Second thoughts

I like oil. It makes my snowmachine run, which lets me have fun, get food, and go trap. This is very important to me, and running a dog team is not an option for me. This picture makes me re-think offshore oil in the Arctic, though:

As bad as this disaster is, I can't imagine floating chunks of ice would make it any less worse. I love our home too much to want this to happen to us.
There, I've got the politics out of me for the month.

Kuinerraq gets new houses?

I thought I posted about the Cold Climate Housing Authority's Anatuvuk Pass hosing experiment, where they built semi-subterranean houses like a napik. I've got a picture to the right. I think they're possibly good ideas, because the current houses are the same that are used in Arizona for BIA housing there. They don't work there, either. Here in Alaska, they rot, leak heat, and are very vulnerable to cold and blowing snow.

So I'm really happy that they've apparently worked well in Anaktuvuk Pass, and Quinhagak is considering them too. They want to make theirs octaganal, which is an interesting idea. I have a hard time imagining living in an octagonal house, though! The problem would be arranging things, so you don't waste space.

One other thing I wonder about is how they insulate the house from the permafrost, to keep it from melting into the ground. Would permafrost melting be more dangerous to a buried house? I wonder.

The future of Polar Bears is Styrofoam

There's a stock number of questions I get all the time. Usually the first question I get is something about whether I shoot wolves or not. But just as often, after a long discussion about predator control, I'll get asked about Polar Bears, and whether I support their listing.

My answer is, of course, that given my knowledge of Polar Bear biology (admittedly incomplete), it seems prudent to protect Polar Bears. People will then ask me if I support subsistence harvest for Polar Bears. Which, given my knowledge of Polar Bear ecology, I do. `Ah ha!` someone will cry. `You're biased to subsistence! You wouldn't let a bunch of white guys go out and shoot a Polar Bear, but you're happy to let natives do it even when you want to protect a species!`

This is when I get out the clue-by-four and begin beating them with it until they get a clue.

So how can a species need protection, but still be available to harvest? Well, unlike many things in biology, this is actually mostly straight forward.

Let's say you have a Polar Bear.

Yes, yes you are a Polar Bear. Incidentally, if you want my art skills using paint, check out this tutorial.

Okay, let's take that Polar Bear, and put it with all her buddies.

What a wacky bunch! They should have their own prime-time sitcom.

Now, in this system, we have something that is a limiting factor, and something that will become an increasingly large limiting factor - habitat. Particularly, ice habitat. We're going to have a lot less of it. Some Polar Bears are going to have it...

But what about those who won't? Or those who get sub-optimal habitat?

Well...

I joke. It's not curtains time for them, but those bears will be much worse off. The boars probably won't get to breed, and the sow will have very low cub survival, because the sows will be in poor condition. There may be some small contribution contribution to the next generation's numbers, but the contribution will be dominated by chance (stochasticity).

It's my contention, and the contention of US gov't., that harvesting a small number of Polar Bears is entirely acceptable (albeit unsustainable). If you shoot a Polar Bear, either a) it wasn't going to make a large contribution to the demographics (especially if male) or b) it frees up the limiting factor (habitat) for another animal who will now be able to make a larger contribution to the next generation. And if you keep your hunts low, the mortality will rarely make a blip on the population magnitude radar. The story is simplified slightly, yeah. And I glossed over a few things. But on the whole, it holds water.

"Wait! You said it was unsustainable. What's with that" Well, sure. Eventually, given the trends in habitat, there will be very little habitat left to Polar Bears. Short of building Styrofoam icebergs for them, there's nothing we can do about that. Thus, it's not a sustainable situation. However, it's got less to do with hunting pressure and more to do with people running coal fired power plants. Here's some cold hard facts to throw a damper on your day: There probably won't be many Polar Bears in the future, Yup'ik Language is dying, someone will have to take a cut in their lifestyle because every country can't all have it and Africans will eventually want to start eating food too, and eventually India will kick our ass economically. Oh, and there's no Santa.

So, that all said, the ban on importing Polar Bear rugs from hunts is pissing into an active volcano. Sure, it feels good, but it doesn't get anything done to Polar Bear conservation. Worse, it has the unintended consequences of cutting off the livelihood of people. And it will consume resources enforcing the ban which would be better spent doing conservation in other ways. Like, say, putting up a few few wind turbines. But if we were really serious about solving these problems, things would be different, wouldn't they?

Recycling Shopping Bags

While I'm against plastic shopping bags - few things makes me angrier than finding random plastic shopping bags wafting across the tundra - I'm a bit disappointed in the decision to tax plastic shopping bags. I reuse the plastic shopping bags as trash bags, and as packing material for shipping things. Luckily, I have a small hoard of the plastic bags left over. I'm not sure this is the best way to fund a recycling program.

On the plus side, it'll encourage people to shop at places other than Freds and Walmarts: Small businesses are exempt from the new plastic bag tax.

Quotes from Orwell and North American Mammals

I found this quote at the bottom of a daily news update, and I like it:

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded. -- George Orwell

I was never made to read George Orwell at school, or collage, and so I came to appreciate what a good author he was without the negative memories of time in Engrish class. Which is good, this way I like him!

---

Here's some more science from the Conference, this one being talk number 54, titled "What's killing North America's mammals? A meta-analysis of cause specific mortality." It was authored by Christopher Collins and Roland Kays, out of New York State Museum.

As they write in their Abstract, everything eventually dies. What we'd like to know is across all mammals, what are the major drivers of mortality? We can quantify this by `Collering and follering` - putting on GPS or radio collars to track animals until they die, and investigating the cause of death.

Any given study can only look at so many animals at one time. GPS and radio collars are expensive, and so are putting them on critters. It's also very time intensive. So any given study only gets so much information, and that information is generally most applicable to a given species, or a group of species in a similar area. However, people can go in after studies are published and collect lots of peoples' different studies and bring them together. This is called a Meta-analysis. Meta-analyses frequently need lots of boring mathematical treatment, because people invariably collect their data in different ways, but well done meta-analyses can be very informative about large scale patterns that no one study would reveal.

Collins and Kays gathered in all the studies they could find with mortality data, and after working with the data, they found that surprisingly, 43.8% of across-species mortality was caused by humans. Most of this was hunting, though not all; Road-kill accounted for 7.9% of all mammals' mortality reported. Now, natural causes accounted for 40.9%, and unknown causes accounted for 15.3%, which is very large indeed. Natural mortality is probably much larger, because that 15.3% of unknown is likely a lot of disease related death, and predation. However, in those cases, the researchers got to the bodies late, or just couldn't figure out how the animal died - it's harder to figure out what disease killed an animal than you'd think!

Still, even if all of the unknown mortality was caused natural causes, that still leaves 43.8% in the hands of humans. Where other factors used to dominate, now humans apply the "Natural Selection" in North America. This has very profound implications for the direction that evolution will take in the long-haul, as species slowly adapt to human presence. Well, either that or they'll go extinct. One of the two.

I once took a course in Urban Ecology, which is the study of natural systems in human areas - farms, villages, dockyards, and big cities. What really stuck in terms of animal resilience was that species that thrived around humans either had a long history around human cities (usually Europe or Asian weeds and vermin), or animals that are so behaviourally complex, and so plastic and amenable to changing conditions, that humans really couldn't disrupt them. Racoons in the lower 48 are the perfect example of this.

With this in mind, and knowing what Collins and Kays said about human-cuased mortality, what Alaskan Mammals do I see with the best chance at persistence in 200 -400 years?

• Arctic Fox
• Red Fox
• Coyote
• Feral Domestic dogs
• Racoon - invade and expand.
• Ermine
• White Tail Deer - invade and expand
• Snowshoe Hare

This isn't a comprehensive list, but species that are behaviourally plastic, and stick out in my mind as things that can dodge human-induced mortality to a sufficient degree. I don't include moose because they're highly susceptible to diseases carried by White Tailed Deer, who are slowly invading northward.

There's some hope for other species, though. According to Collins and Kays, when humans designate an area as protected, it seems to work by-and-large. There's still human caused mortality, but it becomes considerably less. There just needs to be the political will to do it, and the public support for the designation.

Easier said than done.

Organic Lunch

I did something I normally don't do. I tried to buy all organic at Fred's. I don't go out of my way to buy organic, typically, but paradoxically, I tend to eat a lot of organic food - wild game is about as free-range and organic as it gets. But what I dress that meat up in tends to be... uh. In-organic? Un-organic? Something like that.

So, I had a short list for yesterday - just around 10 things I needed from the store, and normally, it would have run me about 30 dollars. Most expensive purchase should have been the tortilla chips (mmm. Taco salad!). However, when I went through and got Organic stuff first (I couldn't find a few things as organic foods, like doughnuts. And I love a doughnut with my coffee), the most expensive thing ended up being the salad! All told, I ended up spending 65 dollars on food. Yes, I know buying organic is like anything - shop around - but really, 100% markup is something else!

And on top of that, I forgot to pack my lunch! Oh, well. I have my inorganic doughnut to tide me over.

Bad year coming up?

I wonder, how bad are they going to cut into the subsistence quota on the Yukon? The answer that they're going to cut really deep into it. Commercial fishing is going to eliminated all together, probably for the whole season. Fish are food. Literally. Yugcetun, the words for food and fish is the same, and for generic eating also comes from the word for fish. And of all the fish, Salmon are the very, very most important by a huge degree. By orders of magnitude. I know they got to meet escapement goals - continuation of the species is important. But if you think things are tough on the lower Yukon before, you go through and do that to the subsistence quota, and shut down commercial fishing, and you see how things go.

The history of Reindeer in Alaska

I've been reading a lot about the history of Reindeer herding lately, and my head is so full of thoughts that I can scarcely get them down on paper fast enough. Two very important things I've been reading have been "Eskimos, Reindeer, and Land," a publication by UAF's school of Ag and Land Resource Management from the 80s. More recently, but more tangentially, Gary Kofinas (UAF) and Don Russell (Environment Canada) wrote a chapter in "Family-Based Reindeer Economy, and the Status and Management of Caribou Populations" on the status of North American caribou in the high arctic, and their use as a subsistence resource. There was 4 pages on modern Reindeer herding on the Seward Peninsula, which might not seem that much, but it's helped me clear up some long standing questions I'd had.

If you're not clear on the difference between reindeer and caribou, I'd describe it like this: Caribou are to reindeer as wolves are to dogs. They're both members of the same species (Rangifer tarandus) but they're different subspecies (Reindeer: R. tarandus tarandus; Alaskan Caribou: R. tarandus granti). Reindeer are semidomestic - they've had a long history of being herded in northern Eurasia, but there are also wild populations of reindeer, and the two groups freely interbreed. Physically, reindeer are shorter than caribou, with thicker chests, more muscle mass, and they're more likely to have spots or stripes on their coat. Behaviourally, caribou and reindeer differ in that caribou are less docile, and tend to be migratory. The top picture is of a caribou, and the second picture is of reindeer at the Ag. station.

The overwhelming majority of reindeer in the state are the descendants of reindeer imported from Russia in the late 1800s, when the Reverend Sheldon Jackson imported 1,280 reindeer to provide to the eskimo in the areas he was evangelizing. The hope was that with the introduction of reindeer, subsistence hunters would stop hunting, and take up pastoral activities - somewhere in all of this, they were looking for people to join their brand of Christianity. I imagine it worked like opening a bank account, and the bank mailing you a free toaster. "Accept Jesus today and get two free reindeer! (Offer not for existing parishioners)."

Oh, randomly. A lot of the old bible translations use qusngiq for sheep, which amuses me to no end. `Reindeer of god, who takes away the sins of the world.` Okay, I'm easily amused.

All glibness (is that a word?) aside, Jackson was only partially concerned with evangelization, and no doubt part of his importation of reindeer stemmed from a crises that he thought was growing, in the form of declining Caribou numbers. Long ago, it would mean people would merely shift their focus to new food sources, like more whaling or fishing, and de-emphasize caribou as a food source. Similarly, Jackson interpreted the old sod houses and qasgiqs as being miserable, damp places, having overlooked that they were quite nice in the winter, and weren't really occupied past the spring.

Whatever the humanitarian motivations were, reindeer herding was quickly associated with religious missions, and was spread to various areas by various churches - Bethel by the Moravians in 1901, Point Barrow by the Presbyterians in 1898, Kotzebue by the California Yearly Meeting-Friends in 1901, etc. The Barrow situation is of interest, because the reindeer were drove to partially provide relief for stranded white whalers; it's my understanding of the story that the reindeer drive ended up being more of crisis than the stranded whalers. One of my graduate students has the whole story of that, but she's currently out on a well earned vacation. There were other disastrous reindeer drives, such as a drive of animals to Circle, where only about 1/3rd of the animals survived. I can't find a single time in the history books that a reindeer drive worked.

After 1930, reindeer herding underwent a rapid and catastrophic collapse, with populations going from 640,000 to around 25,000 between 1935 and 1950. The numbers remained stable there for a period, before entering a steady decline. The reasons for the collapse are mutlifaceted. Part of it was over-grazing in some areas. Other reasons were failures to retain reindeer when caribou herds would enter the area. Part of it is was related to a en-mass change of ownership mandated by the Reindeer act of 1937. The Reindeer Act of '37 warrants its own post, really. Boy, do I have a lot to say about that!

Now days, reindeer herding is essentially only conducted on the Seward Peninsula, with minor herds on Nunavak, Umnak, St. Paul, St. George, and very recent, small herds in Palmer, Delta Junction and on the Kenai Peninsula. For the herds off the road system, the biggest issues are concentration of knowledge, logistics, and the near-total collapse of the Asian antler market, which used to be a major source of income. The data I see for the value of reindeer meat up to 2000 shows a steady decline from '95 on, suggesting that alternatives to the meat are becoming more desired, or possibly the price of reindeer meat is overvalued, and any increases in price result increased no-sale. I'm not an economist, though. The Reindeer project had more to say about the state's future economic viability.

The reindeer industry in Alaska, and especially the industry at Seward Peninsula, is facing major problems.

The growing caribou herd represents a major threat to the reindeer industry in Alaska. The caribou has a devastating impact on the pasture areas; they attract preditors when they migrate into the pasture areas; and the caribou bring the domesticated reindeer along when they migrate through the permit areas.

There is a huge potential in the market for reindeer meat and other products both within Alaska and in the lower 48. To be able to develop this market the industry depends on access to abattoirs and other essential infrastructure. But the main disadvantage for the development of the industry is the high transport costs. Concerning the size of the potential market for reindeer products, the profitability of the industry could be increased if the above mentioned problems are solved.

Our reindeer and caribou research is focusing on the north slope, especially the Central Arctic Herd, the Western Arctic Herd, the Teshekpuk Lake herd, and to a lesser extent the Porcupine Herd. My own interest is more in the Mulchatna Herd, on the lower Kuskokwim, where the now-defunt Killbuck caribou herd used to reside - as previously mentioned, Bethel was a site of introduction for reindeer by the Moravians.

Careless Language

That's James Randi, a funny man, and one of the few people I'd listen to with the title `The Amazing` before their name. I kinda like his comments about how `natural` is flung around with reckless abandon. All natural this, and natural herbal that, it's enough for someone to gouge their ears. Totally independently of Mr. Randi, I have about the same sarcastic response to the suggestion that natural is a priori better: Methylmercury, cyanide, and botulism are all natural, but you'd do well to steer clear of all of them.

Unless someone wants to suggest that manufactured cyanide would be worse for you than the sort that some plants produce.

Organic is another poorly conceived term. I understand it's supposed to be a stand in for a suite of farming characteristics, but frankly, Organic was the wrong label to put to this suite. When I first started hearing about organic this, that and the other, I wanted to know what an inorganic banana looked like. Did organic potatoes have extra carbon? Are non-organic carrots made in a plastic injection mould?

The term organic implies that there's something unilaterally, fundamentally wrong or unnatural with non-organic foods, which is a sweeping generalization that I'd take issue with. Plying on the whole `natural=good` misconstrusion, it suggests that their goods are all around better, healthier, more sustainable. This is also not true. Yet based solely on the label, and the mistique about it, a growing number of people assume just that. Including, I'll add, quite a number of educated people who should really know better.

Newsless news.

I'll take `well duh` for a hundred, Alex.

“In both communities, we hear loud and clear that the children are going to school not ready to learn [...]

That's the least of the educational worries. Did this `team of experts` ever glance at the drop-out rate in those villages? There's a prevailing attitude that education is useless. Attendance is a joke. There's few jobs, never mind ones that require an education.

They said there were few full-time jobs and they needed help paying heating fuel bills that have soared past $1,000 a month. They plead for help to repair the stock of poorly insulated and crumbling houses, some so dank that respiratory diseases and other illnesses often strike children.

I might have said both of those before. And again. The houses were built for temperate climates, many of them some time ago. They're built just plain stupid. There's a group out of UAF (Cold Climate Research insitute?) who was working on pre-fab homes that could be built easily, fit in a single plane, and doesn't leak heat like a home made of spoons, but that's a bit from being deliver-able. Oh, god, don't get me started on Kotlik's school. It's brand spanking new(ish), but it's among the worst built buildings on god's earth. It won some mondern art archetecture awards, just the heating frequently ups and dies, and teachers have to resort to Space Heaters. Oh, and the floorplan looks like it was designed by the criminally insane. Oh, and it has exposed heating pipes outside. Oh, and the facing were put on it so water apparently collects between them.

Yeah. Anyhow.

She would also like to organize an effort to provide immediate weatherization assistance to help make people’s houses more energy efficient. That might include sending in housing experts to assess the need and do some of the work.

The team will have to identify different “pockets of money” that might be used for that idea, she said.

The state Legislature approved $300 million last year to help people across Alaska weatherize their homes.

The money hasn’t reached Kotlik, Emmonak or other remote areas, said residents, many of whom had never heard of it.

One problem is that there are few energy auditors in rural Alaska to do the required assessment.

Meanwhile, the program has been a huge success in urban areas such as Anchorage, where average incomes are much higher.

Uh. Yeah. And that the Y-K has less access to services is news, all the sudden? They were talking about that back last... Jan?
Politicians: Attention span of goldfish.

In Kotlik, a roadless community where buildings and homes stretch along a slough of the Yukon River, many of the houses are gray, miserable shacks with several adults and children piled together under one roof.

“I’m shocked at the deplorable housing conditions here,” Jollie said. “Shocked.”

...

Someone needs to get that lady into some of the lower Kuskokwim villages. She hasn't even begun to see the bottom of the barrel. I challenge the use of `miserable,` though. Some folk are happy. Not everyone, but not everyone is `miserable.`

Oh, another issue, she doesn't even notice? Housing shortage. Kotlik is growing, and will need new houses built to support that continued growth.

The team’s ideas include resource fairs in February in Kotlik and Emmonak, a village of 800.

AHAHAHAHHAHAHA! Oooooh. It hurts to laugh.

God, how do we dig these people up?

For example, she’s learned that the limited jobs in the village usually lack benefits and retirement plans, and most people plan to rely solely on Social Security income to take them through old age.

She also learned that while the federal government pays for Native medical care, it doesn’t pay for people to fly to larger cities such as Bethel or Anchorage for check-ups. As a result, many villagers who can’t afford the costly flights said they wait until they’re extremely sick to go to the doctor.

“The need is much more profound than I thought it would be,” she said.

Well... well, what the hell was she expecting? Mansions? Direct flights to Achoragua? 100% employment? Igloos?

God, how do we dig these people up?

Global Warming: Don't care if you don't believe in it.

First things first: MERRY CHRISTMAS! And if you don't celebrate it, happy Thursday!
Second things first: What are you doing reading blogs today? :p

Okay. So, I think the evidence for Global Warming is pretty strong. I know just enough chemistry to be dangerous when I read over the papers on the subject, and enough about modelling to know that what climate modellers are doing is by and large legit. Partially, I trust the peer-review process, where scientists love to prove eachother wrong, and partially, I trust expertise - arguing about climatic science is like arguing about how things work inside a nuclear reactor, in that I'm ignoring the hell out of the person who isn't a nuclear chemist/physicist when they go on about the subject.

I don't need to place much faith in them, though, because there's many strong lines of biological evidence, not the least of which is the shifting of plant communities. And as Filmore's Bathtub - a blog from Utah - writes, even a lay person can see what's going on. This guy used to be a staffer for Sen. Hatch (R-UT), once upon a time, and is now an educator. He runs a neat blog, though one that's become increasingly left - it seems he's one of the many that the last 8 years of Bush have alienated from their party.

Here's the money shot:
Plants don't have a political agenda. They do, however, know when its getting warmer.

Random bits of news

Here's a few stories that caught my eye this morning - I had a little extra time while waiting for my truck to melt to the point where it'd start. Kids, don't forget to plug in at night! (Actually, I only thought it'd get down to -20°C. Not -30°. Oooops.)

• Demand for apartments and cabins is down, according to this story by The Fairbanks Minor News. There are more postings than I remember, but also, they're still as over-priced as ever. Most of these places are cardboard boxes with fridges. And they charge 500 a month. Go figure.
• ADN linked to a story in Backpacker about conflict between trappers and wolf advocates near Denali National Park. Backpacker is usually a good magazine - I bought my father a subscription, once upon a time - but I think they're a bit heavy handed here. One thing I did notice is that there seems to be a lot of treating wolf packs as stable social units, instead of dynamic entities.
• The FBNSB is considering a trade in program for old boilers and wood stoves, writes the Minor News. I like this idea, as it tackles two problems, heating costs and air quality, by tackling inefficiency. I think about how much heat is wasted by the old oil drip-heater in my last home, it just makes me shudder a bit. The commenters on the story promptly jump the shark by accusing the bourgh of being out to steal their money, guns, and wood stoves. Fairbanks brightest and best, as always.
  

Y-K fuel

I wasn't going to blog any this weekend (bit of a chore list to get through), but I saw this article in the Village Telegraph that had a really nice table of fuel prices in the Y-K in it. Kotlik was highlighted because I was doing a bit of math using it, and didn't notice I forgot to unhighlight it until just now.

The river has two eyes.

A newspaper in Saginaw Michigan, appro nothing, wrote fairly well about what Eek (a village in the Y-K) is like. It's not a perfect story, but not bad for a newspaper about 7,000 miles away. Arctic Economics makes a good point, that in the story focuses on the subsistence economy, with little focus on the cash economy that these days has to be there to support the subsistence economy. For good or for ill, the subsistence lifestyle has got tied up to things that require money. Hunting isn't cash-free anymore.

The BIA did lots of things wrong. I think there's more than a few books out there on `how the BIA ruined the world,` but to that list I'd add that they, and the ANCSA, forced a bunch of Alaska Natives thoroughly into cash economies without any support for the fledgling economies. If you're going to change over spending money for things as an important part of your lively hood, you better darn well have money, eh? This never happened.

Walkie asked me, not long ago, 'bout my attitude towards the fate of Yugcetun, and about what I thought could be done to protect the language and culture. My answer to the latter was a very quick `Jobs!` Even people in nowhere-Mongolia need jobs, if they're buying stuff. A few high paying jobs, like IT, or other sorts of work that it doesn't matter where you do it, and you don't just support a single family, but the money will slosh through the village. Sort of like it does on the state level when you spend locally.

There's pretty much only one way the cash economy would go at this point, and that's if there's a total collapse of the US. Which isn't good. Baring that, without the right fiscal inputs, it'll kill villages. Right now a lot of the lower parts of the YK primarily get their money through commercial fishing permits. But the margin on these jobs is not high enough to really allow other people in the village to continue to engage in subsistence activities when times are bad like this, so they emigrate to Anchoragua. The problem is money isn't letting them decide to continue living as they want. That hurts the long term survival of both the language and the culture more than satellite TV ever could or will.



Oh, hey, you know that your thinking is starting to get warped when you don't think Eek is especially remote, or isolated.