National Wildlife: December 2008 Archives

copyright Jessica Snyder Sachs, as first appeared in National Wildlife

FOR TENS OF MILLIONS of years, a corps of natural hydrologists ensured the continuous cleansing of our continent's water supplies. In woodlands across North America, some 200 million beavers slowed rivers and streams to a silt-dropping crawl with their semiporous dams. Moreover their relentless logging created an elaborate network of wetland meadows that absorbed and cleansed surface runoff.

Beyond the forests, tens of millions of bison and elk worked in tandem with wildfires to sustain the short-grass and tallgrass prairies that soaked up the torrential downpours of seasonal thunderstorms. Beneath these same grasslands, hundreds of thousands of prairie dogs dug vast networks of tunnels that channeled groundwater deeper, to feed and refresh underground rivers that, in turn, continually recharged the continent's lakes and above-ground streams.

In these ways, a network of keystone species helped maintain a clean supply of the continent's most vital, life-sustaining substance. For while many forms of life can survive without oxygen, none can do so without water. Indeed, 60 to 80 percent of every living cell consists of water, and all vital biological processes begin or end with this simple molecule.

So far as science can discern, life on this planet began in a watery cradle. And when astronomers scan other planets for the potential to support life, they look first for signs of the molecule H20.

As seen from space, the sparkling blue ball that is Earth reveals itself to be a paradise of wetness. Above the oceans and lakes that cover more than 70 percent of the planet's surface drifts an ever-shifting lace of water-vapor clouds. Water pours from our skies, courses down our mountains and flows across every continent, back to the seas where the warming sun sends it skyward again. In this manner, our planet continually recycles an estimated 370 quintillion gallons (18 zeros), most of it older than the oldest fossils.

As life in North America and elsewhere evolved around water's unique properties, elaborate ecosystems developed to ensure continual recycling and purification. In Water: A Natural History, environmental engineer Alice Outwater describes the consequences of disrupting these ecosystems, particularly the large-scale decimation of North America's pre-Columbian populations of beaver, bison, elk and prairie dogs. "By tampering with and in some cases eliminating the ecological niches where water cleans itself," she says, "we have simplified the pathways that water takes through the American landscape, and we have ended up with dirty water."

Without wetlands and prairie grasslands to absorb rainfall, water slaloms across the landscape, picking up and dumping sediment into streams and lakes. Without beaver dams to brake their flow, streams frequently deepen into brown-water gulleys, continually eating away at their own banks. In an even more dramatic manner, development that clears natural vegetation speeds sediment-laden runoff during rainstorms, while adding a potentially toxic load of pesticides and other chemicals. The U.S. Geological Survey's recently completed ten-year assessment of the nation's water resources found multiple pesticides and unnaturally elevated levels of phosphorus and nitrogen in virtually all streams and groundwater sampled outside undeveloped wilderness. The majority of these streams contained pesticides at levels that exceeded--and often far exceeded--federal guidelines for the protection of aquatic life. These same chemicals can likewise endanger humans if they enter the drinking water supply.

"Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that our ability to protect our water sources from pollutants--and there are many of them--relates closely to our ability to safeguard our own health, especially that of our children, with their growing bodies," observes Monty Fischer, National Wildlife Federation policy director of water resources. "As conservationists, we're also keenly aware of the crucial role an untainted and abundant water supply plays in sustaining wildlife."

Certainly, Fischer points out, part of the solution is increased water efficiency--from turning off the faucet when we brush our teeth to making sure that our municipalities repair leaky water mains and otherwise invest in efficient water-delivery systems. But more important, he says, "is a public understanding of the linkage between the water flowing out of your tap and the wild places where it comes from, both in terms of the quantity and quality of that water, and the commitment it takes to protect those water sources."

Outwater agrees, adding: "An undeniable symbiosis exists between our country's water, the land from which it springs and the life that the two support together. Safeguarding that symbiosis is a responsibility all of us must share."

New Jersey journalist Jessica Snyder Sachs wrote about the effects of pesticides on endangered species in the December/January issue.

SIDEBAR:

H₂O: The Incredible Molecule

What is it that makes H₂O the liquid of life itself?

In chemical structure, the water molecule could hardly be simpler: two hydrogen atoms stuck like Mickey Mouse ears onto a single atom of oxygen. But in that simplicity can be found water's unique properties.

In essence, every water molecule is a tiny magnet, and its strong polar nature gives it the ability to dissolve an unparalleled range of substances, including a wide range of salts. In addition to the familiar sodium-chloride molecule we know as table salt, these include scores of biologically important substances such as potassium chloride, magnesium chloride and calcium sulfate. Indeed, all living beings--from plants to humans--depend on water to release the life-sustaining minerals contained in these salts.

Water's remarkable solvent powers provide the perfect medium for virtually every biological reaction that occurs inside a living cell--from energy-storing photosynthesis to energy-consuming respiration. And water has the remarkable ability to dissolve gases--most importantly, oxygen and carbon dioxide. It is water's oxygen-carrying capacity that sustains aquatic animal life.

A water molecule's mini-magnet configuration generates a host of other queer qualities, as well. Given its simple structure and small size, it should fly apart into gaseous form at extremely low temperatures. But water molecules cluster into tight groups, with each molecule's negatively charged oxygen atom lining up with the positively charged hydrogen on its neighbors. The considerable amount of energy needed to break these "hydrogen bonds" gives water the unusually high boiling point of 212 degrees F (100 degrees C). As a result, the planet's surface water never completely evaporates under the beating sun. Instead, oceans and lakes act as impressive energy sinks for storing and slowly releasing solar energy to temper seasons, and smooth out temperature differences between day and night.

As temperatures drop toward freezing, the hydrogen bonds between water molecules perform another impressive trick. They preassemble into the open-lattice structure that gives snowflakes their beautiful patterns and makes ice lighter than water. This bizarre quality of water being lighter as a solid than as a liquid has a huge consequence: It is the reason that lakes and oceans don't freeze from the bottom up, solidifying into a global ice block that even the hottest summer would never melt.--Jessica Snyder Sachs

Copyright Jessica Snyder Sachs, as first appeared in National Wildlife

THE EARLY MORNING SUN glints off the amber, "swamp tea" waters of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, as an eager group of Sunday birders clamber up its wetland observation tower. For the last half mile of boardwalk, they've heard the croak of sandhill cranes above the rustling sound of the sawgrass blocking their view. "They'll be lifting off any day now," says refuge ranger Maggie O'Connell of the swamp's winter population of several thousand greater sandhill cranes. Though only mid-February, winter is already loosening its halfhearted grip on southern Georgia's Great Okefenokee, one of the largest intact freshwater ecosystems in the world.

Atop the 50-foot tower, O'Connell surveys her domain. "Seventeen miles to the horizon without a stitch of solid ground," she marvels. Indeed, the dense vegetation of this landscape grows atop floating peat-bog islands, the largest crowned by bald cypress draped in ghostly green Spanish moss. For good reason, the Creek Indians dubbed this Oguafenogua, the "land of the trembling earth." Stomp hard enough and even the trees shake.

Like the majority of the 539 units in America's National Wildlife Refuge System, the Okefenokee was protected to serve as sanctuary for migratory waterfowl such as the cranes, teals, mergansers, herons and egrets seen feeding across its open, wet "prairie." But the Georgia reserve has evolved far beyond its "duck factory" genesis.

This refuge's expanded purpose becomes clear as the sun rises high enough to banish the morning chill, and boaters begin paddling and motoring up the swamp's 120 miles of canals and slow-moving streams. Blinking back at them from the shore or half-submerged in the shimmering blackwater are the sleek American alligators that are among the Okefenokee's star attractions. Many of the visitors will linger after returning to dock--lunching on the refuge's grassy picnic grounds, touring its new million-dollar environmental education exhibit, and shopping for souvenirs in the gift shop. Some will spend the night, either in the state park easement on the refuge's west side or deep in the swamp, on one of seven overnight canoeing platforms.

In addition to playing host to more than 400,000 visitors a year, the staff of this national wildlife refuge have launched an ambitious long-term project to restore and expand the area's upland stands of rare longleaf pine and wiregrass habitat--home to endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and threatened gopher tortoises, indigo snakes and Florida black bears. To this end, nearly half the refuge staff work on the fire crews that conduct prescribed burns to beat back the saw palmetto and slash pine that once were kept in check by seasonal wildfires. "We figure it'll take about 300 years of active management to restore the area," says O'Connell.

Now, as it prepares to celebrate its centennial year beginning in March, the National Wildlife Refuge System as a whole is experiencing an equally radical deepening and expansion of its purpose. Administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it is the world's only national network of public lands set aside specifically for wildlife. And for years, it struggled without any sense of unifying mission. Beginning with President Theodore Roosevelt's founding of the first refuge--Florida's Pelican Island in 1903--one unit after another has flickered into being with its own narrowly defined mission. Before Roosevelt left office in 1909, these included 56 big game preserves and bird reservations such as Idaho's Mindoka refuge for ducks and geese, Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains for bison and elk, and Alaska's Fire Island for moose.

In addition to playing host to more than 400,000 visitors a year, the staff of this national wildlife refuge have launched an ambitious long-term project to restore and expand the area's upland stands of rare longleaf pine and wiregrass habitat--home to endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and threatened gopher tortoises, indigo snakes and Florida black bears. To this end, nearly half the refuge staff work on the fire crews that conduct prescribed burns to beat back the saw palmetto and slash pine that once were kept in check by seasonal wildfires. "We figure it'll take about 300 years of active management to restore the area," says O'Connell.

Now, as it prepares to celebrate its centennial year beginning in March, the National Wildlife Refuge System as a whole is experiencing an equally radical deepening and expansion of its purpose. Administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it is the world's only national network of public lands set aside specifically for wildlife. And for years, it struggled without any sense of unifying mission. Beginning with President Theodore Roosevelt's founding of the first refuge--Florida's Pelican Island in 1903--one unit after another has flickered into being with its own narrowly defined mission. Before Roosevelt left office in 1909, these included 56 big game preserves and bird reservations such as Idaho's Mindoka refuge for ducks and geese, Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains for bison and elk, and Alaska's Fire Island for moose.

Since 1934, the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act has funded the acquisition of millions of acres of additional waterfowl habitat, concentrated up and down North America's four major migratory flyways. Among the first, Montana's Red Rock Lakes refuge became the last-chance sanctuary for the highly endangered trumpeter swan in 1935.

In 1966, Congress passed the National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act, enlarging the refuge system further with several thousand small prairie pothole wetlands designated as "Waterfowl Production Areas." And in 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act nearly tripled the refuge system's holdings with some 54 million acres of pristine arctic and subarctic habitat.

By the time the 500th refuge--West Virginia's Canaan Valley--was established in 1994, the system encompassed more units than the National Forest Service and more land (90 million acres) than the National Park Service's holdings. Yet much of the refuge system continued to be managed under a mishmash of policies and regulations that left its lands vulnerable to such strangely incompatible uses as jet skiing, dune-buggy racing, livestock grazing, oil drilling, even military war games and bombing runs. Refuge managers opposing such uses stood on shaky legal ground unless they could show that the activities directly threatened the specific purpose for which their refuges had been established.

A case in point: In 1990, the manager of Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas Gulf Coast tried to remove privately owned cattle from the preserve's wildlife-rich Matagorda Island. Biologists had determined that overgrazing had already degraded the island's otherwise pristine habitat, including nesting sites for endangered sea turtles and underbrush vital to wintering songbirds. The problem was that Congress had established the refuge in 1937 specifically as a sanctuary for the world's last wild population of whooping cranes.

"We could show that the cattle were definitely degrading the overall ecosystem of Matagorda Island," explains National Wildlife Refuge System Director Dan Ashe. "But technically, in order to deny the grazing permit, we had to show that it was incompatible with the refuge's original purpose." In the end, federal administrators stood behind the refuge manager's claim that cattle grazing constituted an incompatible use. "But a lot of people, including our own attorneys, thought we were stretching things," admits Ashe.

Such legalistic hand-tying came to an end in 1996, with an executive order by President Clinton, followed the next year by the bipartisan passage of the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act. These two legal directives set forth "conservation" as the refuge system's singular and all-encompassing purpose--a purpose against which any proposed use had to be judged. The groundbreaking Improvement Act also required the staff at every refuge to create a 15-year comprehensive conservation plan--guided, in large part, by public input. Indeed, by placing an emphasis on "wildlife-compatible" uses such as observation, photography and limited hunting, the law acknowledged that refuges are for people too.

Specifically, some 2 million hunters and 6 million anglers visit the refuge system each year. Twice that number--some 16 million visitors--come solely to watch wildlife or soak in the beauty and serenity of the nation's wildest places. Add busloads of students and tour groups taking advantage of environmental education programs and the tally swells to at least 35 million visitors a year. The importance of their input in setting the system's agenda for its second century can hardly be underestimated, says Jamie Rappaport Clark, former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during the Clinton administration and now NWF senior vice president for conservation programs. "The pressures on the refuge system have grown tremendously in recent years," she explains. "We have more threatened and endangered species, more demands for human activity on the landscape, and more development and encroachment from the outside. As a result, the job of safeguarding these wild places and passing them on to new generations demands a high level of public engagement."

In fact, the most serious threats to refuge wildlife and habitat--urban sprawl, water depletion, pollution and invasive species--originate outside refuge borders and, therefore beyond the system's authority. Consequently, progress depends on activism on the part of local citizens and allied conservation organizations.

In recent years, for example, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge has depended on a large coalition of conservation groups, including NWF and its affiliate, the Georgia Wildlife Federation, to stave off plans by the chemical giant DuPont to excavate a 30-mile-long, 50-foot-deep titanium strip mine a few feet from the refuge's eastern border. The proposed mining operations would generate a 24-hour-a-day onslaught of dust, smoke, exhaust, noise and light directly alongside the refuge's main wildlife observation drive. Worse, scientific studies indicate the mine could irrevocably alter the Okefenokee's delicate hydrology and ecology. With no authority to stop operations off refuge grounds, refuge managers continue to rely on sustained and vocal public opposition to keep DuPont's plans at bay.

Public opposition has, at least for the time being, helped play an even larger role in confronting what many people view as the greatest single threat to the refuge system in its 100-year history: the proposed opening of the coastal plain section of Alaska's 19.6 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling--a plan that the U.S. Senate voted down last year. Scientific studies by government wildlife biologists had confirmed that petroleum operations on the Arctic refuge would disrupt its vast caribou calving grounds and irreparably harm the region's delicate tundra ecosystem. More importantly, says Clark, "opening Arctic to drilling would totally blow apart the purpose of the entire refuge system. For if there's the will to violate a refuge as spectacular and ecologically unique as Arctic, what would stop the same from happening at the system's 75 million other acres?"

At the least, adds Clark, the 1997 Refuge Improvement Act makes doing so extremely difficult. "As there's no possible way to open up the heart of this refuge to drilling and call it 'compatible' with conservation," she says, "it would require Congressional legislation to literally set the Refuge Improvement Act aside."

More insidious threats to the system include a widening budget shortfall for staffing and maintenance, says Evan Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, the umbrella organization for more than 200 local refuge volunteer "friends" groups. "Wildlife refuges have long been the black sheep of federal land holdings in terms of monetary support," he says. Specifically, the system must manage more than 94 million acres--and the welfare of more than 200 threatened or endangered species--with an annual budget of $370 million, or less than $4 an acre.

"As a result," says Hirsche, "a great deal of conservation objectives are not being met." Primary among these has been the refuge system's losing battle with invasive species such as the Australian pine and Brazilian pepper trees supplanting native habitat at Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge; the zebra mussels and purple loosestrife crowding out native mollusks and wetland plant species in the Upper Mississippi National Fish and Wildlife Refuge; and nutria, a beaver-like Central American rodent, tearing up tidal marshes in Maryland's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Also showing the strain of underfunding is the refuge system's aging infrastructure of access roads, buildings, water-management facilities and other assets.

The severe underfunding for maintenance and staff has also slowed the system's opening of new refuges, despite the annual influx of "Duck Stamp" money for land acquisition. "Before we acquire new areas, we have to ask ourselves whether we'll have the funds to manage them," explains Ashe. "Too often, I hear the argument, 'You don't have to do anything, just buy the land and protect it.' But 'protect' is an active verb."

Indeed, though much of the refuge system consists of wilderness where humans seldom tread, at a minimum, these places must be posted and patrolled. "In this day and age, even our most remote areas are no longer insulated from such illegal activities as drug trafficking, poaching and garbage dumping," says Ashe. "If we just left these places alone, I don't think anyone would be happy with what we'd find when we came back five years later." Moreover, a large percentage of the refuge system requires intensive management such as controlled burning to maintain ecosystem balance and active farming to provide grain for migratory waterfowl. "We need more maintenance workers, more equipment operators, more law-enforcement officers," says Ashe.

In particular, Ashe and conservation activists agree, the system needs more wildlife biologists. "The lack of biological expertise undermines any effort at strategic planning and wise management," says Clark. "Many of our refuges need extensive habitat restoration that can't be carried out because of this lack of biological expertise." At the very least, she explains, the system needs enough biologists to conduct wildlife surveys, monitor wildlife threats and prioritize spending at individual refuges.

For all these reasons, a coalition of 20 conservation groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, recently called on President Bush and Congress to nearly double the refuge system's budget. "Because of their strategic locations and acreage, our refuges provide safe havens for hundreds of threatened and endangered species, provide migratory stopover for millions of birds, while at the same time provide terrific areas for solace and enjoyment for people who want to experience nature," argues Clark. "But it's a system that desperately requires increased funding if it's going to address the needs of both wildlife and people."

The good news is that authorities in Washington, D.C., are finally getting the message. "We've seen sustained budget increases over recent years, including Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton's endorsement of a nearly $57 million increase for maintenance and operations in 2003," says Ashe, who credits conservation groups for their persistent lobbying on behalf of the refuge system. "Constituent organizations like the National Wildlife Federation have in the past five to six years rallied to our defense. It's in large part thanks to them that government leaders have been able to set aside political differences and support us."

Admittedly, recent federal funding increases fall far short of the refuge system's staggering maintenance backlog--currently estimated at more than $526 million, with another $700 million needed for high-priority projects such as restoring degraded habitats and promoting the recovery of endangered species.

Increasingly, refuges have come to rely on volunteers to pick up the slack. Every year some 30,000 volunteers donate more than a million hours of their time to driving heavy equipment, conducting habitat surveys, building boardwalks, running bookstores and nature programs, and lobbying for increased local, state and federal support. "That translates to about $13 million worth of services a year," notes Hirsche.

The need for volunteer support will only increase in the refuge system's second century. "These precious places are mere islands in the landscape, and we can't hope to ever acquire all the land we need," he explains. "As a result, the success of the system's conservation mission will depend on local volunteers becoming envoys to neighboring landowners and local governments, and in this way extending each refuge's wildlife objectives beyond its borders."

In the future that Hirsche envisions, "refuges will become shining examples for private landowners, state land managers and other federal land agencies of how they can all develop management policies consistent with species conservation."

New Jersey-based journalist Jessica Snyder Sachs visited the Okefenokee and Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuges while reporting for this article.

Jump to Website Home Page

FROM A DISTANCE, the oddly stunted mangrove trees of Florida's Pelican Island look dusted in snow. Approach closer, however, and the snowfall turns out to be hundreds of nesting egrets, herons, ibises, wood storks and downy young pelicans. The mangrove's dwarfed greenery likewise results from the birds, whose continual pruning for nesting material has produced an island-wide bonsai effect. Scientists estimate that this tiny islet, a stone's throw from the East Florida mainland on one side and barrier islands on the other, has provided the birds and their nestlings safe haven from predators for thousands of years.

Yet in the closing years of the 19th century, this ancient rookery came within a hair's breadth of extirpation. First came the winter tourists, shooting clouds of island birds for idle entertainment. Plume hunters followed, systematically raking the island for both nestlings and adults to feed the insatiable demand for fashionable feathered hats. Naturalists and scientists only added to the massacre in the late 1800s with their wholesale collection of eggs and specimens for display.

Watching it all from the mainland, boat builder Paul Kroegel cursed the mindless slaughter. In 1881, Kroegel established his boat shop across from Pelican Island in order to enjoy the sight of reeling birds. But by 1898, the herons, egrets, roseate spoonbills and white ibises were gone, the pelicans severely reduced. Over the next five years, Kroegel and pioneering wildlife conservationists William Dutcher and Theodore Palmer lobbied officials in Washington, D.C., for protection. In 1903, they finally convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to declare Pelican Island a wildlife sanctuary--the country's first national wildlife refuge.

Hired as the sanctuary's first manager, Kroegel earned $1 a month to keep his eye on the island rookery. He kept a ten-gauge shotgun in his dockside skiff to help persuade trespassers to move on. The mild-mannered conservationist started the island on its slow recovery.

A century later, refuge manager Paul Tritaik continues the fight to protect Pelican Island and its spectacular diversity of nesting birds. Instead of a gun, Tritaik faces the island's modern-day threats with an impressive array of bureaucratic wrangling and artfully harnessed public activism. "I try every angle I can," says Tritaik of his ten years managing a refuge that until recently didn't so much as provide him with his own budget, let alone a wildlife biologist or other full-time help.

When he arrived at the refuge in 1993, Tritaik realized that Pelican Island was literally disappearing. "I noticed it when I was looking at old aerial photos of the island," he explains. "The shape of the island was dramatically different than it is today." A survey confirmed Tritaik's worst fears: Over the course of the 20th century, the island had eroded from a 5.5-acre triangle to a 2.2-acre comma.

Part of the problem, Tritaik realized, was the island's location--dead center in Florida's busy Intracoastal Waterway. The wakes generated by the heavy boat traffic had been pounding on the fragile islet for decades. "At some point, I knew the island would simply be too small to support a viable rookery," he says. But Tritaik remained powerless to stop or even slow the traffic.

Though the refuge had acquired some 4,700 acres of surrounding water from the state of Florida in 1963, the additional territory came with the precondition that no restrictions be placed on fishing or boating. Tritaik first turned to volunteer labor to try to stabilize the islet's battered shore. When that made little headway, he finagled Pelican Island's designation as a National Historic Landmark into getting money for hiring a helicopter to dump 250 tons of oyster shell.

Similarly, Tritaik has wrangled Environmental Protection Agency funds to help clean and restore the surrounding Indian River Lagoon, even as he gleaned other restoration money based on its status as a National Wilderness Area. Most importantly, perhaps, Tritaik continues to network with Pelican Island's many passionate local supporters, who stand ready to wield their lobbying clout as well as their physical labor.

A sea change in government support arrived in 1999, says Tritaik, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Jamie Rappaport Clark committed her agency to transforming this, the nation's first wildlife refuge, into a showcase for the system's upcoming centennial. Within three years, the refuge had acquired more than 150 acres of neighboring barrier island. The newly acquired acreage will allow the refuge to welcome the public for the first time with hiking trails, boardwalk, rookery observation tower and visitors' center. "Pelican Island today," says Tritaik, "stands as a monument to the National Wildlife Refuge System that it spawned."

Jump back to Website HOME PAGE