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By Megan Kimble, October 24, 2011 10:32 am

An aquatic inventory team explored this dry wash in the Rincon Mountains during the BioBlitz (photo by Megan Kimble)

Standing under the sun on a 110-degree day in Tucson, it’s easy to assume the Sonoran Desert is a hostile, lifeless place. But, venture into the hills, and you’ll find a different story. Nestled among the giant Saguaro cacti is a brimming ecosystem, hosting the greatest diversity of vegetative growth of any desert worldwide, as well as an astonishing array of mammals, reptiles, birds, and aquatic invertebrates.

This weekend, the National Park Service and National Geographic teamed up to host the 5^th annual BioBlitz in Saguaro National Park to inventory the diversity of that ecosystem.

A BioBlitz is a 24-hour event to find and identify as many living species as possible in a national park. Scientists and experts lead inventory teams of students, teachers, and community members into Saguaro National Park East and West to explore the park’s mountains, valleys, cactus forests, washes, and tinajas in search of the desert’s wildlife.

An un-inventoried rattlesnake (photo by Megan Kimble)

Each team had a focus—from Gila monsters to aquatic fungi—and they ventured into the national park for two- to four-hour shifts. School kids took over the inventory teams all day on Friday, Oct. 20, as part of a broader mission to get young people excited about science.

Two of the major events unique to Tucson included the saguaro census, which focused on counting the growth and preservation of the iconic saguaro forests, and the night sky inventory, which measured light pollution in and around Tucson, an important measurement for the many world-class observatories located outside the city.

Tucson’s BioBlitz was the fifth in a series of 10 annual BioBlitzes planned by National Geographic and the National Park Service, leading up to the Park Service’s centennial in 2016. The first BioBlitz was held at Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., in 2007; in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California in 2008; Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 2009; and Biscayne National Park in Florida hosted last year’s BioBlitz.

While inventorying species is the stated mission of the BioBlitz, the event is as much about the park as the people—getting people into the park—which is why all BioBlitzes focus on national parks adjacent to major urban areas around the U.S.

John Francis, the Vice President of Research, Conservation and Exploration for National Geographic, explained why: “We’re trying to awaken people who don’t really understand their deep connection with nature,” he said in an interview on the National Geographic BioBlitz website. “Sometimes in the urban setting you don’t get out into nature. But there are parks around the country that are close to the city, and we want to get the schoolchildren and the families into the park, to get them to be with those who really know it and love it and get them bitten by the bug that’s so exciting about loving nature through these BioBlitz activities.”

The Tucson BioBlitz was the first large-scale species inventory of Saguaro National Park. Check out images and results from the BioBlitz on the National Geographic BioBlitz blog.

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By Andrew Gottlieb, June 29, 2011 8:25 am

Permanent Vacation: Twenty Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks. Volume 1: The West

Edited by Kim Wyatt and Erin Bechtol
Bona Fide Books, 2011
Reviewed by Andrew C. Gottlieb

If you’re like me, you’ve visited a number of National Parks, you’ve been enthralled by the beauty and variety presented by that great national resource, but your personal list of parks-to-see is long. What to do to ease the craving in between trips to our national parks? One answer: read about them.

Bona Fide Books, a young press out of South Lake Tahoe, has put together for a first anthology a rich collection of essays by writers who’ve not only visited our parks but have spent time working and living in them, in some cases for whole careers. Thirty-plus years. That’s the beauty of Permanent Vacation: Twenty Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks. Volume 1: The West . These essays present the lives, insights, and secrets of people who’ve not only visited the parks but have experienced them from the inside. A handsomely produced volume, it’s readable, fun, and small enough to shove in a backpack.

I’ll admit: I’m biased. I had the luck to once be the writer-in-residence on Isle Royale National Park, and those three weeks gave me my own taste as a National Park Service insider. But as this anthology illustrates, one park, or one experience, is not like the other. There are stories here you won’t find in any parks guide book. The beauty and appreciation you’ll expect; the dark side of working in the parks may be a surprise.

Joseph Flannery writes about encounters with grizzly bears, secret back roads and buffalo carcasses, the differences between grizzlies and black bears, and the way Yellowstone employees pride themselves in experience: “To have a close encounter with a grizzly is to wear a sort of badge of honor around the park.” Troy Davis, a ranger and biologist at Yellowstone for nine years, tells of the management of the famous Elk Number Six, and losing sleep one night while the animal circled his cabin, bugling. “I spent more time, eyeball to eyeball, with Elk Number Six than did any other human being.” Ruth Rhodes, now a professor of English, spent three seasons working at Denali National Park, and writes of the Dash, the end of summer ritual in which park employees strip down and run three miles, naked, in the frigid midnight air of Alaska, from one bar, the Golden Spike, to another, the Chalet.

There is the beauty and the wildlife: sunsets and sunrises, lush forest, snowy wilderness, elk, bear, wolves, big horn sheep, and brook trout. The geology: mountains, petrified forest, volcanoes, canyons. The process: tents, cabins, employee housing, hiking, climbing, summiting, and river-rafting.

But there’s also the rote work, the let-down, the exhaustion of underpaid drudgery, and the drugs and alcohol, the car accidents and deaths, the dark side of the Park Service, the symptoms of young people together in isolation, working in a dream wilderness but with few other outlets. Melanie Dylan Fox talks about escape during five seasons of work in Sequoia National Park: “It’s easier to rely on the feelings alcohol and drugs evoke than it is to recapture that sense of wonder we all felt at the beginning. We keep searching for the intoxication that the forest itself once brought.” Nicole Sheets, for this essay perhaps appropriately named, writes of changing bed linens, pleating sheets and tucking edges, of being a “lowly drone.” For Sheets, the adage “leave no trace” takes an unexpected angle. “My work succeeds . . . if . . . each guest can maintain the illusion that they are the first people to ever stay in their room.”

Like all anthologies, some essays are stronger than others. The best here tell more than one story, using lyrical prose to reveal something personal. Cassandra Kircher tells of a difficult relationship with her aging father, attempting to understand his quiet, his isolation. During one of his visits while she works in Rocky Mountain National Park, “my father arranges pieces of bark with his foot like he’s playing a game, creating a whole world that is more real to him than the one he is in.” By the end of the essay, caught trout slowly dying in a bucket become a larger metaphor for the reader, for the essay’s narrator. Mary Emerick writes of escaping relationships with men, traveling from park to park, a vagrant seasonal worker with a fear of commitment to anything but her “ancient road atlas.” Janet Smith writes about working in the parks to escape feelings of inadequacy, ugliness: “living—literally—in the shadow of Half Dome equated to a better life.” This type of writing is at once painful, revealing, and gratifying.

Other national parks represented include Mount Rainier, Wrangell-St.Elias, Grand Teton, Petrified Forest, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Yosemite. A highly recommended collection that will make you want to ditch your job and pack your gear for a nearest or favorite national park, but with a new appreciation for many of the seasonal and full-time rangers, naturalists, and workers helping maintain the incredible National Parks System that most of us will only briefly get to visit.

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Andrew C. Gottlieb is the Reviews Editor for Terrain.org. His work can be found online, in many print journals, and in his poetry chapbook Halflives (New Michigan Press.) Find him at www.andrewcgottlieb.com

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By Simmons Buntin, October 4, 2009 4:53 am

New Report Identifies Top Threats and Recommendations to Protect Parks

Winter clouds over Saguaro National Park east of Tucson. Photo by Simmons Buntin.

11 Climate-Related Dangers in Parks in AK, AZ, CA, CO, FL, ID, IN, MD, MT, NJ, NY, ME, NV, NM, NC, ND, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, and WY.

Editor’s note: Video is available at: http://www.vimeo.com/nrdcbroadcast/videos

Denver and New York (October 1, 2009) — Climate change from human activity is the leading threat to wildlife, plants, water and ice in 25 of America’s national parks, according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO).

The report, National Parks in Peril, comes on the heels of the introduction of clean energy and climate legislation in the U.S. Senate, as well as Ken Burns’ national parks series on PBS, which has put parks in the center of America’s national conscience.

The RMCO/NRDC report outlines 11 climate-related threats and the needed remedies for the following national parks (in alphabetical order):  Acadia National Park; Assateague Island National Seashore; Bandelier National Monument; Biscayne National Park; Cape Hatteras National Seashore; Colonial National Historical Park; Denali National Park and Preserve; Dry Tortugas National Park; Ellis Island National Monument; Everglades National Park; Glacier National Park; Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore; Joshua Tree National Park; Lake Mead National Recreation Area; Mesa Verde National Park; Mount Rainier National Park; Padre Island National Seashore; Rocky Mountain National Park; Saguaro National Park; Theodore Roosevelt National Park; Virgin Islands National Park/Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument; Yellowstone National Park;Yosemite National Park; and Zion National Park.

“As a country, we need to ensure that our parks have a future that is as promising as their past,” said Theo Spencer, senior advocate for the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Clean energy legislation is now moving in Congress that would help preserve our national treasures, while creating more jobs, economic growth and national security.”

The report outlines climate-related threats in 25 parks spanning 22 states. The top risks include: loss of snow and water, rising seas, more extreme weather, loss of plants and wildlife, and more pollution.

“Climate disruption is the greatest threat ever to our national parks. We could lose entire national parks for the first time, as Everglades, Ellis Island, and other parks could be submerged by rising seas,” said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the report’s principal author. “To preserve our parks, we need to reduce the heat-trapping gases that are threatening them, and begin managing the parks to protect resources at risk.”   

Remedies, which are outlined in the report, include enacting comprehensive clean energy legislation, including reducing carbon pollution by at least 20 percent below current levels by 2020; increasing investment in energy efficiency; and accelerating the development of clean energy technologies. The National Parks Service also needs to prioritize this issue by enacting policies to mitigate the impacts of global warming; and should have more funding for research and to reduce the effects of climate change.

Bill Wade, chair of the executive council of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR) and former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, said: “National parks are often referred to as the ‘canaries in the mine shafts’ when it comes to climate change. By their very characteristics and locations, impacts and effects of climate change are noticed in national parks first and are a forewarning about what will happen elsewhere. That’s why this report is particularly important.”

For the full report, including the list of the National Parks, go to:  www.rockymountainclimate.org

The report and more information about national parks and global warming is also at: http://www.nrdc.org/land/parksinperil/

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By Simmons Buntin, July 10, 2009 5:11 am

Greenpeace Makes Urgent Call for Climate Action From Face of Mt. Rushmore
Challenges President Obama to lead the world in fighting global warming

Learn more at www.greenpeace.org/rushmore (includes video)

WASHINGTON – This morning [July 8, 2009], 11 daring Greenpeace climbers hung a banner on Mount Rushmore challenging President Obama to show real leadership on global warming. The banner, measuring sixty-five feet high by thirty-five feet wide, features an unfinished portrait of Obama with the message, “America honors leaders not politicians: Stop Global Warming.” The demonstration comes as President Obama meets other G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy today to discuss the global warming crisis in the lead-up to UN climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

“This monument celebrates leaders who rose to the great challenges of our past. Global warming is the greatest crisis humankind has ever faced and it is the defining test of leadership for this generation. It’s an open question whether President Obama will pass that test,” said Greenpeace USA Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett.

To highlight the issue, 11 activists completed a challenging climb to the top of Mount Rushmore, and three rappelled down, hanging the nearly 2300-square-foot banner as they descended. The activists, highly trained in rock and industrial climbing, took special care not to damage the monument, using existing anchors placed by the National Park Service for periodic cleanings. The demonstration follows a series of protests in Italy this morning where other Greenpeace activists hung banners on coal plant smokestacks calling attention to the collective failure of leadership on global warming at the G8.

“We’re at a moment in history where President Obama must show real leadership on global warming, not only for Congress and the American people, but for the world. Unfortunately, the steps taken to address the crisis so far have been grossly inadequate,” said Muffett. “While President Obama’s speeches on global warming have been inspiring, we’ve seen a growing gap between the president’s words and his actions.”

The best science shows that to avoid catastrophic global warming, governments must take action to keep global temperature rise as far below 2 degrees Celsius as possible. “Given President Obama’s pledge to follow the science, it’s troubling that his administration has not yet endorsed emission targets strong enough to keep us below that critical threshold.”

Earlier this year, the experience with climate legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, which was drastically weakened by lobbyists for the oil and coal industries and other big polluters, showed that unless the president provides strong leadership on this issue, special interests will win out over the common interest.

“Doing what it takes to solve global warming demands real political courage,” Muffett added. “If President Obama intends to earn a place among this country’s true leaders, he needs to show that courage, and base his actions on the scientific reality rather than political convenience.”

Greenpeace is calling on President Obama to use every tool at his disposal, both within and outside Congress, to strengthen U.S. climate policy with scientific integrity, and to take that policy to Copenhagen in December as evidence the U.S. will do what it takes to solve the climate crisis.

Specifically, Greenpeace is calling on President Obama to:

. Strive to keep global temperatures as far below a 2 degrees Celsius increase as possible, compared to pre-industrial levels to avert catastrophic climate change;

. Set a goal of peaking global emissions by 2015 and be as close to zero as possible by 2050, compared to 1990 levels;

. Cut emissions in the U.S. by 25-40 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels;

. Join and encourage other members of the G8 to establish a funding mechanism that provides $106 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to global warming impacts that are now unavoidable and halt tropical deforestation.

Greenpeace is also calling on President Obama to attend the Copenhagen conference personally to ensure a strong, science-based agreement is reached.

For live streaming video, pictures, and footage visit: www.greempeace.org/rushmore

Contact: Molly Dorozenski (on site), 917-864-3724, mdorozen@greenpeace.org
Michael Crocker (Washington, DC), 202-215-8989, mcrocker@greenpeace.org

Earlier this year, Greenpeace released its roadmap for slowing climate change, the Energy [R]evolution, which shows that the U.S. can cut emissions 25 percent by 2020.To read the full-report, visit: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/press-center/reports4/energy-r-evolution-a-bluepr

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For the record, Terrain.org supports a little non-violent civil disobedience.