Indian Vultures

I wrote soberly on the Indian Vulture crisis years ago in the Atlantic.

They continued to decline; nobody gives a damn about serious whiny articles.

Today, my friend Jemima "Mima" Parry Jones, daughter of the grand old falconer Philip Glasier, sent me this YouTube piece of pro- vulture propaganda, and I am envious- it will likely be a lot more effective.

Mima is unusual- I am reminded of the remark, which sounds like one of Osxar Wilde's epigrams, that in friendship , it is best to begin with a little aversion...

We were staying at Jonathan Kingdon's near Oxford when  he decided we MUST se Mima's original  Bird of Prey Center on the west coast of England (on a day trip- I will never get over the scale of England). I was a little dubious - I had heard she did not approve of some things I had written-- but the chance to see all those birds was irresistible.

We  had fun exploring the park- it is where  I first encountered the African Crowned eagle I mentioned below. We also played with an Andean Condor who seemed fascinated with Jonathan's car keys.

But finaly the time came to meet the proprietor. Jonathan ushered me into the office where she sat behind her desk and began "This is Stephen Bodio. He wrote.."

She interrupted him : I KNOW what he fucking wrote. He's the cunt who write 'The English have nothing to teach us but history!' "

She glared at me  for a moment longer, as though to be sure I had heard her properly; then stood to shake my hand with a  dazzling smile. "Glad to meet you! Let's go and see my birds."

I don't think she ever uttered a critical word in my direction again, but I am not sure Jonathan ever got over his shock..

 As for Mima, perhaps the last word should go to Merliner Emeritus, naturalist, poet, and former schoolmaster John Loft. In  his local pub, over good peaty Scotch whisky and steak and kidney pie, on a foggy unseasonably cold  May night, I told him this story. He shook his head and said: "Stephen, if you think SHE has a mouth that could take your hide off, you should have known her father."

Mima, the Duke, and her father many years ago

John Loftt with falcon topiary in his garden; hawking with Tim Galllagher.

New Dutch

Dutch Salmon has a new collection of outdoor tales: Country Sports II: More Rabid Pursuits of a Redneck Environmentalist.  (Available from High Lonesome Books, PO Box 878, Silver City NM 88062).  I think it is his best and most varied yet. I don't think I can "review" it any better than to use my introduction, which I volunteered- for free, for the record.

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It sounds funny to say so, because I’m sixty-five, but sometimes I think I’d like to be Dutch Salmon when I grow up. It is not so odd, really. M. H. Salmon is not only the model of the modern sporting writer, but I have been following his tracks for well  over thirty years now.

Dutch was born in the northeast, in the Hudson River valley of New York. He left there as a young adult, and went to southern Texas and northwestern Minnesota, and finally New Mexico, chasing jackrabbits and coyotes and dreams. I first encountered him around 1979 or 80 when I was an editor at Gray’s Sporting Journal, and a publisher came to me with a remarkable manuscript. Titled “Home With the Hounds” it was an account of hunting with coursing longdogs of various breeds. I was a falconer, and it seems to be that this was a kind of falconry on the ground.

Ed thought the material was a little too esoteric for Gray’s, but I became a correspondent with Dutch. Soon, I found myself in southwestern New Mexico, where he was a close neighbor, about a hundred miles away  (understanding  a new home where 100  miles could be "close",  with only one tiny town and two roads, one dirt,  between us was another thing he showed me). I soon acquired a couple of hounds from him, and longdog crosses and salukis became a permanent part of my life.

If longdogs and the State of New Mexico had been the only things that I had gotten from Dutch, I would be in his debt forever. But they weren’t. The unspoiled Gila Wilderness, chile as a natural part of one’s diet, Aldo Leopold’s legacy, and fishing for catfish are four rather random things that I took from our friendship, and there are doubtless a lot more ideas and attitudes I have picked up unconsciously.

Eventually, Dutch, frustrated with mainstream publishing, decided that if you can’t get them to publish your work, you might as well start your own press and book business. Since that day High Lonesome Books has become the premier house for Southwestern classics and environmentally conscious new books about hunting and fishing and the wilderness. He has published several stirring novels, including Home is the River, Signal to Depart, and Forty Freedoms; a couple of books on the Gila; the definitive American coursing dog manual, now in what I believe is its second iteration; and a literary book on catfish. The last made my eccentric list of 100 best sporting books in A Sportsman’s Library.

He has also written various magazine pieces on every aspect of fieldsport and conservation, of which this is the second collection. And I do mean various. The latest volume includes a portrait of mutual  friend, an Anglican priest who is a falconer, a tale of his son’s first big wilderness buck, an elegy for the old cockfighters, of New Mexico,  the tale  of  a favorite dog fathered by one of my Kazakh hounds,  and a nuanced appreciation of feral pigs.

Not content to defend wilderness, especially his beloved Gila, Dutch eventually made it to the New Mexico Game Commission, where he became one of its most outspoken, individual, non- partisan, and occasionally contrary voices. He had the respect of everyone I know, including some that disagreed with him on one matter or another. And I am among those who think that his utterly political firing was a disgrace. He never complained, but went back calmly to the field and his work of portraying it and defending it.

Lately, I have followed Dutch down some more difficult roads. Several years ago he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. One would not know it, considering that he never left the field behind. But one of the weirdest coincidences on earth I, another writer and longdogger born in the east, was diagnosed a year later. I have a pretty funny picture of us in a field of thirty-somethings, all holding a very various pack of sighthounds on leashes three years ago. On it is my note bragging that two sixty-somethings with Parkinson’s (and one woman of the same age, my wife Libby) elected to keep going, chasing the dogs, when the kids all called a halt for mid-day lunch break.

Parkinson’s won’t kill you,  say the humorous – it will only make you wish you were dead. There is even a godawful New-Agey whine: “ Parkinson’s isn’t a death sentence; it is a life sentence.” Gack! With time, unfortunately, it does get worse. But now there’s a promising alternative, a surgery called Deep Brain Stimulation. Once again Dutch became my mentor, going under the knife a year ago at UNM Hospital. His dramatic improvement convinced me to do it too. And I’m very glad I did.

Dutch would doubtless blush at this and change the subject to flyfishing, or the Desert Hare Classic, the annual gathering of the sighthound clans in southern New Mexico. He continues to hunt and fish and write, most recently this book you are holding in your hands. Finally, I salute him as not only a friend who has been a pioneer in so many of my own pursuits, but as a pioneer conservationist, and a  defender of all the Old Ways and things that we must hold on to, lest our civilization become too artificial to live. I’m going to toast him with the punchline of a shaggy dog story about drinking toasts on two sides of the Mexican border, which he told me when I first knew him and several time since. Dutch: “DOWN THE RATHOLE!” May you live to be 100!

The two of us and Libby among  the youngsters (photo by Dan Gauss);  two Western old- timers* who were  born in the East, in the Owl Bar.

*TomMcGuane in the story "Crow Fair ", from the  collection of the same name: "Lately
I've been riding a carriage in the annual Bucking Horse Sale, waving to everyone like an old-timer, which I guess is what I'm getting to be."

Public Lands- More Perspective on Don T

Ron Moody, a neighbor of Don's in Lewistown, has written on the subject of Public Lands and their loss before, notably in this article from  the Bull Moose Gazette he sent me last week:

"So is this dispute an isolated event? Or do other NGOs (non-government organizations) self-censor or suppress support for public access to obtain backing of wealthy donors who want more wildlife but also want exclusive private access to it?   My observation is that such suppression is widespread, even endemic, to the DU-type fundraising model employed by many habitat conservation groups.
 
"Thirteen years ago I wrote on this very subject in my old NIMROD'S TRACE column once published in the Montana Wildlife Newspaper of the Montana Wildlife Federation.  That column was about the challenges for hunters in the 21st Century as predictable at the end of the 20th Century.

"Judge for yourself whether the 20th Century has inflicted hard challenges on conservationists of the 21st Century."

RTWT!  As  Randy Newberg, interviewing Don on a Hunt Talk Radio podcast last week said, (Don agreed): both parties are out of touch with sportsmen, the majority of whom want to keep their guns AND their Public lands; only the very rich don't care. (HT Lucas  Machias for the podcast).

Undue Influence

E Donnall Thomas is an old friend who has written many good books, and had many adventures. In our neck of the woods he is best known as the guy who convinced David Quammen that at least some hunting of mountain lions was OK after David editorialized against the practice, by taking him out with his longbow (made by him) and his hound (trained by him), and later serving him stir fried lion with ginger and chile, cooked by him. David wrote his recantation as "Crossing Lines in Lion Country" in Outside, and later reprinted it as "Eat of This Flesh" in the collection Wild Thoughts from Wild Places.

Don is also a  MD and flies small planes, in fact was a flying doc in Alaska, so you may infer that he does not scare easily. (He also shoots bears with longbows). Which makes it all the dumber when a millionaire who was illegally trying to block public access on Montana streams, used his clout to get Don kicked off a twenty- year gig writing for Ducks Unlimited, because Don wrote a piece in a Bozeman publication decrying his efforts.

There is a lot of hypocritical crap going around, some of which I have seen. Some DU officials say he wasn't fired because he never "worked" for DU. Right-- as Tom McIntyre said, quoting Dorothy Parker, "... and I am Marie of Roumania." Others claim no company would ever keep on someone who "insulted" an advertiser. I cry bullshit on that; first, he "insulted" no one, only told the truth in an unrelated publication. But B (a BIG "B") I know for a fact that when once I  drew the ire of a large advertiser at Gray's Sporting Journal, many long years ago, Ed stood with me, and lost a not inconsiderable sum of money. Not all editors are craven.

Here is Don in his own words, cut slightly for space:

"In October, 2015 I wrote a piece for Outside Bozeman magazine, "A Rift Runs Through It", about the long Montana legal battle to secure and maintain public access to the Ruby River in accordance with the state’s stream access law. (I will make a copy of that text available to anyone on request.) To summarize a complex issue for those unfamiliar with the case, wealthy Atlanta businessman James Cox Kennedy engaged in extensive litigation to prevent such access, only to be denied repeatedly in court due to the efforts of the Montana Public Land and Water Access Association. While the article was not complimentary to Kennedy, no one has challenged the accuracy of the reporting.

"James Cox Kennedy is a major financial contributor to Ducks Unlimited. On November 10, a Ducks Unlimited functionary informed me that my position with the magazine was terminated because of Cox’s displeasure with the article.

"... The Ruby River article had nothing whatsoever to do with ducks or Ducks Unlimited (DU hereafter). The article did strongly support the rights of hunters and other outdoor recreationists to enjoy land and water to which they are entitled to access, and DU is a hunters’ organization... DU has essentially taken the position that wealthy donors matter more than the outdoor recreationists they purport to represent.

"... If every journalist reporting on these issues faces this kind of vindictive retribution, the future of wildlife and wildlife habitat-not to mention the hunters and anglers of ordinary means who form the backbone of groups like DU-is bleak indeed.

"... If you share my concerns-especially if you are a DU member-I encourage you to contact the organization, express your opinion, and take whatever further action you might consider appropriate."

DU has not only "fired" Don-- they have done a Soviet- esque rewriting of history, eliminating every reference and piece of writing that he ever did, and his name, from their website. They are risking making themselves appear not only spineless, but pretty close to a laughing stock, a shame for an organization that has done far more good than harm in the past. Ding Darling must be spinning in his grave. It brings to mind old Montana curmudgeon Peter Bowen's too- true and much- quoted apercu: "Poor folks act like folks; rich folks act like govermint..."

I am betting Don comes out of this looking a lot better than DU, never mind Mr Kennedy...

A contrarian view on eagle conservation

I had published this on Jameson Parker's blog in response to a question and it occurred that it would make an interesting little essay. But some have misunderstood it, so let me give you my conclusions before my reasoning:

I don't think (Golden) eagles are in any way endangered, but I support protection for them.

I don't think wind power companies and other utilities should get an automatic free pass  on killing eagles.

I don't think any Indian tribes without a strong religious reason for taking eagles should be allowed to do so (I am encouraged that at least one pueblo now keeps live eagles, and attempts to breed them). I think that commercial exploitation of eagles and other birds of prey for their feathers by anyone is deplorable, and ideally should be ended. In today's world, I doubt that it will.

The legal take of no more than six eagles for falconry was something that put less pressure on the population than any other conceivable use, and even added to the Indians and wind farms, would have a negligible effect. In all likelihood allowing ANY falconer who qualified to take an eagle would not make any difference. If officials were really worried about this, they could mandate that trained eagles be released into the wild after ten years as the Kazakhs do.

In the ideal world, conservation decisions should be based on biology. In our real world, they can't be, not entirely anyway. Still, using a little information and pretending to a bit less hypocrisy would be welcome. And another thought: the educational value of trained eagles is not to be dismissed.

So, here it is:

I have a bit of a heretical stance about Golden eagles re wind farms. I dislike the amount of kills allowed for wind farms. But whether or not the population is harmed needs at least two questions answered. One is how many (Golden) eagles there are; the other is what else takes them out of (breeding) circulation.

The first is never discussed except among biologists– it is as though certain enviros do not want to ever say anything optimistic. The number of Bald eagles got brought low, partly by persistent pesticides, and now increases as it becomes ever more tolerant of human society. But the number of known Golden nests (or rather the reasonably accepted extrapolated number ) is AND MAY ALWAYS HAVE BEEN almost inconceivably high, so high I am not inclined to quote it without access to the actual data, except five figures of pairs in North America. (There are two nesting pairs I know of within ten miles of where I write these notes). This is never publicized, but you can track it down. The data is not from livestock or energy apologists, either. Remember, there is an untouched Arctic population, and ones in Labrador that seem to eat herons in breeding season. The golden is so adaptable that there is a Greek population that eats mostly tortoises. I doubt wind turbines will dent those numbers or scare them away.

The Texans used to shoot hundreds every year and it seems to have done little biological harm. Now wind farms are allowed to kill several hundred a year, and Navajos and other Native peoples are allowed not only unlimited hunting but utterly unlimited access to such species as Red- tailed hawks, not to train but to sell feathers. Which works out in practice that every delinquent kid on a troubled reservation sees a hawk on a pole and shoots it. Then probably sells it. While there are serious religious uses of eagles by the Pueblos, there is also an internal market, really illicit, in feathers for tribal dance outfits, competitive and lucrative- and some sympathetic judges have decided these commercial competitions are protected too. (Meanwhile one pueblo has modified its ceremonies to no longer kill eagles, and has hired a biologist to teach them how to keep them in a healthy way!)

Many activist types hate falconry as intolerable meddling with romantic symbols, but a falconer’s eagle is not even lost from the population– only “on loan” so to speak. The Kazakhs I rode with in Asia let them go to breed after ten years, and eagles commonly live to over 30. Until now falconers were a allowed a take of  6 wild-caught Golden eagles a year, only from areas in Wyoming and the Dakotas with proven sheep predation problems. Right now the government is inclined to end this benign “use”. I wish that moralists and humane activists would not go after the tiny portion of eagles allowed to falconers! If we allow a small kill harvest from the tribes, an unknown yet amount for wind farms, oil wells, roads and such, and want a healthy population… we HAVE to set fairly rigid quotas to be safe. But known numbers could easily allow a live take of up to six (or ten or whatever– except I don’t think that there will ever be that many eaglers), some of which would eventually even breed.

Meanwhile, in the warden- free lands of most reservations eagles still exist only because of apathy– there is no protection. Ranchers under 60 are more or less benign, and don’t shoot them (wolves are far more threatening in both reality and reputation), but some angry young rez kids kill every sitting bird they see, and sell the feathers no matter what, as a demonstration that they “own” them Some tribes have made clear falconers shouldn’t get any quota, because they are religious symbols! A bit of Googling would show us the old regs, under which we existed and complained for decades, while Texans shot hundreds or maybe even thousands (see Don Scheuler’s Incident at Eagle Ranch), were uninformed– they now seem almost as unimaginable as photos of the aerial dogfights with eagles when they were hunted from planes. But, counterintuitively, they were probably biologically harmless in that they didn’t– because they couldn’t– wipe out eagles. Morally though, making dead eagles a commodity for anyone looks worse to me than wind farms; commerce can drive extinction like stoking a fire.

        (Photo above from Life Magazine in 1953, from an eagle shooter's view in Texas)

Why not reasonable quotas for falconers’ birds? Fewer privileges for Indians, at least ones with no religious stake, as those don’t have the built- in cultural reverence? And less posturing from anti- wind people at least about eagles aka Charismatic Megafauna (the turbines may actually be worse for bats, a group far more threatened than the Golden eagle!)

White Man in Africa, 1997

Dug this up when Annie D showed me a YouTube of a baby rhino-- white? -- in S Africa, in a similar predicament. Back in '97, when it was permissible if naive to think Mugabe was not a monster (such writers as Peter Godwin had already laid out the truth), when Zimbabwe had one of the most enlightened conservation programs in Africa, more innovative than ours...

Karl Hess Jr. sent us-- me and a couple of other journalists; Tom Wolf, Wendy Marston, Rich Miniter-- there at the request of the government, to report on their success, especially with elephants.

Someday maybe-- too much heartbreak soon followed. This photo taken near Kariba, where I caught the falciparum Malaria that almost killed me, and I suspect might have been the trigger that made such things as PD and RA, which I have genes for, express themselves. Certainly I never looked quite that robust again-- I look like Redmond O'Hanlon! White man in the tropics drinking gin...

The rhino's mother had been killed by poachers. The poachers had been killed by the tall, shaven- headed head ranger who, he gleefully told me, was the best ranger in Zimbabwe because "I kill more poachers!"

RIP: Frank Bond, 1943- 2013

Frank Bond, of Santa Fe New Mexico, one of the four founders of the Peregrine Fund; lawyer, rancher, principled politician, father, old- fashioned but innovative conservationist; old friend; perhaps first, in his own mind,  falconer, died of a swift- moving cancer last week.

The scion of a wealthy sheep -ranching family in northern New Mexico, one that once held the grazing leases in Valles Caldera, he grew up in Espanola, and spoke Spanish as well as he spoke English. He attended school at Governor Dummer Academy in Massachusetts and Colorado College before getting a Master's in Spanish at the University of Arizona and a law degree at UNM. With Jim Weaver, who later came to live, ranch,  and fly falcons in eastern New Mexico, Dr Tom Cade of Cornell, who was born here down near the Bootheel, and Bob Berry, then of Philadelphia but now in Wyoming, he founded the Peregrine Fund, which then built the breeding barns at Cornell. Those became the first mass breeding facilities in the world, run by Jim. The Cornell quonset huts were the "factory" that fueled the restoration of the species in the lower 48, an effort manned for years entirely by falconers, who gave up their summer time and amenities to babysit birds in places ranging from urban to remote. (They did not "bring it back from extinction", as the ignorant often say, though they did just that with the Mauritius kestrel). Those that scorn the Fund's deliberately mixed- gene hack birds as Cornell chickens are probably jaded by seeing the now- common birds in eastern cities; without Cornell and the P- Fund  barns we might still have only the Colorado plateau birds and a few southern "Peale's" birds on the coast of Washington breeding in our entire country south of Alaska.

I honestly thought Frank might be the one to provide the bridge between nuevo "Green" enviros and old school ranchers, hunters, and game biologist types, and when he ran for governor on the Republican ticket in 1990, I not only supported him but worked for and with him in Socorro and Catron counties (later I will post about one hilarious incident on the campaign trail). He was a rancher, a founder of the P- Fund, and a long- time trustee of Alan Savory's Holistic Range Management group, whose intense short- term grazing and constant movement can revive desperately overgrazed, "ruined" land. He was both an early supporter of project Lighthawk and a connoisseur of fine guns who hunted big game in Africa. He loved his Gyrfalcons more than any other birds, but was also a serious pigeon racer; his loft was designed by an architect after some adobe structures he had seen in Spain. He offered me the plans once, but I had a feeling they would cost me as much as my (granted tiny, 4 room), house to build, so I thanked him and regretfully declined. He attended race meetings  where there were few Anglos and probably no other rich men.

When he lost by not too much to his friend (and ranch lessee!) Bruce King, a genial old - fashioned hand- shaking pol who never forgot a face but was alleged to have referred to a roadrunner on his desk as "that ol woodpecker",  I realized that today's divisions had begun. When the Sierra Club deserted an eminent conservationist for a Democrat who never saw a cow he didn't like or a bird he could identify, my in- laws quit an organization they had belonged to for over fifty years. Frank devoted the rest of his life to law and conservation, especially to international bird of prey issues. He himself never paid undue attention to partisanship; my lawyer friend Jessica Abberly, a lifelong Democrat, emailed me that he was "...one of the last true gentleman attorneys out there, by the way."

I used to spend a lot of time with him and his then wife in Santa Fe, a time that included my early days with Libby, but time and space and the human realities of loss, breakup, rearing kids, kids leaving, travel and distance all contributed to our not having spent much time together in the last few years, and I realized when I heard that he was ill that I had not seen him but once in the last two years, and that for only a hurried handshake . I wrote to him of the campaign incident, hoping to raise a smile, and then he was gone.

He will be missed. The Peregrine Fund  continues to work with rare species like the Phillipine eagle and the orange- breasted falcon, and is playing a big part in trying to reverse the dire population crashes of Old World vultures, first in India and coming in Africa. Frank himself had moved on to working for the International Association for Falconry and Birds of Prey, where he served as president; when you see films of their meetings in the Czech Republic or the Emirates, you often see his silver belly Stetson hat, the only one present. His importance as a conservationist and a diplomat serving both nature and our sport can hardly be exaggerated.

But he was a private man for all that, and my best memories of him are of sitting around a large living room with the Havell Audubon print of life- sized black Gyrs and the original Reid- Henry painting of white Gyr head studies, telling stories. Some of us will always miss that unassuming, hospitable, soft- spoken friend, a fortunate  man who always gave more than he got,  and one who spoke as easily and with as much interest to his homeboys in Espanola as he did to international figures.

Free Association

I have been kicking a few unrelated (?) things around, having plenty of material but not feeling, with our tough environmental conditions (no water, heat, impending possible rain making it an uncomfortable mix of steamy and dusty) much like writing a long essay. I was rambling freely through these things to L. and suddenly thought: I'll just post this, the stroll through. So:

Tim Gallagher's books have all been interesting, but I have thought even in its first stages; no, since reading his first slightly shaky email  from Mexico when he had emerged from the Sierra in a last nightmarish drive at 5 miles per hour past buildings that had been set afire since he had last passed them--  that Imperial Dreams  may be his best. It is certainly his most thrilling: his account of trying to find a remnant of the biggest and most spectacular woodpecker that ever lived in a beautiful but damaged land now controlled by narcotraficantes.

From my "official" review, not yet out: "Imperial Dreams  is a natural history of the world’s most spectacular woodpecker and a mystery: a forensic inquiry into what, despite the narrator’s hopes, looks like the death of a species. It starts as light-hearted adventure ...  becomes a tragedy and a tale of terror. It may be Gallagher’s best book yet, one to excite adventure travelers who might never pick up a “bird book,” while telling an unforgettable tale of loss...

"The Imperial Woodpecker’s fate might seem even grimmer than the Ivory-bill’s; the researchers find evidence that loggers repeatedly encouraged shooting and poisoning the bird to ensure its demise. If true, it represents a case of successful, conscious biocide; worse, one done for imaginary reasons—the destruction of trees that were already infested with beetle grubs. "


Strong stuff, and all too relevant. But I also saw something funny. For various reasons, uber- guitarist Jimmy Page and his various bands have been crossing the screen lately, and I realized that Jim and Tim look like the old Spy Magazine "Separated at birth'" thing. Tim lives in upstate New York and grew up in southern Cal when there was still nature there, but like Page he was born in England. This is a very gringo face for someone who, with little Spanish, is walking around the Sierra Madre with a bird book, saying "Senor, have you seen this bird?" Tim, Jimmy:

They both looked different back in the late Sixties. I will find a pic of Tim, who had long hair and a beard, but here is Jimmy Page with the great Yardbirds in '68, on French TV:

Great? At one time they featured Jeff Beck, Page, and Clapton (some time will find photos of some of Clapton's London Bests).

Led Zeppelin were recently honored in Washington-- never thought I would see Page, Robert Plante, and John Paul Jones in tuxes, being praised by the president and serenaded by Heart... (Annie Davidson sent this one...)

I was conferring with my little sport- science lit and guns group-- five guys from 40- 70 who are variously, singly and multiply profs, biologists, bloggers, a novelist, a carpenter, a falconer, a former contributor to English Literary Renaissance, and a lawyer, stretched out over the nation from Marin County to Ithaca, about all these various important phenomena. A member who is several of the above,  Carlos Martinez del Rio, reminded me of another band, more local in impact but as memorable in performance: Boston's Mission of Burma, who played the "Cellars by Starlight" (Jimmy Isaac's Phoenix column and collective term for the Boston area clubs) when I worked at Inn Square in the seventies, and in the eighties when he got his nose broken at a memorable concert. Gerry, this is what they sound like-- not Winterreise, though I like Fischer Diskau too.

Finally, Magdalenian Joel Becktell, last seen on the blog busting clays at Piet's last Thanksgiving, cellist and peer of Yo Yo Ma, doing just that, and then playing selections with his crossover classical group Revel-- including, of course,  "Stairway to Heaven."

Water-- nada...

Krazy Kats continued

(I just could't continue with the K's)...
 
David Petersen is a bowhunter and a good writer; I think of him as an old shaman of the antler totem, and he has just received an award from the Back Country Hunters and Anglers. Here he is with a fine bull elk.

But he is not looking for praise; he is spearheading the effort to make Audubon Magazine  live up to its historic principles of bird conservation, and reinstate conservation writer Ted Williams,  fired for arguing for the euthanasia of feral cats, considered a major factor in the loss of breeding songbirds. My take is further down on the page, and I agree 100%. Dave?

"At the suggestion of Audubon, Mr. Williams, quite recently, wrote a short piece for the Orlando Sentinel detailing the horrific annual slaughter of songbirds in North America by cats, both well-fed and alley variety. A focus of Ted's article was on the inhumanity and ineffectiveness of the currently dominant method of public feral cat control, which involves trapping, neutering, and release back onto the streets to continue killing birds and other wildlife. Rather than this failed and inhumane program, Ted pointed out, it would be both more effective and more merciful to these millions of starving homeless cats, to trap and euthanize them. Ted went on to point out the ready availability of an inexpensive, effective and human cat-specific drug that authorities could be using for cat euthanasia, rather than a less effective concoction used in the past. From that, the Kat Krazies eagerly and viciously misinterpreted that Williams' was advocating that you and I should go out and start poisoning kitties in the park, which he had not said at all..."

Read the rest here, and join Dave's campaign to rehire a quality journalist who brought a real problem into focus.

Two more points: cat haters may for all I know be present in this campaign "against" cats, but its impetus was from a group of scientists involved in bird conservation. I have owned nearer ten than five cats, and my not having any is more a function of living in a four room house with five dogs and a hawk, and priorities.

Second, while a cat lovers group has objected to the methods of the study that implicated cats as significant songbird predators, studies in Australia and England came to the same conclusion. Especially if you live in an area of ground nesting birds,  at least til we know better, keep those kitties in!

UPDATE  26 March: Matt Miller says Ted has been rehired. No oficial word but Matt has good connections and I asssume he is right!

The Crazy Cat Lobby

I have known environmental gadfly Ted Williams for well over 30 years, since  Gray's Sporting Journal was based in Brookline Mass. Ted was and is tough, sardonic, and not one to mince words-- he was has never been inclined to cut anybody any slack, even friends. I am by no means in agreement with him on every issue; for instance, like most eastern journalists  he has never quite comprehended the virtues  of public land ranching, only the vices. But so what? Not only is he quite capable of reducing friends as well as  enemies to sputtering incoherence; I think he enjoys it, and I suspect arguing with him will either hone or demolish your own arguments.  Some have called this lifelong hunter of woodcock and ducks (and, last we talked about such things, New England Republican) an anti- hunter because he follows no party line; one friend refers to him as a Bolshevik. By party line standards I am just as bad, albeit on different issues. If you feel he is wrong, you damn well better have your facts researched; Ted was and is fearless, well- researched, blunt, funny, and honest. He is staunchly "green" but never politically correct.

More than ten years ago, Audubon magazine fired the man who may have been the best nature editor of our generation, the audacious and utterly unconventional Les Line (I have blogged on him-- hit archives & search) . They wanted trendy urban stories, not nature writing. At the time I said there was no longer any reason to read the magazine. But I was wrong; Ted still wrote for them, and though I never re- subscribed, I often bought the magazine on the stands and read his column. Even when he was irritating, I knew I could trust him.

Recently,  he wrote a piece for a Florida newspaper advocating culling the immensely destructive feral cat population to preserve songbirds (the numbers of lost birds every year suggested by more than one study runs into the billions, and can be found on Google). A couple of cyber groups immediately put up Internet petitions to have the monster fired .

At which point Audubon, unbelievably, caved in to the Internet flash mob of ecological illiterates (including a mob of sentimental cat loonies who call themselves Alley Cat Allies-- I will NOT link), and fired him, cravenly reducing his 33 years of writing  for them, mostly on the masthead, to "freelance writer and occasional contributor", and ignoring every conservation study in the past decade.

 Audubon- the- mag has now achieved the remarkable feat of firing both the best nature editor of our time and our most independent conservation columnist. If you are so inclined, go to their website and tell them just how inconsequential and worthless they have become.

Update: some hard numbers from Patrick Burns, sent to Audubon:

"Please count me as one of those extremely disappointed in the National Audubon Society’s treatment of Ted Williams in response to a bunch of squalling feral cat advocates who have positively declared war on America’s birds.

Here are the facts when it comes to feral cats:

·         Feral cats kill over 2,500 birds a MINUTE in the U.S. -- over 1.5 billion a year.

·         Feral cats are not pets. They cannot be rehomed.

·         Feral cat colonies are not "No Kill" -- they are the planned, subsidized, and systematic mass killing of native wildlife.

Let's change this losing game. It's time to trap and euthanize... and Audubon should stand behind it.

The only reason to read Audubon magazine is Ted William’s column..."

Update 2:
David Petersen writes:
 " As I read the piece, he was calling for mercy to the murderous hordes of cat-killing feral cats by replacing the dominant neutering program with a far more humane  euthanasia program. While Mr. Williams clearly did not overtly suggest that you and I start poisoning cats, as the cat crazies claim, he has nonetheless subsequently apologized for any lack of clarity in what he did say, as you can see for yourself via
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-03-14/news/os-ed-feral-cats-031413-20130313_1_feral-cats-feral-cat-problem-alley-cat-allies

"Audubon is North America’s leading voice on behalf of birds. Cats, feral and otherwise, are a, or the, leading cause of the shameless mass slaughter of birds. How many feral cat crazies are Audubon supporters?"

(And, like me-- and how many others?-- he remembers Les Line; he " ...was never able to find it in myself to forgive Audubon for dumping Les Line, who, in many readers’ minds, was Audubon Magazine.")

Water Grab on the Plain

Yesterday, local filmmaker Matt Middleton answered my last post with a link to his site against the amazing and as yet little publicized proposed rape of our watershed by a mysterious Italian billionaire who wants us to believe he is benevolent. This is hard to believe, as he wants to take all the water from the Plain of San Augustin, an area larger than Rhode Island and mostly known outside of our area for being the background for Jody Foster's Contact, which now supports ranching and wildlife, and pump it to commercial entities hundreds of miles away for purposes he prefers not to mention. (He talks of the "benefits" of putting surface water back in the ground-- what does he think wildlife and cattle drink?) At various meetings, his spin doctors have managed to give no answers, even to skilled questioners, environmentalists, lawyers, ranchers, and Libby; he is unintentionally building some unlikely coalitions. So far their slipperiness has not won them their permits, but they intend to come back. And make no mistake, they want ALL our water.

Up front: I agree completely with Matt's concern and passion, but severely doubt his Mafia theory, for many reasons. Any millionaire from Milan probably has more money in his coffers than all of Italy south of Rome, and either has no need of the Mafia or employs them when necessary. His is the kind of money that drives the pipeline from Canada to Chinese consumer ships in the Caribbean across the Oglalla aquifer with no regard to local ranchers or farmers. Besides, for historical reasons, (we) snooty northerners often tend to scorn the southern peasants and their "protective societies"; my father's people used to say that Africa-- meaning the corrupt Levant and the Moors, not black Africa -- begins at Rome.

Whether he is right or I am about the Mafia is immaterial. The control of water by either local communities or distant metropolises is the big issue to come in the arid west, a civilization made effectively of city states and their watersheds, just like the ancient Middle East and Central Asia. Matt is on the side of the angels, and I hope he makes a film about the whole deal, preferably without insulting half of my ancestry (that's a joke). Whether the controlling authority is the Mafia or the Chinese People's Liberation Army or Arab oil companies or Ted Turner or Texans, the west is getting tired of being a colony. Read his link to the San Augustin Water Coalition and keep checking it out. I will doubtless have more to say here and more length. Meanwhile, go to his site and see the pieces of his historical documentary Way Out There for a glimpse of the town and country we both love, now under threat from a power so remote that as far as I can tell its proprietor never intends to visit the land he intends to destroy.

Afterthought: I am sure Federico will think I am an alarmist, and have some pungent and true and uncomfortable, even necessary additions. But I am a scientist by training too, and when people will NOT answer questions except with "trust us"- I WON'T.

Attitudes to Predators

I just got an email from Al Cambronne, who has a new blog Deerland here, and book coming out at Lyons by the same name. He wrote an interesting post on how public attitudes toward three predators-- muskies, wolves, and (Bald) eagles differ as exemplified in his home state of Wisconsin.

I found the discussion stimulating enough that I replied at blog length (edited after more reflection):

Analogies between muskies, wolves, and eagles are... BIOLOGICALLY difficult, because as you surmise culturally different. Muskies have always been prizes, but pike which are similar in every way not always so-- persecuted in European trout and salmon water for one example.

I would say that both wolf and eagle are romanticized and revered by the same element of urban society. Some tribes do hold them sacred, which doesn't mean they don't kill them, sometimes cruelly. Wolves are serious stock predators, which doesn't mean we shouldn't let or encourage their return, but not by doing so on the backs and economy of rural residents. So-called reparations for lost stock, at least in NM, are held to such an absolute standard of proof as to be absurd-- evidence of wolf tracks and eaten carcasses is NOT enough even if wolves were seen chasing stock.

I think the urbanites who so want them might find a way to help pay, perhaps as subsidies to predator- harassed ranchers who must share their land. (That they might then demand a say in ranching practices might open up a bigger can of worms-- they know nothing whatsoever about pastoral life, and some ranchers know only a little more about wildlife, but some places both sides are polarized past compromise-- government's fault, another issue).I think confirmed stock killers should be removed, permanently-- good evolutionary biology too. The surprisingly widespread wolves of Europe rarely bother humans. Ranchers should learn the use of stock protection dogs like my Wyoming friends the Urbigkits. Urbanites should not romanticize individual wolves at the cost of harming humans who must live with them, but take it as a necessary compromise-- you get to hear wolves, problem wolves die, and the rancher is not driven off his land.

I think we should learn to live with a good amount of wolf- game predation-- another divisive issue, but the wild is the wild, and co-evolved species must find their way. Prey populations seem to be wobbling into an interesting balance in big wild areas like Yellowstone. We have a hard time seeing that wild populations are often not stable, but run to boom and bust, and that this is natural. Read Where the Wild Things Were. We have little concept of how important apex predators are-- which does not mean we cannot kill a few!

Eagles? Very controversial and even more complicated, but important to only a few. Legally both wind power companies and Indians can kill eagles, practically speaking almost at will. The first do it as a side effect but kill a lot. Some of the second do it even more crassly for money than the wind blades do, for powwow costumes which are no more religious than a prom dress, though their slaughter is defended by the likes of Leslie Silko as religious last I heard.

Complication number one: there are a LOT of Golden eagles-- five figures worth in the continental US. NOT analogous to wolves! Number two: eagles are still sometimes a significant livestock predator. I know of no recent persecution, but until last year (?-- not sure of the most recent decision), problem eagles were legally trapped and removed. Falconers used this population; in fact, trapped legally. Their take was reduced to SIX a year-- remember, recent studies indicate this is a common bird with thousands of breeding pairs!-- and may be ended for good. This does not sit well with eaglers, dedicated and fanatical even among falconers, who may bond with a bird for decades, while wind blades harvest ten and twenty times the annual number allowed to them, and natives-- I am emphatically NOT talking about the reverent Pueblos, who have a real attitude of respect-- shoot eagles for profit, brag about it, and are released by white judges.

I am, as a once- zoologist, inclined to manage populations biologically. If a harvest of sorts is the price to pay for having wolves back, fine with me. I would crack down on consumptive use of eagles by Indians, as opposed to sacrificial, and FIGHT for it-- no other religion is allowed to decimate a species. And I would allow the same biologically reasonable take on Goldens as applies to any other master falconer's raptor. (Balds are a less active predator, not as good for falconry, and protected for better or worse by the US civil "religion", though I know a guy in Canada who flew a male on whitetail jacks).

I have no trouble with the idea of shooting a wolf-- well, not a huge interest, but I have killed coyotes: Betsy Huntington is buried with the pelt of one. Hunted predators bother us less. Suburban coyotes are behaving in a scary manner in southern California and even Albuquerque, and "lions" can become even scarier when surrounded by gentle vegans (read the cougar book The Beast in the Garden) Specific population numbers are rather irrelevant, and stable is a different number for each species and region; there are always going to be low numbers of apex predators, and there soon could be a decent number of wolves; micromanaging by moving them in and out may actually be hindering them. Shooting persistent outlaws will like it or not "teach them manners"-- they are intelligent-- and keep them from eating our dogs & eventually our kids. And please spare me ideas of their harmlessness; the benign wolf of North America is a historical example of what scientists would call an "artifact", based on rapid settlement and and a historically unusual plethora of guns. Run the figures for Siberia or India-- or go to Native accounts, or Medieval ones (Lane?)...

Can't neglect fish: big muskies (also pike; the large predatory catfish like blue and flathead; alligator gar; even carp in non- wilderness waters). The huge ones are old breeders-- catch, photo & release! It is fine, contra "Throw Back the Little Ones*", to keep small fish & eat them...

*Donald Fagen has a new album out!

Links: Good and Bad News for Falcons

The tundra subspecies and other high- latitude migrating Peregrines are in very good shape.

Peregrines are one of those capital- C "Charismatic" species who always get press (whether the label "endangered", once attached in the popular collective mind, will ever be removed is matter for a long essay). Meanwhile, the obscure and beautiful little Amur falcon, like its sister species the Sooty, may be genuinely endangered because (A) it has a very long strange migration route, and B) therefore, one of the migration's concentration points supports an unsustainable and grotesque slaughter for no real reason at all (I am a supporter of sustainable traditional use, but this massacre sounds more like the unconscionable "tradition" of shooting everything that moves in Malta than any kind of aboriginal custom). The video is not for the faint of heart...

Self Explanatory

"Rigby .275", Jonathan Hanson of Constant Apprentice , with a message.

Invincible Ignorance?

I hate to rant but (I can see everybody believes THAT)...

Well, first Reid provoked me with this, knowing that it was like poking a stick at a hot rattlesnake.

At first I just sputtered. "I can't even debunk this-- it is like Mary McCarthy's famous remark on Lilian Hellman: "Every word she says is a lie including AND and THE."

Except of course it is not a "lie"-- it is merely smug, invincible ignorance, with libel of all hunters or even non New- Yorkers thrown in for snark. Would the "Paper of Record" accept an op- ed on any other subject featuring as basic an example of incorrect terminology as using "bullet" for"shotgun cartridge"? That indulged in such basic illogic as comparing putting voluntary limits on a tool used in a sport with limiting the effectiveness of one primarily used in self- defense?

And of course the not very subtle dismissal of NYC cops shooting bystanders because EVERYBODY is a bad shot. You think someone who had been through a serious class like Gunsite would miss 30% or more of the time? Maybe one reason that NYC cops in particular are so bad is that they live in an anti- gun culture, though studies show that cops who are not gun nuts are almost always bad. She should be forced to read the Armed Citizen page in the publications of the "mindless" NRA.

I do read anti- gun propaganda, and one of its most striking features is that it is virtually always factually and technically incorrect-- even those who say they know guns make mistakes. And they never, never read our side enough to even refute our facts. They already know we are mindless, paranoid, frightened, even racist, and probably don't believe in evolution... even if we are scholars, or women or Hispanic...

And then I began thinking about history, and subtleties even our allies don't mention, perhaps because nobody reads outside the lines anymore. The roots of the three- shell limit are historically interesting and have little to do with anything but a bunch of rich sportsmen, who thought repeaters ungentlemanly, trying to put the brakes on market hunting in a time of little enforcement-- they also banned gauges larger than ten, an arbitrary and unnecessary move never done in, for instance, England. Both bans could be repealed today with no bad effect. They have no effect on conservation-- driven shoots in Europe make bags of 1000 plus with archaic side- by- sides like mine.

The anti- repeater bias might well have started with the excitable conservation pioneer and bigot William Hornaday, who like the artist Frederick Remington believed the US should be a "pure" Anglo- Saxon nation. In one of his books on wildlife he had photos of a Browning autoloader. On the same page he complained that such were used by immigrant filth from the dregs of Europe's society, and that Italians and other inferior "races" should not only be refused entry but deported with all their descendants. Imagine my reading this in the fifties after it was recommended to me by an old WASP librarian.

He wanted all Italians, "southern and eastern Europeans", Slavs, Jews, Asians, and "negroes" deported; better at least than the unspeakable Remington, who wanted them exterminated and offered to help in one of his letters. Remington: "You can't glorify a Jew! Nasty humans! I've got some Winchesters and when the massacring begins, I can get my share of 'em and what's more I will. Jews, Injuns, Chinamen, Italians, Huns - the rubbish of the Earth, I hate." I don't put political standards to art, but if I owned a Remington and read that, I'd sell it so fast it would bounce on the way out-- and maybe use the money to buy a Charlie Russell...

Compare to two other establishment figures, both hunters and infinitely more appealing than Hornaday, never mind Remington: Teddy Roosevelt and his generous acceptance of anyone who embraced our culture, and Aldo Leopold (who married a NM "Mexican").

I added, in my note to Reid: "I assume you are acquainted with the utterly racist origins of handgun control? Think "Jim Crow Laws" or read Condoleeza Rice on her childhood in the segregated south, or the pro- gun liberal Don Kates. Hint: white people had no trouble getting guns, just like rich people in New York today."

Maybe sometime I'll talk about "Progressivism" and eugenics. Know your history!

Tiger Reading

John Vaillant did a reading last night at Riverrun Books in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for his wonderful new book on Amur tigers, poachers, and rangers. I had participated in part by reviewing The Tiger here.

I'll let him configure the whole tale for you, but Dr Hypercube was the pivotal figure, and blogged it here. Suffice to say that an amazing crew of nature and travel writers were brought together via the web- the Doctor, Sy Montgomery (who wrote the OTHER great tiger book, The Spell of the Tiger), and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas ( The Old Way, among other fine books). I wish I had been there, but the next best thing was when Vaillant , livestreaming his excellent talk, waved at the camera to "Steve Bodio in New Mexico".



L to R: Vaillant, Sy, the Doctor, Liz.

First Let's Kill All the Tigers..

Professor McMahan, the guy who wants to eliminate all predators, is back with what he thinks is a refutation of his critics. This time he begins with a thought experiment: since Amur ("Siberian") tigers are supposedly insignificant ecological actors these days, why not let them go extinct?

"Many of the commentators said, in effect: “Leave nature alone; the course of events in the natural world will go better without human intervention.” Since efforts to repopulate their original habitat with large numbers of Siberian tigers might require a massive intervention in nature, this anti-interventionist view may itself imply that we ought to allow the Siberian tiger to become extinct. But suppose Siberian tigers would eventually restore their former numbers on their own if human beings would simply leave them alone. Most people, I assume, would find that desirable. But is that because our human prejudices blind us to the significance of animal suffering?

"Siberian tigers are in fact not particularly aggressive toward human beings, but suppose for the sake of argument that they were. And suppose that there were large numbers of poor people living in primitive and vulnerable conditions in the areas in which Siberian tigers might become resurgent, so that many of these people would be threatened with mutilation and death if the tigers were not to become extinct, or not banished to captivity. Would you still say: “Leave nature alone; let the tigers repopulate their former habitats.”? What if you were one of the people in the region, so that your children or grandchildren might be among the victims? And what would your reaction be if someone argued for the proliferation of tigers by pointing out that without tigers to keep the human population in check, you and others would breed incontinently and overcultivate the land, so that eventually your numbers would have to be controlled by famine or epidemic? Better, they might say, to let nature do the work of culling the human herd in your region via the Siberian tiger. Would you agree?"

I'll let my intelligent readers answer this-- have at it. And for God's sake, Daniela-- not before breakfast!

Update for Lane: "What but fear winged the birds?/ And jewelled with such eyes/ The great goshawk's head?"-- Robinson Jeffers, "The Bloody Sire".

Worst NYT piece EVER?

Unfortunately the Times is not up to Jeff Lockwood's standard today, at least outside of their science pages. Last night Daniela sent me this essay by a philosophy professor at Rutgers who is also a visiting one at Princeton (which at least balances him and Peter Singer with Freeman Dyson, who outweighs them both together intellectually), suggesting that we must totally eliminate all carnivores in order to stop suffering on the planet. That anyone this immune to reason, or innocent of any knowledge of anything outside his abstract field, gets paid handsomely for using his brain at any college is a damning comment on our society, education, and of academia as a whole today. This should only have been printed in The Onion. I won't dignify it by quoting further, but am considering a letter to the paper-- think about writing one too (they have already closed comments).

And the other depressing fact is that, if you wade through those comments, the most common reaction after the sensible variants on "what a fool!" and "what was the Times THINKING?" is the one that humans should be eliminated, voluntarily or involuntarily. This hatred of humanity among our elite classes is almost as scary as Professor McMahan's hatred of reality and incomprehension of what life is. Both are utterly fascist, even beyond Naziism in their implications.

Matt exclaims: "What a troubling, sad piece---this man teaches!"

Lighter reaction-- Daniela accompanied the link with the following note: "Well, I'm just about to see whether I have any reasonable carne to indulge my heathen self in!"

And one last point-- what must excellent science writers like the Times' Nicholas Wade think about sharing space and money with such invincibly ignorant idiots?

Update: Daniela comments in an email: "I like Jeff Lockwood's take on ethics! That would make Prof. McMahan a philosophiopath, for being too ignorant to know how to pose a philosophical question. In the Hebrew Hagada the one who doesn't know what to ask is called "Tam" - "an innocent"...The text suggests you help him".

I am not sure I know how...

Military Rifles and the LATE Great Game

To continue the series on guns I have & like, humble & noble...

I don't have a military Mauser because I already have a first rate example built as sporting one.

I don't have a Springfield because with a gun of similar action and caliber (Mauser) it seems a bit redundant.

I don't have a Mosin Nagant and given my Russophilia "might should". I tell people I am holding out for a rare lever action model 95 Winchester made in Mosin's caliber for the Czarist army (it would probably have to be a gift!-- money isn't getting better!)

I DO have two very different very utilitarian military rifles with a long history in Asia. Lots of cheap ammo is still available for both, from corrosive primer Pakistani army ANCIENT .303 British (clean with lots of Windex) to that steel case Russian 7.62 X 39 James McMurtry sings about-- Russian bubba ammo. (Though remember its role in Vaillant's Tiger).

The English bolt rifle is a late SMLE (Short Magazine Lee Enfield)in .303, Great Britain's Empire gun for most of the 20th century, for years the most popular caliber in Canada, and a modest caliber that has taken every big game animal in Africa. It is still used by park rangers in Nepal and India. An old guide friend in BC once dropped a moose dead in its tracks at 400 yards using the elevated military sights-- I prefer its excellent "ghost ring" peep, still good for my old eyes at 100 yards or so.

It is my favorite military action. Before they switched to (mostly-- I have seen pix of some uncanny sporting Rigby Mauser clones) AK47 variants, the infamous weapons shops of Peshawar built many Enfields, complete with English proof marks. I wonder whether the gun toted by the Afghan hunter in this Kenworthy sculpture, photo'd by Sir Terence Clark, is one of those? It is certainly an SMLE.



Here are the two guns, the English bolt (older ones were used in WW I) and the late WWII Russian (actually this one is Yugoslav) semiauto that fires a similar bullet from a MUCH smaller case, and is because of its cheapness and ruggedness and the availability of ammo the choice of poor hunters from the Ozarks to Kamchatka. (Its bayonet is useful but generally as a "stand"-- you extend it and stick it into the ground so your rifle remains high and dry and vertical). I like having one around for it Asian history, its utter utility, its cheap ammo, and because it pisses off some who love Gentleman's Guns like my Grant, for I am a socially equivocal creature who rather likes both-- lifestyles as well as guns...

The SKS is more accurate than the popular "pray & spray" AK47 of the same caliber, but I would admit (Arthur?) the long barrel and the good peep make me shoot the Enfield better.

(I should add that they are on a Kazakh wall hanging that might have seen either in a previous life).





While I am on the unlikely intersection of guns in Asia and Asian textiles I must show off a gorgeous Uzbek embroidered gunslip made specifically for the short version of the SMLE, the "Jungle Carbine", obtained for me by old friend, falconer, and textile scholar Eric Wilcox. Nothing else fits its length and bolt hole. I'll never get rid of it-- anybody have a Jungle carbine that needs a home?

John Vaillant's The Tiger

Here it is, Q- Philes-- John Vaillant's The Tiger: a True Story of Vengeance and Survival is finally out this week. It is better than good-- my favorite book of the year so far, and a likely classic in my rare favorite genre, that which documents (to use a book title) "the edge of the wild", that interface where humans and "nature" are not artificially separated but in conflict or cooperation, acting on each other.

Tiger is a non- fiction book that reads like a novel, set in "Primorye", the Russian Far East-- not "Siberia", despite its desperately cold winters-- but rather a huge block to the east and south of Siberia, a rugged place of mixed deciduous forests, few roads, a flora and fauna mixing the temperate and the subtropical (like leopards and tigers), inhabited by a never- prosperous populace now eking out their lives by such expedients as beekeeping and subsistence poaching.

Its protagonists are a single huge tiger, a ragged bunch of drunken poachers, and a patrol of anti- poaching rangers dedicated to protecting tigers over a huge area, with no money and inadequate tools. The beginning, as an unnamed hunter and his dog approach a dark cabin on a freezing evening, is a masterpiece of tension and quiet terror; the ending is utterly cinematic but real (the book is based on over 200 interviews). In between, Vaillant skilfully cuts from one "protagonist" to another, building an almost unbearable tension even as he dramatizes the serious issue of Asian poaching.

He manages to evoke sympathy for a man- killing tiger that outdoes any in Corbett (at one point he drags a mattress out under the shelter of a spruce to await his next victim in comfort; waits for another IN HIS BED; toward the end,`a la Kipling’s "Letting In the Jungle", he appears to be contemplating the elimination of a village), but also for destitute subsistence poachers tempted by the Han Empire’s eternal appetite for animal parts, and above all for the underpaid, overworked, and threatened Russian rangers, who use SKS’s in 7.62 X 39 (on brown bear, moose, and sadly tiger if they must) because they are the BEST rifles available! (Regular readers will recall previous posts on my love/ hate for this working man's rifle and cartridge-- more later, but I would never use it for such animals if I didn't have to!) On the other hand, a scene where a poacher pulls the trigger on an ancient Mosin and, instead of the firing pin falling, in the words of James McMurtry it "didn't, quite...", doesn't end well; perhaps the rangers are doing the best they can.

(In fact, my only extremely minor quibble with the book is re firearms: if you know a bit it can be momentarily confusing; if you don't, though, you won't even notice. But a poacher's badly- handloaded 16 gauge single- shot shotgun is not a "rifle", and using a thing like that to try to poach an Amur tiger is the exact kind of drunken Russian foolery that is likely to bring on Nemesis, on wheels, with no brakes...)

But really, a quibble-- this is an amazing book, one to stand with Arseniev and Corbett, its worthy predecessors. Annie Proulx sent me an early galley, asking that I return it as soon as I finished, and I was so blown away I asked-- well, demanded!-- another copy from the press, to quote to my friends until the real thing came out months later. On the Amazon site she says:

"The Tiger is the sort of book I very much like and rarely find. Humans are hard-wired to fear tigers, so this book will attract intense interest. In addition to tiger lore and scalding adventure, Vaillant shows us Russia’s far east and its inhabitants, their sometimes desperate lives interwoven with the economics of poaching and the politics of wildlife conservation... This is a book not only for adventure buffs, but for all of us interested in wildlife habitat preservation.”

Another good writer, Sy Montgomery's friend Liz Thomas, adds:

"In it are chilling accounts of human encounters with tigers—but these encounters, however fearsome, convincingly demonstrate the role that these enormous cats continue to play in the natural world. Equally compelling are the people of Primorye, those who of necessity must hunt the tigers, and those who would preserve them. To call this book a page-turner is an understatement."

I rarely quote other writers in praise of a book I like-- as anyone who knows me knows, I am secure in my opinions (!) But in this case, I think this book is so good I want to remind readers that writers I respect and who like MY writing-- "friends of Q"-- are as over the top about The Tiger as I am. Run don't walk...