GUILTY AS CHARGED

Wow- so I haven't touched this blog in quite awhile, have I? I have all kinds of excellent excuses, a lack of electricity and internet access in my lifestyle, mountains to climb, plants to count, mosquitos to smash or occassionally rescue from the suicide missions into my oatmeal before smashing, and just general laziness. It has a lot to do with laziness. I tell people I want to be a writer, and yet, sometimes it is so hard for me to put such pretty plans into action. Aside from my personal journals and the trip reports for work, i haven't written much at all in 2008.

I'm freshly feeling guilty because I met another aspiring writer this weekend at an excellent Oktoberfest party in Lamiolle, NV. We talked writing and adventures around a His blog puts mine to shame. And shame is not an emotion that I am very familiar with, so I am taking it pretty hard. But it is also an excellent motivating factor.

I have so many things I want to write about, 2008 had thus far been a pretty great year for adventures and inspiration, so I guess I need to suck up my excuses and my doubts, and get back to work. I feel a little deja vu about this- prehaps I have restarted my devotion to this blog before a few times...but maybe this is for real....wish me luck....and occasional readership....in the efforts to follow.

Saving a Spiky Endanged Shrub

So what does it really take to save an endangered species? Culturally, we have come to the general conclusion that we should save the baby seals and rare owls- as long as it doesn’t inconvenience our finances or personal property too much. Our leaders designate parks, preserve areas from logging, and draw no-fishing zones to protect the habits that we’ve been told our favorite charismatic animals need to survive the odds we’ve stacked against them. However, most of our planet’s endangered species are not as bumper-sticker worthy as the whales. Save the Wedgeleaf Button Snakeroot! just doesn’t have the same successful sound; it is difficult to pull on people’s heartstrings for a small herbaceous plant. Endangered plants, in general, receive far less attention than their more animated animal list-mates.

So allow me to introduce you to one very uncharismatic endangered species, Ziziphus celata, commonly known, to the handful of people who know it, as Florida Ziziphus. It’s a spiky shrub from the buckthorn family, growing in sandy upland sites along the Lake Wales Ridge in south central Florida. It can reach 6 ft tall- sometimes on a single upright stem, but more frequently, in a twisted, zigzagging mass of stems, branches and spines, making it difficult to tell where one plant ends and another begins. It has small, alternate leaves that are typically dark green with a shiny upper surface, and sometimes slightly heart shaped. On many older individuals, the older, woody branches are leaf-less, just gray bark and thorns.

The flowers begin as clusters of small green buds along the leafless older branches. On some of the plants, these buds are the only green present. The flowers bloom for about two weeks, at some point between late December and early February, depending on environmental factors and the plants’ personal sense of humor. Thousands and thousands of the tiny flowers can bloom on the larger plants.

However, despite the sometimes prolific flowering, Ziziphus is not thriving. Stubbornly, it refuses to reproduce sexually in the wild. It is hard to save a plant that doesn't seem to be trying to save itself. Many of the known populations are made up of plants from a single genotype- they are all clones, separate stems growing up from a shared colony of roots. These clones are self-incompatible: they can not fertilize flowers and produce viable seeds together, since they share the same genes. Even when several genotypes are present in a population, some of the crosses are incompatible as well, and no fertile seeds are produced. Most of the viable seeds have been produced from painstaking, painful hand-pollinations by biologists working with the captive population at the Bok Botanical Garden in Lake Wales Florida.

Ziziphus is currently considered the one of the most endangered plants in Florida. It was first described from an old herbarium specimen- no one living had seen it in the wild- so it was presumed extinct. In 1987, the first of 7 known wild populations of Ziziphus was discovered. In clumps in cow-pastures, eroding hillsides hidden between housing developments, behind skeet-shooting ranges and oranges groves, Ziziphus is hanging on. With very low genetic diversity, small, scattered populations, and the inability to produce seedlings in the wild, Ziziphus needs all the help it can get.

However, saving Ziziphus is hard work. Evolutionary adaptations to prevent being chewed upon(aka spikiness) do not make for happy scientists. My current employers, the plant ecology researchers at the Archbold Biological Station, have tagged and followed every known individual in the wild populations and the captive populations we’ve planted in gardens and preserves. Each january, in less than two weeks, we measure and record size and flowering status of every existing plant. That includes the time wasted pulling thorns free from fingers and whining about the spiny scratching. It’s important to take the data because the plants, perhaps oblivious to their status as genetically doomed, do grow, some years profusely. Research assistants and interns crawl into the spiky mess of twigs to hunt for tags and labels that have been totally overgrown since the previous year’s census. And you can’t consider breaking off a little branch to clear a spike-free zone for your arm to work in because this is a highly endangered plant we’re dealing with here- the Ziziphus comes first.

To catch plants for the captive collections, clones are grown from root-pieces cut from healthy wild plants. Now, if Ziziphus had a long term perspective towards the survival of their own species, they might try to cooperate with biologists in this process. But instead, with each individual selfishly focused on short-term survival, Zizphus comes prepared to battle with biologists for its roots. They send a single long, thick tap root straight down, or sometimes horizontal, or sometimes down, then horizontal, then down again and to the left, often for more than a meter before branching. You can’t just cut the tap root itself- knowingly murdering this spikey endangered shrub, so you have to keep digging, with your hands like a dog, belly in the sand, head in a crown of thorns, until you find a branchpoint. A branch of about an inch thick and several inches long, that is- then you’ve hit the buried treasure. However, just to ensure that the Ziziphus get the last laugh, some of the roots, even after being chased for two or three meters, never branch.

Like most of the plants endemic to the Lake Wales Ridge, Ziziphus is adapted to wildfires. In this dry, sandy landscape, frequent lightning strikes used to set the scrub ablaze. Now, it’s frequently prescribed burns that land managers use to maintain the natural ecosystem processes. A preserve containing a population of introduced Ziziphus was recently burned so that researchers can study if the fire spurs the previously lazy plants into new growth.

Fire is also used as a tool in the quest to save the Ziziphus to eliminate competing plants like pasture grasses and invasive weeds. However, to burn all of the competitors in close proximity to the Ziziphus without harming the spiky endangered shrub itself is a thorny issue, literally. My boss advocates the cardboard box method. The grass is lit from a drip torch on one side of the shrub, while a lucky intern, in this case me, holds a large, folded cardboard box between the Ziziphus and the oncoming flames. The theory is that the cardboard will protect the shrub, and as a added benefit, me, by diverting the flames into the surrounding grasses, an easily burnt fuel.

I know what you are thinking- cardboard boxes are flammable! This is the stupidest idea ever to light a fire all around the plant you are trying to save with merely a flammable, floppy box to protect it. But, to my surprise, the technique actually works. At least of the first hour, we carefully light the grasses around the shrubs from each side, moving the box-shield ahead of the path of the leading flames. To hold the box, and not get burnt, required me to stand in a rather uncomfortable proximity to the Ziziphus, but being stabbed seems to beat being burnt.

However, after about an hour, my cardboard defenses were breached, and suddenly my fire-protecting shield was in flames in my hands- singeing the very plant it was supposed to protect. Trying to snuff out the first burning leaves by hand just led to more spines in my hands and had very little effect on the flames. Add to this moment a sudden increase in wind that kicked the fire up a notch and sent smoke everywhere, thicker, taller grasses available for fuel, and a boss who suddenly decided to go trigger-happy, lighting several patches simultaneously. The endangered shrubs were suddenly in need of very immediate saving. You think fast in a fire: to save myself or the spiky shrub? I ended up running around, smoke-blind, stomping out the flaming grass in front of each plant I could find, only to turn and realize that imminent disaster was approaching this one, and then that one, and oh shit- that one over there in the corner, until my boss called to stop and the land manger turned on the hose to put out some of the remaining flames.

The smoke cleared and we could clearly see, even through smoke blurry eyes and running noses, the absurdity of our afternoon. What did we do at work today? We lit a very spiky endangered shrub on fire, in the name of saving it, obviously. That was several months ago. We’re going back tomorrow to measure the survivors for growth and flowering, to see if my smoky sacrifices have helped the Ziziphus grow a little taller or bloom a little brighter.

For all that Ziziphus celata is lacking in charisma, cooperation, and reproductive ambition- in a twisted way, here in the lab, we’ve all come to love it anyway. Every new plant is a new chance to learn more about how to save them, even if it requires the miserable bloodletting process of wiring a tag to a less than friendly branch. One day, with almost 150 new plants tagged in a pasture, it was hard to believe the plant is really in danger of extinction. But in reality- my coworkers and I have been stabbed by every single Ziziphus plant known to exist on the planet, and although some days that feels like a lot of spines, it is still a plant in real trouble. Saving an endangered species isn’t always pretty, feel good-work. But, in a masochistic way, we’re rooting for these clonal masses of roots to put up more shoots, spread its spiny branches and grow.

Photos by Lauren Sullivan. Thanks to Carl Weekly and the rest of the Archbold Plant Lab for introducing me to Ziziphus and for finding the humor in these long, spiky days in the field.

Profile: Moses Michelsohn

Like a superhero; he carries the daily weight of two identities. By day, Moses Michelsohn is the mild mannered education intern at Archbold Biological Station who patiently introduces school children to the natural wonders of the florida scrub. But, as the buses drive off, he trades his professional polo for yet another faded tie-dyed tee and wanders off into the night, snake-hunting. Armed with a hooked stick, a headlamp, and several large ziplock bags, he catches snakes for his own curiosity, adding to his amazing mental library of herp facts, myths, and adventures.

Herps, in case you’re not yet hip to the lingo, is the way herpetologists refer to their study species- snakes, lizards, and amphibians, collectively. They are a quirky bunch, herpetologists, combining a nerdy passion for scientific discovery with a thrill-seekers addiction to catching the uncatchable: the slimy, poisonous, and dangerous creatures most of us try to avoid.
Herpetologists tell much better stories than birders or plant ecologists, possibly because they’ve flirted with fangs, not just feathers and flowers. Moses, true to his academic peers, is quite the story teller. While his real love is frogs, he has found more adventure in catching snakes. In his few months at Archbold, he has reported Eastern Diamondback, Cottonmouth, and Pygmy Rattler sightings, and brought back plenty of pretty but safer specimens. Curious after seeing his captures on many previous nights, I got myself invited on a trip out to snake road-cruise.

Road-cruising? According to Moses, and obviously the herpetology lore that inspired him, one of the best ways to find snakes is to drive up a small country road at dusk and just after, catching the herps when the are visible and vulnerable- the open border crossing. Moses’s snake road is a rough dirt road between ranchland, located in the middle of nowhere south central florida. Any road might do, but what makes this road special is the frequent wetland ditches on either side, prime herp habitat, that motivates their border crossing.

“Here’s the thing,” he started explaining, as we arrived on the infamous snake road, “It’s not all Animal Planet- everywhere we go we can’t just catch a rare snake like Jeff Corwin does on TV.” Instead, it’s about patience, practice, and a willingness to put up with terrible pop radio, the only accessible signal in the vicinity of the middle of nowhere, Florida. In fact, snake-hunting is incredibly lazy work.

He explains the search image, what to train your eyes to watch for, and I begin scanning the rough dirt road for dark, slender, tubular shapes. We brake several times for suspicious sticks, shadows, and once, very excited, for suggestively coiled bungee cord. In between false alarms, we saw a small wild hog, several birds, and a disputable bobcat (He was there, I saw him, Moses was too focused on the road to see the glowing eyes, I stand my ground). To pass the time as we cruised at 4 mph, he told me how he got hooked on herps, when a biology lab put him waist deep in a swamp, trying to catch the frogs who were calling from every direction, surrounding him, hiding and taunting. We talked about graduate schools, invasive frogs, and the Hannah Montana phenomena on the radio. Before we knew it, we were back to the highway.

“Are you going to write about how I couldn’t get it up?” he asked me as we returned to the research station, snakeless. Moses claims to have only returned without snake sightings or captures twice, and both of those times he was traveling with company. So perhaps it’s my fault, not his, I broke the magic. The mythical snake road might just be a plain old dirt road after all. But I’m not sure I’m ready to give up the dream just yet.

He’s left Archbold now, gone to an actually research job, chasing answers to questions of evolution and speciation in the form of small amphibians across the pacific northwest. But his legacy lives on- I even caught my first wild snake- a docile green vine snake, but still- inspired by his example. In his honor, we’re planning our own adventure out to snake-road this week; headlamps, a field guide, and, obviously, Moses on speed-dial.

Essay: Last Fall in Williamsburg

The thing about nature isn’t that I don’t experience it, because I do. However, I tend to rush past, running along the trails and past the lake almost daily, in my quest for an elevated heart rate and some time alone to think. In this sense, nature’s nothing special, it seems like I rush through everything these days. Always in motion, like I’m afraid that if the inertia caught me, I’d never break free.

But tonight, for a change, I’m going to make myself slow down. Night is falling in a warm, romantic September way, and I’m running my new favorite route, across town and out along a country road to this beautiful little park with the dock out into the freshwater marsh. I write in my head as I run, enjoying myself as I hear fewer and fewer cars; more and more cicadas.

Descending into the empty park, I slow to walk and head out to the dock. The upland cicadas’ resonance is broken by sharper vibration from within the marsh grass. It’s the kind of overwhelming resonance that your body can’t help but internalize, and soon I’m not really hearing it anymore, just feeling it. Sitting on the dock, I take a deep breath. I was here with a lab class a few days ago, and I recall the professor saying that there’s not a wetland more beautiful than these tidal freshwater marshes. Alone in the dark, I’d have to agree.

But actually I’m no where near alone. There’s a goose calling across the lake, and several insect mating serenades are blending together with my heart rate, like standing too close to the speakers at a rock concert. Peripheral vision catches a water snake gliding across the surface: A short fat pug-nose snake trailing a long elegant ripple in the dark water. He disappears into the maze of Spartina and the blade-leafed plant whose seeds can float for years. Can you imagine that? Floating for years, waiting for the perfect place and the perfect time to make your attempt at life. And even then, so few succeed. Looking around at the plants thriving on the wetland edge, we forget about all of the other lost seeds, that these plants we see are the chosen ones, with the right combination of luck and genetic advantage to win the chance at living. Then again, I’m only here because I’m a winner too.

Focus. My legs are getting twitchy and my mind is jumping, ready to return to forward progress. I’m tempted for a moment to dive into the dark water and glide across, neglecting to consider the shallow bottom and that my pug-nose probably has friends. A car honks violently on nearby 199. I start to get indignant about the intrusion of the human world into my nature bubble, before I remember that it’s those ingrained distinctions: Us, in here, separate from Nature, it out there, that stands between us and a real chance for environmental change.

But I’m drifting off topic again, and back into my more pressing reality. Dinner to cook, reading for class, and Friday night plans to find. I almost don’t want to get up and run back to the busy world of people. Lengthening my stride, I’m running again instinctively, and whether he intended to or not, the goose honks again for my departure. Like a child, I wave towards the sound, and quicken my breath as I hit the uphill path.

Scrub Dinosaurs

I was almost eaten by a dinosaur at work this afternoon. I was lucky to get home alive. And no, dinosaurs are not a typical threat in my average work day as sampling wetland vegetation in central Florida. Normally, at it’s worst it’s knee-high muck, hot sun, and several indistinguishable species of sedges. But today, I stumbled into another world. After crashing through the scrubby palmettos that surround the ponds I work in, on the way to plot 167, I suddenly left the florida scrub and entered a scene from Jurassic Park.

Already ankle deep in a dark pond, looking around at the unfamiliar landscape I was instantly unnerved. Tall pines shaded the swamp to dusky-dark in the mid afternoon, and fallen and rotting limbs covered by the thick grass clumps created a unseen maze that threaten to trip my every step. The temp dropped 15 degrees and the air was perfectly still, as if nothing living had been there in a very long time. Well, except for the spiders, who were more numerous then I have ever seen- giant orb-weaver webs filled almost every open space at approximately head height. Smaller spiders had stretched nets between every fern.

And the swamp was full of ferns. Ferns dominated areas are always disconcerting, the primitive plant immediately creates a sense of other-worldliness. Suddenly, you’re back in time, before the evolution of flowers and mammals…so that crash in the brush behind you must be ancient as well. Turn quick, but you can’t quite catch a glimpse of the velociraptor that you sense has been watching you. Into the fern-swamp, add plenty of bloodroot, a thick, 3 foot tall plant with its end of season black leaves and stems, and flowers heads that can look like a nest of little black spiders. It looks burnt, charred unnaturally in the middle of a swamp.

Every step and stumbled I took shook up eerie clouds of fern spores, and sent the little spiders scrambling. My heart began to race, adrenaline pumping as I tripped over hidden limbs, knowing that I’d be unable to run if the raptors decided to attack. My hands shook, trying to adjust my GPS and find the plot I needed to survey so that I could get the hell out of there.

Half an hour later, still amazed that the raptors hadn’t jumped out from behind the thick red bay trees, I struggled back out into the palmetto scrub and hot sunshine that I normally work in. Without thinking, back in my natural environment, my body began to relax and I began to realize the absurdity of being scared of a small dark swamp. I’m a biologist for crying out loud, my daily life is mud and bugs and plants. Although not usually dinosaurs. My brain knows it was ridiculous to be in the early stages of a fight or flight response to long extinct predators, but my body couldn’t deny the reality of its fear.

Why does something as simple as a change of scenery, a new set of surroundings, have the power to so thoroughly unnerve us? Sometimes it’s beautiful, the awe-inspiring view when you finally break above the tree line on a long hike as see snow-covered peaks spreading out to the horizon. But it’s disconcerting too, stepping out of your tent for a late night pee into a moonlight, shadowy forest, when we’re used to the electric hum of urban life.

It has a lot to do with the plants. I’m not just saying that because I’m a plant ecologist. When you've grown up surrounded by oaks and maples, a dense tropical forest is subconsciously scary. So are the oaks and maples, if you've just arrived from a lifetime with southwestern cactus or mountain aspen. We all notice the vegetation we live our daily lives in- the territory we know. And, like the animals we still are underneath, I think we subconsciously know that safety and success lie in our awareness of our surrounding. Shaded by unknown trees, with unsure footing, and suddenly, you know you’re out of your element. Whether or not you’re about to slide down a notch or two on the food chain is more of a question of imagination, but the anxiety is there. Thrill too, when you survive, back in the sunshine again.

I know you don’t entirely believe me, I didn’t believe me either, except that the way I felt was unmistakable. I don’t know when I’ll be back at plot 167, and I don’t know what will be lurking in the trees, but I know that stepping into that swamp, my heart will race again. I’ll bring my camera for the dinosaurs too.

The first carbon-neutral state?

They aren't your typical liberal environmentalists. No one has ever accused the Pope of being a tree-hugger. And yet, the Vatican announced this week that they are poised to become the world's first carbon neutral state. A Hungarian organization has donated 37 acres of a reforestation effort in a long degraded region of forest to the Catholic church, a gesture intented to compensate for the Vatican's electricity and transportation.

Cardinal Paul Poupard told the New York Times that "As the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, recently stated, the international community needs to respect and encourage a ‘green culture'. The Book of Genesis tells us of a beginning in which God placed man as guardian over the earth to make it fruitful."

The idea of carbon "offsets" is relatively new, but it is quickly catching on globally. There are many differing "offset" solutions, but the basic idea is that you can support activities that take as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as you put in, through heating your house, driving your car, and running your electronics. Some plans, like the Denali Green Tag project, invest your money in renewable energy production, like wind farms and geothermic heating projects. Other projects, like the restoration effort of which the newly christened "Vatican Climate Forest" is a part, plant trees and other natural vegetation. The plants use the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in their growth and photosynthesis, which is why growing, healthy forests are considered a carbon sink. The restored forest is predicted to absorb ten times the carbon dioxide as the current weedy vegettion growing on the land.

It sounds like a great idea. The restoration project will provide jobs. The Vatican doesn't have to feel the guilt of contributing to global warming. The restoration company will make a profit if more companies and/or governments follow the Vatican's lead and invest in these carbon offset programs. So, what's the downside? Well, the science isn't yet settled on the long-term carbon impacts of reforestation. Although this particular restoration project in Hungary's Bükk National Park seems environmentally sound, others are charged with being nothing more than a green-washing propaganda scheme.

Russ George, the CEO of Planktos, the company running the restoration project, has praised the Vatican's environmental leadership. “Not only is the Vatican steadily reducing its carbon footprint with energy efficiency and solar power, its choice of new mixed growth forests to offset the balance of its emissions shows a deep commitment to planetary stewardship as well. It eloquently makes the point that eco-restoration is a fitting climate change solution for a culture of life," George told the Catholic News Agency.

Msgr. Melchor Sánchez de Toca Alameda, an official at the Council for Culture at the Vatican, told the Catholic News Service that buying credits was like doing penance. “One can emit less CO2 by not using heating and not driving a car, or one can do penance by intervening to offset emissions, in this case by planting trees,” he said. (NYTIMES)

This might be an occasion when we all, religious persuasions aside, might want to consider the Catholic Church's example. No, people aren't going to donate parks to us like the Vatican Climate Forest, which is valued at $130,000 in CO2 credits on the European market. But, we all need to think about the global costs of our contribution to the carbon dioxide problem. It's an abstract concept, pollution that's hard to put a price on; so these offset programs are a good starting point to think about the costs of our personal choices. How much to offset your daily commute, if invested in wind power? How many trees would be needed to use the CO2 emitted from your last flight? Sure, many of the carbon offset programs are simply trying to assuage your guilt and take your money, but many are offering a valuable service: putting a price on pollution and letting us find solutions to the growing global warming problem. Good for the Catholic Church for being a leader.

New Home: Hot and Flat

I have moved to the opposite of Alaska. Literally, central Florida is a whole different ballgame. I'm not complaining though, even if I am sweating buckets. It's actually beautiful here, it sort of reminds me of Brazil, not the rainforests, obviously, but the tropical scrub/pasture ecosystems of central brazil look a lot like the scrub and pasture of central Florida. Hot, sunny blue skies on sandy soils and crazy scrub palmetos. Great lightning storms in the early evening too.

I'm working as an intern in the plant ecology lab of the Archbold Biological Station. It's a really interesting place actually, you can look at the website, www.archbold-station.org to see pictures of my new home and read about the work that people are doing here. I'm living in the women's dorm room, which is nice enough, AC thank goodness, and spending my mornings working on a restoration project for the lab, which mostly entails planting native plants in old pastures, and recording lots of info about them. Afternoons will eventually be for my own research, but since I don't have a topic yet, I'm doing a lot of reading trying to find some good ideas.

Everyone here seems really nice so far, there's about 6 other interns living here now, a few more soon to arrive, and also several research assistants and other staff who live on the station as well. So I'm making friends- people are interesting in food and running around outside- so we've got plenty in common. On my run yesterday I saw both an endangered tortoise and an armadillo, so that was pretty exciting. Especially considering that I didn't get very far because it's so darn hot. I saw a rainbow towards the end of my drive in, so I think it's a promising sign.