We've been warned

Another vacation. Another naturalist. Another warning about climate change, human causation, and political ineptitude from the front lines.

Last week I didn't write a blog post due to the fact that my family and I were on another vacation.  Sometimes summer works like that.  And, this time it worked heavily in my favor.  After beginning the summer in Alaska, we were able to revisit one of our most favorite places in the country: Mount Desert Island (MDI), Maine, home to Bar Harbor, and, more importantly, Acadia National Park.  

MDI has many unique characteristics.  At 108 square miles, it's the largest island off the coast of Maine, and second largest island on the eastern seaboard.  Only Long Island in New York is larger.  Wisconsin Glacial retreating, that occurred over 15 thousand years ago, caused the formation of approximately 26 peaks, the tallest of which stands at 1,529 feet...which doesn't sound like much, but mostly because the majority of hikes start at an elevation greater than sea level.  Not so with MDI.

Acadia preserves 47,000 acres of land, and in 2017, according to NPS, over 3.5 million visitors...well, visited.  Simple math tells us that's over 74 people per acre...if every inch of the park was visited equally, which it's not.  Enter Park Loop Road and Sand Beach traffic congestion.  Still, like us, the majority of these visitors came between the months of May and September.  Why?  We're trying to live like the Rockefellers in the early 1900's, and escape the heat and bustle of New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia, etc.  

MDI is also home to many migrating bird species.  It's smack dab in the middle of the northern part of the Atlantic Flyway, a name given to the geographic area where the majority of bird migration occurs, from Florida and further south (i.e. Cuba, Central and South America) to Maine, Canada and Greenland.  And, change is afoot.  During my time on MDI, I made it a point to visit with Michael Good.  Michael is a jack-of-all trades naturalist with expertise in anything MDI: geology, botany, biology, and ecology, though his passion is birds.  Michael has been giving island birding tours since 1993, collecting data and performing quantitative analysis on observed species and he knows nearly every nook and cranny on the island where they may be hiding.  During our outing, his warning about man-made environmental change was no different than my guide in Alaska.

"I see chaotic [ecological] fluctuations every year"
One of Michael's messages: everything is connected.  During our outing, he made sure to show us where fish ladders have been rebuilt.  A concerted effort was made in 2007 to rebuild fish ladders that, historically, allowed alewives access through the tidal streams into the freshwater lakes to spawn.  What are alewives?  According to the Maine Department of Marine Resources: "Alewives are important to the ecology of freshwater, estuarine, and marine environments. They provide an alternative prey item for osprey, eagles, great blue heron, loons and other fish eating birds at the same time juvenile Atlantic salmon are migrating downriver. Alewives provide cover for upstream migrating adult salmon that may be preyed on by eagles or osprey, and for young salmon in the estuaries and open ocean that might be captured by seals."  Alewives are another species that specifically impact both marine and freshwater ecosystems found on MDI.  They are essential components of the food chain both in life and death, providing direct nutrients to things that eat them, and indirect nutrients to the lands and water bodies where they decompose.    

Which brings me back to birds.  Things are changing almost too quickly to document.


"Twenty years ago we had many more Evening Grosbeak and hardly any Northern Cardinals or Canada Geese. Today, no Evening Grosbeak, Cardinals are everywhere and Canada Geese are starting to be seen in every watershed...so the dynamics are changing for sure."

I asked him what were the primary contributors, and he basically said that we have a tremendous job of undoing all of the stupid decisions we've made in the past. "The other aspect of this is how the 'ecologically-illiterate' people of the past and those science and ecology deniers of today, are essentially the product of the 'European Concept of Exploitation' and the absolute misunderstanding of Ecological Systems and how they are tied to our economy." He's speaking of the collective economy, but also of the coastal Maine economy. Unplanned, unsustainable, uninformed human practices, it turns out, is bad for business. Due to over-fishing, the only coastal fishery allowed to operate is lobster. No cod. No haddock. No flounder. No pollock. The Boston Globe reported earlier this year that these staples of traditional New England catches have moved to colder water. Also, the dip in alewives as bait-fish due to poor management practices in addition to years of mismanaging ocean stocks of fish have led to those fish being unsustainable. And they're not done making poor political mistakes with our environment.

Michael puts it this way: "Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife cannot design a free-flowing fish passage for the Union River because of the 70 foot tall Union River Dam. That dam is sucking the life out of Blue Hill bay and nobody... not a single politician is doing anything about it nor have they since 1908. So, we need some good old American Common Sense and some direction that increases our biodiversity."


And, we need it now. The ignorance shown by our politicians where natural systems are regarded is mind boggling. On a page that our Cheeto-In-Chief hasn't found yet, NASA.GOV, the statement is quite plain: "Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver."  This on a page named Scientific Consensus.  The 18 organizations listed on that page seem disconnected to you and me...which is why we need to heed the warnings from scientists like Michael Good, and the work that Down East Nature Tours is doing.  It's not too late to vote in environmentally responsible representation.  And, as I've mentioned before, it's not too late to change personal habits with regard to our choices of light bulbs and ensuring that we're not contributing to the waste problem that single-use plastic bags presents.  "Now that you mentioned Cuba [above, ed.] you better tie in the plastics issues because the beaches of Cuba are covered by plastic." Thanks Michael. I guess I now know where I need to visit next before we've permanently destroyed those too.