Gonzo Ecology

sidetracked

2011-10-31T03:53:00.006-04:00

Schidea kaalae

...sidetracked by plants. Settling back into life in Hawaii and while most my days are spent writing about Arnhem Land and savanna fires, there are plenty of distractions to be had here - plenty of opportunities to get back into the mountains.

the Ko'olau

Learning your plants in Hawaii is different...it is arguably the world's most eccentric flora. This is largely a result of the islands' radical isolation from the rest of the continental land masses. Beyond having one of the world's highest rates of species endemism, the plants here have evolved into magnificently unique forms... California tarweeds to the agave-like silverswords on the larger volcanoes, delicate violets from the Arctic gained woody stems (protection from maurauding flightless geese?), nursery bellflowers to tufted shrubs imagined by Dr. Seuss.

The plant ID skills you pick up here may be irrelevant elsewhere in the world, but there's no doubt that understanding Hawaiian botany alters one's perception of the place. Finding native plants usually involves a good climb up the mountain, literally into a different world. Unfortunately, very quickly along the way, one realizes that native plants are alarmingly scarce.

Cyrtandra paludosa

Its not for a lack of greenery. Hawaii has an amazing amount of forest cover - from state and national parks to Honolulu suburbs where folks' yards back up into rain forest and dryland scrub. Unfortunately the vast vast majority of trees, shrubs, vines, grasses - even birds - that one encounters in Hawaii's lowlands are weeds. Released from more ecologically "aggressive" communities on the continents, these introduced species are competitively superior to native plants and have drastically transformed local ecosystems. Compound this with introduced rats, pigs, insects, extinctions of native birds and undocumented declines of who-knows-how-many invertebrates - all disrupting the processes of pollination, seed dispersal and plant regeneration. The result has been a dramatic and continual contraction of native forest higher up into the mountains and into smaller, more isolated patches in the lowlands.

The Oahu PEPP gals with Cyanea truncata - a species down to single digits in the wild

The description is simplistic - only because the actual system is enormously complicated - but this is the general state of Hawaiian native ecosystems. The more gritty details just get, well, grittier. The rarest of Hawaiian plants are so critically endangered that a state-wide program has been developed solely for their conservation. The Plant Extinction Prevention Program's (PEPP) focus is species with wild populations numbering 50 individuals or less. Think about that quantity for half a minute. Then consider that on each island, there are likely 50-60+ species classified as "PEPPs".

The brighter side is that connecting with native plants and learning their story brings a lot of people to action. Organizations like PEPP, the National Tropical Botanical Garden, Army Natural Resources, the Hawaiian Association of Watershed Partnerships, the Nature Conservancy, many state agencies and more provide opportunities for folks to volunteer and even get paid to work at restoring the forests here.

Cyanea truncata flowers - note the Drosophila fruit flies on the left - another Hawaiian species group that has radically diversified

Before heading to Tasmania, both my wife and myself had field jobs here in Hawaii. And now that we're back, Talia's picked it right up again, working for Oahu PEPP. So in between bouts of computer-induced madness (I am paying, one word at time, for all the fun in Arnhem Land), I get to tag along on some good walks, work out the machete on some bad weeds, and decompress in the forest.

Friends from Kualoa ranch wander down a drainage of decent native forest

Is it a losing battle? It can be difficult to be optimistic counting plant populations in single digits. But the conservation community here in Hawaii is growing by leaps and bounds...more energy, more ideas and more people learning, telling and changing the story.

fortunately not everything's endangered - Peperomia oahuensis (?)

Charpentiera obovata

another PEPP - Schidea kaalae - tough flowers to shoot

(and happy halloween)

tucker truck update

2011-10-17T04:15:00.000-04:00

a very cool skype call the other day. typed some numbers into a laptop in the back of manoa valley and a little phone booth in the middle of the arnhem land savannas rang away. let it ring a few times to get someone's attention then hang up. give them time to wander over to the booth, and call again. this time, Bilanjan picked up in the little community of Kolorrbidahdah. we talked story with her and Balang, Wamudjan and Wamud for over an hour and everyone's healthy and happy - the tucker truck is back in action.

the tucker truck

2011-08-24T19:26:00.006-04:00

Starving time. Unfortunately, I didn't write down their word for it.

Spent a few nights at Yaiminyi just last month, an old outstation nestled between a little creek and some stone country outcrops at the eastern edge of the Arnhem Plateau. The first day there, the two of us balanda (whitefellas) went gatum (up river) to count trees as diligent botanists do. Balang and family walked gandji (down river) for the day, doing manwurrk (burning country) and hunting gomdow (long-neck turtles). By the time we returned to camp, they had already roasted two gomdow on the coals for lunch, two more were kicking around in an old flour tin next the campfire.

"Garreimun gomdow molam?" ('We eat turtle tomorrow?' Bits and pieces of language were coming back to me from the year before.)

"Maybe, but maybe we save them for when starving time comes."

And I crack a joke: "You mean till the Tucker Truck comes next week?"

"Nah, no more Tucker Truck."

"No more Tucker Truck? Since when?"

"Since…maybe after you and Talia left in the dry season - last year." No joke.

The Tucker Truck has been servicing central Arnhem Land for over 30 years - every dry season and as long as roads stay open through the wet. For families at outstations, its their lifeline to the goods and services of town - especially in communities like Kolorbidahdah where no one has a working vehicle. Every two weeks, the Tucker Truck rumbles out of the government settlement of Maningrida on the coast and makes rounds to the 30 or so remote outstations serviced by the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation (B.A.C.). Flour, sugar, tea bag, milk powder, tin meat, and baki (tobacco) are the local staples. It also provides other necessities like lighters, flashlight batteries, and fish hooks and line.

Or rather, provided them. The program manager for the Tucker Truck stepped down last August and Bawinganga has yet to resume the program. What this means is starving time - an old, old word with an unfortunate new resonance. Balang and Bulanyjan had told us about a couple harrowing, hungry weeks during the wet season – a 20 km walk with their 6 and 3 year old to a neighboring outstation for food, the B.A.C. Rangers bringing in supplies another time by helicopter. Yet we simply assumed the Tucker Truck couldn't reach the outstation because of flooded roads. Instead, over the past year Balang and his extended family at Kolorbidahdah have been relying on "bush tucker" – fishing, hunting and gathering food from the rivers, billabongs and savannas surrouning their home – as well as the occasional lift to town from the Rangers and family from other outstations. But being one of the furthest communities out and at the end of the road, life in Kolorbidahdah has fallen on tough times.

In central Arnhem Land, the outstation "movement" began around the late 1970s in order to give Aboriginal people the opportunity to leave the government and missionary settlements like Maningrida and move back to managing and living on "country" they've come from. And the very cool part is that it is their country – Arnhem Land has been officially recognized as Aboriginal territory for decades. In order to fund the whole enterprise, the Australian federal government established the Community Development and Employment Program (CDEP). The CDEP is essentially an alternative form of government assistance, wherein Aborigines are provided housing and a living stipend for managing their lands at the outstations. The whole program is highly controversial among whitefella Australians. To many, the CDEP is simply living "on the dole," (though payments amount to less than welfare) and they question the use of tax money to resource tiny and remote communities.

The alternative argument, however, makes both economic and humanitarian sense. Bininj (Aboriginal people) highly value their relationship with country and those who choose to live on outstations generally retain healthier and happier lifestyles. Fishing, hunting, making didjeridus and other other traditional crafts, and all the stories which connect living and ancestral bininj to the land...these things are too often lost when people leave their country. And for bininj who settle in larger towns the social and physical woes of alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence, and preventable diseases such as diabetes are appallingly higher than for the average Australian balanda (whitefella).

Balang and his family are incredibly resourceful – the diversity of foods that bininj exploit is mind-boggling. And with no Tucker Truck some "long time, old time" methods of food production have gotten a cultural dusting off. They showed me photos (taken with their mobile phone of course) of a huge fish trap they built across the river during the wet season – something Balang hadn't done since he and his brother were kids living out on remote country with their father, far from the Tucker Truck. They had also begun revisiting old yam beds that haven’t been managed for years. Although bininj are technically considered never to have practiced agriculture, garbara (yams) are a staple resource that was carefully managed through weeding, transplanting, and protection from fires. Very cool, but also very easy to view this knowledge and resourcefulness through a lens of nostalgia and romance…the danger is not realizing the suffering the comes hand in hand with such a dependency.

To have the choice and option of bush tucker is a cherished part of life in Arnhem Land. But to expect bininj to live off the land like the folks of "long time, old time" is unrealistic and fundamentally inhuman. If the Tucker Truck fails to resume, it is inevitable that Balang and his family will move to Maningrida. Kodjan, Balang's mother has already left Kolorbidahdah. They don't want to. Balang's grandfather took his family there in the 1950's – a three day walk from their country far to the south. After two days in town he decided marek (nope). He turned around and marched the whole family back home – where he felt they belonged. That decided Balang's lifestyle. He grew up hunting wallabies with mangole (throwing spears) up in gobahbat (stone country) and hearing his grandfather's and father's stories…incredible, but again, a dangerously romantic and nostalgic. It was a day's walk, but throughout Balang's childhood, even they had dry season access to the Tucker Truck.

There was rumor in Maningrida that Bawinanga might start the bugger back up soon…never thought I'd put so much hope into the bloody Tucker Truck!

Stone Country Dimensions 2

2011-07-28T08:56:00.003-04:00

Macrocosmos...

the stone country is a universe unto itself. seasonal, eternal, and as expansive as your imagination.

yet as wide and wild as this landscape seems, the human footprint (and handprints and more) is everywhere, and has been everywhere, for longer than history can fathom.

Stone Country Dimensions 1

2011-07-07T09:13:00.010-04:00

Arrived in Darwin to bushfires filling the sky. Back in the Territory. Four little walkabouts on the Arnhem Plateau in Kakadu National Park since then and some imagery is long overdue. Days in the field have passed counting trees and shrubs, getting species jumbled in my head. But spending plenty quiet moments too, getting lost in the colors and textures of the Stone Country. I've finally invested in a lens that can capture something of it (Pentax DA 35mm macro). Rather than the play-by-play story of field adventures (and endless landscape shots), here's a handful of fotos exploring the Stone Country's inner dimension....

Lithomyrtus cordata

Eucalyptus alba (?)

Grevillea liko

plant hopper

Arnhem sandstone

Myrsine sp.

Jacksonia remota

assassin bug

Urtricularia fulva

Boronia grandisepala

friendly face

Pityrodia quadrangulata

Tasmania - west coast goodbye

2011-04-28T02:01:00.007-04:00

Here I am in paradise: warm water, easy wave access, and - the bottom line - friends and family.

Yet somehow dreaming of 4 milimeters of rubber, the summer days that never were, watching point swells do the same...the tough love of Tasmania...

here's one just for fun.

I had a mad mad run out of Hobart. Lying in our bedroom in the "summer" evenings' ever coolness Talia says, "We have to move out of the house." Family comes first. Studenthood is geographically flexible, Talia is all too ready to wrap up work at the cafe. So 10 days till Talia's flight out, 20 days till mine, we decide to cut our tethers. Our friends offered more help than we needed, plenty places to stay when we return. And we did it - lease signed over, car on the market, boards under friends' houses, our treasured posessions - all 86 kilos - packed, and repeatedly packed, into 4 separate bags for us and friends to check onto flights. Borrowed a wallaby spring-scale from the school and hoisted luggage for an evening to get the weights perfect. Ran ourselves ragged sorting drawers, clothes, and things, dropping bags at the goodwill store, deciding what stays, what we need. Yet underneath the frenetic current of sorting and chucking and packing was a sense of serenity - we don't need much - everything else was a burden unshouldered - and our families would see us soon.

Talia was off first. Only a minor meltdown at check-in, as the robotic counter lady repeated the $400 price tag for the extra bag, over and over. "Thanks for your help, I'll take it back to the car." There were many things still left to do once she left...little things mostly, getting extra boxes, bikes, canoe, and surfboard donations wherever they needed to go. But I had another very important task, a matter of some adventuring to do.

Tasmania is a tough lover to be sure. And, selfish as they seem, the mad journeys folks make through this crazy landscape are more for Tasmania herself, to show the place how much respect you have. And, also to be sure, you must respect this place, oftentimes simply to survive it. So, in the most literal sense, I felt I had one more jaunt to give, for now, before leaving.

Tassie also doesn't make it easy to choose - ocean or mountains - you cannot go wrong in either direction. But with most my camping gear boxed up and headed to Darwin, the simplest choice was the sea - boards were staying on island and my wetsuit would travel by trashbag in carry-on. Car's still for sale, though - a trickier one. Screw it - I leave the keys with my housemate, even field an interested buyer via my mobile, and four days before my flight out I jump the bus to meet my mate Trout in Launceston.

Sunday morning I roll in off the Midlands highway on Tassie's Own Redline bus. Trout had a big one the night before - as did I, packing bags though not beers. Either way we're both a bit of a wreck. I throw my boards in the ute and we go to his place to load up for a trip...the winds have gone easterly - perfect weather for the West Coast.

"Where the fuck is Stuey? Probably on the fudge. That's what he's done." - Trout. And so on went the running half-joke over the 4 hour drive through Tasmania's bible belt westward. Stuey had the key to the devil shack - we'd pass by his house on the way out - but we're gunning for an evening surf and can't reach him. So we stall ourselves in Stuey's hometown, Smithton - a town the proper size and strangeness of a real frontier. To the south lies stark, maddening wilderness, the second largest tract of temperate rain forest in the world known - the Tarkine. We are riding the fringe. The sun is dropping low, but the shack is worth the wait.

Shacks, you see, are a way of life in Tasmania. Many dot the tracks crossing the island's vast wilderness areas - the highland lake country, ever-remote coastlines, all throughout the national parks. Many are still open to any passing traveller requiring shelter. Others have been padlocked over the years - either due to visitor neglect or disrespect. Some only require knowledge of place, but the upper echelon require a key. And access to a locked shack is a privilege which one reveres.

In the eleventh hour we are frothing to see the ocean and Stuey calls back Trout. "Come on up to ol' Mick's place." We venture on a road south, wending our way through the surreal green pastureland, the last curve of rich, tillable earth before the leached out skeletel soils of the Tarkine. The beef here, they say, are raised on the cleanest grass in the world. If air quality sets the standard, this is no lie. Stand into the prevailing westerlies, facing the southern ocean and the next piece of land out there is South America. So breathe deeply, there's two-thirds a world of ocean to clean the air filling your lungs.

Up at Mick's were invited into the barn for a beer. He and Stuey are getting ready to lead a 4x4 trip to the South Cape - a gnarly track down the Tarkine Coast from Arthur River as far south as you can drive. Trout tells them I'm working on Aboriginal burning up north and Stuey gets straight into the Aboriginal history of where we stand. "That shack, its in a crazy place, a special place." In short, as white Australians expanded the agricultural frontier westward from Hobart and Launceston, the Tarkine Coast became the last stronghold for local Aboriginal clans. "Because this was the westernmost place with good soil. The shack sits right on the line." While Aborigines had lived off the rich marine resources of the Tarkine coast for at least 40,000 years, towards the end of that terrible history the West Coast literally marked their final stand, the last foothold of a cultural legacy so long-lived, we really can't imagine it.

Stuey hands us the key. "Have fun boys." And as we're pulling out, Stuey yells over his shoulder, finishing a piss in the yard, still shaking his willy, "And Trout, get to the hahdware store and get yahself a copy of the cunt!" Get it done.

Only a half hour to the coast and the low sun is making the world all fat and brilliant with color. "Shit, don't forget the roadkill." Did you forget the name of the shack? The spot marks yet another frontier - devil country. Tasmanian devils are getting knocked out across the island by a facial cancer so aggressive its actually contagious (as they bite each other eatin' and fornicatin' - for real). Out west remain the last populations of devils as yet unaffected by the disease. And the best way to lure them in for a peek is nice bloated roadkill. Load 'em up.

Just after dusk, we pull off the Arthur River road up to the gate barring the track to the devil shack. I get out to scope it. We gun it through a pretty boggy section, takes a couple solid frame-shots, but we make it no worries in Trout's 2wd Mitsubishi. The shack sits on a bluff maybe a half kilometer from the water and overlooking a sweeping white crescent beach fringed at either distant end by the red rocky points endemic to Tasmania. First things first - get the rotting wallaby carcasses out of the back, drag 'em round the scrub surrounding the shack and string 'em up to the metal post cemented into the ground. Pull out the car battery to power the lights inside, pop open a couple stubbies of Corona, and enjoy the panoramic fade to nighttime.

Next morning we pull out for the beach - wind's still offshore but we know we're only pretending to see lines on the ocean...the surf is tiny when we arrive at the overlook. And at the moment we're feeling deflated, over it, the frenchies pull in. Gerard, who I have met before through the university, is on a road trip up from Hobart with his brother. Fortunately his enthusiasm was just contagious enough "Kiman guys - jest to get awet." We suit up, grab our fishes and paddle out into the waste high waves - as the Aussies say - just to have a dag.

Weird moment number one at the pub that evening. We're onto our second round of Cascade Stouts, shooting the shit with the locals. In rolls Pierre Cardin, pink button-down tucked in, nice slacks, polished shoes, sits at the counter and orders a bottle of red.

"You boys got the boards out there? Get any surf?"

"A bit - only waste high - just down the road."

"Wait a minute." Things suddenly turn dramatic. He looks at us quite seriously. "It was waste high down there?"

"Yeah...maybe waste high."

"Shit." He slams the wine in his glass and looks to the bartender. "Keep the bottle behind the counter."

Trout and I look at other...what?...then look at Pierre, "What's up, man?"

"Arthur River boys. It'll be firing right now." With that, buddy runs out the door. The bartender takes the wine bottle and wipes down the counter.

Its 5:30 pm, maybe 2 hours till nightfall. We tilt back our beers. "Whatya reckon?"

"Gotta go check it out."

So back in the ute and make the run down the cost to Arthur River. As the road dips down to the single lane bridge we get a first glimpse of feathering lips waving to us over the dunes. We cross the bridge and pull into to the tourist area overlooking the river mouth - of course its called "The end of the world." The sun is laying low, winds still offshore and to the north several peaks are A-framing beyond the huge rock lying off the beach.

"Where the F is buddy?" We're scanning the beach, the water, we even went back to check for fresh tire tracks to the beach track heading south. Meanwhile its approaching dusk and we're staring at these peaks rolling offshore, staring at the churning tannin-stained river entering the sea...then staring back at the waves.

"Why is nobody out?" Why? Because its the spookiest set up imagineable...cold water, sunset, rivermouth, way offshore. Shit - we need more recon on this. Buddy is nowhere to be seen. Shit...lets go get another beer.

Weird moment number two at the pub that evening. I stay in the car, Trout goes in for ice. One of the local old mates grills him immediately, "How was it?"

Trout: "We didn't paddle out."

Old mate: "Why not?"

Trout: "'Cause it was bloody spooky."

Old mate: "Whaddya mean, spooky?"

Trout, looking at old mate a bit funny: "Ya know, spooky. Rivermouth, sunset..."

Old mate: "And what?"

Trout: "C'mon mate, looked pretty sharky out there."

Old mate #2 pipes in: "Nah."

Old mate: "Nah."

Old Mate #2: "No shahhks out there, mate."

Trout, looking at old mate # 2 a bit funny: "Ya sure about that, old fruit?"

Old mate: "So how big?"

Trout: "I don't know. Maybe 4 feet."

Old mate: "Whaddya mean maybe 4 feet."

And so on and so on as if testing Trout's whole oceanic worldview - within a minute Trout's found himself hip deep into some weird interrogation and somehow defending his whole history - growing up at Margaret River, Rottnest island...what the hell is going on here? He suddenly checks himself. "Reckon its time to go, mate. Nice chat."

Meanwhile I'm watching this through the glass door of the pub, thinking old Trout's getting some more inside info - at the very least finding out what happened to Pierre Cardin. But he comes out bewildered. "I don't know what the fuck that was." And proceeds to relay the interaction. Scratching our heads, a bit downtrodden, we crack one for the road and try to beat the dark back to the devil shack.

"We'll get 'em tomorrow." The waves we mean. I failed to mention also the night before no devils came. So our bait had an extra day to ripen, an extra day to draw them in with its sweet sweet stench. After a feast over the propane cooker, we crash out on our board bags on the floor, silently hoping the abundant huntsmen spiders won't creep across our faces.

(not a devil)

1 AM. Trout, in whisper: "Dude, wake up." No way. I spring up knowing instantly what he's on about. We peer out the panoramic front windows with our flashlights. At the edge of the clearing, like a miniature bear, a devil has its snout raised, sniffing the wind. The light makes it pause, but those dead carcasses are so tauntingly close. Cautiously, it eases into the clearing - its stocky, maybe 40 cm tall, with little bear-like ears, a shiny black coat with a bib of white fur under the chin, the hindquarters sporting a stiff, stubby tail in that slightly awkward way that is peculiar to marsupials. The devil comes in, grabs one of the carcasses by the leg and tries to pull into the bush. The yanking builds in violence, but our zip ties hold strong. We switch on the spotlight out front. The devil backs away again but soon sniffs the air and cannot resist. Accepting the fact that the meal must remain stationary, the devil starts prodding the good bits. It nibbles at the gut and the bloated cavity suddenly deflates.

"He's in!" As cute as the devil was when it walked into the clearing, watching it bury its snout deep into the rotting bowels of a dead wallaby shatters any possible teddy-bear analogy. It works up into the internal organs first - seemingly seeking out its favorite bits - the sweetbreads, I'm imagining, the thymus, liver, pancreas. It takes its time, we sort of drift in and out. Later, I wake to the sound of bones being snapped and gnawed, the devil has moved onto the legs. Sorry, no photos here. When you get a group of devils they're easy to sneak up on, distracted as they are quarreling and snapping at each other over the carrion. But ours was solo and a bit timid, bolting everytime we tried to get close.

Next morning, the devil is long-gone, but there is enough carcass to go around another night at least. Too bad we'll be heading back to Launceston that evening - I've got a flight to make in a day and half. We pack up our gear, put the battery back in the rig, donate our extra food and firewood, and head back to the little bay we surfed the first morning. On the track in we run into two of Trout's mates that live up the road, Salty and Macey.

"Nothing happening down there, boys. Heading to Arthur River."

"We're right behind you." This again? Nah - this is how it was supposed to happen the day before. We shoot back down to the river mouth, happy to put our luck in the hands of locals. Back at end of the world, we duck in under the gazebo, out of the rain and tuck into breakfast. Once again we're staring across the river at the peaks just north of the big rock. Its a bit bigger and even cleaner than last night. "Dude...where are they?" Crap, not again...then suddenly there's old Macey, his helmet a tiny white dot as he kicks out on his kneeboard. Up ahead Salty's almost made his way to the peak. "We're out there." As we finish brekkie, we see Salty whip into the left we had been drooling over the night before and take it 300 meters down the beach before kicking out.

We get in our wetsuits under the cover of the gazebo, drive the car back across the bridge and follow the beach along the Arthur river, trotting through the graveyard of driftwood to the break just up the coast. Its a tangle of rocks at the beach, but the paddle out is way more mellow than it seems. When we get to the line-up we get shit-eating grins from Salty and Macey. Only 5 of us out, everyone simply stoked, and we spend all morning shouting each other into 4-5 foot rights and lefts peeling off the outer sand bank. Four hours later, surfed out to all hell, we're back on the beach staring at the empty lineup and pounding a bag of local cherries with our new mate Udlis.

"How was that?"

"Unreal. Problem with this spot is its usually just too bloody big." The skeletons of rain forest giants strewn across the beach and up into the dunes confirm his claim.

"Hard to leave it today, anyway." No shit. Udlis is wrapping up his summertime Tassie migration, off to trim grapevines in Victoria as a private contractor. "Good gig - at least for now - let's me come and live down here in the off-season, even sneak an Indo trip here and there in-between."

Until next time then, mate. We hike back down the beach, half-drunk from the sea, and unwind at the car with a stubbie. There are a couple spots to check as we meander north. We pull back into the first little beach break of the trip. There's a little crew parked down on the beach and a few guys out inside the cove. The winds are dead, the cloud cover bringing an early evening feel to the afternoon. As we watch the lines bend and push into the bay a mist is slowly creeping in off the water. We spot Macey down at the lower overlook and head over to shoot the shit.

We talk about his stained glass work and how we should play some mandolin next time we make it down.

"Any stories about this spot in particular," I ask.

He gets what I'm after immediately. "There's powerful history all around this place."

He gestures to the giant shell middens looming above us and the beach, marking the old encampments of its former stewards. This history is still alive here in Tasmania - all the struggle of settlers staking their lives at the ends of the earth and all the guilt and horror of a genocide. And while many may choose bury this history - how easy, sitting in the cafes of Hobart town - folks living on the West Coast confront it everyday - and keep it part of their story.

"Ya going back out?" Trout asks Macey.

"Maybe not tonight...I'll be here tomorrow too."

No worries, old mate. We run back and suit up at the ute, grab our boards and surf head-high waves in the bay till dusk, till we can barely paddle. Its almost dark and we pull out towards the main road, dodging wallabies and pademelons, as you do in Tassie. The mist turns to rain and fog. Have a piece of fudge, its gonna be a long haul back.

We make it to Launceston before midnight and crash hard at Trout's place. I'm on the 9 am bus back to Hobart the next morning. I've got about 20 hours till my flight to Hawaii. Still got a couple surfboards to leave with friends, some things to lock up at school, a last minute deal to try and sell the car, a few more goodbyes. Little things, really. I've already given Tasmania the goodbye I owe her. At least for now.

Manwurrk

2010-12-07T02:40:00.018-05:00

For a Balanda like me, a whitefella from the far far northeast - burning country (manwurrk) with Aboriginal landowners was certainly something out of my sphere. I went to Arnhem land with a research plan in place and that plan depended on having Traditional Owners, our friends at Dukladjarranj, help us light savanna fires. The question at hand is whether and how these cool fire-sensitive conifers - manlarru or Northern Cypress (Callitris intratropica) - can actually suppress these fires. (turns out they do....quite an amazing ability for a plant if you think about it).

In tropical savannas all over the world, it is rare for any given patch in the landscape to go for more than a year or two without getting burnt. And in northern Australia, people have been setting those fires for more than 50,000 yrs. For Balang and his countrymen in Arnhem Land, fire really is nothing - burning country is just what you do when you're in the right place at the right time. Wamud, 2 yrs old, learned to strike matches and lighters before our eyes. His mother Bulahnjan would show him a decent clump of grass and he'd work his little fingers on the flint till he set it ablaze.

It goes without saying I had a lot of catching up to do. Fire here is just part of the landscape, the ecology, and the culture. Despite how well I know this, understand this, study this, there was such an overpowering sensation of nervous energy - anxiousness, even trepidation - when it came to letting those crackling matches sail from my own finger tips into the grass.

Then of course there's another side - the pyromaniacal 5-yr-old residing in us all (though still way behind Wamud). Fire exerts such an instinctual and emotive force on our psyche. All mixed up with the sensation of absolute irresponsibility, chucking matches left and right, was childlike delight in mayhem.

Understand though, this was far from chaotic arson in the bush. With Balang's guidance we were setting our fires to target the transects we had set up through stands of Cypress. Of course what the fires did past the study site was beyond our control. I will say we were playing quite conservatively. It was relatively early in the dry season after late rains, meaning fairly wet grass, and the local Djelk rangers had already lit fires along the jeep track about a kilometer downwind...leaving extremely limited potential for disaster.

But after the 4th fire we lit, I almost vowed to stop. It was a fairly unspectacular burn. We waited a bit too late in the day and the trade winds were all but dead. We lit the fires with Balang and Bulahnjan and the bloody thing was taking so long to reach our study transects, they decided to walk home. Eventually the site burnt and we got the data we wanted. With the sun filtering magically through the smoky evening, we walked home too.

Two days later, I returned to check out the scene of the crime and scope out the next spot we wanted to burn. After finding a couple decent patches of unburnt Cypress nearby, I traversed North to look for more. After about half a kilometer, the thigh-high bunch grass gave way to a fresh burn. And relative to the little patches we had lit up so far, this burn was bigger, much bigger. As I gazed to the north and west, taking in its full extent...then followed its lines back eastward, behind and upwind from where I had just come, my heart sank. This was my fire. How else could it have burned? The back burn. Fires are certainly driven by the wind, but they can also creep upwind from the ignition point and sneak around the place in all sorts of devious ways.

Shit...this was way bigger than I had intended. My rational brain fought to keep things in perspective. All in all, it was probably less than a square kilometer in size - still very small by Northern Territory standards. But these thoughts fought hard against my emotional reaction - the weight of realized culpability and consequence. The freshly burnt country ran all the way west to the jeep track and stretched long and wide to the north where some low rocky country probably (hopefully) caused it to peter out.

No more burning, I said to myself.

What a silly thing - how unaccustomed was I to being part of this force that's so commonplace in Arnhem Land? More rationalization ensued. Its just a speck (and really it was), as I continued walking through the low charred stems and ash. It would have burned anyway (but then not by my hand). Nope. No more burning. And so on went the inner dialogue all the way back to camp...

A silly thing indeed - a very Balanda reaction - I've wrought such destruction! How melodramatic. This little fire seemed so huge to me there on the ground. And yet I knew the whole time that in the grand scheme of this landscape, my fire really was nothing. We burned again - three more sites. And after all was said and done, you know what? I went back and tracked the back edge of that 4th fire - the one I thought got away - and it didn't connect. That big patch burn wasn't even mine - it was burned from helicopter by the local Aboriginal Ranger crew. What did I tell myself? It would have burned anyway.

And now its months later back in Tasmania...I'm armpits deep in data analyses (thinking thinking thinking about our amazing friends the Cypress trees) and about to tuck into some serious writing. But to really write about fire I wanted first to remember living with fire - as if I'm afraid to re-acclimatize to the predictability and control of our "modern" life. So I get to relive my own little coming of age with burning country, experiencing savanna ecology live. And my heart still jumps at the thought of those fires, drifting and flaring through the grass. Ironically, the utter beauty of burning country - its wildness and unpredictability - belies the fact that it may ultimately have left the mark of humanity upon an entire ecosystem.

But all abstract reasoning and philosophical waxing aside, fire is a beautiful thing.

**photos taken with a Pentax k10

Mago Monster

2010-10-13T09:31:00.010-04:00

The austral winter has already given way to the hot season in Central Arnhem Land. Its been weeks since we left and I’m left haunted again by the beauty of this place and its people. As I slip back into the crankpot drudgery of datasets and computer models, it begins to feel like a dream - 6 weeks in Arnhem Land...cast off from the world of mortals with a satellite phone and a trailer full of food. Magic magic magic.

Music was our entry card. As a gift, we gave our host Balang an acoustic guitar, knowing he played, but not knowing that his own instrument had been broken for a while. For five days straight, no joke, from morning till past our bedtime he strummed that guitar like the Mad Minstrel of the Bush. It is difficult to comprehend, much less describe, the cultural gap between whitefellas and blackfellas in Australia, but as it is written: music is love. Balang’s guitar and my little beat up old mandolin rang into many a night out there in Arnhem Land. And from so many early awkward moments, it helped our family and their family find harmony.

With the juxtaposition of such European instruments in such an un-European place, questions about instruments from Balang’s country were inevitable. Maybe the most iconic, the didjeridu, is not native to all Australia - it comes from Arnhem Land. What began as very simple conversation - a bit of practice in Kune, one of Balang’s languages - inadvertently led to a little adventure.

Balang: ‘Mago, its called. The didjeridu is mago.’

And me, like a child: ‘Ah...mago...’

‘Ngai djarre mago!’ (I like didjeridu)

‘Ngai djarre marnbun mago!’ (I wanna make didjeridu)

‘Molam garrire garinan mago?’ (tomorrow we go and see didjeridu?)

And so forth in my broken Kune, night after night, joking by the fire, plucking our instruments.

Until one day Balang says ‘Gamak, garrire molam.’ (Good, let’s go tomorrow).

Next day I come in from a morning of fieldwork to find a note from Talia, “we went across the river for mago!!!”

Crap - I’m not missing this. So I go after them, cross the river up into proper stone country, following footprints in the sand.

Up by a little creek the track faded. I give a “hui!” and there they are, Talia, Bulanjan, Wamudjan and Wamud, up across the stream hunched over a tree stump.

‘Mangun!’ Sugarbag. The little hives of the beautifully stingless Trigona bees colonize old trees, rock crevices, sometimes straight in the ground.

Get a digging stick and yank a hunk of comb straight from earth to mouth...glorious honey streaming down your hands.

The wax is saved for the mago mouthpiece.

Not too far off, Balang knocks on young Eucalyptus trees (E. miniata and E. tetrodonta), listening for hollow notes. Tree-piping termites (Coptotermes) do most of the work by eating through the center of the stems, but harvesting is only the first step from tree trunk to mago.

The monster mago project has begun. We first talked about mago in the singular. Now we’re hauling eight stems back to our home at Dukladjarranj.

Back at camp, the bark is peeled with a knife, then a rasping file burnishes the mago clean.

Sandpaper preps the surface for painting...ah the paints. Balang and Bulanjan spend days and nights painting in layers...strictly from the earth - charcoal for black, grinding red and yellow rocks from the stone country itself.

Delek, the white clay, requires more work. Veins of the sediment are spotted in the rock, often near, sometimes even in the river. By our camp, another Balang and Wamud pull out delek bit by bit with a rebar hook.

Pigments are mixed with a bit of water and some wood glue to adhere to the mago. A stem from a river sedge makes a good paintbrush, and the designs come from dreamtime stories and imaginations of Balang and Bulanjan.

Couple days later, Balang goes back for more stems. More prepwork and all-night painting sessions.

Ten days later, they’re finished. We roll the mago into a swag and they’re ready to haul to Maningrida, 70 km north on the coast. Why take them away? Along with music, there’s a fair bit of money to made with these mago. In Maningrida, the aboriginal art center accessions his work, cuts him a nice check and later that day, Balang’s back at Dukladjarranj and his ‘didjeridus’ are on their way to Darwin for an art expo. That’s another story altogether...

Bulanjan pulls out a honeycomb

Balang mixing paint

The Wet

2010-06-03T06:07:00.002-04:00

As northern Australia comes into the dry season, I'm looking ahead to a solid month or so of fieldwork in Arnhem Land. This is where my own adventure began in Australia a year ago and it will be good to get back out into the savannas around the outstation at Korlobirrahda. But there have been adventures in between as well. And as I prepare for the predictable sunny days and relatively cool weather which prevails this time of year, its good to remind oneself – and share with everyone else – that there are two worlds at play in Australia's Top End. You see, like hot and cold, light and heavy, silly and serious, you cannot have the dry without The Wet...

dry season (above) to wet season (below)

The Wet is what the monsoon season has come to be known in northern Australia. Ever since the rise of the Himalaya 30 million years ago, the Asian monsoon descends upon the savanna woodlands and tropical forests each year with a steady cycle of storms – dumping 90% of the annual rainfall between the months of December and April. On the Arnhem Land Plateau dry creek beds and trickles of water along the famous Escarpment become raging rivers and waterfalls. After the long dry season, plants can once again transpire and photosynthesize stress free – and they flourish. In the lowlands rivers and wetlands swell and flood, fish and crocodiles follow the waters, dispersing far and wide across the landscape. Other animals flee for high ground, often trapped on islands and even tree-tops during severe floods.

Humas usually flee too – under roofs and into air conditioning. As far as fieldwork is concerned, the vast majority of scientists (the sane) save it for the dry season. Ahhh... predictable, sunny, non-sweltering dry season. It makes sense. In the wet, roads get closed, vehicles get stuck, streams get uncrossable, and its hot, humid, and stormy. But its also incredibly beautiful and alive...so when my supervisor suggested a wet season trip up into the Stone Country on the Arnhem Plateau in January, I needed very little convincing.

Needless to say, the “expedition” was mindblowing. I took a couple friends (whom I cannot thank enough for helping me out) on two 6 day walks in some good Cypress Pine country in some of the more remote sections of Kakadu National Park (for more on the Cypress Pine story check here.) Aside from the logistic costs of wet season field operations – yes we got dropped in by helicopter, it was incredible – the field conditions weren't really all that bad. It rained, we got wet. The sun shown, we dried out – and got hot – and basically hoped it would rain again...which it inevitably did.

But to see the Stone Country savannas sweeping away all flush and swathed in greens, to watch the monsoon storms come ripping over the sandstone outcrops and blacken the sky, to catch a flash of dark fur as another walaroo (an endemic wallaby species) bounded from beneath a rock shelter, to feel the quenching relief of the rain, washing the sweat out of our field clothes once again...these are just an inkling of the many moments that instill the Wet with a mythic and magical quality.

Well with that, I'll let the photos tell the rest. And how about this: You too can enjoy a wet season trip in the Australian tropics – my friend Russell who came with us on the first 6 day walk runs the best guiding company in the business out of Darwin...some of the trips he runs make my little bit of fieldwork here seem like a walk through the garden veranda at the Holiday Inn. Check out Willis' Walkabouts.

the drive through the lowlands with Russell and Zoe

Zoe was a bit jealous of my setup

plant hopper

I didn't mention the flies, did I...

death adder

Petraeomyrtus punicea

another storm approaches

Jim Jim Falls in flood

Brett and Zoe waiting for supper

Stone Country

Allosyncarpia tree in a rain forest patch

Callitrix megacalyx (I believe)

water water everywhere

bower bird nest

what's a swallet?

2010-05-25T04:35:00.006-04:00

What is a swallet indeed? Quite a question to ponder as you wander through a late autumn day in the forests of Tasmania. The giants above? Nope - those are the 500 year old Eucalypts - the worlds biggest flowering plants. The deep dark green around us? Nah - that's the ancient rain forest whose roots stretch back to Gondwanaland - remnants of an ecosystem more than 30 million years old. How 'bout the delicate silence of decomposition?...its not that either. But on a wet wet day like this one the fungi flare elegant and bright like soft corals in a tropical sea. So what is a swallet anyway?

here it is...

the "growling swallet" - its a cave that swallows a river of course

**photos taken with Pentax K10

Cradle Mountain Morning, February 2010

2010-04-29T08:31:00.006-04:00

This little set of photos stood out on its own. An austral summer morning in the Tasmanian highlands. I've been here over 9 months - much too long for these to be the first images I've posted here on gonzo ecology. As you can see, Cradle Mountain National Park is a spellbinding place - and this scene happened just 5 minutes out our cabin door. I promise more to follow soon...

**all photos shot with Pentax k10

Long Island Watershed in Springtime

2010-04-17T05:37:00.008-04:00

As one travels further and further from home, its often easy to forget how special the place you left behind really is. Its been probably 15 years since I've seen springtime on the east coast of the US. This year I was lucky enough to be with my family on Long Island from the end of the winter snows through the full riotous bloom of spring.

Long Island is a crowded place - there's no doubt. But only 25 miles from Manhattan, tucked away on the north shore in my home town, there are a few pockets of woodlands that run behind backyards down into ponds and wetlands which connect through spillways under roads to estuaries that eventually lead to Long Island Sound.

On this visit I actually met a gentleman in the swamp back behind my house who was using a clinometer to measure tree heights. My curiosity piqued, I asked him what he was up to. He had come down from upstate NY to this very spot after reading that the tallest trees on Long Island were the tulip poplars towering above us. How cool is that? How many years had I walked below those giants with no idea how special they were?

Another day I met Kenny, fishing at the pond in a little estate-turned-preserve just down the street. The area only opened to public in 2008 and I had never been there before. But thirty years ago Kenny and his friends used to ride bike from his hometown 12 miles away and trespass here to fish the private, stocked pond. The landowners caught on after a while, but Kenny and his friends got sneakier, started fishing in camouflage. That worked for a couple years till a friend lit too big a campfire and the police started spotlighting them from the road. This day was his first time back to the pond since he was a kid - finally fishing legally.

Its easy to overlook the significance of open spaces like these - especially the tiny bits left amid Long Island suburbia. But having access to these areas is something I never truly appreciated till after I moved away. And as I return to visit my folks year after year, I treasure the simple routine of taking the dog for a walk in the woods by my house.

When the red-breasted robins and magnolia blooms first arrived you could still peek through the hedgerows at the houses beyond and the air still nipped your cheeks. Yet within a single breath, a span of days, the sun brightened just enough and suddenly the cherry blossoms popped, the first ospreys could be seen prowling the bays, and pollen dowsed the cars all yellow speckles. Springtime in full swing. So before the crispness in the air and the all-round brilliance faded away into the haze and fat greens of summer - really, though, before I left to return to Tasmania - I grabbed a camera.

Funny enough, the one I found immediately handy was my old Olympus OM-1 in the closet, probably older than me, and a couple rolls of kodachrome sitting in my dad's dresser drawer. The colors are faded, the grain outright palpable, but the prints just ooze nostalgia. I took the camera for a day or two to try and capture a few springtime moments in the watershed where I grew up. From the woods above my house, through the swamp (home of the giant trees) and to the estuaries which meet the sea. Hope you enjoy and I wish everyone a lovely, lovely spring this year.

the woods

cherry blossoms by a school field

fresh flush of leaves

leaves just starting to show

Kenny's pond

skunk cabbage in the swamp

causeway over the estuary

saltwater marshes

toby appreciates open spaces too.

Arnhem Land

2010-03-25T18:05:00.013-04:00

As most have already heard, I've been living upside down in the Southern Hemisphere on the incredibly beautiful island of Tasmania. As incredible a place as it is, somehow I've gotten myself wrapped up in a project far far away...in Arnhem Land.

here's some background for the current adventure:

The eucalypt-grassland savannas that sweep across tropical northern Australia are one of the world's most flammable ecosystems. Unlike the rest of the continent, the climate there is governed by the Asian monsoon so that 90% of the annual rainfall occurs between December and May. The ecological significance of this is simply that lots of grass grows in the Wet, resulting lots of cured fuels in the Dry. A third “season,” which many folk call the Buildup, is marked by incredibly high humidity and dry lightening storms for about a month before the onset of the rains. This creates the perfect recipe for the landscape-scale wildfires which rage across much of the landscape every year - dwarfing the bushfires in southern Australia which get all the media attention. Yet while these wildlfires seem quite beyond human control, ecologists reckon this wasn't always the case.

Arnhem Land sits squarely in the middle of northern Australia. It is home to one of the oldest continuous cultural groups on the planet with evidence of Aboriginal occupation extending beyond 50,000 years. Think about that number for a minute – its hard to imagine. The stories still sung by these people predate the rise of agriculture, all the world's major religions, civilizations and empires, even the last ice age. What has come from this incredibly long occupation is a very refined set of knowledge and tools for survival in this landscape. And one of the most significant of Aboriginal tools is fire.

Historical and contemporary descriptions of “traditional” management by Aborigines in Arnhem Land and elsewhere in Australia involves burning country – mostly in the early dry season when the weather keeps fire size and intensity low, but some Aboriginal elders maintain that people set fires year-round. Coined as “fire-stick farming,” Aboriginal burning accomplished many things. Fires were lit for communication and driving game animals like goanas (monitor lizards). Flushes of fresh grass after burning attract kangaroos for hunting. Preventative burns also protect sacred site and valued resources like stands of edible fruit trees. “Cleaning country” with fire improves access to fishing holes and other resources like turtles and yams. The landscape-level effects of these management activities, which ecologists are still trying to understand, were likely a reduction in the occurrence of large, destructive wildfires and an increase in the diversity of habitat patches. This last feature – the so-called “habitat mosaic” of mixed age patches of vegetation – has become a key argument in explaining patterns of diversity of plants and animals in savannas across the world.

saltwater crocs abound in the low-lying wetlands - no swimming here

Unfortunately these days much of Arnhem Land stands empty of people, especially in the “Stone Country” of the Arnhem Plateau – the rugged country of western and central Arnhem which straddles the east edge of Kakadu National Park. Aborigines along the Arnhem coast enjoyed trading relations with Indonesian sailors coming for sea cucumbers at least since the 16^th Century, however, white Australians only began “developing” the region around the 1900s. As is too often the case with colonization, the immigration of cattle ranchers and prospectors painted a pretty grim history. Vindictive and often inhuman retaliations by the newcomers against Aborigines defending their lands ravaged entire clans and disrupted ancient trade relationships. In the aftermath of the 1920s and 30s, missionaries further broke apart culture and family, discouraging traditional song and ceremony and forcibly removing “half-caste” children from their Aboriginal mothers. By the 1940s and 50s, as the taste for “western” goods grew and local economies shifted away from subsistence, most remaining families had walked off their ancestral lands in the heart of Arnhem Land towards permanent settlements nearer to the coast. Despite the disruptive and conflictual history, Arnhem Land was officially returned to Aboriginal Traditional Owners in 1976. More recent infrastructure development has provided a few scattered “outstations” where some family groups still hunt and gather traditional foods on ancestral estates. However, the current patterns of human settlement in Arnhem Land are dramatically different than they were into the first half the 1900s.

the stone country

The cultural and economic marginalization of Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land may be less severe than elsewhere, but the conditions of health and education are poor overall. There is effectively a “third world” population within Australia (arguably not unlike the situation for many ethnic groups in “first world” nations). The problem is directly related to lifestyle and livelihoods – those families fortunate enough to live at outstations on ancestral lands and maintain some degree of subsistence activity are generally much healthier and happier. Unfortunately, many Aborigines in the larger coastal settlements face myriad problems brought about by welfare dependence, poor nutrition, alcohol, and the imposition of European social structure on traditional relationships and taboos. Integrating or even establishing common ground between “whitefella” and “blackfella” culture – to provide the educational and economic opportunities of “Western” society and maintain the values, ceremony, and connection with country that define Aboriginal identity – is still a hugely daunting challenge.

magnetically aligned termite mounds

Leroy, enjoying living on country (and my hat)

From an ecological perspective, the effect of this marginalization has been a drastic change in the patterns of burning across the savannas. Rather than small patchy fires set by humans widely dispersed over the landscape, the fire regime has shifted towards huge, uncontrolled wildfires lit by lightening strikes in the late dry season. We are only beginning to understand the ecological consequences of this change. There have been recent and marked declines in populations of many plants and animals – a major concern in areas like the Arnhem Plateau, which is considered a center for species endemism (ie, species unique to this region) and part of World Heritage Area Kakadu National Park. However, directly linking these declines to changes in burning patterns remains a challenge for biologists.

Arnhem Land campsite

green ants

Evidence of Aboriginal occupation abounds in Arnhem Land through the rich legacy of rock art depicting the people, animals, and spirits that once filled this country. Evidence of their ecological legacy may also abound, albeit through something less obvious than artwork. Rather, there is a curious old pine tree that seems very much out of place in a tropical savanna dominated by Eucalyptus trees. The Northern Cypress Pine (Callitris intratropica) carries the flag for the ancient flora of Gondwanaland amid the much younger (by evolutionary standards), fire-loving Eucalypts. Whereas the “eucs” can resprout after burning, cypress pines are much less tolerant of fire and reproduce only from seed. For seedlings to reach the point where they can survive even mild fires requires years without burning. So how are they found all across one of the world's most fire prone ecosystems?

stands of a curious conifer - the Northern Cypress Pine

Before we surmise an answer, there's a bit more to the story. Aboriginal Land owners were the first point out to biologists that dead Cypress Pines provide evidence of destructive fires and poor land management. You see, another interesting feature of Cypress Pines is that the wood is termite resistant (foresters tried to establish a local industry for its timber in the 1950s) and therefore dead trees can remain standing in the landscape for decades . Running with this idea, counts of dead and living stems across northern Australia has revealed that the species is declining throughout the savannas. What's the upshot of all this? Many ecologists believe the declines in Cypress Pine provide the best evidence of an ecosystem-scale response to the changes in burning patterns mentioned above. Because most of these trees sprouted while Aborigines were still managing their country, the running hypothesis is that Aboriginal patch burning allowed Cypress Pines to establish across the savannas in the first place.

sugarbag - native stingless bees (Trigona sp.)

a filesnake

Its a very appealing idea. All the pieces seem to fit the picture. However, ecologists are still trying to prove it beyond a doubt. In spite of the Cypress Pine example, many biologists still contend that Aborigines – and savanna-dwelling people elsewhere – could have had no major effect on the patterns of fire. Or that any effect they did have did not alter plant or animal diversity. Even if we grant that Aborigines did influence fire regimes, merely associating contemporary large-scale wildfires with recent declines in mammals, reptiles, and birds does not explain how these species are affected by fire. Do the fires themselves directly impact populations? Are they causing declines in food plants? Do large fires open habitat and improve hunting conditions for introduced predators like feral cats? The complexity of the issue reveals itself quickly.

low-intensity intentional burns

Despite the biological arguments, Aboriginal burning patterns provide the framework for current conservation efforts in Arnhem Land and elsewhere in Northern Australia. The sad reality is that Aboriginal people will not likely be returning en masse to their ancestral lands. Knowing this, contemporary land managers are attempting to merge traditional knowledge with modern technology, employing helicopters and Aboriginal ranger groups to set early dry season fires across the landscape. As for the Cypress Pine, we know that dead adults mean poor management. The question now is to see whether the species can be used as a benchmark for good management and whether its presence in the savannas may indicate habitat for other fire-sensitive and threatened species.

There are some cool research opportunities here – comparisons between the national park and Aboriginal estates and hopefully some experimental work directly measuring fire behavior. The ultimate hope is that by addressing these types of questions ecologists can advocate for the increased involvement of Aboriginal landowners in conservation programs in Arnhem Land. The strength of Australian research is that it highlights the ecological significance of both human history and contemporary connections with savannas – ideas that may be extended to other parts of the world.

the "escarpment" - western edge of the Arnhem Plateau in Kakadu National Park

flying with Kakadu Rangers setting prescibed fires from helicopter

scar from a hot fire

rangers use rivers as natural fire breaks

Rainbow Pitta - Kakadu rain forest

giant termite mounts, Kakadu

Canyons - sheltered from fires - filled with rain forest in the Stone Country

sea eagles in the Kakadu lowlands

up on the escarpment - no "salties" (crocs mate!), no worries

sunset at Ubirr rock - Kakadu

juvenile jacana, Yellow Water, Kakadu

**photos shot with Pentax k10

Blue Hole

2009-02-18T21:28:00.006-05:00

Yes yes once again its been ages since I've posted anything here. But we had an overnight collecting trip to a spectacular place last week...Blue Hole. The photos speak for themselves mostly, but in order to understand the full power of this zone, it helps to know the topography. The hike follows the river all the way to the back wall and into the corner at the left in the foto above - that's the hole. The top of the wall is essentially the summit of Kauai sitting at about 5,000 feet, marking the eastern edge of the Alakai swamp. Usually a mire of cloud and rain, it is a rare sight to see it this clear. So the Blue Hole is essentially the drain pipe for a giant basin of swampland where a huge proportion of the waters from the Alakai plunge nearly 3,000 feet into a single stream drainage.

About half-way in - rockhopping up the stream with full camping gear.

Coming around the corner where the real waterfalls start. With the amazing weather we had on the first day, the stream was low and safe, many of the falls were dry.

Pinao `ula, the Hawaiian red damselfly mating.

It was about 7 hours with stopping to collect and setting up camp to reach the back wall.

And the closer we got the more gigantic the Hole became. Find Natalia in the lower right corner to put things in perspective.

Looking back down the drainage with a helicopter tour coming in the late afternoon.

Above is the view from back at our campsite the evening of the first day. Clear and beautiful. When the rain started the next morning, however, we had no idea the show we were in for. An hour of moderate to heavy showers and Blue Hole transformed...just look at the fotos above and below.

This is a sight few humans ever get to see from the ground - Blue Hole in flash flood. Safe and sound at our campsite, waterfalls gushed in every direction. But the awe this event inspired quickly changed to concern when we realized we could be stuck up there. Fortunately, the waters subsided shortly after the deluge began and we were blessed with clear weather for the hike out.

Again - here're some video clips - the first taken right when the rain started (trying to motivate out of my hammock) and then moments later the full flood...

More Kauai

2008-10-13T12:44:00.005-04:00

early morning at the heliport

We had a couple rainy rainy weeks of fieldwork here on kaua‘i. It began with four days being a human sponge in the alaka‘i swamp. We went up there with friends from Koke‘e Resource Conservation Project and the Nature Conservancy to hunt and kill weeds in the native forest. The alaka‘i is claimed to the be the wettest place on earth (I think there are a couple other places that get as wet – like the eastern Caroline Islands in Micronesia, or maybe one or two valleys on the low southern flanks of the Himalaya) – but it certainly lived up to expectations.

classic alaka‘i cloud forest

From about 2 hours after the helicopter dropped us off until we hiked our soggy butts out of the bush 4 days later, it went from downpour to drizzle to steady pissing rain back to downpour. For the planet’s highest swamp – perched at over 4,000 ft on the edge of the Wainiha Pali (pali = cliff) – where all the moisture carried by the trade winds collects, condenses, and descends, these were typical “habitat days,” really.

hammocks are beautiful things in a swamp - dry nights off the ground

We were living in the clouds. By day we traversed the inredibly intricate topography with GPS and compass – navigating deeply divided creeks and streams passing through cracks in the ancient volcano, crossing the patchwork of grassy bogs knee-deep in mud and walking/crawling/falling/scrambling through the thick eflin cloud forest. Our first day “targets” – invasive trees marked for death on our maps during a helicopter survey – were only 1.5 km from base camp yet it took us 5 hours just to reach them.

from the helicopter - looking over the Wainiha pali northeast to Hanalei

After a full day in the forest we’d all converge under the little tarp at base camp (there were 11 of us altogether). As our campsite sunk around our feet, we’d talk and laugh, shiver to keep warm, and try not to touch our skin to the sopping wet clothes still on our backs. Good compay for certain but in truth we all were only waiting for dinner – hot, lovely dinner. Then it was off to our tents or hammocks to strip off the wet work clothes and crawl into sleeping bags.

the edge of the alaka‘i swamp along Wainiha valley

Sleepy time was deeply appreciated, for after a night of blissful coziness we all knew we’d have to get up, get out, and put back on the same sopping wet clothes, rain gear, and boots in the cold morning. I had an extra pair of field pants. They taunted me each morning, but what would be the point? We were sponges. It was ankle deep mud just to get to breakfast. And moments later we were soaked to the bone. Just keep movings and at least we stay warm sponges in the swamp.

As horrible and inhospitable as the weather and habitat were, we just laughed it off – all smiles…

And the following week our last limahuli trip came and went this past week. We spent another couple rainy days and nights sweeping one of the drainages in Upper Limahuli Preserve – climbing the ridges and dropping down to pick off the last of the remaining nasty weeds. With the winter rains, the season for invasive plant hunting is coming to a close up there. There is word about some trips to mark out a future fenceline around the upper valley, but budgets are tight everywhere and helicopter rides aren’t getting any cheaper.

As always, enjoy the fotos – post comments!! I need reason to keep writing these silly things.

the terrain behind upper Limahuli valley

natalia, emory, merlin and me

the native hydrangea - Broussaisia arguta or kanawao

another grey, rainy day in the forest

base camp

flying out along the Na Pali coast with our pilot Ken

above and beyond

2008-07-21T18:00:00.004-04:00

Is this above and beyond the call of duty? I have spent the last week of work weeding a cliff. Not my usual job here at the Botanical Garden – more often than not I work far away from the valley in which the garden is situated. But we have a grant to support the full restoration of a cliff zone along a ridge extending into Lawai Valley, right above our greenhouse.

The cool thing about the site is that amid mostly weedy tree species – like haole koa, java plum and christmasberry – there’s a population of a threatened hawaiian plant, Schiedea spergulina. It’s a delicate little thing in the carnation family (Caryophyllaceae) that you only find growing on cliff faces on the south and western side of Kauai.

The federal government has given grants just like ours to people and organizations all over for critical habitat recovery. But most folks are failing to meet the requirements specified in their grants. So that the money isn’t lost, the agency managing the grants is revising many of these requirements. My boss recently approached me to say that now all we need to do is get rid of one exotic species - Furcraea foetida, a type of agave - along the cliff by September 30th and we can collect on the grant.

I never knew taking an arborist course would put me at a disadvantage - I imagined using the skills to collect seeds high up in the canopy…but now the task of removing all the agave from the cliff has come down to me. So I ordered myself some proper tree-climbing gear (we typically use lighter rock-climbing equipment) and got out onto the ropes.

I’ve been harnessed in on the cliff face 7 to 8 hours a day for the past week, cutting back the Furcraea with a handsaw and poisoning it with garlon. I try not to think about how much money an arborist company would charge for the same job. I go crazy enough between the cut-cut-cutting and inhaling herbicide all day.

Guyana Fishin' trip - Part 3 (the end)

2008-07-11T21:36:00.006-04:00

Well – its been long enough. Back to the fishing story. I must admit though at this point it’ll probably be a bit of an anticlimax.

In case you don’t recall, I had just left my PhD position in the Rupununi savannas of Guyana – no more job, no more income, no more jeep, no more free housing in Lethem – but then again, no more job.

I was free. As if to mark the occasion, the day after I got fired (after I already quit – a long story) Dan and Bryan invited me on a fishing trip out into the bush.

“Just walk with hammock and handline,” they told me.
‘Walk with hammock’ meant camping and no way in hell were we really walking. In late March with no rains yet, the leached-out, white soils of the savannas form brilliant, smooth, boiler-plate single track between the villages. Like I said, in the Rupununi most practical folk move around on bicycle.

the Rewa Road with Makarapan mountain in the distance

Our plan was to head out of Annai along the new jeep track to the village of Rewa. Annai sits 5 miles west of “bushmouth” – literally the gateway to the Rupununi. Its the point along the main road from Georgetown where the huge expanse of high Guianan rain forest gives way to the rolling savannas that stretch for hundreds of miles to the west into northern Brazil. About 30 miles southeast of Annai, back into the high rain forest, across the Rupununi River and at the base of Makarapan mountain is the village of Rewa.

Rewa is a relatively young community, having been established at the confluence of the Rupununi and Rewa rivers sometime in the 1960s at the height of the balata-tapping days. Back then many Macushi and Waipishana amerindians moved from their villages in the savannas to temporary camps in the rain forest to work the balata trade. They scoured the jungle for the bulletwood tree, Manilkara bidentata, to harvest its milky latex – the natural rubber called balata. Once collected, the balata is poured into thin sheets and dried into mats. These mats are then rolled up to be hauled out of the bush several at time. With each roll weighing 80 to 100 lbs, it is back-breaking work. The amerindians working these balata camps often established farms and, eventually, some camps became permanent villages like Rewa.

drying out balata

loading rolls of balata into dugout by the village of Katoka

While the balata trade has waned in Rewa, a couple NGOs have helped the village construct a beautiful new ecotourist lodge. Most that make it come to see the giant, prehistoric-looking fish called arapaima that lurk in the waters nearby along with other wildlife like river otters and caimen. The more adventurous and well-funded might be up for the several week journey up to the headwaters of the Rewa river – some of the wildest country on the planet. A guiding friend of mine told me they spotted 12 jaguars on one trip alone, many just basking on the rocks, completely indifferent to the humans drifting by downstream in their boats (check out his site www.wilderness-explorers.com/ashley_holland.htm).

couple bottles of 'duck curry' at the Rewa Ecolodge

Fishing with handline at a pond near Rewa

Potentially more profitable and more sinister is oil. Yes folks its there, sitting beneath the feet of the Rewa villagers and a Canadian company has its sights set (see www.groundstarresources.com/country.html). The consequences of impending oil development in the region are anyone’s guess. Too often in these cases, local villages reap short-term benefits through surveying and construction jobs only to see the long-term profits pass them by into the pockets of the developers.

We do have the same oil company to thank, however, for the jeep trail connecting Annai and Rewa. Until a couple years back, the only way to reach Rewa was via the Rupununi River – about a 1/2 day trip by engine boat or a day and half in dugout canoe from Annai. Now, at least in the dry season, villagers in Rewa can reach Annai and the main road to Brazil in a 1/2 day bicycle ride instead.

Vacquero (cowboy) shack on the Rewa Road

For us, the Rewa road meant easy riding deep into the savannas and access to a couple good fishing holes at the base of Makarapan Mountain. Mid-morning we pedaled out of Annai towards Rewa – Dan and Bryan on their Brazilian Monarks and me on a cheap, borrowed Chinese mountain bike. In the afternoon we came upon a campsite at the edge of a gallery forest bordering a stream and set up our hammocks. Bryan was convinced the pond was just up the road, so we continued on with just fishing gear.

jungle gym - the real thing

We pedaled and pedaled. Five miles? Six? Who knows? We passed through open savannas, shrublands, forest, back into savannas. The landscape changed continuously. Were they islands of forest inside the savanna or islands of savanna inside the forest? Impossible to tell but wherever it was, we were way out in the bush. Finally, late in the afternoon, we arrived at the fishing hole and threw in our lines.

classic Rupununi savannas

pit stop in a bush island

Dry season fishing in the Rupununi will make anyone feel good - its shooting fish in a barrel. As the waters recede throughout the dry season, fish get trapped in ponds and as their food runs out, they become ravenous. Throw in just about anything and you get a hit. In this particular pond the hasa, or armored catfish, were plenty. We caught our fill and before long the sun was setting.

Bryan's fishing hole

a bad time to start the ride back

Well shit - dark was nearly upon us and our hammocks were swaying on trees who knows how many miles away. At least Dan and I had headlamps – Bryan was left to his other senses for the ride back. And just to make the adventure thicker, right after we mounted our bikes, the rain came.

It was hours of blind pedaling through savannas and bush islands – no brakes (remember?), sliding out in the mud, crashing into tree stumps, and falling into stream beds with our headlamps all but useless in the rainy gloom of the night. We were soaked, our toes and shins bruised and bloody from slipping off the pedals in our Havaianas (rubber flipflops), and Dan’s rear wheel was coming loose every 20 minutes. But we were laughing all the way – flipping over his bike on the lonely wet jeep track, trying to crank the bolts down with a leatherman, and pushing off again.

more feral humans

We made it back to camp still smiling through the time warp of the night and commenced with the next mission. Fire. We kept ourselves warm chipping wood with our cutlasses, keeping the flame alive. Meditation through sweat and constant movement. What rain? What cold? We were soaked to the bone, but our fire grew and grew. When we were finally convinced it would survive the weather, the rain stopped. Things began to dry out, we set up the hasa to roast over the coals, broke out the duck curry (rum) and feasted on a huge pot of jumbalaya Bryan had stashed in his bag.

mmm...roast hasa

sweet lovely hammock time

Funny how great adventures so often teeter on the brink between misery and a good time. The night turned out beautifully. A starry sky, stars, jungle sounds, and the dead calm sleep of exhaustion. We awoke to a breakfast of smoked catfish and a fresh rinse from the rainwater collected in my tarp. Compared to the night before, the ride back to Annai was a dream.

Dan and Bryan dig into breakfast

a morning rinse with the night's rainwater

very cool shot of a jumping spider who'd snatched up a bee

the ride back to Annai - the fishing hole far behind near the base of Mt. Makarapan

I had no job, no income, no jeep, no home. But I was free and in company of some wonderful people. I spent the next 2 months visiting the friends I had made across the savannas and exploring little corners of village and wilderness alike. There is no place quite like the Rupununi to make one feel so bloody alive.

Guyana fishin' trip - Part 2

2008-06-15T22:17:00.004-04:00

sunset over annai

I was staying at the volunteer teachers’ quarters at the secondary school by Annai, an Amerindian village on the main dirt road linking Lethem with the capital city of Georgetown. Dan, a volunteer health worker, just rode in from Surama village. His plan was to go out with Bryan, one of the teachers at Annai, and throw handline for hasa (armored catfish) at one of the ponds out in the savanna. As I said, I had just left my PhD position – no more job – which meant no more money, but it also meant no more job. So I did what any sensible Guyanese would do in the same situation – I went fishing.

Dan cruising his Monark through the savanna

It was late March, 2007. Early yet for the rainy season so the savanna around Annai was dry and the roads good. Perfect condition for a bike trip. With the prohibitive price of vehicles and fuel in the Rupununi, motorized transport is very limited for most locals, any volunteers and certainly for an unemployed grad student. And while motorbikes, jeeps, and Bedford cargo lorries do travel the roads, the most prevalent mode of wheeled transportation in the Rupununi is the Monark: the burly, steel-framed Brazilian-made bicycle complete with single gear, fat spring-loaded seats, welded fenders and cargo rack, and no functional brakes to speak of.

Feral humans. Dan and Bryan enjoy a Rupununi energy drink

Dan and Bryan Williams (no relation) had been in these parts for a couple years, victims both of the Peace Corps. By the time we met, they were well-seasoned Rupununi cyclists. A year earlier they decided to bike to Lethem for the annual rodeo. Rather than pedal the 60 miles along the main road from Annai, they planned to cut north into the Pakaraima hills and then turn west, heading for the Amerindian town of Karasabai before cutting back south to Lethem. For three days and nights they pedaled and dragged their bikes laden with camping gear over mountain passes, snuck through tiny villages by twilight, traded cigarettes for cassava bread, and pushed their way through the Pakaraimas. Finally, rather than take the jeep trail out of Karasabai, they paid an old Amerindian lady to paddle them and their bikes across the Ireng River to better roads in Brazil.

google earth projection showing Lethem, Annai and Karasabai (click it for a larger image)

On the morning of the fourth day Dan woke up in their derelict campsite on a lonely track in the state of Roraima. He looked over at Bryan still sleeping and lit a smoke. As he took his first drag he looked up and nearly shat himself. Coming down the road was a line of shiny white trucks, too many – definitely too shiny – for locals. The Brazilian Federales. Here they were, two white kids, a couple of beat up bicycles, no passports, no portuguese, barely any cash, a bag of ganja stashed somewhere, and the region’s entire federal police force bearing down on their campsite. Holy shit.

typical terrain in the south Pakaraimas

Jaw gaping and cigarette burning to the filter, Dan guessed about 60 vehicles were on the approach and awaited certain disaster. But the first truck passed them by. And the next. One after another – white Chevy Suburbans alternating with white pickups carrying ATVS – the entire entourage kept on going with not a glance in their direction. Apparently the police ha bigger business up north. Bryan slept through the whole thing. Holy shit. So what to do? Breath again. Wake up Bry. Light another cigarette? Hell no – roll a joint and beat the hell on back to Guyana.

the tiny village of Paipong. Dan and Bryan passed through here at 4 am on the way to Karasabai

Dan told me that story over rum and poker in his wooden house in Surama village. He never figured out why there were so many federal police in such a remote part of Brazil and why they wanted nothing to do with a couple feral gringos huddled on the roadside. Funny thing was I knew exactly what they were doing. You see the very research project that had so recently transported me to Guyana was originally planned for Brazil in the same lands where Dan and Bryan spent the night. However, exactly one year before, the President of Brazil officially returned those lands to the Amerindians of Roraima State, giving the squatting ranchers and farmers 365 days to vacate.

singletrack through Karasabai

The ranching and farming families, some having been there a couple generations already, were not happy. A school was burnt down in an Amerindian village. People on both sides organized and protested. While the President remained firm, the Brazilian military exercised its jurisdiction along the international border and sided with the squatters. A research project examining Amerindian hunting practices? No need for meddling foreigners - the military claimed the situation was too dangerous. My ex-PhD advisor spent the better part of the year and many round trip tickets between Hawai‘i and Brazil trying to wrangle research permits.

looking across the Ireng River to Brazil

The last day arrived for the ranchers and farmers to move out. Two gringos crossed the Guyanese border in a dug-out canoe. President Lula foresaw violence. For a long, sickening moment, Dan foresaw Brazilian prison. Thankfully, no one that day was harmed. Dan and Bryan and their bicylces made it for the party at the Lethem Rodeo. The ranchers are still squatting on Amerindian lands. We were never granted permission to work in Brazil. And I met these jokers in Guyana.

heli ride home

2008-06-14T18:11:00.003-04:00

just trying this out...

a quick clip of our flight home from limahuli last month.

Guyana Fishin' Trip - Part 1

2008-06-09T22:37:00.009-04:00

map of Guyana (meatnpotatoes.com)

The Rupununi region is named after the river which bends through the landscape of southwestern Guyana to meet the country’s largest waterway, the Essequibo. It is truly a mysterious, uncharted corner of a continent – literally the land of El Dorado, marked on a map by Sir Walter Raleigh sometime in the 1600s. Despite early explorations, most of Guyana’s interior was left largely undeveloped by the Dutch and later British colonists apart from a few ranching operations still carrying on. Sadly, since independence in the late 1960s, much of the land has been concessioned to timber and mining companies by the Guyanese government.

over the river and through the woods - the Essequibo crossing on the Georgetown-Lethem road (photo by Joel Strong)

Fortunately the road connecting the coast to the interior – a dirt track winding from the swamplands surrounding the capital of Georgetown, through thousands of hectares of rambling rain forest, out into the wide open savannas surrounding Lethem on the Brazilian border – is so poorly developed that the mining and timber companies can’t afford to access these resources – yet. For the moment, the land still largely serves the needs of the local Amerindian people who have hunted, fished and farmed here for centuries.

in need of improvements

It is a difficult place to portray in words, the Rupununi. I can tell you about the open grassland savannas sweeping as far the eye can see, the sunsets that make the sky burn bigger than any sky on earth. I can write about the deep deep forest looming at the savanna’s edges, along the rivers and covering the hills. There are the creatures of this landscape – cayman, jaguar, giant armadillos, tapir, brocket deer, tamandua, ocelots, giant river otters, bushmasters, howler monkeys, capybara, macaws, anacondas, etc. – still so chock full it would make David Attenborough drool.

poison arrow frog

jabiru storks out in the savanna

Then there’s the water, confined within the banks of great rivers, oxbow lakes and ponds for the dry season, and confining the fish that filled our bellies. With the rainy season, the water swells in flood, breaching the banks of rivers and lakes to transform the same savannas into an inland sea. While the fish now disperse thin across what was once land, terrestrial animals themselves become concentrated, trapped on islands making easy meals for hunters. The rains come so full and heavy that somewhere out in that wilderness the waters of South America’s two greatest river systems, the Amazon far to the south (via the Rio Negro and the Ireng) and the Orinoco up north in Venezuela, actually intermingle.

the Rupununi by "engine-boat" - a motorized dugout (photo by Joel Strong)

queen victoria water lilies are found in still-water ponds

folks fish here with bow and arrow

hosts and friends Paulette Allicock and her son Frank parch farine - a local staple made from bitter cassava

I can describe the Amerindians that have shaped the very landscape of the Rupununi, setting fires to clear farms and flush game, inadvertently, or sometimes very advertently, thinning the trees that would encroach upon the grasslands. Villages lay scattered loosely across the savanna, with homes never too far from the edge of high forest and “bush islands” where they plant cassava, chilis, beans, gourds and melons and other fruits. The Macushi and Waipishana people of this region smile from bicycles on the road or dugout canoes on the rivers, walking always with cutlass, usually bow and arrows, and often slinging warishis (woven backpacks) loaded with food and firewood.

night-time savanna fires running up the hillside and into the forest (photo by Bryan Williams)

There is a spirit realm there too – implicit and real in the lives of most local people, yet scarcely visible to me, someone who just skimmed the surface of the Rupununi over 8 months. Was it sinister? Nineteenth century explorers wrote about the “demon landscape” of Guyana’s interior, told stories of travelers who disappeared or lost their minds in the wilderness. Despite the influence of missionaries, tales still abound of both Piaimen and Kanaimas - shamans “doing their work” for both good and evil.

a quiver of arrowheads

In the 1990s, an anthropologist documented the “poetics of violent death,” the ritualized murder of Amerindians and outsiders alike by Kanaimas in the Pakaraima mountains on the northern fringe of the Rupununi – he was actually poisoned and survived (check out the book Dark Shamans). Rituals much less macabre – communion with plant and animal spirits for farming and hunting, charms for luck and skill, the appeasement of mischevious forest spirits – were related in bits and pieces, barely revealed in passing conversation and only after months and months talking with local families.

jeep trek into the Pakaraima mountains

why aren't other beer companies catching on to this? (photo by Sean Giery)

Still, this all fails to convey the mad mad potential energy that permeates the place. Potential is the key word here because one passes a lot of down time in the Rupununi. Waiting for friends, hitching rides, whatever is happening happens only “just now” – an interpretive phrase that ranges in meaning from a couple minutes to a couple days. During that down time you gaff (talk story) and generally consume obscene amounts of good Guyanese rum or cheap Venezuelan beer (in fact the Guyanese beer Banks is highly superior, but we were continually suckered in by the Venezuelan’s brilliant advertising). All this downtime is almost a necessity, however, because when it comes to movement through the surreal landscape of the Rupununi, adventures tend to happen in epic proportions.

hen napping in a warishi

hunting fish

the Rupununi side of the Georgetown-Lethem Road

dugouts near the village of Yupukari

Upper Limahuli

2008-05-24T19:43:00.007-04:00

native tree snail in upper limahuli

The actual grounds that the Garden manages here on Kaua‘i cover two valleys. Our headquarters are in Lawai Valley on the south side of the island but we also take care of Limahuli Garden and Preserve which is the last valley before the road ends on Kauai’s north shore. Just off the road near the visitor’s center there are lo‘i (taro patches) and a beautiful native plant section that the public can visit. Behind, in the lower valley there are restoration projects and some areas with rare plants that we monitor (the shot of “my office” in an older post). But the real gem of the north shore garden is the Upper Preserve.

Above the waterfall in the back of lower Limahuli sits a hanging valley that’s only accessible practically by helicopter. Although the forest of Upper Limahuli was devastated by Hurricane Iniki in 1992 (as with much of Kaua‘i’s forests) the habitat is much more intact than the lower valley. In other words, the area contains a relatively high percentage of native Hawaiian plants.

blurry shot from the helicopter of the upper valley's west side

Unfortunately, even in good native habitat like Upper Limahuli, there’s constant war to be waged against aggressive, exotic weeds. Plants from across the world – like Australian tree fern, christmasberry, paperbark tree, African tulip, octopus tree, and many many more – have been introduced Hawai‘i accidentally and intentionally. A good proportion of forest throughout the archipelago is already dominated by exotic plants and in a highly mobile economy like ours, new ones arrive each day (just think of the garden section at walmart, home depot, kmart, etc). Dealing with these tenacious pests for the sake of native plants – especially in the rough terrain of Limahuli – can be more than daunting.

lehua blossoms

Well, it’s summertime and the livin’ is easy…or at least we have clear weather, and the Upper Limahuli season is on. Natalia and I are not part of the full-time Limahuli crew, but we’ve been happily roped into the trips this year to help in accessing some of the steeper terrain. The last week of April was our first trip this year – my first trip ever. We dropped a crew at base camp just above the waterfall while Natalia, Emory – part of the Limahuli staff – and I climbed back in the chopper for a quick ride to the very back of the valley. The plan was to drop us off onto the ridge that runs between the two knife-edge walls forming the boundaries of the valley and spend two days traversing the route down to base camp and mapping invasive trees.

Back in the belly of the bird…We come up onto the back of the center ridge rather quickly and begin to circle, looking for the landing site. Emory and I are in the back seats, no doors, our backpacks clutched between our legs, ready for a quick exit. Natalia is in the front seat and the only one of us with a headset to communicate with the pilot. He started off pretty grumpy this morning, but of course without headsets neither Emory nor I have any idea what they’re talking about up front.

top end of the center ridge looking N down the valley

The pilot pulls the bird into a hover above a narrow section where the center ridge sort of S-curves before connecting to the valley’s back wall. As we slowly lower down, I hang my head out the doorway – the left side – as far as my seatbelt will allow and wonder what the hell is going on. The ridgetop is about 8 feet across, with the slope in front and behind us plunging a couple hundred feet into the ravines below. Despite the small clearing just below the bird, a small copse of ohia and olapa trees stands about 8 feet tall, nearly within arms reach to my left. This is no place to touch down.

We hover for another moment, the skids perhaps 6 ft above the ridgetop, and a decision is made. Natalia snaps around suddenly, motions to Emory and points out the door. Her body language is clear: “NOW!” Emory looks to me for a split second, and I point him out too. “GO, GO, GO!” But of course we can hear nothing over the rotor’s roar. He unbuckles, steps out onto the skid, drops his pack and scrambles down for the 6 foot jump onto the ridge. Natalia looks back again. I’m next. I do the same on my side, dangling my backpack as low as I can before dropping it, then lowering my own self off the skid and jumping.

natalia's exit

I land clumsily and get myself crouched down as low as possible and as deep as I can back into the ohia copse. The noise and the downdraft are tremendous. I’m not anywhere as far from the helicopter as I’d like to be. The skid drifts 4 or 5 feet just above my head and I try to make myself small. As Natalia’s foot sets down onto the skid, I grab for the little camera in my pocket and manage to snap off a couple shots of her exit from underneath the chopper. Classic.

liko (new leaves) of Metrosideros waialealae

And in another moment its over. The helicopter rolls off to the west and we’re left on the ridgetop in the sunshine, set down deep in the Hawaiian cloud forest and amping on the adrenaline still surging through our veins. We let the energy of the experience wash over us until breathing returns to normal.

Now the energy of the place sets in – a mix of awe, humility, and respect. The power and grandeur of the mountain demands it, like compulsory meditation, absolutely superceding the human ego. Another, longer breath. One feels small here but so very much alive.

emory with his giant backpack

Cyanea fissa, a very cool native shrub

look mom, no harness - natalia descends a waterfall

one of my favorites, Scaevola glabra

the heli ride out along Na Pali coast

Lehua

2008-05-04T14:58:00.018-04:00

Our field trips aren’t always into the mountains. Over the past month much of our time was occupied by two trips to Lehua, one of Hawai‘i’s offshore islets. We're headed back this week...

The last surviving pair of Lehua rabbits can no longer be found in the wild. They were put into captivity as part of conservation efforts several years ago. In fact, the same conservation effort nearly wiped out the entire population, all except the two rabbits that will spend their remaining days in a wire hutch in my supervisor’s garage. While a sad story for the animals, it’s a happy one for Lehua, because the rabbits never belonged on Lehua in the first place.

the northwest tip of the islet

Lehua is the largest offshore islet in Hawai‘i. It is the remnant of an ancient volcanic crater now standing 2 miles across and 800 feet high that has slipped halfway into the sea, forming a north-facing crescent island. Lehua lies about 1/2 mile to the north of Ni‘ihau, the last inhabited island of the Hawaiian archipelago about 25 miles west of Kaua‘i. Ni‘ihau is privately owned by a ranching family and is forbidden except for the families of the 200 or so native Hawaiians that still live there. Lehua, however, is owned by the US Coast Guard who have been allowing biologists to study the plants and seabirds on the islet for years.

nw coast of ni‘ihau

sammy the monk seal

The only native animal inhabitants of Lehua are seabirds and Hawaiian monk seals. Rabbits made their debut over a hundred years ago with the foresight of hungry sailors. They reasoned it would be nice to have some game available on the islet in case of a shipwreck. Over the years the rabbits wrought havoc on Lehua’s already sparse vegetation. Recognizing the significance of Lehua as critical habitat for nesting seabirds, the Hawai‘i State Department of Fish and Wildlife had them eradicated about 2 years ago.

hauling gear through the boobies

Although the plants have been recovering since the rabbits’ removal, Lehua is currently dominated by nonnative grasses and shrubs. This is where the National Tropical Botanical Garden has stepped in. As part of a contract with Fish and Widlife, the Garden has outplanted several hundred native Hawaiian plants. The challenge however is that plants are very thirsty when they are trying to establish and as far as Hawaiian islands go, Lehua is extremely dry. Most of the plants are on an irrigation system, so the actual watering of the plants is fairly easy. The tricky part is getting the water to the island. There’s only two options for travel to Lehua: helicopter and tour boat. Being that helicopters cost $1,000 per hour and aren’t very seabird friendly, our boss has opted for the latter.

crew off-loading water jugs onto a surfboard

The tour boat companies have actually been giving biologists rides out to Lehua for years now. There’s no proper landing at the islet, only a couple reef shelfs on the south side so you’ve got to swim in from the boat with your bags and scramble ashore. Otherwise it’s a pretty plush trip. While onboard, you get to play tourist complete with complimentary breakfast, a cruise along the Na Pali coast and whales and dolphins galore. Then after spending a couple days camping on Lehua, there’s lunch and an open bar on the way back. A couple extra mouths to feed and a little show of the biologists landing for the tourists really isn’t a big deal.

Now imagine arriving at the dock at 5:45 AM and greeting your friendly crew with over 100 gallons of water weighing close to 900 lbs, in 5 gallon jugs to load onto the boat. Those biologists suddenly aren’t so cute anymore. But they tolerate us – especially with the heavy handed tip we provide on the way there and back. We help them load and unload the jugs from belowdeck and when we arrive at Lehua a crewmember uses a longboard to swim about 3 jugs at a time from the boat to shore. Its definitely a production but once on island, as I said, its pretty mellow. We use a portable 4 hp water pump to move the water from the shore up into the irrigation tank and aside from a few plants off the system it pretty much takes care of itself.

ridiculous red-footed booby

Exploring the island is fairly amazing, especially now during the seabird breeding season. The first sight to greet you are hundreds of red-footed boobies nesting in the shrubs and squawking in irritation as you pass. The slopes of the crater are also littered with the burrows of wedge-tailed shearwaters which makes walking anywhere on Lehua sometimes feel like a surgical procedure. Further upslope brown boobies nest on the ground and larger burrows are often occupied by red-tailed tropic birds. Over the ridge on the northern slope, the inner side of the crescent, are black-footed and laysan albatrosses cruising the tradewinds like small aircraft and already nursing chicks this time of year.

Back on the south side is base camp – a weatherport with cots and gas stove. The north shore of Ni‘ihau entices you from across the channel to the south with miles of empty, beautiful white sand beaches. And the humpback whales are all but gone now, migrating back towards the Arctic. But during both our Lehua trips in March and April, juveniles and mothers with their calves constantly cruised and breached all around the island.

base camp

condos for wedge-tailed shearwaters

Our first trip over Easter weekend consisted mainly of weeding, watering, and setting rat traps around the native plants. We also explored the Northwest crescent arm, collecting native plant seeds from the only area the rabbits didn’t reach. On our second trip just two weeks ago, Brenda Zahn, a bird biologist on Kaua‘i, accompanied us and we helped her band albatrosses and red-tailed tropicbirds. Pretty darn cute, those albatross chicks - especially when they start barfing fish oil all over you when you grab them for banding. Its gross and the poor guys are losing the lunch for which their parents have been scouring the seas all day. But the benefits outweigh hungry chicks and stinky field clothes - bird banding enables concrete measurements of breeding success and survival of threatened seabirds like the albatrosses nesting here.

a young whipper-snapper

Conservation efforts on Lehua – the banding, the revegetation, the rabbit removal – they’re all for the birds really. Albatross are hit hard by long-line fishing. Both they and the red-footed boobies nest in only three places on the main Hawaiian islands, and Lehua is the only place where they don’t have to contend with dogs and feral cats. Now that the Lehua rabbits are gone, slated next for eradication are the rats, known predators of seabird eggs. While few could argue against planting native vegetation, killing introduced animals is certainly more controversial, certainly the darker side of conservation.

Natalia and Brenda band another one

On the first day of the our most recent trip, we contour along the southern slope of the crater with Brenda to visit a colony of nesting cattle egrets in a kiawe tree. Another modern introduction to the Hawaiian Islands, egrets are also known predators of seabird chicks. Natalia and I came here on our last trip and threw the eggs to the fishes, but didn’t have the heart to do the same with the recently hatched chicks. With years of intimate work with her seabirds, Brenda has no qualms. The helpless chicks from three weeks ago are now running from us on two strong legs. I grab my first one and feel its heart beating in my palm.
“Cervical dislocation,” Brenda yells over to me as she demonstrates by yanking the head and neck of the egret chick in her hands. “This is brutal,” I say to myself.
I take another look at the red-foots nesting in the same tree as the egret colony. I’m here to help, right? Brenda’s onto her third victim already. Before a second thought arises, I yank the egret’s head. The beating heart stops and I throw the body to the sea. Plenty more chicks are scrambling through the kiawe bush. No rabbits, but more dirty work yet to be done.

black-footed albatross and landing gear

waiting for food

sammy's portrait shot

2008-04-21T17:43:00.014-04:00

OK folks, friends, family…its been a long time since I’ve been at this – the internet updates – but as far as work is concerned I have been up to some pretty cool stuff still. The question is where to start?
I’ve had some pretty ridiculous adventures over the past year and a bit – 8 months in one of the wildest regions of South America, a summer botanizing with the Bedouins of the Sinai peninsula, and finally landing a “real job” with the National Tropical Botanical Garden here on Kaua‘i – a gig that’s focused on Hawai‘i but has already taken me to other islands at the farthest end of the Pacific.
I’ve got some good stories piling up and my writing needs to catch up to them. But rather than try to capture all of these in a single, convoluted update, I’m gonna try them one at a time. I’m reclaiming this site (not visited since some 2005 adventures in India) not only to share my current adventures, but also to relate flashbacks of journeys that I’ve failed to share already.

And now for coming attractions off the beaten path – Adventures past and those to come:

Guyanese wilderness...

Sacred landscapes of the Sinai Desert...

Remote Pacific Islands...

Encounters with dangerous creatures....

and Hawai‘i of course...

Now for the update:
For those of you from whom I’ve been completely out of the loop, I’ve been at the Garden for over 6 months already. My official job title is Assistant Field Botanist. But if they gave me business cards I’d use the title, Fruit Mercenary. Got your imagination churning? This is how it works – my position at the moment is funded entirely by contracts the Garden acquires to do habitat restoration projects. The money comes in by charging the contracts for native Hawaiian plants grown in our greenhouse that are planted out. My job as fruit mercenary is to head up into the mountain, the last stronghold of Hawai‘i’s native forests, and acquire seed and cuttings of Hawaiian plants to keep the greenhouse stocked.
It sounds more like business than biology, but all these projects are an earnest effort at conservation here in Hawai‘i. Most of what we use in restoration are common species but we also regularly work with some of the most endangered plants in the world. Too many of these plants have less than 50 individuals left in the wild – this close to the brink, an entire species could literally be lost to a single storm, a single landslide, a single hungry goat. From this perspective, some of the seed we bring in are truly invaluable.
So that’s my “real job” – a salary with full benefits to explore the woods all day and pick fruit. I work most days with another field botanist, Natalia, and as long as we’re bringing in seed we can pretty much choose when and where to go. So for about 3-4 days a week this is my office…

te-rain

2006-02-24T12:48:00.000-05:00

OK some play by play Indian madness...Rolled into Gokarna on the west coast this evening after a crazy mad stressful travel day. Overnight train into Mangalore then the afternoon local express heading up the coast. Getting on the carriage in this bottleneck press of sweaty small Indian torsoes and limbs, my mandolin case handle broke and reaching down to grab it, my glasses got knocked off and down into the abyss below the platform as the press of bodies lurched up and forwards. Scrambling back upright to establish my presence I try to step up and someone has my slipper pinned to the step so I stumble on the train figuring its gone as well. Somehow it stayed on the step and after searching along (and underneath) the train carriage I ended up jumping off to wait for the train to leave to get my lenses. My friend stayed on with a ticket for two and I figured I'd just take a miserable 6 hour bus ride up...but I got a harrowing turbo rickshaw ride (oncoming traffic? what oncoming traffic?) and caught the train at the next stop....now safe and sound near the beach in Gokarna awaiting a supposedly unreal Hindu festival to start on the new moon.

Trying to catch up

2006-01-11T11:52:00.000-05:00

The last (and only) email I sent out to friends and family was pictures from town...the mad mad city life in India. So now is the time to show a bit of the Biligiri Ranganaswami Temple Wildlife Reserve, or the BR Hills for short, about 80 km SW of Mysore, in the state of Karnataka, where I've been spending the majority of my time.

When I say I'm working in the forests of southern India, most would envision a hot and humid jungle. (As a biologist, I have to state that while the word "jungle" does get the imagination firing, science has long abandoned it for terms like "rain forest" or "humid tropical forest"). Actually, where I'm working much of the forest is nothing like the "jungle" one would tend to picture.

(dry deciduous forest)

The forests of the BR Hills look closer to temperate woodlands than anywhere else I've worked in the tropics. And it feels like a temperate forest...more open and dry with lots of deer and elk...that is until you come across a herd of gaur (Indian Bison) or elephants in the woods or spot fresh tiger tracks in the mud.

(Indian bison-came across it injured one day near our study site...
the next day it had died)

Its really the elephants that we have to worry about. I've wandered near bison herds, seen a leopard close by and listened to a tiger attacking a gaur a 100 meters off in the woods. But one of the problems in the BR Hills is the invasive weed, Lantana camara, which grows in huge thickets in many parts of the reserve. Beyond halting regeneration of forest trees, it makes it very difficult to spot wildlife until you are right on top of them, or in the case of elephants, right underneath them.

(steps leading down from the temple)

But its not all wilderness and encounters with birds and beasts. There's an old Hindu temple built on a hilltop near the field station (hence the name of the reserve) so plenty of people from the surrounding towns come to visit. Even within reserve itself little podus (villages) of the local indigenous people, the Soligas, dot the hillsides. The contrast between here and the cities...the cleanliness, the pace of life, and the beauty of the landscape...is pretty stark. All in all I try to make the trek down to Mysore or Bangalore as little as possible.

More to come soon...

(~5000 ft. elevation...the BR Hills!)