Traditional Food Ways Increasingly at Risk

When we, in North America, think about food and where it comes from, we see supermarkets, farmers' markets, and for a growing few, our own backyard and community gardens. When it comes to clean water, we look no further than the kitchen tap or the store, for those who insist on or have no choice, but to purchase bottled water. This is not so for millions of people elsewhere on the earth.

When it comes to medicine, we turn to doctors who prescribe something for us or we rely on over the counter pre-packaged medication, perhaps we will purchase an herbal product from the local health store, and increasingly some people are growing their own healing herbs. However, we, for the most part, purchase, rather than produce the products we believe we need.

Once again, around the globe there are people who have traditionally relied on nature to meet their needs. Now, according to the recently released IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, these traditional supplies of food, water, and medicines are at risk, more so than any other period in our history.

The most recent version of the Red Lists shows that of the 63,837 species assessed, 19,817 are threatened with extinction, including 41% of amphibians, 33% of reef building corals, 25% of mammals, 13% of birds, and 30% of conifers.

What does this loss of species mean; Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) said;

“Sustainability is a matter of life and death for people on the planet. A sustainable future cannot be achieved without conserving biological diversity - animal and plant species, their habitats and their genes - not only for nature itself, but also for all 7 billion people who depend on it. The latest IUCN Red List is a clarion call to world leaders gathering in Rio to secure the web of life on this planet.”

Besides food and medicine, what services does Nature, in it diversity, provide for humanity and the planet?

One vital service is the control of air quality; a service that is generously and freely given by the trees and plants; For example, when a tree reaches maturity, it is able to produce as much oxygen in a season as 10 people inhale in a year. Trees also, clean the soil, act as carbon sinks, and clean the air.

Wetland plants provide water filtration services and thus clean the water as do bivalve molluscs. Snails help to control algae. The latest IUCN Red List reports that in Africa, 42% of all freshwater molluscs are globally threatened; while in Europe, 68% of endemic freshwater molluscs are globally threatened by habitat loss, pollution, and the development of dams.

Human behaviour has a major impact on other species with which we co-habit this planet and we do so at our own peril. Once a species is lost, so are the services that species provided, and we cannot readily replace those services, while we continue to spoil ecosystems worldwide.

Threatened Species Find Refuge in Natchitoches

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Veronica Sturman - I visited the Natchitoches Fish Hatchery to interview Tony Brady, age 38, propagation biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He has been working at the Natchitoches Fish Hatchery almost a year, and he worked at a fish hatchery in Wisconsin for seven years before moving to Natchitoches. He is a mussel expert. He says mussels are natural filters and help keep our fresh waters clean.

Fresh water mussels are kind of like butterflies. They have a larval stage called glochidia. They cocoon on the gills of fish. Then they drop off of fish as tiny little mussels that you have to view under a microscope to see. During my visit, I was lucky enough to get to see a baby mussel under a microscope.

Grown mussels are very sneaky in how they propagate. Each type of mussel uses a different type of fish to incubate their
cocoons. They grow tissue around the glochidia that looks like a certain type of fish, whatever type of fish their target fish likes to eat. When the fish eat the glochidia, some of them get stuck on the gills of the fish and live there until they have transformed into mussels. Most glochidia do not survive until adult stage. Not only do they have to catch onto the gills of a fish to cocoon, but they also have to land in a good spot to live as young mussels.

Tony Brady specializes in Louisiana pearlshell mussels. He is trying to find out when they develop glochidia and what type of fish they need to cocoon. He goes to the streams every few weeks to check on the Louisiana pearlshell mussels. He is looking for signs that they have glochidia. When he finds the glochidia, he will put them on different types of fish to see which one will grow the cocoons. Louisiana pearlshell mussels are a threatened species and are only found in two parishes in Louisiana.

Mr. Brady enjoys teaching children about mussels. If you’re a teacher, you can bring your class out for a tour and some
classroom activities. I asked Mr. Brady if he liked his job. He replied, “I love my job. I get to play with fish, go swimming, chase mussels and walk through the woods. There are a lot of good things about my job.” I had a lot of fun learning about mussels from someone who is excited about his subject.

Veronica Sturman

How the Santa Ana Sucker represents our environmental challenge

by Samantha Torrence- The Santa Ana Sucker might just be a fish but it represents an issue that impacts all of us and the way we decide to live in the future.

[caption id="attachment_4552" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Santa Ana Sucker - flickr- Hotash"][/caption]

The Santa Ana sucker is more than an ordinary fish. It is a small bottom feeding fish that has sparked a large controversy in California’s 41^st district. At face value the controversy may seem limited to  the environment of Inland Empire and the people who live there, but if you look deeper there is another  issue.  Is our current need to have large cities with urban sprawl met at the expense of our environment?

In the past, before major industrialization, we had cities that were surrounded by green zones dotted here and there with small villages or farms. The forests were burgeoning with fauna and flora, and our rivers and streams were mostly clean and teaming with life. Pollution was centered usually around the larger gatherings of our species while farms and villages lived more in tune with the land.

Industrialization changed our way of life in ways we could have never imagined.  There was significant impact on life expectancy and infant mortality giving us more children that lived on through an increasingly extended lifespan. Our population increased and as humans tend to do, we grouped together in large cities. Our need to have space, to be in touch with the land, but still have comfortable homes and closeness made us move from the big cities into the surrounding areas we now call suburbs. Our urban sprawl eliminated green zones until one city blended with another. Forests were destroyed, lakes and rivers tamed to our needs, and our farms over farmed to feed the growing population.

Species after species has succumbed to human tampering and in that long line of suffering swims in one little seemingly insignificant fish that has caused to surface an age- old debate between environmentalists and industrialists.

In the Inland Empire metropolitan area urban sprawl and big cities have made the necessity of a dam to be built to protect the population from flooding and to control and increase the water supply. The residents of the area are facing litigation and lobbying from environmentalist groups that champion biodiversity. The groups are working to convince the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to tear down the Seven Oaks dam and give the Santa Ana River back to the sucker fish that inhabit it. Jerry Lewis, the Republican Representative for the district has claimed that the dam needs to stay or there will be 2.7 billion dollars in loss as well as a loss of enough water for 400,000 families or 10% of the Inland Empire Population.

Why are there over 4 million people sprawled into this area? California has always been an attractive place to live because of its beauty and its bounty. There are also political motivations for the gay community and for illegal immigrants due to the sanctuary cities in its midst. People of like minds like to congregate, to find safety in numbers; however those numbers are over burdening the Californian wildlife. Environmentalists have proposed lifestyle shifts to help solve the problems of needed congregation without hurting the wildlife. The lifestyle shifts all go back to our historical way of living, but with a modern twist. Vertical sprawl with large cities surrounded by a mandatory green zone then outlaying farmlands have been seen as a solution.

There are many proposals for changing the way we live, from simple solutions like more clean living, to frightening solutions like eugenics and population control. Each solution has been looked at on an academic basis to determine its values and flaws. Everyone agrees overall that over population is the problem, and the decline of the Santa Ana Sucker is just one symptom.

The Santa Ana fish represents the complicated choices we must make for our future because where the fish swims cleanly, smoothly and safely might represent the safe passage for the rest of us.