Reconciliation Ecology

So long, blogger... hello, wordpress

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 07:58:00 +0000

I'm moving on to Wordpress, folks, so please update your bookmarks / RSS readers / email subscriptions to point to:

Reconciliation Ecology: a leaf warbler's gleanings

Wondering what prompted this move, after so many years of blogging here? Read this. And this.

And this too (added 27 Nov 2012)!

I hope you will follow me to the new unified blog. See you there.

The trees that are gone at Fresno State

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sun, 27 May 2012 20:25:00 +0000

The trees that are gone at Fresno State, a set on Flickr.

I walked under these trees every single day i was on campus. I studied some of the creatures that made their home there, and enjoyed watching and listening to others on quiet (or not so quiet) mornings on campus. Sadly, I did not carry my camera with me or look at the trees through the lens all too often. Alas, now I will never be able to do so again. Here are a few images I was able to dig up in my albums. We overlook the familiar to our own peril...

Deforestation of an urban ecosystem DRAFT RESPONSE (from President Welty)

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:59:00 +0000

I woke up this morning to find the following DRAFT response in my campus email inbox, and thought it worth sharing given the interest my original letter has generated. Do share your thoughts on this while I mull it over and respond.

{Update: Several faculty colleagues tell me that they too received versions of the same generic response to letters they wrote on this issue.)

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Welty <johnw@csufresno.edu>
Subject: Deforestation of an urban ecosystem DRAFT RESPONSE
Date: May 26, 2012 8:20:56 AM PDT
To: Madhusudan Katti <mkatti@csufresno.edu>
Cc: John Welty <johnw@csufresno.edu>

Sent from my iPad
Thank you for your thoughtful and articulate letter regarding the removal of trees in preparation for a parking project. I understand your concern and I agree that there was insufficient discussion as we approached this renovation. I have sent a message to the campus community today [going out Friday] about the need to review our consultative process on major renovations. I also will consult with Academic Senate Chair Lynn Williams and the Senate Executive Committee on the shared governance process that is applicable to projects of this nature. Attached to my campus message was information about the project from Vice President Matson, which includes the re-forestation plans included in the project, which will be of interest to you.
Again, thank you for sharing your concerns. It is caring faculty such as you who are Fresno State's greatest asset.

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

How do we unbrand our university? A call for creative submissions

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sat, 26 May 2012 09:49:00 +0000

Last month our university - California State University - decided to stop calling itself a university, and transform itself into the brand Fresno State instead. This makeover came with a new sports-team inspired logo consisting of the words "Fresno State" (minus the word "university") emblazoned with a paw print supposedly from our mascot the Bulldog (but with retracted claws, suggesting a cat more than a dog!). Underneath are the three D-words that are supposedly part of our brand identity: Discovery. Diversity. Distinction.

Perhaps to our administration's surprise, this branding exercise did not go over well with most of the academic community. Our faculty senate even passed a resolution against the ill-thought move and is trying to turn the clock back to reclaim our identity as a university. Meanwhile, the administration has pushed forward with the rebranding exercise, plastering the new logo all over campus, replacing the old university seal from everywhere it was used from faculty business cards and letterheads to university websites, and even replacing the old "csufresno" in the URLs of campus websites with "fresnostate" instead.

Continuing in the pattern of completely ignoring the campus community's wishes and taking faculty and students all for granted, the administration this week came up with yet another campus makeover move that may prove to be the straw that breaks the camel's back (one hopes, anyway). Most of the faculty (and what students are on campus in the summer) is in uproar over the decision to cut down almost 200 trees for a parking lot expansion project, ostensibly to accommodate 600 more cars in a larger, "safer" parking lot with security cameras unobscured by trees blocking their lines of sight - rather like the parking lots of soulless shopping malls! If in the process they destroy a little of the soul of our (formerly known as) university campus… well, that's just so much collateral damage.

But this time they have gone too far. This time, I am seeing a level of outrage on campus I have never seen before: outrage that is being expressed in numerous protest letters to President Welty, endless threads of emails flying between faculty members strategizing and organizing to try and bring the administration to its senses, amid fairly widespread local media coverage, not to mention blog posts (like this one here), Facebook status updates, and tweets spreading the word online.

And amid all the angst and frustration, we are seeing some creative venting, with people putting their photoshop skills to work on the logo in darkly funny ways. Here are a few new versions of the much-vaunted Fresno State brand logo I came across today:

Meanwhile, some are also wondering what Wanda, our campus' arboreal Squirrel mascot, cause celebrate of Squirrel Apreciation Week just last month (its not too late to buy a t-shirt!), might have to say about 200 trees constituting her habitat on campus being cut down and fed into a woodchipper this week.

I love these creative responses to the mess we find ourselves in thanks to our university's leadership. I think we need more. So how about it? Ready to unleash your creativity, bust out your mad (or mild) photoshop skills to hack the new Fresno State brand? What do you think it really represents? What should it look like to properly reflect what is becoming of this university? Send me your submission via email, or drop a link in the comments below if you've already posted (or found) it online on Facebook/Flickr etc. I would love to collect these logos and share them here.

Let us see if parody works where serious arguments fall on deaf years. Let's make these alternative logos go viral...

Administration responds to protests against deforestation for parking lot expansion at Fresno State

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:55:00 +0000

This morning, we got the following email distributed on the campus Bulletinboard system, in response to faculty concerns about the removal of trees for parking lot expansion, which included my letter to President Welty yesterday. As you read this, allow me to also point you to this item in Fresno State News just last month about our campus being included in Princeton Review's list of Green Campuses. How well do the actions this week, and even the plans outlined in the email below, match up with that Green designation?

From: Cindy Matson <alangrid@CSUFRESNO.EDU>
Subject: [BULLETINBOARD] Message from President Welty regarding parking lot project
Date: May 25, 2012 9:00:11 AM PDT
To: BULLETINBOARD@LISTSERV.CSUFRESNO.EDU
Reply-To: Cindy Matson <cmatson@csufresno.edu>

I have received a number of expressions of concerns about the current parking lot renovation that includes the removal of trees and the replanting of others. Though this project was vetted with a number of campus constituencies over the course of months of planning, its implementation came as a surprise to some. That was not our intent. After reviewing this project, it is clear there was insufficient discussion and we need to review the consultation process on major renovation projects. I will consult with Academic Senate Chair Lynn Williams and the Senate Executive Committee on the consultation process that is applicable to projects of this nature.

Please be assured that the renovation will include a re-forestation and that we will be seeking the advice of our campus constituencies as we move forward.

Please see Vice President Cynthia Teniente-Matson's information on the project, below.

INFORMATION ON PARKING LOT PROJECT

From Cynthia Matson, Vice President for Administration/CFO

The life of a dynamic campus includes making changes to meet new needs. One growing need – repeatedly identified by campus and community groups – is for more parking. Unfortunately when it comes to parking, there often is no “best” solution to accommodate the needs of students (our largest parking user group), faculty, staff and visitors.

The parking program operations and lots are completely funded by fees and fines. No general fund support is provided. With the declining enrollment and lack of parking fee increases from faculty and staff, revenues have been insufficient, leading to deferred maintenance in many of the lots. Some lots have significantly deteriorated and the lots in the poorest conditions desperately need repair. The original parking plan contemplated a parking structure in this area, however a more-economical solution was necessary to minimize the parking fee increase to our students. Therefore, lots are being repaired and expanded, where practical, in lieu of a parking structure.
Our current parking project addresses two critical issues: the need for more student parking and the need to improve safety in parking lots. In the construction project under way this summer in Lots A, J and UBC on the east side of the Peters Business Building, we are adding more spaces, replacing trees, and improving lighting and security.
The $4 million project, funded through student parking fees, is scheduled to be completed by Aug. 15, just before the start of the 2012-13 academic year. Construction and maintenance projects across campus typically are scheduled during the summer and winter breaks to cause the least disruption to students as possible.
While short-term impacts of tree removal, traffic redirection, and temporary closure of parking lots are disruptive, long-term benefits of the project are important for students, faculty, staff and the community. The lots provide close access to the University Business Center and the Joyal Administration, Conley Art, Peters Business and Science buildings.

Safety was a top priority in designing the new space. The previous design of the three lots posed many public safety challenges. Thoughtful placement of 150 new trees is designed to provide unobstructed line of sight for five security cameras. Five emergency phones also will be placed within the new parking lot.
The three lots, which currently have a combined 1,357 spaces, will become one contiguous lot with approximately 1,900 spaces aligned in an easy-to-navigate, two-way traffic access pattern throughout. Several dry ponding basins will be removed. The project also includes road and intersection improvements around the area.

An extra-wide walkway will be constructed to connect the lot with the existing walkway south of the Peters Building. This follows the Campus Master Plan vision of connecting the east and west sides of campus with a continuous pedestrian thoroughfare.

While 160 trees were removed, 150 trees will be planted within the lot. Trees will remain around the perimeter. Plans call for Chinese pistache trees, chosen for their vivid fall colors and high canopy (helping security camera views), amongst other tree varieties.
Some of the trees removed were diseased, but healthy crape myrtles were uprooted and saved. Trees that were removed were mulched for future use throughout campus.

The project is on a tight deadline that required coordination of funding with completion by the beginning of the fall semester to minimize disruption. American Paving Co. is the contractor.

Discussions of Lots A and J and the proposed financing were held with the President’s Student Lunch Group, Campus Planning Committee, Student Fee Advisory Committee and the Academic Senate’s Facilities and Campus Environment Liaison Committee.

When complete, the project brings the total number of parking spaces on campus to 8,280.

Progress reports on the project will be posted at http://www.fresnostate.edu/police/traffic/flow/advisory.shtml

Deforestation of an urban ecosystem and failure of campus governance: an open letter to President Welty

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Yesterday morning I drove into campus to my customary parking spot under the dense canopy of trees that have shaded our parking lots for years - only to find a scene of carnage: the entire urban forest on those parking lots - some 100 or so trees - were being chopped down to make way for a larger parking lot! Mature, healthy trees, supporting many other species, being cut down to make way for a few more cars!! Craig Bernthal has written about this and posted a bunch of photos of the devastation over at Huron County Extract, along with calls for action. I didn't have my camera with me, but am not sure I would have had the heart to photograph the killing fields either.

Late last night, I was able to compose the following letter to my university's president, Dr. John Welty, urging him to change the course of our university, away from the path of heedless destruction to create more soulless concrete deserts, and instead work on making our campus a leader in urban ecology and sustainable landscape design:

-----------------------------

Dear President Welty,

I am writing to you today as a tenured faculty member who is deeply disappointed and worried about the direction in which our campus has been heading. While I am sure you are used to hearing complaints of this kind from faculty who may not seem to have the bigger picture you focus on, I would assure you that I think of the role and image of our university in the broadest contexts possible and am acutely concerned about the leadership our campus can (but too often does not) provide in improving the lives and environments of people and nature. I write now in particular to respectfully express my deep sense of rage about the deforestation of a mature urban forest on east campus yesterday morning, to make way for a handful of new parking spaces for students. This deforestation represents a massive failure on the part of our university at multiple levels: in the complete failure of consultation with relevant faculty senate committees (not to mention other interested faculty members) before cutting down over a 100 mature, healthy trees; and in the total lack of any broader vision about how to build a truly sustainable green campus (despite everything we profess on this front) that could be a model for urban landscape development. On a personal academic level, I am also deeply hurt by yesterday’s deforestation because it was the equivalent of ripping up a significant part of my research and teaching laboratory without even the courtesy of any advance warning. Allow me to first provide some background to clarify my perspective, before I address the two main failures I just mentioned above.

I am an Associate Professor in Biology, where I teach various courses in ecology and evolution. Current research in my laboratory focuses on Urban Ecology, where I study, in collaboration with colleagues from multiple other disciplines, the dynamic interactions between ecological and human social components determining biodiversity in human-dominated ecosystems such as cities. I am lead PI of Urban Long-Term Research Area - Fresno And Clovis Ecosocial Study (http://www.urban-faces.org/) a multidisciplinary grant funded by the National Science Foundation to study the interplay between urban water policy, residential water use behaviors, landscaping practices, and urban biodiversity in the Fresno Clovis Metro Area, in the context of the onset of water metering in Fresno. This project is perhaps the largest active interdisciplinary research collaboration on our campus, involving over two dozen faculty members and students from at least eight departments in four different colleges, a co-PI from UC-Davis, and several collaborators from UC-Merced and the USDA Forest Service. It builds upon the Fresno Bird Count (http://www.fresnobirds.org/), a volunteer-based citizen science project started by me, and run by graduate students in my lab for the past 5 years, to monitor urban biodiversity in our growing urban area. Our research in both these projects has attracted considerable attention from urban ecologists across the US and worldwide: I’ve been asked to Guest Edit a special issue of Cities and the Environment journal this summer, and have also been invited to present a Keynote Address at the upcoming international Urban Biodiversity and Design Conference (URBIO 2012) in October in Mumbai, India. A year ago, the campus development committee at UC Merced sought my advice on building their campus into a living laboratory for teaching and research where principles of urban ecology could be tested and implemented.

All of my research is situated within a framework of Reconciliation Ecology, a multidisciplinary approach which seeks to develop novel ways to reconcile human development with biodiversity conservation on our overcrowded planet. This reflects my fundamental optimism (in the face of overwhelming reality as my colleagues often point out) about the human capacity to clean up our act and do the right thing towards all life on this pale blue dot we share. While that may sound like a lofty romantic ideal, I actually prefer to take a practical approach by engaging with policy makers, urban planners, and ordinary citizens to explore and develop new ways to soften the impact of our actions on our environment while also improving the quality of life for humans, especially those from underprivileged sectors of our city. While sustainability is a buzzword we often use in promoting our campus, reconciliation ecology offers practical ways to achieve the goals of a sustainable environment.

Thus far, I have enjoyed a great deal of support from my department, college, and higher levels of our university in developing this research program during my way up through the tenure track. You may remember me describing some of this research at various meetings, and perhaps also recall my seeking access to the grounds of your residence at University House as a site for field research on bird behavior by my students. I have also developed new courses in field ecology and reconciliation ecology - which was one of the reasons I was hired here. In my urban research and in these classes, various parts of our campus serve as primary field study sites. Indeed, I am grateful that our campus offers a range of habitats in which to study questions of reconciliation ecology, even though we are rather profligate in our use of water, to maintain many acres of lawn. Many of my students have done interesting original research projects right on campus, including in the now deforested parking lots. We have documented how even these seemingly barren urban spaces (what could seem more devoid of life than a parking lot?) provided valuable habitat to a number of wildlife species including many species of migratory birds protected by the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Fox Squirrels which have become something of a mascot on our campus being celebrated during Squirrel Week, a number of Great Horned Owls that live on our campus, other birds of prey (including an occasional Peregrine Falcon), and a number of other species. Alas, these habitats now stand barren, bereft of the tree canopy which provided valuable resources for all these species. Apart from habitat for wildlife, those trees also served as valuable pedagogical tools for field lessons taught by me and several other colleagues in the biological sciences. This deforestation therefore presents an existential dilemma for my entire research and teaching program on this campus: how can I teach reconciliation ecology to my students and others if we cannot practice even a modicum of reconciliation on our own campus? What credibility will I have at URBIO 2012 next October when I give that Keynote address to an international audience (of academics, policy makers, and practitioners) trying to convince them that it is indeed possible to preserve and nurture biodiversity within urban habitats, when my own university so blithely cuts down a mature urban forest to make room for cars?

All of this brings me to the two most important failures of our university leadership in how this deforestation was visited upon us:

Lack of transparency in the decision making and failure to communicate with faculty members and students: my colleagues and I were completely taken aback upon arriving on campus yesterday to witness the trees torn down. Several of us serve on high level campus committees charged with overseeing the nationally recognized University Arboretum as well as the broader development of our campus (FACEL). Yet none of these committees were aware that all these trees were to be cut down - until after the fact. Had I heard about this plan earlier, I would have gladly helped devise a much better way to accomplish the goal. This action clearly represents a serious dysfunction in how our campus is governed even in such important matters, and such dysfunction needs to be addressed immediately given how demoralized our faculty already are these days.
Lack of vision for true long-term sustainability: While the ostensible reason for yesterday’s deforestation is to increase parking spaces available to students, the manner in which this is being addressed shows a complete lack of vision or ecological foresight. I know that conventional approaches to construction and land development treat trees as just another physical element on the land to be disposed off at will, but is that really necessary? Was it really necessary to cut down a 100 trees (which fix carbon, provide shade, habitat, and psychological benefits, to name just a few) just to add 600 new parking spots? Did whoever make the decision to go this route on the masterplan consider any creative alternatives that would not require the killing of living, breathing, healthy, mature trees? I am sure my colleagues and I could have come up with alternative plans that would preserve the forested nature of our campus environment (recognized nationally in our Arboretum status) while meeting the needs of students. Were alternatives such as aggressively promoting carpooling, bicycling and other options even considered at all when deciding to cut down trees to make more room for cars? Even as our research on local urban ecology is beginning to attract wider attention, we appear to have failed utterly in bringing any ecological transformation to our own campus. I would love for our campus to serve as a model and a demonstration / experimentation ground for the design of more ecologically sensible landscaping and urban habitat design options for others to adopt. Alas, this appears to be a mere pipe dream as our campus rushes headlong down the unsustainable path. What kind of message are we really sending to our students and future generation of leaders by putting cars above trees, at a time when many people around the world are actively developing and implementing solutions to help us transition into the post-carbon age? Is our university even interested in being a leader in finding solutions to our environmental problems? Or are we content to remain a big part of the problem?

I am afraid that yesterday’s deforestation sends exactly the opposite signal on both these counts: that we don’t really care about sustainability or any elements of Nature on our campus, and that we are willing to ride roughshod over both the environment, and any concepts of democratic shared faculty governance as we hasten to turn our campus into another concrete desert.

As the leader of this campus, who must navigate carefully to sustain our campus through extremely difficult financial times, I urge you to not overlook the ramifications of various decisions being thrust upon a campus academic community that feels increasingly alienated and demoralized. A little more respect for the views of faculty and students who care deeply about this university, a little more compassion towards the environment and other organisms who share our campus, and a little more ecological smarts in finding ways to soften the hard edges of our campus’ physical and psychological footprint, will go a long way towards making the difficult times ahead far more bearable for all of us. It can also turn our adversities into opportunities to show genuine leadership in building a truly sustainable academic community and environment for the long term future of this century old university, and indeed our whole world.

Sincerely, and with the very best of intentions,

Madhusudan Katti

Associate Professor, Biology

http://www.reconciliationecology.org/

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

Chimpanzee: a nature film where story matters. For our cousins. For ourselves.

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 08:25:00 +0000

It is something else to look into the eyes of a Chimpanzee staring out of a giant movie screen, the rainforest canopy reflected in those intent pellucid mirrors so like our own.

I don't know if I will ever get the chance to really look into the eyes of our closest cousins, the Chimpanzees and Bonobos, in their natural habitat in the wild. I have seen them in captivity, and lingered around their captive groups, which appear not entirely unhappy in modern zoo habitats enriched to sustain their social behaviors. I have also seen them in a number of documentaries on the television, usually with the familiar face and voice of Jane Goodall (Jane-didu or Grandma Jane to my daughters) accompanying the story. Those have been the best avenues available to most of us wanting to understand something about the lives of these cousins of ours. Most of us will not be able to see those lives up close in person in the wild - and that is a good thing. It is enough, for the most part, to know that we still continue to share this planet with these evolutionary siblings of ours, even though their numbers have dwindled and we continue to ravage their habitats. As a wildlife biologist, I do hope/dream of someday making it to Africa to see them in person. I don't know if that will ever happen.

In the meantime, I will take this incredible peek into their lives on the big screen at my local multiplex:

More about the campaign tying this film to chimpanzee conservation at janegoodall.org

We saw the film a few hours ago, on opening night at the behest of our youngest, N, who can't help but squeal in fangirl excitement every time she hears Jane Goodall's voice or sees her face. N had already watched her appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (yes, my 6-year-old is also a big fan of Stewart and Colbert) earlier this week, delighted by the anticipated chimpanzee greeting they exchanged, and listening rapt to the story of the film as told by Jane. The moment N heard that a portion of the ticket price would go to the Jane Goodall Institute during opening week, it was decided: we were going to see it on opening day!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I went in with a fair bit of trepidation, given that the film comes under the DisneyNature (yes, its their own copyrighted version of nature) banner, and aware that the proliferation of nature shows has also dragged down the quality of these films in recent years. As George Black wrote in that pointed critique just a couple of weeks ago, "...we’ve kept the thrills but we’re losing the story... ... Think of it as nature porn." So I was wary of this film, and even said to my girls while heading to the theater that I wish we had the option to turn off the audio in such films and just enjoy the visuals.

As it turned out, I need not have worried. Because soon after the beginning, as the camera took us (slowly, without jump cuts or shaky cam effects) into the rainforest of West Africa, immersing us into the dark green world beneath the mist-shrouded canopy, giving us our first glimpse of the chimpanzees, it settled down to look into a pair of those pellucid eyes, letting the face fill much of the big screen - and I was lost.

As you can see from the two videos I've shared above, the film crew stumbled upon a truly remarkable story in the adoption of the orphaned Oscar by his troop's dominant male Fred. I am glad, therefore, that the director and scriptwriter did not succumb to the tendency to overly dramatize such events, and bury them under a layer of schmaltz. They trusted the story, and let it unfold for us, taking the time to build a full picture of life as a chimpanzee in that rainforest: with remarkable footage of tool-use in the course of daily foraging, a thrilling sequence of Fred leading his friends in a well-coordinated colobus monkey hunt, and insights into the social dynamics of chimpanzee society both within and between troops. Yes, they labeled the neighboring troop as villains of the piece, but given that it appeared to be composed largely of males, with no young chimps (was this really the case, or merely a result of careful shot selection?), that bit of dramatic tension too hit the emotional mark.

I have seen such drama up close among bonnet macaques at my field site in southern India, and thought then that that would make for great soap opera. This film rises above even that, and tells a truly touching, thought-provoking, ultimately heart-warming tale, Even the voiceover narration stayed in the right zone, I thought, with just enough silly humor mixed with pathos that did not dissolve into sap even at the most poignant moments. It helped that the voice was not that of God (Morgan Freeman) but of Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). And the anthropomorphisms too did not seem out of place - for these are, after all, the most anthropomorphic of animals we have left on the planet. Watching the complex behaviors, and the facial expressions of the chimps, it seemed perfectly natural to view them as our kin, whom we might actually be able to understand using some of our own framework of thinking - even as they may shed light on our own social evolution.

The anthropomorphic tone, which had seemed jarringly over-the-top when applied to penguins (by God, no less), is much more appropriate with chimps. Especially when the tale unfolding has such resonance for our own social lives: the mother-infant bond, the social bonds and anxieties of living in territorial groups, the culture of learning complex behaviors including making and using tools for various tasks, the orphaned young chimp trying to find a place in the troop, which is met with the truly remarkable altruism of the big alpha male, showing his tender side, adopting the child when even most females had rejected him. Why did he do it - the evolutionary biologist in me (fresh from teaching kin selection theory earlier in the day) wonders? Was he the father? Perhaps - but how could he be sure of that in a promiscuous society? Was he thinking ahead to the longer-term need for more male allies in his troop (seems far-fetched)? Or did he simply feel it was the natural, right thing to do? The human thing to do. Isn't it?

N's favorite scene was when, weeks into the growing relationship between Oscar and Fred, we see the little boy reach into the big male's hand, and grab a bit of nutmeat from just in front of his mouth - just like she loves to do with me!

Who needs to amp up the drama when life is full of such moments? I'm glad the filmmakers didn't yield to that base media impulse, instead choosing to deliver the first real dramatic story (at least the first I've seen) from the life of another species, projected on the big screen at our neighborhood multiplex.

Go see the film, for it has a "triple thumbs up" from N! I'm certain we will be adding it to our home library when it comes out on disc. But right now, if you can, see it during the first week to send some of your ticket price towards actual Chimpanzee conservation, or visit the Jane Goodall Institute for ways to make even more of a difference to this planet of us apes.

Just look into those eyes, on the big screen, and tell me that saving chimpanzees is not a crucial part of saving ourselves.

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

Dang... I better update my lab website...

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:45:00 +0000

via phdcomics.com

... but I have this meeting to prepare for first...

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

How the athletic tail wags the academic dog at the new "Fresno State"

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 03:28:00 +0000

As of yesterday, I no longer work for California State University, Fresno. I got my tenure at that institution almost two years ago and have been an Associate Professor in the Biology Department ever since. I still have my lab and office in the same Biology building, and I still have that view from my window of the Sierras, currently hiding under ominous dark clouds as the state reels under today's rainstorm. But our campus too is under some dark clouds these days. So I'm still here. But I'm not at California State University, Fresno any more.

You see, amid continuing budgetary woes, fee hikes, classes being cut, labs straining to accommodate too many students desperate to graduate, understaffed offices, faculty unrest over stalled labor negotiations... a whole litany of troubles, the powers that be on our campus decided that what we really needed was a makeover!! Who doesn't feel better after getting a fresh haircut, a snazzy dress, and some makeup, right? Maybe a spa treatment (and a colonic cleansing... nah, scratch that) too? What better way to cheer oneself up? So, while we faculty have been struggling to maintain the quality of education in our overcrowded classrooms (e.g., I've currently got 72 students in my upper division writing- and experimental-labs-intensive Ecology course this semester - up from the normal cap of 48!), and fighting off attempts to dissolve our entire college of science and mathematics and other "reorganization" plans, those powers-that-be were working with a makeover team to cheer us all up!

Who knew?! You guys… you shouldn't have!!

No, really: you shouldn't have.

But - Surprise!! - you did it anyway. And so, with much fanfare, our new face was unveiled yesterday: all tarted up in skimpy red and white (our "traditional colors") with a bulldog's paw (from our sports teams' mascot, a bulldog) tattooed across our cheeks, and brand new triple-Ds sticking out beneath our chin, like the cheap cheerleaders we are now for the all important athletic brand of Fresno State! Hurray!!

Feel better now? You sure? You really should, you know! After all, they've been deliberating on this re-branding for three years (the same three years that the university has been sinking under the budget cuts... but don't think about how many people were working on this makeover during that time!). Further, they reassure us, it was truly a cheap makeover too (can't you tell?), because they couldn't hire an outside consultant to do a professional job either! Over these years, focus groups and surveys apparently kept telling them that the brand identity people associate with this campus is "Fresno State", which has been the brand of our athletics division, along with the bulldog as our mascot. And they really identified us with those three D's too: "Discovery. Diversity. Distinction." Not, as a wag has it: "Denial. Desperation. Despair." Call it the three stages of academic grief, and we're clearly in the desperation stage of hoping for miracles from a makeover, even if much of the faculty is already in despair. But this is the age of education as a free-market commodity, so branded we must be!

The provost does reassure us though that we haven't officially changed our formal name - but you'll be hard pressed to find the old formal name on the new website. And with perception governing so much of reality these days, how long before that formal name is forgotten too? Indeed, we no longer even have the word "University" in our new brand name at the top of our new website! I wonder what those focus groups thought we do around here if they no longer think "university" when they think of this campus! So, after celebrating our centennial year just recently, that word doesn't even fit in our new "brand identity" any more.

Last November, during one of the series of open forums we had on campus over the proposal to dissolve the College of Science & Mathematics (among other colleges/departments also under similar axes), when someone on the Budget Task Force said that the reorganization plans under discussion only affected the "instructional side of the university", one of my senior colleagues in the college stood up to remind the provost and everyone else assembled that "we are not simply the 'instructional side of the university' - we are the university." Our passion managed to save the college, for now, but we may be losing the whole game. For little did we know, as we applauded that quaint sentiment that afternoon, that soon we would have to stop calling ourselves a university at all!

Why didn't they go the whole hog though, I wonder, and actually sell out to a real brand name and bring in some real hard cash? Wouldn't we have been better off branded as, say... the Doritos Locos Taco State? After all, Fresno was also one of the test markets that launched that exciting new product into the national fast food chain! Looks like consumer focus groups in the valley sure can pick winner brands... maybe there is hope for us after all in an exciting new world of branded drive-through fast-food style "education"! Who needs the sad old "university" any more?

Thus do we begin our second century, no more a university, but a brand, one that came branded in the minds of our sports fans, who apparently think nothing of the thousands of students we graduate from our classrooms every year, or the reams of scholarship we produce. Never mind that, during my tenure on this campus, my department alone has, under shrinking budgets, faculty attrition (down from 22 to about 16) and staff cuts, managed to not only hold the line, but raise the quality of our education. Or that my (shrinking body of) colleagues and I have produced (since 2006) with our hardworking graduate and undergraduate students: 128 peer-reviewed publications, 431 research presentations at conferences, and raised over $10 million in external grants; all while maintaining heavy and increasing class loads under a sharply higher student to faculty ratio. All this, at a non-research (non-RO1) campus where the running joke (on us, surely... hahaha...) is that research is a "required hobby" because we only get paid to teach (and serve on committees), but if we want to get tenure and promotion, why we must produce research and scholarship! Talk about an unfunded mandate. And these numbers are right at the tip of my typing fingers because just this week we had to submitt a deprtmental self-study as part of our 7-year program review where our entire department will be scrutinized to make sure we are up to snuff and maintaining standards on par with other biology programs at other universities. I wonder if the reviewers will notice that we've actually dropped the word "university" from our campus name, which should raise the question: what standards should we be upholding really? The normal academic ones? Or some new free-market benchmarks gleaned from some focus groups? Uh-oh... we forgot to do focus groups in our self-study! I hope we don't get dinged because of that.

While we academics been sweating to keep up our research productivity and make sure our students graduate successfully, the athletics guys must've been really burning up the tracks and fields something fierce, eh? Do tell me if that is the case, for I've been too busy in my classes and labs to notice the smoke. Until now... when I look up and realize that they've got their brand burned into our flesh now, and in the process have even burned off the word "university" from our "brand identity". Oops!

We do get to keep the dog's paw tattoo and the triple-Ds, though! At least Zaphod Beeblebrox may like us more now - and ain't that something?

But I protesteth too much, for the only thing worrying local news organizations about our new branding ad logo is that Timeout, the campus mascot, isn't featured in it more prominently! Time for mere academics like me to accept the writing on the wall, perhaps. For this is how the athletics tail wags the academic dog on our campus now. Enjoy the branding. Don't mind me if I feel like a little flea about to be swatted off the fur of this overly-made-over bulldog.

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ScienceOnline2012 in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:32:00 +0000

via vimeo.com

Nice short video overview of the aaaaScienceOnline2012 unconference I attended last january, just days before my life went into a turbulent period from which I am still recovering. I had several blog posts in mind to record my own experience at the meeting, and summarize the discussion in the un-session I was able to lead there. It is nice to see this video which reminds me of the warmth of that unconference, and jogs memories that should help me write those blog posts... just as soon as I'm done catching up with all the other more urgent scheisse that has piled up at work in my absence! In the meantime, enjoy this video, which even has my own hairy face on camera for a second, laughing at something Brian Malow, the Science Comedian said during lunch on the final day. Its only been a couple of months, but feels so long ago that I have to say: ah, the memories!

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Hoodies and the beasts within our multicolored skins

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:18:00 +0000

In his very second outing, the newest Doctor Who (a white guy… ever wonder why the last remaining Time Lord in the universe keeps choosing to be reincarnated as a parade of white guys?) and his newest (and whitest; again, where's the kick-ass black beauty Martha Jones who accompanied him for a season?) companion land on a strange sort of ship which is really home to all of Britain transported into outer space somehow.

But something is awry (of course), as the Doctor soon notices (of course). Within about five minutes he is out checking glasses of water for something amiss, and suddenly points Amy Pond (his lily-white companion) towards a little girl sitting on a bench all by herself, crying.

The little girl is also white, of course.

The camera pans back towards the Doctor and Amy just before he darts forward. As Amy begins to follow him, from behind her we see a dark hooded figure emerge from the shadows, evidently following them.

This is a point where I should worry about my 10-year-old daughter S (brown like me; too dark-skinned for my Indian parents' liking), curled up beside me on the couch as I watch this new episode of a show which elicits a mixed fear/fascination response from her. A budding sci-fi fan growing up on the Harry Potter franchise and moving into more grown-up stuff, she loves the idea of Doctor Who - but, at this point, is also rather terrified of the show. Especially its penchant (like much British sci-fi) to throw children into harm's way as is happening on the screen right now.

Normally, a scene like this one (see from c.6min into this clip) where a girl is crying and a darkly hooded figure emerges to apparently stalk our leads - such a scene would cause S to hold her breath, followed (when the hoodie appears) by her either bolting from the living room, or at least burrowing into the sofa cushions behind my back.

Yet, as this hooded figure approaches the camera, her clutching my arm anxiously, and we can see his dark skin, the whites of his eyes, and then his full black face...

...something surprising, and wonderful, happens: her fingers relax and S lets out her breath in an audible sigh of relief! Not a reaction even the creators of the show would have expected or wanted, I imagine, because the scene is clearly playing on our fears. And what's more fearful in our culture than a black guy in a dark hoodie emerging from the shadows to stalk a pale white girl?

So I ask her why she isn't scared. She says because it turned out to be an African guy, and African-Americans she finds reassuring, so she doesn't think it is a bad guy. As the story progresses, we learn, of course, that he is indeed not a bad guy. Yet, despite the obvious tropes being used on screen, this ten-year-old brown girl didn't fall for the manipulation, saw right through it, because her gut told her that black was the color of trust and comfort and reassurance.

I wish I could say I taught her that.

I remember that little moment from a couple of years ago, for comfort and hope now, during these weeks when much of white America has seemingly gone crazy over fear of overly pigmented skin. It is suddenly OK (again) to kill black boys in hoodies. Or to beat brown women (in hijab? does it matter?) to death for simply being in this country. And even outrage over fictional characters in futuristic fantasies turning out to be black in a movie! There is of course also the country's first black president, who is apparently responsible for every ill in society now. But this isn't anything new - its just flared up now for some reason, is all. As my friend Danielle Lee (black, and proud!) pointed out in a powerful blog post earlier today, having pigment is a hazardous thing even in science, as in many other areas of ordinary life in America (and elsewhere too).

How then did my little girl, born of parents from a culture that is among the most racist in the world (black/white - pffft!! Indians discriminate based on a whole gradient of shades of wheatish in our brown skins! Have even turned our dark-skinned gods blue because that is somehow better than being black! And slavery? Ha! See how elegantly our caste system has made people completely internalize slavery for thousands of years!), raised in a definitely-not-post-racial America, somehow overcome all this cultural programming to instinctively find trust and reassurance in a darkly hooded black face, instead of running away screaming?

She wasn't even thinking about all this, of course. She has probably forgotten the incident entirely, moved on. At 12, she imagines herself as Katniss now, and will therefore be really righteously angry if she reads what the racist morons have tweeted about Rue being black.

Wish I knew where (if) our parenting went right. I would take credit, happily! And if I could, bottle whatever it is that resulted in her healthy human attitude. Because clearly, the world needs more of that.

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Yosemite: a mind-blowing high-definition visual journey through an incredible place

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:36:00 +0000

A spectacular view of the freshly rain-and-snow-washed Sierra Nevada range had me in its thrall during my morning commute this morning! Just the kind of view that all-too-rarely these days reminds one of the value of living in Fresno, so near to these fantastic mountains. Yet also so far sometimes as we get too caught up in the daily mundane. A view like that, and a video like this one, remind me again that I don't go up in these mountains as often as I would like to... as I really should! At least I get to see them from my windows more often than most people, though. Besides, perhaps it is better that more of us enjoy getting up close to them via such HD footage than actually crushing those trails (like the one here going up Half Dome which the National Park Service is seriously worried about) underfoot. I also particularly love the nocturnal shots in this film, showcasing a Yosemite that is likely even less accessible to most people, including those who tromp through there on short visits. Therein lies the trade-off in capturing such spectacular footage of such special places, I guess: it is great that some of us have access so they can bring all this beauty to the rest of us!

via vimeo.com

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Welcome to the Anthropocene (a video)

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:21:00 +0000

via vimeo.com

A 3-minute journey through the last 250 years of our history, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the Rio+20 Summit. The film charts the growth of humanity into a global force on an equivalent scale to major geological processes.
The film was commissioned by the Planet Under Pressure conference, London 26-29 March, a major international conference focusing on solutions.
planetunderpressure2012.net
The film is part of the world's first educational webportal on the Anthropocene, commissioned by the Planet Under Pressure conference, and developed and sponsored by anthropocene.info

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PIRATES!! Yes!!! (But hush... don't mention scientists or Charles Darwin - we're Americans!)

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 20:32:00 +0000

via youtube.com

Now that sure looks like a fun movie, doesn't it? Pirates! Aardman's brilliant digital claymation wackiness! and Pirates! What's not to like?

Well, a rather big chunk of the premise of the story, apparently - if you're American. For the film is based on a novel titled "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists". Not just any old scientists either - but the story actually revolves around Charles Darwin, whose Beagle is sunk by the titular pirates who then actually team up with him for some scientific mayhem. Sounds like fun, right? But you wouldn't know any of that from the above trailer for the film intended for the American market. Not only is there no mention of Darwin (although some of us may recognize him from one tiny glimpse in the above trailer; hint: he didn't have that famous beard while on that voyage of his youth), the trailer makes it sound like some comic knock-off of that awful Disney Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. With a Band of Misfits!

Why, Sony, why? Is this what your marketing department and its focus groups told you? That mentioning scientists or Darwin would be the marketing death knell for this movie in America? That no one would go to see a movie with scientists in the title? Is this what we have come to in this nation that was once the proud global leader of science? That one must remove not only any mention ofphilosophers, but even scientists from children's literature and cinema? I guess the marketers know something we don't quite appreciate fully - just how low science has sunk in the estimation of the American public! And that is rather sad and quite alarming...

At least the British aren't as squeamish about science or Darwin, going by this, rather more fun, musical trailer being shown in the UK - although this trailer too doesn't exactly play up the science bits:

Let's hope the actual movie itself hasn't been purged of references to science or Darwin when it hits the screens here in the US. Or I will have to look for ways to pirate that original UK edition myself!

Bonus: David Tennant, who voices Darwin in the film, was on BBC's Five Live with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode this week to talk about the film. He said something about having to fight to keep the original title at least in the UK. You can listen to the interview online for the next few days, or download the podast.

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Muhammad Yunus on how economists went wrong and misinterpreted human beings

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:00:00 +0000

via guardian.co.uk

I particularly like what he says at the end about the problem of unemployment, and the sheer waste of human potential when we allow people to be unemployed.

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Archaeologist Brian Fagan to visit Fresno State this week (and a repost)

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:29:00 +0000

I just learnt that archaeologist and writer Brian Fagan is visiting my campus this week - tomorrow (Mar 6) in fact - but I will miss his visit! I've been wanting to bring him to Fresno for some time now - and here I am stuck in Mumbai when he does actually arrive on campus! If you are on Fresno and reading this, please do go to his talk on the Fresno State campus tomorrow. Here's more info on the event, which is open to the public:

Meanwhile, since I won't be able to participate in the event, let me at least throw in my tuppence remotely, by sharing something I had written about him a few years ago. The following is a repost:

"This is a very serious issue, in fact..."

"... that's why you're on this show!"

That was perhaps the most ironic exchange between Brian Fagan (who said the first part) and Jon Stewart (who came back with the swift self-deprecating retort) tonight on The Daily Show where Fagan came on to talk about his new book "The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations". The Daily Show's promo blurb for today's show had a link to Fagan's blog, where he wrote this interesting post about the forecasts of prolonged droughts in some parts of the world being the silent elephants in the climate change discussion. And it was when he was discussing that very point when the above ironic exchange occurred during the interview (look for it @ 3:35 min in the video below the fold) - a double dose of irony if you will!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Brian Fagan

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Meanwhile, I was touched by another post discussing the Indian monsoon in a historical context, with the opening making me ache for my favorite season of the year back home:

"The peacocks danced at eventide", wrote the sixth-century Indian writer Subdandhu of the onset of the monsoon. The monsoon is much more than a matter of meteorology in India and Pakistan. The very fabric of human existence unfolds around two seasons--the wet and the dry. The wet season brings warm, moist conditions and heavy rain, carried by the monsoon winds blowing inland from the ocean. The other half of the year, the arid season, enjoys cool, dry air from the north. The coming of the monsoon is a highlight of the year to those who suffered through the buildup after the pleasant winter months--weeks of torrid heat. Colonel Edward Tennant of the British East India Company wrote in 1886: "The sly, instead of its brilliant blue, assumes the sullen tint of lead. . . . The days become overcast and hot, banks of clouds rise over the ocean to the west. . . . At last the sudden lightning flash among the hills, and shoot through the clouds that overhang the sea, and with a crash of thunder the monsoon bursts over the hungry land." My father was a civil servant in the British Raj in the Punjab during the 1920s. Even in his extreme old age, he could vividly recall the most epochal day of the year, when India became cold and grey, like distant England.

Trust me, it is actually quite unlike England, being grey, yes, but definitely not cold - but rather invitingly cool after a blazing hot summer! Oh how I miss the march of those grey clouds across the Bombay coastline...
Fagan goes on to describe the discovery of correlations between the Indian monsoon and El Nìno events in the Pacific...

Generations of meteorologists have tried to forecast monsoons, notable among them Sir Gilbert Walker, a brilliant statistician with a passion for flutes and atmospheric pressure, who is remembered for his discovery of the Southern Oscillation, the driving force behind El Nino and its opposite cousin, La Nina. There is now fairly general Agreement that monsoon failures sometimes, but not invariably, coincide with El Nino conditions in the Pacific, as was the case with the terrible famine and monsoon failure of 1875-6, which killed tens of thousands and ravaged at least a third of Bengal.

... before adding some strong words about the historical context of the famine and the culpability of the British empire:

While much of India starved, the British Raj was busy exporting grain to the world market. Meanwhile, the Viceroy, the eccentric and erratic Lord Lytton, who happened to be Queen Victoria's favorite poet, was preoccupied with a gigantic durbar in Delhi, which included a week-long feast for 68,000 maharajahs and officials. An English journalist estimated that at least 100,000 rural farmers perished during the festivities, which were designed to be gaudy enough to impress the orientals". Lytton's shameful famine policy was one of laissez faire. The historian Mike Davis, whose book Late Victorian Holocausts should be required reading for every historian of the nineteenth century, estimates that at least 20-30 million tropical farmers perished during that century as a result of drought, famine, and famine-related diseases.

And as Fagan rounds off with an alarm bell about how future wars will be fought over water even as we waste our current resources on unnecessary wars while avoiding facing the real problems looming ahead, I'm reminded of the Indian journalist P. Sainath's powerful book Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts.

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"Forest Fires" - in which Sarah Kay cuts deep

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:31:00 +0000

Another astonishing poem, spoken word, from the young-but-seemingly-wise-beyond-her-years Sarah Kay. This one cuts deeper into me, given my own recent brush with fire...

via youtube.com

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Why, oh why, does it rain so much in a rainforest?

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:03:00 +0000

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

Darwin was a Geologist too!

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 05:29:00 +0000

In an autobiographic note Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809 – 1882) remembered a childhood wish:

“It was soon after I began collecting stones, i.e., when 9 or 10, that I distinctly recollect the desire I had of being able to know something about every pebble in front of the hall door–it was my earliest and only geological aspiration at that time.“

Darwin today is mostly associated with terms like natural selection and evolution, but his first scientific achievements and publications were dealing – even against his own preconceptions – with geology.

via blogs.scientificamerican.com

A good history lesson for your Sunday. Well worth reading.

Posted via email from Darwin's Bulldogs

Ficus, Focus, Poet, Cop.

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:56:00 +0000

"What are you photographing here?", the policeman asked somewhat sternly, as he approached me. The young policewoman, eyebrows deeply furrowed, hovered behind her superior. She had been eyeing me with increasing concern as I had loitered near one of the entrances of the Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika (or Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) building for almost half an hour. Peering into the darkness of the grand old doorway she guarded, and at another entrance in an adjacent building, scanning up and down the street, and taking pictures of the building and surroundings. Clearly suspicious behavior in the modern anxious age of the security-state. I had been wondering how long I would have lasted doing something like this in front of, say, New York City Hall. The petite young woman, charged with guarding the gates of Mumbai's City Hall, right across the street from CST Station, site of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, was clearly nervous about my behaviour, and had sent the burlier cop to investigate.

"What are you photographing", the burlier policeman asked again, in Marathi, looking up towards the window my camera was pointing towards. I pointed up, to the lower right corner of the window, and said haltingly in my rusty Marathi, "That Peepal sapling over there". He looked up, more closely, and said, "Ah, that peepal! Amazing, isn't it, how that little plant is growing up there on the wall? Who waters it? Where does it get its food and water? Isn't nature wonderful?" I was struggling in my head to compose a fuller explanation about my interest in urban ecology, and how I found these epiphytes fascinating. Also getting ready to explain that I was waiting there for an important signature from one of the officers up in the buildings they were guarding. But all I really needed to do was nod in agreement, and look back up with him at the little peepal in shared wonder.

"What is he doing?", demanded the younger woman, urgently. He turned to her, pointed at the window sill and told her I was interested in the Peepal and other plants growing on buildings. "Why?", she asked, her voice cracking on the edge of alarm and confusion. "Because poets are like that!", he said, "They like to find beauty in strange places, and look for nature's wonders, like how that peepal is growing up there, with no one feeding or watering it." I could only nod again, and mumble something in agreement, my eyes probably even bigger now in wonder.

Then he turned towards me, extended his arm, shook my hand, smiled warmly in acknowledgment of a shared moment of connection with nature in the midst of the evening bustle of Mumbai, and ambled away towards his post in the other building. Well met, indeed, good sir...

The young woman, meanwhile, frowned again at me, and retreated to her post. Little did she know that the real long-term threat to the safety of the building she guarded came not from me, but from the tiny peepal which had gained a foothold in the crevice of that windowsill above her head. For the peepal has evolved playing the really long game of the rainforest epiphyte. Its seeds, carried by birds, wait patiently for the tiniest foothold in the crevices of another tree, cliff, or building. It sucks moisture from the air and the little pool in its crevice, makes its food from stray rays of the sun, and grows, slowly spreading its roots out in a growing embrace around whatever has provided it that initial space, tree, rock, building. In time, if left unharmed, it will grow its roots all the way to the ground, and all the way around its host, strangling the tree, crushing the rock, cracking open the building, even as it might hold them all together for a while longer. That little peepal may still be here a century or more from now, after this building has crumbled away with this city. Or until building maintenance sends someone up to that windowsill to uproot the upstart peepal - although its holy nature may give them some pause.

Nature is wonderful indeed, and dangerous. And so are people, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

It is time again, for another round of the Great Backyard Bird Count!

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:05:00 +0000

The 2012 GBBC will take place Friday, February 17, through Monday, February 20. Please join us for the 15th annual count!

The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds.

via birdsource.org

As it happens, unfortunately, for the second year in a row, I am going to be away from my favorite birding partner during the 2012 GBBC! Last year, she was in India while I was stuck in the US. This time its the other way around. Perhaps she will be able to get her class to participate. What about you? Will you spend a morning counting birds in your backyard next week?

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Homegrown subversive plots to feed the hungry and save the world!

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:07:00 +0000

It is passing strange to think that growing your own food in your own garden can be considered a subversive act! How did we come to this state, especially in the developed world, but also many cities in the developed world, that we are so alienated from the food on our own tables? Roger Doiron (see his TEDx talk below), founder of Kitchen Gardens International is correct though, in asserting that in our current industrialized global food production system, growing your own fruits and vegetables in your yard or balcony garden has become a subversive act. Because in doing so, we can take back some of the power over our own foods and lives that we have ceded to multinational corporations who control most aspects of global food production now: the policies, the money, much of the land, and the means of food production.

It is remarkable that we have lost power over something so fundamental as the food we must consume daily to survive. It was a mere 10,000 years or so ago that we invented agriculture, a huge step in humanity's gaining power and control over our foods, and therefore our lives, by freeing ourselves from the vagaries of nature. That initial revolution fueled much of the growth of civilization and has brought us to where we are now - heavily dependent upon the industrial food production and supply system, and often with very little control over the quality of what we can put on our plates or how it is produced, or at what environmental and social costs. Yet this is one area where it should not be too hard for most of us to take back some of this power, some of the means of production: by growing our own little subversive garden plots! Doiron explains how we can do this and what we stand to gain through this subversion:

via ted.com

Hard to think of a downside to this, isn't it? We need not stop with just our own little gardens in the small bits of urban space we may control - we can, and must, also work collectively to subvert public spaces towards food production, converting vacant lots and even lawns in public parks into edible landscapes that can feed the thousands of urban dwellers who may not have the space or the means to grow their own gardens. The city of Irvine in southern California (yes, the city in conservative Orange County) has done just that: opened up some effectively vacant land to growing vegetables, which apparently feed up to 200,000 people! Here's a video tour:

via youtube.com

To put it in terms of the activist metaphor of the moment, gardening for food is an effective way to occupy the global food system, begin to wrest it back from the corporations (even though they still control it through the sales of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and all the other paraphernalia that goes with gardening) - while simultaneously improving our health and building community. In the process, we may even begin to help heal some of the wounds we have caused in natural ecosystems, and restore some parts of local biodiversity, as is being shown by recent work on the ecology of urban gardens.

So - how would you like a little healthy homegrown subversion on your dinner plate? Give me a double helping, please!

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Hamsadhwani: an inner dialogue contemplating humanity's swansong on earth

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:24:00 +0000

Anirban Mahapatra (aka Bhalomanush, a good man I have come to know on Twitter) recently (well, a month ago) shared with me a thought-provoking essay he had written contemplating some of the deepest questions in conservation: where do humans fit into the rest of life on our planet? Is it hubris on our part to think we can save the planet or that we are even superior to other species when we have all evolved from a common ancestor? What does it matter if species go extinct, when we know that most species that have ever evolved are already extinct, and everything must die eventually? Questions that certainly haunt me as I try to find meaning in my own research and educational efforts aimed at conserving biological diversity on this little blue dot we inhabit. The essay, written in the form of an inner dialogue in the author's mind, resonated with me immediately. Yet Bhalomanush said it was among the least read of his blog posts! Surely, this contemplation deserves more attention, so I offered to share it here to try to reach a broader audience interested in reconciliation ecology. He was kind enough to send it to me as a guest post! The essay is titled after a well-known "raga" from Indian classical music, the name of which literally translates as "Swansong" - an appropriate title, I think. I hope you like it - and if you do, please pay the author's own blog a visit and let him know.

An almost apocalyptic image of the fiery sky at dusk earlier this week at Morro Bay beach in California.

via flickr.com

~~~

Hamsadhwani

by Anirban Mahapatra

I cannot recall when I first heard someone say that humans should try to save the earth from imminent destruction. It may have been written on a sign, or I may have read it in column. It is a common argument: humans need to act now to save the earth or we might propel the planet toward destruction.

The possibility that one day we will inflict the full force of our ruthlessness on the earth is quite real. At some point in our history, we may succeed in pushing the climate to a point of no return, we may annihilate ourselves through a cold and dark nuclear winter, or we may generate a grave pestilence against which we have no defense. But can we really destroy the earth?

No. The earth needs no saving.

But how can you say that humans are not capable of destroying the earth? That our planet needs no saving? In a very short span of time, humans have put a physical mark on the landscape like no other species before us. We’ve lit up the night sky and etched wonderworks which are visible from space. We’ve climbed the tops of mountains and dived into the depths of the oceans.

For the earth is not just any planet. It is the only one we know which teems with life. The myriad life forms on earth are as much a part of the planet as the oceans, ice-shelves, and canyons. And we’re killing these life forms off at an alarming rate. If we continue to impact the environment, won’t that threaten living organisms which are a constant part of this earth? As for anthropogenic climate change and nuclear war – wouldn’t events such as these be cataclysmic for the planet?

The earth does need saving.

Here is a hypothetical scenario: if someday the technology that aliens in science-fiction novels use to pulverize the earth becomes a reality for our descendants, would they contemplate using it? There is not an iota of doubt in my mind that they would. For all of our skills, we are still capable of extremely short-sighted suicidal tendencies. We don’t lack the impudence to think about destroying the planet: we lack the technical ability. The earth will survive because we can’t destroy it, regardless of how hard we try. At worst, we are a pesky comet or a supervolcano. We are not a heating sun or a supernova. Life, as it exists on our planet is supported by the alignments of the planets, the precise temperature of the sun, the gravitational pull of the moon, and other planetary and geological wonders which we cannot violate.

Speaking of extinctions, most species that existed on this planet – by some estimates, 99% or more – became extinct before we could contemplate our place here. We helped death along by precipitating the demise of the passenger pigeon and the dodo. Before we become extinct, we will continue to kill off other species. Perhaps, in our final dying moments, the number of species which are wiped out will spike. But the earth will survive as it has in the past. We are in a hurry to modify our surroundings because our lifetimes are short, but evolution does not follow human timetables. With time, traces of the ugly abominations we erected will vanish and new life forms will develop and cherish this wonderful planet. Maybe they will be wiser than us? We will never know. When our time comes, we will go. The earth will still survive.

Are you saying that if the earth is physically destroyed that would be a tragedy, but that the extinction of life around us is inevitable? If the earth changes because of us, then we have failed to save it. You can’t deny that humans have modified the planet like no other single species before us. If we don’t save the wondrous life around us, wouldn’t that be a tragedy? Don’t you feel a pang of sorrow when you see a polar bear stranded on shrinking ice knowing that it might be too late to save the species? When you know that there are plants in the Amazon River basin that are dying because of massive deforestation to feed our so-called progress? We can do something about it. We should do something about it. We’re an advanced species with the gift of conscious thought and the power to make decisions that impact our planet.

I never condoned inaction. We’re currently in the middle of a mass extinction, no doubt. This worries me immensely and I wince to think about how many forms of life we are destroying each moment, some perhaps, without our knowledge. The fact remains that the earth is the only planet I will ever know. I wish I had many lifetimes to study it, to observe it, and to simply be filled with wonder. I’ll do whatever I can to save the polar bear, the panda, and the tiger, even though for some species it may be too late. I do not attempt to explain why I feel this way logically, but I consider this part of what makes me human. Our descendants deserve to enrich their own lives by knowing the life we have around us; by killing it off, we’re failing both our ancestors and our descendants.

On a human scale, the plants we farm and the animals we’ve domesticated have changed irreversibly already. As natural surroundings change, so do organisms. Plants and animals should live unaltered according to my own convenient whim. But this is an anthropocentric view. My curiosity, my sorrow, my acknowledgement of the scale of tragedy of death has no bearing on what happened billions of years on this planet and what will happen for billions of years after my infinitely short life. What I can do is to try to prevent destruction in my own lifetime.

I’ve heard the argument that humans are an advanced species, but why do we take that at face value? How are we superior? There are other organisms which exceed us in numbers: there are many more tiny bacteria in the human body than “human” cells. There are organisms which can live in more extreme environments like the boiling cauldrons of sulfurous springs. Many species of bacteria can replicate in the span of minutes. Tortoises live longer than us by decades.

And species we consider primitive? If all living organisms trace their roots back to common ancestors that arose several billion years ago, if we all evolved over the same billions of years in a constant struggle to survive in our changing niches, how are any more advanced or primitive than others? The dodo was no less suited for its environment than the monstrously-oversized chicken is in an assembly line farm where it thrives. We precipitated its demise. Who is to say that someday some other organism doesn’t precipitate our own? Neither is the sloth lazy nor the snake vile, in an absolute sense. For all of our superiority, a minor change in atmospheric temperature might wipe us out, without causing the least discomfort to a unicellular bacterium.

That is not to say that humans are not unique. We possess intellect. We can manipulate tools. We can record our histories and archive our collective thoughts. We have certain skills which no other organism possesses. We can analyze and learn from our mistakes, when we choose to do so. To be able to express emotions, record abstract thoughts, and attempt to understand surroundings are both collectively and individually a blessing. I am grateful for the written words on this screen, longevity due to modern medicine, notes of Hamsadhwani, the frescoes of Ajanta, bitter dark-chocolate, and comfortable walking shoes, among countless other gifts.

But, quintessentially, in our minds humans are the most advanced species on the planet because we are human. Perhaps, since I am a member of the species, I find nothing wrong with this prismatic viewpoint. But, increasingly I believe that the earth was not created for us and will not perish with us. There is nothing divine about us. We are not the Chosen Ones.

If this world is all we have- and there is no compelling reason in my mind to believe otherwise- there is nothing more spiritual than trying to preserve it. Especially with the sobering knowledge that ultimately it is an impossible feat.

In reality that is what saving the earth is about. It is about saving ourselves and the life we know and value.

~~~

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

To a new year full of life and colour!

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:47:00 +0000

via flickr.com

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings

Exploring the world of birds and biodiversity with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

noreply@blogger.com (Madhusudan Katti) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:22:00 +0000

As a thank you to its supports, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology shares this video montage filled with wonderful sequences of birds from their archives. Enjoy:

via m.youtube.com

Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings