Six on History: Geography and Science
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"Nights, when I can’t sleep, I listen to the sea lions
barking from the rocks off the lighthouse.
I look out the black window into the black night
and think about the fish stirring the ocean.
Muscular tuna, their lunge and thrash
churning the water to froth,
whipping up a squall, storm of hunger.
Herring cruising, river of silver in the sea,
wide as a lit city. And all the small breaths:
pulse of frilled jellyfish, thrust of squid,
frenzy of krill, transparent skin glowing
green with the glass shells of diatoms.
Billions swarming up the water column each night,
gliding down at dawn. They’re the greased motor
that powers the world, whirring
Mixmaster folding the planet’s batter.
Shipping heat to the Arctic, hauling cold
to the tropics, currents unspooling around the globe.
My room is so still, the bureau lifeless,
and on it, inert, the paraphernalia of humans:
keys, coins, shells that once rocked in the tides —
opalescent abalone, pearl earrings.
Only the clock’s sea green numerals
register their small changes. And shadows
the moon casts — fan of maple branches —
tick across the room. But beyond the cliffs
a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic
ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,
I could swim through into its thousand pound heart."
Ellen Bass is author of The Human Line from Copper Canyon Press and Mules of Love from BOA Editions. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, and teaches at Pacific University.
"In particular, we’ve spent countless hours with people across El Salvador, where drought has taxed the river system that provides water for over half the country’s population. Over the past two decades, this river system was threatened by a giant mining company that wanted to mine gold near the rivers.
Gold mining uses toxic chemicals like cyanide that poison water. But a global mining company attempted to buy public support by launching flashy PR campaigns, funding local projects, and hiring expensive lobbyists.
Beyond offering these few carrots, they also carried a large stick. When the Salvadoran government paused new mining licenses to study the issue, the mining companies filed lawsuits against the government under the rigged rules that govern investment across borders.
As we describe in our new book, The Water Defenders, communities across El Salvador fought back. They studied the science of mining and water, educated their neighbors, and organized farmers, priests, and international allies to speak out — even as some received death threats and four frontline water defenders were brutally assassinated.
These water defenders won over the most unlikely of allies, like a conservative archbishop alarmed by the dangers of cyanide. They even flew in a governor from the Philippines, who spoke first-hand about abuses by the same mining company, OceanaGold, in his province.
Against extraordinary opposition, these communities convinced their government in 2017 to become the first in the world to ban all metals mining to save their rivers.
Today the United States faces a similar reckoning as El Salvador.
The Texas freeze that left millions without water exposed the desperate need to rein in fossil fuel firms, retrofit and weatherize millions of homes, and upgrade our water infrastructure.
There is an opportunity to do just that as our nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. After the American Rescue Plan, Congress’s next big relief bill will focus on building a green infrastructure — and it can create tens of thousands of good, dignified union jobs in the process.
Movements that bear kinship with the Salvadoran water defenders are already active in many parts of this country.
In Alaska, Native groups linked with conservationists to halt the giant Pebble Mine, which would have destroyed one of the country’s largest salmon fisheries. In Arizona, activists successfully pressured the Biden administration to more carefully evaluate a proposed giant, water-depleting copper mine on sacred Apache lands.
And across the country, the Poor People’s Campaign is uniting many of these struggles with the demand for clean and affordable water for the 14 million Americans who lack it — from the Apache lands to Mississippi to Flint, Michigan.
If ordinary people can overcome powerful companies to protect their water in a poor country like El Salvador, imagine what their counterparts can do here."
"Early Sunday evening, a 2-year-old girl was bitten and dragged by a coyote as she sat in her Arlington yard. Ten minutes later, another 2-year-old girl was scratched by a coyote less than a half-mile away.
Both girls were treated for their injuries at an area hospital and returned home. But the brazen and terrifying attacks have sent a clear message that backyards, woods, and play areas, even in densely populated suburbs, are home to coyotes and other wild animals.
One of the world’s most adaptable animals, coyotes have learned to live in urban environments. And as they become more accustomed to their surroundings, and with plentiful amounts of discarded food, they can grow less fearful of their human neighbors, wildlife experts say.
“They’re out there, and they’re here to stay. The best thing we can do is learn how to live with them,” said Elizabeth Magner, an animal advocacy specialist for the MSPCA. “We all need to be aware of the wild animals around us.”
Three attacks have occurred in Arlington in the past month, and police believe that a single coyote was responsible. On Wednesday, Arlington officers and the state Environmental Police continued to search for the animal, primarily in a section of town-owned woods near the sites of Sunday’s attacks.
Only one other attack with injuries has been reported in the state this year. On Aug. 11, a 3-year-old girl was bitten on Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown. The animal was shot and killed by rangers who responded to the incident.
“The risk of having that kind of encounter is very, very low. You’re more likely to be bitten by a cat or dog that you think you know,” according to Marion Larson, spokeswoman for the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
Since 1998, 22 coyote attacks that resulted in injuries have been reported in Massachusetts, Larson said.
“One of the reasons that we’re seeing more coyotes in the eastern part of the state is they’re searching for new habitat,” Magner said.
And searching for food. Birdseed on the ground, drippings from the grill, and garbage placed overnight in trash cans on the sidewalk are attracting coyotes, nearly all of which would rather run from a human being than confront one, wildlife officials said.
“It all has to do with food and cover and shelter,” Larson said. “We need to clean up our act because we’re providing food, sometimes unknowingly, to a whole bunch of wildlife. We’ve got a trash management problem.”
The more interaction that coyotes have with people, the more likely the animals are to become accustomed to them, and perhaps less likely to scamper away. Experts do not recommend that people run from coyotes because the animal might instinctively give chase.
“The good news about wild animals is there is a natural fear and avoidance of people,” Larson said. “But if a coyote is feeling comfortable enough to lounge in your yard, that’s the time to remind them that they’re not welcome to hang out and chill.”
Yell at the animals, train a floodlight on them, douse them with water, or bang pots and pans together, wildlife officials said.
“You’re not hurting it psychologically. You’re sending a message,” Larson said. “It’s like training your dog.”
Still, the sight of a coyote is enough to cause many suburbanites and city dwellers to look for an escape route. The animal is a predator, and up to a quarter of the DNA of the Eastern coyotes that live in Massachusetts comes from interbreeding with wolves as they moved this way.
“You can’t discount the possibility that this could have been a predatory situation,” Larson said.
Although the attacks in Arlington appear to be an outlier, they remain a worry, Arlington police Captain Richard Flynn said.
“It’s an animal that doesn’t have a fear of humans for whatever reason,” Flynn said. “We’re hopeful we can locate this animal.”
The coyote population in Massachusetts appears to have stabilized recently, partly due to self-regulating reproductive behavior. Coyotes have the ability to adjust litter sizes based on the amount of available food, wildlife officials said.
Despite their unnerving reputation, coyotes play a major role in keeping habitats in balance, wildlife officials said.
“They’re a really important part of the ecosystem. It’s great that we have a healthy coyote population,” Magner said. “They help to regulate the populations of smaller animals, which helps to regulate other animals and plants and boost diversity.”
Last weekend’s attacks would frighten any parent, she said, and the rarity of such encounters should not diminish the alarm surrounding them.
“Thank goodness it wasn’t worse,” Magner said. “I shiver to think of it.”
But now that coyotes have taken up permanent residence in the Boston area, learning more about them and their behavior will be important, she said.
“Like any wild animal, the best path is to learn to coexist as best we can,” Magner said. “A pleasant, wonderful gift is to happen to see one going through the woods.”
"The first cave art. The dawn of agriculture. While these are among the most crucial moments in humankind’s beginnings, our most dramatic origin story starts 66 million years ago. It was the apocalyptic instant when a rock from outer space slammed into Earth, terminating the age of dinosaurs and eventually offering a bountiful new world to our mammalian ancestors.
For 40 years, scientists have studied the tale of this catastrophic object, known now as the Chicxulub impactor. Today, the impactor represents more than just one bad day on Earth; instead, it has become a kind of Rosetta Stone that can decipher deeper riddles about the origins of life and the future of human civilization, both on our planet and in other worlds across the galaxy.
“The Chicxulub impact event completely modified the geologic and biologic evolution of planet Earth,” said David Kring, a planetary geologist who leads the Center for Lunar Science and Exploration in Houston and who was part of the team that announced the discovery of the Chicxulub impact crater beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula in 1991. “That is such a big scientific story with popular appeal because it extinguished dinosaurs and cleared the slate, if you will, for mammalian evolution that led to humans, it’s going to captivate both the scientific community and the public for years to come.”
For decades, scientists argued about the cause of the dinosaurs’ deaths. Volcanic eruptions and other exotic hypotheses were proposed, but the scientific consensus settled on a rock from space being the killer. The Chicxulub theory now reigns so supreme that scientists have pieced together detailed timelines of what transpired on that fateful day, and other researchers are writing what could be called the prequel, seeking the extraterrestrial origins of the event to which we partially owe our existence. ... "
How's your birding knowledge? Can you identify most of the lovely bird visitors who appear on our live cameras?
See how many you can guess from this video, and be sure to let us know your guesses in the comments section! Open the video caption to reveal the answers.
Never Stop Birding,
The explore.org Team
Explore is the world's leading philanthropic live nature cam network and documentary film channel.
