On Trees

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.” ― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen ind Gedichte

Marquesia macroura in Northwestern Province, Zambia

Pseudotsuga menziesii in Montana, USA

I loved that passage about trees by Hermann Hesse. It sort of reminds me of Rupert Sheldrake's ideas about morphic resonance. It's like my monkey body has relic form due to millions of years of close interaction with trees like opposable thumbs and eyes that see many shades of green. Trees have dangling fruits, provide shade, have fire adaptation, and protection from exposure that they evolved in their forms by having a symbiotic relationship with primates. You see this in bold red print in Africa. There is so much information in a tree. It is a living record that emanates wisdom. Our ability as humans to evolve is in a lot of ways connected to the way we interact with trees. We have forgotten that we are children of the old mother nature and that evolutionary forces made us into what we are. That's exactly what nature says to me every day. That I am supposed to be challenging myself physically and spiritually the same way that a tree does because I have a partnership with that tree. It is a part of me, and I am a part of it. We are essential to each other, respectful of each other, and responsible for each other. It tells me that if I kill something, I am responsible for its life. How can we expect that we will be able to overcome the challenges of the future if we ignore the millions of years of our symbiotic relationship with other organisms that undoubtedly made us human?!! We cannot overcome this fact, we just can't! We have sure tried to deny it though!! We will never overcome our own chemical makeup and the fact that we are made of cells, and DNA, and atoms, and that all of this is at the mercy of nature. How can a few thousand years of dominator culture suppress or make us unconscious of what happened for many millions of years before that? The knowledge of what happened for many millions of years before dominator culture oozes out of nature. It screams, begging to be heard. Once you hear it, you can't deny it is there. It strikes the deepest fear and opens a terrifying black hole the size of the universe. It shows you that nothing can be measured. It forces you to wholly submit. It is maternal. But if it is frightening, it must be worth exploring. It is still in the subconscious of every human being, but we have to learn to deconstruct culture, especially culture that preaches fear as a motivating force. Across the entirety of humanity, this is the ONLY idea that is constant. It is omnipresent. It is the thing that makes us Homo sapiens.

Road Sharing, taking back the streets

I really have to take some time to talk about what is in my opinion, the only environmental issue that really matters. The issue that is the root cause of nearly all of our environmental and public health problems across the world. Yes, it's CAR CULTURE!!!

Nine of the ten largest corporations on our planet are either oil/energy companies or auto manufacturers. The other one, which is sitting at number two behind Royal Dutch Shell, is Walmart, which is where you drive to in your car you just filled up with gasoline to go to in order to buy things to fill up your house. There is an incoceivably massive amount of power behind these corporations. They invest billions selling consumer/dominator/car (whatever you want to call it) culture to consumers, and are recording record profit even in times of worldwide economic despair. It's pretty obvious that car culture was invented by corporations for the engineering of their own profit at the expense of other living things and deepening the dominator culture that exists because of the monumental chasm of ignorance and disconnect that has been inserted between consumers and the realities of industrial production. The other industries that are intimately associated with car culture are also recording record profits since 2008; especially fast food, pharmaceuticals, and banks. If you want more examples or evidence of this, send me a message.

There is now a serious movement in Manila to release the grip that car culture has on the city. The car culture is much different here, than in the United States because only two percent of Filipinos own vehicles, compared to 89% in the United States. Far fewer people actually depend on car culture in the Philippines, but just as many people buy into it. Most people use public or shared transportation conveyances in Manila, jeepneys, shared taxis, taxis, and tricycles. The roads in Manila are not designed for the extremely heavy use they get. It is generally extremely unsafe to walk or ride a bicycle in Manila because there is little infrastructure that is dedicated for those methods of transportation. Bad air quality along main streets and the heat also make people unwilling to walk or cycle.

I urge anyone, not just Filipinos, to think about the lifestyle benefits that would come from allocating more of the roads to bicycle and pedestrian traffic. This isn't about painting lines and slogans on the streets and sidewalks. This is about actually participating in a shedding of the de facto car culture. Manila is a densely populated city, so this cultural transformation, if anything, makes MORE sense here than in most of the other larger cities in the world.  Lack of exercise and bad air quality are contributing to many of the health issues that people are experiencing in the Philippines.

       The cities of the present must be designed more thoughtfully and take into account what we now understand about the requirements for sustainable human life. People are discovering the errors of the unchecked globalized industrial models of the past and a technological revolution is being awakened that combines "archaic" values and a democratic technic. This is about retraining ourselves about how we can have civilization without dependence on profit, greed, car culture, or on oil period. It's all about what actually happens on the streets, not what we talk about on the internet. There is no new information involved here. The information has been consciously and intentionally suppressed by those who stand to profit from its suppression. I realize the irony, and you could even argue hypocrisy, of me using a computer and the internet, which both implements of globalization that require electricity, to make this argument, but we are going to have to figure out how to de-globalize our technology systems to be more sustainable. We just have to actually do it. We already know how to do it. It's not impossible. I really urge people to give this movement a shot and see what it can do for their lives. The benefits outweigh the sacrifices. Start small. Be thoughtful. Be intentional.

http://greenphils.com/2014/02/12/road-revolution/

http://www.environmentphilippines.com/2011/12/green-living-road-revolution-making.html

Spider fighting season almost here

I knew already about the national passion for cockfighting in the Philippines. In seemingly every available open space in Manila, including highway medians, there is a rooster tied to a rope or in a small cage. You see men carrying roosters around, pointing and grooming their roosters, and shops dedicated entirely to supplying feed, medicine, and equipment for cockfighting. But I just discovered yesterday that spider fighting is also a national sport. I really didn't believe it until I saw it. Apparently spider fighting occurs in the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and China.

In the Philippines, it seems to be mostly done by children, but adults also participate. Two female spiders of the genus Araneus are placed on a stick. The spiders are aggressive toward one another, so they will try to remove the challenger. The spider that falls to the ground first loses the round, and the first spider to win three rounds wins the match. People collect the spiders in the forest, so this activity is only conducted in the summer months. (March - September) It's also more popular in the summer because children are out of school. The best spiders can be sold for 100 pesos or more ($2), and people bet as much as they want on the matches.

Gambling is very popular in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia. I've been told that people in the Philippines fight chickens, spiders, dogs, and even horses. In the U.S., fighting of animals is illegal and there is a big cultural stigma associated with it. The case of NFL football player Michael Vick, convicted of dog fighting in 2008, brought the issue of dog fighting into the national spotlight in the U.S.. I see many people lined up at OTBs and lottery ticket dealers on pay day here in the Philippines.

As easy as it is to label animal fighting as brutal and cruel, there are several legitimate arguments to made that it is no more cruel or brutal than modern animal husbandry. A for-profit industrialized agricultural model requires the disconnection of the process and the consumer. Large-scale industrial animal husbandry operations are arguably much more cruel and brutal than fighting, and have a vested interest in hiding this from the consumer. There is also the argument that the willingness to fight is in the genetics of these animals, and that animal fighting has occurred in the wild for millions of years outside of human control or observation. Arguably, the consumers and producers that participate in the for-profit industrialized agricultural model are no less guilty of cruelty to animals than people who fight animals.

Urban Ecology - Greenspaces in Manila

I have been meaning to post about this topic for a few months now. It is so interesting, but I have really struggled to find the words and the right context to write about it. I don't think I could ever find the right context about this issue, especially in Manila, but hopefully my perspective as an outsider is of some value. I really got interested in this issue when I visited the University of the Philippines - Diliman Campus Arboretum in Quezon City back in November. At that time, I was really struggling with adjusting to living in a big city and having seemingly no available respite in quiet, open spaces. I was really looking for places in Manila where I could enjoy nature and have time for thought and reflection.

I found out about the Arboretum by just looking at Google Earth and a map of Quezon City, trying to get a sense of where there were greenspaces and how much of the city was "set aside" for public greenspaces to offer people a place to relax and enjoy nature. Quezon City also has a website that describes some of the parks there. If you get the chance, pull up Manila on Google Earth and try to get a sense of how dense and urbanized the landscape is. As I mentioned in my last post on urban ecology, there is very little space for anything here, having one of the highest human population densities of anywhere in the world. I read the following on the website about the UP Arboretum:

"This is a man-made forest park found within the grounds of the Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines. Established in 1948 by the Department of Agriculture, the 16-hectare arboretum is the only remaining rainforest within Metro Manila where exotic and endangered species of trees, along with diverse flora and fauna, can be found. The park has a man-made pond that hosts various aquatic and humid-loving plants, which also serves as a favorite picnic spot among visitors."

After reading this description on the website (I'm not sure when this description was written), I was thinking to myself that it sounded like a perfect place to visit on Sunday afternoon. I was expecting that the place would be great to learn about the local flora and fauna. I was expecting that it would be well preserved and cared for by the university that owned the land. I was even thinking of bringing picnic supplies. So, we set out one Sunday afternoon to find this place. We located the technology park that is adjacent to arboretum. We asked some of the security guards at the technology park where to find the entrance to the Arboretum. They all gave us looks like "why would you want to go there?" or "you shouldn't go there" or "I have no idea what you are talking about." Eventually we found a side road between the technology park and a gas station that had a sign next to it that said "UP Arboretum". So naturally we walked down the road. As we walked down this road, to our right was a high cinderblock wall with barbed wire on top separating the road from the technology park. On our left, was what could only be described as a slum. Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw after we found the "entrance" to the arboretum.

This is an aerial view of the UP technology park and the arboretum behind it. The white dome on the right is the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute. The entrance road to the arboretum is on the left side of the technology park. You can also see the areas of informal settlements along the left side of the photograph and adjacent to the large forested area.

We entered the gate to the arboretum, and saw children playing basketball, laundry drying on lines strung between trees, garbage all over the forest floor, piles of plywood and corrugated metal sheets, and the smell of burning plastic. Wait a minute! People live here! As we walked further into the arboretum, we saw more of the same. There were motorcycles, bananas, tarpaulins, roosters tied to trees, people cooking and washing clothes, dogs barking, and small shops selling basic items. We found that the majority of the arboretum contained houses, and some of them were built with bricks or concrete, making them permanent. The man-made pond described on Quezon City's website was completely surrounded by settlements and garbage. It was not an ideal spot for a picnic. This experience blew my mind. I think the most surprising thing was that all of the trees were still there. It was like a slum in a jungle. I estimate that at least 500 people were living in the arboretum. The Arboretum is on public university land. People are not supposed to be living here, right? How did it get to be like this?

After seeing this, I had to do some investigation. I kept thinking that this situation would be the perfect topic for some sort of documentary. I was thinking, "how did UP Diliman let this happen?", and more importantly "why is there such a big gap between policy and reality?" This website posted by the university gives a brief history of the arboretum, but there is obviously a huge gap between the end of this "official" story of 2012 and the modern realities of 2013. Not the information I was looking for. Luckily, I found a short investigative documentary that I assume was done by a university student. I am personally so thankful for university students and the fact that they still have the time, energy, and motivation to do something like this. The rest of us are sadly usually too downtrodden by our own society to do anything like this. The interviews are in Tagalog, but as a non-Tagalog speaker, you can still get the gist of the story and the images of what these settlements look like.

Apart from these resources, I have found it exceedingly difficult to find much information about informal settlements on the UP Diliman campus or anywhere else in Manila. I was able to find out that the Urban Poor Affairs Office did an assessment in 2006 and discovered that 25,000 informally settled families lived on 11-15% of the 493 hectare campus. Assuming that each family is four people, that is 100,000 people living illegally on a university campus. I'm guessing that eight years later, that the number has at least doubled. If we assume that 200,000 informal settlers live on 493 hectares, that is about 400 people per hectare if you spread the people over the entire campus! That is four times the population density of New York City! That isn't even taking into account the fact that there is also a functioning world-class university there with 22,000 students!

When you think about this for a while, and the multitude of issues at play here, a number of key things rise to the surface. First, UP Diliman is obviously in a state of denial about the situation. To the university, the situation is just another inconvenience, and it should be swept under the rug so to speak. They don't really see it as a problem as long as the informal settlers don't obstruct the functions of the university. If anything, the informal settlers are well integrated into the day-to-day function of the campus, many of them working there. Besides the problem is now out of hand, and dealing with it would be a big undertaking. If it's not a problem, then why can't the university change its policy to acknowledge the legality of the informal settlements? What cultural and political forces require the university have to keep pretending like they have a problem with it, yet they do nothing about it? These are questions that I can't even begin to have the answer to.

There is obviously a clash going on here between the western idealization of private property, entitlement, individuality, and open space with the eastern idealization of community, patience, hospitality, conformity, and generosity. The university was designed to mimic American universities with a large quad, open lawns, parks, common areas, and walkways. It is a complete anomaly to the way Filipinos conceptualize and design their cities. Within the Filipino culture itself, there is a constant pull between the forces of western and eastern influence, and the situation here is a perfect reflection of this. In this country, it is a basic tenet of life that everyone have a place to live, regardless of your level of contribution to society. There are other places in the city with the same issue, including Manila's North Cemetery.

There are also political forces at play here, but it is not my place to get into that. Nor do I have the desire to discuss the political situation at the university. If the informal settlers were going to be kicked out, where would they go? How would the university go about removing them? Buy them out? Remove them with the police by force? There is nowhere for them to go. They can't go back to the province because they cannot earn money there, and there is no land for them to farm even if they could farm. They can't go somewhere else in Manila because someone else already lives there. Many people are "professional squatters" and spent their whole lives bouncing around from settlement to settlement. Many of the people in power in Manila depend on the people living in informal settlements for everyday services. The reality is that these spaces that were initially designated as greenspaces, are being devalued as greenspaces, and are now providing the most basic human requirement, space for the human body to physically occupy. 

As the land value in Manila rises with the population increase (the country is roughly the size of the US state of Arizona and the population of the Philippines is expected to surpass 100 million in 2014), the land becomes allocated to the basic survival needs of people. Land is no longer used for purposes that could be defined as luxuries or for leisure. But at some point, some level of connection with a piece of land is essential for survival. There is no way to replace land for food to be grown on, although there are some really innovative things happening in Asia. Check out this vertical farm in Singapore. Although this is a great and innovative idea, it is nowhere near as sustainable as organic gardening and permaculture on the ground. The Philippines is a net importer of its food, and the country is going to really struggle with ways to raise its agricultural productivity and to feed all of its people in the future.

I haven't even gotten into the psychological and environmental health benefits of greenspaces and pervious surfaces in cities. These benefits have long been documented across the world. I have also discussed in past posts about the flooding problems that Manila has on an annual basis during the rainy and typhoon seasons, in large part due to the pervasiveness of impervious surface in the city.

What is in store for the future? The campus officials at UP Diliman maintain that the informal settlements will be removed, but there has been no official press release on their intentions. Am I wrong in assuming that there is even a problem here? Is there a line that needs to be crossed before there is any change? Do people really think that the current situation is sustainable? What is it going to take in order for people to be mobilized into action? The thought of going to the UP Arboretum for a "picnic" or to find "diverse flora and fauna" is laughable. I think Quezon City should change its website.

Ecological Parallels in the Montane Forests of Northern Luzon

Imagine walking up a steep gravel/dirt road and there is extreme coolness, dampness, and greyness, and greenery all around you. You are gradually absorbing something between mist and rain into your clothes. You are not sure if all this moisture in your clothes is from rain, dew from the leaves, or from sweat. You are noticing the plants around you. Many ferns, alders, oaks, pines, and large-leaved annuals crowd the disturbed spaces along the roadsides. The smell is damp, fresh, and of rich soil. The sounds you hear are the white noise of a small creek tumbling somewhere below you, a few distant chainsaws, and the occasional twitter of a small flock of songbirds. If you've spent any time in the coast ranges of the Northwestern North America, you know that I am pretty much describing the experience of walking through the forest in spring almost exactly. The crazy thing is, that I'm thinking about my experience walking through the montane forests of the Cordilleras of Northern Luzon in the Philippines at 1200 meters elevation and 17 degrees north latitude in December.

I was amazed at the ecological parallels I experienced in walking in these forest ecosystems in the Philippines half a world away from coastal Northern California and Oregon where I have spent a significant portion of the last 10 years. I wanted to write about the two distinct forest types that I encountered on my travels to Northern Luzon and share some of my thoughts about the ecological parallels between these ecosystems and some of the other places I have visited.

Mossy Forest:

This is a great photo showing the micro-ecological competition present on every available surface in the mossy forests. This photo looks exactly like some of the vine maple thickets I have hacked my way through in Western Oregon!

This is a typical montane mossy forest scene in the mountains of Northern Luzon above 1500 meters. There is a dazzling display of epiphytes in this forest. It is constantly moist and a substantial proportion of the precipitation that reaches the forest floor originates as fog.

I experienced many parallels between this forest and the mossy temperate rain forests in coastal Northwestern North America, especially in the structure of metamorphic geology, the structure of the plants in the forest, the sounds and smells there, and the feeling of being literally soaked by life. Mossy forests are on the high mountains, the windward slopes, and are directly exposed to whatever the Pacific Ocean to the east has to offer it. To me, the relationships between these two forests on two different continents were unquestionably related and parallel, rather than convergent in origin in the way scientists refer to Darwinian evolution. It felt connected to many of the indicators in the environment that felt familiar to me as what I can only describe as "Pacific." It could also be described stereotypically as "Jurassic" if you are the sort of person that grew up on classic dinosaur books. I was taken by being here, and regretted that I decided that I wouldn't pay the time and level of attention as a scientist and an animal that the place really demanded for me to have a relationship with it that was sufficiently useful to it.

There's no doubt that the mossy forests of the Philippines are in big trouble. Peril is really not a strong enough word to describe the likely fate of these forests in the not too distant future. I'm basing this assumption on three simple things...the value of the wood, the pervasiveness of the chainsaw, and the enthusiasm with which roads are being built. Indigenous leaders that have spoken out against loggers in the Philippines have been known to be killed or just disappear in the past. The Philippines has taken the stance of putting a complete logging ban on many of these forests, in essence taking a stance of complete denial that a problem exists and that people rely on the forest for survival. It's analogous to taking the stance of abstinence to prevent the spread of HIV. It is insanely ignorant and out of touch with cultural reality. The prices of logs have risen steadily as a result of the illegality of the logging and the scarceness of these rare and treasured hardwoods. The wood is beautiful and the markets are hungry for it. Chainsaws are already found in almost every village. They have become an everyday sound in the mossy forests. Evidence of their use is along every trail. This observation alone was extremely disturbing. The chainsaw is a deadly instrument in the hands tied to the wrong mind. The road situation is also grim. Not only have I seen rivers filled with sediment and massive landslides along every road, but these roads are constantly being extended into these forests. Bulldozers and excavators seemed to be parked on every road, constantly clearing landslides and pushing new road into impossibly steep slopes. In some ways, it was selfish of me to want to go there to see the virgin mossy forest growing on some of the more inaccessible mountains, but on even the most remote and steep slopes that I was able to visit, there were trails leading off to stumps. I think it's worth going there if I am able to tell other people about my primary experience. I don't know how it's not going to get worse.

Pine Forest:

The pine forests of Northern Luzon are equally special, but they have to be described in a completely different way. The pine in Luzon is referred to as Benguet Pine, (Pinus insularis) or (Pinus kesiya insularis) depending on who you ask. The forest that support Benguet Pine as it primary species are on the drier, leeward mountain slopes, usually between 1000 - 2200 meters. Being from California, it is hard for me describe a monoculture pine forest with as much novelty and reverence as I can describe a virgin tropical hardwood forest. How many species of pines are found in California? It's at least 15. In fact, some of the landscapes I found there, I would have guessed would be in Northern California had I been drugged and left there only to wake up and try to figure out where I was and what year it was.

The view to the east from Kiltepan Mountain. Is this in Mountain Province, Philippines or perhaps eastern Mendocino County, California? They are so similar.

Benguet Pine - Pinus insularis

The pine forest in the Philippines seems to have entered into a relationship with human beings for the same reasons pine forests in other places have. Why? You guessed it...grazing, logging, and fire. These things are very much integrated into the forest ecology. The forest ecology is struggling to transform at the speed with which cultural transformation of the humans that live there is occurring.  In the Philippines, fire is being suppressed and grazing is dying out as the industrial ethos begins to work its way into more remote areas. It seems as though logging of the pine forests is common and its rate increasing just as is apparent in the mossy forests. People are beginning to face some of the same problems in managing pine forests that we are experiencing in the Western US. Namely, an excess of fuel in the understory due to fire suppression.

The town of Sagada is intricately woven into the pine forests

Being a birder, I can't write about the ecology of montane forests of Luzon without mentioning the birds there and the parallels between them and the birds found in a typical coniferous forest in Northwestern California. The similarities are uncanny. First off, there is one species found in the pine forests that is the same as one found in pine forests in California and across the world. It is a bird that is arguably more symbiotic with pines than any other, the Red Crossbill (Loxia curvirostra). I can't overemphasize how amazing Red Crossbills are and how they have evolved into many different types that eat many different species of conifer seeds. Their specialization lies mostly in the varied shapes of their bilaterally asymmetrical bills. Loxia is one of only two bird genera in the world that display external bilateral asymmetry. I have met many people who have studied Red Crossbills, but I especially think of Ken Irwin, an ornithologist and amazing birder in Humboldt County, California who has dedicated a large portion of his career to this species. Check out this video to see how Red Crossbills extract seeds from cones using their asymmetrical bill:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inzxNQSudqk

I was birding in Northern Luzon in December, so all of the songbirds were not breeding, but instead were in mixed multi-species flocks. Songbirds in North America exhibit the same behavior when they are not breeding in autumn and winter, then establish breeding territories and mostly ignore other species of birds in spring and summer. So, in birding, I focused on finding these big, noisy flocks of songbirds, then trying to find out what species were there. I found many species, and I decided I might put each montane Philippine bird side-by-side with its "theoretical ecological counterpart" from a northern California douglas-fir forest in early fall:

The core species:

Elegant Tit - Periparus elegans

Chestnut-backed Chickadee - Poecile rufescens

Mountain White-eye - Zosterops monatus

Golden-crowned Kinglet - Regulus satrapa

Just along for the ride:

Arctic Warbler - Phylloscopus borealis

Yellow-rumped Warbler - Setophaga coronata

Mountain Leaf-warbler - Phylloscopus trivigatus

Townsend's Warbler - Setophaga townsendi

Sulphur-billed Nuthatch - Sitta oeonochlamys

Red-breasted Nuthatch - Sitta canadensis

Philippine Pygmy Woodpecker - Dendrocopos macularis

Downy Woodpecker - Picoides pubescens

Citrine Canary-flycatcher - Culicicapa helianthea

Pacific-slope Flycatcher - Empidonax dificilis

Green-backed Whistler - Pachycephala albiventris

Western Tanager - Piranga ludoviciana

              Mountain Tailorbird - Phyllergates cuculatus

Wilson's Warbler - Wilsonia pusilla

The analogy was more striking than I ever would have expected, not just in form but in behavior. Of course, there were exceptions. I'm not saying that all of these birds exhibit the exact same behaviors. Also, there are many other species that could be conceivably present in either place, and would have no "counterpart" that would be quite the right fit in the other place. It's fun to draw these comparisons and think about ecology on a global scale. All in all, I enjoyed thinking about connectedness on so many levels during my visit to Northern Luzon. The scale of how all of these organisms and all of this biomass is connected is staggering. Just think about how much biomass Arctic and Yellow-rumped Warblers collectively transport between the boreal, temperate, and tropical forests of the world every year as they migrate back and forth!

Most Memorable Wildlife Experiences

I have been reflecting a lot recently about my most memorable experiences with wildlife. I decided to take an hour to write down all of the experiences that I really remember. I have personally spent an unreasonable amount of my free time observing wildlife. Only one of these experiences that I have listed occurred in the Philippines, but I think this topic is still worth posting on this blog. As expected, the majority of these experiences occurred in Africa. In Africa, wildlife is just everywhere, and you can't avoid it if you tried. I'd really enjoy hearing responses to this with some other memorable experiences others have had with wildlife. These are in no particular order. Undoubtedly, I've left some good ones out because they just haven't popped into my head in the hour I've spent thinking about this.

• My first leopard in Kasane, Botswana. I lost it and yelled leopard after spotting it at the watering hole when we were eating dinner at Elephant Valley Lodge. I guess I'm not familiar with safari etiquette. Nobody else seemed too excited about the leopard. Neither did the elephants. Are you kidding me!? 
• Morning with Sitatunga in November at Kasanka National Park, Zambia. Sitting under huge Mululu trees, listening to Baboons, Lesser Swamp-warblers, White-browed Robin-Chats, Dark-backed Weavers, and Square-tailed Drongos and them really showing me the language of nature. One of those special days in Africa, if you take the time to listen, it makes you think of the age and wisdom in the land beyond what you ever thought possible. 
• Going birding with Frank Willems in Kasanka National Park, Zambia. He is unbelievable.
• Straw-coloured Fruit Bat migration in November at Kasanka National Park, Zambia. One of the great spectacles of the natural world. Ten million bats with 80 centimeter wingspans. Enough said.
• My first Ethiopian Wolf in Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia. The world's rarest canid.
• Seeing a Serval in the wild in Dinsho, Ethiopia.
• Black-and-White Colubus Monkeys in the giant fig trees and one of the best days of birding of my entire life at Lake Langano, Ethiopia, December 26, 2012. 45 life birds in a morning. The sort of day that is so renewing, it makes you wonder why it is so unique. 
• Finding a 4th-cycle Slaty-backed Gull in McKinleyville, CA meanwhile getting a phone call from Rob Fowler that he had found a 3rd-cycle Slaty-backed Gull in Fernbridge, CA the same morning. So weird! The topper is that we ran into each other at the grocery store the day before (just another grey Humboldt winter day) and were talking about gulls.
• First day in the Chobe River Valley, Botswana. There is no other place in the world with so many African Elephants. I just had no idea what an incredible display the elephants would give us on this day. I estimate we saw at least 200 individual elephants at once. So epic.
• Sunset in Awash National Park, Ethiopia. Standing out on a parched grassland, looking for bustards as it quickly got dark on Christmas Eve. Lifer Hartlaub's Bustard was just a neck in the dry grass.
• Watching a rainbow skink steal a paralyzed cricket from a parasitic wasp in Lundazi, Zambia.
• Watching the lake flies on Lake Malawi.
• My first Grey-winged Robin-Chat in Kelondu, Zambia. I was taking a bath at the stream near my garden, when I heard one of the most ridiculous bird songs imaginable. I went a grabbed my I-pod and speaker and played a Grey-winged Robin-chat song. Sure enough, it popped out of the forest and started singing. I think I heard it perfectly mimic at least 10 species, including European Bee-eater, Klaas's Cuckoo, and African Yellow Warbler. I later discovered a second bird, suggesting the birds were breeding there.
• Just watching ants and termites in Africa in general.
• My first Blue Duiker, world's smallest antelope, at Zambezi Source National Heritage Site, Zambia. 99 out of 100 people would have never known it was there.
• My encounter with a herd of Impala on a solo bush-walk (stupid thing to do in a place with lions) at sunset in Kafue National Park. The moment I really learned how to walk and observe nature. I was thankful to be in Zambia, the home of the walking safari.
• Birding in the San Pedro River Valley in Sierra Vista, AZ in winter. I love sparrows. I don't know if there is a better place in the US to observe them in winter.
• Drifting the Kafue River. The most serene place in the world. My first Rock Pratincole. Way too close for comfort hippo encounters. An experience that can only be fully enjoyed with an ice-cold Castle.
• My first Moray Eel encounter in Maui, Hawaii.
• A memorable encounter with a black bear in Redwood National Park, CA when doing my master's field work. I was alone, on foot, and this bear was just way too curious about me and my equipment. Doing that project, I got some insight into the incredible psychology of the American Black Bear in my encounters with dozens of them. Surely one of the most misunderstood animals in the world.
• Watching a Black Heron forage using its "umbrella" technique for the first time at Lake Awasa, Ethiopia. If you haven't seen this, watch a Black Heron on Youtube or better yet, go to a wetland in Africa and see it for yourself.
• Watching "flocks" of hundreds of Common Nighthawks over Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge at dusk.
• Watching a female long-tailed Weasel with a small rodent in her mouth near Klamath, CA cross a log over a creek. She spotted me and immediately dropped the rodent, which was still alive, onto the log, and she ran into the brush. The rodent sat there on the log, and about 5 seconds later, she came out on the log snagged the rodent, and ran back into the bushes, fast as lightning.
• Another long-tailed Weasel story in Humboldt County…a female chasing a small rodent across the road in front of my advancing truck, then the same thing, three seconds later, back across the road in the opposite direction. If I were a mouse, a long-tailed weasel would be my worst nightmare.
• Watching a Brown Shrike kill and eat a snake in Quezon City, Philippines.
• Watching a Western Scrub-jay kill and eat a mouse in Battle Ground, Washington.
• Having a 20 minute staring contest with a curious Northern Spotted Owl along the Elk River in Humboldt County, CA. It was only about 20 feet from my head. The owl crushed my soul with its alien wisdom.
• A Northern Saw-whet Owl landing on my tent in Redwood National Park. It was a full moon, an amazingly clear night, it was 3 am, and I had to pee. I looked up and saw a weird shadow on the top of my tent. Then it moved. I uttered various expletives to myself.  When I unzipped the door., it silently flew over to my camp chair about 15 feet away. Then it just sat there in the moonlight and stared at me while I got out of my tent and took a piss. Crazy! I swear that happened, and I was completely sober.
• Just watching American Dippers, period. Everything they do is amazing.
• The feeling when you finally, finally, finally find a bird you have spent an extremely unreasonable amount of time looking for. American Three-toed Woodpecker. Grimwood's Longclaw. many others

Urban Ecology - The human side

I've been meaning to write on Balicassiao about urban ecology. I have never seen a place where it is so appropriate to examine this topic than in Manila, a city built on a swamp. Manila proper is also the most densely populated city in the world with 111,000 people per square mile. Several cities in India as well as Dakha, Bangladesh, and Jakarta, Indonesia are now in similar situations. In these cities, it's nearly impossible to get an accurate measure of the population density. As an outsider, it is astonishing to me to think about how Manila came to be what it is today. Especially given the frequency of natural disasters in the Philippines.

I've posted this BBC video as an introduction to this topic. It's definitely taking a distinctly western approach to the slums in Manila, but it also interesting to see how differently outsiders view the situation from the people that have lived in slums for decades. To them, it's just the way they live, and it's better than being in a rural area with no access to daily income. Despite this, the Philippine government wants to clear the slums and force people to live in rural housing developments.

What has struck me most about the slums in Manila is that although they are widespread, they are so patchily distributed. Slums in Manila tend to exist along corridors, margins, thoroughfares, and dark, underswept corners of the city. They are not the expansive slums we think of in Mumbai or Nairobi. There is just no space in Manila for anything expansive. The city is surrounded on all sides by open water, permanent swamps, or mountains. The only way to build is up. Slum structures are often four or five stories tall and look like Tim Burton creations, haphazardly piled on top of one another and stained with the soot of decades of diesel emissions. They exist right next to fancy housing developments and condominiums. They exist in parks, along creeks and railroads, and propped up against skyscrapers.

I will be examining this topic more and more as I make more observations about urban ecology, including the other animals and plants that make Manila home. In Manila, I really see something every day that amazes me. It's a city of extremely sharp contrast. It's fascinating to see people embrace the ultimate sense of togetherness and community to be able to live literally on top of one another. It's something that is totally inconceivable in the Western mind. Privacy is only a state of mind in this situation.

I've been able to live in one of the least densely populated places in the world in Northwestern Zambia, and one of the most densely populated cities in the world in Manila, Philippines within the span of a year. I am really interested to focus on what effects the highly urbanized ecosystem has on its inhabitants.  How do they benefit from this situation and what are the negative effects? I also want to examine the few greenspaces in Metro Manila. What role do greenspaces serve in this city?

Protect your lungs!

There is one item that I've seen here in Manila that I think pretty much sums up life in modern Asian cities more than any other, the designer air-filtration mask. The masks are designed to protect against all airborne pollutants, including diseases.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2013/11/china-keeps-it-classy-designer-smog-filtration-masks/7673/

Winter is the worst season for smog in Asia for a number of reasons. First, the rainiest season is finished and there is much less turbulence in the atmosphere. Smog near the ground surface does not get dissipated up into the atmosphere as quickly as it does at times when the weather is more turbulent. Second, people are using more fossil fuels to heat their homes in the winter, causing higher emissions levels.

The Air Quality in China is making headlines this week. People have never seen air quality levels this bad in the cities. Shanghai recorded an Air Quality Index of 505 on Friday last week. The conditions are extremely hazardous. People have to plan their days around the air quality. There are those that have the luxury of being indoors, and there are those that are forced to be outdoors.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53767908#53767908



A few weeks ago I was on the LRT (Light Rail Transit) in Manila at around 7am. The LRT is elevated above the madness of the street, and you are able to see the skyline of Manila pretty well. I actually like riding on the LRT because I can get a good view of the city. Early in the morning, when the air is still and clear, the city is shrouded in a brown soup. The brown soup extends just above the skyscrapers of Makati City.

The Air Quality in Manila is pretty bad by the standards of most of the world, but it's really nowhere near as bad as in China. Manila usually sees air quality levels of moderate this time of year, with some areas locally with AQIs of 100-200. The Philippines is actually fortunate to be warm enough year-round that people are not required to heat their homes in the winter. There is not quite as high of a traffic volume in Manila as there is in larger cities like Beijing or New Delhi. The air pollution in Manila tends to be more localized than in most other cities. It is also caused by a larger proportion of old, highly pollutive vehicles. You find that the air quality along the major transportation corridors is much worse than in areas away from most of the traffic.

I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. In the 1990s, the valleys to the east of Los Angeles had the worst air quality of anywhere in the US. The mountains to the east of Los Angeles tend to trap smog from escaping with the wind to the east. I remember not being allowed to play during recess when I was in elementary school because of hazardous air quality. The air quality in Los Angeles is now so much better than it used to be. California has enacted higher air quality standards, enforced smog-checks, and has required that auto manufacturers make cleaner burning vehicles. Industry standards have also changed. Just like Manila, Los Angeles's bad quality was caused mostly by vehicular emissions. A significant proportion of the emissions come from older vehicles. I see so many similarities to how Los Angeles was in the early 1990s to how Manila is 20 years later.

I really hope that Manila can follow the example that Los Angeles has shown to improve its air quality and not go down the disastrous path that Beijing and Shanghai have taken. I really hope that Filipinos feel compelled to act to improve air quality standards and not just feel like they are powerless to do anything. People should feel like the changes they make in their own lives have an impact. There is a living example of what's possible if you take a collective responsibility to stand up for environmental issues that relate directly to public health. For Manila, it's really not too late to build a model for the future that sees air-quality improve in the next few decades. With so many people forced to live or work outdoors in Manila, hazardous air quality levels in this city would really be a public health crisis for the Philippines.

I decided to write about air quality because it is something that is so visible to so many people. It is one of the most obvious environmental health problems, and one we can easily fix if we enforce regulation on emissions and emission standards. It's so important, especially with so many people flocking from rural to urban areas across the world. Too many places in the world operate on the outdated equation of CH=$. We are smarter than to trap ourselves into a fossil fuel dependent situation. I've developed a burning hack this week from spending so much time in rush hour traffic. I'm going to try to spend the day indoors today. I guess I need to ask Santa Claus for a designer air-filtration mask. Unfortunately, I haven't been very good this year. I can't even imagine what people in China are going through right now.

Tayabasan Sub-watershed, a look at a not so simple life

On the surface, and after being in Manila, a visit to Tayabasan makes life seem simple there. Most of the livelihoods of the people there come from subsistence rice farming. We were there to investigate some of the livelihood activities in the context of an effort to reforest the heavily deforested watershed.  Estimates in the past have found that 2,500 hectares of forest remains in the 7,000 hectare watershed. As I said in my previous post, the quality and quantity of forest cover in the upper watershed is directly connected to the incidence of catastrophic flooding downstream in Metro Manila. Every person in Manila has a vested interest in the reforestation of the Marikina watershed. The livelihood activities of the local people have shifted in recent years away from a dependence on local forest products.  There is less and less from the forest that a person can use to survive with every year. People have had to learn other skills such as farming in order to have enough to survive there.

A look at the lower sections of the Tayabasan River basin. Seen here are heavily deforested slopes that are prone to landslides.

One of the deforested areas in the upper watershed that is now occupied by grassland. This area was replanted with native trees in summer of 2012.

It soon became clear that the interactions between the people there, the land there, and the people in the lowlands are in actuality incredibly complex. There is undoubtedly a yawning chasm lying between the daily life of someone living in the Tayabasan headwaters, and someone living in Manila. Most Filipinos who have left a subsistence lifestyle in the outer provinces to come to Manila for a better life will tell you that in-fact their lives are easier and better in or near the city. There is certainly more opportunity to make money in urban areas.

We walked about 2 hours on a steep and muddy trail to reach the settlement. We also had to cross 3 rivers that had no bridges, and are most likely impassable during floods. We had to use 2 guides/porters for our goods, which included a guitar and 3 days worth of food. They were wearing flip-flops of course.

When I asked people about the recent history of the Dumagat community there, they said that the number of families living in the community has decreased by about half in the last 20 years. The current population seems to be somewhere between 30 and 50 families, but because people are spread out and not always at their homes, it is really difficult to get an accurate measurement of the population there. We also asked about how many of the people speak the Dumagat language. Only a few of the older men raised their hands. I wasn't able to ask any of the older women about this. I asked them to tell me a few words in the language. I don't remember what they were, but the phrases sounded nothing like Tagalog. I'm not exactly sure, but I think Tagalog originates from the Malay family of languages, while Dumagat comes more from Austronesian. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I've seen estimates that there are only a few thousand people that can speak Dumagat, most of them in the Sierra Madre of Luzon. None of the younger people see much value in learning to speak Dumagat, and everyone speaks Tagalog in the community. Most of their ancestry is now mixed through marriages to other Filipinos with mixed Asian and European ancestry.

We were there to focus on what people were doing for livelihood. It is really the key to see how we can best ensure the long-term reforestation of the area. We wanted to see if the people were invested in forest products for their livelihoods. Here's some of the anecdotal data from our investigation:

Primary livelihoods included:
Rice farming
Gold mining
Growing other fruits and vegetables: Bananas, sweet potatoes, cassava
Growing bamboo for housing materials

Small-scale hydraulic gold mining is fairly common in the upper Tayabasan basin. The gold mining contributes very significantly to bank erosion and increased turbidity in the river. The men we talked to said they found 2mg of gold that day, between the 3 of them. Some days they find more, sometimes they find nothing. They get a price of 1,350 pesos per gram, which is equivalent to about $30. Do the math.

These are some of the terraced rice paddies in Tayabasan. The steep slopes in the mountains require this terracing, which the Philippines is actually very famous for.

A carabao, the local beast of burden, wallowing after a long day working in rice paddies. These guys are seldom used for carrying people, goods, or for pulling carts. Most of their work is done plowing or preparing rice paddies. They are well adapted to the climate in the Philippines.

There is plenty of disturbed secondary forest in Tayabasan, great habitat for this amazing little flycatcher. I got to see a pair of these Black-naped Monarchs (Hypothymis azurea).

Secondary livelihood activities:
Gathering wild honey
Gathering wild fruits
Making brooms using tiger grass (Thrysoleana maxima)
Raising animals (chickens and cattle)

The local people make hives for some of the native stingless bees. These small black bees produce a bitter honey which is used medicinally. There are also two species of honeybees that produce different types of honey that is commonly sold to other communities.

This man makes brooms for selling at local markets. He was kind enough to give us a demonstration of how he makes the brooms even though he doesn't make them at this time of the year (November). The tiger grass (Thrysoleana maxima) spikelets are harvested around March are used to make the head of the broom. Other local and non-local materials are used to complete the product. He said he makes several hundred per year depending on the tiger grass harvest. He sells them each at 100-120 pesos (about $3).

A tree planted in 2012 as part of the initial reforestation effort. Coming from Africa, naturally I had to ask if they will be burning in the dry season. They responded "no", but I'll wait and see for myself.

It was a pleasure to meet these people. We didn't eat the dog. We ate a chicken once we caught it (read more below).

One of challenges of living in this place that an outsider would likely overlook is the steep terrain. Coming from flat land, there were things that I just never would have considered to be difficult until I got to the mountains. Of course, after you walk around, you get tired because you are walking up a hill, but I think the best example was when we wanted to catch a chicken to eat.  I've caught free running chickens before on flat terrain just by running after them. Eventually they get tired and you can catch them, especially if you have a dog to help you. Here, it is pretty much impossible because you can't run around on a 40% slope for very long. A chicken, though, has no problem. Southeast Asia is after all, the natural range of the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus), the wild bird species from which the chicken was domesticated. Chickens can fly away very easily, especially if there are trees around. We had to devise a way to catch it. We were going to use a pellet gun, but someone else was out hunting with it that day. So we tried to make a slipknot loop and lay it on the ground. We tied it to a stick and kept throwing rice into the center of the loop. The idea was to pull on the string when the chicken unwittingly stepped in the center of the loop, closing the loop around it. So we kept throwing rice, and the chickens kept pecking and pecking, but the one we wanted to catch never stepped into the loop. Eventually we gave up because we were wasting so much rice. The chickens had won. Their crops were full. A few hours later, some guys brought the chicken up the hill. I never found out how they caught it.

This is the Marikina River below Wawa gorge. Metro Manila is just downstream from Wawa gorge. This place is filled with middlemen, as it is a natural constriction in the traffic of goods moving up and down the river. Upon observation, fruit moves downriver, while money moves back up. It is a stunningly beautiful place.

As much as I loved going to this settlement in Tayabasan for a few days, I really struggle with whether I can be of real benefit to them by being there. I struggle whether it is right for me to be there at all. They accepted me as a foreigner of northern European ancestry. I am American, and I'm not sure if they can understand my identity as an American rather than a European. I don't know how to speak their language, and I need an interpreter. I don't live with them, I didn't come to give them money, and I'm not really required to invest in them in any way by going there. The reality is that most people that look like me that people like them have encountered in the past have harmed them directly or indirectly. That is the legacy of colonialism. I don't know if I am harming them when I go there. Even though they accept me and I am there to try to help them, it doesn't mean that I'm not hurting them. The reality is that most foreigners that might go there in the future are likely to harm them directly or indirectly, not help them, as good as their intentions might be. That is why their lives are much more complex than we might see at first glance.