Frank Leslie’s Boy’s & Girl’s Weekly, March 2, 1867

Most in the conservation world know nearly by heart Aldo Leopold’s “Thinking Like a Moment,” featuring what Bill McKibben called “the key Damascan Road story of American environmental conversion.” The pioneer of game management-cum-wildlife ecology recalls when he “was young…and full of trigger-itch,” reflecting:

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen edible bush and seeding browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

Taking nothing away from Leopold, I was delighted nonetheless to discover the following passage—similarly prescient about conservation biology and ecological niches —in Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man, published (and set!) on this day in 1857. The narrator, surveying the St. Louis waterfront, spots a

peddler [who] hawked , in the thick of the throng, the lives of Meason, the bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers Harpe, the Thugs of the Green River county, in Kentucky—creatures, with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for the most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same regions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause for unalloyed gratulations, and is so to all except those who think that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes increase.

• The return of wolves is not just a problem in the U.S. Grey wolves in Eastern Germany are increasing their population size and expanding their range.
• Katherine Belov and colleagues at the University of Sydney appear to have found a population of Tasmanian Devils that are immune to devil facial tumor disease, a transmissible cancer that’s decimated (literally) the species.
• Dave Melhman (TNC) has done a fantastic job blogging the State of the Birds 2010 report.
• The IUCN on restoring bison in North America.
• It’s March Madness, time, and the NCAA seems to have a lot of endangered species in its bracket. Those not yet extirpated from the tournament: Baylor bears, Kentucky and Kansas St Wildcats and Northern Iowa Panthers. Lobos, terrapins, grizzlies, owls, bears, and spiders all apparently not covered under the Endangered Species Act. Obama should send out an executive order.

NY Times doesn’t seem to want to embed videos, but check out this great video on the new open season on wolves (thanks Piper, and as she points out, very relevant if you were in attendance last night / have seen Milking the Rhino).

• There’s a public lands bill that’s been floating around Congress (previously mentioned here), and last week the House messed it up and actually failed to pass it. They were trying to do a runaround of Republican shenanigans by getting a 2/3 super-majority that would allow no amendments to the bill, but they lost by 2 votes (2 votes! And if 2 of those opposition votes simply hadn’t showed up to vote, it would’ve passed, because the 2/3 requirement would’ve been lower). Well, they’re trying it again — the Senate has set it up for re-passage as part of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Battlefield Protection Act.
• In-depth, fascinating read on the different Yellowstone wolf packs’ activity. A true soap opera.
• Peter Kareiva kind of knocks it out of the park talking about children and carbon footprints. Worth a full read, but here’s the take-home message: being an eco-hero in your daily life could probably save 300-500 tons of carbon over your lifetime. Reducing the number of children you have by one would save nearly 10,000. Unless you live in Bangladesh, in which case you would save about 50.
• Nice article from the NY Times on the trade-offs between preserving ecosystems and building the fabled Smart Grid.
• WCS has released free software that, using camera trap photos of tigers, develops 3D models of their stripes to identify individuals. They’ve even used it to identify poached skins. The next question, of course, would be whether certain patterns are spatially correlated. Can you identify a tiger’s home based on his stripes?
• Dinosaur mesopredator discovered.
• Had a very nice dinner with Brian (of the consblog Brians) last night, and the topic of “fish: good for you, terrible for the oceans” came up.

• Ecuador has voted on a new constitution. Nature got a right: “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” Yes. Yes. Yes. Should we start aiming for a 28th amendment?
• Cod are crashing because the baby cod are being killed from by-catch. This article has a funny pun in its headline.
• Another frog has been found back from the dead (i.e. “The Lazarus Effect”, “The Romeo Effect”). It had originally been thought wiped out by the chytid fungus, which looks to be killing off most amphibian species on this planet. I had the “pleasure” of hearing David Wake talk about this today, and the whole thing really is chilling.
• Look at this Andean mountain cat. Have a look at this beautiful motherfucking “snow leopard of the Andes” cat. He was last seen by Mauro Lucherini and colleagues being awesome in the huge ass high elevation mountains of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru, which is where he is right now being awesome as usual. He is about the most beautiful god damn cat in the whole world and chews on endangered prey all the time. Responds to “Xerxes”.[1]
• Immediately after Grey Wolves were de-listed, the Disciples of Palin from Montana and Idaho “went on a shooting spree,” according to the LA Times. Initially this struck me as pretty interesting: whatever punative measures that were leveled under the ESA against hunting the wolves worked, despite what would seem like almost unplaceable odds against catching a poacher. Hunters were very well behaved in waiting to brutalize the wolves (population down 20% since being removed from the list).

• The Wildlife Conservation Network believes that venture capital will protect species by funding “conservation entrepreneurs.” They’re having an expo in San Francisco the first weekend of October.
• Fish & Wildlife Service: For protecting wolves before they were against it, before they were for it.
• It appears to be New Species Day: In Fiji, a new iguana has been described. The team of Australian and US scientists must have been bummed to discover that on the same day, Australian scientists announced the description of HUNDREDS of new species along the Great Barrier Reef, including “shrimp-like animals with claws longer than their bodies, along with already known animals like a tongue-eating isopod parasite that eats a fish’s tongue and then resides in its mouth.” “…uh, guys? My iguana? Over here? … anybody?”
• And just to re-iterate, I’m Tim Bean, and that’s news to me.

• TNC, WCS and WWF have signed an agreement to collaborate on preserving the world’s largest in tact grassland — Mongolia’s Eastern Steppe. Although I’ve never been there, I have a great affection for this place. One of the many threats facing the grassland is the (legal!) exportation of Saker falcons to Middle Eastern sheikhs for falconing (falknering?). Welcome to the weird world of globalism.
• Chris Darimont and collaborators at UBC have discovered the wolves in western Canada prefer salmon to deer when it’s in season.
• Here’s a roundup of current news in the endangered species world from Plenty Magazine’s Extinction Blog. Did you know bottlenose dolphins near the British Isles kill other dolphins and porpoises in competition for food?
• Revkin pushes back against the news that the Arctic is now an island.