Bear River basin
Courtesy Utah State Division of Water Rights
https://waterrights.utah.gov/techinfo/bearrivc/history.html I grew up in a town that had a story for nearly every run-down property in its borders. Most buildings had at least one ghost floating around its fence line, but the really haunted estate—the one where, supposedly, my great-great uncle plastered babies into the walls, where it’s said he threw his wife into the well, where the land itself swallows livestock and spits out bones, where you can still hear screams coiling up near the hackthorn bushes and willow trees—is just outside of town. Just far enough to escape the reach of the city lights, but not too far that you won’t make it back by morning. The location, more than its history, is probably the reason for the stories. If there is no journey, there is no room for stories to germinate.
My friend, Dr. Lynne S. McNeil, is a folklorist. She told me that it’s common for haunted things to happen in liminal spaces, in the places between places. So the haunted house on the edge of town makes sense. Just like it makes sense that most of the people who went to the haunted house were teenagers—not yet adults, but somehow not kids either. It’s human to seek out nooks to create the things we fear, and the things we feel compelled to lie about. She also told me about the theory of ostentation. People act out something of the legend to connect to the legend more. It’s not enough just to go to the haunted house, but you have to throw stones in the well to see if the motion of something falling will awaken the long murdered wife.
Bear River
Courtesy USDA Forest Service I now live near the geographic center of the Bear River drainage. I can walk to decent water from my house. But I hardly ever fish it. Mostly because the best fishing in Northern Utah is in Southern Idaho. Some of it is right on the border. There’s something in the trip. It’s more of an event even if the trip distance is increased by fifteen minutes. The Bear River travels nearly five-hundred miles, but its mouth and source are only separated by about 100 miles. It starts and ends in Utah, but crosses the borders of five states. It’s the largest river in North America that doesn’t flow to an ocean. It is known for its calm meanderings and its white-water kayak sections. It is America’s caveat river. Almost as an homage to the river that always needs an explanation, I choose to travel to it. I choose to fish those tributaries that feed the river instead of the convenient pull-outs where the Bear threads the road. I like to follow the fish to where they spawn. I’m always looking for the less obvious place to fish because everyone knows the story goes that you have to work for the big fish. Fishing trips need time to steep both before and after fishing. Where, if you fish with others, they’ll tell you how the fishing is going to be or was that day. Where, if you fish alone, you’ll think about how the fishing will actually be or was that day. You’ll compare it to other times at the same place and you’ll remember both real and imaginary fish. If there isn’t a space between fishing and not fishing to think and create, if you don’t drive past water that looks fine in search of great water, the fishing won’t be as good. I’ll never be a guy who spends more time on the road consistently than in the river—but, I’ll always give the fish and the river the respect of a drive.
J.J. Horns – Our lab name is the Biodiversity and Conservation Ecology lab and our work focuses on how human land use affects different types of wildlife.
J.J. – I’m J.J. Horns.
Patricia Gao – I’m Patricia.
Ahmed Bwika – I’m Ahmed.
Anna Vickrey – I’m Anna Vickrey.
Kyle Mika – I’m Kyle Mika.
Jennifer Bridgeman – I’m Jennifer Bridgeman.
Kylynn Clare – I’m Kylynn Clare.
J.J. – Here in Red Butte Canyon we monitor migratory songbirds as they move through and try and get a picture of one, what is the bird community like in Utah. That’s why Red Butte Canyon is such a nice place to work because it’s a protected canyon so it gives an idea of what the natural state of birds along the Wasatch should be like. And we monitor their populations, look for any population level changes, and we look for changes in their migration, in the health of the birds, and try and understand how human effects like land development and climate change are affecting these bird communities.
Ok, so we’re ready to go around and check our nets.
Anna – The mist net is this really superfine, hard to see material with shelves in it. So when the bird flies into the net it kind of falls into one of these net shelves and that material is so fine, especially if you put it in front of a tree, that the birds don’t see it and so they’ll just fly right into it, fall in, and we come around frequently enough that they’re not in there for a long time.
J.J. – So this is a bird called a spotted towhee and based on how brown that head is
J.J. – and the eye color, we can tell that it’s a little baby, just born this year. Towhee squawking in the background. When the bird lands in the net like this they get all tangled up, they get the net around their wings and around their legs, and so what we do is we carefully take it off of any part of their body where it’s tangled up and then we put them in these little bird bags. And the bird bags are just little cloth sacks that keep the bird warm and because they’re kind of dark the bird stays really calm.
J.J. – So this is a yellow warbler. So as part of the banding we take the age and the sex and then a bunch of morphological measurements. We can tell this one’s a male by those brown streaks on the breast and we can also tell it is an older bird. It’s been around for at least one year because of that nice yellow edging on those tiny feathers there.
[Sound of JJ blowing the bird’s feathers away from its body.]
Let’s say a CP of one. A CP is a cloacal protrusion, it’s what males get when they’re breeding. Sound of blowing. No brood patch. Brood patches are where birds will loose feathers on their stomachs so they can incubate eggs. Sound of blowing. No fat. Birds deposit fat in a really predictable way. They have a little cavity where their collar bone is. Sound of blowing. No body molts. Not growing any feathers on his body. Wing is sixty-two and his weight is 8.4.
If anyone is interested in helping out bird conservation just in their day to day life, if you have cats either keep them inside or buy them a cat bib or a couple of bell collars. That’s probably the number one thing you can do to help bird conservation.
Everyone – For Wild About Utah this is the Şekercioğlu lab in Red Butte Canyon!
BioBlitz 2016 Logo Courtesy Audubon International auduboninternational.org/BioBlitz/ (updated 8/22/2024) Note: Audubon International is a separate organization from National Audubon: Audubon.org and has a different mission.
“So what is a BioBlitz anyway”, by far the most common question we get from the public who visit our parks and other venues offering the event.
A BioBlitz is an event that focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible in a specific area over a short period of time. Scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members work together to get an overall count of the plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms that live in a place.
For the past decade the National Geographic Society and National Park Service have collaborated on a BioBlitz in a different park each year. This year in order to celebrate the NPS centennial, over 250 BioBlitzes are happening across the country and throughout the year. The resulting recordings can be impressive with hundreds of organisms showing up. It is great fun, a celebration of life in all of its myriad forms
My first experience occurred two years ago at the Golden Gate NRA where several thousand folks joined us. One of many highlights was standing on the Golden Gate bridge with a bunch of college students during a wind driven rain storm counting porpoises swimming through far below. Joining us was a lead mammologist who had been researching the return of these remarkable beings. The porpoises had been excluded from the bay by a massive cable net installed during WWII to prevent enemy submarines from entering the bay. Many new species of life were added to the Park list as is often the case.
Last year I joined the Hawaii Volcanoes NP for another grand experience including many native Polynesians adding a marvelous cultural component to the experience, then on to Yellowstone NP where my team investigated pika numbers near Mammoth Hot Springs. The park is especially concerned with the warming trend and reduction of snow pack on their long term survival.
I just returned from blitzing New Mexico’s Bandelier NM. As with Hawaii Volcano, they included a strong cultural presence by inviting in the Pueblo people to perform and exhibit their rich life ways. During the two-day event 17 inventory teams collected 877 observations and identified 363 species.
Back home we had our first event on the Logan River golf course a week ago sponsored by Audubon International and our local Bridgerland Audubon chapter. For our first run we did well. 57 bird species, 67 plants, 1 reptile, 1 amphibian, and a few fungi made the list. There are many more species that were overlooked given our short window of time and limited numbers of observers.
Perhaps you will find opportunity to join a Bioblitz, or create one of your own in your area. Gather up some folks, load the I Naturalist program on your smart phone or I pad and spend a few ours or few days reveling in what nature has to offer- many surprises to say the least!
This has been Jack Greene reading for WAU.
Have you ever looked at a healthy forest and wondered “how do those trees, shrubs, and smaller plants thrive without fertilizer inputs, pest control, consistent watering, tilling, thinning, and being overtaken by unwanted species?” Many in Utah, in striving for alternative ways to grow food and landscapes in general, are turning away from conventional practices and experimenting in a relatively new design process called “permaculture.”
But what exactly does permaculture mean? Permaculture is a design philosophy for producing sustainable landscapes and buildings that work as a system and have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.
Although concepts included in permaculture design have been in practice for millennia by indigenous cultures worldwide, the term “permaculture” was first coined in Tasmania in the mid 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. They describe permaculture as “consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fiber, and energy for provision of local needs.”
As Utahns lean toward water conservation and self-sufficiency, many are incorporating permaculture into their lifestyles. The first, and most important, principle in permaculture design is “observe and interact.” Watch your landscape during different weather events – in heavy rain, regular rain, high winds, and more. Where do storms come in from? Which way do the high winds normally blow? Which areas receive full sun? Where do you hear consistent noise and do you like or dislike what you hear? How does water flow on your property in a rain event? These observations will serve as the foundation guiding how you will eventually design your landscape.
Following “observe and interact” are 11 additional principles, which can be found in most introductory texts about permaculture design, and in USU Extension’s permaculture fact sheet. After making long and slow observations, you may decide you wish to block noise coming in from a certain part of your property, or capture rainwater from your south-facing roof. This is where various tools and techniques come into play, such as harvesting rainwater and stacking functions. Rainwater is a clean, free resource that falls on our roof and properties. Are you effectively using this free resource by building basins and swales to better capture and infiltrate water instead of mounds where water would easily runoff? Are you capturing and storing water from your roof for drier periods? Stacking functions is the practice of considering the entire spectrum of benefits various elements (such as plants or structures) on your landscape could provide, and then grouping elements in a way that works as system. A common example includes the Native American “Three Sisters Garden” of corn, beans, and squash. Nitrogen-fixing beans provide a stable, slow-release nitrogen source for the corn, whereas corn provides a pole for the beans to grow. Squash forms a natural ground cover to reduce weeds and retain soil moisture, while the prickly hairs help deter pests. The gardener can reap a higher yield through stacking functions like this.
To find out more, search for USU Extension’s permaculture fact sheet.
For Utah State University Extension Sustainability, this is Roslynn Brain.
Credits:
Photos: Courtesy and Copyright Roslynn Brain
Text: Roslynn Brain, Utah State University Extension Sustainability
