That Time Josh called that coot with his speck call & the shell fell out of Kevin's gun...

© 2010 Joshua Stark

I love the Fall.  "The sound of gunfire, off in the distance (I'm gettin' used to it now")... because, when I'm hunting, that's oftentimes the only way I hear gunfire. 

Many people worry about the physical act of hunting, because guns are so dangerous.  Well, let me put that worry to bed right now: Go hunting with me, and the only worry you'll have about your gun is how it's making your arms sore from lugging it all over Kingdom Come.  In fact, you might even start asking yourself why you even bothered to bring a gun in the first place. 

I'm known in my hunting circles as a "cooler" (look it up, yourself), a condition that grows in magnitude whenever I go hunting with my cousin.  Our hunts together have been described as Epic, as in, "Wow.  I've never, in my entire life, had as bad a hunt as with you two - and I doubt I ever could again." 

If you've ever heard a hunting story of our adventures together, you know that they always start with the line, "that was the time that" followed by a title fitting of the greatest thing to happen on that particular hunt.

"That time we shot that speck";
"That time we shot that dove";
"That time we heard those woodies about 15 yards from us, but never got a shot";
"That time we emptied a box of shells to bring down that bufflehead";
"That time we saw those pileated woodpeckers";
etc.
(Contrary to the ramblings of one Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, there never was, "that time we almost heard those geese," that's just hurtful.)

For clarification's sake, those aren't special hunts - we didn't shoot a record-winning dove.  We shot a dove.

So, though I often talk about the ethics and importance of hunting, I just wanted to be clear with you, the reader(s, I hope).  I wouldn't want any illusions as to any prowess out there. 

A typical mid-Winter day duck hunting with me.  75 and clear, with no breeze...

Parks get short shrift (and myopic suggestions for management)

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Here, I'd like to add a small voice in support of parks, and explain, via a couple of poor ideas I've found in the media, some real threats faced by parks.

First, this op-ed in the High Country News really irked me.  Mr. Pace makes a good point about the need for the environmental community to provide Californians with bigger ideas, but he does it by trying to shoehorn the loss of Proposition 21 into his analysis. 

I worked a short stint in California State Parks, and I worked over four years in environmental advocacy at the California state level, and believe me, Mr. Pace's characterization of California State Parks as the environmentalists "pet agency" is simply wrong, and damaging. 

First, most state parks are historical sites.  Second, the California Dept. of Parks and Recreation has had to get its budget through the general fund, while environmental groups sought fees and fines to fund other agencies with a more direct environmental bent (like CARB, DFG, air pollution control districts, etc.)  If State Parks is a pet agency, it's the runt, sucking hind teat - and Californians sadly illustrated that notion last week.
 
Then, A few days back, I came upon this Environmental Economics post on National Park visitor fees by Professor Whitehead.  It's an interesting, short question about determining the most efficient visitor fee level for the National Parks.  Unfortunately, it also perfectly illustrates a couple of common misperceptions about park visitation and management.

First, national parks are not overcrowded.  Like Mr. Pace's mistake, Prof. Whitehead taps the notion of a few, iconic parks, ignoring the vast majority of the 392 park units, and ignoring the seasonality of visitation.  But, even during their peak visitor seasons, those iconic parks are not overcrowded.  Instead, their crowds occasionally need more efficient in-park management.

The reality is that park visitation has lagged in the past decade, and managers are rightly worried about this lag. 

You see, the mission of the National Park Service is twofold:  To preserve, for future generations, those places we've found to be important to our natural and cultural history, and to provide for the recreation and enjoyment of Americans at these places.  This, plus the truth of the NPS budget (that revenues don't come from visitor fees, but from the Federal Government), means that Professor Whitehead's simple view of parks fits the mistaken perception of the public, but it does not fit the real threats to parks, nor does it fit the mission of the National Park Service.

The professor assumes that parks are overcrowded, that entrance fees = budget revenues, and that park fees are the most efficient way to manage for crowds.  All three are mistaken.

Simply put, parks need visitors who love them.  Park managers understand that they need many visitors to all have a great time.  In California, state parks have come up against this reality, and they find themselves in a vicious circle.  They can pretend that their visitor fees pay their bills, and set entrance fees to optimize their revenues from fees, but in doing so they will alienate themselves from the constituency that really pays the bills - the California resident.  In a short time, they will lose popularity in the public's view, and will therefore lose their budget.  Park advocates and managers, therefore, rightly decided to take the idea of visitation and Californians' responsibility to our cultural and ecological heritage, directly to the People.  Sadly, that vicious circle had already taken its political toll.

Using visitor entrance fees to manage for crowding in park units can exacerbate that political reality.  If fees are raised to "manage" (i.e., discourage) crowds, crowds won't come.  If crowds don't come, parks won't get high priority in budget determinations. 

Higher visitor fees are the wrong way to manage for crowds.  Sadly, many economists can only talk in visitor fees, and therefore must make some seriously constraining assumptions when trying to "help".  Also sadly, many park systems are realizing that, among their problems, the fee structure has politically alienated them. 

I wish I had a suggestion for this dire problem many park systems now face.  If you have any, bring 'em.

History and responsibility, and hope

© 2010 Joshua Stark

If you are expecting some reflection on yesterday's election, it ain't happening here.  I'll gladly give my opinion if people want to read it, but not unless there is some email outpouring lamenting the dearth of talking-head spinmeisters.  The only thing I will say is that I completely and totally gave up on the federal government doing anything for climate change in 2009, and I'll keep my focus on California and regional attempts to do right by their people, considering the latest changes in federal vs. state government. 

But this post is another reflection from reading "A Sand County Almanac." No politics.  This is about history, and more specifically, the importance of knowing history and acknowledging and reflecting on our good and bad past deeds.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to sit on a panel at the BlogHer Food '10 Conference (for my take on that great event, read here).  During my short time at the conference, I had a number of fascinating conversations with people well versed in all things culinary.  One of these conversations involved hunting snipe (Gallinago gallinago), which included the typical snipe-hunting conversation - five minutes of swearing up-and-down that they do, in fact, exist (hence, the link on the name).

Then the conversation moved to the notion that the snipe is the last of the legally huntable shorebird game species (okay, there's timberdoodles, but if I mention them, then nobody will believe any of these exist).  Someone showed surprise that shorebirds had been eaten at all, the concept being so foreign, and the cultural knowledge of these supposed delicacies having been removed by law decades ago.

But shorebirds were heavily hunted by Americans for many, many years.  The end of shorebirds appearing on menus and in cookbooks happened because of the efficiency of the market hunter and the flocking nature of most shorebirds, coupled with a new-found awareness that we must protect our wilds, lest we lose them all.

This morning, then, when I read 'May' in Aldo Leopold's wonderful work, I was reminded just how close we came to losing so many birds.  Leopold writes,

"There was a time in the early 1900's when Wisconsin farms nearly lost their immemorial timepiece, when May pastures greened in silence, and August nights brought no whistled reminder of impending fall.  Universal gunpowder, plus the lure of plover-on-toast for post-Victorian banquets, had taken too great a toll.  The belated protection of the federal migratory bird laws came just in time." 

One hundred years ago, the demand for plovers was so great among households and restaurants that market hunters nearly ended them all.  

And the same is true for many, many species.  Egret feathers no longer adorn hats.  Buffalo tongue and wild grouse are no longer on the table as regular fare or ingredients.  Most sadly, there is no longer a popular pigeon pie, because that great biological phenomenon, the passenger pigeon, was shot, netted, and clubbed out of existence. 

Thank goodness for the wisdom, if belated as Leopold put it, of legislators who thought past mere economic efficiency, and looked at the value of things from other perspectives.  

Maybe this is a political post, then.  Perhaps I'm still hoping for that human trait to make a comeback, and for our leaders to note the value of our wild places, the value of what we put in our bodies, the values that we teach our children.  I can hope that our leaders will look past their political affiliations from time to time, and recognize the need for us to directly manage and protect our wilds.  We've done it before.  

Maybe I haven't totally given up hope.

The ethical conundrum that is the apprenticeship

© 2010 Joshua Stark

I am unemployed.  Of course, that means much anxiety about the future and the present, although I don't have to worry nearly as much as many others, my family and friends being who they are (wonderful).  But still, it's been hard.

The past few years I've attempted to switch professions, from teaching high school to something that involved the outdoors more, because it overwhelmed me one day that I need to be outside more, and I need to be involved in the outside.

But, few outdoors-oriented jobs are currently open to me, because my educational background is in social science, and many outdoors jobs require biology or "related fields".  In fact, I'm confident in my environmental science knowledge, but without papers, I can rarely get even an interview.

And so, for about five seconds, I considered the option of apprenticeships, in order to get my foot in the door.  I went to California FarmLink's (a great organization, by the way) section on apprenticeship options, and found one close by.  However, when I read the position description, I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach:  Five months, 40-65 hours of work per week, for $300 per month. 

A familiar rant welled up inside me.

I'm not from the movement that spawned environmentalism, 'back-to-the-land'-ism, urban farming and the like.  Namely, I'm not from the urban & suburban upper-middle and upper class white community.  We were not poor by any means, but to quote a famous song, "I was born in a small town."  The landscape was riddled with conservationists, but not one bona fide environmentalist that I can remember. 

Every Summer, then, to help get through college, I worked in agriculture - every pear packing shed on the Delta and in Ukiah.  I did every job in the shed except pack, eventually getting a great gig as a USDA/CDFA fruit grader, 50+ hours per week at its best, for a decent wage.

There was never any option about taking a Summer off and touring Europe.  There was never an option for a free apprenticeship to get a foot in the door at some company or industry.  I needed to help cover my college expenses as much as I could, and so part-time work during the Semester, and work with overtime during the Summer was the only way. 

Today, many in the environmental movement are derided by others as "limousine liberals", folks out of touch with real America.  I'm not so harsh a judge, because I share most of their goals.  But I know that there is a kernel to that truth, and a large part of that image comes from the way in which the industry (because it is an industry, too) chooses its employees. 

People taking this road must often sacrifice, not just time, but financially to a level below a living wage.  This may feel like one is only choosing the true followers of these ideas, but in reality it is only choosing for those who can support themselves by other means, as well.  Typically, this is a young, single person with family to provide for tuition, room and board, and health insurance.  Other options are spouses with enough time for both to work, but one making enough money to cover the basics (health, mortgage, insurance), leaving the other free to pursue a more altruistic profession, or the single and wealthy individual, or the retiree looking to help out.  All of these are fine people, and do great work.

But what this method excludes are myriad voices - passions and perspectives that would make the environmental movement the complete system it needs to be in order to effectively reach its goals.  Poor folks who need employer-based insurance, single parents who want to dedicate their vocation to a calling, college kids who need a living wage during the Summer in order to cover exorbitant tuition rates, families who want to be a part of the solution, who want to advocate and who have talents and skills to contribute, but who cannot live on less than minimum wage.  These people bring different perspectives about what the wild means to them, and these people can often more effectively talk to those people living in similar circumstances. 

So I am frustrated with the apprenticeships and entry-level positions offered in the nonprofit, environmental world.  I understand the difficulties often faced by fickle funding, but I'm much more frustrated at being "offered" positions that cannot provide my family an honest living, and I'm a tad offended that they would expect me to continue to impoverish my family for The Cause. 

A great friend (and nonprofit veteran) once quoted me Confucius during a conversation about this.  She said, "that which is expensive is not expensive, and that which is cheap is not cheap."

Quick thought from the Each One Teach One idea

© 2010 Joshua Stark

In responding to NorCal Cazadora in my previous post, in occurred to me that we could help solve the chicken-and-egg conundrum about hunters and environmentalists.

Oftentimes when I'm attending an environmental advocacy conference, I come across one or two people who would love to try fishing and/or hunting, but who don't know how to start.  I often also come across open-minded hunters who absolutely love having new folks to show hunting.  I propose, then, a Take an Environmentalist Hunting Day, and I mean that in the sincerest sense.

Many hunters believe that environmentalists and animal rights people are one and the same, but they are not.  In fact, I don't even consider animal rights advocacy part of the environmental movement (with a couple of notable exceptions, of course), although I must admit that the fact that many members of nonprofit environmental groups also tend to be knee-jerk members of animal rights groups, which clouds the situation.

Many environmentalists believe that hunters today are paramilitary members who spend part of each year in a compound in Idaho and worry about the New World Order.  However, they carry a romantic notion of the act of hunting, because they have grafted themselves to the Tree of Conservation, whose trunk is T.R. and Thomas Seton, and whose roots are their romantic notions of subsistence hunters and pre-Columbian folks in North America.  They know that deep within their love of the wild exists a need to be the wild, to be a part of it in the most natural way possible, through getting some of their sustenance from it.  They may salve that empty part of their hearts by telling their conscious selves that this is a New Era, and that hunting, today, doesn't have the same spirit and heart, but many long for the experience.

What happens, then, when we introduce enthusiastic environmentalists with the likes of Holly at NorCal Cazadora, Hank at Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook, Phillip at the Hog Blog, or Tovar Cerulli?  And there are many, many more like them, ready to share their love for hunting and what it provides, physically, mentally, emotionally, and in some cases, spiritually.

Hunters, if you are so inclined, I recommend you seek out some of your more environmentalist acquaintances, talk up the beauty and experience of intimately knowing your habitats and gaining sustenance from them, and see what happens.  You may end up with a new hunting partner, and helping to re-engage two artificially separated communities.  But if it doesn't even go that far, I doubt you'll be disappointed in the conversation and the shared feelings about those things to which we all feel connected.

Addendum:  If you are interested in hunting or fishing, but have never done so and don't know where or how to start, please shoot me an email, and I will do my darndest to find a hunter in your area who will give you more information, and may even want to meet you and help show you the ropes. 

Aldo Leopold, & why I don't see a difference between my hunting and environmentalism

© 2010 Joshua Stark

This morning, I read some of Aldo Leopold's, "A Sand County Almanac" to my son (he is one month old).  If you are interested in understanding just why I cannot comprehend how hunters and fishermen don't consider themselves as brothers and sisters to environmentalists, or indeed, environmentalists, themselves, then please read the first three paragraphs of Mr. Leopold's foreword.

The spirit conveyed in this work, so beautifully put in those first paragraphs, lays bare the reasons that many of us hunt and fish. 

The only thing separating us into different communities are other politics, and that is a crying shame. 

Thoughts?

Water Politics and Physics

© 2010 Joshua Stark.

Okay, so with little exception, the California debates for governor and senator ran their courses as expected.  And for all the listening I did, I only found one environmental reference worthy of note, but not in a good way.

I'm sure you've all heard that Meg Whitman employed a woman to work in her house for 9 years, and it turns out that the woman didn't have her papers in order to work here.  I'll brush past that, except to say, "duh!"  I think it's obvious that wealthy people hire undocumented housekeepers as a status symbol. 

But on to the environmental comment.  In the first Whitman-Brown debate, Ms. Whitman stepped into a time-honored tradition in California politics:  offering the promise of more water.

That's right, Meg Whitman promised more water.

I believe it was about two-thirds through the debate, when one of the moderators brought up the Peripheral Canal.  Ms. Whitman took it and ran with it right in the direction I knew she'd go.  She said that the Central Valley's current economic woes were due to the overzealous environmental regulations (or some such thing), and that the peripheral canal was a perfect example of a jobs-building, environmental savior.  Then, she contracted something, a condition I've heard called "diarrhea of the mouth", in which she couldn't stop herself from explaining the benefits of this grand scheme.  She worked herself up into such a state that she had to finish where she did, as horrific as I'm sure it had become in her head.  She ended by claiming that the peripheral canal would provide more water for the environment and more water for agriculture. 

I can imagine the little voice in her head, "okay, you've made a great point about jobs (although it isn't true, and the poor Central Valley will always be a feudal state), so wrap it up.  Okay, bring it in bring it home... wait, wrap it up!  Arrghh!  Stop talking!  No, don't promise them more wa... well, crap."

Ms. Whitman is surely smart enough to realize that a new river bed, no matter how it is designed, will only provide the water that runs from its sources, and cannot provide any new water.  Ms. Whitman has got to be cognizant of the fact that weather and climate determine precipitation, and that one concrete conveyance cannot do one thing to increase our rainfall and snow pack. 

It would have been one thing to say that the Central Valley needs the jobs that more water provides.  I'd have slammed it, but at least it is within the realm of physics.  But to promise a magical transformation?  Pretty bad, pretty amateurish, and perfectly, politically, Californian.