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Blue Ridge Naturalist: The New Ecology

By Marlene A. Condon

October 6, 2017

A burgeoning human population places serious strain upon natural systems as well as manmade ones. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

There is so much talk these days about sustainability that you are probably tired of hearing that word. However, a recently published book—The New Ecology: Rethinking A Science for The Anthropocene (Princeton University Press, 2017)—provides extremely valuable insight to what sustainability is truly all about and why it matters so much to each and every one of us.

Yale University professor and author Oswald J. Schmitz furnishes us with numerous in-depth examples of how human behavior can alter ecosystems (the communities of living things interacting with their non-living environments) so much that they can no longer support us. He does a superb job of making clear why humans must learn to take into account the natural world when deciding how to live their lives.

For example, codfish off the coast of northern New England and Canada were once so plentiful that they sometimes stopped the progress of ships! When discovered by European explorer John Cabot in 1497, no one could have imagined that the commercial cod fishery that would develop from these stocks would end 500 years later in a devastating collapse that would not be possible to resuscitate.

The story of this fishery provides a historically detailed case study that illustrates how human exploitation of a resource species can lead ultimately to an alteration in the proper functioning of the ecosystem and thus to disastrous consequences for humans. The inability of cod to recover by the end of the twentieth century resulted in serious economic and social consequences for the coastal communities of New England and Eastern Canada, as well as Europe.

Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English fishermen started harvesting cod off Newfoundland in the 1500s, when they mostly caught inshore fish by trawling baited long-lines or by casting small nets from rowing or sailing dories. The cod was salted and dried throughout the summer, and the fishermen would return with the preserved fish to Europe in the fall.

With the building of permanent settlements along the seacoast from Newfoundland to New England, however, fishing became a major enterprise. Larger ships, known as schooners, carried dories to harvest cod in offshore waters as well as inshore. Size-selective fishing began, with the largest fish (90-100-pound range) being valued more highly than middle- (60-90-pound range) or small-sized (less than 60 pounds) fish.

Increasing societal demand meant major American cities as well as European and Caribbean markets received fish, increasing the need to catch ever more cod, preferably the largest ones. With the development of the factory ship that could catch and hold larger quantities of fish, the small-scale 450-year-old inshore fishery was doomed to extinction as cod fishing became an industrialized activity.

Gigantic vessels employed emerging sonar technology (a product of World War II inventiveness) to electronically pinpoint the locations of codfish. The ships trawled huge nets behind them that could capture large amounts of fish in a single sweep. Factory fishing led to a rapid increase in harvests, which dramatically crashed in the mid-1990s, halting the entire northern cod fishery, probably forever.

The takeaway from this situation is that humans cannot just increase or decrease their “withdrawals” from the environment based solely upon changes in human demands or prices without any regard whatsoever to their effect upon the harvested population. When harvest levels fell, fishermen should have backed off to allow the cod to reproduce and rebuild their numbers. Instead, the fishing effort increased, and people added insult to injury by taking the largest fish.

By taking the largest individuals, people reduced the productivity of the cod because larger fish reproduce better than smaller ones. But it was not just the cod’s inability to reproduce their numbers as quickly as they might have that drove this fishery to extinction. No, it is more complicated than that, which is why understanding the life histories of our fellow creatures is so vital to our ability to sustain their existence as well as our own.

The larger codfish were top predators in their ecosystem. They fed upon mid-sized predators, such as squid, crab, and mackerel that feed upon small-bodied larval and juvenile cod (as well as other kinds of tiny animals).

Larger-sized adult cod are better able than smaller cod to assist their offspring to reach adulthood by limiting these mid-sized predators. In other words, it is now much more difficult for young cod to reach adulthood, which limits the numbers of adults to reproduce, which limits the numbers of young cod, and so on ad infinitum.

Because humans did not recognize cod as part of a system of interdependent species, they created a series of cascading effects that keeps the cod from recovering to harvestable levels, despite the now-decades-long moratorium on fishing. Accepting the reality that species are part of complex food webs that humans need to respect and work within is what sustainability is all about.

Professor Schmitz includes many other such narratives in his book, including a fascinating one explaining the importance of termites to such large animals as zebras, buffaloes, impalas, and wildebeests. (Who knew?) These accounts should probably be required reading for students and adults alike as they make the concept and importance of sustainability easy to grasp and to truly appreciate.

However, I feel the thesis of this book is seriously flawed. Professor Schmitz seems to believe that environmental problems wrought by people can be solved simply by teaching folks about the relationship of organisms with each other and their environment, which will, he hopes, lead to people choosing to live in a more thoughtful (i.e., sustainable) manner.

But even if people got the message and reacted accordingly, a burgeoning human population makes sustainability impossible. All organisms, including humans, must be limited in number because that is the only way in which the environment can function properly. Organisms need space, food, and shelter to live among us, but it is exceedingly difficult to get people to provide habitat for wildlife. Government does not help, what with regulations and tax laws that discourage appropriate landscaping.

Humans have significantly altered the world we live in, which some folks may believe is a good thing. But the diminishing capacities of the Earth’s ecosystems to sustain their proper functioning is cause for concern that must be addressed if we expect human life to persist on Earth.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: The Future is Now: People Submit to Computers

By Marlene A. Condon

January 4, 2018

Futurists (people who make predictions about the future based upon current trends, especially with regards to technology) often suggest that machines will eventually take over the world. They typically see machines as somehow attaining the ability to think and act of their own accord, ignoring—if they so desire—the commands of people.

The futurists are right about machines taking over, but it will not happen because of innate intelligence on the part of computers. It will happen (and is happening already) because people put so much faith into the competence of computers that they are extremely unlikely to contradict these machines.

Last year I had the misfortune of having to replace my washing machine and a heat pump. Despite having spent way more money than I would have liked, I encountered months-long problems with these appliances, each of which depends upon a computer for proper functioning (an idea I dislike intensely).

Each computer informed the technicians that certain components needed to be replaced, which they dutifully took care of without question. Yet the original problem persisted. Following months of basically refurbishing my two brand-new pieces of equipment, I insisted that the computers had to be the problem. I could not believe what a hard sell this idea was!

People so believe in the infallibility of computers—even though they are no better than the people who make and program them, not all of whom possess enough skill to do a good job—that no one wanted to accept that they could be spewing incorrect diagnoses! But, yes, they were.

Once the computer was replaced in my heat pump system, it worked fine. However, even after the computer was replaced in the washing machine, it continued to put out error messages later found to be incorrect. In the end, the manufacturer had to replace the entire machine for me.

Do you think that after this experience I would want to place my life solely under the control of a computer? Absolutely not. What I witnessed was several perfectly capable technicians doubting their own competence and refusing to make their own informed decisions because of the supposed superiority of a machine.

Indeed, kowtowing to computers can be very dangerous. On May 19, 2017, the “man who saved the world” died at his home in Moscow with little fanfare. Yet if this Soviet military officer of the Cold War era hadn’t had the courage of his convictions, nuclear war could have ensued.

During the early hours of September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov’s computers identified five U.S. missiles headed towards Moscow. Mr. Petrov had only twenty minutes to act. Based upon my local experience, I believe most, if not all, people in his position would have warned the military of an impending nuclear attack. Instead, this man—unafraid to use his own intelligence—informed his superiors of a system malfunction.

In a 2013 interview with the BBC’s Russian service, he said that he had all of the data to suggest an ongoing missile attack, and if he had sent his report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it. “The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word ‘launch’ on it.”

An investigation later found that Soviet satellites had misidentified sunlight reflecting off clouds for intercontinental ballistic missile engines. In 1999 Mr. Petrov told The Washington Post that he did not rush to start a war because “We needed to understand, ‘What’s next?’” His gut feeling was that people don’t start a war with only five missiles. The New York Times reported that he said his decision to stand down was at best, a “50-50 guess.”

But Stanislav Petrov employed common-sense analysis, undoubtedly saving the world from a catastrophe. How sad that the death of such a brave man should have received so little notice, the significance of his decision basically unrecognized and underappreciated.

While life-and-death decisions do not comprise most situations, the inability of people to act because of their reticence to contradict a computer certainly results in time and money wasted for everyone involved. It can also result in serious consequences for humans and their environment.

Consider the water situation in Charlottesville at the end of the summer of 2017. On September 30, local news agencies reported that water levels at area reservoirs were lower than normal, but the water authority was not expecting to declare a drought watch. Why weren’t they?

After all, the director of the state climatology office at the University of Virginia had reported below-normal precipitation since May, and area temperatures had been above normal for much of September. It would be surprising if these two factors did not produce drought conditions, and indeed, they had.

Because I get my water from a well, I worry about groundwater when drought is threatening. Therefore, I had been keeping an eye on the streams in my area, and I witnessed one after another drying up. I wondered why no authorities were discussing the drought we were so obviously experiencing, and instituting water-conservation measures.

When the stream at the end of my road dried up on September 29, something that I had not ever seen happen until the serious drought of 2002, I knew groundwater was in poor shape. Finally, on October 5, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) issued a drought warning. Why were they so slow to get folks to limit their water usage?

A major reason is that people today have somehow been made to feel inadequate when it comes to using their own reasoning ability. Thus, numerous straightforward decisions that governmental agencies should determine for themselves are instead farmed out to “experts” who, it is presumed, are better equipped to make them.

Hence, the RWSA, instead of sending someone out to look at streams to see what was happening, instead paid a contractor to run a computer model to predict a probability of a shortage of local water. (dailyprogress.com/news/local/water-levels-are-low-but-drought-watch-not-expected/article_e196c0da-a639-11e7-910c-9b50322f67c0.html)

However, a computer program is not better able to indicate the likelihood of drought than simple observation of local conditions.

We have been deluded into thinking that computers are infallible, and our naivete leads us to make our lives ever more dependent upon them. When I am exercising, I commonly get asked for directions from deliverymen because their GPS device has led them astray. This would never happen if they relied on a good old-fashioned map, which many younger people no longer even know how to read.

Therein lies the real danger of entrusting computers to take care of so many things in life. When they fail, people are helpless.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: “Invasive” Plants Invaluable to Degraded Environment

By Marlene A. Condon

June 4, 2015

A large stand of Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), which is considered an invasive plant species, grows underneath a native Eastern Redcedar (Juniperous virginiana). Both kinds of plants, located along a gas pipeline, tell the informed observer that the soil in this location is nutrient-poor and compacted. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

As April transitioned into May, I was surprised to see a fair number of daffodils still blooming along the roadway where I walk. It was a sign of how chilly the spring had been.

Another sign I picked up on that morning was the “invasiveness” of daffodils. There were many, many daffodil clumps spanning the miles of my exercise route. They exemplified the ability of some plants brought to this country to reproduce successfully enough to move well beyond the garden gate and out into the larger world.

Such so-called invasive plants have constituted an issue for some time now, although I don’t recall ever hearing anyone complain about the invasive nature of daffodils. Perhaps if a plant is lovely, people can forgive its tendency to reproduce and spread.

But when you are talking about the health of our environment, you can’t entertain such biases. If a plant meets the criteria for being considered “bad,” then it shouldn’t be granted a special exemption.

This situation begs the question, “Should nonnative plants be considered pestiferous when they spread?” I say absolutely not in most cases, especially in back yards, along hiking trails, in meadows and fields, and by roadsides. These plants are providing an invaluable service to a degraded environment.

Usually nonnative plants fill an area only after it had been left barren because of an altered soil profile brought about by man, severe storms, or both. Very few native plant species can grow in poor-quality soil.

By moving into these damaged areas, alien plants do what humans can’t easily do: they rehabilitate the soil. In other words, they are creating a rich soil so that—once they’ve done their job—native plants may again be able to grow there.

Nonnative species are able to obtain nutrients from nutrient-poor soil and transform them into plant tissue. When that plant tissue is returned to the soil (such as when leaves detach to be replaced by new ones or when the plant itself dies), it becomes humus—organic material that enriches the clay soil because its nutrients are in a form that’s usable by many more kinds of plants.

But enriching the soil is not the only thing invasive plants are doing for the environment. They are also supporting our wildlife, all of which require plants for food, shelter, and nesting sites. Every plant on invasive-species lists provides one or more of these basic necessities to our critters.

Although “invasive” plants are often referred to as noxious (deadly, harmful, dangerous), they are simply doing what they are meant to do—reproduce and multiply if there is room for them and the growing conditions are right. It’s what “happy” plants do.

Consider Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica), a large herbaceous perennial plant that was brought from Asia to this country in the late 1800s. Its flowers feed abundant numbers of insects, especially bees of many kinds.

Yet according to the National Invasive Species Information Center, this plant is problematic because “it crowds out native species.” Well, yes, Japanese Knotweed eventually gets large enough and spreads enough to take up space so nothing else can share the space, but in all likelihood, this plant is not crowding out native species, but rather, other nonnative plants like itself!

One of the reasons this plant was originally brought to this country was erosion control after the ground had been denuded by man’s activities, such as road building. The only reason to bring in a foreign plant to prevent soil from washing away in these areas during rain storms is because no native plant could possibly handle the job.

During construction, heavy equipment clears away topsoil that native plants have evolved to grow in. The subsoil that remains is hard, and made harder still by the heavy equipment driven over it. It takes a tough plant to grow in heavy, hard-as-rock dirt!

In Charlottesville, the City Council recently voted to continue to use pesticides for controlling unwanted plant growth, such as Japanese Knotweed growing along the Rivanna River. People believe the plant “will take over next to streams so nothing else can grow there,” creating “a monoculture.”

However, it could well be that nothing else can grow there. The Rivanna runs red every time there’s a heavy rain. That color signifies sub-soil erosion, the result of development upstream and properties on which land has been cleared right to the edges of streams (it’s allowed on “pasture” in Albemarle County).

Although that soil is traveling towards the Chesapeake Bay and is a major contributor to its impaired state, some of it gets deposited along the edges of the waterways. This red clay is not typically conducive to native-plant growth, which is why nonnative plants were able to start growing in the first place and to subsequently “take over.”

Although one might think the land along the river is in a pristine state, it’s easy to discern the truth of the matter by simply examining what plants are growing with the Japanese Knotweed. If you see many so-called invasive species, such as Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum), and Autumn Olive (Eleagnus umbellata), that’s an undeniable sign of disturbance.

Killing and then replacing the Japanese Knotweed plants along the Rivanna River will simply re-disturb the soil, setting back the clock for its rehabilitation. If people truly want to help the environment, they need to take the long view.

Over time, the Japanese Knotweed will ultimately be shaded out by trees because Mother Nature’s goal is to create forest. No environment is static; it’s constantly in a state of flux.

People can spend time, effort, and money to remove nonnative species that are able to grow vigorously in disturbed areas of our making, but it’s virtually impossible to do so without re-creating the conditions that brought about the problem originally.

In the majority of situations, it’s difficult to make right what man has done wrong. Better to take the passive approach and let Mother Nature perform the renovations.

In fact, the whole invasive-plant issue has been a huge disaster for our environment. As a result of the rush to judgment that says all of these plants are “bad,” no matter what, herbicide usage has increased tremendously. Even most environmentalists now consider the employment of pesticides acceptable.

It’s as if poisoning the Earth is far better than allowing plants to exist in areas where they are not native. Rachel Carson’s ashes must be whirling in her grave.

This scientist, by recognizing the dangers of pesticides, brought about the environmental movement in which people began to recognize the effects of their actions upon the planet.

Yet now these poisons (substances that are capable of causing illness or the death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed into its system) are seen as either totally innocuous or a choice that is preferable to the alternative.

What is the alternative? The alternative is that a nonnative plant should occupy a spot of ground that in most cases is degraded and incapable of supporting a native plant anyway.

Herbicides sicken and kill many kinds of organisms, either directly or indirectly. Alien plants, on the other hand, often do far more good than harm to the environment. Can there really be any doubt about which choice is the better one to make?

The Blue Ridge Naturalist: This Bud’s for You

By Marlene A. Condon

August 3, 2017

Gray Squirrels and several species of birds visit my Autumn Olive plants in spring to feed on the nutritious flower and leaf buds. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

This past April, as Autumn Olive (Eleagnus umbellata) shrubs were abundantly blooming around Albemarle County and Charlottesville, the ones in my yard were looking almost lifeless. They were lucky if they sported a few leaves, and there was nary a bloom in sight. The butterflies, bees, and I were sorely disappointed by this turn of events.

I always look forward to the early-spring blooms of Autumn Olive shrubs. I absolutely adore the fragrance of the flowers on these plants, which normally perfume my entire yard. It also delights me to see how much the blossoms help to feed the many species of butterflies and bees out looking for nectar sources.

Yet I was not surprised, nor did I wonder why, my shrubs were not blooming as they usually do. After all, I am always documenting the wildlife activity that takes place daily in my yard, and the explanation for my barren shrubs could be found there.

For the first time that I can remember in the three decades-plus that I have lived here, one or more of the Gray Squirrels that share my property had visited my plants almost daily since the buds had swelled. They had eaten virtually every leaf—and then flower—bud. I was recording their bud-binging activity in my wildlife-food notebook far more often than I had ever done before!

It is not unusual for squirrels—and birds—to eat flower and leaf buds during late winter to early spring (depending on when the buds swell, or start their growing process, due to warming temperatures). I have observed White-throated Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Northern Cardinals, Pine Siskins, and American Goldfinches heartily eating the buds of Autumn Olive.

Following bud break, when leaves or flowers start to emerge and are quite small, birds and squirrels feed on them as well. Usually they lose interest once the leaves and flowers that had escaped their notice have managed to grow bigger than the animals apparently like. Thus I do not see them in the Autumn Olive shrubs again until another year has passed. This year, however, the birds lost interest, as is typical, but for some unknown reason, one or more squirrels did not.

The hardest time of the year for squirrels to find food is early spring when new seeds have not yet developed on most kinds of plants, and seeds from the previous fall are almost gone. However, I would not have thought these medium-sized rodents would have had much of a problem this year as there was plenty of food around for them. They inhabit The Nature-friendly Garden, after all!

Additionally, they should not have had much trouble getting enough to eat because there were not a lot of squirrels around to compete with each other for food. In the fall of 2013, we had a hard mast (acorn crop) failure. The lack of those nutritious nuts hit White-tailed Deer and Gray Squirrel populations hard. These mammals could not quickly move away to other areas, as another acorn-dependent animal, the Blue Jay, had done.

When we then had a severely cold February in 2014, many of these mammals died of starvation. February of 2015 repeated this same scenario, with a cold, wet spring compounding the difficulty for these animals to find enough food to survive.

The result of two years of die-offs and poor reproduction (recruitment) by the animals that managed to survive means that there were far fewer deer and squirrels in the area this spring. Therefore I would not have thought the squirrels would be so intent upon eating my Autumn Olives to such an extent this year.

Judging by their behavior, I would say that the squirrels were simply enjoying the flavor of those plants. And, since there is no junk food in nature, they were simultaneously getting needed nutrients.

The squirrels worked intensely to reach every-last bud on every Autumn Olive in the yard. After the buds within easy reach were gone, I would often see a squirrel hanging upside down to reach buds at the tips of branches below. Sometimes it would lose its grip and fall to the ground. Other times, it would just chew through the branch altogether, take it in hand and eat the buds off just as we eat an ear of corn!

Autumn Olive, being a plant from Asia, is considered an invasive species—an alien plant that supposedly displaces native plants by crowding them out and “monopolizing essential resources.” I have not found that to be the case.

I planted five of these plants when I moved into my house 31 years ago. They formed a hedge that ran north to south, parallel to my veggie/fruit garden. Despite being only about eight feet away from the garden, Autumn Olive has never “invaded” it, preferring to grow in the nutrient-poor and dry-as-a-bone soil that has been left to its own devices following the clearing of the property.

Inside the garden fence, however, where I have added compost that enriched the soil, trees—such as Tulip Poplar, Chestnut and Red Oak, Red Maple, and American Sycamore—insist upon coming up. Removing them is a rite of spring.

Autumn Olive is an extremely useful plant for creating habitat in areas shunned by native plants, which is exactly why it has filled in areas alongside highways and long-ago-depleted cow fields. Indeed, government agencies brought this plant to this country in the first place to prevent erosion and to rehabilitate degraded areas because they knew native plants would not grow there.

Mysteriously, these agencies have somehow forgotten this fact and now call Autumn Olive “invasive” and a “pest.” But although it is easy to claim that these plants pushed out native plants, that notion is simply a myth perpetuated by people who do not recognize the prior history of the land. That loss of historical knowledge is detrimental to current efforts to create habitat because people are working to get this plant banned from privately owned land.

Yet Autumn Olive is perhaps the most valuable wildlife plant there could be, feeding birds and mammals in spring (buds, leaves, blooms) and late summer (fruits), and numerous species of bees and butterflies in early spring (nectar). More than three decades after planting it in my yard, I can say with the utmost assurance that Autumn Olive is a wonderful plant that has performed its function beautifully. I can also honestly say that it has never behaved in the manner people ascribe to it.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Everyone Should Practice Environmental Libertarianism

By Marlene Condon

November 2, 2017

This stream ran red into the Moormans River of western Albemarle following logging upon the adjacent mountain. The dirt-laden water pouring into the river was unfortunate not only for aquatic wildlife, but also for the future growth of trees on the mountain. Photo: Marlene Condon.

Flowering plants (angiosperms that make up more than 80 percent of green plants in the world) depend upon wildlife for their continued existence. Conversely, wildlife depends upon plants for its existence. It is a form of quid pro quo, in which both entities benefit from each other’s activities.

Humans, just like plants, also depend upon wildlife for their continued existence. When people provide habitat for pollinators and numerous other kinds of critters, the animals provide people with the perpetuation of plants that provide oxygen and food, as well as great beauty in the form of flowers, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and oh, so very many creatures!

Yet it can be very difficult to get folks to do what is proper for the environment, which in the end, is also going to benefit neighbors near and far as well as wildlife nearby and down the road. The situation with the Chesapeake Bay is a prime example.

Although people are aware of the causes of the bay’s problems, many refuse to change their ways to help the Chesapeake Bay to recover. Their inaction has brought great harm to the people whose livelihoods were dependent upon a healthy bay chock full of sea life. Environmental libertarianism would never have allowed this to happen.

A right-to-the-point summation of the political philosophy of libertarianism is that it advocates allowing folks to do pretty much whatever they wish, especially on their own property, so long as they do not bring harm to others. The idea is that state intervention in the lives of citizens should be minimal. Therefore, so long as people are not causing difficulties for other people, there should be a minimum number of government regulations for citizens to abide by.

Indeed, if everyone practiced libertarian ideals with respect to the environment, we certainly would not need so much government interference in our lives. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency came into being only because people refused to take proper care of the environment that all of us depend upon for our own health and wellbeing.

When too many people will not act of their own accord to do what is right for the natural world—and thus their fellow citizens—there is absolutely no choice but to rein in their behavior with threats of fines, or jail, or whatever it takes. More recently, government had to step in to demand that companies manufacture more-energy-efficient light bulbs because people would rather leave lights unnecessarily burning than to flick a switch to turn them off.

And while some farmers have put up fencing to keep their cows and cow waste out of our waterways, others continue to allow their animals to enter streams at will, the Chesapeake Bay and the people dependent upon it for jobs be damned (please excuse the language). I have heard straight from farmers’ mouths that they do not believe waste from their cows is a major contributing factor of bay pollution that harms sea life, but chemistry proves these farmers to be in denial of the truth.

Of course, home and business owners, as well as government, are equally guilty, if not more so, of polluting the bay. On many of their properties, laborers mow and weed-whack every last plant to such an extent that the soil often becomes exposed and then dries out. If you come by as they are working, you can see soil dust-clouds created by their machines. The dirt settles out on roads, eventually washing into drains and streams that feed the Bay.

In our forests, loggers may not feel obliged to take adequate precautionary measures to limit erosion if the logging takes place high up on a mountain hidden from view. However, a steady rain alerts those of us paying attention to the error of their ways.

I have seen more than one local stream run red with local clay during logging operations well out of eyesight, but not out of earshot. All that dirt ends up settling out eventually to smother aquatic habitat and wildlife.

Some folks leave trashcans out 24/7, creating a hazard for our wildlife. When people neglect to secure their trashcans so that animals cannot get into them, critters may eat plastic wrap because it smells like food, and die a horrible death due to intestinal obstruction. Bottles that were not cleaned up can lure and trap small animals.

The world would be a much nicer place in which to live if folks would just consider whether the things they do on their own land impact not only wildlife, but other people as well. On many a lovely day I have had to close my windows to keep the house from filling with smoke from neighbors burning yard debris (and sometimes plastic-laden trash, the fumes of which can cause cancer).

On those occasions, it is very upsetting that I am not able to bring fresh air inside, but it is also troubling to know that these folks are not letting their yard debris decay naturally. They would not be polluting the air, and they would be recycling organic matter while creating habitat for many different kinds of animals, such as lizards, salamanders, insects, and spiders.

We have so many environmental regulations because far too many people do not take proper care of the environment. Yet it is our moral duty to nurture it, and if everyone behaved morally in the first place, we would not need laws to make us behave appropriately.

I am not particularly political by nature, but I think it would be extremely worthwhile for people to start practicing environmental libertarianism, no matter what their political stripes may be. After all, a better world always begins at home.

Nature Notes: Groundhog day was no fun for the groundhog

By MARLENE A. CONDON
Feb 9, 2025

A groundhog, its mouth stuffed with dried leaves, will bring them to its burrow beneath the author’s porch in preparation for hibernation. Courtesy of Marlene A. Condon

Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil may be the most famous weather-forecasting groundhog, thanks to additional publicity from the 1993 movie Groundhog Day. But should mishaps befall Phil, publicity would be virtually nonexistent because his handlers cloak his life in secrecy and tall tales.

For example, he’s supposedly the same critter that’s been making predictions since 1886, even though groundhogs live only about 10 years in captivity (two to three, on average, in the wild). According to The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, Phil manages this feat by drinking a secret recipe — the “elixir of life”: One sip every summer at the Groundhog Picnic “magically gives him seven more years of life.”

Spinning myths and pretending a zoo animal can tell us whether spring will arrive early seems harmless. But is it really?

Other prognosticating groundhogs provide insight into the risks of being in this famous “job.” In 2014, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio attended the Staten Island Zoo Groundhog Day ceremony. When handed the groundhog by a zookeeper, he dropped it. A week later, the 10-month-old rodent was dead from internal injuries suffered in the fall.

This kind of accident may be rare, but does anyone believe these undomesticated animals want to be handled at all, never mind that they’re brought out into the cold and held high above throngs of people, a frightening situation to an animal that has no comprehension of what’s happening? In Pennsylvania, Phil was obliged to participate in selfies with many of the 10,000 to 20,000 people attending this event, keeping him in disquieting circumstances much longer.

We’ve come a long way regarding animal welfare, but we still have a way yet to go. While dogs and cats have become virtual human beings in the eyes of the law and afforded many protections, many kinds of wild animals continue to be seen as playthings for humans instead of recognized as the sentient lifeforms they are.

Like humans, wild animals have an innate need to live freely, roaming and exploring their world as they search for food and mates and live the life they were meant to live. Groundhogs live in dark burrows, but Phil lives in “a warm terrarium built into the Punxsutawney library. The wall that faces the outside is made of glass, so visitors can pay their respects at any time.”

Does Phil hibernate as he’s biologically “programmed” to do from October to April in Pennsylvania? No, that is not allowed: His “manufactured burrow” is kept at a constant temperature, and artificial lighting prevents the shorter days of autumn sunlight from triggering his urge to put on fat and settle in for a long winter nap.

Like Canada Geese living in Virginia year-round, Phil must become as unsettled as they do during fall. Local Canada geese move around constantly because they undoubtedly still have the biological urge to leave the area. They have descended from geese that reproduced in Canada during summer and had no choice but to migrate south in the fall if they were to survive the winter. The urge to move southwards or to hibernate is “built-in.”

Some people think Phil has a wonderful life because he doesn’t need to find his own food and is protected from predators, which may grant him a longer existence. But would you choose life in prison just because three meals are served every day and health care is provided so you might live longer? Of course not; no one wants to be caged as Phil (and every other zoo animal) is.

In fact, according to the Live Science website, this mammal hasn’t lost his wild instincts. One year, the groundhog tried to escape. “They caught him right before he tried to run for the hills,” wrote the editor of Punxsutawney Spirit, a daily newspaper that covers local news, adding, “If Groundhog Day comes around and the main man doesn’t show up, you have problems.”

Animals try to flee for the same reason people do: They want to live the lives they’re destined to live. I’ve seen a Box Turtle in an aquatic nature center terrarium desperately and continuously trying to climb the glass walls of its tank to escape the boredom of its existence in that cramped space. I’ve watched wolves running back and forth in a crazed manner along a fence enclosing them at a nature park in the Northwest. As a child, I broken-heartedly observed a huge white Polar Bear pacing endlessly back and forth in its tiny cage that was barely larger than it was.

Wild animals don’t exist to entertain us. Each one belongs in the wild, where it plays a vital role in keeping the environment functioning properly. Groundhog Day may be fun for us, but it’s no fun for the groundhog.

Nature Notes: Human saliva stimulates healing

By MARLENE A. CONDON
December 16, 2025

A squirrel sits in a tree in Central Park after snowfall on Sunday in New York.
Adam Gray / The Associated Press

A wonderfully valid saying of Albert Einstein is that we should, “Look deep into Nature and you will understand everything.”

I couldn’t agree more.

When I wrote my book, “The Nature-friendly Garden,” in 2005, I mentioned that no matter how many precautions you took, you would still get scratches while gardening. I dutifully pointed out that it was essential to keep tetanus shots up to date and to clean your wounds with soap and water. However, I did not mention applying antibiotic ointment to them, as most folks would suggest.

Indeed, when my editor read this section, he called to ask why I hadn’t suggested using the ointments, which are so widely recommended for cuts. I told him that when washing with soap and water was not possible, or my cut was not severe enough to make me take the time to get into the house to clean it, I had always applied my saliva to the broken and bleeding skin instead. I had never gotten an infection in all my decades of gardening, so I had never personally found antibiotics necessary.

I explained that during my life, I had observed numerous kinds of mammals. I’d noticed that when an animal had a wound, it licked it —sometimes a lot — suggesting to me that saliva must have antibiotic properties. Just as form follows function in architecture and animal anatomy, I realized that in life, behavior follows necessity.

Wild animals, like humans, get hurt, but unlike humans, who have salves they can apply, wild animals need a way to help their injuries heal without infection. It was obvious to me that, because wild animals do not waste energy (every behavior can and must be explained in terms of benefit to the organism), they would only lick their wounds if it were beneficial. I saw no reason why that rule of thumb would not also apply to me when I suffered a superficial cut.

My editor found this fascinating. It made sense to him, and he pushed very hard for me to include this information in the book. However, I demurred. Knowing how litigious our society had become, the “lawyer in me” thought better of making any recommendations regarding human health without an official study to back me up, even though the scientist in me knew I must be right.

Indeed, just two years after my book was published in 2006, researchers in the Netherlands confirmed what I’d told my editor, and went even farther than I did.

“A report by scientists from the Netherlands identifies a compound in human saliva that greatly speeds wound healing. This research may offer hope to people suffering from chronic wounds related to diabetes and other disorders, as well as traumatic injuries and burns. In addition, because the compounds can be mass produced, they have the potential to become as common as antibiotic creams and rubbing alcohol,” according to the article, Licking Your Wounds: Scientists Isolate Compound In Human Saliva That Speeds Wound Healing.

Nature Notes: Red foxes make good neighbors

By MARLENE A. CONDON
November 25, 2025

A 3-legged Red Fox visits a home on Afton Mountain.
Courtesy of Marlene A. Condon

When I heard that Harrisonburg city personnel had killed two raccoons and a fox for supposedly digging up areas of the Heritage Oaks Golf Course, I wrote to City Manager Alexander Banks VI. He responded by telling me he “immediately put a halt to all such practice” and explained that the city’s “staff at [the golf course] put together several non-lethal strategies to address the wildlife destruction…[including] motion sensor cameras/lights and the use of natural repellants.”

I was relieved that the city had changed course, especially if this situation was only about damage that could be repaired. All of us require a properly functioning ecosystem in which to live, and those killed mammals had helped to create such an environment for all of us, humans and wildlife together. Folks need to keep in mind that these critters are simply trying to survive, not be problematic for humans.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of a Red Fox at my grandfather’s farm in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. I was in the front seat between my parents as we entered the driveway to the farmhouse. It was after dark, and as the headlights lit the front of the barn ahead of us, a Red Fox trotted through the beam of light. I was enthralled.

It was my first-ever glimpse of this small relative of “man’s best friend,” the dog. Barely as large as your average house cat, a Red Fox is a slim creature with lovely red fur and a large bushy tail. It’s been said that a fox couldn’t survive without its tail, which it uses as a blanket to cover the bare bottoms of its paws and its nose in cold weather.

Humans aren’t prey species for such a small animal, and wild animals try very hard not to interact with any animal that’s larger than they are. In the natural world, size confers advantage. That means a smaller animal is much more likely to be harmed or killed in an encounter with a larger one. Because it doesn’t want to die, and because it can’t survive easily if injured, an animal will try to flee from bigger creatures if it can.

If it’s not possible to get safely away, the smaller animal will attempt to intimidate the larger animal into leaving it alone. That’s why a rattlesnake rattles its tail tip before striking and a skunk stomps its front paws, hisses, and raises its tail before spraying.

So, generally speaking, people don’t need to fear personal harm to themselves or their pets from a Red Fox. Unless a fox has rabies (a rare disease; otherwise, it would wipe out entire populations of susceptible animals), it isn’t about to attack a human, a cat, or a dog.

Of course, if folks are raising chickens that are food for foxes and other predators, then they need to build a predator-proof enclosure to protect them.

Learn about your wildlife neighbors to appreciate all they do for you.

Nature Notes: Spooky sounds for Halloween can be heard at night during autumn

By MARLENE A. CONDON
October 21, 2025

On chilly winter days, the Eastern Screech Owl enjoys sleeping in the warmth of sunshine. It allows us a wonderful opportunity to see a creature mainly active at night.
Courtesy of Marlene A. Condon

At this time of the year, you may be lucky enough to hear owls calling, especially the Eastern Screech Owl.

If you spend time outdoors in the early evening (just as it’s getting dark out) or in the early morning (just before the Sun comes up), listen carefully. This small bird has a very eerie call (often referred to in books as a mournful whinny), which makes it easy to imagine a ghostly spirit crying in the night. It’s quite an appropriate sound for the Halloween season.

Because screech owls hunt mainly at night, they’re not easy to find during the day, unless you spot one in a tree-cavity opening. Eastern Screech Owls are only 7 to 10 inches long. They have ear tufts, bright yellow eyes, and are more often a rusty red color, but sometimes are gray. If it’s late afternoon, the owl may linger on the rim, waiting for dusk so it can start hunting.

Screech owls usually start nesting after the weather warms a bit. If late winter is unusually warm, they may begin nesting then. They have traditionally laid eggs by April at the latest.

When egg incubation begins, both the male and the female owl share the cavity during the day. Once the young hatch, the male typically moves out but remains close by. The young hatch after about 26 days, and fledging occurs approximately 27 days later.

You can keep track of what is happening by paying attention and keeping notes. If you notice an owl using a cavity in March or April, it is most likely nesting (screech owls do not actually build a nest but lay their eggs on the bottom of the cavity).

The pair of owls is quite secretive at this time, though, so you might have to look at the entrance hole very early in the morning to know if the cavity is being used. If you write down the date, you can then calculate the approximate hatching date because the eggs are probably already laid.

A few days before your estimated date and daily thereafter, watch the box as twilight descends and/or very early in the morning before sunrise, and you will eventually see the parent owls bringing food to the young. The average brood size is four.

Until the owlets grow too big, the female will remain inside the box with them during the day. When it becomes overly crowded, she will start perching nearby on a tree, just as the male will have been doing since the eggs hatched.

The male usually perches where he can keep guard over the nest. He often calls very softly throughout the day, possibly to reassure the young that their parents are nearby, and also presumably to teach them the typical screech owl call.

Once you’ve seen the young being fed, you can calculate the approximate fledging date. On the night that they are prepared to enter the outside world, they usually all leave in reasonably prompt succession.

Nature Notes: Jewelweed is a wildlife gem

By MARLENE A. CONDON
Aug 19, 2025

ewelweed (Impatiens capensis) makes so many seeds that the seedlings are often overcrowded, but they work it out as weaker plants succumb, leaving space for healthier plants to thrive.
Courtesy of Marlene A. Condon

One of the first plants I cultivated alongside one of my little artificial ponds was the Touch-me-not or Jewelweed.

In nature, it’s found growing in shade by streams and in swamps, so I felt this annual native plant would be a perfect companion for my new pond.

Blooming from about the middle of July into September, Jewelweed produces many orange flowers that dangle like ladies’ earrings. Each flower is shaped like a miniature cornucopia, a receptacle that resembles a curved goat’s horn.

In times of old, a cornucopia was also known as a “horn of plenty”. Signifying abundance, it would be filled to overflowing with fruit and ears of grain. Appropriately enough, the Jewelweed flower blossom could also be known as a horn of plenty, as it contains an abundance of nectar.

Jewelweed blooms are great in the wildlife garden. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and numerous species of insects visit the orange “jewels” throughout the blooming season, making this a most valuable gem of a plant.

My Jewelweed was so content in its initial location that it bloomed well, attracting many pollinators (the birds and the bees, etc.). The animals fertilized the Jewelweed flowers, which then created an abundance of seeds.

The following year, new plants came up within several feet of the pond, the result of seed dispersal. I didn’t pull out the seeds that germinated (started to grow) in locations that had no competing plants. Some of the plants were in shady places, but many others were in full sun and received at least eight hours of sunlight a day.

When a friend stopped by and saw these Jewelweed seedlings in full sun, he commented with assurance that I might as well pull them out because there was no way that they would ever survive in that much light. Well, I am a natural-born scientist, and I almost always have to find things out for myself. There was no reason for me not to leave the plants alone to see what happened.

And by the way, this is the beauty of growing what so many folks call “weeds.” If you have not spent money on plants, you can afford to be less worried about their welfare. That’s an especially good thing if you are prone to using pesticides at the first sign of plant damage.

I kept an eye on the new Jewelweed plants, fully expecting that my friend was right and they would succumb to the hot sun beating down upon them. Indeed, every day the plants looked horrible as they drooped and sagged in the sunlight. Yet as soon as shade greeted the seedlings, the plants would perk right back up and look none the worse for wear!

This stressful scenario continued day after day, and still the seedlings grew and prospered, reaching their full height of about five feet. They flowered, the birds and the bees (etc.) visited right on schedule, and the following year the march of the Jewelweed across my yard continued.