Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)

Posted on February 28, 2016 by GarryRogers

Humboldt’s Importance

Alexander von Humboldt was the most influential man of his age. His contributions helped unify our understanding of nature and how human alterations could lead to dangerous changes. Heads of government, scientists, engineers, artists, and authors were inspired by and consulted with him on a range of topics. Around the world, there are more cities, parks, mountains, and rivers named for Humboldt than anyone else that ever lived.

Dr. Ulloa Ulloa (front, left) and field assistants at the Humboldt statue on Chimborazo in 2009.

Humboldt’s strengths were his curiosity, his tireless desire to record his experiences, his ability to see connections, and his ability to write about objective facts with lyrical prose. He described nature as a web of life, noting and mapping the plant and animal changes with elevation on Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador a century before C. Hart Merriam mapped life zones in central Arizona. He invented isotherms, the lines on maps connecting areas of equal temperatures, and he warned that human destruction of nature was having widespread consequences. He described the drop in stream flow, lake level, and general climate change resulting from cutting forests and diverting streams for monoculture farming. Humboldt influenced and inspired Goethe, Darwin, Hooker, Bolivar, Thoreau, Muir, and many more. Without Humboldt’s books, Darwin might never have gone to sea, South America might have remained a slave-holding Spanish colony for another century, and nature conservation might have lagged even farther behind human alteration of the land.

Humboldt’s zonal flora and fauna map of Chimborazo.

I am delighted to report that my grandson born in October, 2014 bears the name Alexander. Alex’s birthplace is just 15 miles west of my home in Humboldt, AZ.

The essay introduced below provides links to some the books by and about Humboldt. The one by Andrea Wulf is one of my all-time favorite biographical works.

Humboldt and Bonpland’s Essai sur la géographie des plantes and its significance

By: Randy Smith, Image Technician | Metadata Librarian. Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden

“Over 210 years after Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland’s work titled Essai sur la géographie des plantes was published, climate science, book conservation, and botanical research have converged around this 1805 work. This book was digitized and made available in 2008 by the Missouri Botanical Garden for the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Modern science meets historic data

“In 2015, scientists published a paper detailing their findings as they retraced the path that Humboldt and Bonpland took on their ascent up the dormant volcano, Chimborazo, in Ecuador. The paper, “Strong upslope shifts in Chimborazo’s vegetation over two centuries since Humboldt,” utilized the data and map contained in Essai sur la géographie des plantes and presented modern data from the same locations as detailed in Essai to reveal the effects of climate change on the volcano.

“As Stephen T. Jackson writes in the 2009 book, Essay on the geography of plants, the significance of Humboldt and Bonpland’s work describing their ascent up Chimborazo lies in the detailed data they collected at various elevations. Jackson and historian Andrea Wulf have noted that while most people have forgotten Humboldt, his significance in unifying early scientific disciplines into an inter-connected web of life cannot be understated. Measurements taken on Chimborazo include light intensity, temperature, barometric pressure, and gravitational force. Descriptions of the flora and fauna at various levels of Chimborazo were described and illustrated on the map contained with Essai sur la géographie des plantes.” Continue reading.

Invasive Species and the Bighorn Sheep Die-off in Montana Mountains, Nevada

Posted on February 20, 2016 by GarryRogers

Invasive Species

GR: Human-introduced animals, plants, and disease organisms have destroyed many species and ecosystems. This aspect of the human impact on nature became a global disaster in the 1500’s as we began crossing the oceans. In the lands we reached, we rampaged about with no thought of the seeds stuck to our boots or the diseases carried by our livestock. Then we developed nature. We cut the soil and filled it with pipes and wires and then we entombed its microorganism ecosystem with pavement. We damned streams, dried up springs, cut the forests, stripped the land with cattle and sheep, and we poisoned the water and air. Now comes our grand slam: We’ve added sufficient greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere to give our climate warmer temperatures, droughts, fires, and stronger storms.

How do we react to all that we’ve done? In the current time of competition between oil producers, for example, the temptation to burn more of the cheaper gasoline doesn’t horrify us, no, we call the lower prices a consumer blessing.

And so, in all that we do, our species appears to be striving for maximum destruction of earth ecosystems. Here are a few essays I wrote about how this works with invasive plants.

The following article is by Ken Cole on the Wildlife News website (February 19, 2016).

Bighorn sheep photo copyright by Ken Cole

“On Sunday and Monday, February 14-15, 2016, USDA Wildlife Services took to the skies and shot the remaining 24 bighorn sheep in the Montana Mountains of northwest Nevada at the request of Nevada Department of Wildlife.

“While the exact source of the disease outbreak is not known, it is not surprising that the bighorn sheep in this area are suffering this fate because there are two domestic sheep grazing allotments – the Bilk Creek allotment and the Wilder-Quinn allotment – in the middle of this area and BLM ignored the disease threat that they pose to bighorn sheep.

“In 2012 the BLM began the permit renewal process for one of the allotments – the Bilk Creek allotment – and Western Watersheds Project submitted comments notifying them of our concern about the risk that domestic sheep posed to bighorn sheep in this area. It is well know that domestic sheep are carriers of pathogens that result in deadly pneumonia to bighorn sheep and that even just one nose-to-nose contact between these related species can result in a disease outbreak that commonly kills up to 90% of a herd and kills the offspring of the remaining animals for up to a decade.

“In 2013 the BLM issued the Final Environmental Assessment that dismissed those concerns . . . . ” Read more at: http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2016/02/19/bighorn-sheep-die-off-in-montana-mountains-nevada-is-it-any-wonder.

2015 poaching stats: what do they mean?

Posted on January 25, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: We can’t seem to put the brakes on for wildlife or habitat. Our population growth and our homocentric lack of concern for other species is devastating nature.

Blogging for the Earth

Posted on January 5, 2016 by GarryRogers

Blogging about Nature: Introducing Garry Rogers on the League of Bloggers for a Better World

Garry Rogers

My blog posts are about nature, about wildlife and its habitat (posts). They are expressions of my concerns for natural conditions and events.

During the past year, 2015, lethal heat waves and storms, decline of the great iconic species of elephants, lions, and rhinos, whittling away of the tropical rain forests, and massive clouds of air and water pollution made it clear that humanity is changing the Earth.

More than just the great species, we are eliminating many other species hundreds or perhaps thousands of times more quickly than ever achieved by meteorites, volcanic eruptions, or natural climate change.

Total extinction of a species usually happens after decades of decline. In 2014, the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations carried out an exhaustive analysis of more than 10,000 wildlife studies (download the report). They wanted to know how wild plants and animals were holding up against human activities. They learned that from 1970 to 2014, just 44 years, the total number of animals on Earth declined by more than 50%! Rates of decline vary across species groups. Birds, for instance declined by 40%. Other groups, especially those dependent on freshwater, have declined by 70%.

What evolution took billions of years to produce, we humans are destroying in a tick of geologic time. We are changing the planet so quickly, that not by migration, and certainly not by natural selection, can plants and animals cope. If we continue our activities at their current rate, in only a few centuries, we will turn the Earth into a factory farm of cities, farms, feedlots, and roads with only the tiniest fraction of our native creatures surviving on the fringes.

I often write brief comments without listing my sources. I am always happy to respond to requests for explanations.

Human Population Answers

Posted on October 19, 2015 by GarryRogers

Earth’s Human Population Problem

Click the book to read online.

I learned about human population as mathematical relationships between migration, birth rates, and death rates. As I started my academic career, I continued to use the numbers, the formulas and projections to discuss population. My students learned about population growth, but the numbers didn’t create much excitement. [Click here for current numbers.]

In the years since I began lecturing about population, injuries to Earth’s ecosystems have spread around the planet. We no longer need math to see what will come; it’s visible everywhere. This book, “Over,” illustrates the human impact on nature with a set of magnificent photographs. In sequence, the photographs first show how we are damaging the planet and then they show the beauty that can be ours if we want to fight for it.

The beautifully written essays that accompany the photos discuss the consequences of feeding the 10 billion or more people the United Nations projects will be alive by this century’s end. The authors explain that producing enough food will require conversion of the Earth into a factory farm for humans.

The writers point out that reducing our birth rate will not require any form of coercion. Evidence from developed countries clearly shows that with education and access to birth control, women freely choose to have fewer children.

The chart below shows that the most recent world population projections by the United Nations sets the probable number of people alive in 2100 (the solid red median line) at 11.3 billion. The needs of that many people will crush the life out of the Earth.

The writers do not attempt to describe the future that someone born this year (2015) will face when the year 2100 arrives. Will that elderly person be living on a food-factory planet still dominated by the growth objectives of corporations and countries, or will they be living in a beautiful world they helped save? Will they be unsure of the future? If the Earth has become a human food factory by 2100, will population and artificial food sources continue to rise, or will businesses find new ways to grow and profit from a static supply of workers and consumers?

Answers: Responding to the Population Problem

Click this link to follow the population and immigration news.

For the past 50 years, our leaders have done almost nothing to slow population growth. There have been a few national programs (see the review in Wikipedia), but certainly no real successes. Looking at the photos in the book, the inaction seems irresponsible, an incredible failure. It will take the utmost pressure from all of us to make our governments form strategies to reduce population. I don’t know what we can do about the universal growth imperative of our businesses, but that is a key problem that we must solve. For a first step, I hope you will go to the Global Population Speak Out website and choose one of the ways to help communicate the seriousness of the population problem. You might also wish to check on the population control programs by the Center for Biological Diversity.

Description:

Title: Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot
Authors: Tom Butler, Musimbi Kanyoro, William N. Ryerson, Eileen Crist
Hardcover: 330 pages
Publisher: Goff Books (February 17, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1939621238

Grieving over Growth. Gary Gripp: To a Future Generation

Posted on October 14, 2015 by GarryRogers

BY GARY GRIPP, to a future generation:

“Everything central to our way of life is in the growth mode: the banks, the corporations, all our extractive and service industries, and, not least of all, our population. More people means: more willing buyers of homes, cars, electronic gadgets, and all the trappings of modern life. More jobs, more prosperity, more everything.

“More, more, more. It is in the interest of banks and corporations, as well as businesses large and small, that the market for products continues to grow. More, more, more. Grow, grow, grow.

“On a finite planet with degraded natural systems and diminishing natural resources, this growth imperative, built-in to our systems and into our lives, is an irresistible force coming up against an immovable object. It is us hitting a wall, and doing so at speed. More and more people in my time now see this crash coming.” blog.edsuom.com

GR: Hey grandkids, we just couldn’t help ourselves. (We really couldn’t. To see what it would take for humans to survive on Earth, read Corr Syl the Warrior.)

Nature News Digests

Posted on October 10, 2015 by GarryRogers

Nature News Digests:

Arizona Wildlife Notebook Revised – #Wildlife, #Arizona, #Conservation

Posted on October 3, 2015 by GarryRogers

Arizona Wildlife Notebook

A new edition of the “Arizona Wildlife Notebook” is available.

In the year, 2015, lethal heat waves and storms made it clear that humanity was changing the Earth. Anyone who paid attention to the news knew that Earth’s animals and plants were disappearing.

This figure from the review by the World Wildlife Fund (2014) shows that, from 1970 to 2010, Earth’s animals declined by 52%.

I have come to believe that nature conservation is the great challenge of our time. Human beings are imposing a mass extinction that will eliminate almost all animals on Earth. We may not be able to stop this, but I believe that the Notebook will be useful for anyone who hasn’t given up and wishes to work to protect Earth’s creatures.

Arizona Species Conservation Status

For this edition of the Notebook, I added more information on conservation. The table below shows group status for species that AZGFD specialists consider critically imperiled (S1), imperiled (S2), and vulnerable (S3). It also shows group status according to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for Threatened (LT) and Endangered (LE) species. I didn’t include butterflies, moths, damselflies, and dragonflies in this table because the status of most species in those groups is unknown.

Many species that the AZGFD says are critically imperiled are not given national recognition and protection by the U. S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). It seems that only after species are mostly gone that protection becomes available. Thus, the ESA achieves very little overall protection from biodiversity loss.

ARIZONA WILDLIFE CONSERVATION STATUS
Species Group	Total minus Exotic & Extinct	AZGFD S1+S2+S3	ESA LT+LE
Amphibians	31	18 (58%)	2
Birds	451	260 (58%)	9
Fish	40	40 (100%)	13
Lizards	67	27 (40%)	0
Mammals	189	64 (34%)	15
Snakes	76	35 (46%)	1
Turtles	10	6 (67%)	2
TOTAL	864	450 (52%)	42

The third column shows how many species AZGFD considers at risk. For instance, all native Arizona fish species are at risk, and about one-third of native Arizona mammals are at risk. Being “at risk” usually means that numbers are dropping. The principal causes are construction of buildings and roads, and invasive plants and animals.

Click–Arizona Wildlife Notebook–for a free copy of the 168-page book formatted as a PDF “fillable form.” If you like the book, tell others. Write a review for Amazon: http://mybook.to/AZWildlifeNotebook , or Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1Mkgmei. If you would like to review a printed copy of the book, send a note using the form below. Thank you.

Now that you’ve downloaded the book, you have a conversation-starter for tonight’s warm-up party for World Animal Day!

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Thank you for your response. ✨

Record-Breaking Wildfires, Greenland Melting and Earth’s Hottest Month Ever

Posted on September 3, 2015 by GarryRogers

Humans have some advantages over other animal species, but like the animals, we can’t control our urge to reproduce and our desire for the security of material wealth. Sentient but not sapient, sensitive but not wise, our advantages have let us to eliminate competition, disease, and danger. Thus, nothing can stop our booming population and our world-destroying “environmental footprint.” (ACD = anthropogenic climate disruption)