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SMALL
CREATURES & ORDINARY PLACES: Essays on Nature by Allen M. Young.
University of Wisconsin Press, 2000
- Professional zoologist Allen M. Young, who spent much of his career conducting field studies on butterflies in the American tropics, finds fascinating creatures lurking in suburban backyards of the Upper Midwest.
- The creatures are mostly insects like cicadas, butterflies, katydids, fireflies and crickets which Young keenly profiles as they pass through the annual cycle of seasons. He invites his readers to pause, bend over and spend a moment watching paper wasps building a nest or dragonflies patrolling a pond.
- Each essay in this collection of both previously published and unpublished pieces is like a living specimen in an entomologist's studio, capturing brief moments of life's complexity and perfection. Arranged seasonally, from spring through winter, their underlying theme is one of coping with the passage of seasons.
- "I am awe struck at how the paper wasp's nest-building anticipates the growing season," Young explains in his essay on their insectan way of life. "A queen wasp instinctively know when it is time to begin its nest, even when the food needed to sustain the future colony is nowhere present or accessible for the time being. But the initiation of a new nest in late spring is an investment that pays off as prey numbers bloom later on, allowing the wasp colony to mushroom in size."
- BALANCING WATER: Restoring the Klamath Basin by Tupper Ansel Blake, Madeleine Graham Blake and William Kittredge. University of California Press, 2000.
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- Lying along the border of Oregon and California, the Klamath Basin extends eastward from the snow-capped Cascade Range into the sagebrush steppes of the Great Basin. It is a land of huge marshes, crystal-clear trout streams and great expanses of forests. It teems with life, both wild and domesticated.
- This handsome large format volume of spectacular photos and engaging text offers a unique watershed study of the Klamath Basin, telling both the human and natural history of the region. William Kittredge, one of the West's most respected essayists, delivers a sensitive summary of the social and ecological conflicts surrounding land use decisions past and present, and explains why this publicly owned commons deserves public attention and government protection.
- "The Klamath Basin is a national treasure, like the Hudson River, the Mississippi, or the Everglades. Much of it belongs to ctizens everywhere," Kittredge writes. "Regulatory agencies represent the interests of that citizenry. They are hired to protect my interests in the Everglades, although I've never lived in Florida, and the interests of everyone else. They are also hired to protect my interests in the Klamath watershed even though I live in Montana."
- Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge
- Along Montana & Idaho's Continental Divide Trail
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Small Creatures & Ordinary Places: Esays on Nature by Allen M. Young. University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. "In another fascinating adaptation, naiads can collect water in the body through the anus and then expel it rapidly, giving these creatures their own personal jet propulsion system that pushes them forward at an incredible speed. The speed can be adjusted by the amount of water drawn into the body and expelled, and by the insect's locomotoring skills." "Remember again, though, that more than 80 percent of all animals are smaller in size than the length of a paperclip. Remember too that in smallnewss there comes a wealth of biological diversity and ecological ingenuity." |
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Balancing Water: Restoring the Klamath Basin by Tupper Ansel Blake, Madeleine Graham Blake and William Kittredge University of California Press, 2000 "Pintails and mallards and teal in their quick undulating vee-shaped flights were everywhere in the early December twilight, wheeling and calling, setting their wings, settling. I was with Tupper Blake at the little property he calls Marsh Island Ranch. We were looking out over the Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge. I was happy like a child." "Evidence of pesticides in watersheds ought to be unthinkable, and not only on wildlife refuges. I mean anywhere. Do any of us want such stuff in our water? "On the other hand, it's probably impossible at present, given the intractable nature of late blight in potatoes (the cause of the 'potato famine' in Ireland 150 years ago), to raise potatoes without fungicdes." |
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