Memories of 21, 42, 63 ... the 84th meandering

Clicked, and helping to hold down the fort, but no articles to post.

Good day wildclickers

Check out "This Day in History" from nyt's archives - Time Traveler 1909

http://timestraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/


http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

Pics from upgraded Hubble are quite beautiful...enjoy

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/photogalleries/new-hubble-camera-first-pictures/index.html?source=email_photo_20090917

clicking the rounds

It's danon's birthday today. I hope he's having a fabulous day.

Have a great Earthturn everyone (including the ones who read and lurk and do not post )

Clickety Click click click......

x

edit: HAPPY DANON and Patti. Have a FABULOUS brithday to yuo. xxxxxxxx with love and big hugs. xx

click clickety

hi izzzzzzzzzie

Best Birthday wishes to dan! a n' funess day for you and Pattie

Have a marvelous Fall Season day, wildclickers

http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

t is generally thought that anthropogenic noise is a contributing factor to declining nesting success for urban birds, but it appears that in some locales noise can have indirect and positive effects on some bird species. In woodlands adjacent to natural gas wells situated in the state of New Mexico, Francis et al. found that noise decreased the extent to which western scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica) preyed upon the nests of other birds. The relative intolerance of this predator for noisy habitats may result from the acoustic masking of their vocalizations by the compressors used in gas extraction. Although there was a general decline in nesting success and a reduction in species richness in response to noise, the escape from predation appeared to benefit species such as black-chinned hummingbirds and house finches, whose higher-frequency vocalizations are less vulnerable to interference from the sounds of human activities.

Curr. Biol. 19, 1415 (2009).

clicking through on the last Friday of summer

Have a joyous and peaceful weekend all.

clickign....... have great weekends all......... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Not much noise here - in fact today one of the Jays gleeped a twig for nesting - and there's not much chattering near the feeder - just visitors.

Interesting what we know and observe in quieter neighborhoods.

September 19, 2009
Editorial Observer
The Extinction Knot: A Hidden Crisis in Northern Australia
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

As I walked back the other night from dinner at a lodge near the Van Diemen Gulf on the north coast of Australia, I accidentally stepped on a toad in the dark. When I looked down, I realized there were toads all around me and that they were cane toads " Bufo marinus " natives of Central and South America. Tens of thousands were released in Australia in the 1930s to control a beetle that preyed on sugar cane, another introduced species.

The toads have marched slowly ever since from the Queensland cane fields into New South Wales and the Northern Territory, reaching the country around Darwin, on the north central tip of the continent, only a couple of wet seasons ago. Cane toads are poisonous, from tadpole to adult. They kill whatever eats them, including birds, reptiles and carnivorous mammals.

Cane toads are only one of the pressures on Australia’s small and increasingly endangered species " others include large grazing (non-native) herbivores, ferocious late-season wildfires and feral cats.

It’s estimated that there are between 4 million and 12 million feral cats in Australia, the progeny of former house cats. Just in the Kimberley " a region of northwestern Australia that is about the size of California " feral cats are eating as many as 300 million small mammals, especially small nocturnal marsupials, a year.

What is happening is a population crash. Scientists surveying native mammals in northern Australia, widely regarded as an oasis of biodiversity, report that they are finding it almost impossible to catch native mammals. During a recent study, it took an average of 1,000 trap-nights to trap 3 mammals.

The scale of this crisis is partly the result of Australia’s unusual and particularly vulnerable ecology. It has always been a predator-poor country " no bobcats, no weasels " so the effect of feral cats has been especially devastating. And though there are many poisonous reptiles in Australia, the advent of a new poisonous amphibian " one so apparently edible as a cane toad " has completely upset nature’s balance. Some birds, crows especially, have already learned how to flip cane toads over and eat their stomachs, avoiding the poisonous glands near the head. But nothing is really stopping the cane toads.

And in most places, nothing is stopping the cats. There is an exception: Australia’s native dogs, the dingoes. They, too, are under attack. Since dingoes sometimes kill sheep, the owners of pastoral stations have tried to exterminate them by using poison bait " a practice once called “dog stiffening.”

The Australian Wildlife Conservancy has purchased several environmentally significant properties across the continent, and on several of them they have stopped killing dingoes. Studies by the conservancy have shown, preliminarily, that when dingoes are present, cat numbers drop sharply. It’s not clear whether the dingoes are killing the cats or driving them out of the neighborhood. But the effect is a rebound in the numbers of other small mammals and reptiles.

The result resembles what scientists discovered in Yellowstone when gray wolves were reintroduced in the mid-1990s. The wolves killed intermediate predators, coyotes mostly, which in turn caused a rebound in the number of small mammals, including voles, gophers and ground squirrels.

What makes Australia’s population crash especially problematic is that most of the species that are disappearing " the marsupials eaten by cats " are seldom visible even when they’re abundant. Their absence goes unnoticed, so it’s hard to rally public sentiment. And thanks to the cane toad, even some larger species are dwindling. Not long ago, on a drive along the Arnhem Highway, heading east out of Darwin, you would have passed a number of pythons warming themselves on the asphalt. Now, they’re a very rare sight.

In a profound sense, the landscape of northern Australia is rapidly losing its biological resilience. It can’t begin to be restored until these non-native creatures are eliminated, no matter how uncaring it may sound to mount a campaign to kill feral cats. What Australia should not do is introduce another non-native predator and create other unintended and disastrous consequences.

Until feral cats and cane toads have vanished, there can be no hope of real recovery. The only good news is the familiar good news: Nature rebounds quickly whenever it gets a chance. But there’s no rebounding once entire species of marsupials and reptiles and birds have vanished for good.

September 18, 2009
Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells
By CHARLES DUHIGG

MORRISON, Wis. " All it took was an early thaw for the drinking water here to become unsafe.

There are 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County, which includes Morrison, and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby grain fields. Other farmers receive fees to cover their land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage.

In measured amounts, that waste acts as fertilizer. But if the amounts are excessive, bacteria and chemicals can flow into the ground and contaminate residents’ tap water.

In Morrison, more than 100 wells were polluted by agricultural runoff within a few months, according to local officials. As parasites and bacteria seeped into drinking water, residents suffered from chronic diarrhea, stomach illnesses and severe ear infections.

“Sometimes it smells like a barn coming out of the faucet,” said Lisa Barnard, who lives a few towns over, and just 15 miles from the city of Green Bay.

Tests of her water showed it contained E. coli, coliform bacteria and other contaminants found in manure. Last year, her 5-year-old son developed ear infections that eventually required an operation. Her doctor told her they were most likely caused by bathing in polluted water, she said.

Yet runoff from all but the largest farms is essentially unregulated by many of the federal laws intended to prevent pollution and protect drinking water sources. The Clean Water Act of 1972 largely regulates only chemicals or contaminants that move through pipes or ditches, which means it does not typically apply to waste that is sprayed on a field and seeps into groundwater.

As a result, many of the agricultural pollutants that contaminate drinking water sources are often subject only to state or county regulations. And those laws have failed to protect some residents living nearby.

To address this problem, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has created special rules for the biggest farms, like those with at least 700 cows.

But thousands of large animal feedlots that should be regulated by those rules are effectively ignored because farmers never file paperwork, E.P.A. officials say.

And regulations passed during the administration of President George W. Bush allow many of those farms to self-certify that they will not pollute, and thereby largely escape regulation.

In a statement, the E.P.A. wrote that officials were working closely with the Agriculture Department and other federal agencies to reduce pollution and bring large farms into compliance.

Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.

The problem is not limited to Wisconsin. In California, up to 15 percent of wells in agricultural areas exceed a federal contaminant threshold, according to studies. Major waterways like the Chesapeake Bay have been seriously damaged by agricultural pollution, according to government reports.

In Arkansas and Maryland, residents have accused chicken farm owners of polluting drinking water. In 2005, Oklahoma’s attorney general sued 13 poultry companies, claiming they had damaged one of the state’s most important watersheds.

It is often difficult to definitively link a specific instance of disease to one particular cause, like water pollution. Even when tests show that drinking water is polluted, it can be hard to pinpoint the source of the contamination.

Despite such caveats, regulators in Brown County say they believe that manure has contaminated tap water, making residents ill.

“One cow produces as much waste as 18 people,” said Bill Hafs, a county official who has lobbied the state Legislature for stricter waste rules.

“There just isn’t enough land to absorb that much manure, but we don’t have laws to force people to stop,” he added.

In Brown County, part of one of the nation’s largest milk-producing regions, agriculture brings in $3 billion a year. But the dairies collectively also create as much as a million gallons of waste each day. Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields.

In 2006, an unusually early thaw in Brown County melted frozen fields, including some that were covered in manure. Within days, according to a county study, more than 100 wells were contaminated with coliform bacteria, E. coli, or nitrates " byproducts of manure or other fertilizers.

“Land application requirements in place at that time were not sufficiently designed or monitored to prevent the pollution of wells,” one official wrote.

Some residents did not realize that their water was contaminated until their neighbors fell ill, which prompted them to test their own water.

“We were terrified,” said Aleisha Petri, whose water was polluted for months, until her husband dumped enough bleach in the well to kill the contaminants. Neighbors spent thousands of dollars digging new wells.

At a town hall meeting, angry homeowners yelled at dairy owners, some of whom are perceived as among the most wealthy and powerful people in town.

One resident said that he had seen cow organs dumped on a neighboring field, and his dog had dug up animal carcasses and bones.

“More than 30 percent of the wells in one town alone violated basic health standards,” said Mr. Hafs, the Brown County regulator responsible for land and water conservation, in an interview. “It’s obvious we’ve got a problem.”

But dairy owners said it was unfair to blame them for the county’s water problems. They noted that state regulators, in their reports, were unable to definitively establish the source of the 2006 contamination.

One of those farmers, Dan Natzke, owns Wayside Dairy, one of the largest farms around here. Just a few decades ago, it had just 60 cows. Today, its 1,400 animals live in enormous barns and are milked by suction pumps.

In June, Mr. Natzke explained to visiting kindergarteners that his cows produced 1.5 million gallons of manure a month. The dairy owns 1,000 acres and rents another 1,800 acres to dispose of that waste and grow crops to feed the cows.

“Where does the poop go?” one boy asked. “And what happens to the cow when it gets old?”

“The waste helps grow food,” Mr. Natzke replied. “And that’s what the cow becomes, too.”

His farm abides by dozens of state laws, Mr. Natzke said.

“All of our waste management is reviewed by our agronomist and by the state’s regulators,” he added. “We follow all the rules.”

But records show that his farm was fined $56,000 last October for spreading excessive waste. Mr. Natzke declined to comment.

Many environmental advocates argue that agricultural pollution will be reduced only through stronger federal laws. Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, has recently ordered an increase in enforcement of the Clean Water Act. Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, has said that clean water is a priority, and President Obama promised in campaign speeches to regulate water pollution from livestock.

But Congress has not created many new rules on the topic and, as a result, officials say their powers remain limited.

Part of the problem, according to data collected from the E.P.A. and every state, is that environmental agencies are already overtaxed. And it is unclear how to design effective laws, say regulators, including Ms. Jackson, who was confirmed to head the E.P.A. in January.

To fix the problem of agricultural runoff, “I don’t think there’s a solution in my head yet that I could say, right now, write this piece of legislation, this will get it done,” Ms. Jackson said in an interview.

She added that “the challenge now is for E.P.A. and Congress to develop solutions that represent the next step in protecting our nation’s waters and people’s health.”

A potential solution, regulators say, is to find new uses for manure. In Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle has financed projects to use farm waste to generate electricity.

But environmentalists and some lawmakers say real change will occur only when Congress passes laws giving the E.P.A. broad powers to regulate farms. Tougher statutes should permit drastic steps " like shutting down farms or blocking expansion " when watersheds become threatened, they argue.

However, a powerful farm lobby has blocked previous environmental efforts on Capital Hill. Even when state legislatures have acted, they have often encountered unexpected difficulties.

After Brown County’s wells became polluted, for instance, Wisconsin created new rules prohibiting farmers in many areas from spraying manure during winter, and creating additional requirements for large dairies.

But agriculture is among the state’s most powerful industries. After intense lobbying, the farmers’ association won a provision requiring the state often to finance up to 70 percent of the cost of following the new regulations. Unless regulators pay, some farmers do not have to comply.

In a statement, Adam Collins, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said farmers can only apply waste to fields “according to a nutrient management plan, which, among other things, requires that manure runoff be minimized.”

When there is evidence that a farm has “contaminated a water source, we can and do take enforcement action,” he wrote.

“Wisconsin has a long history of continuously working to improve water quality and a strong reputation nationally for our clean water efforts,” he added. “Approximately 800,000 private drinking water wells serve rural Wisconsin residents. The vast majority of wells provide safe drinking water.”

But anger in some towns remains. At the elementary school a few miles from Mr. Natzke’s dairy, there are signs above drinking fountains warning that the water may be dangerous for infants.

“I go to church with the Natzkes,” said Joel Reetz, who spent $16,000 digging a deeper well after he learned his water was polluted. “Our kid goes to school with their kids. It puts us in a terrible position, because everyone knows each other.

“But what’s happening to this town isn’t right,” he said.

The Clean Water Act was weakened in favor of CAFO's during the Bush administration - feed lots policing themselves.

http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674

Hey, Stradee, heads up:

Down on the Farm, More and More Fish
Aquaculture Reshapes Economy, Environment

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 20, 2009

By the end of this year, the world is projected to reach an unheralded but historic milestone: Half of the fish and shellfish we consume will be raised by humans, rather than caught in the wild.

Reaching this tipping point is reshaping everything from our oceans to the livelihoods and diets of people across the globe. It has also prompted a new round of scientific and political scrutiny, as researchers and public officials examine how aquaculture is affecting the world's environment and seafood supply.

"Hunting and gathering has reached its maximum," said Ronald W. Hardy, who directs the University of Idaho's Aquaculture Research Institute and co-authored a study on the subject in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We've got to grow more."

The drive to bring fish "from egg to plate," as Hardy puts it, has the potential to answer a growing demand for seafood worldwide, as well as reduce some of the imports that compose more than 80 percent of the fish and shellfish Americans eat each year. But without technological advances to improve efficiency, it could threaten to wipe out the forage fish that lie at the bottom of the ocean's food chain and potentially contaminate parts of the sea.

And consumers will have to accept that they are eating a different kind of fish than the ones that swim wild: ones that might have eaten unused poultry trimmings, been vaccinated, consumed antibiotics or been selected for certain genetic traits.

Although there is still debate about farming's share of the world fish supply -- the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization estimates it stood at 44.3 percent in 2007, whereas the PNAS study says it will reach over half in a matter of months-- no one questions that aquaculture has grown exponentially as the world's wild catch has flattened out. In 1970, farmed fish accounted for 6.3 percent of global seafood supply.

This trend reflects global urbanization -- studies show that as more people move to cities, they are consuming more seafood -- but it is changing the world's seascape as well. Vessels now venture to the Antarctic Ocean to catch the tiny krill that have sustained penguins and seals there for millennia, and slender poles strung with farmed oysters and seaweed jut out of Japan's once-pristine Matsushima Bay.

Chinese freshwater fish farms are replacing traditional agricultural plots there, according to Karen Seto of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Nature Conservancy senior scientist Mike Beck said some Chinese bays are so crammed with net pens that they are no longer navigable.

Moreover, fishermen such as Shannon Moore, who catches salmon in Washington state's Puget Sound, worries about how farmed fish's parasites are affecting wild stocks. "These young wild critters are pretty small, and they can ill afford to have these hitchhikers on them," Moore said, referring to parasites that plague juveniles migrating near Canadian fish farms.

But aquaculture's proponents suggest that farming represents the best chance of giving people a chance to make a living off the sea. Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, noted that three-quarters of his group's members are either current or former commercial fishermen, and although the average age of Mainers with a fishing lease permit is 57, the average for those with a fish-farm permit is 33. "It's really the next generation of watermen," Belle said.

Jane Lubchenco, who used to write about aquaculture's environmental impacts as an academic before taking the helm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced this month her agency will come up with a national policy to address fish farming. "It's important that aquaculture be done in a way that's sustainable," she said in an interview.

America now ranks as a minor player in global aquaculture: It accounts for 5 percent of the nation's seafood supply, but the $1.2 billion in annual production is 1.5 percent of the world's total. In 2006, China supplied 62 percent of the world's farmed fish and shellfish, according to FAO.

But farms are expanding in traditional U.S. fishing strongholds, such as New England, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Northwest, and freshwater fish farms continue to operate in states such as Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. Freshwater species such as catfish, trout and tilapia still dominate the nation's farmed fish production, but such niche products as oysters with regional appellations and sustainably raised shrimp and caviar now fetch a premium in the United States.

Michael Rubino, who directs NOAA's aquaculture program, said he envisions a future in which the country is "producing seafood from a range of technologies, with wild catch on one side, aquaculture on another, and a whole range in-between."

This prospect has set off a flurry of activity and experiments, as scientists and entrepreneurs try to resolve the environmental challenges fish farming poses. The biggest one involves a fundamental quandary: one needs to feed many small fish to bigger fish to produce ones consumers crave.

One-fourth to one-third of the world's fish catch is landed just to produce the fish oil and fish meal that fish, poultry and pig-farming operations demand, depleting stocks of forage fish such as anchovies, sardines and menhaden. Aquaculture has become more efficient" In 1995, it took an average of 1.04 kilograms of wild fish to produce 1 kilogram of farmed fish, according to the PNAS study, and in 2007 it took 0.63 kilograms to achieve the same result. The sector's share of global fish-oil and fish- meal supplies has doubled in the last decade, as the industry has boomed.

Patricia Majluf, who directs the Center for Environmental Sustainability at Cayetano Herida University in Lima, Peru, watched fleets decimate Peruvian anchovetta stocks in the 1970s and again in the 1990s, setting off an environmental chain reaction in which the area's seabird populations crashed.

"There was no supervision, no control whatsoever," said Majluf, adding that it took a change in government in 2006 to institute a more restrained fishing policy that guarantees at least 5 million tons of anchovies remain in the sea to sustain the ecosystem. "Since then, you're seeing this amazing recovery."

"We've got to solve the feed problem," said Stanford University professor Rosamond L. Naylor, the PNAS study's lead author. "We've got to come up with an alternative that breaks the connection between aquaculture and wild fishing of forage fish."

Hardy experiments with everything from pulling out corn protein right before the corn is fermented into ethanol to stringing together algae to form the omega-3 fatty acids people expect from their fish.

Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), who sits on the House Natural Resources Committee and plans to introduce legislation in the near future to help establish a national aquaculture policy, said the current situation "requires a comprehensive response" from the federal government.

"There are commercial demands; we can't ignore that," Capps said. But she added: "Doing it at all means doing it carefully."

Science has been trying to alter nature with disasterous results so far, imo.

Feed lots, fish farms, genetically altered seed and animals...and introducing those as a cure all for world hunger has proved unhealthy for all concerned - the enviornment taking the biggest hit.

In the States, organic sustainable farming is on the rise, but unfortunately, other parts of the world are altering good farming for profit.

Argentine cattle move from Pampas to feedlots

SANTA LUCIA, Argentina (Reuters Life!) - Cows grazing freely on the vast Pampas have long been part of Argentine tradition. Now that view is changing as ranchers herd their cattle into feedlots.

Breaking with a history of cattle roaming the plains, feeding on grass and herded by gauchos, many farmers are looking to increase efficiency and free up land for the profits of grains.

"The feedlot system is here to stay, there is no turning back," said Ignacio Rivarola, president of Proteco S.A., a cattle feedlot operator.

Historically one of the world's leading beef producers and an agricultural powerhouse, Argentina has ridden a boom in soybean prices in recent years to become a top global soy exporter.

Soybean prices have plummeted in recent months, but in their long, climb, farmers moved their free-range cattle off Argentina's most fertile lands and into corrals.

Today, nearly 40 percent of Argentina's cattle -- some 12 million to 13 million head -- have been driven into feedlots, nearly three times the number in 2001.

Feedlots, the holding pens where cattle are fattened before being slaughtered, are widely used in the United States and Europe, but have been slow to catch on among Argentine farmers.

And, unlike in other countries where cattle are essentially raised in feedlots, in Argentina they spend only up to four months in corrals.

In Santa Lucia, some 125 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, Proteco has built a cattle raising complex complete with corrals, troughs and resting areas for cows -- even streets for them to meander on.

While the changes in cattle-ranging methods have been embraced by producers, some Argentines, including Buenos Aires chefs and grill masters, complain the country's famous beef doesn't quite taste the same.

"Beef from grass-fed cows has a more intense flavor and more texture," said Martiniano Molina, a popular Argentine chef known for his beef recipes.

"You can hardly find that meat now in the cities, so I look for it every time I go to the countryside."

Cacho Paez, who mans the grill at the 1880 steakhouse in Buenos Aires, agreed.

"Beef from feedlot cows is more tender, but it doesn't have as much flavor," he said.

Feedlot cattle producers brush off the complaints.

"Flavor is subjective. Argentines are developing a growing appreciation for beef from feedlots," said Rodrigo Troncoso, the head of a trade group representing feedlot companies.

Feedlot use has grown in part because of government subsidies aimed at stimulating beef production to meet growing demand both at home and abroad.

Argentines are the world's most voracious beef eaters, consuming nearly 154 pounds (70 kg) a year. Local beef prices are a hot-button political issue, and the government has curbed beef exports to tamp down prices while at the same searching for ways increase supply.

Beef experts insist grains-fattened beef has its advantages, including better production consistency and an intense red color, which frequently catches the eye of consumers willing to pay higher prices.

And feedlot operators say their method has helped keep production stable despite the increased farming of soy and other grains.

"Farmers now see they can produce a more consistent product and they have more land to farm, which generates more profit," said Troncos

hey hey clickivisisisisisisiisisisiisists....



clickety click this side of the pond

xxxx

Beautiful Izzie!

sitting in Kingston, taking a break from cooking with hamburgboy, clicking

thanku Beth - all your colours girl - shades of burgundies and reds and coppers and yellows and ambers and auburns and greens and... and... and...

love the autumn

will you give PaPa a big hug from me please.... all love to you and HIM. xxx

Will do!

You're right, I do love all of the autumn'y colours.

clicked and cooked and clicked and cooked and clicked and crock-potted it all