Hey Ma, Pass the Jellyfish

The following was published in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman in the fall of 2009.

“I wish I was a jellyfish, floating on the sea
Riding on the currents sailing along so peacefully.” 
~ Bobs & Lolo

One of the most stunning natural history exhibitions I have ever seen was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Their jellyfish display featured a dark room with various sized aquaria back-lit such that their inhabitants glowed. Floating effortlessly, I could have sat entranced for hours watching, just going with the flow.

 According to recent work by marine biologists, we may have a lot more opportunity to ponder jellyfish. A review by four scientists published the June, 2009, issue of the scientific journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution cautions that “a more gelatinous future” is clearly in the offing unless we take steps now to change the way we treat and manage the oceans. Jellyfish outbreaks are being reported worldwide, often with disastrous effects.

Of course jellyfish are a natural part of ocean ecosystems. Fossil evidence suggests they were they dominated the Cambrian seas some 500 million years ago, long before other vertebrate and invertebrate life forms we know today had evolved. They remain important as food for not just other sea creatures, but humans as well. Many Asian cultures eat jellyfish – some 425,000 tonnes each year by some estimates.

More often, they are viewed as a nuisance at best and hazardous risk to human life at worst. The list of deleterious consequences is long: closed beaches, blockage of cooling intake pipes for coastal power generators, fouling fishing nets, killing farmed fish, reducing commercial fisheries. Most often, human interference with marine systems has led to great increases in jellyfish numbers around the world, and the potential consequences are not pleasant.

The causes of jellyfish increases are not surprising: overfishing, eutrophication, climate change and accidental introductions from ship ballasts. The largest problem seems to come from a reduction in small filter feeding fish populations. Two examples cited are the sardine fishery off the coast of Namibia and anchovies in the Black Sea. Both of these fish play key roles in suppressing local jellyfish numbers, largely by eating their larval stages. With the fish gone, the jellies quickly multiply and the adults assume the plankton-eating niche that the sardines and anchovies occupied. Jellyfish biology is such that a self-enhancing feedback system sets up leading to rapid increase in jellyfish numbers.

Increased runoff of fertilizers and sewage has also benefited jellies. Increased nitrogen and phosphorus is advantageous to phytoplankton (including red-tides). This comes at the cost of more silicon-based diatoms. Jellies prefer phytoplankton, while most fish, marine mammals, turtles and other species prefer diatoms. Jellyfish win again. Phytoplankton blooms can lead to low oxygen levels, something jellyfish deal quite well with, while other animal species cannot tolerate.

Climate change has similarly favoured jellyfish. Warmer waters have allowed potentially fatal species of jellyfish, such as the box jellyfish of northern Australia to expand southward toward more populated swimming beaches. Warmer temperatures lead to nutrient-poor surface waters, a condition, like eutrophication example above, that favours jellyfish.

Finally, the commercial shipping industry has played a role in inadvertently introducing jellyfish to new areas. Like many other species, they can become invasive and without natural predators or other forms of regulation they rapidly increase in numbers to the point of greatly altering native ecosystems. The Black Sea, Caspian Sea and Gulf of Mexico have all witnessed introduced jellyfish problems in recent years.

The concerns are significant. Our current actions are potentially driving the seas away from those dominated by diatoms and fish to one of phytoplankton and jellies. Some scientists have suggested that if current trends continue, our oceans could soon more resemble the warmer, more eutrophied Cambrian seas of 500 million years ago.

No one is suggesting that jellyfish are driving fish and whales to extinction. It’s just that jellies and their ancient, time-tested adaptations are able to quickly take advantage of the opportunities that have been provided to them.

Thankfully, there are several options available to us. Mostly, these involve reversing the actions that have allowed for the recent proliferation of jellyfish: over-fishing, eutrophication and climate change. If we don’t, the seas may well be a vastly different place than what we are familiar with today. And instead of singing the children’s song quoted at the top, we’ll be following the advice of fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly, “My kids will tell their children: eat your jellyfish!”

Springtime out of tune

This column was published in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman Friday May 14, 2010.

Yellow bird, yellow moon
You've arrived while the spring is out of tune
- Justin Rutledge, from "Jack of Diamonds"
 

The un-spring like view of our driveway

I confess I've never heard Justin Rutledge's music, but a review of one of his concerts included this lyric. Though out of context for a late-season snowfall, it seemed fitting for recent East Kootenay weather. A week ago our spring was badly out of tune.

Quite a difference a week can make. Last Friday we awoke to a winter wonderland with Christmas carols the most appropriate lyrics. Pretty enough, I suppose, but winter weather occurring during winter (where was this snow in February?) seems a better idea.

So what happens to the yellow birds and when they arrive from their tropical winter paradise only to find that spring is "out of tune"? We don't find piles of dead birds under trees, so how are they able to cope with such weather anomalies?

The unfortunate answer is that some don't. Late cold snaps (or early autumn ones like last year's Thanksgiving weekend's -15°C) take their toll on wildlife, particularly pint-sized songbirds. However, most adults are able to withstand brief periods of unseasonable cold.

That the cold and snow occurred before most species had young in their nests is very helpful in avoiding widespread mortality. There may have been some egg failure among early nesting species such as robins, but snow at the end of May it is far more damaging.
 

Most songbird nests are highly exposed to the elements and baby birds, often still featherless, are very susceptible to cold, snow and heavy rain. Cool springs or one freak storm can wipe out a large percentage of a year's songbird production across many species. Some may lay a second clutch of eggs, but many pack it in and wait for another year.
 

Hummingbirds, having returned for the summer nesting season, instead met with a big white surprise. But the physiological adaptations of these tiny marvels are astounding. Their small body size and highly active lifestyle means they have incredible energy demands which would otherwise leave them vulnerable to cold temperatures. However, the advantage of small body size is that warming up and cooling down are easy and efficient. Even most nights in summer, they slip into a torpor of slowed metabolism and lowered body temperature. Normal temperature for most birds, including hummingbirds, is in the 40ºC range. But in torpor, that can drop close to below 15ºC. The advantage is that their metabolic energy demands drop by 50%.

In fact, the greatest danger to endotherms (animals which can regulate their internal temperature - birds and mammals) is overheating. Normal body temperature is very close to the point of irreversible cellular damage. Living on the edge like this may seem dangerous, but speeds metabolism and movement of nutrients across membranes as well as optimizing nerve transmissions. Maintaining a high brain temperature may also assist in learning and memory.
 

Many so-called cold-blooded animals (more properly termed ectotherms) rely on behavioural adaptations to survive the cold and snow. Snakes just emerging from their underground winter hibernation sites will quickly retreat to their subterranean warmth. Frogs either stay submerged in water or seek refuge under forest floor leaf litter and rely on their ability to withstand some freezing.
 

So while spring may occasionally be "out of tune", it's certainly not entirely out of character. And as for the older song that waxes poetic about "Springtime in the Rockies", I doubt the author ever spent many springs in the mountains. It can be the cruelest of seasons.

The Sound of Spring

The following was published in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman, Tuesday, May 4, 2010.

For most, the sound of spring is the clamour of bird song. After the long silence of winter, hushed by layers of snow (or maybe not, this year!), the return of songbirds from their lush tropical dreamland brings a welcome music to the early morning sunlight. The gathering chorus, added to daily by new arrivals, grows earlier as dawn heads steadily north. In the evening, the robin, soon joined by other thrush cousins, sings a vespers to the enclosing darkness.

But if you are lucky enough to live close to a pond or wetland, that evening song is soon joined by another voice. This one more rhythmic than melodic. Steady. Emphatic and determined. The steady krek-ek… krek-ek… of the Pacific tree frog is as much a sign of spring in the East Kootenay as any crocus or bluebird.

Pacific tree frogs are one of the more common amphibians in southern British Columbia, occurring from the coast east to the Rocky Mountain Trench. Highly variable in colour as a species, we here in the East Kootenay get the drab olive variety, with a black triangular mask behind their eyes. They’re small in size – rarely more than 5 cm long. Their range ends as the Lizard and Galton ranges climb from the valley into west slope of the Rockies. But many small ponds, sloughs and wetlands throughout the Trench are the site each spring of a ritual pilgrimage for the tiny amphibians.

For an animal that is reliant on the whims of fickle spring weather, frogs are remarkably adapted to cold. Some nights when the temperature battles hard to remain above freezing, we can still hear the frogs croaking away in late April.

As the snow melts and frost eases from the ground, tree frogs emerge from their hibernation – a winter spent under the chilly blanket of dead leaves and other forest floor cover. Many frogs have an physiology adapted to super-cooling that allows them to virtually freeze during the winter. Provided they are not disturbed, they literally thaw out the next spring and start their year anew.

They return to ponds each spring only to breed and lay eggs. As all amphibians, their larval stages are fully aquatic. Tree frog tadpoles or pollywogs develop rapidly, metamorphosing into terrestrial adults within two months. They have to grow quickly, for their pond is often ephemeral and dries out under the summer sun.

Like most tree frogs, their toes have suction cups on the end to facilitate climbing into their eponymous lair of small trees and shrubs where they spend most of the season, often quite distant from water. Here they feast on a typically froggy diet of insects, spiders and other bugs caught from their not-so-lofty perches. Unlike most frogs, which only call during the spring breeding season, Pacific tree frogs often just can’t hold back. Any particularly glorious night of rain and damp misery may elicit a song of apparent joy from a tree frog’s throat.

However, ours is not a particularly joyful time for amphibians. Species the world over are in decline, and BC is by no means sheltered. Chytrid fungus, originally from Africa, has been unwittingly spread worldwide with devastating effects on our frog populations. Reducing transmission by not handling frogs and not visiting different ponds is the best way to restrict the disease. Any mass die-offs of frogs should be reported to the British Columbia Ministry of Environment.

This year, the pond in our neighbourhood is dry. The water table lowered from lack of snow and too long without rain. We have not yet heard the frogs, though I know they are singing elsewhere. I miss the call, lying in bed with the window open at night listening for their spring ritual. Species fated to the whims of climate are well adapted to adjust to a occasional dry years. We just hope this is an anomaly and not a portend of conditions to come. A spring without tree frogs is far too silent.

Water: making waste hurt.

The following was published in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman, Wednesday April 21, 2010.

Congratulations to Cranbrook City Council for their recent signing of the Columbia Basin Water Smart Charter. Setting a target of reducing domestic water use by 20% by 2015 is an admirable start, one that everyone should support. Just drilling a new well to get at even more water is not the answer.

Extra kudos to Mayor Scott Manjak for having the cahones to go further and suggest he’s willing to look at water meters. To say that’s not a popular political move is a vast understatement. However, there is simply no other way to reliably reduce water consumption. A study from Ontario found an average reduction in water use of roughly 30% after meters were installed. There’s your target and then some, right there.

We are water hogs. A report out of University of Victoria in 2001 compared Canada with 28 other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For water consumption, Canada came in 28th, ahead of only the United States. From 1980 to 2000, water consumption in Canada rose over 25%, more than 5 times the combined OECD rate.

The daily amount of water needed for consumption, basic sanitation, food preparation and bathing is estimated between 60 and 80 litres per household. Let’s be generous and round that up to an even 100L. Average Canadian household water use is well over 300L. Per day. (figures sourced from the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia.)

Meters should be seen more as incentive than tax. I would not support a move to metering strictly for cash grab. In fact having them installed for 6 months or so before any charges would help people learn about their consumption and find ways to reduce it.

Most importantly, I suggest that a certain base volume, rated on a daily average, would carry no charge. Don’t call it free – there most certainly is a cost to all of us for any water use. But in recognition of our requirements for health and sanitation, a basic daily allotment should be provided. Given the numbers above, 100L might be a reasonable domestic number. The number of people per residence would also be factored in. Above that, charges start applying and rise steeply to curb waste.

Marq de Villiers wrote the highly acclaimed book Water in the late 1990s. On the topic of meters, he wrote, “It is important to signal water’s value and to price it so that waste hurts.”

But are water meters just another tax grab? I wouldn’t support them if they were. And here we need to be careful. de Villiers notes bad experiences from Great Britain where cost of water rose over 100% following privatization of water companies. Corporate profits rose almost 700%, with little re-investment into infrastructure. Privatization of our water (and it most certainly is our water) should not occur. I envision a non-profit structure where water charges cover incurred costs of managing the accounts, but any surplus should be re-invested into community environmental programs that encourage water conservation and rehabilitate local waterways.

Domestic water use is not the only issue. For meaningful conservation, industrial use also must come down. Thermal power (generation by fossil fuel and nuclear) is far and away the largest industrial consumer in Canada, followed by manufacturing, according to the Program on Water Governance at UBC. But what we can individually control is a good place to start: our own taps and toilets. Measuring just how much is going down the drain would open many eyes.

Disclosure: I am an Area C resident so would not be directly affected by a requirement by City of Cranbrook to install water meters. However, like most Area C dwellers, I work in the City of Cranbrook and have a vested interest in the city, its environment and its economy. Though my home is on a private well, I support water meters for rural residents such as myself. Whether we draw water from city treatment reservoirs or underground aquifers, it’s all water, it’s all connected and it all needs to be used judiciously and wisely.

The Flathead Conundrum

The following was published in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman.

And they called it Paradise, I don’t know why.
Call some place Paradise, kiss it good-bye.
- The Eagles, from The Last Resort.

A couple trips to Calgary lately have taken me past the main road leading to the Flathead valley. If you don’t know which road it is, find yourself a map and look it up. I’m not going to tell you.

I half expected a large sign to be erected at the turn-off from Highway 3 directing travelers to nirvana. The news lately seems to have been all Flathead, all the time.

Wildsight has been targeting the valley for a while now. Not content with a moratorium on mineral and petroleum exploration and development, their intent remain firmly set on a National Park.

National Geographic has added to the siren call of the Flathead, highlighting the area in its Crown of the Continent campaign encouraging people from all over to come visit the Serengeti of the North.

Is a national park really in the valley’s best interest? While there may be merits to that extent of formal protection, I have trouble supporting it. The Flathead is advertised by park proponents as ‘wild’ or an ‘intact watershed,’ implying there is no significant development within the river’s drainage basin in Canada.

At times, forestry activity has been heavy – chasing beetle epidemics in the 1970s and 80s – but trees grow back much quicker than mountains ripped apart for coal or minerals. Even a giant geezly clearcut looks all soft and fuzzy from a distance within a few years of replanting.

Ultimately, it’s the Flathead’s wildness that appeals to so many. And if the Flathead is still considered wild after a century or more of being ‘unprotected’, then clearly something is going right.

What is going right is there are few people there. There are no towns and the few roads are unmarked, largely unknown and often in miserable shape.

A National Park could very well bring pressure from Ottawa to plant a large brown road sign with a stylized beaver on it somewhere in the Elk Valley (watch for one pointing out Waterton Lakes National Park heading into Pincher Creek). Will there be pressure to pave the road? Put in formal campsites or a visitor centre? Why take the chance?

The shifting sands of Parks Canada Agency management adds little security. In the early 1990’s, Parks was moved to Heritage Canada with the slogan ‘Parks are for People.’ The notion of environmental protection was a distant whim. Then later in the decade, the tide turned. Parks were moved back to the Department of Environment and a national panel on Ecological Integrity shifted the focus back to environment. More recently, Parks Canada Agency operates almost entirely as its own entity and has swung back to the Parks are for People focus with environmental emphasis downgraded. A new park arising under this mandate is very likely to have significant pressures to be marketed for its vast recreational opportunities.

The Flathead is often cited as supporting the greatest density of inland grizzly bears in North America, one result of long-term research by Dr. Bruce McLellan with BC Ministry of Forests and Range. One of Dr. McLellan’s key findings of what limits grizzly bears? Traffic volume. Not so much the road itself, but how much traffic is on it. Gravel’s better than paved, but the best thing for grizzly bears is lack of human presence. Advertising the Flathead as a destination will not help the local grizzly population.

To me, the best option for protecting the Flathead is designating much of it as a Wildlife Management Area (WMA). This would restrict development, but maintain most, if not all the activities currently taking place in the valley.

One the best examples of selecting a WMA over a National Park is the Columbia Wetlands WMA running from Canal Flats to Donald. Local proponents for the WMA wanted to retain hunting and fishing opportunities and felt the full protection of a National Park was not only unnecessary, but unwanted. The leader of that push was the late Ian Jack of Invermere. His job? Chief Naturalist with Kootenay National Park.

So to those seeking greater protection of the Flathead, I ask that you consider more broadly accepted options that may well achieve the ultimate goal most of us want for the Flathead: a wild valley. And please, stop advertising paradise before we kiss it good bye.

The Plight of the Pika

The following column was published in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman February 18, 2010.

Most hikers who frequent the local alpine crags are familiar with one of the more endearing mammals of our area. Pikas are more often heard than seen, giving their short, shrill alarm distinct to the high mountains. If you stay still long enough and have keen eyes, you’ll find them looking out from talus pile hideouts watching nervously for trouble.

Pikas are lagomorphs, kin to rabbits and hares, and not rodents. They probably reached their zenith as a family sometime in the Pleistocene, aided by the cooler northern temperatures. They are well adapted to survive frigid mountain winters, but are highly susceptible to heat stress in temperatures over 27ºC. Today, the few species remaining are found mostly in Asia. Two are here in North America. The American Pika is found from central California and northern New Mexico, north to the Prince George area. The Collared Pika is farther north throughout most of Yukon and eastern Alaska. While there may be few species of pika, there have been 18 sub-species of American Pika identified. This reflects their highly isolated populations and minimal dispersal abilities.

Pikas are strongly associated with talus slopes, where they make their homes and seek refuge from predators, that are adjacent to grassy meadows where they forage for food. This specific habitat requirement limits them to alpine areas and crossing the forested landscape between their preferred habitats is not an easy task. Life as a dispersing, juvenile pika is not easy.

Their habitat is best viewed as ‘islands’ in a sea of inhospitable forests which isolates one group of pikas from the neighbouring alpine area. Their population ecology is an excellent fit of Island Biogeography theory that I discussed in my last column. Rather than number of species however, the question is the number of individuals. Smaller alpine ‘islands’ will support fewer individuals, which will leave them susceptible to random environmental effects such as poor weather which may wipe out an entire year’s reproduction effort. Smaller populations are more vulnerable to disease, genetic inbreeding and other impacts.

Once a population is lost, the empty habitat can only be recolonized by other pikas that manage to cross the inhospitable forested sea. The more isolated a population is from other pikas, the less likely it is to experience successful immigration.

Their patchy distribution today is a remnant of the last ice age, when more continuous populations are thought to have occurred throughout western North America. Research backs this up, with evidence of pikas from the late Pleistocene in areas where they no longer exist. The average elevation of now extinct pikas 8 to 10 thousand years ago was 1750 m, while today pikas in the same area of the US Great Basin occur at an average elevation of 2530 m.

Research on prehistoric pika populations suggests their extinctions were driven by increasing temperature, decreasing moisture and changes in plant communities. These three conditions are all key predictions of current climate change models, which does not bode well for pikas. However, last week the US Fish & Wildlife Service released their review of the American Pika in the USA in which they determined that, though climate change may impact the small lagomorphs, they are not currently at risk under US Endangered Species legislation.

Hopefully the same holds true here in BC. If American Pikas do decline under predicted climate change conditions, their populations will likely contract toward the cooler north. This would make BC responsible for an increasing proportion of the species’ global range.

Farther north there is more concern. Biologists have documented significant declines in Collared Pika numbers in the Yukon leading the committee responsible for assessing status of endangered species in Canada (COSEWIC) to launch a review of the species and whether it merits listing under our federal Species at Risk Act.

Hopefully pikas will continue to find a way to persist should their alpine habitats continue to shrink upslope and northward. Talus slopes can be barren, unfriendly grey places. A little company is always welcome.

The pika picture above is by Dave Sindholt, a Cranbrook naturalist, who sent me the picture after reading the column. Thanks Dave! Great shot!

A Cup of Songbird Friendly Coffee

This column was originally published in the Cranbrook Daily Townsman January 6, 2010.

In the dark, early January morning of a northern winter, there is nothing so welcome to many as the smell of freshly ground, freshly brewed cup of coffee. Coffee is that magic elixir that manages to both appease tension while at same time providing a physical stimulus of a caffeine injection. And while you savour that morning java, know that you’re not alone. Of all the world’s agricultural commodities, coffee is number one, generating over $55 billion a year world wide.

Coffee’s origins are as an understory tree from montane tropical ecosystems of sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. However, our thirst has led to industrial scale monocultures of sun-drenched plantations in attempts to raise production. As a result, coffee plantations in the northern Andes Mountains of South America suffer some of the highest deforestation rates in the neotropics.

Thankfully, demand has grown for “shade-grown” coffee over the past decade. It is now widely available at pre-brewed at local coffee shops and in most grocery stores. Most shade-grown coffee comes with the added benefit of being a “Fair trade” product as well.

Shade-grown coffee is cultivated under the conditions to which coffee trees are adapted – beneath a canopy of trees, often themselves of direct economic benefit. Beyond the advantages of requiring less irrigation, pesticides and fertilizer applications, there are a host of social and ecological advantages to fostering a strong shade-grown coffee industry. Most say it tastes better too.

One of the tags often used on shade-grown coffee is “songbird friendly”. This is because many of our neotropical migrant birds – the small, colourful songsters that migrate north from tropical wintering ground each spring – are reliant on the montane ecosystems where coffee is cultivated throughout Central and South America.

A recent paper in the scientific journal Biological Conservation reports on the implications of shade-grown coffee plantations on the Cerulean Warbler. Unfortunately, Cerulean Warblers are not found in the East Kootenay at any time of year. They are a brilliant blue bird that nests in the mixed deciduous forests of Eastern Canada and the US. In the winter, their core range directly overlaps with coffee plantations of Venezuela and Colombia. Habitat loss on their wintering grounds may account for the 83% decline Ceruleans have suffered over the past 40 years.

The research, led by Marja Bakermans at Ohio State University compared population density, body condition and survival of neotropical migrant birds in shade coffee plantations to those in primary forest sites in the Cordillera de Mérida of Venezuea’s Andes mountains.  [as an aside, this brought back memories of Kari & I visiting Mérida, Venezuela, in 1995. A great town and wonderful place]

They found songbird population densities were up to 14 times higher in shade coffee plantations than nearby forest, while the body condition of birds in plantations steadily increased throughout the “winter” season. This measure is particularly important because Ceruleans and other species migrating north each spring face daunting physiological stress. Birds leaving their wintering grounds in better condition arrive on breeding grounds sooner and are more successful at rearing young.

Better body condition helps survival too. Bakermans and her colleagues banded 20 Cerulean warblers in the first season on shade plantations and recaptured or resighted 13 (65%) of those the following winter. When only adults were considered, that rate increased to 89%. That’s an excellent return rate for a small bird with a short life span traveling thousands of kilometres twice a year.

The research demonstrates the importance of agro-ecosystems. Birds were more abundant in shade coffee plantations than primary forest, so protection of the dwindling pristine forests alone will not stem songbird declines. But demand for shade-grown coffee must be maintained and increased. Bakermans and her colleagues cite reports that 40-50% of shade coffee plantations in Latin America were converted to sun coffee in the 1990’s, including 70% in Colombia. 

The research suggests we can have our coffee and maintain functioning ecosystems at the same time, but to do so, we need to support shade-grown coffee producers. Ask for a cup next time you’re in a coffee shop or pick up a pound at the store. Then relax, close your eyes and drift off to tropical mountains, warm breezes and colourful birds. 

It’s almost enough to forget its January.