The room was packed for the unveiling of the 1,000-page government report. But the mainstream media were nowhere to be seen.
Then again, it was a gorgeous sunny Friday, and the city and area schools were largely shut. Hurricane frenzy had taken its toll, despite only the few inches of rain that actually fell.
And, to complicate matters, the news wasn’t about some piece of legislation or incremental change in White House policy.
No, it was about the future of the water we drink, air we breathe, fish we eat and land upon which we work and play. It was from the sorts of anonymous folk whose expertise and diligence are reminders that the bureaucracy includes impressive human resources–even if many do wear those plastic “nerd packs” of pens in their breast pockets.
I had stumbled into the S. Dillon Ripley Center Auditorium at the Smithsonian Institution for the unveiling by the U.S. Geological Survey of the first full-scale analysis of the “health and status and trends of the nation’s biological resources.”
The survey’s Biological Resources Division had assembled 200 experts from the federal government, academia and non-government groups to produce what would seem unlikely for pointy heads, namely a full-color report written in terms intelligible to those who don’t wear nerd packs in their shirt pockets and believe a wetland is a tavern.
If I could understand it, anybody can.
“We do want the average educated person to be able to pick this up and understand it,” assured Charles Groat (known as “Chip” to his laugh-a-minute chums), director of the Geological Survey.
He succeeded, producing a work that is a primer on the history and status of the nation’s ecosystems and astonishingly diverse biological resources.
One learns that land use, water use and the arrival on a particular scene of a new or “invasive” species are most responsible for the “often dramatic declines” in the country’s plants, animals and ecosystems.
Seven states, for example, were once covered with native grasslands but now “less than 1 percent of the native tall-grass prairie habitat remains. Losses are due to agriculture, grazing, urbanization and mineral extraction. The result is that native grassland bird species have shown more consistent, widespread and steeper declines than any other group of North American birds.”
Fish aren’t having an easy time, either. In the Southeast and Southwest, large scale construction of dams, as well as ground water pumping and pollution, have imperiled a large percentage of the freshwater fish species; indeed, nearly half the species in the Southwest.
In the Great Lakes region, one learns that at least 25 non-native fish species have arrived and become established, “drastically changing the fishery,” because they are in areas with no natural competitors or predators, “enabling the invaders to thrive to the extent where they either out-compete native species, significantly alter habitat or both.”
There is also a fair bit of good news. In the case of the Great Lakes, clean-up efforts have met with impressive success, reducing the levels of toxic chemicals, reviving the bald eagle and burrowing mayfly populations. Burrowing mayflies? I shall explain shortly.
After the formal presentation, I ambled up to Tom Edsall, who runs the federal fisheries research on Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan. He’s a fish guy, specializing in the effects of exotic species and the restoration of lake trout.
For sure, the broad-shouldered and roundish Edsall looked as if he were confronting an exotic species when I introduced myself and requested a broad overview of the Great Lakes chapter he wrote in the new report.
“There are 33 million people living in the Great Lakes basin, mostly jammed along the southern Lake Michigan shoreline, southern Lake Erie and near Detroit and Toronto,” he said. Most use the lakes for recreation, and the lakes are obviously important for our industrial water supply.
Despite the image of Americans as ecologically insensitive, even brutish, Edsall demurs. He finds substantial support for his work, especially in a Great Lakes region that, he felt compelled to note, is so big “it’s a geological feature one can see from the surface of the Moon.”
“Water pollution was a major problem, but we have turned it around,” he said. “We have done much to clean up the lakes and pesticides. The bald eagle is making a recovery, as are other fish-eating birds like the osprey.”
And then there’s the burrowing mayfly.
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My costly private-school education had never mentioned this aquatic insect that lives in mud, comes out of the mud, mates, then dies. To exist, the quality of the sediment in which they exist prior to their romantic apocalypse must be of good quality.
“They were huge around Lake Erie in the 1930s and 1940s,” Edsall explained. “But due to pollution, by the 1950s the whole population went to zero.”
Water-pollution controls have improved the low-lying sediments. “And last year, all of a sudden, they started coming back.”
Ah, yet another story missed by the Tribune, The New York Times and CBS News.
Chicagoans have heard of the cantankerous zebra mussel, one of those interlopers that plays havoc with native species. But what about the diaporeia?
It’s a tiny shrimplike critter which is feasted upon by whitefish and perch but is now disappearing from the Lake Michigan shore.
“We’re losing the bottom of our food chain, and nobody quite knows why,” said Edsall, clearly concerned.
After coverage of the presidential campaign, I swear to get back to the diaporeia. Until then, be informed that “The Status and Trends of the Nation’s Biological Resources” is available from the U.S. Government Printing Office for $98. It can be ordered by phone at 202-512-1800 and, like everything else on the planet, will be available on CD-ROM and on-line through www.usgs.gov.
Floyd has windy competition
They are total weather wimps here.
A half-inch of rain falls last week, and the city is crippled, its tow trucks break down and the mayor gets apoplectic.
Before a single drop of rain had fallen, school was being canceled. You turned on wacky local TV coverage and one thought that World War III beckoned as melodramatic announcements ran across the bottom of the screen:
“Liberal leave for employees of D.C. schools . . . Prince George County, liberal leave for employees . . . Anne Arundel County, Code Blue . . . Charles County, essential only . . . Prince William County, Code Red . . . Frederick County, Code Two For Employees . . . Maryland State Government, liberal leave for non-essential workers. . ..”
It went on and on.
“Flood of Troubles” was the name of coverage by the light-as-a-feather Fox affiliate, whose anchors jabbered about “the killer storm that spread fear in 15 states.” And Thursday night, in a move that suggested the wackiness of a young Geraldo Rivera, the station went live to a reporter who was holding a candle in the living room of a darkened Washington home.
Gag me with a spoon.
The writing almost topped the visuals this night, especially when learning that “tree limbs are turned into flying daggers.”
And, of course, all the reporters, perhaps aping their big-time network heroes, made sure to wear loose-fitting nylon windbreakers–the sort to flap around wildly in any wind above 2 m.p.h.
Call this the Flock Syndrome, hereby named after an old chum, Chicago-based CNN correspondent Jeff Flock, the video Michelangelo of natural disasters.
One was reminded last week, somewhere along the Carolina coast, that Flock has perfected the art of resembling a human pinata being yanked about by a storm but still having the presence of mind to complete his stand-up open and close.
It’s not weighty. But it’s live and frenetic. And most TV news directors love that more than sex.
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.