NATURAL RHYTHMS AND HUMAN RIDDLES

HOW DO YOU RESPOND?

   While there is no shortage of terror, horrible events and violence in the world, the kidnapping of those 250 Nigerian school girls by the Islamic extremists Boko Haram has been especially troubling.

     You have empathy for families, but what can we do?

It's a challenge to all nations and to our own sense of justice.  
      People of faith are called to love, even enemies, but that flies in the face of what seems a natural response to such wanton aggression and violence. Defining and then doing the right thing is another rocky step on the sometime treacherous journey of being a human.

     As my old radio colleague Lou Palmer might say,

"While of predators, consider this…."

COUGAR ALERT

   Local authorities report 3 cougar sightings on the north coast of San Luis Obispo County, including on our ridge. The locations above are close; wide open spaces that surround Cambria and its thickets, canyons, forests and wooded hills.    This is prime territory for cougars, made inviting by the abundance of deer, wild turkey, fox, coyote, coons, ground critters and pets. People report family cats being taken by the mountain lions.

    We face western grazing slopes where new calves are attractive to the predators, as are the many fawns. It is  chilling that two of the sightings have been in neighborhoods considerably more populated than ours. 

Authorities tell parents to make sure young children are not left alone outside, especially at twilight.

    We've been advised on ways to respond, should we encounter a cougar. The advice is similar to what we've been told when hiking in Alaska where the issue is grizzly bear.  

THE THURSDAY THROWBACK

   Speaking of Alaska, this archive shot is near the summit of Mt Redoubt a 10,197 foot active stratovolcano in the Aleutian range in 2001.

    Working on a documentary for Discovery we chartered a chopper to fly around the mountain with a USGS scientist who was measuring the relationship between earthquakes, magma flow and eruptions. As director I assigned myself to be second camera.

     No eruptions this day though Redoubt frequently spits or blows. It shuts Anchorage airport and coats the region in ash and spew.
     It was "a good day in the office." You can never do enough location shooting.

Photo Courtesy of Geology.com

      See you down the trail.

   

WILDLIFE BATTLES

KILLING THE BIG CATS

  

Photo by California Department of Fish and Game

The graphic scene from high in the Eastern Sierra near Rovana illustrates
the centerpiece of an ongoing wild life management debate.
Should big mountain cats, mountain lions, some call them cougars,
be killed to protect the endangered Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep?
Wildlife experts say there are maybe 400 Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep. They say
at most, there probably has never been more than 1000.  When they were federally
listed as endangered in 1999, the number was down to 114.
The Sierra Nevada Bighorns are a relative to the more common Desert Bighorns with their rounded horns, the type used on Ram trucks and by the football team.

The alpine Eastern Sierra is vast, rugged and a harsh environment.
The Associated Press reports 23 mountain lions have been killed by trappers in the 
last ten years.  There are said to be some 5,000 Mountain Lions in the region. The AP says the cats have eaten at least 59 sheep. In the same ten years 1,079 mountain lions have been killed for threatening livestock or pets.  
THE NUMBERS
5,000 Mountain Lions
400 Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep 
Passions run on both sides of the kill issue.  
For the time being the lions can be killed only  if
they are proven to have killed a sheep.  Of course a
lot can happen in the wild that goes beyond monitoring.

DAY BOOK

HAPPY COWS
as the commercial says
"California Cows are Happy Cows."

See you down the trail.