SAVE OUR SALAMANDERS!
We’ve reached a point where survival is no longer about stopping global warming; it’s about saving our snails and salamanders.
One of my earliest recollections from childhood – and one in which I still indulge myself when there’s an opportunity – is turning over stones. The stones along the edges or in the shallows of streams or creeks are the ones I like best to turn over; also, the stones in tide pools at the beach. Whether it’s a walk in the woods, or a stroll along the ocean front, I’m still curious to know what small creature is hiding from predators beneath the stones I come across.
This curiosity emerged when my parents enrolled me as soon as I reached the eligibility age of ten years in a week-long summer camp nestled in the forest about an hour outside of Portland, Oregon, where I grew up. I soon longed each year for that week away from home and a chance to join about fifty other kids at Camp Gales Creek, named after the stream that flowed through the camp on its way down from the snow-topped Pacific Coast Mountain range to feed the fertile Willamette River valley.
The camp facilities were basic. They consisted of a kitchen/dining hall and nature/art center that flanked a fire pit, flag pole and exercise area big enough for playing tether ball. Off to one side was the girls’ dormitory and the counselors’ residences. Just upstream to where the creek was deep and wide enough for a small swimming hole, was a narrow suspended wooden bridge that led across the creek to the boys’ dormitory on the other side.
What attracted me most about the camp was the creek where I could discover crawdads, minnows, snails and amphibious salamanders. My personal challenge was collecting specimens rare enough to be included in one of the aquariums or terrariums that the camp counselors maintained at the nature center. I guess I got some validation from that exercise because with my discoveries came recognition from the counselors and campers that, ooh! aah! Phil’s found another creepy crawly to look at!
Camp Gales Creek also gave me the opportunity to get up close and personal with fragile living creatures close to the bottom of the food chain, atop of which we summer campers – and all of humanity – sit in the evolutionary scheme of things.
Many of those creatures have shown commendable resilience to the changes we have introduced into their habitats from the homes, roads and factories we have been constructing around them. Some, like the house wrens, ground squirrels, field mice, deer and rabbits have even learned to adjust and cohabitate in our suburban surroundings. Still, I’ve recently read too often now about species that have not been so adaptive and whose numbers have declined to the point of extinction. Evolution continues, and in its path are the inevitable extinction of some species and the proliferation of others that have been able to adapt.
There’s a basic problem in this evolutionary scheme of things today, however. Species evolve slowly, very slowly, in response to the changing conditions, but the scientific evidence suggests that rising temperatures and growing human populations are now introducing changes faster than many species can adapt. Moreover, it’s very likely that we’ll shoot past even some of the most pessimistic predictions of planetary warming. Our fossil fuel addiction is now too deeply entrenched in our market economy to halt or even slow in time to avert rising temperatures and with it more frequent and more violent weather events.
We humans stand out in our capacity to protect our ourselves and to recover from weather-related disasters. We have at our disposal institutional and technological tools – damage insurance, physical infrastructure and sturdy homes. Unfortunately, other species in the plant and animal kingdoms have none of these human advantages for survival. They need our help. And it is in our interest to help them for one critical reason: our mutual survival. We are inescapably interdependent.
Also, we must recognize that there are only limited resources -- time, money and people -- to advocate for and to achieve a sustainable and habitable planet for all. We need to use those resources judiciously.
Given that reality we need to shift more resources away from advocating for a fossil fuel-free world and direct them toward efforts to increase habitat resiliency. It’s a disservice to the natural world, and most likely a disastrous course of action for humans, to pursue unrealistic efforts to end the use of fossil fuels and then have little remaining funds for building resilience to coming global climate change. Available funds are finite.
Gradually, fossil fuel dependency will give way to new technologies just like similar changes have occurred in the past. History confirms that substitutes will be developed. In past centuries, global empires were built and defended by armadas of wooden sailing ships. The construction of those fleets of vessels led to denuding European forests for wood to build them and for charcoal to refine the heavy iron weaponry they carried. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries European forests were disappearing at alarming rates.
In the mid-eighteen hundreds, however, fossil fuels – coal for making steel hulls and petroleum to fuel the newly invented steam and internal combustion engines that drove modern sea-going vessels – became the environmental saviors of Europe’s forests. Thanks to fossil fuel discovery and use, more forests stood in Europe and North America at the beginnings of the 21st century than did 100 years earlier. Coal, oil and gas made that possible.
I’m a strong advocate for applying our inventive skills and collective know-how as a nation to developing and bringing to market, renewable energy sources that can gradually displace the use fossil fuels just as fossil fuels displaced forests in the past. But today political and economic forces are still arrayed against reducing fossil fuel use at a pace necessary to slow global warming.
US administrations, even those most disposed to address putting a lid on more fossil fuel extraction, cave to voters pressing for expanded fossil fuel extraction in an effort to return to cheap energy supplies. The political will and the sense of urgency are just not there and not likely to emerge until environmental degradation becomes so severe, we are forced to act.
The problem: By then it will be too late to reverse rising global temperatures and to save much of the earth’s natural habitats.
That leaves us with only one choice: prepare for a warmer world. Still, we can make significant strides in habitat protection for all creatures on a warming planet. We can start by:
· Working with state and local governments to build resiliency in both human and natural habitats. We can advocate for sufficient state and local resources to protect and manage the natural habitats on which we all depend. Acting individually that’s hard to do and harder to have a discernable impact. But we can support independent organizations that monitor how state and local governments administer those lands, and hold them accountable when they don’t do so in a sustainable fashion.
· Supporting local bond measures and property taxes that fund habitat protection. Public money invested in maintaining and operating state and local lands yields a range of dividends, among them the multiple contributions of those land habitats, when properly managed: clean air, pure water, stable soils, sustainable forest products industries and jobs, and recreational outlets. And that includes summer camps for our kids!
· Establishing natural habitats in our own backyards and community green spaces. Urge commercial stores to carry organics and drought-resistant plants that can tolerate the extreme weather conditions that most likely we will confront. Exercise our ecological consumer purchasing power in this way to bend market forces in the direction of environmental sustainability.
· Spending a week in the woods. Find the time to live for a week in the woods each year. For many, that may be sending their kids to summer camp or sponsoring summer camp opportunities for inner-city kids who otherwise could not afford the experience. All these protected resources fall within state boundaries and are close enough at hand for us to support and enjoy. We need to get out into forested habitats and get better acquainted with them. If we can’t camp in the forest for a week, then budget a couple hours every couple of weeks to walk in the woods or along the beach shores. That totals up to almost 60 hours a year, a solid “work week” of outdoor experiences.
· Consume material goods responsibly. Clearing forests for wood products and farming is over. A tree standing is worth more than a tree cut when all the contributions of forest habitats are considered. Extractive pressures on terrestrial and marine habitats can be minimized by recycling and repurposing and what we use.
Why do I focus on snails and salamanders? Because they are among the most vulnerable of animal species and the habitat to support them is among the most fragile. They serve as our signature species, or markers, of our progress; if we can preserve and protect salamanders and their habitat, then most other species will have a better chance at survival as well. I know this seems a bit simplistic, so I’ll leave the ecological nuances of my proposal to the scientists and environmental specialists. My goal is to change the public’s outlook on how to arrive intact at the new world that is evolving so quickly around all of us.
And by “all of us,” I mean not just humans but all living plant and animal species we’ll need along for the ride into the future, a future world with resilient and sustainable habitats, including places where the next generation of kids can turn over stones with the excitement of discovering what’s beneath them.
I can’t predict what a warmer world will be like for our kids, but I can work to give them the tools and training and to instill in them the empathy they will need to survive and thrive in partnership with nature. And if these efforts to save natural habitats just happen to contribute to reducing the release of greenhouse gases, slowing global warming, and ameliorating dramatic and destructive climate events, great!
I consider that an added positive dividend from protecting the habitats of salamanders.
I like this. It's well written and provides excellent information and good suggestions. Judy O