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"C'mon, Beast," Bathke urges. "Let's go."
The Beast regards him with regal disdain.
"Fine, have it your way." Bathke jounces his arm, and The Beast takes off. She flies a few yards, quickly and powerfully, before landing in the dirt here at the Roosevelt Regional Landfill. That alone sends the dozens of gulls that were picking through garbage into a whirling, squawking panic.
Bathke, 60, a master falconer, is lean and long-haired, with a thick horseshoe mustache and soul patch whittled to a point. His manner is loose, friendly, earnest, occasionally wry and slightly befuddled. The Beast, so named because of her size and disposition, is one of four falcons employed by Bathke's business, Fear the Falcon. They spend 10 to 15 days a month at the landfill making life miserable for the gulls, ravens and other birds that would otherwise feast lavishly on the refuse.
At over 2,500 acres, Washington's largest private landfill receives more than 2 million tons of trash annually, from as far away as Alaska. Managers thought its location on a plateau above the Columbia River and a couple of miles inland would discourage gulls. But such hopes ran counter to biological predilection. Thousands of gulls descended. They massed around heavy equipment, screaming at the operators and driving them nuts. They carried garbage to nearby parks, flouting federal containment regulations. A worker was pulled from the line to blast away with cracker shells and bottle rockets. "The birds weren't scared at all," says Art Mains, the landfill's environmental manager. "That was when we started to look at bird abatement."
Bird abatement is the use of hawks and falcons to scare pests away from property. The practice began at military air bases and commercial airports, where bird collisions can cause expensive damage, even bringing down planes. Bathke trains his falcons to dive on a leather lure that he swings in circles from a long pole. They don't have to actively hunt to be a deterrent. "There's nothing like a predator to scare the crap out of a gull," Bathke says.
Originally from Oakland, California, Bathke started raising falcons more than 30 years ago, when his parents purchased a steer, and the rancher threw in a young kestrel. Bathke raised it, unaware that, without the requisite paperwork, he was breaking the law. (He has since "legaled up.")
He was living in Santa Rosa in 2000, when he got a call from a falconer in Spokane, Washington, asking if he wanted to start a trial abatement program at Roosevelt. His first day was miserable: early August, 102 degrees Fahrenheit, 45 mph winds, dust, garbage and gulls everywhere. He stood in the lee of giant trash mountains in a state of existential ambivalence, while heavy equipment crushed and compacted all around. But his birds drove the gulls away. And when the hordes returned the next day, they did it again.
For abatement to work, the harassment must at first be intensive; Bathke lived out of his van for four months, hazing gulls daily until they stopped coming back. "I had a cycle," he says. "Four months here, two months in California, four months here." This went on for almost two years before he moved to Washington for good. Now, he lives about an hour away in Goldendale, a small town where he also owns an auto body shop. His home is a veritable menagerie, with pigeons, falcons, hawks, spaniels and a cat; goshawk eggs sit in an incubator on his dining room table.
"It's interesting work, but you go where the jobs are," Bathke says, as the trash-perfumed breeze ruffles The Beast's feathers. The birds can be temperamental; sometimes, rather than flying to the lure, they light out for more open spaces. Bathke has spent hours, and occasionally days, following them in his van, radio antennae held aloft, listening for the faint beep! of a tracking device.
And then there are the days when they don't feel like flying, choosing instead to kak! at his feet. After several minutes of this from The Beast, Bathke relents and holds out his arm. The Beast hops up and glowers at him, baleful and extraordinary. "What's with you today?" he asks her softly, offering a wing of raw chicken. The Beast grabs it with her talons and, earned or not, tears it to shreds.]]>
The birds' success testifies to an intelligence nearly unmatched in the animal kingdom. Ravens are resourceful, talkative, capable of using tools. They can hunt in packs. They solve puzzles. They're one of only two vertebrates known to be capable of displacement, the ability to communicate about objects and events distant in time and space. Humans are the other.
The brilliance and adaptability of ravens have helped them triumph in an era that has been disastrous for most wildlife. Ravens feast on refuse and roadkill, drink from livestock troughs and nest on and hunt from human power structures. They are what biologists call a subsidized predator, thriving on the food and habitat humans provide. In the last 40 years, raven numbers have grown fourfold in the West at large, fivefold in Idaho, sixfold in Nevada.
We humans, however, have not greeted them warmly. Ravens devour crops, attack livestock, and, perhaps most notoriously, clash with sage grouse. In response, Westerners have shot and poisoned thousands of them. Ravens have become victims of their own success. The question is, what do we do about them?
In the early 2000s, Peter Coates was a graduate student at Idaho State University, completing a dissertation on the greater sage grouse, a balloon-chested, ground-dwelling bird whose population has declined by 90 percent over the past century. While the grouse faced many threats – including invasive cheatgrass, wildfire and habitat fragmentation – Coates and his adviser, biologist David Delehanty, wanted to investigate a less-studied peril: nest predation.
What was eating grouse eggs? Other scientists suspected coyotes, badgers, even ground squirrels, but Coates and Delehanty had a different hunch. Over the course of two years, they set up cameras at 55 grouse nests, disguising them behind vegetation and stealthily changing the batteries when the grouse left to forage. When they watched the footage at study's end, they didn't see any coyotes or ground squirrels. Instead, most of the preyed-on nests had been plundered by ravens, who absconded with the eggs in their hooked beaks. "We'd always suspected they were a nest predator," says Coates, now a wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. "What we learned was just how frequent predation actually was."
This wasn't the first time ravens have been accused of devouring an imperiled species. In the Mojave Desert, researchers found the shells of threatened desert tortoises, holes pecked through their scutes, in middens beneath raven nests. Preying on sage grouse, though, was more egregious. In 2010, the same year that Coates published his camera research, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the grouse as "warranted but precluded" under the Endangered Species Act – meaning the bird deserved protection, but that other species demanded more urgent attention – and promised to revisit its ruling in 2015.
Starting in 2010, the West had five years to convince the feds that grouse populations were healthy; otherwise, industries like ranching and energy could face painful land-use restrictions. Landowners and agencies in a half-dozen states responded by undertaking a range of sage grouse conservation projects, from removing invasive plants to modifying grazing rotations. But the region has also been gripped by a scientifically dubious passion for killing off ravens.
Jared Brackett, the burly president of the Idaho Cattle Association, is among the ranchers trying to save grouse. Brackett, whose livestock graze a 50,000-acre allotment southwest of Twin Falls, has tweaked his operation – for instance, shutting down water troughs near leks, where sage grouse perform their mating displays – to help the birds survive. "We've got a pretty progressive rotation system in place,"
he says. "And we have a thriving population of grouse."
Around 10 years ago, Brackett realized he also had a thriving population of ravens. The occasional calf turned up with a pecked-out eye; one afternoon, a trio of birds ate an entire flock of turkey chicks that Brackett had raised in his yard. Fearing the ravens would hinder his grouse conservation work, he began discussing raven control with other ranchers – including his uncle, state Sen. Bert Brackett, who owns around a thousand head of cattle.
Next door, in Nevada, raven-killing fever had already taken hold. In 2007, the Nevada Department of Wildlife launched an initiative called Project 21, a plan to boost sage grouse survival by killing their predators. From 2007 to 2013, the state poisoned 9,423 ravens with DRC-1339, a poison that induces kidney failure in corvids, the family that includes ravens, crows and magpies – and spent around $200,000 doing it. Meanwhile, commissioners in ranching-dominated Elko County, in the state's northeastern corner, recently petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove ravens from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a law that restricts how many can be killed.
This spring, raven mania spread to Idaho. Under the state's plan, announced in March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services would scatter thousands of chicken eggs filled with DRC-1339 in three grouse-nesting areas. Idaho's permit allowed it to kill as many as 4,000 ravens over two years; rancher-cum-senator Bert Brackett was among the lawmakers who advocated for the program.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game calls the plan an experiment. But to Clait Braun, a research biologist who's been studying sage grouse since 1973, the program isn't sound science – it's slaughter. "They don't have any control group" – i.e., places where the state won't cull ravens for the sake of comparison, Braun says. "There's no way on God's green earth that they can attribute any effects (on grouse) to ravens."
If Idaho truly cared about saving grouse, he argues, it would prohibit ranchers from grazing livestock on public lands. "I've seen ravens predating sage grouse nests in Idaho," says Braun. "Why? Because the understory is so thin that ravens fly over and see the eggs and say, 'Aha, food!' And why are the forbs and grasses so thin? Cows ate them."
As Idaho embraces lethal raven control, Nevada, ironically, has begun to back off. In its most recent predator-management plan, the state Department of Wildlife acknowledged that raven-killing's "long-term benefits have yet to be documented." And although Project 21 is funded through next year, it may not continue beyond 2015.
Why doesn't lethal control have lasting effects? The problem, suggests Delehanty, is that poisoning often kills nesting pairs of ravens, territorial individuals that command areas as large as five square miles. When those nesters vanish, new ravens fill the vacuum – and because the arrivistes are often non-territorial birds, poisoning might even produce greater densities.
"Does raven poisoning reduce numbers?" concludes Delehanty. "You bet it does. But it's temporary. You're bailing out a little spot in an ocean of ravens, and that spot fills in very quickly."
That dynamic has led scientists to seek more lasting ways of managing C. corax – namely, ending the accidental stimulus packages that have allowed the birds to thrive. Peter Coates is researching how to raven-proof transmission towers – lattice structures provide inviting nesting platforms, while tubular structures are less tempting – and Nevada has begun removing roadkill and separating food waste at landfills. "We're not blindly killing everything we can," insists Chris Healy, public information officer at the state's Department of Wildlife. "We're trying to reduce the subsidies."
For its part, Idaho won't poison any ravens in 2014, though not out of newfound love for the birds; federal Wildlife Services didn't complete its environmental assessment in time. Intense public scrutiny may have had an effect. One online anti-poisoning petition received over 65,000 signatures, despite being circulated by a California food writer who's never even been to Idaho. Still, the reprieve is only temporary. By next year, the permits should be in order, and the killing will commence apace.
With Wildlife Services' poisoned eggs sidelined this spring, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game initiated raven control measures by itself, without much luck: The agency destroyed just 18 nests, and shot only 11 adults. "We placed some roadkill near leks to draw ravens in," says Jeff Gould, the agency's wildlife bureau chief, "but shooting them proved to be difficult. "They're very wary, very intelligent birds."]]>
The chicken-sized ground-nesting bird, best known for elaborate mating dances and stubborn loyalty to ancestral mating grounds called leks, occupies massive swaths of 11 Western states and two Canadian provinces. And it has lately been figuratively looming over the region like a gigantic, balloon-chested, strutting Godzilla: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must make a court-ordered decision whether to formally protect it under the Endangered Species Act by 2015, potentially ushering in what many believe would be economically devastating land-use restrictions. Grouse numbers have declined by 90 percent, and habitat by about half, over the last century. In 2010, Fish and Wildlife found that an ESA listing was warranted, but that other species more urgently needed protection. That bought time for federal and state agencies, ranchers, conservationists, energy companies and others to mount massive recovery efforts in hopes of staving off the need for listing altogether.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Harney County's Soil and Water Conservation District will finalize one such project -- a collaboratively-developed private land conservation plan called a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, or CCAA, that will cover Harney's million-plus acres of private land. Landowners who sign on agree not to fragment habitat with subdivision or development and will apply conservation measures tailored to their properties, such as removing encroaching junipers that crowd the birds out, tagging fences to reduce lethal collisions, and altering grazing to improve forage and nest cover. In exchange, they'll avoid further regulation should the bird be listed.
More than 30 landowners have already committed, covering 250,000 acres. Oregon's seven other sage grouse counties will likely follow Harney's model, meaning all the state's habitat on private land would be covered by a CCAA before the listing decision, according to Fish and Wildlife's Oregon State Supervisor Paul Henson, though what impact that has depends on how many people sign up.
"Private landowners often view endangered species on their property as a risk. We want them to be seen as an asset," Henson says. That's a major advantage of voluntary agreements, since they foster the trust and buy-in necessary to get proactive habitat improvements on private lands, where federal authorities otherwise don't have much control beyond telling landowners what not to do.
With approximately 40 percent of occupied sage grouse habitat on private lands, the Obama administration has put a lot of muscle behind this approach in the lead up to the listing decision, from CCAAs developed in partnership with Fish and Wildlife to the massive Sage Grouse Initiative mounted by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which has put more than $350 million in Farm Bill and partner-supplied funds into conservation measures on some 953 ranches, covering 3.8 million acres across 11 states, since 2010.
And earlier this month, the administration rolled out a court-ordered revision of its critical habitat rules and policies for endangered species that appears to bolster its collaborative approach. The critical habitat designation is supposed to protect landscapes and features essential to a species' conservation, and thus comes with restrictions on how the land covered can be used. Among other things, the new draft, open for public comment through July 11, clarifies the terms under which non-federal lands covered by conservation agreements such as Harney County's CCAA can be excluded from critical habitat designations, essentially adding transparency and consistency to things Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service are already doing.
That's important, says Defenders of Wildlife Director of Endangered Species Conservation Ya-Wei Li, because while "critical habitat rarely has a regulatory impact on private land (it only affects projects that require a federal permit or federal funding), the perception is that it's this big monster and 'I can't put a swimming pool in my back yard' (if my land is designated). This policy is more about giving people peace of mind." That will help a lot in the West, says Henson, "especially for species where we need private and state landowners to commit. I think it will result in more conservation on nonfederal lands."
Indeed, just as dodging an ESA listing is a powerful motivator for conservation, so too does the specter of unavoidable ESA restrictions seem to have a chilling effect on private land conservation efforts. According to an NRCS report to the Western Governor's Association, landowner participation in the Sage Grouse Initiative declined precipitously on the Nevada-California border after Fish and Wildlife proposed listing a distinct population of grouse there as threatened. "While several factors likely influence landowner participation," NRCS Chief Jason Weller wrote, "13 producers who had submitted early applications (for SGI conservation funding) in fiscal year 2014 … withdrew their applications shortly after the listing announcement."
Li worries that the critical habitat proposal makes it too easy for the feds to exclude land covered by agreements developed in partnership with Fish and Wildlife or the Fisheries Service (CCAAs, as well as other arrangements called Safe Harbor Agreements and Habitat Conservation Plans). Some of those plans "are horrible," Li says, pointing to a recent CCAA for prairie chickens, which covers oil and gas development on the bird's range in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. Because that particular CCAA allows temporary mitigations for "permanent impacts," he argues, it isn't nearly as protective as a critical habitat designation would be. He also nods to the controversy over a CCAA covering dunes sagebrush lizard habitat in Texas. Fish and Wildlife used the agreement as justification not to list the lizard as endangered, inspiring lawsuit from Defenders and the Center for Biological Diversity, who charge that the CCAA doesn't provide the agency with enough information on conservation measures for it to judge whether they'd be effective or not.
The resolution of the case will be interesting, Li says, because it "raises novel legal questions. How much can the Service rely on an agreement that has no track record? If you can do enough conservation to prevent (a species) from being listed, that's success. But there needs to be some real level of confidence that those activities are actually going to produce benefits."
Sarah Gilman is associate editor of High Country News. She tweets @Sarah_Gilman. Image courtesy of Flickr user Kathy & Sam.]]>
Killing most birds, even accidentally, is illegal under the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But unlike other energy producers, wind farmers have not been punished – until now. On Nov. 22, Duke Energy pled guilty in the first federal prosecution of wind farm bird deaths and was fined $1 million for the 160 birds, including 14 golden eagles, its Wyoming turbines killed over four years. Duke is now installing radar to warn of incoming eagles. Meanwhile, a new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule will extend the five-year permits allowing limited eagle deaths at wind farms to 30 years.
Scott Rashid stands in front of his open garage door, a bed-sized crate behind him. "Want to see my new roommate?" he asks eagerly through my car window as I park in his driveway. Through the crate slats, an eagle, three feet tall, with a hooked beak and huge talons, peers back at us with alert, round eyes. "You know what kind of bird it is?" Rashid asks. Looking at its brown head, I venture a guess: "A golden eagle?" "That's the second one you've got wrong," Rashid replies jubilantly. "It's a juvenile bald eagle."
This avian visitor is just the most recent in the stream of birds that find their way into Rashid's house. People in this mountain town turn to Rashid if they hit a bird, find an abandoned nestling, see an owl trapped inside a building, or -- as with this eagle -- observe a bird that seems weak and suffering. "I get calls at 4:00 a.m.," says the tall, slightly gangly, balding Rashid. "I get calls at midnight." His wife of nine years, Susan, is used to all this. Sometimes the roommates take over the house: a marbled godwit in the bathroom, a sharp-shinned hawk in the office.
Rashid doesn't have a degree in ornithology; he makes his living cooking up lunches and teaching at a local high school. Rather, his interest in birds began simply: He enjoyed drawing them. In high school he was "amazed at the agility of birds," compared to his own self-proclaimed clumsiness. In college he pursued an art degree, painting overlapping images of the same bird from multiple angles to serve as a sort of field guide for viewers.
Rashid began bird rehab work in 1994. After a stint as an assistant in Fort Collins, Colo., he was on his own. "You never know what you're going to see," says Rashid, explaining that he's done most of his learning on the job. He now knows to keep birds warm when they are in shock, say, after flying headlong into a window, and he can deftly shift a bird from a smaller cage into a bigger one without touching it. Figuring out the bird's mood is key; Rashid is most effective when he knows if a bird is stressed or hungry or angry. And each bird is different: "One great horned owl may have a different mentality than another great horned owl."
It's satisfying work, he says. "Raising and rehabilitating one Steller's jay or house wren -- for that creature it's everything. It's that bird's entire life."
Rashid's bird obsession goes well beyond his roommates and his artwork, which he now sells to help fund his rehab operation. His latest project is a book on local owl species -- Small Mountain Owls -- which will hit shelves in fall 2009. The idea for the book grew out of a series of birding lectures Rashid gave in the early 1990s. He ran into a wall trying to find published data on pint-sized owls, especially the northern pygmy owl -- so he began to collect his own data, combing aspen groves and mixed forest stands around Estes Park and neighboring Rocky Mountain National Park. In 1998, he found his first pygmy nest. Soon he was also researching boreal owl habits and monitoring the tiny nesting cavities of flammulated owls and northern saw-whet owls.
He's now three years into a saw-whet banding project, gathering more information for his book. He sets mist nets at dusk and leaves a tape recorder playing the owl's call -- a series of whistling toots. Some nights he'll catch and band three of the palm-sized birds, their black pupils contracting in the flashlight beam. Other nights he comes up empty. Rashid welcomes company; he advertises on a local birders' listserv and entertains whoever joins him with an unending stream of avian facts or a game of bird-opoly, a birders' monopoly. His wife, meanwhile, has begun jokingly referring to herself as the owl widow.
But it's not as though she's alone, really. There are always the roommates.]]>
Phelps would like a chance to prove that cattle and grouse can be positively linked. He runs about 250 cow-calf pairs on 12,500 acres of BLM land, practicing holistic resource management and moving his cattle often. He wants to conduct an experiment in which cows are introduced aggressively into grouse brood areas during early spring, to "get the cow flops on the ground and see what that did for chick survival."
Phelps is already an example of how ranchers are not necessarily enemies of the conservation effort. He helped found the Gunnison Sage Grouse Working Group in 1995, then dropped out after two years, claiming it had become "nothing more than a tool against grazing." Now he's mellowed on the group's efforts. He says he supports the idea of local decision-making, but also supports federally listing the Gunnison sage grouse as a threatened or endangered species. The problem is too complex to be handled entirely in any local jurisdiction, he says.
"I do think sage grouse are savable, and they're worth saving," says Phelps, "but it's going to take some federal agencies with courage to take some risks and take some chances, and it's going to have to be long-term. It's scary to get more government in here. But I really, truly believe that we can show due diligence, that we are trying to help the grouse."
Copyright © 2002 HCN and Hal Clifford]]>
Male sage grouse congregate on leks for the same reason young men go to singles bars: They're hoping to get lucky.
For the grouse, sex is very much a one-night stand, which explains why the males gather in late winter at traditional sites to perform their mating dances. Cocks provide no assistance to hens incubating eggs, or rearing broods. All they offer is their genes.
Lek is short for the Swedish term lekstalle, or mating place. Some leks may have been used for millennia. They tend to be in open places, such as old lakebeds, ridgetops, cropland, dirt roads or burned areas - with thick sage cover close by. Leks need to offer good views, so that females can check out the males, and males can keep an eye out for predators. Historical records indicate that hundreds of male sage grouse often gathered in the pre-dawn hours at a single lek, dancing for all they were worth.
The ritual of competition for females is largely limited to showing off, with very little fighting between males. By some accounts, the mating display of male sage grouse inspired some Native American dances.
First, each cock stakes out a few yards of territory upon which to perform his dance. He fans out the spiky feathers in his tail, lifts a halo of black feathers over his head and inflates two yellow air sacs on his chest, which protrude through the white breast feathers like egg yolks. Rearing up on his legs, the bird rapidly draws his wings across his ruff and makes several loud popping sounds - called booming - through the air sacs.
Sometimes the males charge each other, defending a piece of turf. The top males tend to claim the center of the lek; the skinny teenagers lurk around the outskirts, like underage kids outside the door of a bar.
Females cruise through this popping, puffing spectacle, sizing up their choices. They may visit several leks, but when a girl grouse makes up her mind, she evidently knows what she wants: some hens have been observed returning to a previously visited lek and going straight to the cock of her choice, where she offers herself for a quick copulation.
Female grouse tend to have similar taste in mates; 80 to 90 percent of the mating done at a lek is conducted by just one lucky male. The following winter, however, that male "almost always dies," according to biologist Jessica Young. Why this happens isn't clear.
Why all the pageantry? Lekking is a very efficient way for birds that live across a large landscape to size up their potential mates.
In sage grouse country, the males' booming can be heard for several miles when conditions are right. Some studies indicate that other noises, such as those produced by natural gas compressors and other machinery, may interfere with the breeding rituals, another sign of the birds' vulnerability.
If you're interested in observing the ritual dance on one of the leks, and helping the conservation effort, you can volunteer for the National Wildlife Federation's Adopt-A-Lek program. In April, volunteers go to field camps in Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and possibly eastern Washington and Northern California, to count grouse in leks, helping track populations. Contact Ben Deeble, NWF, 240 N. Higgins Ave., Suite 6, Missoula, MT 59802, or by e-mail, email@example.com, or by phone, 406/721-6705.
Copyright © 2002 HCN and Hal Clifford]]>
Slow down and get out of the car; walk in the midst of it.
Then the sagebrush in the cold, dry Gunnison Valley can have a scraggly beauty. It rolls across the valley floor and up the foothills on all sides, a textured foreground for the mountains. The bushes stand as miniature old growth, 2 to 3 feet tall, their gnarled trunks coated in a stringy silver bark. In the right light, the small leaves - most of which stay year-round - glow a silvery blue.
But to really see the sagebrush, go down on hands and knees.
Then it doesn't look good at all. Especially when one considers the needs of the sagebrush's emblematic bird, the sage grouse.
Here, on a flat near Tomichi Creek, biologist Jessica Young examines a lek - a traditional breeding ground that may have been used by grouse for thousands of years. Crawling through the sagebrush, we can see that the thin topsoil around the lek has eroded away, leaving gravel between the sage plants.
Young, who has long, graying blond hair and wears jeans and boots, has dedicated herself to studying the bird in the field. She scoops a small depression beneath a bush and places her sunglasses in it. We crouch down a yard away. The sunglasses, representing eggs in a nest, are easily visible.
"I shouldn't be able to see those from here," she says. "The grass here should be knee-high, even waist-high."
In gaps between the sage bushes, we can see for a dozen yards. The native grasses and wildflowers that once filled in this landscape are almost all absent. There is scant cover to protect the birds from predators, and hardly any diversity of food.
We walk another 30 yards, trying to find grouse anywhere in the vicinity of the lek. "When the pioneers were here," Young says, "we couldn't have walked this far without kicking some birds up."
On this autumn day, all we find is a bit of sign - a few piles of white pellets, their interiors a khaki green from the sage buds and leaves the birds have been eating.
Climbing into Young's truck, we slowly drive a rough dirt track through this portion of the sagebrush sea, an ecosystem that covers 150 million acres in the West. As huge as that number is, it has already been reduced by 45 percent, down from 270 million acres. Young points to more evidence of environmental distress, running down the list of impacts: grazing, power lines, roads, two-tracks, dumps, gas lines, oil and gas drilling, mining, fire, fences, subdivisions, weeds. For more than a century, sagebrush has been treated as worthless, an impediment to be removed, a dumping ground or a free-for-all zone.
"I cannot take you to any place on the public (sagebrush) lands that has not been impacted by our activities," Young says. "We have really undervalued and devalued it."
That explains why, from Canada to the Southwest, California to the Great Plains, sage grouse are in trouble. From a population estimated at 2 million when white settlers arrived, the grouse are down to only 140,000. In much of their historical range, they survive only in small fragmented populations of a few hundred birds.
Perhaps no other native species is so widely distributed and so widely imperiled. It's the clearest signal of the decline of the last great Western landscape.
The alarm has been sounded, but several years into a Westwide effort to conserve the grouse and the sagebrush ecosystem, there are only modest results. Major environmental groups disagree about what strategies should be pursued. To show real progress on the ground, the effort will have to involve ranchers, developers, governments across 11 states and two Canadian provinces, ORV drivers and hunters * everyone who uses the sagebrush for any purpose.
It will take a radical reorientation of how people see the sagebrush sea. And the change required is shaping up to be much larger than what happened in the Northwest, where a different bird's decline forced a revolution in the use of coastal forests. For better or worse, the sage grouse is earning a reputation as the spotted owl of the inland West.
"My great-grandmother pulled, chopped, sawed and tore sagebrush. She built fires, heated houses and covered calf pens with it," confesses columnist Bill Studebaker in the Idaho Times-News in Twin Falls, in the heart of sagebrush country. "My grandparents did the same. They ruthlessly railed it out and planted alfalfa in its place. Mom and Dad kept an eye out for it, too. New growth didn't have a chance. ... It was in the way, and the way was farm fields and fortune.
"I know farmers who still, to this day, can't stand sagebrush. They let their herbicides drift over the fence onto Bureau of Land Management land. They encourage crop dusters to turn on the spray a little early and turn it off a little late. 'Just give the old sage a little dusting.' And I've been told there are folks who'll light a match to the desert if sagebrush gets too thick for cattle grass."
Few people today understand that a healthy patch of sagebrush is rich with plants and wildlife.
"The only ecosystem I know of that has more species than big sagebrush is riparian areas," says Bruce Welch, a plant physiologist at the U.S. Forest Service Shrub Sciences Lab in Provo, Utah. He rattles off lists of species found in healthy big sagebrush: 94 birds, 87 mammals, 71 spiders, 58 reptiles, 52 aphids, 32 gall midges, 24 lichens.
Among them are the sagebrush lizard. Sage thrasher. Sagebrush vole. Pygmy rabbit. Pronghorn antelope.
There are at least 30 varieties of sage bushes alone, ranging from basin big sagebrush to stiff sagebrush to fuzzy sagebrush to dwarf sagebrush - all native to the American West and found nowhere else.
The sage grouse is the most documented species of the ecosystem. Ironically, researchers know a lot about the birds, because they have long been popular with hunters, and hunted species get studied. (While hunting has fallen off as the population has declined, sage grouse are still hunted in most of the states, under conservative regulations and at a level not considered a threat.)
Of the two identified species of sage grouse - the Gunnison sage grouse and the greater sage grouse - the Gunnison is the most immediately at risk. Only about 4,000 of them survive, about half in the Gunnison Valley. It's generally believed they've been extirpated from Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
The greater sage grouse (also called the northern sage grouse) is more widespread, with populations ranging from about 500 each in Saskatchewan and Alberta to more than 20,000 each in Montana, Wyoming and Oregon. They no longer survive in Nebraska and British Columbia.
Even in the states with thousands of sage grouse, "when you start breaking it down (into local habitats), many of the populations are very small, very fragmented," and headed toward oblivion, says Clait Braun, who recently retired after 30 years with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and now is a consultant on grouse issues.
Over the course of a year, a single population may occupy a thousand square miles of range, from critical wintering habitat to brood-rearing areas. These habits make sage grouse an ideal indicator species for the ecosystem. "This is a landscape bird," says Young, whose work led to the Gunnison sage grouse being classified as a distinct species in 2000. "It specializes in using very small pieces of a very large landscape."
Sage grouse blend in with the sagebrush, relying on camouflage and dispersion to evade predators, including coyotes and foxes, crows, ravens and raptors. When approached, grouse flush only at the last moment.
If you catch a glimpse of one, you'll see a mottled brown, black and white bird, about the size of a chicken. The males show a brilliant white breast and throat. They become more visible early in the spring, sometime between February and April, when they create a spectacle at dawn, gathering on the leks to mate. During courtship dances, the males fan the needle-like feathers in their tails, puff up bright yellow air sacs on their chests and scrape their wings across their breasts (see story page 10).
Hens generally nest in the same place every year. They seek out tall stands of sagebrush, where the sage canopy covers 15 to 30 percent of the land, and a rich understory of wildflowers and grasses provides food and cover. They lay eight or more eggs in a clutch, and their nesting success seems closely tied to how well the nests are hidden from predators.
As soon as the chicks hatch they can walk, and they may travel miles when they're only a few weeks old, as summer sets in and they look for insects to eat in wet meadows or farm fields. The trek to wetter areas is even more hazardous if the birds must cross open areas exposed to predators.
In summer and fall, the grouse move back to the drier uplands and even into the edges of aspen stands at higher elevations, where they eat grasses and wildflowers. During winter they congregate in sage stands that provide canopy cover and relatively low snow depths. In this season, their diet is restricted almost entirely to sagebrush leaves.
Sage grouse are vulnerable because of their salmon-like fidelity to place. Just as dams can wipe out salmon runs, development in areas where sage grouse mate, nest and winter seems not to displace birds so much as exterminate them.
In simplest terms, the problem is this: Almost everything people do seems to harm the sage grouse. During our exploration of the Gunnison Valley sagebrush, Young, a biology professor at Gunnison's Western State College, recounts some of the local history.
When Blue Mesa Reservoir was created here in the 1970s, she says, it covered important leks. Rather than adapt to this change, for several winters afterward male grouse appeared on the ice above their flooded lek and futilely performed their ancient mating dance.
When a 1.1 million-ton uranium-mill tailings dump was being built from 1992 to 1995, about three miles southeast of the town of Gunnison, heavy-equipment operators noticed birds dancing just outside the thousand-foot-square pile. To the layman, such behavior might suggest the birds had adapted to the intrusion. But they weren't adapting; they were persevering ineffectively in the face of terrible disturbance. The year after the pile was completed, grouse populations in the area dropped 60 percent.
Even a basic fence line and its posts will become a perch for raptors that prey on the grouse. All the fence lines and power lines in the Gunnison Valley, like those across the sagebrush West, sterilize swaths of ground for grouse. The birds may avoid a strip of land a kilometer wide along these structures.
U.S. Highway 50, which bifurcates the valley, is another gantlet: The low-flying birds are hit by vehicles, their walking chicks run over as they migrate.
Pronghorn antelope (reintroduced to the valley in recent decades), a growing elk herd and cattle all graze the same plants the grouse need. Riparian areas, critical for raising young birds, can be trampled by livestock.
Overhead, hundreds of crows and ravens circle near the Tomichi Creek lek, attracted to the county landfill built during the 1980s on the far side of the uranium dump. These corvids prey on young grouse * a task made easier when grouse cross overgrazed ground, roads and other open spaces.
Four-wheeler tracks crisscross the sagebrush, causing further fragmentation. Chemical treatments and brush-beating, traditional efforts to kill sage in favor of grass, do the same. Ranchette developments introduce dogs, cats and human disturbance.
Around the West, such combinations of habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation are the principal causes of sage grouse declines, but they take different forms in different places. Resort-related developments are eradicating the grouse from Teton County, Wyo., and Eagle County, Colo. Ranchettes were built all through the winter range of a pocket population of Gunnisons in Dolores County, Colo., severely degrading it.
Oil and gas drilling seems to disrupt mating behavior. Coalbed methane development already occupies thousands of square miles of sagebrush in Wyoming, and is likely to expand there and in Montana.
Even fire can be a threat, especially in the Great Basin, where it works in partnership with the weed called cheatgrass. An exotic introduced by grazing cattle, cheatgrass both carries fire into sage and replaces sage ecosystems after they burn (HCN, 5/22/00: Save Our Sagebrush).
There are a few places where grouse populations are on the upswing, such as Jackson County, Colo., but even so, cyclical population peaks are consistently declining over time. "You start putting your fingers on the map," Braun says, "and almost every place you put (them), there's a local problem."
So far, attempts to reverse the decline of the grouse and the sagebrush ecosystem are a typical mishmash of politics, bureaucracies and dueling science.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service named the Gunnison sage grouse a candidate for the endangered species list in 2000. "Candidate" means the agency would list the bird for protection, if it had the money to deal with the problem. But it doesn't.
The greater sage grouse is expected to be nominated for federal protection later this year across all 11 states of its U.S. range. American Lands, an environmental group based in Washington, D.C., that has launched a campaign to preserve the sagebrush sea, says it will file the petition. Environmental groups have already petitioned the feds for protection of small, distinct, local populations in eastern Washington and around Mono Lake, California.
But the Fish and Wildlife Service is backlogged with 252 candidate species and about 1,800 threatened and endangered species nationwide. The agency is overwhelmed, underfunded, and under political pressure not to take action, says Andy Kerr, an advisor on sagebrush issues to American Lands (formerly American Lands Alliance). "We're prepared to sue," Kerr says, to force the feds to protect sage grouse.
It makes sense, he says, because most of the sage grouse's habitat is federal land. The Bureau of Land Management controls about 85 percent of the habitat regionwide, and the U.S. Forest Service controls some of the remainder. "Federal listing is the only way to get the BLM to conserve and restore the habitat," Kerr says.
But another major environmental group active in sage grouse conservation, the National Wildlife Federation, doesn't think it's wise or necessary to wield the big stick of the Endangered Species Act.
"We don't believe the (greater sage grouse) population has reached the point where a petition to list them as threatened or endangered is justified," says Tom France, head of the National Wildlife Federation's Northern Rockies office, in Missoula, Mont. While the bird has declined tremendously, "the core ranges are in reasonable shape. Now is the time to address the problems."
Federal intervention would alienate key political players, chiefly ranchers and farmers, who not only lease federal land for livestock grazing, but also own many lowland riparian areas, France says. "Many key grouse ranges are on private lands."
Grazing is the most contentious of the issues around grouse - and the one many biologists avoid discussing. Even environmental groups disagree on the science of how grazing affects grouse (see story page 12).
Federal intervention would also alienate the states' wildlife agencies, France says. "The state agencies have the public trust to manage wildlife, and they have much more resources than the feds do."
So the National Wildlife Federation has been working with state wildlife agencies and the two federal landlords to increase awareness, scout grouse populations and follow guidelines for managing the habitat. The goal is to have local grazing plans, for example, be more accommodating to sage grouse.
"We've been hard at this," France says. "We're trying to get the state agencies to take the lead. We've made good, if not great, progress. It varies by state."
The process is similar to the way the states are involved with other at-risk species, such as the black-tailed prairie dog. In a joint project led by the BLM, including the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, all 11 grouse states have sage grouse working groups planned or up and running. They're supposed to come up with local plans and help see that the grouse and its habitat are protected on the ground.
There are guidelines, first drafted in 1977 and redrafted last year by state and federal biologists, which in effect call for a circle to be mapped around each lek. Inside the circles, the emphasis is on managing for grouse habitat. And the circles take in large areas - nesting habitat should be preserved and restored within several miles of a lek where the birds don't migrate, and within 11 miles of a lek where the birds are more mobile.
Prescribed burns and other manipulation of plants should be limited in the grouse habitat areas, the guidelines say. So as the guidelines are applied to specific grazing allotments, ranchers' stocking levels and practices can be affected.
But there are more disagreements over guidelines, both generally and specific to each site. Is fire necessary to create a mosaic of vegetation regimes in sagebrush, or is it too destructive to nesting habitat? Is some management, which could include herbicides or brush-beating, necessary to keep sagebrush from crowding out the understory? The guidelines are not binding, and efforts to come up with local plans proceed slowly.
"The issues are very complicated," says Jim Hagenbarth, whose family has ranched on the Idaho-Montana border since the 1880s. He's neck-deep in grouse management, attending four meetings on grouse in January alone. He says he needs more flexibility in managing sagebrush than the guidelines allow: "Any time you manage a resource, you have to be site specific."
Idaho has emphasized restoration, hired "some top-notch ornithologists," and enlisted ranchers and farmers to help count grouse in leks during the mating rituals, France says.
Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn has assembled a governor's commission and a new network of working groups around the state, with an ambitious goal of improving 250,000 acres of habitat annually, equivalent to the amount of sage lost each year to the cheatgrass fire cycle. How this should be done is unknown; after spending so many years trying to destroy sagebrush, nobody knows how to restore it.
"The folks that started their careers trying to get rid of sagebrush," says San Stiver, a biologist for the Nevada Division of Wildlife, "now we're asking them to reverse their thinking and try to get it back."
Both American Lands and the National Wildlife Federation hope to enlist another key player - hunters, who have helped restore many game species. "The goal of the conservation community is to have a sustainable population of sage grouse, so there is a surplus" again for more hunting, says Kerr. "An organized constituency of hunters can be the first line of defense."
Just the threat of the Endangered Species Act is prodding people into conservation efforts. But it has also generated fear and hostility, especially among many ranchers and farmers. "Listing the sage grouse as a federally protected species could deliver a technical knockout to public-lands grazing," declared the Idaho Times-News in an October editorial, a typical reaction in ranching communities. The newspaper charged that environmentalists' goal "is evidently to continue the eradication of traditional land uses in the West - or what is sometimes known as rural cleansing."
If the sage grouse is federally protected, "we may meet with more resistance about doing anything on private land," says Terry Ireland, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Grand Junction, Colo. "In most cases, we aren't going to force people to change their way of doing business. ... I think we can accomplish conservation or recovery of the bird without having to list it, without having to upset some folks ... and we may get more cooperation."
But American Lands and some biologists like Braun say only federal protection will force meaningful changes, especially with grazing. "Counting sage grouse and preparing paper plans is nice, but the way to protect the sage grouse is to conserve and improve the habitat, and the primary way to do that is to remove livestock," says Kerr, who is based in Oregon and took part in the spotted owl battle.
Kerr sees similarities between the two battles: Spotted owls and sage grouse are both "charismatic species," management circles have been drawn around the nests of both birds, and the owls were threatened by "entrenched constituencies" of logging, the way grouse are threatened by livestock grazing, Kerr says.
"The result of meeting the goal of a sustainable grouse population might mean the end of grazing on public lands, but that's a result, not a goal," Kerr says.
Acknowledging that resistance from ranchers often causes the current working groups to stall, the NWF's France says that over time, more and more ranchers will come into line. "It's a 10- or 20-year process," he says, and areas with healthier grouse populations have the time.
If the working groups get tough on them, many ranchers "would walk away," says Jean Stetson, who runs cattle on 10,000 acres of BLM land in northwestern Colorado and is involved in a five-year-old working group there, which has yet to agree on a local grouse plan.
The difficulty of bringing people together is shown in the Gunnison Valley, where the first local effort began. Since 1995, representatives of state and federal agencies, academics, local government, ranchers and environmentalists have labored as the Gunnison Sage Grouse Working Group to restore the bird.
At the first meeting, 100 people showed up. At the second, 50 were present. By the time the group coalesced, it was composed only of representatives of a dozen interest groups or agencies - from the Black Canyon Audubon Society and High Country Citizens' Alliance to the Gunnison Stockgrowers Association, Colorado Division of Wildlife and five federal agencies, including the National Park Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service.
"There were three or four individual (citizens) who showed up at first, but when they realized how long this was taking, they sort of dropped out," says Joe Capodice, a BLM wildlife biologist who rides herd on the working group.
Among its problems: The BLM-led group generally meets only twice a year. The group drafted its plan in June 1997 - calling for scores of individual projects, from managing noise sources near leks to regulating ORVs, to making presentations to county boards - and is now beginning a review, to be completed by early summer. Anecdotal evidence suggests that little progress has been made on the ground, and that, in fact, the political structure of such groups ultimately stymies real change.
"It is a voluntary plan, and up to this point it's been looked at very much in that light," says Michele Sewolt, a biologist who, with husband Pat Magee, founded Sisk-a-dee Environmental Organization, a nonprofit trying to carry out the plan. "I can't see where there's been a big thrust of effort put into implementing the plan, at least at the level it could be. It has to be understood that there are interest groups that are going to have to give a little bit more than others are. We can't please everybody in an equal sense, and I think our working group has tried to do that."
One person involved in the Gunnison sage grouse process, who asked not to be named, says the BLM is not getting tough enough on grazing. The BLM is responsible for 300,000 acres of grouse habitat in the valley, almost all of it leased for grazing, and the agency's staffers "don't have the real desire to make changes, to make difficult choices. They don't want to take it on because it's confrontational."
"I'm very proud of the progress that BLM has made," counters Barry Tollefson, the agency's Gunnison field manager. He points out that between 1999 and 2001, his office cut the permitted cattle-grazing animal-unit months (one cow and calf on the range for one month) by 19 percent, or 8,000 AUMs. "Sage grouse management (now) is kind of the overriding umbrella in any management decisions ... in sage grouse habitat. Whether it's grazing issues or gravel pits or road rights of ways, the first thing out of our mouths is, 'What kind of sage grouse impact are we dealing with?' and then we go from there."
Tollefson concedes the working group's voluntary nature and consensus approach may have caused some scientific compromises, but says that "in the long run, I think we will be more successful if we're working on a community-based initiative."
But local BLM ecologist Sandy Hayes says about half the BLM sagebrush "is not meeting the standard" for plant and animal community health and diversity.
Evidence like that, says Jessica Young, indicates the go-slow approach won't be enough for the few thousand remaining Gunnison sage grouse. "I recognize the enormous amount of fear around this issue," Young says. "I wish I could go to the ranchers and land agencies and say, 'It's going to be okay.' But I can't. If we're going to sustain this ecosystem, there are going to be real economic impacts. That's the choice we face. I keep trying to get people back to the table, because we don't have a lot of time."
Hal Clifford writes from Telluride, Colorado.
The following sidebar articles accompany this feature story:
- Chick-a-boom-boom at the lek
- Can cows and grouse coexist on the range?
Copyright © 2002 HCN and Hal Clifford]]>
SEATTLE, Wash. - Forty years ago, sighting a Canada goose would have caused most residents here to stop and admire this handsome symbol of wildness. Now, many city dwellers wish the geese would just go away.
Hostility to the big birds began in the early '60s, when state agencies relocated about 50 geese from islands flooded by dam construction in eastern Washington. Closer to Seattle, the original population of transplants skyrocketed; currently there are 25,000 birds and the population increases annually at 14 percent.
"Basically we have created a goose buffet with our grass lawns in parks, yards and golf courses," says Helen Ross of the Seattle Audubon Society. She points out that geese have abundant nesting sites, no predators, and easy access to their favorite food: freshly cut grass.
"Geese are symptomatic of our long-term, poor management of urban ecosystems," she says.
As bird numbers climb, so do public complaints. Locals are frustrated by having to jostle the geese for space at public parks. But Seattle residents are not alone. The problem has become so common across the country that now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working on a nationwide study.
While the rest of the country is getting its geese in a row for management, Seattle has been struggling with this burgeoning population problem for over a decade. By the late "80s, Canada geese on the University of Washington campus were no longer charming.
"Students were stepping in goose poop, and during mating season the geese were really aggressive," says Keel Price, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Service. He says this moved the city to form the Seattle Waterfowl Management Committee to devise a management strategy.
Since then, park managers have tried a variety of nonlethal methods. They've tried scarecrows and plastic streamers, spraying chemical repellents, harassing the geese with border collies, and blocking access to water with boulders and shrubs. More drastic methods include relocation, destroying eggs and occasionally killing geese.
"Despite our efforts, the problem is getting worse, and complaints are on the rise," says Donald Harris, head of the management committee. Harris hopes that the involvement of the Fish and Wildlife Service will help state and city officials devise a solution. The agency has held nine scoping meetings across the country in cities including Denver, Colo., and Brookings, S.D., to prepare for a nationwide environmental impact statement for managing the geese.
The scoping meeting in Seattle in February attracted wealthy homeowners, park and golf course managers, as well as animal-rights activists. People were passionate about the issue.
"We can no longer tolerate stepping in the poop," said a lake-front property owner. "The Fish and Wildlife Service should do whatever is possible to eliminate the problem."
An older woman from a wealthy suburb said, "I am worried about my grandchildren getting swimmer's itch from the birds."
But local activist groups protested the idea of destroying Canada geese: "Pooping should not be a capital crime, especially when alternatives exist," said Wayne Johnson of the Canada Geese Humane Coalition, a group that advocates strictly nonlethal methods. "It's not wildlife management; it's a slaughter."
Currently, the agency issues "take permits' but only under special circumstances, says Robert Trost, the Fish and Wildlife Service coordinator of waterfowl activities in the West.
"We only give them out when there's a direct threat to human health and safety - like when there's too many geese on an airport runway," he says.
Now the agency is considering six alternatives to address the population problem. They range from a no-action alternative to a general depredation order, which would allow "any authorized person to take geese posing threats to health and human safety and damaging personal and public property."
According to Trost, different cities may implement different alternatives.
"The further east you go, the more willing people are to kill geese to deal with the problem," says Trost. "In Seattle, people are pretty evenly divided between those who want direct killing of the geese, and those who don't."
Public comments may be submitted until March 20, and Trost says the agency plans to have a draft EIS out by this fall.
David B. Williams is a writer who lives in Seattle.
Copyright © 2000 HCN and David B. Williams]]>


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Jeff was quick to answer some questions I had about a purchase. I was confident about my choices, and my order was processed and shipped very...Read More ->
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text: I am an artist, living PA. Have done an extensive amount of traveling internationally and in the U.S. Like museums, galleries, cycling, yoga, (used to do a lot of sports till knees gave-out), camping, baking bread. Have been happy AirBNBer..used in California, Berlin, (NYC since my Brooklyn-living son moved out west). See my (email hidden)


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Jay Y Kim, 69 years old, lives in Los Angeles, California. Jay has also lived in Anchorage, Alaska; Allston, Massachusetts; Boston, Massachusetts and Aloha, Oregon. Some of Jay's relatives are Jennie Jeehyun Kim, Annette Huiwon Kim, Rachel S Kim, A Ingrid Tsay, Hee Jung Kim, Jae Hun Kim, Angie D Kim, Andrew Ki Kim, Elizabeth H Kang, Mike C Kim, Christine Hyoyoung Kim, Dae Hyun Kim, Stephen Sunyup Kim, William Jinyeong Kim, Gregory Ki Schlais, Hyung K Hyun, Ingrid Elizabeth Tsay, Jabin Kim, Lora J Kim, Yunjung Jung Kim, Young O Kim, Kim Sunkyoung, Young Sil Kim, Nancy C Kim, Jonathan Wano Kim, Shelly Tammy Kim, Angie S Kim, Susan M Douglas, Jeannie H Kim, Sang Bum Kim, Toni Ann Kim, Sandra M Kimball, Brian K Kim, Yi Seul Kim, Yun Ok Kim, Jennie Unah Kim, Young Seung Kim, Ji Y Kim, Chang H Kim, Eun J Kimsshin, Hyun Sil Kim, Grace K Lee and Yong Soon Kim.


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Wood engraving on fine Japan paper, image size 10 x 8 1/8 inches, artist's monogram within the image.
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A fine image of sailboats along the Maine coastline, painted in watercolor on paper, sight size 12 3/4 x 16 1/2 inches, signed lower left, framed. Laurence Sisson was born in Maine and after serving in Japan in WWII, studied at the Yale Summer School. He became known for his seascapes of the New England coast as well as images of the American southwest.
An original wood engraving by Italian Renaissance artist Niccolo Boldrini, after a pen and ink drawing by Titian. The image size is 10 3/4 x 15 5/8 inches, created c. 1525, cat: Mauroner-20, original lifetime impression. This image of monkeys battling snakes is based on Titian's drawing "Parody of Laocoon", which mocked the vast influence of the ancient Roman Laocoon statue after it was unearthed in 1506.
A very fine sketch of a stand of maples by the artist, Dexter Dawes. Summering in Marlboro, NH, he is known for his lithographs, drawings and paintings of Mt. Monadnock and surrounding views. This image measures 11 x 7 5/8 inches and is done on a lightweight paper.


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Key lime tree not doing so good.
I'm new to the site and new to gardening too. I bought a key lime tree at home depot and ever since i planted it in the ground its been losing its dark green color. I noticed today that the tree has new growth but it seems to be deformed? Maybe i'm not using the correct terminology. I'm going to try to post some pictures, any advice would be appreciated. Thanks! Key Lime tree problem
What have been your cultural practices?
What have you been feeding it? How much sun has it been getting? Have you been watering correctly?
How did you plant this tree into the ground? Can you explain the kind of soil it's in? Did you amend the soil?
Did you shade this tree if just recently planted..Please share as much detail from the time you brought it home till now..
What have been your cultural practices?
I don't understand the question.
What have you been feeding it?
After the first couple months after planting i noticed it started turning light green i wen to home depot and bought a bag of palm and citrus fertilizer. its an orange bad i will have to read it carefully to give you specifics.
How much sun has it been getting?
Its pretty much full sun which is what I thought citrus needed... maybe i'm wrong?
Have you been watering correctly?
I water once every 2 or 3 days.
How did you plant this tree into the ground? Can you explain the kind of soil it's in? Did you amend the soil?
I mixed half a bag of top soil in with some of the natural soil from my yard. which in south florida is very sandy and not very nutritions from what i have been reading.
Did you shade this tree if just recently planted..
I didn't shade the tree. its been getting full sin since I planted it.
Please share as much detail from the time you brought it home till now..
well as I said, I picked a spot in the yard, dug a hole twice the size of the pot, threw in half a bad of black top soil, mixed it in a bit with surrounding dirt and planted it. I back filled with the same natural soil and tamped it down slightly and gave it a good first watering. Since then I just water it once every 2 or 3 days cause I read on here that you can't over water citrus. Its slowly been turning yellow and I think about 3 weeks ago i bought the fert and threw a handfull on the ground. thats when the growth started but as you can see the leaves are still light and the leaves are not normal.
Leaves that look funny, but have no insect damage, usually indicate that the tree is not getting the right nutrients, although it could be a combination of things. First of all, South Florida soil as you said is mostly sand so it contains very sparse nutrients, on the good side it drains well. Secondly, you added top soil, which may be good for something like a lawn, but it wouldn't contain the best nutrients for a fruit-bearing tree.
Some good-quality compost would be a good addition at this point, but work it into the top layer of soil around the tree's base. Try not to raise the level of soil on the trunk, just get that good stuff close to the roots, without distrubing the roots. Because the organic material is going to tend to sift away from the area where you planted this tree you will need to add more every year, or more often if you see the tree beginning to look peaked again.
Lemon tree leaves are normally light green when they first come on, but they should darken within a few days. In other words, the top leaves of the branch in your pic might be light, but the bottom ones should already be darker green and flattened out. They should have a firm, crisp, shiny top surface when matured.
If your problem was one of too much direct sunlight, those tender light green leaves would be scorched, so I think your tree gets enough relief from the sun at various times during the day. I used to live in Florida and every now and then my plants would start to look kinda puny, and that's when I'd pour on the compost and a good drink of compost tea. That usually cured what ailed them. I think your tree's just a little hungry. Cheryl


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Two dead in hang gliding accident in Jean
Two people were killed this afternoon in a hang gliding accident in Jean.
March 27, 2015
A message from Senator Harry Reid announcing he will retire from the Senate at the end of his term. For more, visit: http://www.reid.senate.gov/
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Reader comments are listed below. Comments are currently closed and new comments are no longer being accepted.
Note to editor: Muskoka is a region of Ontario, not a resort.
One has to wonder who was the Chief Chartered or Professional (Mechanical) Engineer of the firm who actually designed, built & was operating the oil rig & the opinion of the Governing Bodies of his profession as to competence?
And why on earth a Congressman with an Engineering or Physics degree, didn't discover who this might be, in Thursday's enquiry?
Indeed, had a day been spent @ Waterloo's Perimeter Institute
right by the G8 & G20 venue, prior to the enquiry, the above question would have been answered!
G20 member states, especially India with like institutions to Canada & the UK are fully attentive to these developments, Viz: Bophal; moreover the White House also really needs many more really numerate advisers, that can actually do partial differential equations, which would enable them to really ask
the right questions of Chief Engineers!
Prof M H Settelen, B.Sc.(Eng.) Edinburgh, MBA Wharton
Let's be optimistic and hope that this Summit will bring positive change.."With Great power comes great responsibility".
President Obama is plunged into trouble and his speech about oil spills was not inspiring. And once that company who suffered this disaster,whose whole expense or fine is estimated to be more than 38 $Billion, go bankrupt , who would pay for ththe pollution ? who is in charge of it? In the end , action speaks louder than words, no matter how eloquent President Obama is , he has to take feasible measures to solve that problem.
President Obama is singled out, more and more clearly, as Accident - Prone. Obama's atural inclination to making "Gauche", and gaffes, and faux pas, is gathering momentum. Who will have to suffer his blunders ? It looks like China, and Germany will be targetted, and will be embarassed. We'll get used to it sooner or later.
I hope that the G8 and G20 summit meetings is for the world not only for one or some rich counties.
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"Great book"
I really enjoyed listening to this book. Great insight into the process of capturing a Nazi. I was surprised at how many countries really didn't want to find the Nazi's.
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Milestone Apartments REIT to Pay $46 Million for Alpharetta Community
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Post Properties Kicks Off Phase II of $75.5M Buckhead Apartment Tower
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Set of four stainless steel 'Scarlet Posy' pastry forks
Item No.2751001007
From Katie Alice, this set comes with four stainless steel pastry forks, all of which have pink porcelain handles with posy designs. The set is presented in a hat box.
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- Set includes: 4 pastry forks in hat box
- Stainless steel with porcelain handles
- Dishwasher safe


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Olympic-sized challenges: Parenting and competition meet at the 2014 Games
Erik Ostling, Getty Images/Pampers
When skeleton athlete Noelle Pikus-Pace looks at videos right after a slide, reviewing with coach Zach Lund what went right or wrong, she's apt to be holding her daughter, Lacee, in her arms. When the cameras catch them, her cheek is close to Lacee's as the 5-year-old peers with the same intent look at the little screen.
Pikus-Pace has melded two Olympic-sized tasks. The Orem native is a top contender in skeleton, in which she'll compete in two weeks in Sochi, Russia, for Team USA as part of the 2014 Winter Olympics. At the same time, she is a very hands-on, full-time mom to Lacee and her little brother, Traycen, 2.
When she slides down that bobsled track in Sochi, her kids will be watching and playing in the snow just a few feet away under the watchful eye of her husband, Janson Pace.
They travel as a team, and her tweets and blog posts contain a happy mix of sports news and mom pride. "My 2 yr old ate fish and broccoli today on his own Huge #MilestoneMoments! Ok & I just finished sliding on my sled & crossed 1" she tweeted a week ago.
She captured her dreams in another post: "Potty training, riding a bike... and winning an Olympic medal :)"
"It's really crazy. I have had to figure out how to be a mom and an Olympic athlete," she said with a laugh during a recent phone interview.
She and her husband have to manage their time in sync, so he covers parenting while she's training. But the most intensely physical, competitive day still begins and ends with hugs from little arms, bookending a day that also contains a bit of snuggling, diaper changing and other typical parenting tasks.
They've been all over the world as a quartet for her competitions. She's not the only Olympic parent, but she is the only one who travels to every competition and training with her entire family.
Parenthood among Olympic athletes is not common, either. In fact, of the 230 athletes who will represent Team USA in Sochi, just 22 have children. Of those, only three are mothers.
Touring and parenting
David Wise, a member of the first-ever U.S. Olympic ski halfpipe team, refers to himself as a "rad dad," a nod to his standing as the only member of the U.S. freeski team with a child. It is not uncommon to see his wife, Alexandra, and 2-year-old, Nayeli, in the finish area of competitions.
"It wasn't something I was necessarily looking for," said the Reno, Nev., native. "I always thought I would get married when I was older. ... But I found a girl I really enjoyed being with, and I realized I better lock it down while I could. I never had any doubts that I found the right person."
Those with children said that becoming parents actually improves their time-management skills. Nordic Combined skier Billy Demong is married and has a 2-year-old.
"My wife is definitely a saint," said the four-time Olympian, who lives and trains in Utah. "When you're home, it's like you're a part-time athlete, full-time parent. It has been very focusing, and I think I'm in better shape this year. ... I have to be much more disciplined than I've ever been. And it ups the enjoyment level to have a child who can experience what you do."
Logistics are sometimes challenging, Pikus-Pace said.
"We're on airplanes and in airports for hours at a time," she said. "The things parents dread, we do so much of. I have just learned to be patient. And we want to show that family is strong. Together we are better. I need my family by my side to achieve what I can."
Traveling with her husband and children helps her remember her priorities, she said. And it turns something that's extremely important to her — just as her kids and husband are — into a family affair.
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Phillips projection tv #60PP935217
jeremycDecember 21, 2006
I am getting double images on the screen now and they have a reddish tint to them. Any suggestions on how I might fix this myself? I am limited on electronic experience so if it might be out of my realm to fix, can someone at least help me identify the problem and an estimate of repairs so that I am not getting ripped off if I take it somewhere to be fixed. Any help will be most appreciated.
Thanks in advance,


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A big name coming on board the next installment of the "Hunger Games" franchise is Julianne Moore, playing President Alma Coin. Lionsgate has released a couple of first images of Moore, here forgoing her usual red locks for something a bit more Jane Campion-like. One of the images has her seated nex...Read More »
Want to know what Julianne Moore looks like as the president in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1"? Sure, you do, so Lionsgate has released an early first look including a picture with her alongside the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.Read More »
Today's TWC Indie Film Month exclusive clip offers a behind the scenes look at "God's Pocket," the directorial debut of "Mad Men" star John Slattery and one of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's final projects before his tragic death.Read More »
This is the kind of film I usually root for: a collage of vignettes about offbeat, colorful characters, played by an A-list cast including the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman.Read More »
In God's Pocket, a small town in Pennsylvania where everybody knows everybody's business, it wouldn't be uncommon to look out your window and see a man with one leg digging through the trash. Unfortunately, the same is also true of "God's Pocket," a morbid, 1970's-set bummer of a film that strands i...Read More »
John Slattery, best known for his role as the debonair "Mad Men" star Roger Sterling, makes the shift from actor to director with his feature length debut.Read More »
After the loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman, his upcoming completed projects are attracting a clambering crowd. You've already heard of his spectacular German accent in "A Most Wanted Man," but coming May 9th is "God's Pocket," featuring Hoffman in yellow 70's attire, pelting down the highway on foot, ...Read More »
Philip Seymour Hoffman may no longer be with us, but thankfully he's left a couple completed films to help soften the blow of his tragic loss. Later this year we'll see him in Anton Corbijn's thriller "A Most Wanted Man," but coming first this spring, Hoffman will feature opposite John Turturro in "...Read More »
One of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman's final films is Anton Corbijn's spy thriller "A Most Wanted Man," adapted from the John Le Carre bestseller, which debuted at this past Sundance. A trailer has arrived; watch below.Read More »
Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, and Robin Wright costar in the Sundance entry based on John le Carre's novel.Read More »


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Veterans Health Care:
VA's Medical Support Role in Emergency Preparedness
GAO-05-387R: Published: Mar 23, 2005. Publicly Released: Mar 23, 2005.
Additional Materials:
- Full Report:
- Accessible Text:
(202) 512-7207
Office of Public Affairs
(202) 512-4800
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has increased its efforts to plan for and respond to national emergencies, including acts of terrorism and natural disasters. Additionally, in August 2004, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security announced that military and VA medical facilities were potential terrorist targets. In light of military casualties from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and continued threats of terrorist incidents, Congress asked us to review VA's medical support role in emergency preparedness. Specifically, we agreed to provide information on the following questions: (1) What is VA's role in providing medical support within the U.S. to military personnel in wartime and during national emergencies? (2) What actions has VA taken to improve its internal emergency preparedness to ensure that it is ready to maintain continuity of operations and provision of medical services to veterans? (3) What is VA's role in participating in emergency medical response measures with other federal, state, and local agencies?
GAO found that Public Law 97-174 authorizes VA to provide inpatient medical care to active duty members of the armed services during or immediately following their involvement in armed conflicts during wartime and national emergencies. According to VA, while the Department of Defense (DOD) has never requested priority care from VA based on this law, VA has routinely reported to the Congress and DOD the number of inpatient beds available for military personnel. We also found that VA has taken numerous actions to improve emergency preparedness, such as developing educational and training materials for its staff, training staff at 134 VA medical centers, and increasing security at its facilities by requiring a minimum of two patrolling VA police officers on duty at all times. Other activities, such as developing a systemwide strategy for protecting its facilities and acquiring decontamination equipment, are still in progress. Finally, VA participates in emergency medical response measures with other federal, state, and local agencies by providing assistance in seven support functions outlined in the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan. For example, if requested, the types of support VA would provide include public health and medical services, emergency management, and public safety and security.
Feb 10, 2015
Land-Use Agreements:Improved Data Reliability and Monitoring Needed for Department of Veterans AffairsGAO-15-134T: Published: Feb 10, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 10, 2015.
Jan 21, 2015
VA Construction:VA's Actions to Address Cost Increases and Schedule Delays at Major Medical-Facility ProjectsGAO-15-332T: Published: Jan 21, 2015. Publicly Released: Jan 21, 2015.
Nov 25, 2014
Veterans' Reemployment Rights:Department of Labor Has Higher Performance Than the Office of Special Counsel on More Demonstration Project MeasuresGAO-15-77: Published: Nov 25, 2014. Publicly Released: Nov 25, 2014.
Nov 19, 2014
Veterans' Disability Benefits:Improvements Could Further Enhance Quality Assurance EffortsGAO-15-50: Published: Nov 19, 2014. Publicly Released: Nov 19, 2014.
Nov 7, 2014
Military and Veteran Support:DOD and VA Programs That Address the Effects of Combat and Transition to Civilian LifeGAO-15-24: Published: Nov 7, 2014. Publicly Released: Nov 7, 2014.
Oct 30, 2014
Disability Compensation:Review of Concurrent Receipt of Department of Defense Retirement, Department of Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation, and Social Security Disability InsuranceGAO-14-854R: Published: Sep 30, 2014. Publicly Released: Oct 30, 2014.
Sep 17, 2014
Land-Use Agreements:Department of Veterans Affairs Needs to Improve Data Reliability and MonitoringGAO-14-501: Published: Aug 18, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 17, 2014.
Sep 10, 2014
Veterans Affairs:Better Understanding Needed to Enhance Services to Veterans Readjusting to Civilian LifeGAO-14-676: Published: Sep 10, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 10, 2014.
Sep 9, 2014
Veterans Affairs:Data Needed to Help Improve Decisions Concerning Veterans' Access to Burial OptionsGAO-14-537: Published: Sep 9, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 9, 2014.
Sep 2, 2014
VA Dialysis Pilot:Documentation of Plans for Concluding the Pilot Needed to Improve Transparency and AccountabilityGAO-14-646: Published: Sep 2, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 2, 2014.
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Stephanie McMahon and Sting
A photo on Instagram where WWE commentator Booker T shows us his unique view on the segment between Sting and Stephanie McMahon during Monday Night Raw.
March 23, 2015
HHH fires Booker T
Some rumors popped up recently that Triple H went off the script when he worked an interview segment with Booker T on Monday Night Raw. Some are saying that the firing angle was something that was impromptu and spontaneous. Those rumors are false. WWE had the entire thing scripted out from the beginning. Otherwise, Booker might not have been able to react that well in a pinch. HHH was said to be one that came up with the idea.
March 6, 2015
Booker T fired
A video on YouTube of a segment from the latest episode of Monday Night Raw where Triple H fires Booker T for making allegations about him in regards to Sting avoiding WWE for years.
March 4, 2015
Jerry Lawler removed
In a surprising bit of news, Jerry Lawler has now been permanently removed as the color commentator of Monday Night Raw. Many had been under the impression that his absence was temporary and that he would return once he recovered from his stay at the hospital. However, WWE opted to make the switch to Booker T a permanent one. Lawler will still be working for the company, but as a commentator on Smackdown.
January 8, 2015
Jerry Lawler replaced
As many of you already know by now, Jerry Lawler has been laid up in a hospital for the past week because of diverticulitis, the same condition that caused Brock Lesnar to retire prematurely from UFC. While he is getting better, it is not enough to get him back to work on Monday Night Raw this week, so WWE has decided to replace him with a fan favorite at the commentating table tonight. Booker T will join JBL and Michael Cole instead.
January 5, 2015


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Photo Gallery
Sports Extra-H.S. Football: Leilehua vs Farrington, Sat., Nov. 3
Jamm Aquino
1 of 18
Leilehua's Ikaika Piceno dives for a pass during first-half action of an OIA high school football game between the Leilehua Mighty Mules and the Farrington Governors on Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012 at Kaiser High School in Hawaii Kai.
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It is undeniable that life would be much simpler if you had no worries.
A martial arts expert from Bromley believes he can help people become carefree.
Si-Fu Julian Hitch, who runs the Julian Hitch Martial Arts Schools of Excellence across London, said: "Martial arts training and Wing Tsun (his speciality) is about removing fear from your life.
Imagine if you didn't have to be worried about anything.
"Imagine how different your decisions would be. If that's what we would love, why wouldn't we make that a reality?"
Earlier this month, Julian launched the 30 Challenge. Ostensibly, it looks like a lot of other get fit programmes – participants pay a set price and are encouraged to take in as many sessions as they can in a month.
There are prizes for the people who fit in the most sessions (last year, a lady in Bromley completed more than 150 hours in 30 days) and money is raised for Help for Heroes.
What's unique about the 30 Challenge is that the focus is that the physical workout is only one element.
Julian, who has been teaching martial arts full time since he was 17 and is also a qualified barrister, said: "What we're always trying to do with the students is trying to make them understand that what they think is impossible is possible. It is redefining what they think is possible.
"We thought 'what can we do if we have people for 30 hours?'
"Actually, we can do a lot. We can really help them totally change their lives in 30 hours.
"We can make radical changes. You can define it in three different ways: the physical, the health and the spiritual.
"The spiritual is the most radical and most important change you can have, because it is about changing the mindset. It is about changing how you think about yourself, how you think about your relationship with others and, particularly, how you view the world."
Though the martial art is taught to commandos and will teach you self defence, Julian insisted that teaching people to punch and kick is far from the be all and end all of the sessions.
He said: "Martial arts are not about fighting, they are about developing yourself.
"The last thing we want to be doing is rolling around on the floor like pigeons fighting someone."
Go to julianhitchmase.com or 30-challenge.com
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- The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels talks about coming to Greenwich, reaching goals and Katie Hopkins
- 5 must-haves to keep you fit and healthy in 2015


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A bystander submits footage of the Asiana Flight 214 crash to CNN. Video was submitted by Fred Hayes.
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( Warner Bros. Picture )
Review: 'Get Hard' is not for the sensitive
Stars Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart are a good comedy team, but 'Get Hard' is full of off-color jokes about race and sex that will offend many viewers, and it gets repetitive at times.
'The Sopranos' Drea De Matteo loses New York home in explosion
'Modern Family' actress Sarah Hyland grew up across the street from buildings that burned and collapsed in accident caused by gas and plumbing work.


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Chillin' By Louisiana 'Grand'
July 3, 2011
My granddaughter loves this chair and she is a gal who knows how to relax.
Big chair - will grow with kids By Jennifer
October 13, 2011
I like this chair becuase my kids won't outgrow it after they hit 3. That was the problem with most chairs I found. The only issue is that it's really hard to use the recliner. There are no buttons, you have to pull it open at the bottom with your hand. But, my kids love it!
Child's Recliner By Louisiana 'Grand'
September 27, 2011
Love the chair. It is so cute and appears to be sturdy. This is our second Dozydotes. We sent one to our granddaughter and then 6 months later bought this one in another fabric choice to have at our house.
Kids reclining chairs By Hank
September 12, 2011
Excellent quality, exceeded my expectations


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The biggest issue with assembling an AR isn't so much getting the parts together right - it's getting the right parts together.
US Army 1966-69, VFW Life Member, Retired Geek
I saved up and put an Eotech 512 on my Delton Echo 316/MOE and it was well worth the cash. Close to $450 with tax. I would love to have an aimpoint micro but the Eotech will have to do for now.
Thanks everyone
I have 3 Bushnell TRS 25's and they are the best under $100. 3000 hr battery life. You will need a riser for the AR.
Patron Member NRA
"I would not be an old man if I had not been an armed young man." JTJ
I was taught to respect my elders but they are getting harder to find.
I love Vortex for under $200.
I'd argue that they're 80-90% as good as the Aimpoints they seem to replicate, at 40% of the price. Of course that's a highly subjective statement. But for my needs and uses, I'd say they're that good.
Primary Arms Micro Dot. Yes.....it is a "poor man's Aimpoint" but it's also $400-$500 less. I would have loved an Aimpoint Micro, but I couldn't afford it. I got a PA Micro Dot for $90, and I was very impressed. A GREAT alternative until I can cough up the dough for an Aimpoint or Eotech or ACOG.
There is no such thing as an inexpensive quality red dot optic. There are red dot optics that work reliably and have good battery life and there are optics that don't work reliably and/or don't have good battery life.
Don't waste your money on cheap optics of any kind. There's no point in purchasing an optic that doesn't work when you need it to, even if the rifle it's mounted on is just for plinking. If you purchase an optic that's not up to snuff, then you'll inevitably pay for an optic that does work reliably in addition to the money wasted on the optic that did not work reliably.
Even with China's artificially low wages for skilled labor, there's no way to make a $100-$200 dollar optic equivalent to a $500-$600 dollar optic. Quality has a price tag attached to it.
Save your money and buy an optic of known quality. Aimpoint and EoTech make quality red dot optics. Get the models that permit you to use night vision if the thought even passes through your mind that you might need to use night vision. The $50-$75 extra dollars you pay for the capability is of no consequence.
I like the Aimpoint Comp M3. I think the Aimpoint Micro tube is a tad too small. I like the Aimpoint Comp M4, too, but I can put a Comp M3 and SureFire X300 on my carbine or rifle for the same weight. Basically, the little extra bit of ruggedness and AA battery are not as useful to me as the weight savings. I try to limit the weight of my added accessories to 1 pound or less.
U can get a decent reflex for cheap. It depends on what caliber of gun your going to run it with.I would recommend a reflex and if u got the money a eotech
I've read good things about these, for $ 70:http://www.guns.com/2013/02/16/primary-arms-new-even-lower-priced-red-dot/