Our tour begins with a beautifully landscaped front yard

Imagine this audacious plan: we return our grid of manicured yards into watershed and wildlife-friendly spaces. From a bird or butterfly’s perspective, it would be a transformation from sterile segmented turf fields to bounteous habitat full of nectar plants, insects, hiding places and nesting spaces.  This "Bay-Friendly"
gardens initiative is underway around the Bay Area under the sponsorship of Stopwaste.org. Last weekend some generous, certified “Bay-Friendly” garden owners opened their yards for tours.

A red fox squirrel scampers through the garden

We were able to purchase a tour booklet and tickets to gain entry to meander around and view the seven principles of "Bay-Friendly" gardening used in very different ways.  As their website states, "It’s an approach to landscaping with room for lots of personal preferences and interpretations." The gardens were beautiful, creative, and a great way to bring the natural world into people’s every day lives.

What struck me was the amount of insect and wildlife activity in the featured gardens.  These gardens were busy with insects visiting flowers on the sunny Sunday afternoon.  Squirrels scampered through the trees and a variety of birds were flitting about and calling from the shelter of trees and shrubs.  Like little wildlife havens, the yards were alive with an abundant diversity of plants and wildlife compared with other nearby yards of traditional turf grass and ornamental plants.

Garden creekside retreat featuring water permeable surface and artistic seating area

"Bay-Friendly" gardening also calls for the limited use of pesticides. Toxic chemicals, along with trash pollution, pose big problems to our bay and creeks.  Diazinon and chlorpyrifos are two commonly used insecticides.  According to a report by TDC Environmental, the two are “of great concern, because elevated levels of the two pesticides have been linked to findings of toxicity in wastewater treatment plant effluent, storm water runoff, urban creeks (including all San Francisco Bay area urban creeks), estuaries (including San Francisco Bay), and the Sacramento River.  Much of this toxicity occurs in urban areas, apparently reflecting urban releases—rather than agricultural releases—of diazinon and chlorpyrifos.”

Thimbleberry provides food for native birds and insects

"Bay-Friendly" gardens seem to need fewer pest control measures because the owners strive to create healthier soil conditions, choose plants that are best suited to our climate and location in the garden which, in turn, encourages beneficial insects.  Ultimately this combination keeps the pest populations in better balance.  When control measures are called for, there are resources available to help you choose those least toxic to the environment. Our Water, Our World website has some great resources including a downloadable pocket guide.

The "Bay-Friendly" garden website is a great resource, too, for both home gardeners and landscaping professionals.  There’s an interactive page showing some examples of good gardening practices. There is still one more tour you can attend in Marin County on May 19 to gather ideas for your own "Bay-Friendly" garden.  We’ve also been working on creating a "Bay-Friendly" landscape around the Crab Cove Visitor Center.  Maybe you’ll see us on the Alameda County garden tour, once we get certified, in the next couple of years!

Additional Links:

Pesticide pollution prevention ideas

Sunset Magazine landscaping ideas with less lawn

There are many admirable conservation organizations around the world, but zoos and aquariums have a unique advantage: they welcome 175 million people through their gates each year. On a nice, affordable day out, these zoo-goers can be exposed to conservation messages at a variety of levels. In fact, zoos were ranked among the top most trusted messengers of wildlife conservation.

Zoos and aquariums are now on the forefront of wildlife protection. They raise and donate funds, send medical, educational and operational supplies to projects, raise awareness through lectures, classes and publications, donate expertise by sending vets and other staff to project sites and sell indigenous wares in their gift shops. They band together with other zoos in their ecosystem to work on local conservation issues, breed and release species, and provide medical attention to local wildlife. They are full service.

The conservation of wildlife is central to the mission of the Oakland Zoo as well, and we fully embrace the projects we are closest to. The Budongo Snare Removal Project in Uganda is a good example.

A chimp from the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda

This project protects endangered chimpanzees by providing a snare patrol and removal team, an educational outreach program and a means for getting protein for ex-poachers: goats!

The Oakland Zoo Conservation Fund has been the sole financial supporter of the project since 2001. The funding is raised through an evening event and silent auction, called For the Love of Primates, in February, giving us a chance to raise awareness about the project, as well as funds. Discovering Primates Day also happens in February, where guests participate in fun, hands-on stations and learn about all primates and what each of us can do to help them.

Kids participate in The Oakland Zoo's "ZooCamp"

In 2011, the Oakland Zoo’s ZooCamp selected the Budongo Snare Removal Project as their beneficiary, thereby designating one dollar of every camper registration as a donation to the project.

During the week, 1000 plus children donned in yellow t-shirts with the Budongo logo, connected to chimps and the project in a variety of ways. They visited our dynamic group of chimpanzees, created enrichment for them and participated in a theatrical, live presentation called Budongo Hour. Their ZooCamp gift was a Kibale Bead bracelet made by an artisan group in Uganda.

Meanwhile, an intrepid group of adults and an enthusiastic group of teens collected cameras, laptops, books, school supplies, medical supplies and notes of appreciation from staff and ZooCampers, and set sail for Uganda to visit the project. After a very warm welcome, each group delivered their goods, walked the forest with the snare patrol team, attended ex-poacher meetings, got schooled in their outreach programs, and experienced first-hand the joys and challenges of maintaining a successful conservation program. I think the highlight for many of us was the day spent working to de-worm the many goats in the program.

The Oakland Zoo team in Uganda

Back at the zoo, a new concept launched: Quarters for Conservation. This program donates $.25 from each zoo admission to one of three featured conservation programs, and in our inaugural year, the Budongo Snare Removal Project was selected. Visitors receive a token at the gate and vote for their favorite project at the conservation voting station. Signage and often a volunteer, enlighten all Oakland Zoo visitors about the plight of these Ugandan primates.

As we have reached a critical time in the history of conserving wildlife, now is the time for all of us to care and take action. It is fortunate that most zoos do just that. We look forward to creating more ways our zoo can fully embrace the Budongo Snare Removal Project and all of our planet’s precious wildlife.

A wolf from OR7's pack in Oregon. (Image: Oregon Department of Fish and Game)

OR7, the lone gray wolf from a pack in Oregon, crossed back into his home state yesterday after two months of wandering in Northern California. OR7’s trek made him the first wolf in California in almost 90 years. Officials say it’s possible the wolf will continue to use both states.

With OR7’s arrival, California has been thrown into a national debate about how to manage wolves. Environmentalists want to see a wolf population restored in the state. For others, OR7 is not a welcome visitor. In Lassen County, where OR7 has spent the bulk of his time, wolf opposition is heating up.

"If it's killing my cattle, I'm gonna kill it."

At a recent county board of supervisors meeting in Susanville, a town in the state’s rural northeast corner, Fish and Game biologist Karen Kovacs takes the podium. “What we’re here today to do is just to share what we know about wolves in California,” she says to the crowd.

Kovacs’ agency gets daily downloads about the two-year-old male wolf’s location through its radio collar. “Are there other wolves in California? That’s a $64 million dollar question,” she says.

If there's one thing Kovacs has learned since OR7 arrived, it’s that wolves make people emotional. For several weeks, Kovacs and other wildlife officials have attended a number of public meetings about California’s wolf. In the state’s northern counties, the reaction has been vocal.

“The protection afforded something that doesn’t belong here in the first place doesn’t make any sense,” says Susanville resident Len Grizwold. “Be cautious, folks. They’re here to tell you there’s nothing to worry about,” says another resident. The reception from county supervisor and rancher Bob Pyle isn’t any warmer.

“I really don’t care what it is. If it’s killing my cattle, I’m gonna kill it," he says.

“Any wolf in California is considered endangered,” responds Susan Moore of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. “And if you should take it, kill it, it is a $100,000 fine or a year in jail, or both.”

That sentiment has followed wolves from the moment they were reintroduced in the West almost 20 years ago. In states like Idaho and Montana, where wolf populations have rebounded, there’s been an all-out war. Ranchers and hunters say wolves kill too many livestock and elk. Environmentalists see the wolf as a key part of a healthy ecosystem.

With OR7’s arrival, that debate has come to California.

On the Wolf’s Trail

In a quiet pine forest outside of Susanville, Kovacs and Fish and Game biologist Richard Callas walk through a light layer of snow. OR7 crossed a major highway nearby a few weeks ago, not far from where California’s last wolf was trapped and killed in 1924.

Click to see a larger map of where OR7 has traveled.

“The way we find his tracks is because they’re pretty darn big,” says Kovacs.

OR7’s exact location is secret to protect the wolf, but once he leaves an area, Kovacs and Callas go in to see what he’s been eating. “We know that OR7 has fed on two deer. We don’t know if he killed them or scavenged them,” Callas says.

Life isn’t easy for a wolf on his own. But there’s a reason OR7 has traveled 2,000 miles since he left his pack in Oregon last September. “His love life hasn’t been much to brag about lately,” Callas says. “But he’s certainly looking for a mate.”

In other states, it’s taken about 10 years for a pack to be established after the first wolf showed up. But biologists aren’t sure how successful wolves will be here. “Our elk population is smaller than some state like Montana, Colorado and Wyoming. Our deer numbers were lower than they were,” he says.

Since Oregon’s wolf packs live hundreds of miles from the border, it could be some time before another wolf wanders this way. But for the Department of Fish and Game, that may not matter. Groups on both sides are calling for some kind of plan to manage wolves.

“There are entities out there who are ready to litigate at the drop of a hat,” says Kovacs. “Can we get those stakeholders here in California to the table to collectively meet to move forward?”

Local Ranchers Concerned

OR7 wandered close to Willow Creek Ranch outside of Susanville.

On a cold morning at Willow Creek Ranch outside of Susanville, Jack Hanson is getting ready to feed 300 hungry cattle. A few weeks ago, OR7 wasn’t far from here. “About 17 or 18 miles as the crow flies,” says Hanson.

Hanson says it’s not OR7 that’s he’s worried about. It’s that wolf populations could grow. In other states, some ranchers are trying out tools to deter wolves, like special fencing and loud noises. Some even get text messages when wolves are close.

Most ranchers see wolves as one more thing to deal with in an already tough industry, says Hanson. Still, he wants to be part of the discussion. “We’ll be able to have a dialogue with agencies. I don’t think it will ever come to exactly where we want it, which is not to have them back in the first place.”

State and Federal Protections

Wolves are currently protected in California under the federal Endangered Species Act, but several environmental groups are petitioning the state to protect them under California law as well. That would require the Department of Fish and Game to figure out how many wolves belong in California and how they’ll recover.

The federal government is also considering whether to specially protect California wolves. Populations in Idaho, Montana and parts of Oregon and Washington have already been taken off the endangered species list but this week, the agency recommended removing protection for wolves in some of the remaining parts of the lower 48 states.

California wolves may still be protected, however. Fish and Wildlife is considering whether to specially protect wolves in parts of Oregon, Washington and California. If so, the agency would consider writing a recovery plan for what would be known as the Pacific Northwest population. That decision is due by September 30th.

“We don’t see California as being essential to the recovery of wolves. It’s not prime wolf habitat,” says Dan Ashe, director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. “But certainly, wolves will move hopefully in the future and will find some hospitable territory in California. Some may establish themselves there, but hopefully they’ll be well-managed under state law.”

Weathering the Debate

The question is: can California avoid the battles that other states have seen?

“No, I don’t think so,” says Ed Bangs, the recently retired Wolf Recovery Coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He’s been in the middle of the Western wolf debate for two decades.

“You have to remember wolves and wolf management has nothing to do with reality. I mean we can give you facts, you know all this biology stuff. That isn’t what people talk about. They’re talking about what wolves mean to them symbolically.”

But he thinks that debate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Imagine if it was the way it was before when no one cared at all about natural resources or wildlife. Apathy is a lot worse.”

Just 30 years ago, there were only a handful of gray wolves in the West. Today, there are more than 1,600.

Dusky-capped flycatcher (credit: mdf)

Most people know the Philadelphia suburbs for cheesesteaks and unruly sports fans. But it’s no wonder that John James Audubon started his lifelong affair with birds just 25 miles northwest of Center City, and a 20-minute drive from my natal stomping grounds. The dense, rolling woodlands of Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County where I grew up offered prime habitat for cardinals, chickadees, blue jays, wrens, and countless other species my mom loved to point out to us kids. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my mom’s avian affinities taught me not just to pay attention to the biology in my backyard but, ultimately, to consider which species lived there and why.

This weekend, novice Bay Area wildlife watchers get the chance to play field biologist in their own backyards and join forces with expert birders and scientists to gather data on the incidence, abundance, and distribution of birds. Between February 17 and 20, the 15th annual Great Backyard Bird Count invites people of all ages and experience to spend as little as 15 minutes (or as long as you like) counting birds wherever you are.

The event is a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Audubon, and Bird Studies Canada, leading bird conservation organizations that provide a wealth of resources for participants, including tips for getting started,
regional checklists, and tools for resolving tricky identifications.

“The Great Backyard Bird Count is an excellent introductory citizen science project for any level of birder,” says Brian Sullivan, an expert on North American birds and project leader of Cornell’s online resource for birders around the world, eBird.

“You can just count the birds you see in your backyard or go to your local park and count what you see there. The idea is to get a weekend snapshot of late-winter bird distribution across the United States and to make things really simple so just about anyone can participate.”

Sullivan, who has 1,669 species on his life list, says lucky birders could see “mega-rarities” like an Iceland gull, “a very rare bird in California” spotted near Sausalito in early February, or maybe the dusky-capped flycatcher that's been living in Golden Gate Park all winter.

The largest estuary on the West Coast, the San Francisco Bay Delta provides habitat and refuge to more than 250 species of waterbirds, some (including pelicans, loons, herons, and egrets) year-round residents, others, like the Wilson’s phalarope and Sabine’s gull, on stopovers to feed and rest before resuming their long-distance migrations. As many as 800,000 birds inhabit Bay Area waterways at any given time.

To find out which birds you’re likely to see in your area, go to Cornell’s eBird, click on “View and Explore Data,” then click on “Bar Charts,” select “United States,” “California,” and then “Counties in California.” Choose your county, click “continue,” and you’ll see the occurrence of birds throughout the year.

Last year, participants entered more than 92,000 checklists with 1.4 million birds from 596 species. Their data helped researchers identify changes in abundance (including an increase in evening grosbeaks, which declined 50% between 1988 and 2006) and distribution (winter finches moving south), and spot anomalies (an Asian brown shrike in McKinley, California).

The bird counts give weekend nature lovers an easy way to help scientists gather data on a widely distributed group of animals that serve as valuable indicators of biodiversity. Because birds occupy many different “trophic” levels in food webs, eating everything from insects to fish to mammals (and, for top predators like owls, hawks, and eagles, other birds), they play critical roles in maintaining healthy ecosystems. Among their many “ecosystem services,” all of which benefit humans, birds help regulate prey populations, facilitate plant reproduction through pollination and seed dispersal, and recycle nutrients by scavenging carcasses.

This widespread influence on their environment also makes them extremely sensitive to ecosystem disruptions, including habitat destruction and climate change. An alarming 13% of the world’s birds, 1,253 species, face extinction, according to the 2011 IUCN Red List. The Great Indian bustard, a native of India and Pakistan that barks when alarmed, has been reclassified as critically endangered, a victim of hunting and widespread habitat destruction. Scientists think fewer than 250 mature birds remain.

Closer to home, black-crowned night herons and snowy egrets have been on a downward slide since 2005. And the endangered California clapper rail, once abundant in the tidal marshes of San Francisco Bay, offers a case study in the unintended consequences of development. Extensive filling and diking of the bay has destroyed some 85% of the clapper rail’s salt marsh habitat, making a shy species that seems to prefer scampering over swimming and flying easy pickings for feral cats and invasive red foxes, which now have unfettered access to adults and their ground-nesting offspring.

California clapper rail (Don Roberson)

Roughly 60% of the critically endangered clapper rail population, estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500, lives in San Francisco Bay’s Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, in Fremont.

Researchers will use the information collected from the bird count to learn how birds like the clapper rail are coping with these new predation pressures, as well as other stresses from ongoing urbanization, global climate change, and disease.

The decline of suitable habitat for these species affects us as well. Tidal marshes filter contaminants to enhance water quality and serve as natural flood barriers. If the marshes can no longer support species like the clapper rail, chances are they can’t provide these ecosystem services for us either.

Birds are among the most diverse and ubiquitous vertebrates on the planet and often offer humans a first brush with wildlife.

As a little girl, I marveled that my mom always knew when Jenny Wren and her husband, Joe (as she liked to call the resident house wrens), would appear in our backyard, build their nest, and settle into the business of raising, feeding, and protecting their broods.

She couldn’t have known that scientists would one day blame the precipitous declines in Bewick’s wrens in the eastern United States on the expansion of her beloved house wrens, known for ejecting eggs, and even young, from coveted nest sites.

Blue jay (Liza Gross)

As I listened to Mom’s fanciful tales of avian domestic dramas, my young imagination conjured all manner of worrisome scenarios. Would Joe find enough food for the babies? Could Jenny protect them from a torrential summer downpour? How would either of them cope with a curious cat? Some may shudder at such anthropomorphizing, but I wonder: If more people viewed birds the way my mom did, struggling to survive like the rest of us, would they worry about their welfare, too?

Henry David Thoreau first said “In wildness is the preservation of the world” in a lecture some months after Audubon’s death. I like to think, had they discussed the question, Audubon would have objected: “My dear sir, I believe you meant to say, ‘In birds is the preservation of the world.’ ”

Harbor porpoises as seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. (Photo: William Keener/Golden Gate Cetacean Research)

Harbor porpoises haven't been seen in San Francisco Bay for more than 60 years. But now, they're coming back through the Golden Gate in growing numbers and researchers are trying to understand why they’re returning.

The best place to look for them is 220 feet above the water on the pedestrian walkway across the Golden Gate Bridge. That's where Bill Keener of Golden Gate Cetacean Research photographs them, holding a massive telephoto lens over the side of the railing.

"There's a porpoise right there, coming very, very close," he says pointing. A dark shape appears in the water. It's a harbor porpoise, coming up for air. "And here's a mother and calf coming straight at us."

The porpoises have dark gray backs and pale bellies. They're about five feet long, smaller than most of their dolphin relatives.

"Look at that! That one's on its side," Keener says. "The porpoise turned on its side. It's spinning and it's feeding."

Porpoises spin as they go after schools of herring and anchovies, which means these porpoises are feeding in the middle of a heavily-trafficked shipping lane. "The porpoises have found a way to not only avoid the ships, but it's also the noise they make," says Keener.

Studying a Shy Marine Mammal

Seeing this behavior is huge for Keener. Harbor porpoises are notoriously shy in the open ocean, so they're tough for researchers to study. Here in the bay, Keener and his colleagues have identified 250 individual porpoises with their photos by looking for unique scars and color patterns on the animals.

Porpoise mating display as seen from the bridge. (Photo: William Keener/Golden Gate Cetacean Research)

When these researchers first started their work on the bridge, they caused a bit of a stir. "You noticed there was a Golden Gate Bridge patrol officer here just a few minutes ago," says Keener. "Well, we're staring down at the water for hours. They'd start getting worried about us. But they know us now. They know what we're doing."

Of course, the big question is why harbor porpoises disappeared in the first place. Keener says the bay has historically been porpoise habitat. Their bones have been found from hundreds of years ago.

"And then there were reports in the 1930s. And then we don't really have reports from around World War II. And there were a lot of things going on during World War II that could have caused that."

San Francisco Bay became a wartime port and a major ship-building center. The Navy strung a seven-mile-long net underwater across the opening of the bay to keep out Japanese submarines. Hundreds of mines were planted in the waters outside the Golden Gate.

Keener says all that activity certainly would have disturbed the porpoises. But there's a bigger change that may have driven them away.

The Changing Bay

To see it, we head toward the Golden Gate Bridge on a twenty-two foot boat with Jonathan Stern, a whale researcher at San Francisco State University. Stern was the first person to spot the porpoises in the bay three years ago.

"I just couldn't figure out what they were doing here. It's like when you see somebody you're used to seeing at work and you see them somewhere, in Hawaii or something. What are you doing here? You're out of place," says Stern.

The bay we're gliding over today is a far cry from the bay in the 1950s and 60s. As the Bay Area boomed, so did water pollution. Keener says raw sewage used to flow right into the bay. "I remember coming across the Bay Bridge when I was very young and it would just smell. It would stink."

After the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the bay's water quality began to improve. But Stern says it took time for the food web to come back. "It takes the biology a while to track the chemistry. So it's not surprising that it's taken years for this ecosystem to generate like this."

Stern says it's also possible that the porpoises had to rediscover the bay. "Because over 60 years, we're talking about a number of generations of porpoises. So it's quite likely that San Francisco Bay as a location, as a habitat was out of the institutional memory of the harbor porpoises off the coast here."

Bill Keener and Jonathan Stern search for porpoises in the bay.

As we slow down under the bridge's span, Keener keeps an eye out. "There are porpoises between us and the south tower at 200 yards," he says.

Keener and Stern have a special permit that allows them to approach the porpoises. We wait, listening for them to surface.

"I just heard one here. Here's a cow-calf pair close to the boat and we'll hear this puff," Keener says.

We hear two loud puffs as the porpoises surface just off the bow. "The old time sailors used to call them puffing pigs. That's the exhalation," says Keener.

The harbor porpoises seem calm around boats in the bay, which Stern says will let researchers study their life cycle and social structure, as well as how they might react to big events like the upcoming America's Cup race. Overall, he says it's a good sign that the porpoises are here.

"It's one of those very few good news environmental stories. And it's in our backyard. You know, there was the will to get the bay cleaner and we're now starting to see the effects of that. It gives one hope."

I first became aware of Mike Forsberg’s work Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild two years ago when I was asked to introduce him and his slideshow presentation of images from his book at our local Audubon preserve where I was board chairman.

Over the next year and a half, I traveled through ten states following Mike with a video production crew to some of the most remote, endangered and stimulating environments to produce the PBS documentary, Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild. Today’s wildlife photographer has to be proficient with all sorts of new technology — such as walkie-talkie triggered cameras and infrared camera traps — that didn’t even exist just a few years ago in order to create striking images that can compete for the shrinking print market. To illustrate this, there is a scene in producer Gary Hochman’s Your Photos on QUEST: Great Plains Photographer story where you see Mike setting up a camera trap in the Black Hills of South Dakota. A month later, Mike returned to the scene and retrieved the digital photos stored on his camera, captured when the mountain lion and deer shown in the story set off the traps.

When most of us think about the Great Plains, we think of very long, flat and boring stretches of interstate highway – endless concrete slabs running east to west. Or we think about flying over the patchwork quilt of vast stretches of irrigated corn, wheat and milo fields or cross-fenced prairie cattle country dotted by windmills, stock tanks and two-track jeep roads that look like ant tracks from above.

A lone bull bison in Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota Credit: Mike Forsberg

But to Mike Forsberg and the scientists, land-owners, conservationists and educators who helped him achieve his goal of publishing striking images and words about the last remnants of the wild and untamed prairie, there is much more to and much more at stake in the Great Plains.

Hidden away in remote, nearly inaccessible places are remarkable creatures most of us will never see or even know exist: black-footed ferrets emerging from their underground dens at dawn; a million Mexican free-tailed bats exiting a gypsum cave at dusk; nesting willets in the vast pot-holed Missouri Coteau region; prairie grizzlies and mountain lions caught at night in Mike’s ingenious camera traps.

Mountain lion walking through camera trap, Black Hills, South Dakota Credit: Mike Forsberg

And for each of the species Mike captures with digital photography, there are also the people who have dedicated their lives to caring for and about them. We met Jill Morrison and her husband Dave Clarendon who have spent the past three decades fighting to keep the not-so-habitat-friendly coal-bed methane wells off their ranch near Sheridan, Wyoming. Jill and Dave have seen the water quality decline and the wildlife that supported a secondary outfitting and guided hunting business retreat much higher into the mountains.

We spent a night from dusk to dawn with Travis Livieri four-wheeling around a massive prairie dog town in the Conata Basin near Badlands National Park in South Dakota trying to capture and inoculate the elusive black-footed ferret. Ferrets, who prey on prairie dogs, were thought to be extinct until a rancher’s dog brought in a dead one a few decades ago, setting off a massive effort to live trap the few remaining individuals. After a few failed tries, a captive breeding program finally resulted in success. Travis, then a graduate biology student, was on the first team that reintroduced the ferrets to their natural habitat.

Mike Forsberg is enormously dedicated to his self-imposed task of photographing everything of meaning and consequence in the remaining natural world of the Great Plains. He hears birds when no one else does and knows them by their call. He has remarkable distance vision. He clambers up steep hills like a mountain goat with a load of photo gear. He dresses in camouflage and blends in with his surroundings, keeping still for hours at a stretch.

What I learned from this experience of a lifetime is that “the lingering wild” is as much a part of Mike Forsberg as it is a part of this rare, beautiful landscape that has once more come into stunning focus for me.

View A Portrait Of The Plains in a larger map

A documentary team led by NET Television producer Mike Farrell and photographer Mike Forsberg spent over a year exploring the vast landscape of the Great Plains, meeting people and exploring problems that are having an impact on the area. What they found was both hopeful and troubling. These are just a few of the things they found on their journey, which will eventually become the PBS documentary Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild.

A northern spotted owl in Marin County. Credit: National Park Service.

Spotted owls are one of the most iconic threatened species in the West. But despite two decades of work to bring them back, their numbers are still declining. That may be due in part to a new threat – not from humans, but from other owls.

You might picture spotted owls in a mossy Pacific Northwest forest – but they actually live right here in the Bay Area.

In a forest near Muir Woods, Bill Merkle, a National Park Service ecologist, plays a recorded northern spotted owl call. He's standing where a pair of owls had a nest last year.

"I think they're just probably 50 or 60 feet up there…" says Merkle. After a moment, he hears a faint call. Merkle runs up a steep slope that's covered in brush and poison oak. In the branches above his, he sees two spotted owls.

Listen to the QUEST radio story Spotted Owls Face New Threat

"So this would definitely be a pair. They're hanging out together," says Merkle.

Northern spotted owls aren't very big. They're a brown owl with white spots that's found from Washington state down to the Bay Area. They've also had the starring role in a decades-long battle between loggers and wildlife groups over their habitat. In many logging towns in the early 1990s, this owl was public enemy number one.

Merkle says in all, about 80 pairs of spotted owls are found on national park land in Marin County – and for 15 years, the park service has monitored the health of that population.

But recently, Merkle says they've been hearing a new owl call in the forests – a barred owl call.

Arrival of the Barred Owl

"The call often described as ‘who cooks for you?" says David Press, another ecologist with National Park Service. He's joining Merkle near Muir Woods to look for the owl that makes that call – the barred owl.

"You see anything?" says Merkle. They peer into a hollow cavity high in a tree – a cavity that used to be a spotted owl nest.

"Just at the base of it you can see a little bit of that barred owl," says Merkle. It's a female barred owl, sitting on her eggs. Merkle looks concerned.

"It's a troubling picture for the spotted owls," he says.

Barred owls are an invasive species, originally from the Eastern US. They first arrived in spotted owl territory in Washington and have been moving south down the coast – which makes this owl the frontline of the invasion.

"The barred owl is a little larger. It's a little more aggressive. And so in other areas where you have barred owls set up, the spotted owls aren't there anymore," says Merkle.

Barred owls take over spotted owl territory and in some cases, even attack them. In places like western Washington, the spotted owl population has been cut in half since the barred owl showed up.

David Press says he's already seeing a change in Marin. "Since the barred owls moved into the area, we've had a harder and harder time detecting spotted owls where they have been historically."

"The barred owls are really sort of adding insult to injury," says Paul Henson of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency overseeing spotted owl recovery.

"The injury for the spotted owl was 100 years of habitat loss, and the sort of insult, the more recent insult, is barred owls have now shown up and are really out-competing spotted owls."

New Study to Remove Barred Owls

The Fish and Wildlife Service hopes to deal with the issue in a new plan expected to be released in a few weeks. It includes a barred owl study that's… raising a few eyebrows.

"We identified the need to do a focused study where we could test the response of spotted owl populations to the removal of barred owls," says Robin Bown, a biologist with Fish and Wildlife.

Which means…

"Well, basically it means permanent removal. We're going to look at all potential opportunities but the most humane way to do it is to shoot them. A shotgun removal is extremely quick, it's almost instantaneous."

Bown says they plan to eliminate barred owls from a few study plots to see if the spotted owls there do better. They also want to see if it's even feasible to remove barred owls by shooting them.

And yes, Bown says this is an idea that's not easy to consider. "Oh it's a very difficult thing. Even for those of us involved in this, it's a very difficult concept to say I'm going to kill one species to try to save another species. But it's also something that in some cases we need to do."

Back in Muir Woods, Bill Merkle says a lot of people are waiting on the results of the study to see what's next.

Budget cuts are also an issue. Just as more barred owls are arriving, Merkle says the park service's owl monitoring program has been cut.

"Now the situation is getting a lot more challenging just when I think the threats are getting more apparent with the barred owls. We know climate change is going to change things out here. It is a difficult time to be cutting off our monitoring."

If approved, the barred owl removal program would begin next year.

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Mountain lion. Photo: California Department of Fish and Game.

But after a bit of research, I learned that tranquilization is never an option in situations like this—it takes up to 30 minutes for the tranquilizer to take effect, during which time the situation could turn much worse. Wardens with the California Department of Fish and Game don’t even carry tranquilizers; Berkeley Police sure don’t carry tranquilizers, either. And, Fish and Game does not relocate wild animals that display this kind of bold behavior, because they’re still too much of a threat. These policies make sense—and so does a mountain lion walking in streets of Berkeley, when you really think about it.

Over 50% of California is mountain lion habitat. Mountain lions can be found wherever there are deer, their main prey item. As we humans have built houses and highways, we’ve broken up the mountain lions’ habitat into fragmented patches. To move between patches of habitat, mountain lions have to cross our streets and highways. Mountain lions are territorial, and their territories tend not to overlap; these animals need a lot of space.

My friend Chris Wilmers, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, studies mountain lion movement and behavior. He catches mountain lions and fits them with GPS-accelerometer collars, which record their every movement. He’s learning how the lions move through the landscape. You can learn more about his research, and the Bay Area Puma Project, in QUEST’s Tracking Urban Lions. Chris’s research will show us which areas the mountain lions are using, and how we can connect these habitat fragments, so mountain lions can move safely from patch to patch.

Last week, the plight of urban lions came close to home—or rather, close to work. I work at the Lawrence Hall of Science, in the hills above the UC Berkeley campus. I found out, via email, that three mountain lions, probably a mother and two juveniles, have been seen several times near the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, just down the slope from where I work. And, two dead deer and one dead goat found near the Lab’s buildings strongly suggest that the lions aren’t just taking an evening stroll.

Clearly, we coexist with mountain lions. Our habitat is their habitat. But there are things we can do to prevent encounters; fill your garden with plants that deer find distasteful, so mountain lions won’t be tempted to stalk their prey in your backyard. (See A Gardener’s Guide to Preventing Deer Damage.) Don’t leave food outside for pets. Don’t leave pets outside, or run or bike alone, at dawn, dusk, or nighttime, when mountain lions hunt. And, if you do encounter a mountain lion, stand tall, make noise, and fight back. Find more info here.

Until Chris figures out where we should build wildlife corridors, I’ll be sure not to walk alone from my office to my car during darkling hours; one more reason not to work late!

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Pepin is famous for going to work after just 9 weeks of training, finding 52 scats in a single day.

This candidate must:

• Follow orders
• Be rough, energetic and adventurous
• Travel around the world
• Find things that are nearly impossible to see
• Be willing to ride in the back of a truck and wear a collar
• Run long distances
• Be a fast learner
• Be obsessed with toys
• Be willing to sniff poop
• Get compensated in rope-tugging with benefits such as scratches and belly rubs
• Come from a background of animal shelter living

Yes, the only qualified species is: Dog.

The Job: Working Dog for Conservation.

I saw these dogs in action at the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) Expo in San Francisco in October. The organization, Working Dogs for Conservation and their dog demo with Pepin took center stage during lunch. While Pepin was inside the building schmoozing with the likes of Dr. Jane Goodall, her trainers hid scat in a giant, wide open field area. Once the crowd gathered, Pepin was taken outside, given directions and once released, blasted with determination and blatant glee out into the field. Within 3 minutes she had located the scat and sat proudly next to it, indicating to her trainer that she had done her job; a job that would have taken a human hours.

Being able to find scat helps humans track down various species in the wild and provides needed species conservation information. Deployed conservation dogs have increased scat sample collection rates and have discovered samples that are smaller and more cryptic than people alone are capable of detecting. The working dogs for conservation have found scat of moose, snow leopard, grizzly bear, wolf and cougar, to name a few. The dogs have also been trained to find plants and lost pets and people.

Partnering with dogs is nothing new. Humans have been using the 220 million scent-sensitive cells available for canine olfaction for centuries. These animals are truly man's best friend, but perhaps they are becoming nature's best friend, as well. They certainly deserve to hold this most unusual job.

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The noise of all these nesting and breeding birds is almost overwhelming (check out the slideshow below for a firsthand look), but these birds speak for a lot more than themselves. Our guides, PRBO Conservation Science, have been studying these birds for 40 years. As Biologist Russell Bradley explained, these seabirds are environmental samplers. In order to raise their chicks, they depend on the food web that blooms in the spring when coastal upwelling brings nutrient-rich water to the surface. If that is disrupted or delayed, the first place scientists will see it is in these bird populations, who will either have poor or non-existent breeding seasons.

Those changes in the upwelling patterns can be due to natural variability in the system. But increasing, scientists are asking whether the changes are due to climate change. That's not an easy question to answer. There are a lot of different factors in the mix.

I spoke with Zack Powell, a professor at UC Berkeley who studies climate and upwelling, and he said it all comes down to the timing of natural cycles. First, there's El Nino – where warm water spreads across the equator and heads up the California coast. That can happen every two to seven years and when it does, it acts a barrier to upwelling, interfering with the marine food web. Scientists recently confirmed that El Nino will return this year.

Looking at changes on a longer time frame, there's the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. It's a pattern of ocean warming and cooling that can last 30 years. Powell says it can also have an effect on marine life and fisheries.

And finally, there's climate change, which comparably may cause changes on the longest time frame. Powell says there's about 100 years of historical data about the ocean conditions off the California coast and it's not much when looking at such long-lived patterns. Powell and others work on climate modeling to help answer these questions. Some of the models show that the seasonal winds may become stronger, meaning upwelling patterns could be altered. And ocean temperatures could rise significantly, changing the way warmer surface water and nutrient-rich deep water mix.

Powell says right now his focus is the granularity of the climate models. They simply can't predict changes on a small geographic scale. "For most models, the smallest footprint is about 100km and all the upwelling takes place closer to shore than that." But he's hoping there will be drastic improvements over the next few years. And if extreme changes do take place, for whatever reason, the birds will certainly tell us.

Listen to the Journey to the Farallones radio report online, and check out our Farallon Islands Interactive Map for the sights and sounds of the island. Or watch the audio slideshow below for a first-hand look.

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