avocets foraging in Wascana Creek. The avocets, fading from their bright breeding plumage, flew back and forth in front of us, up and down the channel, long legs trailing, backs humped, heads lowered. It was glorious seeing them in these slow, circling flights.

American Avocet, beginning to moult

As the evening passed I told Charlie and Doreen about the moult of the avocets, the sexual behaviour of the bobolinks, the natural history of cowbirds, and I spelled the word "slough" for them, unfamiliar as it is to people from the eastern half of the continent.

Later we all watched in awe as a Vesper Sparrow sang to the setting sun from its ditch-side dock plant.

Vesper Sparrow, head back in full song

"So many birds. I can't believe how many birds there are here," Doreen said as we watched cowbirds with some cattle.

I see all that is missing and they see all that is there. And instead of complaining, they were grateful, so grateful, part of them bowing inwardly to each creature, each field of cut hay, or barn, or row of fence.

I don't know if I have ever felt that deep receiving thankfulness, but it seemed in that moment like something I had lost and wanted dearly to feel again.

And so, thanks be for Upland Sandpipers, Avocets, Vesper Sparrows and the many birds we still have. Thanks be for the wet season we had, the waterfowl it spawned in the millions across the land, and thanks be for farmers and ranchers who have found it good to keep native grass or any kind of grass on the land they draw a living from.

Sage grouse fading away as Canada proves once again to be an environmental backwater

2011-09-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Billboard in Calgary sponsored by the Alberta Wilderness Association
The media is beginning to pick up on the story of the Greater Sage Grouse being driven from Canada's sagebrush habitats. Here is the lead fromrecent piece published in the Edmonton Journal.

A new billboard campaign in Edmonton and Calgary flags the disappearance of the province's greater sage grouse, a bird whose grasslands home is compromised by industrial development in southeastern Alberta.

A nation that dredges "ethical oil" from the boreal forest and thumbs its nose at a world concerned about climate change, and where all levels of government approve a pipeline to send tarsands oil to Texas, is not going to blink when its last breeding Sage Grouse disappear, driven out by the same lies of "sustainable resource development".

In this case it is sour gas and oil development, cutting up the remaining critical habitat for sage grouse into small chunks, introducing roads and vertical structures that give predators an advantage, ponds that breed West Nile virus-bearing mosquitoes, and in general making such an industrial clamour that the grouse are unable to communicate and breed in peace.

I could not find a good satellite or aerial image of what Southwestern Saskatchewan and Southeastern Alberta gas fields, but here a shot from Wyoming to give you an idea of what Sage Grouse habitat looks like once it has been given over to gas and oil development:

This kind of destruction of sagebrush habitat and native grassland has put the
American population of sage grouse in peril, but things are far more dire with the Canadian population, which now is down to fewer than 50 birds (all in Saskatchewan and Alberta).

And yet American conservation agencies appear to be doing a lot more than their counterparts in Canada. At least they have begun a program to protect the species' breeding grounds.

Here is a recent article from the New York Times, entitled "SAGE GROUSE: Wyo. 'core area' concept could provide blueprint for BLM conservation strategy."

Will no one in Canadian government face up to the gas industry and strongly advocate that we must protect our critical habitat for this iconic species of the wild prairie?

Biologists are predicting that in two or three years our last Sage Grouse will be gone. What does this say about Canada, about the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta?

Marketing grass-finished beef

2011-09-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

[banner from the Bite Beef website]

It would be wonderful to live in a world where something as good for us and as good for the environment as grass-finished beef would just sell itself and catch on like, say iPhones. Truth is, grass-finished beef needs marketing. Unfortunately, people who raise cattle are not often good at marketing (and the inverse is true too). And while meat from animals that only eat grass can be as tender and tasty as the best grain-fed beef--some would say better than--sometimes it is tough and it almost always requires the cook to take a different approach.

American grass-fed beef producers are ahead of us in Canada in the marketing department--five years ago it made the cover of Time--but we are starting to see some interesting efforts here too. From Alberta recently I heard a story about a couple of young women who have launched something they are calling Bite Beef. They are promoting the health benefits of grass-finished beef and working with local producers to get something ready for market this fall. Their website is quite sophisticated and it looks like they are hoping to sell a high-end boutique beef product to the urban foodie and restaurant markets. Here is a video and article about the two women, Nicole Lamb and Carli Baum, in the Calgary Sun. Hard to tell if they have any native grass in their operations but they refer to alphalfa a lot in their material. Ultimately, we need processing and marketing systems that will bring grass-finished beef from pasture to the supermarket at prices people will pay for food that is healthier for themselves and for prairie ecosystems.

In the meantime, any cattle removed from the industrial feedlot system and finished on grass--whether it is native or otherwise--is at least an improvement over the grain-and-drugs system most cattle are pushed through to put meat on our plates. I hope the Bite Beef people can make a go of it and show Albertans that beef raised entirely on grass is tasty and healthy.

left to right, Bite Beef's Nicole Lamb and Carli Baum

An interview with Ian Tyson on CBC Radio One last year ended with him holding out hope for the prairie if people can make the switch to grass-finished beef. You can listen to the podcast here (scroll down to hour three on the Sunday Edition when it was replayed on Jul10 this year.)

from Ian Tyson's official website

"The cowboy life is fading, and there's only a few places left where it's the real deal," Tyson said. "But if grass-finished beef can make the cover of Time magazine, who the hell knows what's going to happen? They'll need cowboys if they're going to raise grass-finished beef. They're going to have to have guys to chase them on horses."

Cattle on native grass, cowboys on horses herding them--it's an old dream but a worthy one.

French-frying the Ancient Prairie: Alta. Re-opens Potatogate

2011-09-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

Will it be this . . .

. . .or this?

When the Alberta government tried to sell 16,000 acres of native grassland in the Bow Island area to a large potato farming corporation last September (see original posting on this story here), a public outcry put an end to the deal by Christmas (link to posting here).

As the story unfolded in the media, it became known as “Potatogate,” because it seemed to many observers that, for reasons one can only guess, the Ed Stelmach government really wanted this particular potato corporation (SLM Spud Farms) to get the land in question.

As every defender of wildness knows too well, however, any victory is merely a victory for today. The forces of darkness do not go away; they just regroup and come back in disguise. By February this year, the Stelmach Government had a new scheme to sell off provincially-owned grassland. They would unload 84,000 acres of tax recovery land, much of it unbroken native prairie, to counties and municipal districts for a dollar a quarter section. That way, the local authorities would be free to turn around and sell the land off to the highest bidders, without having to worry about annoying little obstacles like provincial regulation and public input.

Again, the Alberta Wilderness Association (the AWA, who should win some kind of award for perseverance) swung into action and got the word out. Letters and emails started to arrive at the Alberta Legislature from people concerned about public land being sold off without any public accountability.

Now, however, the exact same 16,000 Bow Island acres are being put up for sale again--this time in a bid process (here is the official “opportunity notice from the Alberta Government) and after doing a “wildlife survey,” but once again without due public process. Hard to believe but in another way not hard to believe. When you can get away with re-branding tar sands oil as “ethical oil,” why would you not try to sell some endangered species habitat to an industrial potato farming operation?

Here is a Canadian Press article on the story, “Grassland selloff: Alberta seeks to convert native prairie to irrigation land.” And here is an article in the Medicine Hat News showing that after failing in its first attempt to buy the land last year, SLM Spud Farms hired a lobbyist to massage Alberta MLAs and get them to see the light (this is a big potatoe operation but hiring a lobbyist? Makes you wonder if a french fry or potato chip manufacturer is really footing the bill.)

Meanwhile, Alberta is in the midst of a leadership race for the Tory party, in effect determining who will be the next premier. In recent days, one by one the leader candidates are distancing themselves from the boondoggle and questioning what appears to be a rush to sell the land before a new premier gets into power. Here is a Calgary Herald article ("Tough to Find a Tory who likes sale of grassland") on the topic.

According to Cliff Wallis, VP of the AWA and one of the greatest advocates of prairie wildness in this country, the wildlife survey is suspect. It was not done by a professional biologist, but by a practitioner with limited skills in species at risk. Perhaps most damning, no plant work was done during the survey. Apparently, but again not surprisingly, the species at risk survey and report were not prepared for the government but for SLM Spud Farms, who also had the irrigation study done that is included in the bid package materials. Gee, isn’t that handy? The corporation that really wants the 16,000 acres helps the government get all the stuff it needs to initiate the RFP. Well, I guess it’s all one big family in Alberta, so ordinary rules of propriety and governance don’t really apply.

What does it take to convince people that these 100 quarter sections of native grass matter? According to a release on the AWA website , two active burrowing owl nests were found on the lands posted for sale. There is also a breeding pair of the endangered ferruginous hawk, and several pairs of North America’s largest shorebird, the long-billed curlew, a species of special concern. This region is particularly important to female pronghorn antelope, who use it as a fawning ground where they can hide their fawns safely in the native vegetation.

The people who want to convert this ancient and venerable piece of native grassland into irrigated cropland have most of the economic and political force on their side. On the other hand, those of us who would defend such places have most of the science, media opinion, and moral high ground on our side. We need to find more ways to use them--get scientists to make strong public statements, engage more people in the media, and always, always speak from a position of defending those who cannot defend and speak for themselves, i.e. the wild species who depend on these last large remnants of native grass.

And, of course, take a minute to write a letter or email to your Premier and to his Minister of Sustainable Resource Development. Here are the addresses:

The Hon. Ed Stelmach
Premier of Alberta
Room 307, Legislature Building
10800 – 97th Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6
Email: premier@gov.ab.ca

Honourable Mel Knight
Minister of Sustainable Resource Development
Alberta Legislature Building
10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB
T5K 2B6
Phone: 780 415-4815
Email: srd.minister@gov.ab.ca

Grassland birds of the Carden Plains IBA

2011-08-23T11:37:00.001-07:00

Carden Plains Important Bird Area, near Kirkfield, Ontario (image courtesy of Bruce Wilson)

Nature Canada and Bird Studies Canada have been moving forward strongly on their Important Bird Areas program, working with local naturalist organizations and birders to conserve the ecosystems and monitor the birds on some of Canada's most critical pieces of avian habitat. Here in Saskatchewan and in other provinces, local naturalists are signing up to be volunteer caretakers for the IBA in their part of the country.

One IBA I hear a lot about is the Carden Plains in Ontario. Among naturalists in that province, there seems to be a fair bit of pride in the remnant populations of grassland birds at what many simply call the "Carden Alvar." What is an "alvar" was my first question. I hope to get to see the Carden Alvar some day, but while I was on Pelee Island this spring I visited a small alvar there and learned that it is a rare landscape on a base of limestone or dolostone that gives it a distinctive character and matrix of plant and animal species. Amazingly, Ontario is home to 75% of all North American alvars.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) considers the Carden Alvar to be "an internationally significant natural area." Carden is even more imporant because it hosts rare and endangered species, including the Eastern Loggerhead Shrike and several declining species of grassland sparrows.

Bruce Wilson, a birder friend from Barrie, Ontario, recently agreed, after minimal arm-twisting, to write up a piece for Grass Notes explaining a bird banding project he has undertaken at Carden, along with his banding trainer, Nigel Shaw.

Bruce Wilson

Nigel Shaw

Their work caught my eye because they are taking advantage of the high number of birders who come to Carden by fitting banded birds with an additional plastic alpha-numeric band that can be read either in a spotting scope or digital photo. With this approach, any subsequent sightings of individuals will help Bruce and Nigel find out more about nest site fidelity, movement and distribution of the birds they band. Seems like a good idea to me, and it is always heartening to hear of people giving up their time and spending money out of pocket to gather data on our declining grassland birds.

I will let Bruce give you the full details on the project. Here is the report he graciously wrote up for me to post. (All bird photos by Nigel Shaw.)

The Carden Plain Important Bird Area near Kirkfield, Ontario, less than two hours northeast of Toronto, is southern Ontario’s premier area for grassland birds. It is a rare alvar habitat that supports a number of grassland birds including a breeding population of the endangered Eastern Loggerhead Shrike, as well as Bobolinks, Eastern Meadowlarks, Upland Sandpipers, Sedge Wrens, Eastern Bluebirds, Eastern Towhees, and Brown Thrashers. The typical grassland sparrows, Vesper, Savannah, Grasshopper and Field as well as Clay-colored also breed in the area as do Golden-winged Warblers.

The majority of land in the area is privately held with the exception of some areas that have come under the control of the Couchiching Conservancy. Major acquisitions are the Cameron Ranch, Windmill Ranch and Bluebird Ranch totalling some 5000 acres. These properties will eventually become an Ontario Provincial Park thus preserving portions of this unique area. The Couchiching Conservancy is also working with landowners in the area to encourage conservation of important habitats.

It is well-known that many species of grassland birds have declined rapidly over the past few decades. Once common species such as the Bobolink are now listed as threatened by COSEWIC. The decline of the grassland bird species is of concern.

Although some data are collected by means of annual point counts carried out on the Cameron and Windmill Ranches, typically in late May and early June, there are no data with respect to the ages of birds and the number of birds returning to nest each year. To obtain additional data Nigel Shaw licensed master bird bander from Alcona, Ontario and Bruce Wilson of Barrie, Ontario have undertaken a banding study with the permission of the Couchiching Conservancy and the Ontario Ministry of Natural resources. In particular they are focusing on several of the grassland species known to nest on The Ranches, namely: Upland Sandpiper; Clay-colored Sparrow; Savannah Sparrow; Vesper Sparrow; Grasshopper Sparrow; Bobolink; Eastern Meadowlark and Horned Lark.

Grasshopper Sparrow, just after banding

Banding studies have shown that many birds show a site fidelity and return to the same breeding area each year. The Carden IBA study will help determine if the same is true for the target species on The Ranches. The banding program will provide additional knowledge about movements of birds and will help determine the dynamics of the population trends of some of the typical grassland bird species by assessing the numbers of breeding birds and production of young. One advantage of carrying out a study on The Ranches is there are a large number of birders who frequent the area and will be able to report sightings of banded birds.

The study will be carried out over a number of years to collect the data necessary to better understand the breeding populations on The Ranches. The birds are attracted with audio lures and captured using conventional mist nests. When a bird is removed from the nets it is banded, wing chord measured made, weighed, moult patterns recorded, photographed and released. The birds are tagged with the standard bird bands as well as a plastic alpha-numeric band such that each bird will have a unique number. Studies of Green Finch in Europe using the same type of bands show the band numbers can be read with a spotting scope or by examination of digital photographs.

Adult Field Sparrow, showing alpha-numeric band

The program got off to a late start this years due to having to wait for delivery of the bands from overseas. On July 25 Nigel and Bruce went out to the Windmill Ranch hoping, given the late time, to be able to get a few birds but were pleasantly surprised with the results. In about 5 hours time they managed to band a total of 13 birds of which 10 were the target species. Although there were not many birds actively singing they responded well to the audio lures.

Clay Coloured Sparrow, just after banding

Target species banded:

Grasshopper Sparrow 2 adult, 1 hatch year
Clay Colored Sparrow 3 adult
Savannah Sparrow 1 adult, 1 hatch year
Vesper Sparrow 1 adult
Field Sparrow 1 adult

Other species

Yellow Warbler
Gray Catbird
Song Sparrow

An Upland Sandpiper responded to the call by coming into the net are but flying over. This bird was a different one than one heard a few minutes earlier.

Based on the results the birds will still respond to the audio lure despite the apparent lateness of the season. This bodes wells for work next year.

Next year's early efforts will focus on areas that lead to the various point counts on the Ranches hoping birds trapped there will be more likely to be seen again.

This is an interesting project and it is hoped it will give us more information about the little brown jobs most people do not give a second thought to.

Ducks need grass too

2011-08-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

Drake Ruddy Duck displaying in late July near Grasslands National Park, Sage Herriot

This wet spring and summer has made for as ducky a breeding season as I can remember. There are ponds and sloughs everywhere on the prairie and in late June and July every one of them seemed to host a brood of mallards, wigeon, scaup or redhead.

I often report alarming and discouraging statistics in this space, but here are some we can all celebrate. According to an outdoor column I read today, U.S. Fish & Wildlife waterfowl surveys are estimating 45.6 million breeding ducks in the North American population this year. That means they believe we will have 11 percent more ducks than they estimated last year (40.9 million) during the spring survey. They have been keeping data on this since 1955 and this year’s estimate is 35 percent above the long term average! In fifty-six years, the estimate has exceeded 40 million only five times. (See below for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife estimates on the common duck species that breed on the northern Great Plains.)

According to this same column, the aerial pond counts in the United States and Canada showed 8.1 million ponds, a 22 percent increase from last year’s estimate and 62 percent above the long-term average. Only one other time in the history of the survey has the figure gone beyond 8 million.

Redhead landing at a dugout near Lanigan

As terrific as these figures are (you knew I would have something to qualify all the good news), they would have been even better if our wetlands were surrounded by wider margins of grassland. Too many of our sloughs are cultivated right up to the water’s edge. Ducks don’t ask for a lot of grassland habitat, but many species need to have some upland grass beyond the water’s edge to nest in.

Unfortunately, nesting cover has been declining in both the Canadian provinces and the American states on the northern Great Plains. In the U.S., grassland formerly protected by the Conservation Reserve Program has recently been converted to cropland in response to high corn prices driven by federal subsidies for biofuel production. According to Ducks Unlimited, North Dakota alone has lost 22 percent of its CRP acres since 2007. They estimate that another 387,000 acres will be lost in 2010-2011 and more than 1 million acres will be lost in 2012-13. (For more on this concern about losing native grassland in the duck-breeding prairies of the northern states, see this excellent column by Minneapolis Star-Tribune writer, Dennis Anderson.)

Ring-necked Duck pair in early spring, beaver pond in Upper Indian Head Creek

All the water we have this year and are likely to still have in the next couple of years could produce even more waterfowl if Canadian and American governments would stop subsidizing biofuels and instead begin to subsidize carbon sequestration in perennial grassland.

Having said that, these reports of high duck numbers and pond counts are as encouraging as anything I have heard this year in conservation circles. Like many prairie naturalists, I'm feeling grateful for the recovery of our prairie waterfowl, and looking forward to seeing some large flocks this September and October as they begin to gather for the flight south.

Northern pintail near Strawberry Lake Community Pasture

Here is a breakdown of estimates for this year species by species:

Mallards — 9 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 22 percent greater than long-term average.

Gadwalls — 9 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 80 percent greater than long-term average.

Wigeons — 14 percent decrease compared with 2010 estimates; 20 percent less than long-term average.

Green-winged teal — 17 percent decrease compared with 2010 estimates; 47 percent greater than long-term average.

Blue-winged teal — 41 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 91 percent greater than long-term average.

Shoveler — 14 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 98 percent greater than long-term average.

Pintail — 26 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 10 percent greater than long-term average.

Redheads — 27 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 106 percent greater than long-term average.

Canvasback — 18 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 21 percent greater than long-term average.

Scaup — 2 percent increase compared with 2010 estimates; 15 percent less than long-term average.

Source: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Photo journal of Grasslands NP trip

2011-08-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

yellow coneflower, by Sage Herriot

Last week I made a quick trip down to the West Block of Grasslands National Park and back to work on an assignment for Canadian Geographic. My second oldest daughter, Sage, a photography student at Ontario's Sheridan College, came along for the drive to take some photos. She had to use my camera, which is a bottom of the line Canon Rebel with a stock lens and a 100-400mm zoom (5.6), but even so many of the shots Sage took came out very nicely--mostly because she knows how to use a camera.

Here are the results--all of these shots were taken by Sage--except the fuzzy ones of the weasel and the prairie falcon.

Half way to the park, just as we were coming off the Missouri Coteau, we came across this abandoned farmyard swarming with hundreds of tree, bank, cliff, and barn swallows.

On the road into the West Block ecotour we found a number of Chestnut-collared Longspurs still in song and perching on rocks and fenceposts.

This shot Sage took of the Frenchman River shows how extensive the Yellow Sweet Clover is this year. Let's hope this introduced species does not become a permanent problem in the park.

This fledgling meadowlark sat still for a photo--mostly because it wasn't that confident flying yet.

Lark Buntings were easy to find outside the park on the return portion of the Ecotour road.

We spotted this fellow, a fairly large Western Painted turtle, along a road south of the West Block.

The park's buffalo were off in a remote coulee during our visit, but this small herd of longhorns was just west of the western edge of the West Block.

Here is my weasel photo. Again on a road outside the park, we found this Long-tailed Weasel trotting into the ditch carrying a Richardson's Ground Squirrel ("gopher") in its jaws.

This Prairie Falcon sat atop a prairie dog mound in the grey light of dawn. Here it is in flight:

Another view of the West Block. Sage took some landscape shots but, like most photographers, found the park's wide open landscapes challenging to shoot.

I think this is a young Krider's Red-tailed Hawk.

Then there is the one that got away. On the drive home we skirted the northern edge of Old Wive's Lake, which is a vast inland sea this summer, and I am pretty sure we had a glimpse of a Swift Fox. It trotted along the trail in front of us but when I stopped to try and get a photo it vanished into the cropland as I held the camera and watched the wheat sway to its hidden passage. If it was a Swift Fox--and I am not sure what else has a small fox body with a black-tipped tail--it was pretty far north. The recovery of the Swift Fox in Canada has been one of a few success stories in our grassland species at risk--thanks to the vision of Miles, Beryl, and Clio Smeeton early on, and the more recent efforts of the Environment Canada and the Calgary Zoo.

On the Sweetgrass Trail

2011-07-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

In the warm, sweet days of midsummer it's hard to bring myself to the computer, which is why I have not posted in a few weeks, but here is a story of one of those fine days.

The most storied of native grasses to grow on this continent is Sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata) and though it is locally common in our part of the prairie, I always have trouble finding it. We like to gather some every summer and braid it up to hang in the rafters of the cabin, so for the second year running Karen and I asked Rob, Cherry Lake's resident botanist, to take us on a Sweetgrass expedition and show us how to find it.

It was the last day of a weekend of celebrating and learning about ancient skills--people brain-tanning hides, starting fires with bows, flint-knapping, gathering wild foods, throwing the atlatl. A dip in the lake followed by a hike to find the sweetgrass that grows on the far end seemed like a good way to finish off.

It took us a while, but eventually Rob located it on the edge of a Bobolink's territory where its mature seed heads shined bronze in the sun amid sedges and wire rushes. For the next half hour we crouched to pick enough for a couple of braids and I did my best to learn how to identify the flower structure.

This Creative Commons image by Krzysztof Ziarnek

This is the grass whose very name evinces its role in the spiritual traditions that run deepest in this part of the world. Hieros is Greek for "sacred" or "sanctified", and Chloa is Greek for "grass." This sanctified grass is among the most important gifts of the Creator for indigenous people on the prairie. One Blackfoot account of its origins says that Sweetgrass once lived in the sky along with another holy plant, the prairie turnip, which we now call IndianBreadroot (Psoralea esculenta).

Morning Star became smitten with a young Blackfoot woman and brought her into the sky to live with him. She was happy there until she was tempted to pull the sacred turnip up, which Sun Chief had forbidden her to touch, because it was plugging the hole through which his son, Morning Star, had brought the young woman. Looking into the hole she saw below the prairie where she grew up, shining in the sun, and her people there in their lodges and she became homesick. Angered at her transgression, but showing his unending mercy, Sun Chief sent her back to her people, giving her the sacred turnip and sweetgrass, as well as a digging stick, to help guide the Blackfoot in their journey.

This story, an abridged conflation of a few different versions from Blackfoot tradition, reminds us that we are meant always to receive from the Creator in a spirit of humility and greatitude, and that when we take without proper gestures of respect and reverence, it is a transgression that brings repercussions, yes, but always within the wider mercy and compassion of the Creator.

Walking back from our picking expedition, and thinking about things like gratitude and what it means to really receive a gift, I stepped into one of the new mudflats exposed along the creek in this year's flooding. Immediately, I began seeing worked lithic materials, flakes at first, and then a small shard that could have been a scraper. Two more paces and I saw the outline of a sharpened point jutting out from the mud sideways, as though it had been dropped moments before. Here it is, made from a pinkish quartzite.

I am no expert, but comparing it to drawings in books and online, my best guess is that it is a point from what archeologists have named the Besant culture, which occupied this prairie from 2000 to 1150 before present. The Besant were considered to be among the most proficient buffalo hunters to ever live on the plains.

At the end of a weekend where we gathered with friends to imagine and rediscover the skills that allow for a more direct, less mediated engagement with the earth and all of its gifts, it felt like a small blessing to find this artifact left by the ones who first developed these lifeways and the ethics that moderated their use in the land.

Western Red Lily, another mid-summer blessing from the prairie (photo by Maia Claire Herriot)

Giving hayland birds a break in a wet year

2011-06-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

Bobolink pair (female on left)

A few days ago, before the daily monsoons hit, I had a sunny evening free and decided to go for a drive just southeast of Regina to see what birds I could find along the Wascana Creek floodplain.

Almost as soon as I was out of the city I found an alfalpha field with several birds. Mostly species that will accept tame hayland in place of native grass. Western meadowlarks, bobolinks, sedge wrens, savvanah sparrows, and common yellowthroats flew back and forth over the alfalpha or landed on fence posts or high weed stalks to sing. Species like these have adapted to the simplified structure of hay fields, or at least it seems they have adapted.

We don't know for sure whether this king of habitat is really working for these species. It may attract them to come and set up territories but in the end not provide the right matrix of cover from predators and food supply that they need to rear young. Their biggest peril comes from the farmer's mower in late June or early July. Most hay fields are cut the first time before the end of June in wet years. When that happens in a field like the one I saw just outside of the city, nests, fledglings and sometimes adult birds are destroyed.

Farmers work within a demanding cost-price squeeze. They don't get any income from raising baby bobolinks and sedge wrens, which makes it all the more amazing when you hear of a hay farmer taking measures to avoid harming the birds nesting in his hay fields. Those who are willing to, will delay their first cut to July 25, by which time most if not all young birds will be flying and dispersed from their nesting sites.

Some farmers aware of the birds just leave a piece of each field uncut, rotating to different spots each year to allow some tall grass habitat for the birds that need it.

Here are some guidelines for farmers who feel they can afford to give the birds a break and for landowners who lease out hay land or allow a local farmer to mow it:

If you can wait to mow, wait until July 25 for the first cut.

If you have to mow before July 25, consider leaving part of the field uncut.

If you must mow, start at the centre and mow out, giving nestlings a chance to flee to safety at the edge of the field.

In the long term, consider a three-year mowing rotation leaving some fields uncut each year.

savannah sparrow

In a year as wet as this one, many of these hay land species will be delaying nesting and having to renest after their nests are flooded out. Any break we can give them will help ensure that we get to hear their songs and see their colours in years to come.

Things popping up at Cherry Lake

2011-06-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

The wet earth this spring has stirred to life some things I do not always get to see on the prairie, and in the coulees and wetlands at Cherry Lake.

The photo above shows a mushroom, verpa Bohemica, sometimes called "Early Morel" that I found in mid-May in a deep, shaded ravine on the north side of our land. The glade was covered in wood violet leaves, just emerging cow parsnip, and a liberal sprinkling of bud scales sticky with resin from balsam poplar twigs in the canopy. At first I thought they might be a kind of stinkhorn, which is another even more phallic fungi, the one that Charles Darwin's daughter, Henrietta, is said to have purged from local woods, to protect the chastity of her servant girls.

After searching through field guides, I realized that I'd missed a chance to taste another kind of wild edible mushroom, one that is said to be tasty, and harmless to most people, though some apparently react by losing their coordination. There were dozens of these fungi jutting up impudently from the winter-worn earth and trumpeting the fecundity of spring. Just as well I didn't try eating them, perhaps--I am uncoordinated enough without ingesting the complex chemistry of a dubious fungi.

The other wild thing sprouting forth in profusion this spring we have fed on several times. At first, sauteed in olive oil, garlic and lemon for two different meals and then in a wonderful quiche that appeared on our supper table last night.

our youngest, Maia, holding the season's bounty

Stalking the wild asparagus on a nearby abandoned farm site (location guarded with the greatest of secrecy), has become an annual May and early June outing at Cherry Lake. This spring we were able to harvest a crop twice, though we could have done three. Shameless as trespassing berry-pickers, we eat a few fresh as we search through the undergrowth for each stalk leaping up to get some sun, but the feast begins when we make it back to the kitchen and grill or fry up a batch.

This is a bad image of another surprise at Cherry Lake: a snowy egret.

Last weekend, we had several young families out for a campout (including the family belonging to Erin Knuttila, who sometimes reads things in this space). We went for walks, let the kids touch frogs and snakes, paddle canoes alongside beavers, and cross a stream from log to log. At dusk as we shared supper, I saw a large white bird with no black on its wings crossing the lake to the south. Through binoculars I could tell it was an egret, likely a snowy, by the speed of its wing-flap, but it was too far for me to see the yellow socks that set it apart from other egrets.

Then the next morning, as we all returned to the valley after a car tour of the upland prairie seeing Sprague's pipits, bobolinks and ducks, the egret flew across the road in front of us and landed in the creek's marshy margins. We jumped out of the vehicles and stood there, watching the angel-grace of a large white bird taking the air.

I tried to get a photo but in my excitement, I had the auto-focus set wrong and botched the opportunity. Still, the fuzzy photos do show the diagnostic yellow.

Surprises like these--a thrust of fungi, a bounty of asparagus, an egret--wake us up to miracles and mysteries whose lives are more entangled with our own than we can ever know.

Gas Development Pushs Greater Sage-Grouse toward Crisis

2011-06-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

image courtesy of John Carlson

Within the next few weeks, Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment staff will be visiting Greater Sage-Grouse habitat in Saskatchewan to prepare for a thorough helicopter survey of the breeding population in the spring of 2012.

In both Saskatchewan and Alberta, the remaining known leks (dancing grounds) are surveyed from the ground each April, but their habitat is notoriously remote and difficult to access at that time of year and so the only way to properly check some of the leks is from the air.

By this time next spring, then, we should have a much better idea of how many Sage Grouse we have left. Those who think and care about this magnificent bird will be waiting in dread. The last ground-based surveys, in the spring of 2010, put the total Canadian population at an estimated 200 birds (down from 2,000 in the 1990s).

What is behind this crash in population? Dr. Mark Boyce, Professor and Alberta Conservation Association Chair in Fisheries and Wildlife at the University of Alberta, has studied the species and has no qualms about pointing to the primary cause. In a recent article (access the pdf here and go to the feature on page 4) he wrote for Wildlands Advocate, the journal of the Alberta Wilderness Association, Boyce points to natural gas development and makes it clear that Environment Canada failed to identify Critical Wildlife Habitat for the Greater Sage-Grouse, thus rendering it incapable of protecting it from the rampant resource development that is going on in Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Boyce is not enthusiastic about the re-introduction project underway this summer in Alberta. The provincial wildlife branch is getting some Sage Grouse from Montana and introducing into former Sage-Grouse areas in Alberta. In Boyce's opinion, "the
entire exercise might be futile anyway, given that there is very little undisturbed
habitat remaining and the little that does remain continues to be eroded."

He ends the article with this stark prediction:

I fear that it might be too late already for this
spectacular bird in Alberta. Habitat protection
and restoration are most crucial to ensuring
its persistence in Alberta. No translocation or
conservation program can be successful without a
total ban on future development and disturbance in
critical habitat for Greater sage-grouse.

Unfortunately, this is not merely happening north of the 49th parallel. Things are also getting bad in Montana and Wyoming. Natural gas and coalbed methane development is driving the Greater Sage-Grouse from the land throughout its range, even in its core population zones, where only a few years ago the species was thriving in great numbers. Ten thousand or more new wells are proposed in some of Wyoming's most important Sage Grouse habitat and current buffer regulations allow the industry to build roads and well pads as close as 600 metres to an active lek. Mark Boyce and others have shown that the species needs a lot more space from development than that.

Later this month, conservationists and scientists working on the decline of the Greater Sage-Grouse will be meeting in Wyoming to discuss the crisis and see what can be done to prevent further destruction and fragmentation of its habitat. Here's hoping they come up with a strategy that will get the industry to back off and stay away from key Sage Grouse lekking and nesting zones.

losing our common farmland birds: the Barn Swallow

2011-05-24T13:35:00.001-07:00

this photo of the Barn Swallow courtesy of Creative Commons

A bird that has pooped on every rural doorstep from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island is now a threatened species in Canada. Earlier this month, COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada) met in Charlottetown, PEI to assess the conservation status of 40 Canadian wildlife species. Up for discussion amongst several fishes, molluscs, insects, whales and amphibians, was a bird that every Canadian farmer knows, the Barn Swallow. Why designate a species that still seems very common? The short answer is because its numbers have fallen by as much as 76% in the past 40 years. If that continues the bird that gives the meaning to "swallowtail" will be all but gone by mid-century.

In my mind, this designation of one of the continent's most numerous and widespread birds is a sign that we have left the initial phase of bird decline and entered a new era. In general (there are exceptions) most of the species on COSEWICs list have had rather narrow niches and restricted breeding ranges making them particularly vulnerable. It's one thing to list a long-billed murrelet or a sage thrasher, because we don't have a lot of old growth Douglas Fir or Silver Sage habitat left. But we know we have reached another level of ecological dysfunction when we start listing the adaptive birds that have become habituated to our disturbed agricultural landscapes.

Here is the "Reason for Designation" from COSEWIC's database:

This is one of the world’s most widespread and common landbird species. However, like many other species of birds that specialize on a diet of flying insects, this species has experienced very large declines that began somewhat inexplicably in the mid to late 1980s in Canada. Its Canadian distribution and abundance may still be greater than prior to European settlement, owing to the species’ ability to adapt to nesting in a variety of artificial structures (barns, bridges, etc.) and to exploit foraging opportunities in open, human-modified, rural landscapes. While there have been losses in the amount of some important types of artificial nest sites (e.g., open barns) and in the amount of foraging habitat in open agricultural areas in some parts of Canada, the causes of the recent population decline are not well understood. The magnitude and geographic extent of the decline are cause for conservation concern.

There are undoubtedly many things behind the decline of this and other aerial insectivores (the Common Nighthawk, the other swallows and swifts, and many flycatchers), but the common denominator here is the food they eat: flying insects. The one insect we pay attention to, the European Honeybee, has experienced alarming declines in many areas of the continent in recent years. No one does Breeding Insect Surveys the way we have been doing Breeding Bird Surveys for more than forty years, so we have no baseline from which to measure the populations of our bugs. It seems a fair guess, given our ongoing toxification of soils, air, and waterways, that the chemical compounds we make and release into the environment--many of them specifically designed to kill insects--are affecting the breeding cycles and abundance of the creatures our insectivorous birds depend on.

Bird Studies Canada's Director of National Programs, Jon McCracken, wrote about this three years ago in a BSC newsletter. Jon does a fine job of presenting the alarming data and then discussing the whole range of possible factors contributing to the decline of our aerial insectivors. Not a happy read but it helps you understand why a bird like the Barn Swallow is now on COSEWIC's roster.

I had a very brief chance to talk to Jon when I was visiting Ontario two weeks ago, at a talk I gave in Simcoe for the Norfolk Field Naturalists. I was delighted to meet Jon and the other BSC folks who made the drive from Port Rowan to come out for the event. If there is any hope in these dark days for our birds and biodiversity it is in the people working for NGOs like Bird Studies and others across Canada. They are doing all they can to protect the birds and the integrity of their habitats and to educate the rest of us. We have to do our part and heed the warnings that the Barn Swallow and other common birds send our way.

Eastern Kingbird on a pasture near Cherry Lake--another common aerial insectivore in Canadian farmland that is declining each year.

Book review and some bird photos from trip to Pelee Island

2011-05-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

Pelee Island, Ontario. SpringSong Bird Festival.
While chasing a trio of blackburnian warblers one early morning last week I came face to face with this winsome creature beneath the Carolinian canopy of hackberry, oak, and shagbark hickory trees. We clapped eyes and stared at one another for a solid minute, sixty feet separating us. I may never see a grey fox again in this life, for it is one of Canada’s rarest mammals, but in that minute I sensed a kindred intelligence and awareness behind those eyes.

You may see the same thing when you look into the eyes of your beagle or palomino, but what exactly else is happening, and how much can we attribute to the lives and minds of the other animals we are crowding from this earth?

This is the subject of a fine new book by Dale Peterson, author of the acclaimed Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man. The Moral Lives of Animals takes some steps toward redefining animal nature, but I found myself selfishly interested in what the book says about human nature too and where these “natures” overlap. Early on, Peterson gives us an historic perspective on how we in the West have regarded other animals and their capacity for moral behaviour. Contrasting Medieval conceptions of animals as intelligent but under-endowed beings who can be held responsible for their actions with the Cartesian view in which animals are seen to be machine-like, mindless beings, Peterson posits a third way, an understanding that while we share some intellectual and moral qualities with animals, they are different, not only from us but from one another. A whale mind is not like a cat mind.

Quoting Herman Melville’s Moby Dick as a springboard for his ideas on animal life, Peterson interprets for us the research of primatologists and other animal scientists, illuminating the lives and minds of elephants, bonobos, chimpanzees, gibbons, chickadees, hyenas, lions, lizards, frogs, wolves and many other creatures. Never technical or data-heavy, the narrative leads out into the jungle then circles back to human cultures and behaviour before making another foray into the wild. Without being shrill or sentimental, Peterson shows us again and again that we are sharing this earth with many other wondrous beings who in their own ways think, love, hate, console, avenge, grieve, and feel.

Which brings me back to my encounter with the grey fox on Pelee Island. As we looked at one another I thought I sensed something more than curiosity or fear in her. The way she moved, came to attention, and stared made me wonder what she was thinking about. A few days later I found out. Staff at the Pelee Island Bird Observatory, which hosted the SpringSong Festival, discovered her den with seven kits, about 150 feet from where I took the photo. Here is another shot of her.

Here are a few of the bird photos I took on Pelee Island during my stay as the guest birder at the SpringSong Bird Festival.

Black-throated Green Warblers were fairly common on the island

I saw more Nashville Warblers on the island than I have seen in 25 years of birding. Almost as common as yellow-rumped warblers are here.

Best looks at Blackburnian Warblers I have ever had. Must've seen ten or more in four days.

We get Black and White warblers at Cherry Lake, but they are hard to photograph

The star bird everyone wanted to see were the two male Prothonotary warblers hanging around the swamps at the south end of Pelee Island. There are only a few pairs now breeding in Canada so it was a treat to see them. Here is one last shot of a Prothonotary, dwarfed by the big tree behind it.

The names of things

2011-04-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

Anenome patens, we call it Pasque Flower, a name that seemed just right this year, because I took this photo on Easter Sunday.

Like a lot of men, I often find myself asking forgiveness of the woman who puts up with me. What I have noticed lately with my wife is that when I am too obtuse to realize I have goofed up, she gives me a look that lets me know. Hard to describe, but it’s one of those graceful things a woman seems able to manifest without a lot of forethought.

Yesterday morning Karen joined me on a morning walk in the city and we stopped to listen to a junco singing from the top of a spruce tree. She said something about all the “fir trees” in the neighbourhood. Rather than outright correct her, I thought I would be more gentle, skilful, even a bit inclusive, and ponder aloud, “Odd, isn’t it that we have hardly any actual fir trees in the whole city, and spruce trees everywhere but we still call them ‘fir’. Hmmph. Strange.”

Turning to Karen I saw her face flash from incredulity to the Buddha who suffers fools inclined to say one too many times that a paddle and an oar are two different things. I opened my mouth to make apologetic noises but was stopped by another look.

“Don’t even bother,” the look said. And so I didn’t.

Then spent the rest of the day wondering why the names of things matter to me, apart from their obvious utility as merit badges for the know it all and convenient handles for communication. Why not just have direct, unmediated experiences of each thing in its thingness, each being in its (inter)beingness? Why let any “spruce” or “fir” intervene between our apprehension and the green cone of branching, prickly matter shooting up from the lawn?

Naming seems like the most human of acts. Yes, dolphins can recognize one another by unique signature whistles, but can they refer to one another by repeating that whistle? Other animals use non-linguistic communication to recognize their own offspring of course, but naming allows more than recognition; it allows for reference. A name makes it easy for me to tell you about a subject that is neither you nor I.

Pasque flower again next to a piece of limestone sprinked with lichens I cannot name though the yellow one is likely a Xanthoria

We have no way of knowing whether any other animal can stick a referent on something and use it in language, but it seems unlikely. Interesting too that in Creation myths, it’s usually man and not God or nature that does the naming of the myriad forms. There is a built-in arrogance there, and assumption of primacy or dominion, but perhaps it is not unfounded. For a primate with very dependant offspring travelling in extended family clans, the capacity to use words to differentiate and tag the differences must have been a tremendously helpful advantage. A few hundred generations later, however, these naming hominids have taken the adaptation to the hubristic extremes now threatening the planet’s life systems.

Even as we homogenize the earth with the bland over-culture of our desires writ large, we are losing the names of the things. Entire indigenous languages have been extinguished and degraded so that the names of places and creatures most intimately christened by human tongues are lost to our wisdom. Prairie school children not very long ago would learn the names of several birds and wildflowers as part of the curriculum, but that is gone. A fifth-grader today can recognize and name twenty corporate logos, but would be unable to put a tag on the red-breasted bird yanking worms from his front lawn.

Science and faith seem to agree that we live in a relational cosmos, a universe where things are intimately interconnected and wonderfully complex. Naming helps us to participate consciously in and to make some sense of that relationality. Even revel in it if we choose. But it does something else too that could perhaps help us renew our relationships, the oh so crucial ones that might keep us from destroying the earth. In traditional narratives of romance between two people or religious narratives of blessing between Creator and created, the saying of a name is a deep expression of love.

In our hearts we understand that we can only love what we know and only know what we can distinguish within the many forms that surround us. To love a child is certainly to love all children, but paradoxically, to love a child is also to recognize that child as unique, to say its name.

I may never be privileged to see creation from the mystic’s or the quantum physicist’s perch and know that all is truly united in a singular flow of matter and energy, despite the illusory spin of time and space. Like most people, I am caught in an ego that sees itself as real and distinct and looks outward on a lot of other creatures that seem very real and distinct too. I confess to enjoying the distinctions and am endlessly curious to know more of what it is that makes one being a little bit different from another.

this time of year on the prairie, every willow that looks like this is a "Pussy Willow" and maybe that is name enough

Issues on grassland I am following

2011-04-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

Grasslands National Park, East Block
I did a fifteen minute radio interview the other day with Michael Short who does an outdoors program played by AM radio all over Alberta. We were talking about the Tax Recovery Lands issue in Alberta, where the Stelmach government seems determined to find a way to hand thousands of acres of ancient grasslands over to those who would like to plough it. (The program ran on April 17, but you can listen to the interview here. Go to the 6:50 point in the show and you should find the interview. It is a bit tricky though, because there seems to be an overlay of some other interview and every second time you click on the zone where my interview is (approx 6:50 to 20:26) you get the other interview. Click again and you should find the TRL discussion.)

But that is only one attack on prairie wildness that has come to my attention in recent days. Last week there was an editorial published in both the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and the Western Producer, written by the Reeve of Churchbridge, arguing that in fact destroying wetlands and ploughing most of the prairie under has brought more wildlife to the countryside. Take a look at it here and then keep your eyes out for a letter sent in response by Lorne Scott, Reeve of Indian Head.

Finally, the day before yesterday, I receieved word that the National Energy Board is considering a new gas pipeline that will be built right across some of the last large pieces of native grass in the province. If you have a moment look at some of these documents:

1.Draft Scope of Factors for the Environmental Assessment
2. Project description prepared for the NEB
3.NEB’s notice of public hearing on the project.

Does it cross native grassland? Here is what the project description document says:

Within Saskatchewan, habitat of high potential for listed species and other species of management concern includes native prairie and shrub/treed habitats, wetlands, riparian systems and valleys, and coulees. Land traversed and in the vicinity of the proposed development within Alberta is cultivated and is therefore of lesser value to listed species.

Worrisome. The doc also says on page 30 that the pipeline goes through Wildlife Habitat Protection Act lands (which begs the question of what the Sask Environment people are doing or not doing). Pipelines leave a big scar and will undoubtedly introduce weeds that will degrade the prairie.

With all of the cultivated cropland we have in this province they should be able to find a route through land that has already been destroyed!!

I see nothing in these documents about mitigation. Can they rip up miles and miles of native grassland, displace native species of plants, ruin habitat for species at risk, introduce invasive species, and then do nothing to make up for the loss? Don't they have to do some native grassland restoration work on equivalent acres they purchase or at the very least purchase conservation easements on other pieces of native grass that match the amount they destroy?

We are going to need Saskatchewan people to speak up at the hearings this fall, request intervenor status if they can (deadline is May 17) and ask the hard questions.

Photo Post: Burning Bluestem, 2011

2011-04-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Four of us (Sylvie, Rob, Karen and I) headed up onto the prairie at Cherry Lake this past Sunday to do another spring burn.

We like to do it in spring when there is still enough snow on the ground to protect the woods and give us options for control. In most of these shots you can see that our grassland is never far from woodland, which is typical for prairie in the Aspen Parkland Ecoregion.

This year we bought a fancy drip-torch to light fires. Fire boss Rob let me hold it long enough so I could look important in a photo.

But this is what the unskilled labour was doing most of the time--sweeping out the fire edges once we had burned as far as we wanted to. (In a better photo you'd be able to see how keen Karen was at this job because I don't let her do it at home very often.)

I just like this shot Karen took.

This is what it looked like when we were done. We were burning mostly Little Bluestem grass and brome at the base of our biggest, south-facing slopes, stopping the fire when it rose up to the more xeric grasses at mid-slope.

The whole time we were working, there was a kettle of red-tailed hawks circling just south of the column of smoke rising from our valley. The image above shows how they appeared to the naked eye--there were fourteen in all.

Here is a closer look with the telephoto lens. In the bottom left corner you can see that one of them is a Turkey Vulture.

They stayed for hours in roughly the same piece of sky, leading us to wonder if they had some instinctive attraction to burning grassland or whether there were warm updrafts from the fire that were fun to ride.

One, a typical Borealis Red-tailed Hawk, wheeled close enough for this shot.

Not Dick van Dyke, but this sweep loves the soot and the smoke of a prairie fire and the thought of crocuses rising just below the ashes.

Landscape of the Soul: Courtney Milne

2011-04-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

image by Courtney Milne, from his Pool of Possibilities

Last night, in a theatre with 100 other people, I was immersed in a symphony of light, shadow, colour, movement, and song that achieved what the best of human art aspires to: a reflecting back to the Creation something of its own beauty. The late eco-theolgian Thomas Berry often said that "human consciousness is the universe reflecting back on itself" and that our creativity in art and science is the Cosmos celebrating itself in conscious awareness.

In his life and death, Courtney Milne, one of the prairie's great artists and mystics, joined in that Cosmic celebration more than anyone I know. Courtney died just last August, leaving us with his photographs and wisdom to accompany us on our own creative paths. Seeing his work again last night on a large screen in a multi-media presentation, illumined by a choir singing poems to life and to the earth, was incredibly moving. All of us gathered there could feel it, our hard edges blurring just a bit, a flow of energies we don't often acknowledge binding us together in a shared experience that seemed, for lack of any better word, liturgical.

The choir, focussed, balanced, and singing and moving with great mindfulness and accord, was conducted by Jean-Marie Kent, a visiting professor at the University of Regina. The music she selected worked seamlessly with the dance of Courtney's imagery put together by Gerald Saul and David Gerhard. A luminous spirit shone through the whole experience, a spirit well familiar to those who knew Courtney and his work.

image by Courtney Milne, from his Pool of Possibilities

The Mendell Art Gallery is putting together a solo exhibition of Courtney's Pool of Possibility work this summer. Perhaps there will be a way to recreate something from last night's performance at the show's opening.

To learn more about Courtney's most recent work, the beauty he found in his own backyard and the wisdom it engendered in his heart, please visit the Poolof Possibilities website. Courtney's partner Sherrill Miller maintains the site, which I recommend to anyone looking to find creativity, insight, and soulfulness in their days.

During the last year of his life, Courtney gave me a year's subscription to an e-calendar of his poolside wisdom and daily photographs. Spending a few minutes each day with Courtney at the Pool of Possibilities always brought me down to earth, reminding me I have a body and a soul and some responsibilities that go along with them.

image by Courtney Milne, from his Pool of Possibilities

In Defence of Alberta's TRL Land

2011-03-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

Some of the grassland in Alberta's TRL land could look like this if the deal goes through

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the Alberta government giving 130 square miles of the province's Crown native grassland to two rural counties. These "Tax Recovery Lands" are part of Alberta's natural heritage and for thousands of years have supported rich ecological communities characteristic of the northern Great Plains. Communities that are among the most endangered on the continent.

In the past few weeks, Alberta conservation organizations have been issuing news releases, sending letters and emails, and pressuring the government to come to its senses and stop the giveaway scheme. And a scheme it is, for the motive behind this move is both political and tactical. The Stelmach government in Alberta is turning up some of the worst popularity figures of any Conservative government in that one-party province's history. They are hoping that giving land away to rural counties will win them back some support. But buying votes may not be the primary purpose of the giveaway.

It is not a coincidence that this strategy of giving away TRL came up shortly after their efforts to sell a large piece of native grassland in the region were thwarted by a public outcry. The land was to be converted to irrigated potato crops for a potato chip corporation. "Potatogate" people called it because the Stelmach government came under sharp criticism for proposing the sale. Conservationists now believe that this TRL deal is an attempt to out-manoever opposition by passing the land into the hands of counties who only answer to their local rural ratepayers and will do what they like with the land--sell it to the highest bidder and let them turn it into centre-pivot irrigation farmland.
If this is not what is happening, then why won't the Alberta Government come clean and declare exactly what pieces of land will receive some kind of protection and what pieces will be sold without any restrictions? Why won't they tell their citizens whether any environmental assessment has been done on the TRL lands that are included in the deal? With no disclosure, no transparency, and no consultation, can anyone fault us for suggesting that something nefarious is going on here?

Adding to the breach of public trust, there is the issue of the Alberta's "South Saskatchewan Land Use Framework," which the government says will ensure “a healthy economy supported by our land and natural resources; healthy ecosystems and environment; and people-friendly communities with ample recreational and cultural opportunities”.

Albertans were promised that this would be in place for effective land management. But in the middle of the process the government decides unilaterally to just hand off 130 square miles of grasslands vital to prairie biodiversity. Land use plans full of empty promises and motherhood statements about healthy ecosystems will not do much for the Sprague's Pipits or pronghorns who find the landscape has been turned into irrigated cropland.

The bottom line is that the Alberta Government is putting at risk an enormous piece of prairie habitat and the many plants and animals that depend on it. The stretch of grassland threatened by this deal is roughly the same size as the Columbia Icefields and larger than Elk Island National Park.

Here is a map an Alberta friend sent me showing (in bright green) the sections that are being given over to the counties.

No matter where you live, I encourage you to let the Alberta Government know what you think about this boondoggle:

Write a letter or email to the Premier and to his Minister of Sustainable Resource Development. Here are the addresses:

The Hon. Ed Stelmach
Premier of Alberta
Room 307, Legislature Building
10800 – 97th Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6
Email: premier@gov.ab.ca

Honourable Mel Knight
Minister of Sustainable Resource Development
Alberta Legislature Building
10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB
T5K 2B6
Phone: 780 415-4815
Email: srd.minister@gov.ab.ca

Moose on the erstwhile prairie

2011-03-22T19:57:00.000-07:00

Bryan Schlosser, Regina Leader-Post

While most of our original prairie ecology is in rapid retreat, woodland creatures have been moving out onto the plains for many decades, taking advantage of habitat they find in farmyards and prairie towns. The white-tailed deer may have been the first to come out onto the prairie and find it hospitable. The raccoon, three species of arboreal squirrels, and the red fox have followed. Strangest of all, over the last five to ten years, moose have joined the mix of forest fauna now living on the erstwhile prairie. The highway from Saskatoon to Regina now has several moose-crossing signs.

You see moose in cropland, in farm shelterbelts, and on the edge of human settlements wherever there is enough cover for them to get by. Oddly enough, though, the moose seem to avoid the natural landscapes on the prairie--whether it is open grassland or wooded coulees. At Cherry Lake, where our land joins onto several thousand acres of poplar and ash-filled ravines, creeks, lakes, and upland prairie, we have seen only one moose in our six years. (It was last spring. As we crossed the creek in the bottomland, my daughter Maia and I heard a loud crashing sound. I looked up in time to get a quick glimpse of a moose's hind end heading east and turning back I could just make out the last of Maia disappearing to the west.)

And so it was not surprising when moose started coming into the city of Regina, attracted to the wooded landscapes in Wascana Park. Every winter several are spotted in Wascana Centre and it has been a treat seeing their spoor when we go for a ski or a walk in the park.

A week ago, Karen and I walked around Wascana lake. We saw a couple of white-tailed jack rabbits (a true prairie species now far more common in the city than in the surrounding land which is cropped so intensively there is not enough cover for a jack to survive).

Then we spotted a red fox crossing the ice to Spruce Island in broad daylight.

At several spots along the shore of the lake we found moose droppings. Most were between the shore and Spruce Island, but the largest pile was directly in front of the Legislative Building, though I doubt the moose was editorializing.

A young man I know who is a waiter at The Willows Restaurant in the park says that they often see two moose crossing the ice toward Spruce Island after dark. Sometimes they make an announcement and the patrons get up from their tables to go to the window and watch the world's largest antlered mammal heading for its bedding site in the city.

These two Wascana moose have been the talk of the town this winter, particularly for those who frequent the park. Neither of them has caused any trouble, though one reportedly does not flee from people. This characteristic made it easy for Conservation Officers who tried to tranquilize it this week and accidentally killed it with perhaps too large a dose (here is the news item in today's paper).

The officers of course were just doing their job. The authorities (from the City or from Wascana Centre?), wanting to avoid blame or litigation, were worried about people getting too close to a habituated moose and perhaps taunting it or causing it to turn on them. That could happen, perhaps, and, yes, moose are known to be unpredictable at times, but usually not in winter when there are no young calves around. People do stupid things in the presence of large wild animals to be sure, as tourists to Canada's mountain parks demonstrate every summer. But couldn't we try to find ways to live with a moose or two in the little scraps of wildness we tolerate in our urban park? Couldn't we just for once take a little chance, if not for the good of the moose then for the rest of us who like having the moose around?

As a prairie conservationist, I wish we could find a way to restore and foster some prairie ecology in Wascana Park, but our European love of woodland has turned it into a funky urban forest and artificial wetland. And as funky urban habitat goes, Wascana is pretty darn good. It brings a lot of wildlife into the city, including a couple hundred species of birds each year, many of which are in decline. If we try, and don't think first of insurance, ass-covering, and lawyers, we can find ways of coexisting with these wild woodland creatures. After all, they arrive here because we have created an island of habitat in a wasteland of industrialized agribusiness. Whether it is a Black-throated Green Warbler looking for landfall during a long migration or a moose needing somewhere to browse and shelter for the winter, all of our wildlife are struggling to survive in a world we are making less habitable all the time. Finding ways to share our urban wildness with them is the least we can do.

Chan Robbins, the oldest Albatross, and a tsunami

2011-03-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

photo courtesy of USGS

I know, an albatross is about as far away as you can get from a grassland bird, but this is a bird story I could not resist posting.

A week ago, Stuart Houston sent me an email about a Laysan albatross that banding records prove to be the oldest known wild bird in the world. Stuart has inspired a lot of people to take their passion for nature seriously and it was his suggestion that led me to write Grass, Sky, Song in the first place. As an elder statesman of the ornithological world, he keeps in touch with some of the great bird men and women of his generation all over the planet. The email about the albatross was in fact addressed to Chandler S. Robbins, who is one of the greatest bird conservation biologists of our era. Robbins worked for the US Geological Survey for sixty years at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland.

This is the man who started the continent's most important bird census, the Breeding Bird Survey, back in the '60s. Without the BBS, we would not have the data to show that bird populations and distribution are changing. Writers and bird people like me rely on the BBS to bring the story to the public.

Robbins was also the bird conservationist who saw to it that Rachel Carson's work would not go in vain. In 1972, an effort led by Chandler Robbins succeeded in getting DDT banned in the United States.

He also wrote one of the most important field guides of the modern era, The Golden Guide's Birds of North America. Covering the entire continent in a small book easily kept in the pocket, this guide has been a favourite of birders for fifty years and has never gone out of print.

image of Chan Robbins courtesy of USGS

But back to the albatrosss. What is the connection between the sixty year old albatross and Chan Robbins?

Stuart knew it the moment he saw the article in the New York Times.
In the email to Chan, Stuart says

An Albatross sixty years old has a high chance of having been banded by that indefatigable and almost indestructible Chandler S.Robbins.

He was right of course. The world's most venerable bird was banded by the world's most venerable living bird bander and conservationist. Chan Robbins banded that albatross as a nestling in 1951. The bird is now 60 and still producing young. Chan is 92 years old and still working on behalf of birds.

The albatross, named Wisdom by USGS staff years ago, is nesting on Midway Atoll in the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. As we all know, the earthquake last week send tsunami waves washing onto islands all over that region of the pacific. Midway Atoll is a very low island and the nests of the albatrosses who depend on it would be most vulnerable to high waves. On March 11, shortly after the quake, a five foot high wave hit the island destroying thousands of nests.

Today, I received this astounding message in my email from none other than the grand old man himself:

Late word from Midway is that "Wisdom" and her chick survived the tsunami, although thousands of other chicks were washed away.

Chan

Chandler S. Robbins
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

Sure, I was just one of the people in the cc field of the email when he responded to Stuart, but it was a thrill to see the name "Chandler S. Robbins" sitting in my in-basket this morning.

The sixty-year old albatross and her chick live through a tsunami, and the news comes from the ancient one who knew her when she was herself a nestling. Meanwhile the world waits to hear what will happen to the people of Japan, with another earthquake expected and several nuclear reactors out of control.

It all feels like a strange resolution to Coleridge's great Rime:

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

Mad cows, happy birds, and distant butterflies

2011-03-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Western Meadowlark at Strawberry Lake Community Pasture, T. Herriot

Try a Google search today for the words “mad cow, birds” and you will get a barrage of hits all stemming from a scientific paper published a couple of days ago in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Canadian researchers responsible for this hubub, J.J. Nocera and H.M. Koslowsky, have either got a very good publicist or their topic has tapped into a zeitgeist the rest of us have underestimated. I think it may be the latter.

Remember the Butterfly Effect? Well, this paper posits a cascade of effects that ties together the outbreak of Mad Cow disease in Europe with an increase in certain grassland birds in North America. Here is the way an article in The Scientist describes the paper’s argument:

After examining data on bird populations, hay production, cattle exports, and European cattle outbreaks extending all the way back to the 1960s, Nocera noted a recurring three-year pattern that starts with an outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe and ends with a jump in North American grassland birds.

The outbreak would result in increased cattle exports from the US and Canada the following year, which in turn reduced the standing herd sizes of cattle in North America, thereby reducing the demand for hay and saving the grassland birds' habitat.

Years of field research to show direct and demonstrable causation (proving, for example, that replacing native grass with crested wheatgrass reduces grassland bird nest success) is ho-hum, but put some numbers in a computer and extrapolate a set of trends caused by remote socio-economic factors and the media will flap their butterfly wings enough to make you a star.

I know, that sounds cynical, and even a little ungracious for someone who has in the past complained that grassland birds get no attention. Heck, this week, even the Regina Leader-Post ran a piece on this story. Here is one that came out in The Vancouver Sun. It is good to see this kind of uptake by the media and blogosphere, but it would be nice if it were based on a stronger piece of science.

On the other hand, there is something fascinating here, not so much about birds as about humanity’s increasing awareness of and passion for anything that shows our lives and ecosystems to be intricately interwoven and interconnected. We are thrilled to live in a world where the flap of a butterfly wing can have far-reaching ripple effects, and we should be. It is a wonderment to be immersed in such a matrix of sunlight and carbon, but we need that wonder and awareness to mature into respect and begin to inform our decisions, both as private citizens and as communities and nations.

This paper has already been criticized in the science community for its lack of rigour, for not really proving anything it presents as correlation. That tearing down is how scientists keep one another heading toward new knowledge that can be defended and upheld. Once research of this kind gets out to the public, though, it contributes to popular awareness, which is always a mixed bag of self-serving distortion and useful education. The teachable moment captured here is the insight that there are important connections between the food we eat and the wild creatures that are hanging on for dear life in the agricultural landscape.

Mad cows and butterflies aside, let us turn our thoughts to our next meal and consider whence it came. If we could cut down our consumption of grain-fed livestock products by 10%, and increase the demand for ecologically-raised, grass-fed beef by the equivalent amount, the birds would do their part.

a much better Western Meadowlark photo, courtesy of Hamilton Greenwood

The case against Roundup advances

2011-03-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

From triplepundit.com.

Over the past five years a series of studies have begun to show that Roundup, the farmer's favourite herbicide, is not the free ride it has been made out to be. First there was some damning research on the effects of the surfactanct in Roundup being toxic to some forms of aquatic life, frogs in particular.

A few years after that, researchers found that the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, inhibits the uptake of nutrients in plants. They linked glyphosate to reduced nutrient efficiency and said animals that eat GM soy and corn have exhibited mineral deficiencies, which can lead to problems with everything from the immune system to reproduction.

Following that work, there were more claims that the herbicide is linked with a number of plant diseases. (Here us a link to a paper that argues "Glyphosate tolerant (GT) crops and glyphosate herbicide (commercial formulation, Roundup) poison nitrogen fixing and other beneficial soil bacteria, increase fungal pathogens, undermine plant immunity to diseases, decrease plant micronutrients available in the soil, and more."

Then, in 2010, researchers published data claiming glyphosate contributed to problems with chicken and frog embryos. Their research was inspired by clinical data on birth defects in the children of agricultural workers in Argentina that use Roundup.

All of which sounds bad enough to at least stimulate a re-examination of Roundup by federal agencies in Canada and the U.S. but no one is surprised that has not happened.

Well, as of a few days ago, the ante was raised by a soil scientist who says he suspects that Roundup and its associated Genetically Modified (GM) crops may be responsible for the kind of agricultural armageddon people have often feared from biotech.

Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University, has sounded the alarm, referring to a pathogen “new to science” discovered by “a team of senior plant and animal scientists”. Huber, said to be one of America's most respected soil scientists, claims that Roundup and the GM Roundup Ready crops may be linked to the appearance of this new pathogen, which is causing plant diseases and reproductive failure in livestock. A couple of weeks ago Huber wrote an open letter to the head of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)saying this should be treated as an “emergency’’, because it could result in “a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

A copy of the open letter can be seen here where it appeared on the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance site.

The letter was intended to persuade Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, to halt plans to authorize unrestricted commercial planting of GM alfalfa on 1 February, in the hope of convincing the Secretary of Agriculture to impose a moratorium instead on deregulation of Roundup Ready (RR) crops.

As this TriplePundit blog posting from a few days ago explains, however, the USDA ignored Huber's warnings and went ahead with the deregulation of Roundup Ready alfalfa. Why? Well, here is what the blog posting says about that:

Frank Lucas (R-Oklahoma), the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, who led the effort to deregulate Monsanto’s controversial alfalfa, has received some $1.25 million from agribusiness during his political career to date.

Roundup Ready wheat, canola, soy and corn are bad enough, but alfalfa is a mainstay of hay crops that often host birds and of course a variety of insects. If Roundup is as dangerous as Huber and others maintain, spraying it heavily on hay crops will damage already degraded habitat for prairie creatures that are being pushed from the last vestages of their preferred habitat, native grass, and onto tame hay.

"Saving our Shared Birds": a Report from Partners in Flight

2011-02-25T14:31:00.000-08:00

Upland Sandpiper breeding in Strawberry Lake Community Pasture, Saskatchewan. T Herriot

A couple of weeks ago, Partners in Flight released a new report called "Saving Our Shared Birds" presenting for the first time "a comprehensive conservation assessment of landbirds in Canada, Mexico, and the continental United States".

Grassland birds in temperate habitats once again proved to be the species in steepest decline:

Grassland birds in this habitat have suffered among the steepest declines of any North American landbirds. These include many familiar birds of rural landscapes including Grasshopper Sparrow, Eastern Meadowlark,Bobolink, Lark Bunting, and Horned Lark.Incentives for bird-friendly agricultural practices and protection of native prairie are essential for reversing declines of grassland birds.

How bad is the decline? Looking at the grassland bird species that breed and or winter in the three nations, the report says that

Loss and degradation of both breeding and wintering habitat has led to an overall decline of 45% for 33 grassland species, a combined loss of 500 million birds over the past 40 years.

The report does not mince words about what is behind the decline. The data shows clearly that agriculture is the number one cause of habitat loss and degradation. Habitat loss is worst in the Chihuahuan grasslands of Mexico, but grasslands in Canada and the United States are also being lost to agriculture. Another quote:

Today, the expansion of agriculture continues to be the major driver of biodiversity loss. Agriculture affects every type of habitat and impacts 76% of the landbird species of highest conservation concern; 65% are threatened by unsustainable livestock grazing. Preventing the conversion of large areas of habitat, whether grassland, forest, or aridlands, in the core distribution of species of concern will be necessary to stem the rapid decline of many landbirds. Policies and management practices are tools that can support the needs of high-priority birds on vast public lands in Canada and the United States. . . . In order to protect shrinking native Canadian grasslands, we need changes in policy and and extensive education to promote expansive native prairie and minimize degradation due to energy development, urbanization, or conversion to intensive agriculture.

Horned Lark in stubble near Dry Lake, Saskatchewan. T Herriot

Take a moment to read the report and then think of the moments you have shared with birds in the last year. As the people who live in the agricultural heart of the continent, we on the Great Plains have a particular responsibility to ring the alarm and help others to see what is happening to the common birds we have always assumed would be here to enliven the prairie.

Stelmach vs. the Prairie: Round Two

2011-02-15T18:47:00.000-08:00

"Ok, so we couldn't get away with selling a big piece of prairie directly to the potato industry, but there are other ways to get that wasteland to turn a profit. . . ." Not an actual quote from Alberta's Premier Stelmach, but this week I can't help wonder if things like that do get said in the backrooms of his legislature.

Monday I had a call from a consultant biologist in Alberta (he wishes to remain anonymous),telling me of a new scheme for destroying the native grassland that belongs to the people of Alberta. In his mind it is "The Great Alberta Land Giveaway."

"They are selling 84,000 acres of mostly prairie land to counties and municipal districts for a dollar a quarter section. If we don't stop this, it will virtually eliminate the western extent of the mixed-grass prairie in Alberta. Most of this land is contained in the MD of Taber and County of Vulcan and most is native prairie or land that has reverted back to some semblance of prairie, and a lot of it is contiguous with existing blocks large blocks of regular public land that is native prairie. This is all being done for $1/parcel. A parcel is generally a quarter section (160 acres or more).

The acreage here is immense. Almost 100 square miles of land is being given to the MD of Taber alone; 30 square miles in the county of Vulcan. Lets compare that to Potatogate, which was 25 square miles of land. The land that is being given away in these two counties alone is slightly less than the size of the Suffield National Wildlife Area."

Ok, that sounds pretty bad. The fear, of course, is that once this land is sold it will be converted into pivot irrigation cropland like much of southern Alberta.

Here is the original government press release announcing the fire sale on prairie.

As with Potatogate, the Alberta conservation community is getting into swing to stop the sale. Here is what Cliff Wallis of the Alberta Wilderness Association said in their press release:

The large areas up for transfer in the Counties of Vulcan and Taber raise big red caution flags since provincially and nationally environmentally significant lands occur there,” says Cliff Wallis, AWA president. “Yet there is no commitment to protect these areas: just a vague suggestion to ‘retain’ environmentally significant land near rivers, water bodies and coulees. Once again important native grasslands are being short‐changed.

The Edmonton Journal printed a piece on the story called "Fleecing the flock -- the great public land giveaway"

If you want the longer background story of all of this, check out AWA's article on it back in 2007, written by Joyce Hildebrand.

Those acres that Stelmach is looking to launder through the books of rural counties are some of the last stretches of native grass in the region. To sneak them onto the auction block in this way is yet another sign that a government that can turn a blind eye to the evils of the tar sands is not likely to see what it is doing to its treasure of grasslands.

Several waterfowl habitat projects run by Ducks Unlimited and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan are located in the land up for sale: Medicine Wheel, Circle E, Vauxhaul and Cameron. Countless grassland birds, already in decline, would be affected if the land is broken by its new owners.

Good people of Alberta--open your eyes and see what your government is doing to Wild Rose country on your behalf.

Write a letter or email to your Premier and to his Minister of Sustainable Resource Development. Here are the addresses:

The Hon. Ed Stelmach
Premier of Alberta
Room 307, Legislature Building
10800 – 97th Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6
Email: premier@gov.ab.ca

Honourable Mel Knight
Minister of Sustainable Resource Development
Alberta Legislature Building
10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB
T5K 2B6
Phone: 780 415-4815
Email: srd.minister@gov.ab.ca

Prairie Restoration--catching what we can

2011-02-01T11:05:00.001-08:00

plains rough fescue at Cherry Lake, T. Herriot

I get envious when I hear of grassland restoration efforts in other states and provinces, because here in Saskatchewan there seems to be very little restoration happening. I'd be happy to be convinced otherwise, but I think it is fair to say that the work of restoring grassland in this province is down to a couple of plots at the University of Regina, some work DU and NCC have done, and the re-seeding efforts that Nature Saskatchewan has overseen in small plots next to burrowing owl nest sites (using cultivars that are not true natives to the area, however).

I recently asked Chet Neufeld, director of the Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan, if he knew of other restoration activity in the province and that brought a couple more to attention. Chet said that they had worked with the Saskatchewan Department of Highways on two or three projects, and he believes there are places here and there related to oil and gas activity, but other than that, not much.

So there is some restoration activity but apparently not enough to support a local native seed producer in the province. Most prairie states and provinces have a small industry producing local seed. For restoration the nearer the seed is grown to the restoration site the better. Recently, I received an email from Carl Kurtz, a native seed grower in Iowa who sometimes reads this blog. In Iowa, he said, there has been "increased funding for conservation programs such as buffer strips and wetland restorations" and these programs have helped his seed-growing business, which he says is small, currently producing between three and five thousand pounds of seed per year. He said that they raise seed in a polyculture, rather than in monoculture rows. This approach cuts the cost of seeding down to 250 to 300 dollars per acre and suits his market well.

(Carl's book, A Practical Guide to Prairie Reconstruction, is worth reading if anyone out there wants to look into the subject. Here it is on Amazon.)

Until we get some legislation making highways and the oil and gas industry use true native seed (and not the weird cultivars often used in its place), or perhaps some incentives and conservation programs that make it affordable to use true native seed in wildlife buffers and other restoration projects, it is going to be difficult to convince anyone to risk making the investment to become a native seed grower in this province.

prairie crocus (anenome) at Cherry Lake, T. Herriot

If anyone doubts the value of grassland restoration, take a look at this blog posting from The Prairie Ecologist, where ecologist Chris Helzer, who works for The Nature Conservancy in Nebraska, explains how restoration, done right, can improve a prairie conservation initiative.

Chris writes well and comes up with some effective images to make his points. In this post on restoration as a landscape-scale conservation tool, he says that trying to conserve prairie ecology with small remnants is like catching popping popcorn in a coffee cup.

Even in places like Saskatchewan where we have a lot more acres of native grass in larger remnants, Chris's message about restoration is worth considering. Instead of hoping our fragmented grasslands will do the job--and clearly they are not--we need to establish larger pieces of contiguous prairie and that means restoration, but not just any restoration. We are going to need high-quality (i.e. local seed), high-diversity restoration, designed and placed strategically to buffer and connect the most important fragments in ways that will build resilience into the ecosystems thereby conserving maximum biodiversity and species at risk.

But the first step is to get Environment Canada and Saskatchewan Environment to recognize the validity of grassland restoration as a vital element of prairie conservation.

Snow birds

2011-01-27T12:34:00.000-08:00

One of the great privileges of being a bird-know-it-all is that now and then someone lets you into a moment of grace that flies or sings its way into their day. It happens on Birdline, the CBC phone-in show I help with every couple months on CBC Saskatchewan's Blue Sky. It happens when I run into people who have a bird they want to tell me about. And it happens by email.

The day before yesterday, I received a note from Swift Current artist and writer, Phyllis Nakonechny. Last year, Phyllis's beautiful book, Vidh: A book of Mourning came out, garnering a nomination for Saskatchewan Book of the Year. (Here is a page from her publisher, Hagios, on Vidh.)

Phyllis, as you will see, when you read her message reproduced below with her permission, is a deep soul whose closely observed writing comes through even when she is just firing off a quick email to a friend.

Hello Trevor,
I had the most amazing, lovely experience this morning. I went out my back door to sit on my winter bench to enjoy my coffee on this blue sky morning.

As I sat I became aware of the sound of birds.... I knew it was birds because it's winter and I don't live near a pond/marsh, because truthfully the sound was more like that of summer in the country than of January in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. I want to say it was like the incessant singing of frogs in the dark, but it wasn't croaking, more like very loud humming and buzzing in a continuous sound - no breaks -like the constant sound of grasshoppers on a hot August day.

But before I could look around to find the source of this -what I knew had to be a - flock of birds somewhere nearby, suddenly directly ahead and above 8 large white-winged birds started making beautiful soaring formations in wide sweeps across the sky - I could actually hear their wings flapping - and I thought to myself: they look like the Canadian Forces Snow Birds practising their aerial tricks. They made about 6 different aerial dances and then flew off.

I don't know what they were, but I was grateful to have witnessed their great white wings soaring above me. I knew the sound of the birds hadn't been coming from them, but maybe they were reacting to the loud sound of birds that still filled the air.

I could still hear this loud metallic humming and I turned now to look for the source. Two lots down from my back yard there they sat high up in the bare branches of the trees: I have no idea what they were. I have never seen such a group of 40 (?) VERY LARGE birds. I mean I have seen one hawk sitting on a fence post, but never so many such sized birds all together in a group.

I ran indoors to get my(unfortunately) small binoculars and tried to see them close up. They were basically a brown but their inside tail feathers seemed darker and a different shade altogether. So then indoors again for the (unfortunately, again)small Sony cyber-shot camera. Here they are with the first photo cropped a bit so as to bring them closer to the eye. I came indoors again to get more coffee, hoping to sit outside for a bit longer to see what they looked like if they flew, but alas, when I went back out, they had all gone. I don't know how long they had been there before I went outdoors, but the time that had passed had been about 10 or 15 minutes from when I had first heard them. I know you can't see them well, but do you have any idea what they could have been?

Best Regards,

Phyllis Nakonechny
Swift Current

And Phyllis's birds? Bohemian Waxwings, but, as my wife often reminds me, putting a name to someone's bird is not nearly as important as naming their experience. In this case we could call it "a mid-winter epiphany."

Now and then we win one

2011-01-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

In September I was writing here about the Alberta government's plans to sell 16,000 acres of native grassland to an agribusiness that wanted to plough it and plant potatoes. Several organizations responded in the media and by letter campaign to protest the loss of this important piece of prairie supporting a variety of species at risk. Nature Saskatchewan joined the fray by passing a resolution from the floor at its fall AGM in Indian Head and then sending a strongly worded letter to the Alberta government, cc'ing the Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA).

Vesper sparrows near Deep Lake, Saskatchewan, T. Herriot

Fall turned into winter and although I heard the Alberta government was taking a hard look at the issue, I didn't know which way things had gone. Then just after Christmas, good news came in the form of a letter from the AWA:

Dear Trevor

Re: Letter to Alberta Premier Stelmach

Thank you for taking the time to write to Alberta Premier Stelmach about the loss of native grassland in Alberta, and for forwarding a copy of your letter to AWA. We greatly appreciate your support in this important matter, and congratulate you on the resolution passed by Nature Saskatchewan, which sends a strong and clear message.
As you probably know, the ‘Potatogate’ deal to sell off 16,000 acres of public land, critical native prairie, was eventually suspended due, in no small part, to the widespread opposition received from individuals and organizations across Alberta and beyond. Your support was an important part of this.

Of course, the suspension of this one individual deal does not mean that the system of random and unaccountable sale of public land in Alberta has changes, so AWA will continue to work towards a system which prevents these sorts of behind-closed-doors processes taking place in future. We still have a long way to go!

We have been working with colleagues to develop principles and recommendations for the government to consider adopting as part of the Public Lands Regulations currently under development. For your interest, please find a copy of the document attached.

With sincere best wishes for a very Happy New Year,
Yours truly,
ALBERTA WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION
Christyann Olson,
Executive Director

If anyone else out there sent a letter, make sure you take a moment to draw in a grateful breath of winter prairie air, maybe hoist a glass of your favourite brew, and turn your thoughts to the creatures who will be doing their best to bring life to the prairie on those 16,000 acres come spring.

early November at dusk on the pasture south of Cherry Lake. T Herriot

Birds of Christmas on the Prairie

2010-12-31T12:26:00.000-08:00

Christmas Bird Counts get me outside in a season when I am often content to dream of warmer days and more abundant birds. On the 18th of December we conducted the 20th Craven-Lumsden CBC, centring the 24 km diameter circle on the village of Craven.

Starting at daylight, we managed to find 30 species for the day, our second best record. Highlights included sightings of a Hooded Merganser and a Common Goldeneye on an open stretch of the Qu'Appelle River near Craven, both Bald and Golden Eagles flying in the valley, a Snowy Owl along Highway 11 just south of the valley, a single robin in Lumsden, two Golden-crowned Kinglets also in Lumsden, a high of 69 Ravens (including 21 at a single deer carcass), 12 Horned Larks, and a group of 9 American Goldfinches coming to a feeder at an acreage. As well, we recorded 14 mammal species, including 3 coyotes, a least weasel, 120 white-tailed deer, and 29 mule deer.

I left my camera at home for the Craven-Lumsden count, but took it along with me for the countryside portion of the Regina CBC, which was on December 27. We had a warm day for the Regina count and the birdlife responded. We found 21 species in our quadrant alone (the southwest portion of the circle), including Sharp-shinned and Red-tailed Hawks. No pictures of those two, but in the afternoon I took a few photos--some more succcessful than others, but even the fuzzier images convey something of birdlife on the erstwhile prairie.

Driving the backroads south and west of Regina as I have done on this count many times before with my friend Bob Luterbach, it was easy to believe the official statistics declaring that 99.07% of the landscape surrounding this city has lost its native cover. Still, there were some native birds to count, including three Horned Larks. This image shows one on a gravel road, where they often come to consume grit.

The other roadside passerine or songbird we found was the Snow Bunting, for whom the northern plains is a wintering ground. We saw one small flock, including this one:

Here was the only Snowy Owl we found. This first image shows how easily they fade into the white backdrop--especially an adult male like this one.

We had initially flushed it at roadside and then had some difficulty finding it until it swiveled its head, showing the dark spots of eyes and bill.

When it flew, we quickly lost it in the flat light beneath an overcast sky.

Toward dusk we lucked onto a Great Horned Owl a mile west of the city.

After that we saw a Northern Shrike cross the road and land briefly on the top of a tree--too briefly for me to get a photo of anything other than its tail.

Light conditions were much better for the Indian Head Christmas Bird Count on December 30, where I joined with Lorne Scott, Gary Seib and Karen McIver to count birds and mammals for the day. We recorded 19 species of birds in our sector (including American White Pelican and Pied-billed Grebe), covering the countryside at the south end of Katepwa Lake and then to the west of Indian Head, before we headed south to the areas I am most familiar with near our place at Cherry Lake. One of the great surprises of the Indian Head count was the number of Sharp-tailed Grouse we found. The largest flock was along highway 56 north of town where we counted 32 among some hedgerows. Here is one we found at roadside near the town dump where we counted scores of ravens and magpies.

We ended up with a total of 72 Sharp-tails for the day--much better than any of us would have expected. Lorne said the species has been scarce all around Indian Head, and I'd have to say the same for the land I survey near Cherry Lake.

After we counted Blue Jays, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers and Black-capped Chickadees in Lorne's farm yard--which includes the best bird feeding set-up I have ever seen--we came upon the local group of Ruffed Grouse who show up beneath Lorne's feeders at dusk every day. The five of them were sitting in the Aspen bush along Lorne's driveway. This male was the less common rufous-phase, which became clear once he started to strutt.

You can have some fun looking at the historical results of Christmas Bird Counts,species by species, and region by region by going to this site managed by the American Audubon Society.

Using easements to conserve grassland and wetlands south of the 49th

2010-12-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

Redhead ducks coming in to land at a prairie wetland, Trevor Herriot

Good news this week from U.S. Fish & Wildlife, who released a document announcing that they have “developed a conservation strategy for wetland and grassland habitat in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana. Under this strategy, the proposed Dakota Grass-land project identifies 240,000 acres of wetland and 1.7 million acres of grass-land for conservation.”

They are calling it the “Dakota Grassland Conservation Area” and the map they have in the document shows the proposed area running all along the International border where it meets Saskatchewan and eastern Montana and then down along the eastern flank of both North and South Dakota.

The strategy that US Fish & Wildlife say they will follow is to work with private landowners by using “conservation easements across the project area landscape to protect wet-land and grassland habitat from being converted to other uses.”
They predict that without these measures the rate of plowing native grassland and wetlands will continue, and they will lose one-half of the remaining native prairie in the region within 34 years.

Take a good look at the map at the end of this document and imagine how much greater this program could be if it extended across the border into south-western Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan. There is no good reason why it shouldn’t.

How about it, Environment Canada? Can we meet the Americans at the border?

waterfowl in November on Cherry Lake, Trevor Herriot

Loving the Bobolink

2010-12-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

Male bobolink nesting in the meadow on the east edge of Cherry Lake.

This week a friend, Joe Kotlar, came across a disturbing editorial written in a farm publication from Ontario, Farmer's Forum, which claims to be "Ontario's Leading Farm Newspaper". The editorial is entitled, "Latest threat to farming — bobolink and biodiversity zealots"

Click on the link above and give it a read, but don't assume that this kind of embattled thinking represents all of rural Canada. Farmers are as diverse a bunch as any other group of human beings. While some enjoy having birds like the bobolink on their hayfields, and will consider taking measures to protect them, there are, unfortunately, those who see any wild animals on their land as a potential threat to their bottom line. It's this vocal group who often succeed in talking legislators into things like coyote and wolf bounties; who oppose any designation of an endangered species and who live in fear of some government employee telling them what they can or cannot do with their land. Between the extremes of farmers who have found a way to make a living by working with nature and those who see themselves in a pitched battle against the wild, there are those who are aware that their land is providing carbon sequestration, biodiversity, water filtration and other "ecological goods and services" (EG&S) that benefit the wider human and natural communities.

And at the same time, they know that these EG&S do not contribute to their short term bottom line and in fact they can make more revenue if they opt for farming practices that reduce habitat, pollute waterways, and increase their carbon footprint. From there it is not far to the assumption that they should be paid or compensated somehow for not choosing to degrade the EG&S their land contributes. This logic will sometimes lead farmers to say things like, "we are providing these EG&S and we should be paid for them."

That has a "truthy" ring, as Stephen Colbert would say, but of course we all know the real truth here: i.e. that it is not farmers but the biosphere itself that is providing the life-sustaining systems we depend upon. Farmers are not entitled to hold the commonwealth of clean air, water, and biodiversity ransom, but neither are the rest of us entitled to the cheap food that industrial agriculture ensures. A cattleman who keeps his land healthy and provides habitat will have higher production costs than those who push their land to minimize costs and maximize revenue. That reality means that today healthier food from healthier land is a luxury that only the wealthy can afford.

But what if there was a way we could agree that EG&S are a collective commons we must all take responsibility for? We would then all begin to share more of the embodied costs of protecting wildness on our farm landscapes, but even more important, we would begin to find regulatory instruments and disincentives that would increase the costs for anyone--farmers, industrialists of any kind, developers--who wants to drain a wetland, bulldoze a poplar bluff, or cultivate native grassland.

preening bobolink

As things stand, we have a cheap food policy that drives our over-heated economies and unsustainable development, and it has fostered a kind of agriculture that pre-selects for farmers who see the bobolink and any creature not increasing yields as an enemy. We all need to help turn this around so that it becomes possible once again for farmers to love the bobolink.

Female and male Bobolink together

Late Autumn Birds of Cherry Lake

2010-11-24T18:59:00.000-08:00

White Birch holding yellow.

I have been meaning to post a few photos of birds from this fall's bird walks at Cherry Lake and other spots in and around the Upper Indian Head Creek Valley. I found a flock of 20 mountain bluebirds in a small pasture north of the Squirrel Hills. They were loosely associated with a small flock of warblers, including this Yellow-rumped. . .

. . .and this Palm Warbler. . .

The bluebirds flew around me for a while. . .

I burrowed myself a spot in the slough grass next to a small pond with a few ducks, and waited for the bluebirds to settle. . .

. . .finally a male landed.

Here are some of the sparrows I was able to photograph this fall. A Harris Sparrow. . .

One of the rarer sparrow species at Cherry Lake in migration is the Swamp Sparrow. I think we have two or three records in six years. Not a great photo, but so far my only chance to get near enough to a Swamp Sparrow to even attempt a photo.

One of the commonest and definitely the latest sparrow species is the American Tree Sparrow.

As the hawk migration continued, we saw this little guy over the yard site high and heading south. A Sharp-shinned Hawk.

And the largest raptor we see regularly on migration is the Bald Eagle. This sub-adult flew over me as I was waiting for the Swamp Sparrow to emerge next to one of the beaver ponds in our valley.

This is the last Turkey Vulture I saw in 2010.

The last buteo hawk we see each fall is the Rough-legged. This one passed through on a warm day in early November.

With the sun almost down, and the leaves all on the forest floor, here is how the hills looked south of the lake the day the Rough-legged flew by.

Don't give up--there are still ways to stop the Outlook Feedlot

2010-11-10T13:24:00.001-08:00

This postcard shows a river that is still safe for swimming. . . .

Sure, the R.M. has dodged the petition, for now, but there are still ways to slow down and then halt this project. Opposition will start to build as the people of Saskatoon wake up to the truth that their river could receive run-off containing growth hormones and antibiotics from the province's largest feedlot. Meanwhile, those of us who are concerned must let our own MLAs know, as well as Jim Reiter, the MLA in whose constituency this feedlot is to be built. Please write a short and polite letter and address it to:

Hon. Jim Reiter, MLA,
Box 278, Rosetown,
SK S0L 2V0.

While you are at it, why not send a copy to Premier Wall and Dustin Duncan, our Environment Minister?

The Honourable Brad Wall
Premier of Saskatchewan
226 Legislative Building
Regina, SK S4S 0B3

The Honorable Dustin Duncan
Minister of Environment
Room 315, Legislative Building
2405 Legislative Drive
Regina, SK S4S 0B3

Meanwhile, if you are looking for inspiration, read this wonderful letter I received recently from an Alberta friend, Don Ruzicka, who has appeared in this space before. In my mind, Don, an award-winning organic producer, is one of the wisest farmers on the Canadian Plains. Have a look at his web site when you get time.

Anyway, here is Don's letter, verbatim, but first an excerpt from his email to me, which read as follows: "Since I have become more connected to nature over the past 14 years through changes in the way we farm, I have noticed that the land, nature, the environment or Creation (whichever you choose to call it) are more forgiving. This "gift" has been passed onto me.

The riparian areas were running on empty; wetlands were drained or pugged from overgrazing; the pastures were overgrazed and going backwords and many trees had gone south. After doing a 180 with regards to the way we manage the land, it has been steadily coming back to good health. For me, this is a sign of forgiveness for what I had done to the land and is also a catalyst for my own spiritual health. When one has been forgiven so profoundly, it is hard not to reciprocate.

Wendell Berry would be able to share some wisdom with the people of Outlook. He writes that when land is farmed in the right way, with respect and love, it has a positive affect on those who see it develop. Conversely, the opposite is also true. Are the people of Outlook even remotely aware of this or has their good sense been subverted by the promise of economic development and all of the so called "prosperity" that it will bring?"

Now the letter he enclosed:

Hi Trevor,

You have explained the issues well and there are no easy answers. Some people see opportunities while others see quality of life being compromised along with the environment that they live in. The result is the polarization of the community. Cases like this make me think that we have to re-define ”progress,” sooner than later while we ponder what we want the future to hold for our children and grandchildren.

Farming publications quite often contain articles on how important it is to know your cost of production as well as the economic benefits of various agri-business ventures. I have yet to see a story on the “cost of destruction.” You give a good example of “destruction” with the picture of a riparian area damaged by cattle. These areas, when healthy stabilize creek banks, remove toxins from the water, filter run-off, sequester carbon, provide habitat for fish, increase biodiversity as well as many other benefits. I had a damaged riparian area like this and it took me 10 years to bring it back to good health after fencing it off from the cattle.

A report was recently released on a study that was done on two southern Alberta rivers. A species of fish was found to have 85 to 90% of the population to be female and some of the males had eggs in their testes. This is referred to as “gender bending.” Normally, 55% of populations are female. These fish are responding to estrogen-like compounds in the environment. Some of the highest counts were in an area where run-off containing antibiotics and growth hormones from a feedlot entered the river. If there is no river, where does this run-off go? The fish are telling us what is going on in the environment just like canaries used to tell miners when it was time to get out of the mine shaft.

I think that if we were to tally up the costs of bringing our surface and groundwater back to good health, this “cheap beef” would be very expensive. I believe that consumers are becoming more discerning in their food choices and are acknowledging that caring for the land has a cost that should be included in the price of the food. And yes, we have a long way to go.

The Amish have a message when it comes to making decisions regarding the land. They understand that their community is a part of nature, not above it. When an opportunity involving innovation, technology or change comes to their community, they ask the question; “How will this affect our community?” They feel that when they do damage to the land, they also do damage to their community as well as their relationship with the Creator. Perhaps we need to become a little bit Amish.

Don Ruzicka,
Killam,Alberta

Birdline on Monday--a question about Saskatchewan's Provincial Bird, the Sharp-tailed Grouse

2010-11-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

This amazing photo of a Sharp-tailed Grouse in dancing form courtesy of John Carlson, friend and a great defender of grassland birds. Here is his always beautiful blog, Prairie Ice.

I'll be on Birdline our (now) bi-monthly phone-in radio show about birds, beginning at 12:30 p.m. next Monday (Nov. 8). During the show, I will be asking listeners to call in and answer two questions: 1. Are they seeing many Sharp-tailed Grouse (or "prairie chickens") in their region and 2. Do they agree that it may be time to close the hunting season for this species.

This morning, Fred Clemence, a retired farmer who has been paying attention to birds for many years in Saskatchewan's parkland eco-region, called to express his concerns over the Sharp-tailed Grouse. "I've been trying to find someone in the provincial government who will take me seriously, but no one will listen."

Fred believes that it may be time to close the Sharp-tailed Grouse season and give the birds a chance to build up their numbers. The best data available shows an unquestionable and statistically significant decline. The Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) run by the U.S. Geological Survey's Patuxent Wildlife Centre and the Canadian Wildlife Service, shows that in Saskatchewan the Sharp-tailed Grouse is declining by 7.2% per year. In Aspen parkland the annual decline is 11.3%!!

Hunters and the hunter-biologists working for Saskatchewan Fish and Wildlife are fond of studies that supposedly demonstrate that hunting has little effect on a species like the Sharp-tail, even when it is in steep decline as it has been in recent decades.

I'm not convinced that is entireley true, but even if it were true, why not give our prairie upland game all a bit of a break anyway and let them increase and expand outward from zones where they are reasonably plentiful? Even if there is no guarantee that would happen from a moratorium on hunting, it would at least be a sign of good faith that the agency responsible for managing these species is concerned about their decline and looking for ways to help them recover. What else is Saskatchewan Environment doing to reverse this death spiral? What have we got to lose if we close the season for a few years?

As Fred said in his phone call, sharp-tailed Grouse dancing grounds are getting very empty in the parkland where they once were common. There definitely has been some habitat loss, but not commensurate with the decline in Sharp-tails and Grey (or "Hungarian") partridge. Something else is emptying the dancing grounds and habitat, but no one seems to be trying to find out what that is. As long as there are still decent numbers of Sharp-tails in the large pastures near the U.S border where hunters can have a good day of shooting, our Fish and Wildlife officials seem to be happy.

Instead, we should be looking to secure more habitat and perhaps allowing the few birds remaining in the south to flourish in hopes that their much-retracted zones of healthy population might actually expand back to the north.

If you have some thoughts on this, please phone in to Birdline on Monday and share them with our listeners.

Outlook Feedlot: Responding to Economic Arguments

2010-11-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve received several comments on my posting about the feedlot proposed for Outlook, but one in particular got my attention. A local farmer, Murray Kasper, took some time to compose a dissenting comment (shown at the end of this post), arguing for the feedlot on economic grounds. His arguments were made with thought and care and deserve a careful and thoughtful response.

I agree, of course, that the beef industry is “market sensitive” and “affected by economics of scale.” Murray mentions a former program that at one time allowed him to finish his own calves with grain, sending them to Intercontinental Packers in Saskatoon for slaughter. Those days are gone, as we all know, because of radical consolidation in the industry. Intercon is gone and two companies, Cargill and XL Foods, now do 80 per cent of the beef processing in Canada. Farmers like Murray who want to process their livestock through the mainstream markets have no choice but to sell their animals to large feedlots, primarily in Alberta, serving this duopoly.

Who benefits from this system? Well, the feedlot owners do okay, and the biggest ones with deep pockets do best, riding out any fluctuations in the cost of feed grain and fuel. Farmers growing the barley at prices cheap enough to feed livestock can do well for a while if they too stick with the “economics of scale” program and get really big.

The meat packers, though, are the primary beneficiaries. They control everything from the price of feed grain to the animals sold at the farm gate to the supermarket. And here is how they do it: companies like Cargill and XL buy their own feeder cattle and have them “custom-fed” in feedlots. This means that they do not have to buy directly from independent sellers if they don’t want to. When livestock prices rise, the big packers can just step out of the market for a while and instead of paying the current price use their own supply of cattle purchased at lower prices. Because of their size, when the packers stop buying for a spell they cause a backlog in the market among independent sellers and ranchers, leading to an artificial oversupply that drives down prices. When the price falls enough they buy more cattle. This 2009 article in Alberta Views said that, adjusting for inflation, the average price farmers received for a steer in 2009 was half what they got in 1969.

However, as Murray astutely points out, consumers are the ones who want their meat cheap--which means the meat-packing corporations can always blame consumers for everything from predatory market practices to environmental damage, saying “Well, you don’t want to pay higher prices for beef do you?” As long as that is true, the beef-buying public remains the ultimate beneficiary of an unfair and unsustainable system, complicit with the greed of the big corporate meat packers.

Who are the losers, though, the ones who are paying the ecological and social costs of this system? With farm gate prices for steers so low, producers end up grazing their pastures harder than they might want to, which decreases biodiversity on their land, degrading habitat for some of the most endangered species in North America. Squeezed between rising costs and falling prices for their animals, they often cannot afford to take measures to protect the quality of their grazing land and riparian areas.

riparian zone damaged by cattle

The only way to keep their income at a reasonable level is to play the economies of scale game and get as big as possible. The traditional small cow-calf ranchers, once the backbone of our beef industry, are replaced over time by the big operations that buy young animals cheap, let them graze until they reach feedlot size and then sell them into the meat-factory system. Our once proud cattlemen and women are being replaced by functionaries working at one end of a conveyor belt that terminates in the supermarket meat department. In between, a lot of destruction is happening, in both ecological and human communities. Take a drive through Saskatchewan’s southwest or Alberta’s rangeland and talk to the ranch families that remain. Ask them what this system is doing to their families, their neighbours, and the future of ranching. Then ask the men and women who sell cattle that end up in feedlots where they get their meat from. Most will say that every year they “finish” a couple of steers themselves for friends and family and many will admit off record that they wouldn’t eat feedlot beef themselves because of the hormones and drugs that get into the meat, not to mention the risk of e Coli.

Given this dysfunctional and wholly unsustainable system, should it be reassuring to the people of Outlook and the RM of Rudy to hear that local feed grains and calves will be bought by Namaka corporation to process through the feedlot? Perhaps it is good news, if everyone can close their eyes to the social, human health, and environmental costs of encouraging cheap, industrialized meat production instead of working to support the alternative: local livestock rearing on ranches where producers are paid a fair price for their animals, which are either finished on grass (the best alternative for ecological and human health) or else finished on grain in small local operations.

All of this, of course, implies consumers willing to pay for healthier meat. That is not going to happen tomorrow, but the writing is on the wall. At some point, enough consumers are going to be demanding healthier meat with a smaller ecological footprint that feedlots will be closed down. A relatively small one farther away from the meat packers will be first to go. Do the people of Outlook and the RM of Rudy want to roll the dice and see how far this ride takes them, regardless of risks to the local environment or the water quality of the South Saskatchewan River? Or do they want to be part of the solution and find better ways to support local livestock producers?

People of Outlook and the RM of Rudy, do not be seduced by “ends-justify-the-means” thinking. Cargill and XL don’t need your help, but all of us, from consumers to producers, need communities to draw a line in the sand and say “no, this is not good for any of us in the long run.”

Click here for Westbridgeford Meats Website

[Here is Murray's comment]

Dear Trevor, I am a livestock and grain producer in the RM of Rudy. Our farm is 12 miles straight north of the proposed Namaka Farms site. I am disappointed that you have chosen to advocate the inaccurate and misleading information put forward by the Rudy Ratepayers Group.

The Rudy Ratepayers Group does not represent the majority of residents in the RM of Rudy and I believe it is headed up by a land speculator from BC who only resides here for a short time during the growing season.

The beef industry is very market sensitive and thus is very much affected by economics of scale. I know this personally, as we finished our own calves for market back in the 80's when the Provincial Beef Stabilization Program was operating. When that program was discontinued, so was our finishing operation and at about that time, Intercon Packers in Saskatoon stopped slaughtering cattle. That is the kind of economic activity we don't want to see. If you can convince the consumers of this great country, and the world for that matter, to pay considerably more for poorer quality beef, then you will see a change in the beef industry.

As far as M1 Canal is concerned, water leaks out of that thing, not into it.

The 36 full-time permanent jobs expected to be created, while being very welcome, are a small part of the economic activity that will spin off of this development. Nothing has been said in regards to the construction or the feed and calves that will be sourced locally. Anyone who thinks that Namaka Farms won't source it's calves and feed locally as much as possible, is out of touch with reality and knows nothing about the beef cattle business.

Of the four residents in close proximity to the site, that are opposed to the development, two are acreages which are not agricultural producers and contribute very little to the tax base of the RM. I was told all of the residents in the immediate area of the site have been visited personally by members of the Thiessen family, to address their concerns.

I hope these comments bring to light some of the reasons why most of the grain and livestock producers in the RM of Rudy are not opposed to this development.

Sincerely, Murray Kasper, Outlook

A Feedlot for Outlook?

2010-10-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Rural Municipality of Rudy, including the town of Outlook, Saskatchewan, has been considering a new 36,000 head of cattle feedlot, which if it goes through would be the largest in the province. As always, these intensive livestock factory issues divide the community into those who support the proposal (they see the jobs and the increased tax base), and those who do not want the pollution, traffic, smells and so on. The matter was to be decided last night (October 21, 2010) in a vote at a meeting of the R.M., but, just before the meeting began, a petition was presented to the Reeve and councillors, calling for a referendum. In response, council gave its administrator a month to determine if there are enough signatures to force a public vote.

The good people of Outlook and area have a month’s breathing room now, in which they can ask themselves some important questions:

1. Is this really a “Not in my backyard” issue or is this a matter of saying “no, feedlot beef is not good anywhere”? There are other ways to raise beef--and all of them are much healthier for people and ecosystems. This province not that long ago was able to raise beef without intensive feedlot operations and the threats to human health, drinking water, human health and the environment that they pose. Saskatchewan people who think about these things are switching to grass-finished beef either from local producers or from outfits such as Westbridgeford Meats in Tugaske.

2. Is the possibility of 36 jobs (that is what the corporation proposing the feedlot projects) and some tax revenue a fair trade for all that will be lost to the beauty and wellbeing of your land and waterways in the Outlook area? Would you allow a toxic waste dump in your RM simply because it would be good for the economy? [Note: a reader, "localfarm" sent a comment advising me that in fact there will be "no additional tax revenue from this feedlot as it is a family farm & will pay no more tax than what it they are already paying." This reader also pointed out that Saskatchewan taxpayers will be on the hook for this boondoggle. The provincial government is promising to build a primary highway to serve the feedlot and to fund any infrastructure costs the Rural Municipality incurs because of the increased traffic, etc.]

3. Do you want to raise your tax base and create jobs in an industry that needlessly breeds E. Coli (incidence in Saskatchewan feedlots is as high as 57%; E. Coli only happens when you feed cattle grain), that has a strong chance of polluting the drinking water of downstream communities dependant on the M1 canal? [A reader, "localfarm," points out that the proposed feedlot would be 500 metres from the canal and four miles uphill from the South Sask. River.] Take a look at this map provided on the ratepayers' website devoted to this issue:

4. Do you really want to entrust the public commons of air, land and water quality you share as people of the RM of Rudy to a factory-farm owner from Alberta who has come with his proposal simply because he has no more room at home and Saskatchewan has cheaper land and no one really protecting the water? The people who settled the RM of Rudy were farmers, but this man is an industrialist and a businessman.

Standing next to cattle in a photograph doesn’t make you a farmer.

Read more:
story from last night's meeting covered on CBC website.

The excellent website created by the people of Rudy discussing this issue.

October 13, 2010 Regina Leader-Post article on the proposal.

Thanksgiving Bird (no, not a turkey, a prairie pileated)

2010-10-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

A misty Cherry Lake morning on Thanksgiving weekend

I've spent more than my share of time lamenting the birds that are declining from the grassy heart at the centre of this continent, thinking and writing about the species I no longer see as often as I would like. On the weekend, as we prepared to celebrate a Thanksgiving meal at Cherry Lake with our good friends Rob and Sylvie and their family, I had an encounter with a woodpecker that taught me to be grateful for the birds we do see, the ones that seem to be adapting and making a go of it.

The kind of prairie we have on our land, Aspen Parkland, is part of the most threatened grassland eco-type in the province. There have always been some trees in this kind of grassland, but under agriculture, with fire suppression, cultivation and cattle-grazing, some areas have seen Aspen bluffs maturing and expanding. (I say "some" because recent cropping practices and the increasing scale of farm machinery with rising input costs, have stimulated a lot of bulldozing of bush in heavily cultivated regions.)

More Aspen and larger trees is good news for a whole guild of bird species. Species like the Red-tailed Hawk are obvious beneficiaries, but for my money the bird that is really moving out from the boreal forest and adapting to the Aspen plains is the Pileated Woodpecker.

For six years I have been hearing and seeing Pileated Woodpeckers in the woods upstream of Cherry Lake in a tributary of the Upper Indian Head Creek. Despite the hard work of a dozen beavers in three lodges along the stream, there are Balsam and Aspen poplars in the ravine that measure 18 inches at the butt--perfect for attracting the largest woodpecker we have in this country.

They can be secretive much of the year and getting a look at one is always a treat. In fall, woodpeckers become more active and roam far and wide from their territories. It's a good season to see them. The last few weeks I have heard a Pileated calling from the woods upstream of our farm site. Each time I have grabbed the camera and headed out hoping to get a shot. I have several images of blurry trees and empty sky taken while one of the birds circled me through deep woods.

This weekend, though, with Sylvie's Thanksgiving supper sending good smells out into the yard, I heard someone yelling for me to come. It was Rob, down at a future garden site where he is using tarps to kill brome grass and other weeds: "It's the Pileated!" He was pointing at a few dead aspen that we have left next to the lake shore in front of the yard site. Grabbing the camera, I scanned the trees and saw nothing. It was a dead calm day, though, and something was moving the tall brome grass at the base of a broken off snag. Here is a shot of all I could see at first.

If you squint at the centre of the image you can see some of the red, white, and black pattern on the back of the woodpecker's head as he works on an old stump buried deep in goldenrod, brome grass, and thistle. I snuck through the grass and got as near as I dared, staying low and waiting for it to emerge. Then, to my amazement, it hopped through the dense grass to the base of another tree twenty feet away, whacking away at ground level, shaking the grass to and fro, before finally hitching upward on the trunk and into view. With late afternoon light behind me I was able to get a couple of photos.

Before I left to go set the table for supper, it moved on to more distant trees, flying part way and then diving down into the grass. This, I thought, is a bird that's going to make it here out on the plains as long as we have trees big enough for them to forage on and nest within. Yes, the grassland is changing and many of the birds who need open treeless plains are suffering, but at the same time, I can be grateful for the adaptive birds that are thriving. At grace that evening, with candles lighting a table full of good food grown on prairie land, I thought of the woodpecker and gave a silent thanks for wild drumming in spring, jungle cries rising from the ravine, and a red-crowned flourish passing through dark woods.

Red-tailed hawks on the move

2010-09-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks I've been photographing hawks as they move south past Cherry Lake and the upper Indian Head Creek valley. There is something about seeing a hawk passing by in autumn that carries with it thoughts of the summer past and the winter to come. It's the mystery of where a bird spent its breeding season and where it will roost and hunt in the colder weeks ahead, but something of my own drifting through another year of life seems to get caught up in the motion of a predatory bird over the land.

Here is an adult red-tailed hawk in classic western red-tail plumage. This bird passed low over me several times one day in late summer.

By late August the red-tails were moving by every day in a steady trickle. We have a pair of Krider's red-tailed hawks, which are very pale, nesting on the northern edge of our land, not far from Deep Lake. This juvenile bird (finely barred tail) may be from this local nest. I'll try to get more photos of them when they return next spring. Here are two out of focus shots of the same bird on the 18th of September.

Many hawks pass by along the ridge just south and west of Cherry Lake, cathing updrafts there before heading out across Strawberry Lake Community Pasture. Here are some more passing red-tails, all distant shots.

Part of the fun in late September and early October is the identification challenge represented by the darker red-tails that seem to arrive at that time. Some are from the Harlan's Hawk race, once thought to be a separate species. Here is a shot of a Harlan's passing over the grassland sw of Cherry Lake on September 26. Notice the pale streaks on the upper breast.

Harlan's hawks summer in the woods of central and Western Alaska and northern British Columbia, but migrate through the northern Great Plains. Audubon who named it harlani after Dr. Richard Harlan called it "the black warrior."

We also see dark phase Red-tailed Hawks of the western race. This is a particularly black one (notice no pale streaking on the breast). It's finely barred tail, instead of the red tail gives it away as a bird born this year.

Sprague's pipit has to wait in line to make the U.S. Endangered List

2010-09-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

photo of Sprague's Pipit courtesy of Wildearth Guardians

When Wildearth Guardians forced the U.S. Government's hands earlier this year by making them consider the Sprague's Pipit for listing, I wondered how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was going to wriggle out of their responsibility. This week we found out. Here is a terrific article in the Montreal Gazette (! why don't we get this kind of writing here in the West?) telling the whole story. And here is an excerpt:

Last week’s long-awaited declaration by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service won’t do much to help the rapidly disappearing Sprague’s pipit, a grassland songbird famous for its elaborate courtship rituals but headed toward extinction as farming, urbanization and petroleum development destroy its traditional habitat.

The problem, said the Washington-based conservation agency, is that while it acknowledges the pipit population has “declined drastically” and needs serious protection, federal wildlife officials are currently too busy saving other species to conduct the studies and hold the meetings necessary to actually get the pipit placed on the U.S. endangered species list.

You can read the official release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service here.

The species by species approach to saving biodiversity is clearly hitting its political and practical limits. Perhaps it's time our governments got down to the real work of inventorying the natural landscapes in their jurisdiction, identifying which ones are most important for conserving biodiversity and then taking the measures necessary to protect their ecological integrity from industry, resource development, and destructive forms of agriculture.

Turkey Vultures and the Last three rural schools in Saskatchewan

2010-09-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

Stuart Houston overlooking the East Block of Grasslands National Park

A couple of weeks ago, Stuart Houston, good friend and mentor of many prairie naturalists, took a break from working on the manuscript of Birds of Saskatchewanand sent off an email to a few of those who correspond with him. I am using this note, with his permission, as the basis of today's posting.

Anyone who reads Grass, Sky, Song will know that Stuart started North America's first and longest-running wing-tagging program for the Turkey Vulture. The story of this bird on the northern Great Plains is tied to the flow and ebb of rural settlement over the past 140 years.

Though it was common in the buffalo days, the Turkey Vulture responded to the arrival of farmer-settlers, who were often inclined to shoot at any "buzzard," by retreating to the forest fringe and to the Cypress Hills. When I was a young naturalist, to see a vulture I had to go to Duck Mountain Provincial Park north east of Yorkton or to the Conglomerate Cliffs of Cypress Hills. That began to change in the '90s, when nature began to take advantage of a new niche caused by events fifty years earlier.

With the industrialization of agriculture destroying the small family farm and de-populating the countryside from the 1940s onward, the prairie quickly became a landscape of homes without people, barns without animals, and schools without children. These abandoned buildings--so common to prairie people and often remarked upon by visitors--have become the natal home of the returning prairie Turkey Vulture. Where they once nested under fallen logs, brush piles, and in small caves and burrows, Turkey Vultrues now lay their eggs in the attics and haylofts built by our settler ancestors. Stuart Houston, with the help of Brent Terry, Marten Stoffel, and Mike Bloom, began wing-tagging the prairie vultures about eight years ago. Vultures don't do well with ordinary bird bands on the leg because of their habit of excreting on their own shanks. Here is a link to Jared Clarke's posting on the experience of tagging vultures (scroll down to postings on October 26 and August 15, 2009). Here is a photo Jared took of a wing-tag on a young vulture.

In his message, Stuart is lamenting the loss of rural schools in Saskatchewan, which means schools actually outside of the limits of any town. There once were hundreds of these small school houses, most of them the classic one-room affair. Using his topographic maps, and Bill Barry's wealth of geographic knowledge, Stuart put together some details on what he believes may be the last three rural schools remaining in the province. Not surprisingly, vultures get a mention or two.

Unbelievably, although school boards, under government pressure, ignore the benefits of rural and small-town primary schools in Saskatchewan's past, and have recently closed down needed schools in vibrant communities like Englefeld and Glenavon, and are threatening to close the Elbow school, I learned today from Bill Barry that there are, or recently were, three rural schools persisting in Saskatchewan.

Because one of my most precious possessions, Bill's expanded version of PEOPLE PLACES, did not list the location of West Central School, the starting point for directions to a vulture nest known to Marten Stoffel (as of 9 April this year and Harold Fisher on 10 August), I phoned Bill to get the section, township and range of that school. What an enjoyable and informative conversion resulted, as always with Bill Barry.

The last three rural schools in operation anywhere in Saskatchewan, are astoundingly near Prince Albert, where I infer they must locally have a) smallish farms; b) largeish families, and c) unusually intelligent people on the local school boards. And two of the three are on the way to current vulture nests, and the third was within a mile of where I banded Long-eared Owls many years back.

West Central School, NW 16-47-27w2, is just over three miles west of Clouston, and last Bill Barry heard, children were being bused from Clouston, MacDowall and Lily Plain to West Central School. Osborne school, named after the middle name of Prince Albert Member of Parliament and then Senator till his death, Thomas Osborne Davis, [the nearby hamlet of Davis and the short-lived siding of Senator nearby were also named for Davis] is only a half mile east of where Highway 2 jogs a mile west, south of Prince Albert, nw 33-46-26w2.

Wild Rose school is only five miles north of the hamlet of Holbein, and children from that hamlet were being bussed away from highway 3 north to Wild Rose school, NE 10-50-2w3, which is where one turns two miles east when heading for the active Holbein vulture nest. I found this interesting and am sharing it with a few of you. I love 1:250,000 maps!

Stuart

Here is a photo I found of children attending Wild Rose school.

Alberta gov't selling grassland for potato farming

2010-09-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

If the Alberta Government has its way, 100 quarter sections of ancient grassland could look something like this in spring:

We thought we had it bad in Saskatchewan when the Wall government last year quietly announced it would sell Crown grasslands to leaseholders. The Alberta provincial cabinet is right now considering the sale of 100 quarters (16,000 acres) of native grassland near Bow Island, all of it habitat for endangered species, to a company that wants to break the prairie and seed it to potatoes, which will be made into potato chips.

The Alberta Wilderness Association is rallying forces to oppose the sale. Here is their letter to the Alberta Government:

Dear Premier Stelmach and Minister Knight
Re: Imminent Destruction of Endangered Species Habitat to Grow Potatoes

AWA is asking for an emergency response from the Alberta government to prevent the
imminent destruction of more than 100 quarters of public land, known to be habitat for a number of endangered species.

AWA is very disturbed to learn that the sale of a huge area of public land – more than 100 quarters – is going through without public knowledge or opportunity for comment. The land is known to have several species listed under the federal Species at Risk Act, including burrowing owl, ferruginous hawk, Sprague's pipit, chestnut‐collared longspur, McCown's longspur, shorteared owl, and long‐billed curlew.
AWA is led to believe that the decision to sell this land is before Cabinet. It is our understanding that the majority of the 100 quarters of native prairie is to be ploughed up for potato farming, to be used in the manufacture of snack food "potato chips".

The public has made it very clear on numerous occasions that they do not want their public land sold.

Public Lands are managed by the Alberta government on behalf of all Albertans. Selling and trading Public Lands with no opportunity for public comment is a failure of public duty. We are asking the Alberta government for an emergency response from the minister to stop this sale going through, and to allow for full public discussion before any irreversible decisions are made.

Yours truly,

ALBERTA WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION
Christyann Olson,
Executive Director

On Monday, Alberta's Minister of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD), Mel Knight said on radio that proceeds from the sale of the Bow Island land would be handed over to the Nature Conservancy of Canada to help them purchase perhaps as much as ten times the amount of native grassland that is going to be destroyed in the potato farming deal.

The Alberta Wilderness Association thought this sounded pretty funny so they made a call to NCC, who denied that they were going to be involved in any way. Here is the AWA press release on the topic.

The industrial potato operation that stands to benefit from this deal and wants to turn 7,000 year old grasslands into potato fields is SLM Spud Farms; 1317748 Ltd.

It would be worth someone's time to see if these folks have "responded" to any of the Alberta Conservative party's requests for funds in recent years. Writers like Richard Manning say that Big Ag in the U.S. usually hedges its bets and donates to both political parties, but that is not necessary in Alberta, Canada's home of the one-party state, where the powers that be have figured out how to cut in half the costs of influencing government.

If there is any doubt about just how big this "farm" operation is, take a look at this statement of claim available online, where they took the American Government to court under NAFTA, after the U.S. closed the border to Canadian Beef. The Alberta corporation sought damages of more than $3.9 million because they had invested in a cattle-feed operation dedicated entirely to fattening big holsteins on potato by-products and then shipping them to American processors who are set up for these larger animals.

Should we be surprised that people who want to convert 16,000 acres of native grazing land into the first stop on the potato chip conveyor belt are the same agri-industrialists who fatten cattle on potato by-products left over from the factory that makes potatoes into unhealthy processed food? We know things have gone awry when we are feeding the ancient prairie to the potato factory to make junk food and then feeding the scraps to cattle in feedlots to produce fatty beef tainted with anti-biotics and hormones.

Postscript, a reader, Lauren, made the comment suggesting I include addresses in case people would like to send letters to the Alberta Government. I should have thought of that. Here they are, belatedly:

The Hon. Ed Stelmach
Premier of Alberta
Room 307, Legislature Building
10800 – 97th Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6

Honourable Mel Knight
Minister of Sustainable Resource Development
#404 Legislature Building
10800 97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6

More birds from summer travels--Okanagan

2010-08-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

View of Vaseaux Lake and McIntyre Bluff

On a family vacation to the Okanagan in August, I had a bit of the blind luck that sometimes enters the life of a naturalist. My wife Karen and daughter Maia and I were reading quietly on a stony beach along Okanagan Lake one morning and a bird flew in at our feet. Thinking more about vineyards and wineries than birds at the time, I was actually reading Roadside Nature Tours through the Okanagan
A Guide to British Columbia's Wine Country, a book by one of Canada's most prominent bird experts, Dick Cannings. The bird that made me look up from my book was feeding on the beach only six feet away from me and seemed not to notice or mind us there. "Hello, what are you doing here?" As the words came out I realized I was looking at a Surfbird, a species that belongs on the Pacific Coast and not the interior of B.C. I called Dick and though he put out the alert to others, it was not seen again. Luckily it stayed long enough for me to run and get the camera, proving a first record for the species in the Okanagan.

A couple of days later Dick invited us to visit the Vaseaux Lake Bird Observtory in the southern Okanagan next to one of the most picturesque bodies of water in the valley.

Here is Doug Brown (right), who runs the station, watching Allan, a volunteer, remove a bird from the mist net.

Just as Karen, Maia and I arrived, Doug and Allan came back from making their rounds to the nets. After entering the screen tent where they do the banding Doug opened one of his little cotton sacks (they always remind me of Rusty the Rooster's home on The Friendly Giant), and pulled out this lovely Yellow Breasted Chat.

The B.C. population of chats is listed as Threatened based on work done by Dick. We felt fortunate to see one in the hand--and to watch a skilled bander like Doug work so rapidly and efficiently with the birds.

The hat I received earlier in the summer from B.C.'s Grasslands Conservation Council got hung up on one of the support lines for a mist net.

While we watched the bird banding work, Dick was out in the valley bottom running a regular bird survey he does for the station. When he finished, we followed him to a grassland and talus-slope spot where we could listen for Canyon Wrens.

In this photo we are watching for a wren that Dick has managed to call in with his very effective imitation of its descending whistle.

Next to the place where we were straining to see the wren, was this pictograph on a large boulder.

Later Dick toured us through the valley and to White and Green lakes where we saw a flock of Western Bluebirds, some Pygmy Nuthatches and Cassins Finches. Along the way, Dick told me about the the proposed national park for the grasslands of the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys. He sits on an advisory committee for the proposed park, and has been working hard with other B.C. conservationists for many years, making the case for the park and helping landowners and First Nations leaders see the value in having it established. I asked him about the "No National Park" signs we had seen all over the south Okanagan. To us it seemed like there was a strong core of organized opposition.

"No," Dick said,"It's basically just a couple of people who are pressuring landowners to put up the signs. We've done polls that show a strong majority support for the park." Dick is confident that the obstacles remaining in the way of an Okanagan-Similkameen park will fall in coming years, protecting a good chunk of this rare grassland and its many endangered species from the ferocious development pressures the region faces.

Here is what the Parks Canada site has to say about the area set aside for a park under a memorandum of understanding signed between Canada and B.C: "Desert-like ecosystems with sagebrush and cactus are found on valley bottoms, changing at higher elevations to dry forests of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir, or sub-alpine forest and alpine tundra. This area is one of the most interesting and ecologically diverse parts of Canada, with many native plants and animals, and natural communities found nowhere else in Canada."

[For more information on the park, Okanagan birds and Dick's ventures as a low-carbon, cycling birder, be sure to take a look at his wonderful blog, "Birds and Books".]

Photo album--what I did this summer

2010-08-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

I will get back to writing posts about grassland issues soon, but first I thought I'd show a few bird photos from some of my travels this summer--in grassland and elsewhere:

This black-billed cuckoo shot was taken by my good friend Chris Reed who lives in Toronto but comes out to Saskatchewan where he and his partner keep a second home in a small town. Chris is the naturalist who appears in the Greater Sage-Grouse chapter of Grass, Sky, Song. I was in Toronto in July at a reading at the Harbourfront Centre and Chris and I went for a long bird walk on the Leslie Street Spit. We heard the cuckoo first and then discovered it near at hand on a low branch. If you look at the throat in this image you can see how it distends as it utters its low, "cow-cow" song.

Now for some grassland birds, taken mostly in the upper Indian Head Creek drainage, on and around the Strawberry Lakes Community Pasture, the landscapes featured in Grass, Sky, Song.

This male Bobolink (a species of concern according to COSEWIC) let me get rather close to him in the saline grass along Indian Head Creek just west of our property.

Here are a couple more shots, including a final one with his more cryptically-plumaged spouse:

While I was standing at the edge of this wet grassland, a Wilson's Phalarope nesting in the creek's marshes kept circling overhead and giving its alarm calls:

On the uplands above the valley, the community pasture was in high June bloom, spangled with astragulus, pentstemmon, gaillardia, and anntenaria flowers.

An upland sandpiper cirled past me and landed in the grass momentarily. . .

. . .before rising up again to fly past. It must have had a nest or young in the vicinity so I backed away.

Another prairie shorebird, the willet, flew over while I retreated.

Turkey vultures often wait for the sun to warm the air in groups along fencelines. On my return drive, I found eight of them perched on eight fenceposts, lined up like some kind of grim tribunal of old men. Here is a shot of one of them.

Here are the best shots of ruby-throated hummingbirds I could manage this summer. First a couple of females in flight . . .

. . . and two shots of a male perched (when the sun is not hitting the gorget directly, it turns black):

Two pairs of Eastern Phoebe nest in buildings on the property. This one was flycatching for the young in its nest by sallying out over one of our garden plots.

In late July we had a moonrise that shot the sky with colour and streams of light after a rain shower.

The next morning, July 26, was calm so I rose early to see what grassland songbirds I could find in the western part of the pasture land. Here is what our little valley looked like, with strands of mist hugging the hills and lake, as I drove up onto the prairie:

The first birds I heard were Grasshopper Sparrows, singing from barbed wire perches.

Here is a closer view of one singing:

Nearby I found a lone Sprague's Pipit, as usual several hundred feet up in the air--damned near impossible to see with the naked eye and still only a smidgen through my 400mm zoom lens.

I saw a handful of Western Meadowlarks that morning. This was the only one who allowed me a photo of his yellow breast. Something about this pose and the shape of the chevron on his breast reminds me of the Fred Lahrman painting on the cover of GSS.

These young Brown-headed Cowbirds were feeding among a herd of Angus on the pasture.

This summer we followed the fortunes of a pair of Cedar Waxwings who nested in the lilac hedge near our cabin. Here is photo of an adult on the nest on July 13:

When it flew off to feed, I snuck a shot of the eggs.

By August 2, the nest looked like this.

As far as I know, three young waxwings fledged.

Next posting, I will show some images from a holiday to the Okanagan, which has perhaps the rarest kind of grassland in Canada.

If grasslands are "like the freezer" no wonder we have so little left

2010-08-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

gauchos on the Argentine Pampas

Out at the cabin for the last couple of weeks, I haven’t been able to post to Grass Notes, but when I get some time I will post some photos from the summer. Meanwhile, here are a couple of thoughts on grassland conservation that have been on my mind:

My ecologist friend, Rob Wright, told me recently that out of the 1.2 million acres of land in the Regina Plain Landscape Area (or ecodistrict K17 - on the Ecoregions of Saskatchewan map), a mere 450 acres still have their native grass cover. That means 99.07% of the native grass on the Regina Plains is gone. What can one say about that kind of annihilation?

Carla Sbert of Nature Canada sent me an article from the June 2007 issue of WorldBirdwatch, entitled “The Tyrant and the Gaucho.” It is about grassland conservationists in South America facing the same issues we grapple with in this hemisphere. Asked why grassland seems to be so undervalued compared to other kinds of natural cover, Anibal Parera, BirdLife International’s Coordinator of the Alliance for the Conservation of South America’s Southern Cone Grasslands, says “For most people, grasslands are like the freezer—a place where their food comes from. When they think of grasslands, they think of cows, crops, and horses. When people think of forest, they think of jaguars, owls, toucans. . . .” Anibal’s colleague Rob Clay added, “the changes resulting from grassland conversion are less dramatic than those caused by rainforest deforestation, so to the untrained eye there is little difference between a grazed pasture, cereal crops, and pristine grasslands.”

Why grasslands need official protection

2010-07-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Grassland protected in Canada's Grasslands National Park

Grasslands are among the most underprotected habitats on the planet, and temperate grasslands, as we have here on the Northern Great Plains, are in the greatest need of formal protection.

The World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), an international body of conservation and parks professionals, has made protecting temperate grasslands a top priority.

When I spoke to the B.C. Grassland Conservation Council AGM in June, I met a Senior Planner at Parks Canada, Bill Henwood, who chairs the new WCPA task force on grassland conservation. Their goal is to increase the percentage of grassland protected internationally from 5.5% to 10% by 2014.

After meeting in Mongolia a couple of years ago 35 WCPA grasslands experts from 14 countries agreed on something they call the Hohhot Declaration, part of which reads as follows:

We the participants of the Hohhot World Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative Workshop from five continents and 14 countries, declare that temperate indigenous grasslands are critically endangered and urgent action is required to protect and maintain the services they provide to sustain human life. We call upon all sectors of society to collaborate towards this goal.

Their rationale for giving grasslands a priority reads as follows:

Temperate grasslands are one of the world’s great biomes – or so they used to be. Temperate grasslands are now considered the most altered ecosystem on the planet. The temperate grasslands biome occupies 9 million sq.km or ~ 8% of the earth’s terrestrial surface. Of this 8%, only 5% are currently protected within the global system of protected areas. After cradling the needs of humans for centuries, temperate grasslands are now the earth’s most endangered ecosystem. Temperate grasslands haven’t been visible on the global conservation agenda. As a result the grasslands exist today only as remnants of their former numbers. These grasslands used to be home to some of the greatest assemblages of wildlife the earth has ever witnessed. Potential for protection still remain, especially in the prairies of North America, the pampas of South America, the lowland grasslands of southeast Australia and the steppes of Eastern Europe.

The goal of their task force is

To promote and facilitate the establishment of new grassland protected areas throughout the grassland biomes, with a priority on temperate grasslands, toward a goal of protecting 10% of the temperate grasslands biome by the year 2014, and to provide for the protection, restoration and sustainable use of grasslands, both within and beyond protected areas, through the development of best management practices and guidelines.

A worthy goal it seems to me, and one that is within our reach if we get started working on it. If you live in Saskatchewan, send an email to the Minister of Tourism, Culture, and Parks, Honorable Bill Hutchinson, urging his government to follow this international initiative and increase the protection of our remaining native grasslands by extending existing parks such as Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan Landing , and Buffalo Pound, and by creating new grassland parks. Here is his email address: bhutchinson@mla.legassembly.sk.ca.

You can also write the Minister of Environment, Honorable Dustin Duncan, suggesting that the government use means at their disposal to strive for that 10% goal by 2014. Here is his email address: dduncan.mla@accesscomm.ca.

East block Grasslands National Park

Summer days at Cherry Lake

2010-06-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

White beardtongue on the prairie

This posting is an attempt to catch up and show some of what I've been doing and seeing out at our place at Cherry Lake in the Upper Indian Head Creek Valley. (This will be my last posting for a week or two. I am taking my daughter, Maia, on a tour of the prairie places I love best and some places I have never seen.)

These intrepid and happy (though moist) folks were with me on the 29th of May doing the first annual Cherry Lake Birdathon. We stayed mostly in the Indian Head Creek drainage, within 15 kms of Cherry Lake and managed on a very wet day to record 116 species, including two Mourning Warblers, a Connecticut Warbler, and a Sandhill Crane (one or two seem to hang around the Strawberry Lakes each summer). All told, we raised $2115 dollars for Bird Studies Canada, the lion's share going to the Last Mountain Bird Observatory banding station. Thanks to all who came out for the day and to those who donated to the cause.

The following Sunday we held "Bright Wings," a bird festival. 55 people came out for the day, taking workshops and tours to learn about the birds we share this watershed with. In this photo, the workshop and tour leaders are meeting for a short confab before getting started.

A photographer friend, Rocky Marchigiano led bird photography workshops with Ryan Peterson. Here are some photos he took during the festival, which he graciously allowed me to post.

A Black-crowned Night Heron. . .

And a Wilson's Phalarope. . .

And, another characteristic bird of the valley, American White Pelican.

There are always bright wings at Cherry Lake and not all of them are avian. Like most prairie farms, our place has a lilac hedge and when it blooms, as it was two weeks ago, the butterflies arrive. A pair of Monarch butterflies spent two days working the hedge blossoms.

Several Red Admirals joined in. . . .

As well as this Northwestern Frittilary. . . .

. . .and this ragged and torn Mourning Cloak.

A bumble bee (left) and a Yellow Warbler were in the hedge at the same time.

That evening, we went for a walk up on the grassland to look at the profusion of blooms on the prairie after the months of rain. Here are some of the flowers.

Great Plains Indian Paintbrush. . . .

Yellow Umbrellaplant. . . .

Indian Breadroot. . . .

Ground Plum (these are the seed pods). . . .

And the beautiful Plains Rough Fescue.

This guy was running through a patch of speargrass on a hilltop: the Smooth Green Snake, a species that reaches its limits in this part of Saskatchewan and is not that common, though we find it regularly each summer at Cherry Lake.

Breeding Bird Survey where there once was grass

2010-06-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

Breeding Bird Survey point on cropland near Francis, Saskatchewan

On the weekend Karen and I did the Tyvan Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) and later this week, if the weather holds, my son Jon and I will head to Crooked Lake to do another one.

On Saturday morning there was no wind or rain to interfere with the chorus of birds along the 25 mile route across cropland in the Upper Wascana Creek drainage. The BBS, said to be the most important citizen science effort on the continent, has been going since 1966. The effort depends almost entirely on the ear-birding skills of amateurs, who are dispatched to pre-determined routes in breeding season to record the presence of birds by stopping to listen for three minutes at 50 stops a half-mile apart.

With all the rain this year there were wetlands everywhere on the first part of the Tyvan route. Ducks and other wetland birds were in good numbers and I was especially happy to hear so many American Bitterns, a bird that the BBS shows is declining over much of its range. I haven't tallied the results yet but I think I heard somewhere between 8 and 11 bitterns in the first 14 stops. Trouble is, the bittern's slough-pump, "ha-runk-a-dunk" call can be heard at least a mile away if things are quiet. So I was never quite sure if I was hearing the same individual at two consecutive survey stops.

American Bittern image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Tyvan--Francis area ranges from gently rolling moraine to level glacial lake bed. I would estimate that more than 90% of the land is cultivated and so there is not a lot of grassland on the route but plenty of erstwhile grassland now growing grain, canola, lentils, and peas. The most common grassland birds are horned larks. . .

image courtesy of Val Thomas

Savannah Sparrows. . .

Vesper Sparrows. . .

Bobolinks. . .

Western Meadowlarks. . .

and Upland Sandpipers.

Some of the upland sandpipers seemed to be singing and flying over cultivated fields and horned larks were in cropland with short vegetation. Savannah and Vesper Sparrows were at almost every stop as long as there were open landscapes of some kind. The meadowlarks were in places where there is either hay land, native pasture (only three or four of the fifty stops), or cropland with grassy margins. I found bobolinks only at two or three stops where the grass was high enough, usually near a wetland.

At the end of the route, for the last ten stops or so, I am in a landscape that looks like a wasteland--nothing but crop running off to all horizons and almost no grass at the edges. Here is a typical view of these level, empty fields.

The emptiness is all the more pronounced by the paucity of birds. At each of these last stops, I typically count nothing but a couple of Savannah Sparrows and Horned Larks, with perhaps a passing gull or Brown-headed Cowbird.

Keep an eye out for Burrowing Owls

2010-06-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

In your travels on the Saskatchewan prairie this summer you may come across a burrowing owl. If you do and the landowner has not already reported it to Operation Burrowing Owl (OBO), please be sure to call in to the HOOT line (1-800-667-HOOT (4668))and let them know where you saw it.

Here are two images that show the difference between a Burrowing Owl and the more common Short-eared Owl that will also be seen perching on fence posts or on the ground.

Here is a burrowing owl (note long legs, barring on breast)

(image courtesy of Alan MacKeigan)

and here is a Short-eared Owl (note distinctive face pattern and streaking rather than barring on breast; legs short)

If you are a landowner or know a landowner with owls who is not currently participating in OBO programs, please at least have a look at the Nature Sask web page on OBO to see what the program entails.

People can be reluctant to report endangered species on their property for fear that the government will somehow take control over how they use the land, but any farmer or rancher registered in OBO will assure you that nothing like that happens.

We are down to a few hundred pairs of these wonderful creatures in Saskatchewan and despite some recent signes of hope they are believed to still be in long term decline.

I was in Kamloops, British Columbia last weekend where I spoke to conservationists about grassland and grassland birds at the 10th anniversary of the Grasslands Conservation Council of B.C. British Columbia gave up its last wild burrowing owls a few years back, but they have instituted a re-introduction program that is now getting some good results. My host Bob Moody, Executive Director of the Grassland Conservation Council took me out to see a local pasture where conservationists have built artificial burrows and placed captive-bred owls. Some of these birds have migrated back to their nesting grounds on their own so there is a lot of hope that the program will over time develop some viable colonies of burrowing owls.

I met some of the folks involved in this work. They belong to the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of B.C., another amazing British Columbia group full of energetic people making somer real progress on behalf of grassland ecosystems. Take a look at their website, for my money one of the best I have seen by an ENGO in a while.

I am going to close this posting with a series of images from their web site:

owls just outside the burrow

a field crew making burrows

young captive-bred owls ready for release

installing a new artificial burrow

captive-bred owl just outside one of the artificial burrows

Grasslands in B.C.

2010-06-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

image by Chris Hamilton, from the GCCBC web site

Grassland advocacy can be a lonely, discouraging path to follow. With grassland ecology and species in rapid retreat and threats from human activity multiplying (we can now add wind farms to the mix--if the proposed "Wild Rose" wind farms in southeastern Alta go ahead, the last Greater Sage-grouse of that province will vanish), you find yourself always scanning the horizon for any signs of hope, anyone doing something that might help. One group that came up on my horizon this winter was the Grassland Conservation Council of British Columbia (GCCBC).

Grassland in B.C.? I know, British Columbia is mountains, forests, and seashore. But they have grassland too. As the council points out on their website, “BC’s grasslands represent less than one percent of the provincial land base and are one of Canada’s most endangered ecosystems.”

Most states and provinces have at least some grassland, and the interesting thing is that the ones with very little, places like B.C. and Ontario and some eastern states, seem to have the best conservation and (especially) restoration programs in place. They have looked at their endangered species lists and seen that a good many of the species at risk depend on grassland (from the GCCBC website again: “More than 30 percent of British Columbia’s threatened or endangered species depend on grasslands for their survival.”)

This Saturday I have the privilege of addressing the B.C. council at its tenth anniversary celebration. I was happy to be invited to come to this great event but I have my own agenda too: I hope to learn something about what it takes to get such an organization started, because this province desperately needs a group dedicated to conserving and restoring grassland ecosystems. During the recent struggle to stop the provincial government from selling off our crown wildlife lands, it became abundantly clear that we do not have such a voice for grassland in Saskatchewan.

71,000 coyotes killed--what does this mean for birds?

2010-05-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

Here is today's news report on the final tally of from the coyote slaughter:

"Coyote ugly: 71,000 killed in Sask cull

By The Canadian Press
REGINA - A coyote bounty Saskatchewan offered hunters and farmers has resulted in more than 71,000 of the animals being killed.

Agriculture Minister Bob Bjornerud says the number is a surprise, but he's pleased with the results.

Bjornerud says the intention was not to eliminate coyotes, but to control the population because the animals were killing livestock and putting farm families in danger.

Jack Hextall, chairman of the Saskatchewan Cattlemen's Association, says attacks on livestock were costing producers thousands of dollars in losses.

The province paid $20 per coyote under a pilot program which ran from November until the end of March.

Bjornerud says the final cost for the program should be about $1.5 million."

Leaving aside the financial and political stupidity of a government spending $1.5 million to solve a problem that was "costing producers thousands of dollars," I am going to speculate on what losing 71,000 coyotes might do in the short term to grassland ecosystems that are already under a lot of stress from habitat destruction and conversion.

71,000 is a big number when we are talking about a top predator. In a post on January 15, I wrote about the effect of removing a lot of coyotes--particularly how it releases the Red Fox, a non-native predator, from any limits on its numbers. Though the fox is native to the continent it was not found on grasslands before settlement and agriculture. In the last century the Red Fox has had some periods where it has exploded in numbers, usually after a large loss of coyotes, which otherwise keep it in check.
(See Finley J.K. 2006. The rise and fall of the Red Fox beneath the apex of Palliser’s Triangle. Blue Jay 64(3): 155 - 159 and Finley, J.K. 2005. The fox that stole the apex of Palliser’s Triangle: a correction. Blue Jay 63(3) : 135-138)

Grassland birds are not adapted to predators such as the Red Fox and Racoon so when these mammals increase bird populations suffer.

Here is an excerpt from a research paper about a declining grassland bird, the Greater Prairie Chicken, explaining how nest success in ground-nesting birds (ducks and the prairie chicken) is greater in areas with higher coyote populations. And wherever coyotes numbers are down and Red Fox numbers up, nest success is cut in half. The full paper is available on the National Prairie Wildlife Research Center's website

"Red foxes and skunks have been the most common mammalian predators of prairie-chicken nests throughout most of the eastern range. Foxes generally have more impact than skunks because they commonly prey on the nesting hen. Over a 10-yr period, Svedarsky (1988) found December fox fur prices to be positively correlated with spring booming-ground counts two springs later. The conclusion was that trapping effort increased with the market incentive and that other potential predators were trapped as well (skunks, feral cats [Felis domesticus]). If trapping (and hunting) did, in fact, reduce mammalian predator numbers, it should have resulted in higher prairie-chicken production the next year and higher booming-ground counts the following year. This appeared to be the case. Further evidence for the high impact of foxes on large ground-nesting birds is that in areas where coyotes tend to displace foxes, nest success often increases. In North Dakota and South Dakota, Sovada et al. (1995) studied comparable areas except that some areas were dominated by red foxes and others by coyotes. Duck nests in coyote-dominated areas experienced nearly twice (32%) the nesting success as those in fox-dominated areas (17%). The authors suggested that managing an area for coyotes rather than for foxes could be an effective method of increasing duck nest success. Svedarsky (1992) observed an increase in apparent nest success of larger ground-nesting birds (ducks and grouse) over a 2-yr period in Minnesota. As coyotes apparently displaced foxes, nest success increased from 8.3% of 12 nests to 61.3% of 31 nests."

The voices of coyotes are part of the twilight and morning song of the prairie--something we take for granted like the creek running in spring. Last weekend my wife Karen and I were remarking that we have heard very few coyotes calling this spring. Most nights now there are none to be heard. To be honest, at first I wasn't thinking it was the coyote slaughter. After all, the estimate was merely 21,000 or so--more or less the same as an average winter. 71,000 is a very different number, different enough to do some short term damage that contributes to the long term decline of prairie ecosystems.

Two weeks ago, I saw my first red fox on the land since we purchased it in 2005. It was in broad daylight. The next weekend I saw two foxes in the same spot, again running in the light of day.

Meanwhile, the surviving coyotes are nursing their litters right now. If you care for the wellbeing of this land, lift a prayer or thought in their direction, that they may prosper this summer and replace that lost 71,000 as soon as possible.

Spring Birds of Indian Head Creek II

2010-05-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

On the weekend I had a chance to get out to the pipit fields on and around Strawberry Lake Community Pasture. Two good friends, John and Michelle, came with me to see what grassland birds had arrived for the summer.

After the surprise of finding a pair of Say's Phoebe at an old farmstead (too distant to photograph), we stopped at one of the wetlands that head toward the beginnings of one arm of Indian Head Creek south of Lake Marguerrite. This Wilson's Snipe stood on his fencepost at roadside amid last summer's cattails . . .

Below him a male Northern Pintail stayed just long enough for this shot (click on any image to see a larger version).

As we neared the native grasslands of the area, I started to hear our first grassland sparrows singing, including this Vesper Sparrow . . .

. . .and the Savannah Sparrow featured at the top of this posting.

No Baird's Sparrows yet, but off in the pasture we heard an Upland Sandpiper giving its bubbling wolf whistle. We heard another, then saw two of them flying back and forth across the road. Unfortunately, this was the only photo I could manage.

Turning the corner west at an old cemetery and heading west along a tame hay field, I heard my first Sprague's Pipit of the year. We jumped out of the vehicle and leaned back on it to look up at the sky. We could hear its swishing, sibilant song perfectly, but we stared up into the blue for ten minutes or more and never managed a glimpse. Pipits are hard to see because they stay a couple hundred feet up in the air and sing, but I can almost always find the little bird-dot moving across the sky if I work at it. We moved on down the road and found another pipit and another, eventually counting five of them in that field, but try as we may, we could not find any of them. I wanted to show John and Michelle what they look like when they sing, but we eventually had to give up and move on.

The other grassland birds we saw on and around the pasture were Western Meadowlarks, Horned Larks, and Sharp-tailed Grouse (including a late lek containing at least 8 birds).

On the way back, we passed a set of ponds and sloughs in the community pasture and found a good mix of ducks and waders, including this female Wilson's Phalarope. . .

. . .and an American Avocet.

Back at our place at Cherry Lake, I tried sneaking up on a Lark Sparrow that had arrived to forage in the yardsite where we see them every spring. No dice, but I took a distant shot anyway, close enough to see the striking pattern on the sparrow's face.

Spring Birds of Indian Head Creek

2010-05-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

Ring-necked duck

Got up early on Sunday morning at the cabin to see what birds had arrived. It was too windy to go out onto the uplands to look for grassland birds, so I trekked up the valley where I knew I could find a few birds in Aspen woods and beaver ponds.

The recent rain and snow has added a bit of gurgle to Indian Head Creek’s customary trickle so the ponds and lakes that feed this branch of the creek are all brimming.

The first swallow species back in spring, the Tree Swallow, is hardy enough to make the gamble that usually pays off in allowing them to secure good nest sites before other cavity nesters arrive. The risk they take is the weather we’ve been seeing for almost three weeks now: lower than average temperatures and late snowstorms, which make it hard to find insects.

I found this bunch clinging to the branches of a dead poplar overlooking Cherry Lake, waiting for the sun to stir a few bugs to life.

They had little desire to move so I walked in for a closer look.

I followed a small set of moose tracks up the trail to the second pond upstream of the lake. On the near shore, there were fresh scent piles, where a new pair of beavers is staking its claim on the pond. The dam is holding back enough water to attract buffleheads, mallards, and these guys, Ring-necked Ducks, which are the characteristic duck of the valley, and of the Aspen Parkland in general.

Like all diving ducks, they cannot launch straight into the air but run along the water for takeoff.

Farther on up the valley, I looked in vain for the resident pair of pileated woodpeckers, but I flushed a young bald eagle,

which then landed in the woods at the end of a set of terraced beaver ponds.

I heard and saw brief glimpses of a few birds that would not sit still enough for me to photograph, including three Spotted Towhees, two Bellted Kingfishers, some Yellow-rumped Warblers and a couple of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (that bird name always makes me think of Miss Hathaway in her birding get-up on The Beverley Hillbillies).

I did manage to get shots of a Vesper Sparrow,

Later that day, near the cabin, my daughter Maia (11) photographed a Lincoln’s sparrow too:

Environmental impact assessments--at the federal level

2010-05-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

Last week I used this space to draw attention to the changes to environmental assessment that we are seeing in Saskatchewan. Things are worse on the federal level, where the big projects go for approval, the stuff that can really do a lot of damage: pipeline, mines, and offshore drilling.

Here is an article published in the Globe & Mail on March 31 this year. It appears that the Tories slipped these changes into parliament, as a way of getting around a Supreme court ruling. From the G & M article:

"The decision to rework environmental assessment requirements follows a Supreme Court ruling in January, where the top court decided that the federal government violated the law by conducting only a partial review of the Red Chris copper and gold mine, located in Northern British Columbia, and not an in-depth study of all the possible environmental impacts of the project.

Under the changes in the budget, Mr. Prentice [Environment minister] will have the ability to limit the scope of assessments at his discretion, legal changes that will allow him to sidestep the Supreme Court ruling, which had been sought by the Ecojustice group."

A month later, on April 21, The Green Budget Coalition--a gathering of Canadian environmental groups, including Bird Studies Canada, Canadian Environmental Law Association, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Centre for Integral Economics, David Suzuki Foundation, Ducks Unlimited Canada, Ecojustice Canada, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, Friends of the Earth Canada, and many others--denounced the Harper government's efforts to weaken Canada's environmental protection laws. Here is a copy of their news release.

Let your MP know what you think of these changes. It is exactly this kind of pandering to industry that leads to both environmental catastrophe as we are seeing in the Gulf of Mexico and to the slow erosion of biodiversity in wild places.

The environmental assessment process is flawed to be sure, but to weaken it further will just make it that much easier for industry and commercial development to run roughshod over the last remnants of wildness we have in Canada.

Here is what you can do to voice your opposition to this dismantling of Canada's environmental protection laws: go to this web page created by Nature Canada and a coalition of concerned groups. From there you can send an email to the Prime Minister, Opposition leaders, Ministers of Finance and the Environment and their Parliamentary Secretaries, the Environment and Finance critics of all parties, and members of the Finance and Environment committees of the House of Commons.

Environmental impact assessments

2010-05-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

While our screens and newspapers bring us the latest news from the Gulf of Mexico showing us the mess that can come from oil extraction, we find ourselves asking about environmental guidelines and impact assessment processes. If the risks with a given development--in this case, offshore oil drilling--are high, how does the project get past the Environmental Impact Assessment? How is it that we allow this kind of oil development or the tar sands in Alberta?

The sad truth is that our official environmental assessment processes are not up to the task and, even as the oil gushes forth from this Deepwater leak, the regulations are under seige from industry and being watered down even further by their allies in government.

A biologist friend who recently found himself participating in a study that was part of the Environmental Impact Assessment for a development in native grassland told me off the record that he was ashamed to say that his report and study was "bad science." The terms and parameters of the study were kept to the minimum that is required under legislation, which meant that the data was not very meaningful as a way of determining the long-term affects of the development on species at risk. Why do it then, if he knew it was a sham? His answer was that if he didn't do the work, someone else would do an even shabbier job.

At the Prairie Conservation and Endangered Species Conference in Winnipeg, I heard Brad Stelfox say from the podium that he thinks the current EIA process is "disgusting." He too called it bad science and said that typically, the studies just look "over the shoulder" to compare the effect of any proposed project to yesterday. Change over such a short time frame increment will always seem minor, but if longer studies were done, the full impact of the development would be revealed.

But if biologists and conservationists don't like the EIA process, the oil and gas industry likes it even less. To a pipeline or oil company, the EIA process is a lot of unneccessary cost and paperwork slowing them down. You can see their logic. Our projects are almost never turned down or stopped and are seldom even re-routed to any significant degree, so why make us go through all of these regulatory hoops and pay for all of these studies? Sure, we have to look like we are considering environmental impacts, but can't we speed up the process of faking it?

In Saskatchewan, the Brad Wall government has been listening. They have promised to "streamline" the existing EIA processes and introduced some legislative changes, claiming to be following a new and better, "results-based regulatory system." This might sound good, but the only place I have seen anyone praise the new regulations was in a copy of "Pipeline News," an industry tabloid put out in Estevan. Check out page 2 of the January edition.

A couple of issues later, on page A5 the paper ran an editorial titled "Some rules are for the birds," written by the editor, Mr. Zinchuk. In it he ridicules the requirements for low noise levels in a bird sanctuary where the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline is slated to run and then reminisces about the good ol' days when you could get a project up and running real fast. Near the end he complains about construction guidelines here on the prairie:

"there is a regulation limiting construction during the summer – the prime time
to be doing this sort of work. This is the regulation I came across, from a source would [sic] prefer not being named, but must work under these guidelines. 'No construction activities will occur within the migratory bird nesting period between May 1 and July 31 until such time as a bird breeding survey by a qualified avian biologist has occurred with recommendations for mitigating strategies that have been approved by Environment Canada.'

That’s ridiculous, but it makes sense when you realize that one of those major pipeline projects I worked on a decade ago, they rerouted the line around an owl’s nest and some protected grass, to a cost that was well into six figures. Now, they don’t even work at all until they figure the nests no longer have chicks in them."

Mr. Zinchuk does his best to make the regulations seem onerous, but the truth is, the pipeline or drilling facilities end up going where they want them to go most of the time, and on rare occasions when they have to move to avoid a nest site, the margins are always minimal and no one really finds out what the long term impacts are on the grassland or species at risk. The oil and gas industry is in general wreaking havoc on grassland and grassland birds by cutting up habitat with hundreds of roads, introducing invasive species that degrade the prairies, installing vertical structures that nesting birds avoid, creating ponds that incubate deadly West Nile virus-bearing mosquitoes, and bringing in noisy machines that mask the sounds of grouse and chase birds from the landscape. And all of this is being done under the current EIA system , with its supposedly stringent guidelines.

In my next posting I will talk about Stephen Harper's assault on the EIA process.

Unintended consequences of a bounty (and good news and a nasty rumour)

2010-04-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

Photo by Rick Price

This disturbing image is from a news story about the Saskatchewan coyote bounty spilling over the border into Alberta. Saskatchewan “hunters” were going into wild places like the Cypress Hills in Alberta to shoot coyotes. After cutting off their paws to turn in for the $20 bounty, they dumped the carcasses in front of a farm near Elkwater. Read the story here.

There is some good news on the coyote bounty, though. After hearing from Nature Saskatchewan and other groups, including the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, the provincial government has introduced a new initiative to compensate farmers for damage caused by predators. This new program will pay farmers 100 per cent of the market value of livestock killed by coyotes or other predator animals. It will also pay farmers up to 80% of market value for any animal that is injured by a predator enough to require veterinary attention.

At the same time, however, I keep hearing rumours that Saskatchewan Agriculture has approved the use of the infamous 1080 poison to kill livestock predators.
It's bad enough that farmers are being encouraged to use strychnine to kill Richardson’s ground squirrels (RGS, commonly known as “gophers”). The Saskatchewan Government extended the Gopher Control Rebate Program for 2010. It provides a 50% rebate to producers and Rural Municipalities for the cost of gopher control products. The federal Pest Management Regulatory Agency has also approved the provincial government's application to extend the emergency registration of strychnine to July 31, 2010. (source: Nature Saskatchewan). Like the coyote bounty, poisoning gophers has significant unintended consequences.

At the Prairie Conservation and Endangered Species Conference in Winnipeg a few weeks ago, one of the most startling posters presenting recent research came from Alberta's Gilbert Proulx, Director of Science, Alpha Wildlife Research and Management. Here is a quote from the poster's abstract: "Although it is known that the use of indiscriminate poisons poses potential threats to wildlife, since 2008, southwest Saskatchewan farmers have used large quantities of 0.4% strychnine (acute poison available as freshly mixed and ready-to-use baits ) and chlorophacinone (anticoagulant causing fatal hemorrhages) to control ground squirrel populations. In the last 2 years, I have gathered field evidence that both strychnine and chlorophacinone efficiently controlled ground squirrels but also killed a diversity of songbirds, small mammals (mice and voles), and predators including raptors, canids, American badger (Taxidea taxus),and long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata)."

Among the non-target species found dead around the strychnine bait stations on Proulx's study sites were Horned Lark, Chestnut-collared Longspur (new to the threatened species list), Western Meadowlark, and Vesper Sparrow.

High populations of Richardson's ground squirrels (as the Sask. Agriculture website itself tentatively admits) result from bad grazing practices. Ranchers who find ways to treat their grass well don't have problems with RGS. Don't get me started on the decline of predators--including the threatened Ferruginous Hawk, which feeds its young nothing but ground squirrels, and badgers. Coyotes too, of course, eat a lot of ground squirrels, so the circle of unintended consequences goes round and round chasing its own tail.

after the burn

2010-04-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

The prairie is greening up in the aftermath of the controlled burning we did earlier in April (see "Fire on the Prairie")This prairie crocus (anenome patens/pulsatilla patens)is standing among dozens of its kind all over the black-becoming-green surface of our upper pastures. Here is another image showing several blossoms amid bunches of grass (perhaps stipa?)now emerging.

In a few weeks, and given the right moisture, only the standing skelatons of wolf willow and other woody plants killed by the burn will show where the flames passed.

The native grass on the edge of Saskatoon's Tipperary Creek burned in an unplanned fire earlier this week on the property of Wanuskewin Heritage Park. (See CBC website story here.)No buildings were damaged, but one bridge was scorched in the coulee. However, the fire department says that "the fire caused 'significant damage' to the surrounding grassland." Can't blame the fire department spokesman for expressing what many others in this part of the world would agree with. Non-indigenous people here harbour a deep-seated animosity to the wildness in a prairie fire. That fire is probably the best thing that has happened to that grassland in decades.

The best thing that happened to me as I walked the land looking at the fire was the time to try out a new lens for my camera. All the photos for this post were taken through a Canon 100-400 (f4.5 to 5.6)zoom telephoto lens. I took some very smudgy shots of kestrels and Krider's red-tailed hawks in flight, some poorly lit and distant images of the first eastern phoebes singing by the cabins, bufflehead on the ponds, and the season's first turkey vultures.

Here are some bird photos that worked a little better--first a mourning dove I flushed from trailside:

Then a dark-eyed junco by our cabin:

And, finally, the song sparrow, back for the summer:

Odds and Ends--some things worth a look

2010-04-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

this horned lark patiently waiting for climate change was photographed by Val Thomas who watches over things in the Weyburn area

I was interviewed recently by David Regan of the "Animals in Canada" blog. Here is a link to his posting on our discussion.

Here are a few things about birds or about grassland that caught my eye recently:

The 2010 State of the Birds: 2010 Report on Climate Change, released by the American Secretary of the Interior. Click here to go to the news release which has links to the full report. The report, put together by a consortium of bird conservation organizations, concludes that while forest birds show low level of vulnerability to climate change, grassland birds show an intermediate level of vulnerability. Here is the page with scores of vulnerability for grassland birds.

From my good friend Chris Reed, who right now is at Grassland National Park working with Greater Sage Grouse, I heard about this BBC report: "Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause."

And an item from the "Leave it Wild" folks in PEW Environment Group about the move afoot to designate 50,000 acres of public land within South Dakota's Buffalo Gap National Grassland as a wilderness area.

And, finally, here is an online version of a survey of grassland birds in Montana's Bureau of Landa Management lands. People who read my book or the wonderful "Prairie Ice" blog will perhaps recognize one of the authors--biologist and bird photographer, John Carlson. If you haven't peeked at Prairie Ice, now's a good time. John has posted some terrific photos of Sharp-tailed grouse on the lek this spring--not to mention some lovely images of sage grouse on the lek and snow geese slip-sliding in the sky in earlier posts.

American Serengeti: on TV Earth Day

2010-04-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

courtesy of National Geographic Society website

"To the west, and as far as the eye can see, tall grass billows in the wind. Two centuries ago, Lewis and Clark were the first European-Americans to discover this land. This is prairie. It once blanketed much of the heartland of North America. Today on Americas Great Plains, few reminders of this pristine landscape survive. Now, things are changing. Through establishing and maintaining a wildlife reserve on Montanas prairies, several organizations work to restore an American Eden. Join us on this exciting journey as we capture the grand rebirth of The American Serengeti."

Ok, we will forgive them the usual misapprehension about Lewis and Clark being the first Europeans to discover the northern plains (17-year old Henry Kelsey was there in 1690 looking over the plains of what is now east-central Saskatchewan, and by 1792 Peter Fidler had wandered all over the prairie in what would become Alberta and Saskatchewan just north of where Lewis and Clark travelled, eventually setting up a fort, Chesterfield House, on the South Saskatchewan River in 1800, years before the two revered captains left Indiana to discover the west), but this should be a terrific show. It tells the story of the American Prairie Foundation's effort to create the largest wildlife reserve in the continental United States.

Should air some time on April 22, Earth Day, on the National Geographic Channel.

Here is a link with more info.

A Sprague's pipit succumbs to one of the underestimated perils of migration

2010-04-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

photo by Tim O'Connell

Habitat loss may be responsible for most bird decline, but for direct and immediate kill, nothing compares to glass windows. This Sprague's pipit was trying to make its way north to some of the last habitat remaining on the northern plains and would have arrived here in the next few weeks to begin the breeding season. Instead, it ran into a window in Oklahoma.

Last week, on March 23, at the Noble Research Center on the campus of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Daniele Benson walked around the building to see if any birds had been killed by the large windows at the Center. She was helping out Dr. Tim O’Connell, on the faculty of the Dept. of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, who has been monitoring the building's bird kills for several months now and writing a blog about it, reporting on the casualties.

His blog posting for March 23 shows the image of the Sprague's pipit shown above and tells the story of Danielle finding it. In the intro to his blog, "Avian Window Kills," O'Connell says “it is estimated that as many as 1 billion birds die from striking windows every year in the United States. (For more information, see this report on Dr. Dan Klem’s work here.) This is more than die by cat predation, oil spills, acid rain, tower collisions, pesticides –you name it. In addition, the victims very often include fit, healthy individuals in the prime of life. These are not young birds, recently out of the nest and foolishly falling prey to a neighborhood cat.

Why the blog? We don’t talk about this issue nearly enough. Migrants face enough hazards without smacking into our windows while in the midst of a 3000-mile passage. Green certifications on new buildings and renovations need to consider bird-safe glass; designers need to understand situations of lighting and sight line that make a particular design especially deadly. We begin by acknowledging the problem.”

Fire on the hills—two days of burning prairie

2010-03-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

If there are ways to bind human desire to the longings within wildness, setting fire to grass is one of them. Yesterday and the day before, we burned several acres of grassland on our pasture at Cherry Lake, in the upper Indian Head Creek valley. The wind, snow and sun did most of the work, but we helped out with some fuel, a Bic lighter, two old brooms, and a small shovel. There were three of us: myself and Rob and Sylvie, one of the other two couples who share the land with us.

Rob and Sylvie tending the burn

Rob, an ecologist with a lot of experience working on prescribed burns, showed us how to do our first small burn last May, using the standard range of precautions: a fireguard around the site, which we made by burning between two lines of grass that we mowed and soaked down; waterpacks with lots of water in reserve, a light wind, a careful plan. Everything under control, it took us the full day of work and another day of planning and preparation to burn that ¼ acre rectangle.

fire running through a stand of wolf willow

Like most grass on the northern Great Plains, our pastures have not seen fire in a long time. Without the disturbance of fire now and then, woody growth takes over, changing grassland to shrubland unfit for many plants and creatures that will not tolerate shade or brushy growth of any kind. Under fire suppression and cattle grazing, native shrubs like wolf willow have begun to invade onto vast stretches of the mixed grass prairie and parkland, degrading the quality and biodiversity of native range. When we talk about burning our pasture, we focus on the wolf willow and smooth brome grass (an invasive non-native) that we would like to discourage.

At a recent community meeting where the three families got together to consider priorities for the coming summer season (Do we raise the water tank or install a pump? Bring in some topsoil or make do with what we have?), Rob said he had been thinking about this year’s plans to do some more burning and wondering if we might be better off firing the grass when the snow is still in the coulees and draws. That way we could let nature take care of the fireguard, because a grass fire at this time of year will stop when it hits snow. All we have to do is wait for a favourable wind during the period when the snow is gone from the hillsides but remains in the low areas. Some of us were heading to the land on the weekend and we would assess the burn opportunities then.

I left for the land on Saturday, planning to spend the day moving bluebird nest boxes. I see mountain bluebirds each spring but they never stay. A couple of my nest boxes raise tree swallows every summer, but most seem to become twig repositories for overzealous house wrens. Perhaps they are too close to treed areas. As well, a friend said that bluebirds like shorter grass than we have on our native prairie.
Within minutes of arriving I saw a group of 4 male and two female bluebirds. One of them was checking out a nest box along the mowed area in our yardsite. That seemed auspicious so I began to install another box next to mowed grass. Just as I finished installing the last screws, I saw smoke coming from the crest of the hill northwest of the yard. Above the flames, I could see Rob and Sylvie standing watch.

Rob at the first burn on Saturday

I ran up to the pasture and joined them. Rob decided the conditions were ideal so he got out his lighter and started up one hillside near last year’s burn. That afternoon we burned about two acres of grass, with remarkably little effort. The next day we got up, had breakfast, packed a lunch and headed up onto the pasture with new confidence that we could safely burn several more acres.

I learned more about the way fire behaves in those two days than I have in the rest of my life. One thing I never fully comprehended was how fire moves outward in all directions from the ignition point, expanding its periphery even against the wind until it meets something that won’t burn. Several factors affect the rate of the burn and its movement over the pasture, and of these wind is perhaps the most important of all. With a southwest wind of about ten or 12 kms per hour, the front of the fire zipped along rapidly right through the wolf willow and grass. The flanks of the burn, parallel to the direction of the wind, burned more slowly, creeping outward, and the rear of the fire, or “backburn,” moved slowest of all with small flames licking only a few inches from the ground.

a headfire

Rob explained that slow moving fires, with longer residency, heat up the cambium in woody vegetation better so the back burn is likely to be more effective in killing the wolf willow, but it was the headfire that was most spectacular. After we lit a chosen segment of pasture, we sometimes walked behind the front of the fire on the burned area’s smoking ground where the fire had passed moments before, looking downwind toward the galloping head of the fire. It was like walking on a broad black, arrow with two straight flanks and a point all lit by fire. Whenever the headfire came to an uphill slope it would run even faster, especially where there was better fuel, taller grasses such as little bluestem.

If there were gaps in the snow banks encircling an area we wanted to burn, we used a small shovel to toss more snow across any areas where the fire might try to escape. Sylvie and I were on broom duty, wetting the straw in snow banks and then sweeping out any rear or flanking fires that tried to get past our snowguards. At one point, we had three separate regions burning over several acres, some of them meeting at narrow bridges of grass. I know that sounds careless, but with snow surrounding us, there was little that could go awry.

backburn

The fire revealed things I had not seen on the pastures before: boulder fields that had been lost in tall grasses; a large harvester ant mound—the ants were not pleased, but their mound survived well and will soon be surrounded with green shoots of spring; and two burial mounds overlooking a coulee.

harvester ants on top of their mound after the fire went through--click to enlarge and see the ants

Once the last headfire petered out, and we were down to one slow-moving backfire moving downslope on a line about twenty or thirty feet wide, Rob and Sylvie left me alone to watch the last flames die. I put my jacket down on the ground and laid back to rest. I thought about the rush of green that will come in the next few weeks, trying to guess what other surprises the fire will reveal. The western red lily is said to like fire. We have had a few blossoms some years but not many. Will this burn make a difference? How will the prairie crocuses fare. They bloom by mid-April and do best when there is little other cover around. Will a fire in March help or hurt them?

me near the end of the second day of burning

And then I wondered about one fire-adapted beauty that has not been seen for more than a century in these parts. The small white lady’s slipper is a long-lost tallgrass species in this province, thanks to fire suppression. It’s not likely to show up just because we lit a fire, but I think a lot about this orchid because it was last seen more than a century ago somewhere near Indian Head, perhaps in the Qu’Appelle or in one of its tributaries. We have other tallgrass plants on the property and the kind of habitat and slopes where the small white lady slipper is said to grow in Manitoba.

The lady’s slipper takes thirteen years to come to maturity, and even then it would likely require soil mycorrhizal associations that this land may not have, but it never hurts to keep an eye out. Some of the deepest rewards of natural history come from faithfulness and watching out for the improbable and rare. The faith costs very little: in this case, an afternoon or two helping the wind to release energies that come from the inside of the sun. I can’t speak for our pastures, but, after a long winter, I feel restored and hopeful.

an antler revealed by the fire