Category Archives: Natural Areas

Is a River Alive? On the Rights of Nature, an Adventure Story and a Shifting of the Dominant Paradigm

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Being a horticulturist, a student of ecology, evolution and all of the usual life science topics, my reading list is long with books I find and others recommended to me by friends. This most recent is one of the latter, “Is a River Alive?”, by British writer Robert MacFarlane. I hadn’t read any of his other books and my friend John thought I’d enjoy it…I did. I listened to it and, as it was read by MacFarlane himself, he added a bit of rhythm and emotion in his reading that would not have been there were I reading it in book form. This is particularly significant as you read the more emotionally driven sections, which, in this format, the ‘Canadian’ section, turns out to be a rollicking, adrenaline laced adventure story. 

While focusing on rivers, this is a book about the rights of nature, legal and otherwise. Why, does the growing community of such thinkers and activists, seem to think nature, in all of its forms, from fungi to mountains, rivers to oceans, the grandest to the most minuscule living species, deserve rights comparable to we humans? What makes them so special? MacFarlane and his compatriots, would turn that around, instead asking what makes we humans so special as to deserve that which we deny literally all others? Their only value, in how they serve us….The rights of nature proponents do not argue simply for their own favorite species or place, many of those so advocating, and protesting, come from thousands of years old indigenous traditions, peoples who have always recognized the links between all living things and those places and forces which permit and support them. And this isn’t because they are simple, backwards, savages or naive. Such thinking is not born out of the heads of green patriots, earth firsters and narrowly focused academics. This is a movement based on memory, connection, of those living in relationship with, in which respect for all things comes first, a world in which life is a gift, to be treasured…all lives, all species, all places, it is a remembering that no one individual, species or place is so special that any and all others may be sacrificed for its needs, its demands, its hungers. Continue reading →

Tigers Between Empires

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Three years ago I read Jonathan Slaght’s book, “Owl’s of the Eastern Ice’, a book that takes the reader into the inhospitable wilds of Russia’s Primorye Krai, the province immediately north of the Korean Peninsula, its multiple mountain ranges pushing up against the Sea of Japan. With a latitude the same as Oregon and Washington, its winters are far more severe. The book guides you through the mountains and snow, along with the researchers and conservationists, both Russian and American, studying the Blakiston’s Fish Owl, the world’s largest owl, and as the name implies, one that hunts fish in the region’s streams

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I’ve just finished Slaght’s second book, “Tigers Between Empires: the Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China”. Set in the same rugged country, Slaght takes the reader along on a 30 year effort of study and conservation of the Amur Tiger, previously called the Siberian, a region they don’t exist in. You go with them tracking, setting snares next to scent trees, around kills the tigers are still feeding on, and narrow game trails the tigers prowl, as the researchers learn and refine their capture techniques along the way, sometimes at great danger to themselves as they attempt to capture one of the 200-500 pound cats. No one had ever done this before. Snaring, anesthetizing, weighing, measuring, assessing their health and attaching radio transmitter collars so the can track them across their ranges. Continue reading →

Nature’s Ghosts, Sophie Yeo’s Look into Ecology, the Loss of Species and Habitat, in a World that is more than mud, leaves and atoms.

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An ecological study tends to start with a particular species, a place or biotic community and then goes on to define it in terms of its relationships with its various members and the place itself, with its physical conditions. Sophie Yeo, the author of, “Nature’s Ghosts: the world we lost and how to bring it back”, does that, but where most of the books I’ve read take a narrower view and focus on a particular species or place, Yeo takes a both ‘local’ and a more global view as well as one that goes back deeply in time. Hers is not a book limited strictly to ecology as we generally understand it, because she is interested in it as a tool, a tool for reclaiming what has been lost, the ‘Ghosts’ of her title.

As a horticulturist, who took care of landscapes, this book has strong appeal, because not only does it look at life and all of its integral relationships, she includes us, the humans, who so often set ourselves separate in the rarified and an exceptional world of our own making. This is also a critique of this decision in which she writes to show us where and how we belong in this world, how we once were very much a part, how we behaved as a ‘keystone’ species, actors in a landscape, shapers, ‘creators’, and how now, as consumers/destroyers, because of our self ascribed position as superior beings, we became removed and exceptional, a threat to the our other community members, as we changed the world into one that allowed them less and less space. It’s a tall order, what she sets out to do here, but I think she largely succeeds and she does so in a way, with language that is almost lyrical, beautiful at times, and like a ‘bad’ scientist, introduces herself into her story, along with the emotion and clarity that being a new mother can give one’s self.  Continue reading →

Redmond’s Dry Canyon Firewise Management Plan, a Critique and Call to Action

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Those who follow such things know that I’ve been involved in the preservation and enhancement of Redmond’s Dry Canyon, joining with others to form the Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area as an advocacy group, working to educate the public about its qualities and fragility, while also providing ‘boots on the ground’ with clean up projects and the control of threatening Invasive plants. Most recently we’ve been supporting other groups and participating with a guided naturalist walk, a bat walk and a recent Botany and Birds, walk with the High Desert Chapter of the Oregon Native Plant Society and Queer as Flock, a bird watcher’s group. We’ve been advocating for better signage, a trails management plan and for increased efforts to control the illegal use of electric and gas powered motorcycles in the Canyon. Additionally we have be doing the Juniper survey work for the City, to help create a plant data base linked with the City’s GIS program to aid them/us in the development of an effective management plan for Dry Canyon. We’ve only been recently notified, along with the rest of the public, that the City has a new Dry Canyon Firewise Management Plan (a PDF is linked below), which we were assured included participation by foresters, local natural resource and conservation groups…yet, somehow, they’ve produced a one dimensional plan with the singular priority of eliminating the chances of a catastrophic fire, while ignoring virtually all other priorities!!!! Continue reading →

The Eager Beaver: Sociology, Ecology and the Role of Relationship in Life and Community

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Ben Goldfarb’s, “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why they Matter”, is an excellent model for other authors who write on ecology for the interested lay public. It is also an excellent entry for the novice into the world and thinking of ecology. As in any other ecological examination of a species, Goldfarb tells us about the roles and relationships the beaver has in their particular landscapes, how they fit in. In doing this he tells its history, that is, its historical role in the lives of us humans, and we in its, alongside those it shares intimately with the other species of its biotic community. It is a book very much about this important animal’s relationships, and, by extension those of our own and every other species on the planet. The beaver’s, or as the author also refers to them, the Castorid story, (the latinized name of our North American species is Castor canadensis, its old world counterpart, the other species, Castor fiber) is closely linked to our own. We, as the ‘dominant’ player in our landscape, have overlooked the beaver’s pivotal role in the world of water including the rivers, streams, ditches, ponds and seeps that ‘water’ the desert. Beavers were essential in the historical landscape and now, in their absence, our landscapes are often very much diminished. Wildlife, and even farmers and ranchers, who have often vilified them, are slowly beginning to understand the benefits their presence can provide, benefits that far out weigh any negative impacts they bring with them. People are, however, stubborn with long and selective memories. It is not easy for anyone to let their misconceptions go and accept what you have always rejected as patently false. Continue reading →

On Our Western Juniper Survey in Redmond’s Dry Canyon

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This is an explanation of the importance of the survey work being done by the Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area, FNDCNA, and it’s role in the creation of a broader management plan, and a fire management plan, that addresses both community safety needs, as well as those of the Western Juniper and Sagebrush steppe plant communities in Dry Canyon. This is a 160 acre portion of the Canyon Park that stretches 3.7 miles, north to south, through the City, a remnant of one of the canyons formed by one of the previous courses of the paleo-Deschutes River, (There were at least two, one some distance east of Redmond’s location, joining with the Crooked River at present day Smith Rock State Park. The current Deschutes River flows 4 miles to the west of this location through a canyon carved in its earlier stages by Tumalo Creek.) Continue reading →

Holodiscus microphyllus, Rock Spiarea in Dry Canyon

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Another less common slope dweller is Holodiscus microphyllus, or Bush Ocean Spray, a deceiving name, or Rock Spiarea, which is also somewhat confusing. Confusing because Spiarea is the genus name for an entirely different genera of shrubs. So I call it simply Holodiscus. ( Botanical names can be confounding to the uninitiated. I’m not a big user of mnemonics, but I still remember first learning this plant’s close relative, Holodiscus bicolor, and the phrase immediately came to mind, ‘Holy Discus, Batman!” I know, silly, but I doubt I will ever forget that plant.)

This typically occurs on the eastern flank of the Cascades and in the mountains of SE Oregon. The common name, ‘rock’, suggests its preferred sites. I’ve not seen one in Dry Canyon bottomland. It seems most common below the east rim north of the Maple Bridge. Continue reading →

That Gray Stuff? It’s All Sagebrush…Nope

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Part of the Dry Canyon plant series

Everybody knows Juniper and I suspect that a lot of people who think they know Sagebrush, that ubiquitous gray shrub you see everywhere, may be confusing it with other plants, blurring all ‘gray’ shrubs into one. Now this may not seem to be a big deal, but if you are trying to manage a landscape with these in them or trying to create a landscape which reflects the local plant communities, then it becomes much more important that you know what you have so that you can evaluate your landscape’s condition and decide upon what you may need to do, or stop doing, to meet your goals. Continue reading →

The Cut Leaf Thelypody in Dry Canyon

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[Plants of the Dry Canyon Natural Area – This will be the start of a new series focused on the plants of Redmond’s Dry Canyon. I’m creating them to be posted for ‘local’ consumption on the Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area. It’s a City Park including about 166 acres at the north end of Dry Canyon Park which the City has identified as a Natural Preserve. The group works as an advocate with the City, on public education and helping with on the ground work projects. I’ll identify each such post here.]

As you walk the trails below the canyon rims you will be seeing these growing scattered and in bunches. This is the Cut Leaf Thelypody, Thelypodium lacinatum. These are common where ever there’s a bit of soil between the rocks on the slopes below the rims growing amongst the tumble of massive basalt. I’ve seen these elsewhere growing in other eastside Oregon canyons with similar conditions.
These are members of the Mustard family, prolific seed producers and quite competitive. Another plant that, at least so far, doesn’t venture out into the canyon’s bottomland.
Elegant when it first starts flowering, like so many native annuals and perennials, these start declining while they proceed through their flowering season detracting from their appearance. What do I mean…each spent flower, begins to form its narrow, linear, Mustard seed capsule, quickly maturing its tiny seed and then drying, twisting and browning, while the inflorescence continues to bloom out towards its terminal end. A little messy, yes, but characteristic of these plants. We humans are relatively intolerant of such decline in our garden plants and so generally refuse them admission. Under the local wild conditions, as dry as they are, species tend to either be early flowering, when soil moisture is still most available or those like this that begin to decline before the show is over. Summer drought is a ‘cruel’ taskmaster. There are exceptions to this rule but….

https://oregonflora.org/taxa/index.php?taxon=8778

On Ornamental Trees and the Remaking/Unmaking of Place: Revising the City of Redmond’s Tree List, part 2

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How Much to Water?

Recommending trees from climates with significantly wetter growing seasons needs to stop if we are to continue growing our population. Landscapes as designed, and managed, are the single largest user of residential water. Recommending trees which ignore this problem is irresponsible. Lower water use residential landscapes are possible. Local codes and recommendations must, however, reflect this priority.

Additionally, how much to water is a bit of a mystery to all of us and especially so to non-gardeners. How much? How often? Our watering practices should be determined by the local precipitation and the tree’s needs. What is commonly done, however, is that we water for our lawns and that largely determines what our trees receive, unless we have separate drip systems. A tree’s root system doesn’t stay neatly between the lines. They quickly extend out well beyond the span of the tree’s leafy canopy. In many cases even 2-3 times as far, taking up water and nutrients. A roots of a tree, planted in a small bed, adjacent to an irrigated lawn area, will move out into the lawn. A tree isolated in a xeric bed with only a few drip emitters, will quickly demand more than such a meager system affords it and such a tree, if it requires summer moisture, will struggle while competing with its nearby  ground level growing neighbors. Again ‘neighbors’ should share compatible requirements so all can thrive on the same ‘diet’ and moisture regime. Continue reading →