Thanksgiving, conservation and the US gun culture

It's Thanksgiving - one of the central US holidays, focused particularly on family get-togethers - vast numbers of people travelling, and consequently the institute is emptying fast, apart from rare migrants like myself. It's also thankfully relatively uncommercialized, apart from all the food, which is why there's been much disquiet at the decision of some big stores like Walmart to open tomorrow night - Thanksgiving evening - for the first time. I've been invited to several Thanksgiving dinners - people keep saying that nobody should be alone at Thanksgiving - so tomorrow's a day off from the office.

It's getting colder, but we've been in a 2 week dry spell under a canopy of high pressure, so no snow yet - some forecast for next week. The weekend is forecasting similar, dry sunny weather but with stronger winds. Going for a bike ride with windchill at -15C may be, er, bracing.

Ice developing over a nearby pond - the ubiquitous beaver lodge in the background

All the leaves now gone, waiting for the snow

Guns and Conservation

Election unhappiness continues for the Republicans, and  views like this from right-wing commentators  are not unusual:

‘America, like Western civilization, is a set of ideas, institutions, and ways of doing things. For all intents and purposes, this has become occupied territory; land occupied by hominids who subscribe to a primitive set of foreign superstitions and wantonly attempt to impose those primitive superstitions on the rest of us.’  (Breitbart website)

One consequence of this viewpoint is that it seems to encourage people to buy guns and ammunition. Both Obama's first election win, and even more so the current election process has led to big increases in sales, as the graph below indicates. 

Sales of guns and ammunition rise to unprecedented levels.

How does this fit with conservation? We had a fascinating seminar last week on a piece of 1930s legislation - the Wildlife Restoration Act. This Act, and later amendments means that all sales of guns, ammunition and archery equipment is subject to an 11% federal tax. This is paid to the Federal government which then distributes it to the states, paying 75% of the costs of suitable projects. 

Hunting season at Harvard Forest - I wear my day-glo cycling jacket to go for a walk

Thus for conservation projects, the last few years have been bumper years. 2009 provided funds 150% of the average in the Bush years, and 2012-13 looks even better - this single source of income is expected to pay out $555 million - about £370 million, purely from this guns-n-ammo tax. The staff in the Fish and Wildlife Service (somewhat equivalent to SNH) have been trying to prepare better for this surge by encouraging more projects. Incidentally, the other major source of state funding for conservation comes from the sale of hunting licences - which means that here in Massachusetts, $60 million of the state conservation budget  (roughly equivalent to SNH's total budget in Scotland) comes entirely from hunting and gun taxes. That's an interesting contrast to Scotland, where hunting contributes little or no direct revenue to wider society. 

Election Fever, and a trip to Martha's Vineyard

It's grand theatre, with billion-dollar budgets and full-spectrum media coverage, but even for interested spectators it's a relief its over. Especially for those with a landline/phone number - with endless 'robocalls' - recorded messages - and calls from live party volunteers. In Massachusetts the presidential election was always going to go with Obama, but we had a very close senate race, with significant implications for the overall control of the US Senate at stake. A dozen of us - Harvard Forest staff and fellows living nearby - gathered for the evening in our conference room, with some good Pennsylvanian beer, super-sized packs of unhealthy nibbles and a bottle of champagne (just in case). As always, the earliest results are analysed in minute detail, even if they are only for 'Assistant Dog-catcher, West Texas' type races (locally there was a competitive race for the local 'Registrar of Deeds'). However the drama unfolded as I'm sure you know, and  all that's done now apart from some fine examples of ungraciousness in defeat (e.g. 'the typical Democratic base constituency of the poor, stupid, and illiterate', or 'the growing number of Democrats who are scums, bums, union thugs, perverts, old fools, young fools, racists and traitors'). 

Last weekend, a change of gear from the political drama to the landscape drama of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. As the ice sheet receded at the end of the last ice-age, it left gigantic moraines and colossal volumes of sand around the southern edge of New England, in the shape of the islands and penninsulas running from Long Island east to Nantucket and Cape Cod. Several of us migratory Fellows were invited for a weekend to the Harvard Forest Director's house on the island of Martha's Vineyard, and in glorious sun and near record warm temperatures we enjoyed a wonderful contrast to the early winter woods of western Massachusetts. Martha's Vineyard (MV has made a transition from early settlement in 1640 to whaling prosperity and and now as an exclusive and very expensive holiday island. 

This house on Cape Poge is yours for $8.5 million dollars (also required: an insouciant disregard for recent and projected sea-level rise)

 For those with long memories, the island of Chappaquiddick (next to MV) and a certain bridge will stir some memories. In 1969 after a party,Ted Kennedy, Senator, brother of JFK and potential presidential candidate drove off the side of an island bridge leaving his female companion drowned - but failed to report this for many hours. The swirl of conspiracy around this probably ended any presidential hopes. The bridge has since been rebuilt (below), and to my delight, without any evident irony the guard rails either side have been ungraded to anti-tank status. No Kennedy's gonna drive off this bridge any time soon!

 MV has some wonderful coastal scenery, with saltmarshes and endless beaches, and even a large arid pitchpine/scruboak  forest on the central plain of coarse sand. It's here that the Heath hen - a ground nesting bird related to the prairie chicken - finally became extinct in 1932, despite one of the earliest formal efforts  in conservation history. Apparently a 1791 Act to preserve 'Heath-hen and other game' ran into problems with a misinterpretation of 'Heath-hen' as 'Heathen' - not a helpful error in Puritan New England!

Chappaquiddick saltmarsh

endless beaches

pitch-pine forest

 Hurricane Sandy hit the sandy cliffs of southern MV hard, accelerating the long-term erosion trends already present. Part of the unseasonal warmth we enjoyed is connected to this event - the sea here is currently about 4C warmer than normal, allowing the tropical hurricane to maintain its intensity further north than normal.

In the shellfishing harbour at Menemsha, the Hurricane Sandy surge overtopped these quayside posts

Particularly striking was the (probably) doomed efforts of the super-rich to defend their beachfront mansions. At Wasque Point after Hurricane Sandy the owner had initiated this mammoth effort with giant sandbags to stop the cliff erosion.

Wasque Point less than 2 years ago

Post-Sandy efforts to hold back the waves...

the beach a mass of fallen trees and tangled driftwood

After the storm...

Well, we had a stormy 24 hours, maybe 3 inches of rain, but nothing worse than a winter gale in Shetland. The whole university shut down on Monday, and we lost power for half a day as a tree outside the institute fell onto our power lines. 

The unusual westward swerve of Hurricane Sandy was so large as to take the worst weather away to our west, and away from the coast the storm surge was of course not an issue. The weekend was an extraordinary time, with the possibility of calamity even squeezing the elections out of the conversations...

I've been following with great interest the ash dieback developments in the UK, culminating in a COBRA meeting today in some bunker under Whitehall (add your own sentence here including the words horse, stable, bolted and door). It's fascinating to see both  press and website comments eager to embrace a positive note - maybe it won't be as bad as Dutch elm disease, maybe ash will recover, or my personal favourite - 'Ecologists know that Nature is resilient'. I'm all for happy endings to stories of mild peril and rescue, but if there's one thing ecology can tell us, it's that in the face of human influences Nature isn't proving very resilient at all. 

We had a lunchtime discussion this week with staff from a private college in Connecticut who have just built a no-expenses-spared environmental research institute, and were looking for ideas for what research they should consider doing. I guess when a major donor offers you a large chunk of cash you say yes quickly, and some of the details get left until later. We had an entertaining debate over the inspirational qualities of 'wacky' research -with the Harvard Forest simulated hurricane being a good example, but numerous other examples - reintroducing species, mouse-proof fencing, blowing up trees to create deadwood and so on.

Next week - our first snow of the winter, an all-night election nail-biter, and a trip into Boston...

Election quote of the week: "It's time for the Governor to slalom down from Bullshit Mountain"

Most heard local radio song: 'Tequila makes her clothes fall off'