Chaparral Wisdom
To celebrate the magic and beauty of Nature & the chaparral
Darwin, Mockingbirds, and Truth
Here’s to maintaining our curiosity of the natural world and the courage to question – a message offered by one of the four species of mockingbirds found on the Galapagos Islands. Not fully known, but it was the Galapagos mockingbirds that Darwin used to support his evolutionary theory, not the famous “Darwin” finches.
Darwin had seen the finches and had collected them, but had forgotten to identify which island from which they came. So they were useless in providing evolutionary evidence. But the mockingbirds did provide compelling evidence for speciation via isolation on different islands – a radical concept since the dominant paradigm was that species were “immutable” and had remained the same since the time of creation.
Why the mockingbird? Darwin recorded where each collected specimen was found. And each of the four were different enough to be separate species. The finch story was not fully understood until the 1970’s, although it’s the finches that are celebrated in nearly all the textbooks – another urban myth.
The take away message here is two fold. One, recording ALL the data is critical in any scientific endeavor. Two, dominant paradigms have a tendency to suppress truth.
It took Darwin decades to finally get to the point where he had the courage to challenge the dogma of divine creation. And only then when another scientist, Alfred Wallace, came up with the same idea and threatened to beat Darwin to the punch. When Darwin finally did publish his Origin book, he said he felt as if he had murdered someone.
Guilt, remorse, self-loathing, social isolation, and fear are some of the consequences of being different. It is ironic that we celebrate those in the past who have challenged orthodoxy to help make the world a better place. Yet, when we are in the midst of that change, those who challenge us are often rejected, or worse.
It’s no wonder change is so slow. However, it would never happen if it were not for those willing to risk it all to speak the truth.
Greedy trees are taking all our water?
In a recent NBC article, Trees vs. Humans: In California Drought Nature Gets to Water First, the anti-forest habitat crusade continues to promote more logging and support the impractical US Forest Service goal of attempting to create “drought and fire resistant” forests through “active” management. Joining the “over-clogged” forest hysteria, we now have the “greedy-trees-are-stealing-all-our-water” propaganda being led by UC engineering professor Roger Bales.
“It seems like a sin of nature that trees may be adding to the misery of California’s extreme drought.”
and… “More trees means more water stays in the forest.”
Is there an ecologist in the room?
What are trees thinking by taking our water before we have a chance to claim it as our own? This reminds us of settlers demonizing Indians for living off the land before “civilization” took it over and set things “right.”
What’s going on here? We have yet to determine where the funds are coming from to promote this vision, but the Association of California Water Agencies, a political advocacy group that promotes water projects, in involved.
Above Photo: Some of the greedy, over-grown trees some feel need to be removed to protect our water supply. Tahoe National Forest.
Wildfire Hyperbole: Falsely Blaming Past Fire Suppression
Whenever wildfire is discussed, you can almost guarantee that someone will say something like the following:
These unnaturally, hot mega-fires are the result of past fire suppression which has allowed an unnatural accumulation of vegetation. Forests are out of whack. And environmentalists have made it worse by their litigation, preventing needed clearing and destroying the timber industry.
How does one explain the million acre grass fire in Texas during March of 2006 that killed 12 people? Clearly it was not the result of over-grown grass thickets.
The 1889 Santiago Canyon Fire in southern California (more than 300,000 acres) that occurred prior to the era of fire suppression.
Map above showing the possible spread of the 1889 Santiago Canyon
Fire from Keeley and Zedler 2009.
The fire suppression story has been repeated so many times that it has taken on the power of myth. We are seeing this over the past week in newspaper stories about the fires burning throughout California.
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