By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Sunday 28 January 2007
"Every winter, the Japanese whaling fleet heads to the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica on a mission to kill a thousand whales. Ever since the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling in 1986, Japan has used a curious rationale for its whaling. It does not kill a thousand whales for commercial purposes. It kills them for scientific research.
The major whaling nations, Japan, Iceland and Norway, have been persistent in their efforts to reinstate commercial whaling. They say that the IWC is supposed to be a marine resources management agency and that the stocks of certain whales, even endangered species like humpbacks and finned whales, have recovered enough to allow for regulated commercial whaling. At last summer's IWC meeting, Japan scored a symbolic victory by pressuring enough member nations to achieve a one-vote majority in favor of lifting the ban. However, the ban remains in place, because IWC rules require a supermajority to overturn it, and so Japan is back to hunting whales under the rubric of science.
As the Japanese whaling fleet combs the Southern Ocean, harvesting its self-imposed quota of 935 minke whales, 50 humpback whales and 10 finned whales, members of the Sea Shepherd Society are hunting the whalers, intent on intercepting the Japanese fleet and placing their own bodies between the harpoons and the victims, the sentient cetaceans.
I spoke with Captain Paul Watson by satellite phone this week about the Sea Shepherd's campaign. Watson is aboard the Robert Hunter, a fast-pursuit vessel that is one of two ships and a helicopter now deployed by the Sea Shepherd Society in the Southern Ocean.”
Thursday
NEW THREATS
By mid century, new threats to wildlife emerged, silent and more insidious than poaching. The damaging effects of DDT were first observed in the 1950s but it was not until the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that the problem came to public attention. DDT alters the calcium metabolism of birds causing thin eggshells that break under the weight of nesting hens. Thin eggshells lead to years of reproductive failure and a precipitous decline in bird populations. Many bird species were again brought to the edge of extinction including the brown pelican and the bald eagle, our national symbol.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas taught us that “birds can serve as excellent indicators of the quality of habitat – not just their own, but that of humans who share the land.” It was the consequence of DDT on birds that first alerted us to the dangers of DDT on human communities. Despite a trail of evidence spanning 40 years that prove the harmful effects of DDT on human and wildlife communities alike, there are lobbyists who disparage the evidence and seek to reverse the ban on DDT.
Another threat to wildlife is indiscriminate development on environmentally sensitive lands. According to Douglas, the problem is attributable in part to “the phenomenal tide of people rushing south faster than the government, the schools, the land and the water could accommodate.”
In the 1960s, the threat to Pelican Island came from the State of Florida in the form of a policy to dredge, fill, and sell the bottomlands for development. Local citizens were outraged. A citrus grower named Joe Michael organized the Indian River Preservation League and joined forces with commercial fishermen, sportsmen, civic groups and the Florida Audubon Society to stop the sale. Citizen activism forced the State into leasing thousands of acres of wetlands and bottomlands to the Refuge for protection, providing that no restrictions be imposed on fishing and boating in the Indian River Lagoon.
Today, the Archie Carr and Pelican Island Refuges are home to many endangered, threatened, or protected species. These include the Florida manatee, the American bald eagle, the leatherback, loggerhead and green sea turtles, the eastern indigo snake, and the North American Wood Stork, only stork indigenous to this continent. Winter brings white pelicans, terns, kingfishers, and other visitors to the region. On my favorite birding trails, I have caught fleeting glimpses of roseate spoonbills and magnificent frigatebirds.
Timely interventions prevented the loss of a national treasure. It is a story about heroism in many forms: the courage of an immigrant, the vision of a President, the activism of citizens, the resourcefulness of a refuge manager, and the work of countless volunteers who keep alive the spirit of conservation.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas taught us that “birds can serve as excellent indicators of the quality of habitat – not just their own, but that of humans who share the land.” It was the consequence of DDT on birds that first alerted us to the dangers of DDT on human communities. Despite a trail of evidence spanning 40 years that prove the harmful effects of DDT on human and wildlife communities alike, there are lobbyists who disparage the evidence and seek to reverse the ban on DDT.
Another threat to wildlife is indiscriminate development on environmentally sensitive lands. According to Douglas, the problem is attributable in part to “the phenomenal tide of people rushing south faster than the government, the schools, the land and the water could accommodate.”
In the 1960s, the threat to Pelican Island came from the State of Florida in the form of a policy to dredge, fill, and sell the bottomlands for development. Local citizens were outraged. A citrus grower named Joe Michael organized the Indian River Preservation League and joined forces with commercial fishermen, sportsmen, civic groups and the Florida Audubon Society to stop the sale. Citizen activism forced the State into leasing thousands of acres of wetlands and bottomlands to the Refuge for protection, providing that no restrictions be imposed on fishing and boating in the Indian River Lagoon.
Today, the Archie Carr and Pelican Island Refuges are home to many endangered, threatened, or protected species. These include the Florida manatee, the American bald eagle, the leatherback, loggerhead and green sea turtles, the eastern indigo snake, and the North American Wood Stork, only stork indigenous to this continent. Winter brings white pelicans, terns, kingfishers, and other visitors to the region. On my favorite birding trails, I have caught fleeting glimpses of roseate spoonbills and magnificent frigatebirds.
Timely interventions prevented the loss of a national treasure. It is a story about heroism in many forms: the courage of an immigrant, the vision of a President, the activism of citizens, the resourcefulness of a refuge manager, and the work of countless volunteers who keep alive the spirit of conservation.
THE PLUME WARS
After the Civil War, the pace of settlement in Florida accelerated due to provisions of the Homestead Act and improvements in boat and rail transportation. It was not the mass migration of settlers that threatened Florida’s wildlife but an aggressive, pioneering spirit determined to wrest a living from the land. In due course, these early settlers discovered the bird rookeries at a time when the millinery trade had driven up the price of feathers to more than twice their weight in gold. Plume hunters armed with clubs and guns plundered the rookeries and slaughtered thousands of birds in a single night. By the end of the century, the great bird populations of Florida were hunted to the verge of extinction, and the last remaining rookery on the East Coast was Pelican Island.
The Homestead Act brought Paul Kroegel and his father to Florida in 1881. They staked their claim along the west bank of the Indian River Lagoon just opposite Pelican Island. From his homestead perched high upon an ancient Indian shell mound, Paul Kroegel observed the thousands of water birds flying to and from the rookery. He witnessed the boatloads of tourists using birds for target practice, the oölogists who ransacked the island for collectable eggs, and the nighttime raids by plume hunters. With a boat and a gun as his only mandate, Paul Kroegel guarded the island’s inhabitants from poachers and vandals.
Over the years, influential naturalists visited the Kroegel homestead including Frank Chapman, bird curator of the American Museum of Natural History, and William Dutcher, President of the American Audubon Society. Chapman and Dutcher learned about the plight of the birds from Kroegel and brought the grim reports to Theodore Roosevelt, our first conservationist President.
In response to the lobbying efforts of Chapman, Dutcher and others, President Roosevelt signed an executive order on March 14, 1903 establishing Pelican Island as a federal bird preserve. Roosevelt created 55 additional sanctuaries during two terms in office. These became the beginnings of our national wildlife refuge system, which now comprises 540 reservations protecting 94 million acres. For his role, Paul Kroegel became our first National Wildlife Refuge Manager earning a dollar a month and a place in history.
Eventually, federal legislation banned the sale and possession of exotic bird plumes thus ending the feather trade. Yet other threats remained. In 1918, hundreds of pelican chicks were clubbed to death because commercial fisherman believed that pelicans were competing for dwindling fish supplies. The Florida Audubon Society ended the controversy by demonstrating that pelican diets were comprised of not-for-consumption baitfish, thus posing no threat to the livelihoods of commercial fisherman. Even today, simple misconceptions and prejudices about wildlife are major obstacles to conservation, and educational outreach programs remain our best defense.
(Hint: Educational outreach includes blogs like “EcoPhotos” that bring this message to blogging community. So spread the word. Thanks, everyone.)
The Homestead Act brought Paul Kroegel and his father to Florida in 1881. They staked their claim along the west bank of the Indian River Lagoon just opposite Pelican Island. From his homestead perched high upon an ancient Indian shell mound, Paul Kroegel observed the thousands of water birds flying to and from the rookery. He witnessed the boatloads of tourists using birds for target practice, the oölogists who ransacked the island for collectable eggs, and the nighttime raids by plume hunters. With a boat and a gun as his only mandate, Paul Kroegel guarded the island’s inhabitants from poachers and vandals.
Over the years, influential naturalists visited the Kroegel homestead including Frank Chapman, bird curator of the American Museum of Natural History, and William Dutcher, President of the American Audubon Society. Chapman and Dutcher learned about the plight of the birds from Kroegel and brought the grim reports to Theodore Roosevelt, our first conservationist President.
In response to the lobbying efforts of Chapman, Dutcher and others, President Roosevelt signed an executive order on March 14, 1903 establishing Pelican Island as a federal bird preserve. Roosevelt created 55 additional sanctuaries during two terms in office. These became the beginnings of our national wildlife refuge system, which now comprises 540 reservations protecting 94 million acres. For his role, Paul Kroegel became our first National Wildlife Refuge Manager earning a dollar a month and a place in history.
Eventually, federal legislation banned the sale and possession of exotic bird plumes thus ending the feather trade. Yet other threats remained. In 1918, hundreds of pelican chicks were clubbed to death because commercial fisherman believed that pelicans were competing for dwindling fish supplies. The Florida Audubon Society ended the controversy by demonstrating that pelican diets were comprised of not-for-consumption baitfish, thus posing no threat to the livelihoods of commercial fisherman. Even today, simple misconceptions and prejudices about wildlife are major obstacles to conservation, and educational outreach programs remain our best defense.
(Hint: Educational outreach includes blogs like “EcoPhotos” that bring this message to blogging community. So spread the word. Thanks, everyone.)
KEEPING ALIVE THE SPIRIT OF CONSERVATION
When I decided to make my home in Florida, little did I know that my career would literally take a turn for the birds. I started out in New York as a scriptwriter and filmmaker. My career took me from New York to London and Paris and eventually back to New York. Florida is where I cast off the urban lifestyle and chose life as a wildlife photographer and conservationist. I have lived in four communities since moving here: Melbourne Beach, Mount Dora, Delray Beach, and Ponce Inlet (current). Perhaps my favorite is Melbourne Beach because it is the place where I reinvented myself, the irrepressible Phoenix.
Melbourne Beach is a patchwork of subdivisions and public lands strung like pearls along 20 miles of barrier island. Bounded by ocean to the east and the Indian River Lagoon to the west, this region is home to some of the most diverse habitats in the United States. Shorelines, wetlands, mangrove habitats, and maritime hammocks support a myriad of animal and plant species. This region is also home to a historically important bird rookery and the most productive loggerhead sea turtle nesting beaches in the Western Hemisphere. The Pelican Island and Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuges are virtually at my doorstep, and I consider myself fortunate to start out in this region of Florida.
My day begins before sunrise with breakfast at a local café. When the first light of day breaks over the treetops, I head towards my favorite birding trails. On any given morning, I am likely to find pelicans bobbing lazily in the lagoon. Brown pelicans are ubiquitous in Florida. The most patient of panhandlers, they loiter around boat docks and fishing piers. They strafe rooftops and shorelines. Clumsy and awkward on land, they are the most graceful of gliders. Pelicans have been described as “solemn,” “dignified,” “comical,” and “pompous” by various observers. With pouched bills pressed against breast, they appear to me like pterosaurs masquerading as English butlers.
Last year, I rescued a pelican entangled in monofilament. I bundled up the hapless bird for transport to a nearby ranger station. The pelican was incredibly light for its size – about the stature of a goose but weighing a mere 7 pounds.
Why Pelican Island is unique among rookeries has been a subject of conjecture. We do know that rookeries must be isolated from mainland predators for successful breeding to take place, and pelicans are known to be social birds that seek safety in numbers. Pelican Island is surrounded with abundant fisheries to support large bird colonies. Like sea turtles and other bird species, pelicans tend to return to their natal origins and “remain faithful to the old homeland of their ancestors,” (Herbert Keightley Job, 1905).
In winter, hundreds of pelicans, along with anhinga, wood storks, egrets, and herons of every variety cram themselves on Pelican Island to begin their courtship rituals. One might say pelicans separate into social classes with the upper crust preferring the treetops while the more down-to-earth birds make their nests on the ground. Newborn hatchings are altricial by nature, meaning they are blind, naked, and helpless at birth.
I return to my favorite birding trails again and again. The combinations of subject, lighting, and composition are infinite and ever changing, and it may be hours or days before I find the right shot. Photography removes all subjects from the continuity of space and time. An endangered species may appear abundant in the frozen moment of a photograph but is often elusive and hard to find. Out of context, a hard-won nature photograph fails to convey the grim reality that everywhere our precious wildlife heritage is under siege.
From atop an 18-foot observation tower, Pelican Island appears humble against a grey-blue expanse of Indian River Lagoon. Nevertheless, this place represents an important milestone as the birthplace of the American conservation movement and our National Wildlife Refuge System.
My journeys leave me breathless. The currents and eddies of my life seem improbable, yet they make sense even if I am the only one to remember or comprehend. So I start here - at an endpoint and a beginning.
Melbourne Beach is a patchwork of subdivisions and public lands strung like pearls along 20 miles of barrier island. Bounded by ocean to the east and the Indian River Lagoon to the west, this region is home to some of the most diverse habitats in the United States. Shorelines, wetlands, mangrove habitats, and maritime hammocks support a myriad of animal and plant species. This region is also home to a historically important bird rookery and the most productive loggerhead sea turtle nesting beaches in the Western Hemisphere. The Pelican Island and Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuges are virtually at my doorstep, and I consider myself fortunate to start out in this region of Florida.
My day begins before sunrise with breakfast at a local café. When the first light of day breaks over the treetops, I head towards my favorite birding trails. On any given morning, I am likely to find pelicans bobbing lazily in the lagoon. Brown pelicans are ubiquitous in Florida. The most patient of panhandlers, they loiter around boat docks and fishing piers. They strafe rooftops and shorelines. Clumsy and awkward on land, they are the most graceful of gliders. Pelicans have been described as “solemn,” “dignified,” “comical,” and “pompous” by various observers. With pouched bills pressed against breast, they appear to me like pterosaurs masquerading as English butlers.
Last year, I rescued a pelican entangled in monofilament. I bundled up the hapless bird for transport to a nearby ranger station. The pelican was incredibly light for its size – about the stature of a goose but weighing a mere 7 pounds.
Why Pelican Island is unique among rookeries has been a subject of conjecture. We do know that rookeries must be isolated from mainland predators for successful breeding to take place, and pelicans are known to be social birds that seek safety in numbers. Pelican Island is surrounded with abundant fisheries to support large bird colonies. Like sea turtles and other bird species, pelicans tend to return to their natal origins and “remain faithful to the old homeland of their ancestors,” (Herbert Keightley Job, 1905).
In winter, hundreds of pelicans, along with anhinga, wood storks, egrets, and herons of every variety cram themselves on Pelican Island to begin their courtship rituals. One might say pelicans separate into social classes with the upper crust preferring the treetops while the more down-to-earth birds make their nests on the ground. Newborn hatchings are altricial by nature, meaning they are blind, naked, and helpless at birth.
I return to my favorite birding trails again and again. The combinations of subject, lighting, and composition are infinite and ever changing, and it may be hours or days before I find the right shot. Photography removes all subjects from the continuity of space and time. An endangered species may appear abundant in the frozen moment of a photograph but is often elusive and hard to find. Out of context, a hard-won nature photograph fails to convey the grim reality that everywhere our precious wildlife heritage is under siege.
From atop an 18-foot observation tower, Pelican Island appears humble against a grey-blue expanse of Indian River Lagoon. Nevertheless, this place represents an important milestone as the birthplace of the American conservation movement and our National Wildlife Refuge System.
My journeys leave me breathless. The currents and eddies of my life seem improbable, yet they make sense even if I am the only one to remember or comprehend. So I start here - at an endpoint and a beginning.
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