Big Basin Heartbreak

The news of the CZU Lightning Fire in California hit home for me this past week as the fire swept through Big Basin Redwood State Park—California’s oldest state park and protected habitat of the endangered Marbled Murrelet. This robin-sized seabird comes inland from the Pacific Ocean to the mature and old-growth forests during the summer to nest on the wide branches of the trees. Big Basin Redwood State Park was the center of the discovery of the murrelets’ nesting site in 1974 in a 220-foot-high Douglas-fir, the kind—and perhaps very tree that held that famous nest—that are being burned and scorched now as the fire engulfs 78,000 acres of Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties. Many of the redwoods will survive—there is some good news here from KQED.

While writing my book , Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet (Rodale 2005 and Mountaineers Books 2014), about this extraordinary bird, I spent much time in this spectacular “big-trees” state park visiting the site of the nest discovery, camping with my family under the very tree where the nest was found, and hiking the park trails under thousand-year-old trees and feeling as if I had walked back in time.

Photo of the author at Big Basin Redwood State Park (by M.D. Ruth)

Big Basin Redwood State Park’s historic Headquarters and Visitors Center burned to the ground (details and photos here) and there is extensive damage in the historic core of the 18,000-acre park, including the popular campgrounds. The headquarters building was the site where the park rangers and historian gazed down on a strange downy chick, saved by a tree trimmer in the August 1974, that they identified out as a marbled murrelet—the first confirmed and later documented scientific evidence that these birds nested in trees. Now this historic building is gone.

The remains of the headquarters building at Big Basin Redwood State Park, the site where park rangers solved the great nesting mystery of the marbled murrelet in August 1974. Image by Randy Vazquez/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News Via Getty Images

The 1974 discovery eventually placed the murrelet on the list of federally threatened and endangered species and helped project much of its nesting habitat from logging—the single biggest threat to this bird’s survival. While the redwoods and other conifers are thick-barked species and adapted to withstand fire, the murrelets themselves are not adaptable. Their populations in California and throughout their range (north to Alaska) have been declining precipitously. The increased frequency, intensity, and duration of wildlife is not merely a “threat” to these and other birds and wildlife. These fires are happening now.

Please consider making a donation to the Sempervirens Fund to help restore Big Basin Redwood State Park. The Sempervirens Fund is a non-profit land trust dedicated to the conservation of forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains. To the first 20 of my readers who donate $50 to help restore Big Basin Redwood State Park, I will send you a complimentary copy of my book, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet. Just send me (mariaruthbooks@comcast.net) a screenshot of the to of the email acknowledging your donation and your mailing address. Thank You!

Send me a screen shot like this (with your name in the To field and I’ll send you a copy of Rare Bird!

State's Marbled Murrelet Strategy Finalized

December 3rd’s Board of Natural Resources meeting in Olympia, Washington, brought to an uneasy conclusion the development of the state’s conservation strategy for the endangered Marbled Murrelet. The meeting was appropriately long (5+ hours) and gripping thanks to a very engaged board, much public comment, and agreement that today’s vote was “historic” given the twenty-two years that have passed since the “interim” conservation strategy for the murrelet was put into place.

The upshot: Alternative H was approved in a 4-2 vote with Clallam County Commissioner Bill Peach and Jim Cahill (Senior Budget Assistant to Governor Inslee for Natural Resources) voting “nay” and the rest “yay.” For those of you following this issue, Alternative H was not the alternative preferred by the conservation coalition (Washington Forest Law Center, Washington Environmental Council, Defenders of Wildlife, Conservation Northwest, Olympic Forest Coalition, Seattle Audubon) and other murreleteers as it does not provide enough conservation benefit for marbled murrelets. Nor was Alternative H the preferred alternative of the timber industry and trust beneficiaries as it does not provide enough revenue and jobs. Alternative H, according to the DNR and US Fish and Wildlife Service, meets the requirements under the Endangered Species Act and also the DNR’s fiduciary responsibility to the trust beneficiaries. And, in striking the “right balance” between conservation and revenue generation, the DRN has made no one happy.

Commissioner Peach voted nay on Alt H because he stated his belief that it does not represent the best interests of the trust beneficiaries. He is concerned that the financial impacts to the junior taxing districts have not been clearly explained by the DNR to the board or members of the public. Peach moved to delay today’s vote until March 2020 but his motion was not seconded and so failed.

This fall, Audubon chapters and others in the conservation community also advocated for a delay in the vote (for different reasons) but it became clear later on that such a delay could open the door to involvement by the Department of Interior (via Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Southwest Washington timber industry) and result in an alternative with less conservation value to murrelets.

Jim Cahill voted nay, he stated, because Governor Inslee requested he do so because of his gubenatorial concerns about changes in ocean conditions and what it has done to the marbled murrelet. (I think there is more behind this request, but I am not privy to Inslee’s insights on murrelet conservation issues).

Alternative H is definitely not the win-win everyone was hoping for but with DNR’s mutually exclusive (in my opinion) orders to protect marbled murrelets and log their nesting habitat, Alt H is meh-meh at best. The proof will be when the strategy gets played out on the ground—in the forestlands where murrelets nest.

The highlight of Tuesday’s meeting for me came toward the very end of the meeting when Board Member Chris Reykdal, Superintendent of Public Schools gave this impassioned 3-minute speech (recorded by TVW) about the future of Washington State and the funding of K-12 school construction from DNR timber sales.

The pith of Reykdal’s three minutes: “The $80-90 million that K-12 gets in school construction—we need to phase off that in time. This money has to go to counties. It has to go to the industries that are impacted by these decisions and ultimately to species preservation and habitat preservation.”

Indeed, de-linking school construction from timber harvest is long overdue and it would be a real victory if Reykdal could accomplish this through the state legislature rather than the U.S. Supreme Court (upon entering the Union, Congress mandated the newly formed Washington state use a portion of its natural resources generate revenue to fund schools, hospitals, reform institutions, and other social services; it did not, however, specify logging).

The seven years of board meetings have been largely civil and congenial, especially under the leadership of Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz. The board members expressed their gratitude to DNR staff and also to the members of the public who have been showing up at meetings over the past several years. I think they were sincere.

So, this wraps up a very long effort to craft a Long-Term Conservation Strategy for one very special bird and its extraordinary habitat. My thanks to you all for your attention to this complex and important issue. I have a hunch it’s not quite over yet since a large swath of the public audience at the board meetings these any years are lawyers.

My hope is that the murrelet will have the last word on this.

Listen here to its call: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Marbled_Murrelet/sounds

The Problems with Clean Energy

Washington Governor Jay Inslee says tackling climate change is our state’s “hour to shine,” but we should be under no illusions about new forms of so-called “clean energy,” especially from wind turbines.

But they look so clean! There they are, dotting the ridge lines across the landscape, turning their blades in the fresh breeze, harkening back to old-fashioned Dutch windmills or a brightly colored pinwheel toy from our childhood. What’s not to like? Much.

I have just finished writing a set of public comments critical of the Skookumchuck Wind Energy Project—a 38 wind-turbine facility proposed to be built in Lewis County (south of Olympia, east of Centralia). Why do I get to criticize this project? Because the Lewis County Community Development Department determined the project will have a significant adverse impact on the environment. How ironic! Under state laws, this determination triggers an environmental review, In this case, the “environment” encompasses the habitat of several species of wildlife listed by the state or federal government as threatened, endangered, or in need of special protection and so these species are expected to be adversely impacted by the project. “Adverse impacts” generally means the species are at risk of being directly or indirectly killed or harmed by the project.

And by “project” we are talking about not only the 38 wind turbines (each 500 feet tall) but also the 120 towers and 17 miles of transmission lines that carry the energy produced by the turbines to Puget Sound Energy’s substation where it is fed into the grid. The towers will look something like this:

An estimated 17 miles of energy generator transmission tie lines (“gen-tie lines”) and and 120 towers are included in the Skookumchuck Wind Energy Project.. Photo by Stefan Andrej Shambora (St_A_Sh), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9431898

Why am I concerned? Because this project, located on Weyerhaeuser property, is sited in the Pacific Flyway for migratory birds (68 species document at the site), is a place where both Bald and Golden Eagles are common, and is on the commuting route of the endangered Marbled Murrelet—the seabird that flies through the project area en route between the Pacific Ocean and/or Puget Sound to the west and north and its nesting habitat on federal forestland at the eastern edge of the project. The proponents of the project, RES-Americas, estimates that 2.496 Marbled Murrelets will be “taken” (killed) each year as well as 4.86 Bald Eagles and 1.65 Golden Eagles during turbine operations. They are not willing to take responsibility for adverse impacts to these birds or any other wildlife during the year-long construction phase of the project when birds could be at risk for colliding with turbines, towers, and get tie-lines. This means that over the 30-year lifespan of this “clean” energy project, we are likely to lose 75 Marbled Murrelets, 66 Bald Eagles, and 23 Golden Eagles, not to mention untold numbers of migratory birds as well as bats that occur in the project area.

To its credit, RES-Americas has worked diligently to figure out ways to minimize the toll on these special-status birds and they have grappled nobly with the strange and somewhat unpredictable breeding behavior of the Marbled Murrelet, whose remarkable life history hovers on the edge of possibility. Since 2001, Washington state has lost 44% of our murrelet population. The loss of its nesting habitat—our coastal old-growth and mature forests—as well as the depletion of the fisheries that supply its food, oil pollution, and entrapment in fishing nets, and a host of habitat-degrading problems have all caused this decline. And then there’s climate change and its impacts on both the marine and forest ecosystems to which murrelets belong.

To some the murrelet is doomed and therefore why not throw 38 spinning turbines and 120 transmission towers in its way? Why not log this parcel of land, or this one, or this one? There are so many forces at work against the murrelet’s survival that no one person, agency, or corporation could possibly be accused of dealing the fatal blow. If no one can prove that the Skookumchuck Wind Energy Project caused of the deaths of the murrelets nesting nearby, or contributed to the loss of the murrelet population barely hanging on in Southwest Washington, or proverbially hammered the nail in the coffin of the 4,913 murrelets left inWashington —then who is? The Washington Department of Natural Resources? The U.S. Forest Service? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? Private timber companies? The salmon gill-net fisheries? There will be such a feast of finger pointing that guilt for this crime won’t stick to anyone. But we’ll all feel it.

We’ll tell ourselves that we address climate change NOW! We must reduce human impacts on the environment NOW! We must wean ourselves from fossil fuels NOW! We need to divest our money and our souls from the dirty oil and the dirty coal that visibly pollutes our water, air, and soil. We need to tax the polluters, educate the wasteful, and “green” our economy! We need to install big, beautiful, white wind turbines across our landscape. Everyone for miles around needs to see us conspicuously generating clean energy!

Few of us will see the hundreds of bird carcasses on the ground beneath these symbols of clean energy. That job will be left to an unlucky few hired to conduct carcass searches beneath the turbines. Has any one considered that the birds using the Pacific Flyway to move northward into a cooler climate may not be able to navigate through this clean-energy obstacle course? How many birds will fatally collide with the very turbines installed in part to reduce the fatal impacts of climate change on these birds?

When operational, the proposed Skookumchuck Wind Energy Project will produce 137 megawatts of electricity. My annual electrical bill from Puget Sound Energy (PSE) is TK kilowatts. So this project could potentially power TK homes. Given the population growth in our region, this energy will not be used to replace but to supplement our current energy needs. The Evergreen State may become forested with forests of wind turbines—sterile forests where no trees grow and no birds sing.

So, Governor Inslee, how about some truly conservative policies—that is, ones based on actually conserving energy? Remember former President Jimmy Carter asking the American people to waste less energy? This was in 1979—forty years ago! (Interesting Carter didn’t ask us to use less, just to waste less!) Watch a short excerpt from his speech to the American people on energy here.

Frumpy cardigan aside, what’s wrong with an extra layer of fleece? How about turning your thermostat down to 65F in the day and 55F at night (you’ll sleep better, trust me!). How about unplugging a few energy-sucking appliances, electronics, and gizmos? Would you not make some minor life-style changes to save a Marbled Murrelet? A Bald or Golden Eagle? What about a Peregrine Falcon, Pileated Woodpecker, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Vaux’s Swift, special-status bats, and any of the 68 migratory bird species flying in harm’s way?

We expect bird, bats, and other wildlife to change their habits, to fly around or over thousands of acres of enormous turbines and towers and electrical lines, to forage and nest elsewhere, and to adapt quickly and successfully to whatever impediments we decided to place in their environment. As we modify and degrade wildlife habitat in the name of “clean energy” and “progress,” we are forcing our wildlife to spend get by with less. Because we refuse to do so ourselves. This is the dirty little secret clean energy. We can do better.

Despite my criticism, the Skookumchuck Wind Energy Project has the potential to be a model project for Washington state and for any place where wildlife is abundant, imperiled, at risk. So everywhere. In my view, the project needs to be downsized. Operations of turbines needs to be curtailed during murrelet breeding season. And the investors need to rethink their expected (large) profits.

There are plenty of very smart and motivated people developing new wind-energy technologies that don’t cause more harm than good. The American Wind and Wildlife Association is leading the way on this front. Check out this uplifting video that gives a glimmer of hope as we navigate our way through our energy crisis. Skookumchuck Wind Energy Project can help us find the win-win in wind energy.

Gratitude for This Bird

There are no holidays celebrating the Marbled Murrelet, unless you count my recent attempt to start “Nest Discovery Day” to honor the date of August 7, 1974, when the nest of this unique seabird was first discovered and documented by scientists. My celebration was just really a “whoohoo!” on social media and silly video involving a friend in a chicken suit, but that’s because I didn’t think to consult anyone at Hallmark, Inc.

The traditional Thanksgiving holiday is mostly about turkey, but the much much smaller and seriously endangered Marbled Murrelet has been the focus of my attention these days and I’m grateful for that. This little wisp of a bird is in the middle of a fight for its life and for the future of the forests where it nests in the Pacific Northwest. The forests murrelets need are described with various terms: old-growth, older, late seral, late successional, mature. The murrelet needs these trees not because of the age or size of the tree itself, but because of the size of the upper branches of these trees. A murrelet doesn’t build a nest but lays its one egg directly on the branch (usually moss covered, but sometimes bare) and so it needs a wide branch where its chicken-sized egg can be safely nestled. And it needs these branches to be at least 50 feet off the ground to keep the nest safe from ground-based predators. Such branches are found in big old trees—coastal redwood, Douglas fir, western hemlock, western red-cedar, Sitka spruce, and other varieties (including the rare occurrence in a big-leaf maple and red alder).

These trees are vanishing and so are the murrelets. Since 2001, we have lost 44% of the murrelet population in Washington state alone. The population continues to decline at the rate of about 4% every year. That might not sound like much, but if you lose 4 of every 100 murrelets every year, it doesn’t take long to get to zero. Zero is not acceptable. This is why, nearly 20 years since I first met the Marbled Murrelet in a photo on the Internet (teehee), 12 years since my book, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet was published, and 5 years since it was reissued in paperback…I am still talking about this bird.

I am not talking about Marbled Murrelets to sell copies of Rare Bird. I am talking about this bird because I cannot bear the thought of “losing my marbled”—of having this bird vanish from our oceans and coastal forests. By talking about the Marbled Murrelet I mean I am speaking out for it—to forest management agencies, conservation organizations, library patrons, bookshop audiences, nature-writing workshop attendees, interested friends, and tolerant family members who know I have a difficult time stopping once I start talking about this crazy little bird.

I am grateful to everyone who listens and to everyone who talks about this bird themselves. The most difficult conversations being had right now are the ones between the many people who manage the forests where the murrelet nests, the people who must generate revenue by logging these forests, and those intent on protecting these forest for murrelets. Not that opinions break cleanly along these lines. The subject of how to manage murrelets makes for complex, messy, fraught, long, interrupted, and frustrating conversations. I have been part of many of these conversations. Everyone feels trapped between a rock and hard place, facing a binary choice between saving the murrelets from extinction (possibly in our lifetime) or merely slowing down the decline to a rate we define as tolerable—the rate that will keep our children or grandchildren from cursing us.

I am grateful for the Marbled Murrelet itself for luring me to the west coast, into the deep forests where it nests and into these conversations about others about biodiversity, old-growth ecosystems, the Endangered Species Act, why birds matter, and the subtle and serious impacts of climate change on murrelets and our forest. The murrelet has given me the opportunity to think long and hard about my role as a steward and advocate, about how to walk the talk, how to resist “slacktivism” and eco-burnout, and how to let my heart go “zing” whenever I see this rare bird in the wild or in a photograph.

Who ever you are and how ever long your “life list,” let a bird into your heart. Let it live there a while. Soon it will let you know what it needs from you to survive. And what it needs is likely to be exactly what we need to survive. Listen. And give thanks.