West Virginia Highlands Voice

By Hugh Rogers

“In March, 1961, the day after President Kennedy announced he was forming the Peace Corps, I called Washington and volunteered.” Julian Martin, our Vice-President for State Affairs, recalls those days in his newly published memoir, Imagonna. What he tells about his motivation-his activities in the Wesley Foundation at West Virginia University, his discovery of certain heroes-only begins to explain that leap into the unknown. Some people are just born radical, although it helps if you’re born into a family of altruistic Christians and union activists. In 1961, a Peace Corps was a radical idea.

It’s still a miniscule program. The

number of volunteers who have served over the past fifty years, 200,000, is less than ten percent of the number of active military and reserves serving just this year. Our military personnel are stationed in 150 countries. At one time or another, Peace Corps had projects in 139; currently, about 8,000 PCV’s are working in 77 countries. Coincidentally, they are no longer in the countries where Julian and I went, Nigeria and Korea.

Among RPCV’s (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers), Imagonna will bring up lots of stories. Let me mention two more coincidences. The title of Julian’s book comes from his students’ puzzlement at a particular word he used-which turned out to be his pronunciation of “I am going to.” Similarly, my wife Ruth had to overcome her North Carolina accent so her students could be understood. Like Julian, who married a fellow PCV in Nigeria, we had a baby in Korea. In both places, strangers were curious (and direct) about the babies’ sex. His girl’s diaper was pulled off. Ruth learned to say, “Yes, he has a chili pepper!” while yanking our boy away from probing fingers.

Julian was not only the first volunteer from West Virginia; he was one of the first from anywhere in the country. Peace Corps’ fledgling bureaucracy couldn’t help but make annoying mistakes. The telegram that arrived a few months after his call said he was being sent to Nicaragua. That was easy to correct, but the trainees rebelled at the pervasive pseudopsychology that was supposed to reveal character weaknesses. The language Julian was taught, Hausa, was useless in the Igbo region where he was sent. Fortunately, he was expected to teach chemistry, and coach track, in English, the language of education in the former colony; he learned Igbo on his own.

Instead of dealing with English colonials, he had to cope with Irish priests. His boss at the missionary school was a throwback in a long white cassock. He calls him Headmaster:

For two years I would witness Headmaster’s vow of humility being tested daily by the power he possessed to lord it over, abuse, and degrade the hired help and the three hundred teenage boys under his control. He usually failed the test.

And not only the vow of humility. Reconcile the vow of poverty with the cook, two houseboys, well-furnished house, new Peugot, ample foreign food, etc. Headmaster’s irritable temper and bigotry seemed to indicate he’d overstayed. The plush situation might help to explain why he didn’t leave.

Julian would learn that even his hero in Africa, Albert Schweitzer, was an appalling racist. His Peace Corps friend, William Shurtleff, who had worked for Schweitzer at the Lambarene hospital, could only shrug and quote the great man’s biographer: “A man does not have to be an angel to be a saint.”

“Culture shock” had to do with more than poverty, strange food, and mysterious customs. While trying to answer his students’ questions about faraway American racism, Julian became aware of local animosities between Igbos, Hausas, and Yorubas. The Biafran War, in which up to a million Igbos died, began shortly after he left. The neighboring country of Cameroon was already seething with insurrection. On vacation there in what he had thought was a safe mountain region, he had an AK-47 stuck in his face, and ate dinner beneath “fencing that swooped from the roof to the street” to divert hand grenades.

Nevertheless, it was a happy vacation: “Dispositions become flowery in a cool climate.” Perhaps he was missing West Virginia. Back at school, his thoughts of home turned to practical help. Friends from his chemical engineering class at WVU arranged donations of more than four hundred books, not only badly needed textbooks but a diverse collection for the school library. Plus a wall-sized periodic chart of the elements, courtesy of Charleston Catholic High School.

Julian’s letters, saved by family and friends, and a journal he kept intermittently, were sources and “memory joggers” for the book. We get a double perspective, the eager 25-year-old and the reflective 75-year-old. Brief sections, some less than a page long, carry the story forward with no dillydallying. Yet it doesn’t seem hurried or thin; there’s a lot to savor.

There are moments when the full import of what he did appears in a startling image. His best student grew up in a mud hut with a thatched roof where his mother pounded yams into fufu. It looked exactly like a picture in the encyclopedia illustrating family life in 3000 B.C. Now Edwin Igbozurike could figure out, with a piece of zinc and a copper sulfate solution, the equivalent weight of copper. Julian writes, “Edwin made a five-thousand-year leap.”

[Imagonna: Peace Corps Memories is available from amazon.com., from Taylor Books in Charleston, or straight from the horse's mouth: Julian Martin, 1524 Hampton Road, Charleston, WV 25314. Ones from Julian cost $14, ]$10 for the book plus $4 for a mailer, postage, and driving it to the post office. The ones straight from Julian are autographed.]

by Lester R.Brown

(reviewed and briefed by Don Gasper)

For decades now, climate scientists have been telling us that global warming would affect all of us. They warned of more extreme weather events. Droughts would spread. There would be more intense heat waves, more wildfires. And the combination of drought and heat could shrink harvests. Today the Earth’s climate is in a state of constant flux.

World agriculture is now facing challenges unlike any before. Producing enough grain to make it to the next harvest has tested farmers ever since agriculture began, but now the challenge is deepening as new trends-falling water tables and grain yields, and rising temperatures-make it difficult to expand production fast enough. As a result, world grain carryover stocks have dropped from an average of 107 days of consumption a decade ago to an estimated 65 days this year, and the world population last year grew by 8 million.

World food prices have more than doubled over the last decade. Those who live in the United States, where only 9 percent of income goes for food, are largely insulated from these price shifts.

But how do those who live on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder cope? They are already spending 50-70 percent of their income on food. Many were down to one meal a day before the price rises. Now millions of families in countries like India, Nigeria, and Peru routinely schedule one or more days each week when they will not eat at all.

This will lead to political instability and possibly a breakdown of political systems. Some governments may fall. High food prices help fuel the unrest in the spring of 2011. The world is now living from one year to the next, hoping always to produce enough to cover the growth in demand. Farmers everywhere are making an all-out effort to keep pace with the accelerated growth in demand, but they are having difficulty doing so.

Feeding the world’s hungry is now a complex undertaking. It involves the ministries of energy, water resources, and health and family planning, among others. Because of the looming specter of climate change that is threatening to disrupt agriculture, we may find that energy policies will have an even greater effect on future food security than agricultural policies do. In short, avoiding a breakdown in the food system requires the mobilization of our entire society. On the demand side of the food equation, there are four pressing needs- to stabilize world population, eradicate poverty, reduce excessive meat consumption, and reverse bio-fuels policies that encourage the use of grain to produce fuel for cars. We need to press forward on all four fronts at the same time.

On the supply side of the food equation, we face several challenges, including stabilizing climate, raising water productivity, and conserving soil. Stabilizing climate is not easy. It will take a huge cut in carbon emissions, some 80 % within a decade, to give us a chance of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change. This means a wholesale restructuring of the world energy economy. This is evidenced most clearly in some of the more affluent grain-importing countries-led by Saudi Arabia, China, India, and South Korea- buying or leasing land long term in other countries on which to grow food for themselves. Most of these land acquisitions are in African countries where millions of people are barely being sustained.

As of mid-2012, hundreds of land acquisition deals had been negotiated or were under negotiation, some of them exceeding a million acres. A World Bank analysis of these “land grabs” reported that at least 140 million acres were involved-an area that exceeds the cropland devoted to corn and wheat combined in the United States. This onslaught of land acquisitions has become a land rush as governments, agribusiness firms, and private investors seek control of land wherever they can find it.

At the same time that water shortages and crop-shrinking heat waves are making it more difficult for farmers to keep pace with demand; and as grain and soybean prices were soaring in 2007-08, grain-exporting counties restrict exports to keep their own food prices down, and importing counties panicked. In response, many began buying or leasing large tracts of land in other countries to grow food for themselves. The potential for conflict is high. Many of the land deals have been made in secret, and much of the time the land involved was already being farmed by villagers when it was sold or leased.

The world is in serious trouble, but there is little evidence that political leaders have yet grasped the magnitude of what is happening. The gains in reducing hunger in recent decades have been reversed. Feeding the world’s hungry now depends on new population, energy, and water policies. Unless we move quickly to adopt new policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will fail.

We must ourselves be aware of our common food crisis and share it’s since of urgency. In this respect there is a new book “Full Planet, Empty Plates,” by Lester Brown. It is available from his “Earth Policy Institute,” 1350 Connecticut Ave. N.W. Suite 403. Washington D.C. 20036 as well as on Amazon

by Kathryn Newfont (University of Georgia Press, 2012), 369 pages, illustrated, paperback $26.95.

Reviewed by Paul Salstrom

“COMMONS ENVIRONMENTALISM” – New Name for an Old Way of Thinking

In the 1700s and 1800s, the forests that covered the eastern mountains were used by people as de facto ”commons” on which to free-ranging their livestock and to hunt, fish, gather nuts, berries and herbs, and in many other ways. Kathryn Newfont’s new book traces the history from that early use of Appalachia’s forests as de facto commons to the later creation of national forests as de jure commons. Technically in U.S. law, the national forests didn’t become de jure commons until the Multiple-Use Sustained- Yield Act of 1960, but all along they have been used as commons.

Yet, how the national forests have been used all along isn’t the same as how they’ve been thought of. In fact, how we now think of them doesn’t even go back as far as the multiple-use law of 1960. It didn’t really start until 1973 when West Virginia’s division of the Izaak Walton League (et al.) sued to make the U.S. Forest Service end clearcuttting on Monongahela National Forest – and won – and won again in 1975 at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Baltimore. From that Appeals Court decision, shockwaves went straight to Congress, which promptly voided the Organic Act of 1897 because it allowed only selective cutting on the national forests, and replaced it with a new National Forest Management Act that legalized clearcutting.

Despite Congress thereby legalizing clearcutting on national forests, fishing and hunting groups all over the U.S. took heart from the Monongahela court case victory — including fishing and hunting groups in western North Carolina. There, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and several huge national forests added up to millions of acres under public ownership.

By coincidence at that time, Congress had just passed the Eastern (a.k.a. Omnibus) Wilderness Areas Act, and the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society were campaigning for western North Carolina (and New Hampshire) to hold the first wilderness areas in the eastern U.S. – but they hit a buzzsaw. Clearcutting timber companies in North Carolina astutely used the “public comment” mandate of the new 1976 National Forest Management Act to enlist hunters and fishers, along with ginseng, galax, and firewood gatherers, and family “car campers” too, against any designation of wilderness areas whatsoever — and thus only a paltry 22,000 acres received wilderness designation in North Carolina (–until later).

Those combined forces of timber companies and other forest users chose the evening of a RARE II public hearing in July 1978 to orchestrate an abrasive heavy-equipment invasion of Franklin, North Carolina featuring slogans like “Stop the Sierra Club,” “We Can’t Make a Living by Hiking,” and “We Have Given All We Can to Parks.” Fortunately, however, that coalition’s arguments depended on the 1960 mandate that the Forest Service allow multiple use, and soon after its anti-wilderness victory of 1978, non-depleting forest users started turning against natural resource interests in western North Carolina — first against oil and gas companies and then against clearcutting timber companies.

The Middle East oil embargos of 1973 and 1979 had sent fossil fuel prices soaring, and the year 1980 brought a rash of oil and gas exploration to western North Carolina’s national forests in the vain hope of finding major oil and gas reserves in the soft sedimentary rock that lay below an “eastern overthrust” of 5,000 feet of harder rock. (Further north, the “eastern overthrust” was even thicker, and at one particular exploratory well in West Virginia, Exxon Petroleum and Consolidated Gas jointly invested $4 million to drill down 16,000 feet before they gave up.)

It turned out oil and gas drilling was anathema to the newly politicized hunters and fishers of western North Carolina because it meant road-building, heavy equipment, noise, spills, erosion, and silted streams. With the help of David Liden who had just coordinated the West Virginia part of the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force (financed by the Appalachian Regional Commission) and then had moved to western North Carolina, a new Western North Carolina Alliance suddenly came together that united environmentalists with hunters, fishers, and other forest users to help oust the oil and gas interests and then to take on the clearcutters. They won against oil and gas and then toward the end of the 1980s they organized an intense “Cut the Clearcutting” campaign that gathered over 20,000 petition signatures and brought over 200 demonstrators to Asheville to deliver them to the Forest Service as a single petition four blocks long. That campaign ended significant clearcutting in western North Carolina.

The second half of Kathryn Newfont’s Blue Ridge Commons features about a half dozen of the key activists in the Western North Carolina Alliance, including David Liden. She has tracked down and interviewed those activists – along with key U.S. Forest Service foresters and also many hunters, fishers, campers, and other national forest users. Newfont is meticulously careful to do justice to everyone’s personal viewpoint. But she also makes timely mention of outside factors that surely influenced people – such as Congress in 1976 passing the Payments in Lieu of Taxes Act. Until that law, county governments in the counties containing national forest land were partly financed by Forest Service timber sales. They got one-fourth of whatever the Forest Service got from timber sales in their county. As of 1972, prior to payments in lieu of taxes, the Forest Service was paying on average to the counties in Appalachia a paltry 13.5 cents a year per acre of their national forest land (– one reason why so many counties could barely keep their schools and other services going). When payments in lieu of taxes started, the yearly payment became a minimum of 75 cents per acre, and a lot of counties were paid more. Thereby, local support for timber cutting on national forests often grew weaker since some of the other sources of county revenue (such as land values and tourism) were being hurt by timbering.

The lessons of this book aren’t merely implicit or hidden away at the end. Kathryn Newfont and her family are forest users and she’s personally an adamant “commons environmentalist.” She asks that environmentalists take note of the specifics of how the Western North Carolina Alliance became such an effective vehicle for a broad spectrum of renewable public resource users. She particularly emphasizes the mobilization of timely in-put during the drafting stages of new management plans for national forest units. And she suggests that “commons environmentalists” become more self-consciously so, and more outspoken. As regards Highlands Conservancy members, I realize she’s “preaching to the choir,” but it’s nice to see it all so well-put.

Paul Salstrom is the author of Appalachia’s Path to Dependency, and recently co-edited Ferdinand Hayden: A Young Scientist in the Great West (2010).

Dear Fellow Appalachians:

Ten years ago, in 2002, we at Blair Mountain Press published Dr. Victor Depta’s Azrael on the Mountain, a book of poems protesting mountaintop removal coal mining.  That method of coal extraction continues to this day, regardless of what the American public knows about global warming and what Appalachians suffer as a consequence of that mining practice.

Azrael on the Mountain is the only Appalachian book in which every poem is a protest against Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. It has sold slowly but steadily in the past ten years, so much so that we have reprinted the book for the individual buyer and for the classroom.  If you don’t have a copy, and haven’t heard the voices from the coalfields of West Virginia and Kentucky, please consider purchasing the book now, either directly from Blair Mountain Press ($10.00) or from amazon.

Jesus hangs there on the crane, you understand.  His is a miner’s body.  Satan skinned him like a squirrel and hung him way up on the crane.

Sincerely,

Betty A. Huff
Managing Editor
Blair Mountain Press
114 E Campbell St
Frankfort, KY 40601
phone 502-330-3707
www.blairmtp.net

by Katie Fallon (Ruka Press, Washington, DC.)

Reviewed by Cindy Ellis

Daddy grew up on 100 acres adjoining what is now Kanawha State Forest. So that place is familiar and special to me. But this book review is not about threats to one forest. Not exactly.

Teaching was my job for 34 years. I know how it feels to enjoy a special rapport with many students and to have a heightened regard for their welfare. But this book review is not about teachers and students. Not exactly.

The study of wild birds has been a deep interest—okay, a passion—of mine since the early 1980′s. And, luckily for me, the years since then have included experiences with tiny birds called Cerulean Warblers. Mostly this book review is about those birds. Teachers, students, and Kanawha State Forest fit in too. So does mountaintop removal mining.

Katie Fallon with Cerulean Warbler

“Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird” by Katie Fallon tells of a young instructor’s research into the life and travels of a small blue bird. It also tells of the year in her life and of her travels and of her reactions to a deep tragedy in which some of her students died.

Fallon is an instructor at West Virginia University and is also the Education Director for the West Virginia Raptor Rehabilitation Center in Fairmont. She was sparked toward a special interest in Ceruleans by attending an Audubon presentation. Dr. Petra Wood explained the decline of these warblers and noted factors that are threats, including, but not singling out, mountaintop removal. In the introduction though, the author writes of the bird as “.a sentinel singing a warning…” Fallon was intrigued by Wood’s remarks and longed to find out more.

Anyone interested in birds and conservation will soon find that one-third of the breeding territory of Cerulean Warblers lies within the mountains of West Virginia. Photographs capture some of their stunning, “four-and-a-half inch, nine-gram” beauty.

Their importance is that they are within that whole array of forest creatures and plants for which the loss of any diminishes the whole; they are an indicator species. I thought I was original in naming the game, “Jenga” when describing dangers to biodiversity—how many wooden game tiles can be removed before the entire structure collapses?! But Fallon at one point uses that too, so there must be a group of people across a span of ages who remember that game and think of it when stressing how every piece fits in a healthy ecosystem.

While busy life carried her away from the notion of studying Cerulean Warblers, Fallon did not entirely forget. In the time after hearing Dr. Wood speak, Katie happened to be teaching at Virginia Tech at Blacksburg. She had decided to pursue her idea of finding out all she could about Ceruleans and had begun making travel and research plans. But April 17, 2007, found her scrunched down in her office, with her back to the wall, waiting for an all- clear signal. Students had been shot, some of whom she saw routinely in her classes.

Poignantly, school counselors gave advice that, in dealings with surviving students, instructors who had concerns about touching them could, “err on the side of the hug.” Katie Fallon used the poem “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry in her first class after the shooting. Her book is dedicated to one of her students.

Fallon struggled with summoning enthusiasm for research on a threatened bird species when recalling young human life ending too soon. But she began.

She interviewed Petra Wood, whose published work includes, “Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica cerulea) Microhabitat and Landscape-level Habitat Characteristics in Southern West Virginia in Relation to Mountaintop Mining/Valley Fills.” She became acquainted with Appalachian reforestation efforts and shares the skepticism of some West Virginia Highlands Conservancy board members on the ultimate efficacy of such work. She traveled to Cooper’s Rock State Forest, Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management Area, and Kanawha State Forest, flatly declaring, “West Virginia is hands down the most beautiful place on earth.”

It was in Kanawha State Forest that she sought and found the nest of her target bird. Along the way toward KSF, Fallon traveled in the state’s southern counties and visited an MTR site, something she had already seen by air. She also already knew something of mining’s legacy; she is the granddaughter of a child laborer—a “breaker”— a boy who toiled at sorting coal.

Then she turned to seeking birds, under armed guards, in Columbia, South America, where Ceruleans spend the winter. There she saw colorful parades with school children in bird costumes and she learned more about efforts to save bird habitat with “shade grown” coffee plantations. The production of coffee in full sun damages trees and land in South America. It is not an exaggeration to link the choice of drink to survival of birds in Appalachian forests.

Memories of her slain students often surfaced and affected her view of the trials of the birds too. One night, after a rain soaked trip, she wrote, “As I crawled into my warm bed and inhaled the familiar smell of my pillow, I wondered: could this—comfort, relief, exhaustion—be what Cerulean Warblers feel when they arrive back in Appalachia after months in the tropics? Or is the reverse true- –that the Andes feel more like home than the breeding grounds? Could it be both?”

Katie Fallon’s year of search, for birds and heart’s ease, ends. Her words make it easy to travel with her, through West Virginia, through the Andes, and through the year. She points us toward usefulness with a list of eight ways to help birds. You are probably already doing some of those things. West Virginia Highlands Conservancy itself was one of the signers of a petition to try to designate Cerulean Warblers as an endangered species. And our organization is listed as a resource under item #4, “Speak out.”

“Cerulean Blues” has a publication date of October 18, 2011; the publisher is Ruka Press, Washington, DC.

Finally, here is her benediction, to her diminutive subject: “May your trees be old, your mountains high, and your coffee plantations shaded.”

by Gwyneth Cravens.

Nuclear Energy, Another Look

Reviewed by Dave Fouts

As we contemplate an uncertain future due to climate change, it becomes critically important to minimize the human contribution to global warming. This requires us to consider all options in energy production. Although recent events in Japan remind us of the potential risks associated with nuclear power generation, the negative effect on human health and life since the beginning of the nuclear era (excluding nuclear weapons) has been minimal compared to the thousands of deaths annually from coal mining and burning.

Since nuclear power production does not pollute the atmosphere, perhaps it needs to play a larger role, at least for the near future, in meeting the increasing demand for electrical energy around the world.

In her book, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy, Gwyneth Cravens takes the reader on an odyssey involving several years with journeys to many locations around the country and abroad, as she visits key sites of uranium mining and production and its eventual use as fuel in the creation of nuclear power to generate electricity. She interviews dozens of experts in a wide range of fields, including physicists, research scientists, nuclear engineers, and plant operators, as well as public health, and counter- terrorism specialists.

Richard Anderson, a retired government scientist with a PhD in chemistry, who specialized in risk assessment of nuclear power and disposal of nuclear waste products, guides Cravens on her quest. In spite of a solid background of opposing nuclear power for many years, the author gradually comes to the conclusion that it is the best option for generating the increasing amount of electricity needed to meet the increasing worldwide demand with the least threat to the environment.

Most environmentalists, including myself, have consistently opposed nuclear energy as a source for electricity production for several important reasons. Nuclear power plants are said to be too expensive, that they are a serious risk to human health from uncontrolled radiation leaks, and are potentially vulnerable to terrorist’s attacks or devastating nuclear explosions. Uranium mining historically has caused serious health problems and safe disposal of nuclear wastes remains a major concern for much of the public. These of course, are all serious concerns.

Cravens thoroughly addresses each issue with solid scientific information and she does it in a delightfully readable fashion. Her broad background both as a novelist and a science writer, equip her well for this task.

For instance, when researching the issue of nuclear waste disposal she, after months of determined effort, manages to obtain permission to tour the government’s closely guarded storage facility at Yucca Mountain. She reviews the entire process of temporarily storing nuclear waste products at power plants and then transporting them to permanent disposal sites such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, currently the only place in the world where nuclear waste (in this case from weapons production) is permanently stored.

In a chapter on nuclear security, Cravens recounts visits to nuclear power plants and interviews with plant engineers, security and counterterrorism experts. She describes in detail the construction and safety features of nuclear power plants and notes the numerous safe guards that have been added over the years. She carefully evaluates the potential for accidental contamination of the environment and the risk for terrorist attacks, including a direct hit by a super-sized jet plane fully loaded with fuel. Also noted is the fact that when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, the nation’s worst natural disaster, petrochemical facilities and chemical plants were damaged, releasing toxic substances. However three nuclear power plants in Mississippi and Louisiana, one near New Orleans, were directly in the storm’s path but remained intact and undamaged.

These are just two examples of the Cravens logical and through analysis of the nuclear power industry from uranium mining to electricity production. In my opinion, her arguments are powerful and present a strong case for transitioning to nuclear energy as the primary method of generating electricity at least until something better comes along. Other options, including wind, solar and biofuels, as well as energy conservation are important, but incapable of providing the large quantities of electrical energy needed to meet the world’s increasing demand. With what is known about the destructive environmental effects of coal and probably nearly as much from gas as Marcellus wells come on line, it would be wise for each of us to remain objective and look closely at nuclear power. Reading this book is a good place to start.

“THE BIRDWATCHING ANSWER BOOK: Everything You Need to Know to Enjoy Birds in Your Backyard and Beyond” by Laura Erick­son, Storey Publishing, $14.95.

Reviewed by Cindy Ellis

“What mammal could truly be called ‘resplendent’ or ‘scintillant’ or be justifiably named for any of the gems common in hummingbird names—ruby, amethyst, topaz, emerald, sapphire, or garnet?

Small wonder our depictions of angels portray them bearing the wings of birds. And small wonder that when we see birds, our minds are filled with questions.”

The quote, from near the end of this book, demonstrates this author’s affection for, and knowledge of her subject. For more than 30 years Erickson, of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has written and spoken about birds. She must have heard the same questions hundreds of times. Questions such as, “Will feeding the birds make them dependent upon me?” “Why aren’t birds coming to my feeders?” “Will mother birds reject the young if humans handle them?”

One clue to the tone of Erickson’s answers could be in the mission statement of the publishing company. “The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.” This book does that. In three parts; “Bird Brains,” “For the Birds,” and “All About Birds, “and their 12 chapters [Canada Goose is found under “Outdoor Hazards!”], Erickson uses the question and answer format to shine light on anyone’s avian inquiries. It is rather like having a pleasant and experienced tutor, neither condescending nor pedantic, available on the bookshelf.

“Why don’t they organize field guides by color?” “What should I do if a bird crashes into my window?” “Do birds mate for life?” “Do birds play?” Sometimes the answers are simple and straightforward; sometimes the writer will provide all the known facts on a particular issue but freely admit that ornithologists do not yet completely understand every behavior or process. To help, she includes frequent sidebar selections on a wide variety of birdy things. Dipping into this book could make a reader feel like the Scarecrow in Oz when he got his diploma…suddenly one’s head is crammed with fascinating facts and figures clamoring to come out. Things like—Most wild birds never see their first year—Birds not only have much better visual acuity than we, but they can also see UV light— A Winter Wren sings an average of 36 notes per second!—Most older people cannot hear Cedar Waxwings.

The list of questions grows with ones such as, “Are balloon releases bad for birds?” “Do Vultures find dead animals by smell?” “Why am I seeing a Robin in Winter?” Meanwhile the sidebars let you know the details of a study on the memory skills of crows that used Dick Cheney masks and, also that, “During the breeding season, you might see three Mourning Doves flying in tight formation, one after another. This is a form of social display. Typically the bird in the lead is the male of a mated pair. The second bird is an unmated male chasing his rival from the area where he hopes to nest. The third is the female of the mated pair, which seems to go along for the ride.”

[At this point in writing the review, I stopped to stretch and stepped outdoors. Three Red-shouldered hawks, a species that have nested here for some time, were screaming in courtship displays! Really!]

So the review will wind down to allow the reviewer to tend to birds of “backyard and beyond.” This excellent resource book includes index, appendixes, and a modest, but serviceable resource section. It is small in size but jam-packed with helpful information and has pen or pencil drawings by Pedro Fernandes. His depiction of a Piping Plover chick is not cute enough, but the Whip-poor-will’s “whiskers” are just right!

The book was printed in China.

We Highlands Conservancy members, as readers of The Highlands Voice, are folks who enjoy the mountain habitat of birds and support protecting it and them. This book would fit nicely with wildlife field guides on our shelves or make a great gift. As Laura Erickson says, “As the world grows ever more computerized and mechanized, we grow hungrier to experience nature, and perhaps especially hungry to experience birdlife.” She would be glad to know we are part of a group trying to ensure that those experiences continue.

By Bob Baker

Pollyanna courtesy
to an Atomic Energy flack
really really hurts us. See.?
Better we direct some flak

than sugar coat that nuclear tail
of radioactive elements,
of accidents & disposal ailments,
miner’s lungs & extraction tales,
of openings for terror.
Take aim at the error.

Alas, Alack!
Just take a look.
Our aims forsook
in flogging his book.

Editor’s Note: This poem is in response to a positive review of a book generally favorable to nuclear energy. Mr. Baker assumes that, since the review was favorably inclined toward nuclear power and it appeared in The Highlands Voice, then it must be the policy of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy to promote nuclear power.

While many people make that assumption, that is not how The Highlands Voice works. While it is the official publication of The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, every story in The Voice does not represent an official position of the Conservancy. While all of our members share the general goal “to promote, encourage, and work for the conservation-including both preservation and wise use-and appreciation of the natural resources of West Virginia and the Nation” , our members often have differing views upon the best way to do that.

As a result, stories in The Voice often reflect different points of view. The Conservancy itself, however, only speaks through its Board. The only stories that reflect the official policies of the Conservancy are those reporting Board actions, including litigation positions we have taken, comments on proposed regulations, etc.

Book Review

Reviewed by Vincent A. Collins and Peter Shoenfeld

We believe this is one of the most important books written in the last year, and perhaps in many years. Why? Because nothing is more critical to our environment, economy and way of life than how we respond to the energy crisis and global warming. As the author makes clear, so far we are not off to a good start.

In this thoroughly researched and beautifully written book, Mr. Tucker first acknowledges that global warming is PROBABLY real and PROBABLY at least partly anthropogenic, even though such conclusions are not provable by ordinary scientific hypothesis testing. He then makes a convincing case that even if global warming is only very slightly caused by human activity, we cannot continue to pour billions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere without suffering consequences.

Mr. Tucker then proceeds to methodically and objectively examine every known source of electric power, with respect to the advantages and problems inherent to each. He then concludes that there is only one source that even comes close to satisfying the criteria of no greenhouse gas emissions, reasonable cost, and minimal environmental impact – nuclear energy.

We take issue with Mr. Tucker’s far too charitable treatment of wind energy. He does point out that because electricity produced by wind is intermittent and effectively can’t be stored, it cannot provide base load or peak load. He also mentions that modern grids must have reliable dispatch control over the amount of electricity going into the grid to balance load and avoid brownouts and blackouts, which wind can’t provide. However, he fails to mention the need for “backup” generation from conventional power plants to cover periods of low or no wind. He concludes unconvincingly, that wind can provide “spinning reserves” to cover grid demand fluctuations. He does not explain how an unpredictable, constantly fluctuating source can provide reserves which must be instantly available when needed. These criticisms are mere quibbles, however, as Mr. Tucker makes it abundantly clear that wind, solar and other renewables are simply not going to solve our energy problems.

Mr. Tucker then moves to his main point, that nuclear energy is the answer. He gives the history, starting with Einstein’s 1905 prediction of the equivalence of matter and energy, and continues through the World War II Manhattan Project and the detonation of the first atom bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico, in 1945. Postwar, Admiral Rickover adapted nuclear technology into an electric power source for submarines and other ships at sea-the Nuclear Navy. President Eisenhower ordered a nuclear submarine “beached” near Pittsburgh in 1955 and the civilian nuclear power industry was born.

Mr. Tucker goes on to convincingly deconstruct the popular arguments against nuclear energy, such as the terrorist problem, the nuclear accident problem and the waste disposal problem. He makes it clear that these problems are either non-existent urban myths or a consequence of bad political decisions made during the last thirty years that could be remedied, if we had the will to do so. He points out that, while the rest of the world is moving toward nuclear energy, the United States has all but abandoned it. We have completed no new nuke plants since the 1970′s, even though we currently generate 20% of our electrical output from nuclear reactors, most of which were built using 1960′s technology. He then proceeds to demonstrate what we should have done, by taking us on a tour of the French nuclear industry, which provides 80% of France’s electricity needs.

It is downright painful to listen to the comments of French industry officials as they describe how cheap, clean, reliable and safe their nuclear industry is, and how grateful they are to us for inventing the nuclear reactor, which they have used to great advantage. If only we had done what France did 30 years ago, we would not now be having an energy crisis and our greenhouse gas emissions would be a fraction of what they are.

This book should be required reading for every public official having anything to do with energy policy, from President Obama, to regulators, governors and local officials, many of whom are making uninformed, scientifically indefensible decisions whose effects will be felt for generations. The stakes here are huge. We are committing over a TRILLION dollars to “renewable” and “alternative” energy schemes that cannot contribute more than an insignificant amount to our requirements. In West Virginia, nuclear energy has been banned and we are rapidly destroying our formerly beautiful mountain ridges with wind turbines that can never replace coal, while simultaneously increasing coal-fired generating capacity. We are doing the opposite of what we should be doing, and will pay dearly for this fundamental policy mistake.

Mr. Tucker makes it clear that the task of replacing coal with nuclear energy can be accomplished, but is not going to happen unless the public and our policymakers become educated and the myths and misinformation fed to us during the last 30 years are refuted. This book is a great start. Everyone who cares about our mountains, our environment and our future should read this book.