Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Do Trees Own Themselves? Thoughts to Ponder
"We by-and-by discovered, however, what I thought well worth my trouble, a pair of those splendid birds, the Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. ... They were engaged in rapping some tall dead pines, in a dense part of the forest, which rang with their loud notes. These were not at all like the loud laugh of the Pileated ..., nor the cackle of the smaller species, but a single cry frequently repeated, like the clang of a trumpet. ... We succeeded in shooting both, which I skinned and dissected."
The ivory-billed woodpecker is now presumed extinct in North America. The above account was written in southern Alabama in the late 1830s. No illegal act was committed and no environmental harm was intended by the writer, Philip Henry Gosse. His 1859 book, Letters from Alabama, reissued in 1993, contains verbal portraits and is an excellent addition to our knowledge of plants, animals, and natural habitats in the 1800s.
William Bartram is generally recognized as having written the most thorough accounts of natural history in the southern regions of the country during the early colonization period, in the late 1700s. More than half a century after Bartram, Gosse's views as a naturalist give intriguing insight into the natural history of the developing region. Gosse arrived in Mobile, Alabama, in 1838, and his writings disclose environmental, as well as social, attitudes of the times. An Englishman who had lived in Philadelphia, Gosse came to Alabama with prospects of being a teacher. His "letters" are notes and sketches based on his observations of the region, its people, and its wildlife.
Gosse mentions more than three hundred plants and animals (usually including scientific names). Most are insects: he had a special fondness for butterflies and moths. He also reports observations of about fifty birds, a dozen reptiles, thirty-five trees, and more than fifty flowers, shrubs, and vines. His accounts of natural history reveal a keen and observant individual with a background in biology. An annotated section by Daniel D. Jones and Ken R. Marion at the end of the modern edition is valuable for today's readers; it cites currently accepted names of each species of plant or animal mentioned by Gosse.
Even without the annotation, many of Gosse's descriptions are accurate enough for readers to recognize today's extant species and some that are no longer with us. For example, Gosse states that on "a ride to Selma ... I had the pleasure of seeing a flock of Parrots. ... There were eighty or a hundred in one compact flock, and as they swept past me, screaming as they went, I fancied that they looked like an immense shawl of green satin, on which an irregular pattern was worked in scarlet and gold and azure." These were of course now-extinct Carolina parakeets. The last confirmed specimen of the Carolina parakeet died in the Cincinnati Zoo on 21 February 1918. Ironically, the last passenger pigeon had died in a nearby cage in the same zoo four years earlier.
Some readers will be alarmed at the prevailing attitude of the times that any living animal was fair game for a man with a rifle. Gosse, like John James Audubon, shot birds in order to study the specimens. But he mentions the indiscriminate shooting of other animals by anyone holding a gun. The prey included great horned owls, Mississippi kites, and opossums — not for food but because of an attitude that shooting anything was all right. Even Gosse, clearly a lover of nature, is not judgmental on the topic. This attitude is understandable. As recently as the 1950s shooting even songbirds or hawks went unchallenged in many parts of the country. Unfortunately, this same attitude persists in some regions today, although a more environmentally aware society is gradually pressing such views into extinction.
Overall, Gosse's book is a reflective and informative guide for those interested in the perspectives of a biologist in the South a century and a half ago. But environmental issues have become increasingly complex not only within the last century but also within the last few decades. In the 1970s, around the time of the first Earth Day, most people could easily decide which position they should take in an environmental debate. Each year, the decisions have become less and less clear-cut. Economics, water quality, agricultural needs, disappearing forests, and other complex issues must be pondered, evaluated, and placed in a proper balance. The environmental conscience of most of us is taxed daily. The American beaver provides an outstanding example of the complexity of environmental conscience at the personal level. The perplexing problem of the beaver mirrors, in microcosm, the ongoing environmental dilemmas that we face collectively and individually.
Enter the Beaver
As many as 400 million beavers inhabited North America in the 1700s. By the early 1900s fur trappers and disgruntled landowners had reduced the beaver population to near extinction in most of its range. Today, beavers have made a comeback and can be found in many regions where they were rare or absent for decades.
Beavers are undeniably cute, from the chubby babies dragging little paddlelike tails behind them to ones that have been raised as pets to adulthood and can even be fed safely by hand. A family of beavers in a lake can be the pinnacle of fascination for someone who enjoys observing animal behavior — a wildlife experience with a lesson in sociology. If they do not feel threatened, beavers will busily swim about building a lodge or dam as a cooperative family unit, although they do not build either lodges or dams in some situations. Contented beaver family members can even be heard mewing to one another. It is easy to be smitten with their industrious, friendly behavior. Their hard-working nature is a textbook example of a positive trait we would all do well to acquire.
People who live on a lake, however, may find that a family of beaver neighbors can soon present a dilemma. Having their own private beaver family involves both costs and benefits. For example, the residents along a lake spoke with pride of their small beaver colony. But one spring night the beavers cut down and carried away six boxwood shrubs planted the previous afternoon. The next night, as if to make a firm statement to their previously admiring audience, the beavers expertly removed a flowering pink dogwood tree that grew only a few feet away from the boxwood stumps. Because the record-size tree (a cottonwood in Canada) known to have been felled by beavers was five and a half feet in diameter, a landowner could easily become concerned. The predicament is how to keep beavers for show-andtell and yet have them behave to our liking. Pam Graves, an environmental educator who has kept a pet beaver for years, has suggested that if people want to keep beavers in their ponds, they should plant red maples and willows. The beaver teeth will act like pruning shears, but the trees will not be killed.
Another common problem occurs when beavers decide the water level of a lake is not high enough to suit them. They may proceed to dam up the overflow pipe, thus flooding driveways and backyards. Removing the vegetation from the pipe will help for only a day at a time, because beavers, some of whom do not care much for running water, will repair a broken dam or fill an unclogged pipe within hours. Beavers also burrow under roads and weaken structural foundations. Another stressful situation can arise when beavers build a lodge inside a boathouse. Although the activity may be fun to watch, the attractiveness begins to wane when the beavers use the boathouse pilings to increase the size of their lodge. In each case, the dilemma is, do you get rid of the beavers or forfeit your personal property? (Beavers, however, are not the only species that can damage property with dams. As Pam Graves points out, beavers in the Savannah River that separates South Carolina and Georgia build neither lodges nor dams but instead live in holes they make in the bank. She notes that the only dams on the Savannah River have been put there by human activity. Think how much habitat, including formerly private property, these dams have flooded.)
The quandary with beavers is compounded when people grow fond of the flat-tailed animals around them and do not want to hurt them. The simplest way to remove beavers is with a steel snap trap that kills them. This method does not qualify as "not hurting." So what about trapping them alive? With more effort than required for snap traps — and less effective results — beavers can be captured unharmed. Then the question arises, what do you do with them? Regional zoos have a limited demand for beavers, so this option is soon exhausted. Releasing what you consider a pest into another lake or stream hardly seems fair to whoever lives there. Besides, like many animals, beavers will return to their former home if the distance is not too great. So, what do you do?
No simple answer exists. Beavers put the issue of nuisance wildlife on a personal scale. You have two clear options: kill the beavers or ignore the destruction of your property. A compromise is often out of the question.
The issue of balancing one's love of wildlife with decisions about personal lifestyle, including ownership of pets, can be even more complicated. One dilemma that affects millions of Americans is caused by a predator that lurks in virtually all terrestrial habitats, ready to pounce upon any small prey — mammal, bird, or reptile. The creature is everywhere, from England to Australia, and throughout North America. Biologists consider it the most dangerous carnivore in many regions because of its large numbers, stealth, and agility. An inclination to hunt, whether hungry or not, makes the species a potential menace to all wildlife. The killer is the domestic cat, a species introduced to North America in the 1600s, centuries before fire ants or kudzu.
Look What the Cat Dragged In
An article in Virginia Wildlife by Joe Mitchell of the University of Richmond gives some striking facts about house cats and their potential impact on native wildlife. He distinguishes between "domestic, free-ranging cats" (those that spend much of their time outdoors but are assured of a food supply at home) and feral (wild) cats. The latter have no human home and therefore must provide their own meals. Both types of cats prey on wildlife and are highly successful predators.
Mitchell, a biologist who lives in a suburban neighborhood and who is a cat owner, kept a tally of the wildlife trophies his family's four cats brought home over a period of eleven months. The total was 104 individuals of 21 native species: 6 kinds of birds, 8 kinds of mammals, 7 kinds of reptiles. Among the prey were flying squirrels, chipmunks, Carolina wrens, and cardinals. Peter Stangel, with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Washington, D.C., told of his two cats' kill records during the time he lived in rural South Carolina: 15 different species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in four months. Anyone with a cat knows such prey numbers are not unusual for active domestic cats with access to wooded areas. Such tallies, which include only animals brought to the homeowners, are probably underestimates. On the other hand, some cats do not seem particularly predatory. Some fat, lazy felines lounge and bask all day and sleep inside at night.
Mitchell used his tally to provide some measure of the total impact that house cats might have on local wildlife. The Humane Society estimated about a million house cats in Virginia, not counting the feral ones. Mitchell calculated that 3 million songbirds and 27 million native mammals potentially fall victim to domestic cats annually, if all kill at the rate that his did. This record is only for one year and only in Virginia! An article by Paul Karr in Sanctuary, the journal of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, provided comparable data on wildlife destruction by domestic cats. An estimated 2 million birds are killed annually in that state. The article mentions another study stating that no fewer than 20 million birds are killed by cats each year in Britain. Cats are also considered a major menace to wildlife in some parts of Australia, where active eradication programs have been instituted by some of its citizens.
Awareness that cats can have a major impact on wildlife is not new. More than a century ago in England, cats were recognized as affecting plant, as well as animal, communities. Red clover was considered dependent on "humble bees" for pollination. The number of humble bees and the level of successful pollination were low in some areas, where field mice destroyed the hives. However, when cats were present, the number of mice was generally low. The author reporting this observation concluded, "it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine ... the frequency of certain flowers in that district!" The author was Charles Darwin; the book was The Origin of Species.
Human beings obviously appreciate cats, as evidenced by the presence of an estimated 60 million in the United States. Their impact on small native animals is significant and in many instances disturbing, whether one is concerned about disappearing wildlife or concerned that the gentle house cat could get a bad reputation. Will Americans concerned about the national decline in numbers of songbirds and other wildlife be willing to get rid of their cats? Not likely. So what should we do about an environmental problem of this kind?
Can we rationalize that cats are only filling a void left by the disappearance or decline of natural predators like panthers, bobcats, and wolves? Do we refer to Darwin's observation that cats can be important in the preservation of flowers? No matter what justification we offer for not getting rid of our cats, such as emphasizing that they do not destroy natural habitat the way some other species do, the reality is that they kill a lot of small wildlife. One solution for the situation with house cats is simply to keep them indoors, a position strongly recommended by many as best for the cat as well as the wildlife.
Cats are not the only nonnative species introduced into a habitat where it competes with native species. Imagine the scene of a herd of horses feeding on an open range. A majestic stallion watches over his harem of mares on a green plain that stretches from one blue horizon to the other. Environmental beauty? Or environmental destruction?
Who's at Home on the Range?
In looking at a magnificent thoroughbred horse, we sometimes forget that the ancestors of all pets and domestic animals were once wild. Each adapted to a specific natural environment before coming under the care and protection of people. The process often goes full circle, as with the feral horses that now roam parts of the West. Horses, like cats, are still capable of living in natural environments, even after generations of care and breeding by humans. The descendants of formerly domestic equine stock, after many centuries of complete or partial domestication, can clearly live under sometimes harsh environmental conditions. Good examples are the ponies of Chincoteague and Assateague Islands, the Atlantic barrier islands off the Virginia coastline. The ponies' ancestors escaped from wrecked European sailing vessels. The descendants have survived now for many generations in the sometimes stringent environments of the coastal islands.
Owners of thoroughbred horses are proud if they can identify their steeds' ancestors back to the turn of the century. Thoroughbreds have long genealogies, recorded in careful detail. But the search back through history can only go so far, for experts disagree about the origins of the domestic horse; presumably its roots were in a grassland region of Europe or Asia. The earliest records of human beings riding horses are from Asia, fifty centuries ago, near present-day Iran.
Paleontologists probably smile at such short-term records. The lineage of horses with which paleontologists work can be traced back 65 million years. We know from fossils that the ancestral "dawn horses" (Eohippus) were about five hands high (less than two feet) and lived in North America and Europe. Four flat toes allowed them to walk in a swampy environment; their short teeth were suitable for a habitat filled with lush, leafy vegetation. As centuries passed, their environment changed to a firmer terrain with coarse grasses. This new diet wore down short teeth very quickly. Thus, horse ancestors with longer teeth were favored for survival. By following fossil remains through geologic time, we see the horse developing the single hoof, as we know it today. Also, as horses spread throughout all continents except Australia and Antarctica, they became larger, owing to unknown forces of natural selection.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Ecoviews"
by .
Copyright © 1998 The University of Alabama Press.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
