DAILY QUICK READ - AUGUST 26, 2016

Everything Is Connected

This is a stunning piece.  Our national parks are our national treasure.  They are where, if we are lucky, we can discover our true place in the world.  Read it!

The most remote place in the contiguous 48 states, the farthest you can go to get away from it all – the only place you can be more than 20 miles from a road – is deep in the south-eastern corner of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

It wasn’t going to be easy – it would take a week of backpacking to hike in and out – but I’d done several long trips into Yellowstone and thoroughly looked forward to this one. I chose Dave Gaillard, a long, lean, carrot-headed scientist as my partner. An indefatigable backpacker, Gaillard was a specialist in endangered species, namely the wolf, wolverine, grizzly and lynx. These are species that only thrive where there are very few humans.

“Today there are an estimated 1700 wolves in the Northern Rockies,” Dave said. “They are a keystone species.”

A keystone species is one that directly impacts the balance of the ecosystem. In Yellowstone, the extermination of wolves caused the elk population to explode. With no wolves to disperse them, elk chewed down the aspen saplings and willows along streams, which depleted the food source for the beavers, reducing their numbers.

Fewer beavers caused a drop in beaver dams, which reduced the amount of cool, shaded water, which reduced the fish populations. Fewer willows caused a drop in migrating neotropical songbirds.

"Everything is connected,” said Dave, poking the fire with a stick.

…is this not the very point of a national park? To reveal a world in which humans are just another species in a beautifully intricate ecosystem.

Please, No More Climate Change

Climate change may be a hoax to one of the United States major political parties, but maybe the world would be a better place if they actually paid attention to it.  Climate change has driven human conflict for centuries and as the impact of global warming accelerates the conflicts will only increase.

A team of European scientists say they can demonstrate, "in a scientifically sound way," a link between civil violence based on ethnic divisions and episodes of drought, intense heat or other climate-linked weather extremes.

The latest finding carries lessons for a planet that has yet to confront the demands of climate change.

Researchers who looked at the patterns of political disturbance and climate-related events weren't especially concerned with climate change: They were looking for connections. And they found one: a demonstrable probability that inter-ethnic divisions could be brought to flashpoint by extended periods of drought.

They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that in the study period of 1980 to 2010, almost a quarter of all armed conflict in ethnically-divided societies could be connected to extremes of heat or drought.

"Although we do not report evidence that climate-related disasters act as direct triggers of armed conflicts, the disruptive nature of these events seems to play out in ethnically-fractionalized societies in a particularly tragic way," they concluded.

But, Really…..

Isn’t every day National Dog Day?   They are the wild that lives with us.

National Dog Day celebrates all breeds, pure and mixed and serves to help galvanize the public to recognize the number of dogs that need to be rescued each year, either from public shelters, rescues and pure breed rescues. National Dog Day honors family dogs and dogs that work selflessly to save lives, keep us safe and bring comfort. Dogs put their lives on the line every day - for their law enforcement partner, for their blind companion, for the disabled, for our freedom and safety by detecting bombs and drugs and pulling victims of tragedy from wreckage.

I’m sure there will be tears involved.

Thank You, Mr. President

President Obama creates the largest protected area on the planet. 

Capping a week of 100th anniversary celebrations for the National Park Service, President Barack Obama on Friday turned to the ocean to create the largest protected area anywhere on Earth—a half-million-square-mile arc of remote Pacific waters known for both exceptional marine life and importance to native Hawaiian culture.

The Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, established in 2006 by President George W. Bush, already covered 140,000 square miles of ocean around the uninhabited northwestern islands of Hawaii, Obama’s home state.

Obama more than quadrupled Papahānaumokuākea’s size, to 582,578 square miles, an area larger than all the national parks combined. Using his executive authority under the U.S. Antiquities Act, he extended most of the monument’s boundary—and its prohibition of commercial fishing—out to the 200-mile limit of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Doing what’s right for the planet isn’t without a fight.

Citing that imbalance and the impact to Hawaii's longline fleet, the fishing industry vigorously fought the Papahānaumokuākea expansion—in TV ads and YouTube videos, in town hall meetings and in the capitols in Washington and Honolulu. Ultimately, support from Hawaii lawmakers helped cinch the president’s decision. U.S. Senator Brian Schatz brokered a compromise that maintained the monument’s existing boundary on its far eastern end, allowing fishermen from Kauai and Niihau to continue working their traditional grounds inside the EEZ.