A Visit to San Bruno Mountain

A Visit to San Bruno Mountain



Today, the endangered mission blue butterfly (Icaricia icariodes missionensis) was on the wing and relatively common during a hike on the southeast ridge of San Bruno Mountain. The beautiful metallic blue males and greyish-blue females were flying about or perching on the lupine foodplants. Other animals were enjoying the warm spring day, including ring-necked snakes, California ringlet butterflies (Coenonympha tullia california), painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui), anise swallowtail butterflies (Papilio zelicaon), and pipevine swallowtails (Battus philenor). Johnny jump-up (Viola pedunculata) and other beautiful wildflowers were in bloom.

This is a special place located a few miles north of the San Francisco International Airport on the west side of the San Francisco Bay. It's a 3000 acre semi-wilderness located within one of the largest cities on Earth. It is home to the endangered callippe silverspt butterfly (Speyeria callippe callippe) San Bruno elfin butterfly (Incisalia mossii bayensis), San Francisco lessingia (Lessingia germanorum), and the San Francisco garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia). Last year, a young mountain lion was spotted on the Mountain! Of course, being surrounded by city, there have been numerous proposals to utilize San Bruno Mountain ranging from removing the top 300 feet and using to enlarge San Francisco International Airport to development of homes.

In 1983, a special permit known as a habitat conservation plan was issued by the Department of Interior that in return for allowing urban development of portions of San Bruno Mountain, the majority was set aside forever as habitat for the endangered butterflies and the snake. Yet, a problem that was unforeseen 26 years ago imperils the site and unless it is brought under control will extirpate many of the endangered and native species of plants and animals.

The threat is a constellation of exotic and highly invasive plants including eucalyptus, gorse, French broom, fennel, Oxalis, and many other species. In addition, the grasslands which are inhabited by the mission blue butterfly and the callippe silverspot butterfly are being replaced by coastal scrub. It is not unreasonable to say that unless dramatic measures are undertaken in the near future, the value of San Bruno Mountain to the four listed butterflies and snake, and many other native species will be minimal or non-existent.

First Butterflies of the Year

We're in the midst of a now two-week long rainy spell. But on February 24, and also on February 27, I saw fresh male cabbage butterflies during a couple of dry days. The first butterflies of the year! Once this storm passes through and the weather warms up a bit, the western tiger swallowtails (Papilio rutulus) should be out and about.

Burrowing Owl at Yolo Bypass

This morning, during our daily walk at the Yolo Bypass, Truman flushed a burrowing owl. It had been hanging out among some ground squirrel burrows on the east side of the levee just south of Interstate 80. This is the first burrowing owl I have seen at the Bypass in eight years of near daily walks. I have seen a small colony about 3 miles nothwest of this site along the perimeter of an agircultural field. And, of course, burrowing owls are well knowned and loved by the average citizen in Davis; a large residential development project was opposed because of the effect on tis personable raptors, as well as increased traffic, sewage, and other effects. Burrowing owls have become much rarer and scarce in California.

photo courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Game

Bush Anti--climate Change Appointee Alledgely "burrowed" into the Federal Government

An interesting story from Talking Points Memo (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com)

A Loyal Bushie Burrows Into Obama's System
By Elana Schor - January 23, 2009, 11:48AM

The Bush administration's participation in the personnel tactic known as "burrowing" has been well-reported in recent weeks. The practice isn't unique to the Bush crowd; during presidential transitions, political appointees eager to stay on the government payroll often wriggle their way into secure civil service positions -- despite the differing political beliefs of the White House's new occupant.

But because the central objective of burrowing is for political appointees to fly under the radar while Washington changes hands, it's often hard to tell when the practice is actually occurring. Consider the case of Kathie Olsen, who just made a very curious move: going from the No. 2 post at the National Science Foundation to the far less influential job of "senior advisor" in the NSF's Office of Information and Resource Management.

As Science magazine observes, Olsen had already submitted her resignation to the Obama administration and would have been out the door had she not slipped into her new, seemingly secure post. And this isn't just any Bush appointee avoiding the need to find a new job -- Olsen was at the forefront of the former president's systematic denial of the human causes of climate change.

Before becoming deputy director of the NSF, Olsen was the associate director of the Bush White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Her immediate boss there was Bush science adviser John Marburger, who was implicated in the 2007 censorship of congressional testimony that would have publicly illustrated the human health risks of the warming climate.Remember Phil Cooney, the once and future oil industry representative who habitually erased from government documents any evidence that fossil fuels cause global warming? It was Olsen who first handed Cooney a debunked, Big-Oil-underwritten study that purported to disprove the existence of climate change. As Rolling Stone reported in 2007: "It was sham science," says McCarthy, the Harvard scientist. "It's almost laughable, except that this study was held up by the administration as a definitive refutation of the temperature record."

But even as the paper was being discredited, it was causing great excitement in the White House. When Kathie Olsen of the Office of Science and Technology Policy forwarded the study to Cooney, he responded with an enthusiastic, "Thanks, Kathie!" Six minutes later, according to internal e-mails, the study was in the hands of Kevin O'Donovan, who served as Cheney's point man on climate. The study also grabbed President Bush's attention ...

During Olsen's 2002 Senate confirmation hearing, before she officially joined the Bush OSTP, her wavering avoidance of climate change questions aroused the ire of none other than Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). From Science magazine's report, available on Nexis:

McCain first read a description of how "warming in the 21st century will be significantly larger than in the 20th century ... and temperatures in the U.S. will rise by about 5 degrees -9 degrees F ... on average in the next 100 years." Without identifying the source -- a recent White House report that President George W. Bush has dismissed as mere speculation -- McCain then asked each nominee whether he or she agreed with the statement.

Olsen and Russell initially refused to answer the question. Olsen, despite NASA's dominant role in the global change initiative, later said that she "was nervous ... [and] didn't understand the paragraph," adding that "I don't know if we have enough data to make that statement." Foiled in his attempt to solicit the nominees' views on climate change, McCain declared that "I will oppose your nominations until I get an answer" and stalked out of the hearing.

How was Olsen permitted to slip inside the NSF bureaucracy after playing such a front-and-center role in the Bush administration's politicization of science? We're looking into whether her case fits the technical definition of "burrowing" -- and what the Obama team can do about it -- but suffice to say that her survival hasn't gone unnoticed.

"This internal NSF personnel action raises serious questions concerning whether a high-level Bush White House science appointee is trying to 'burrow in' at the agency," said a senior congressional investigator with knowledge of NSF. "Usually when a director or deputy director vacates their post, they are not given a non-competitive, SES-level job at the same agency. This merits scrutiny."

We have a call into the NSF to confirm whether the new "senior advisor" post announced last
week is senior enough to ensure that Olsen could not be reassigned for several months.

Late Update: An NSF spokeswoman confirms that Olsen has reinstatement rights as a member of the Senior Executive Service, or SES. This could mean that civil-service rules preclude anyone in the Obama administration from acting on the matter. We'll keep you posted.

Giant water scavenger beetle, and Are Pesticides Affecting Monarch Butterfly as well as Amphibians in the Sierra Nevada?

Today, I was preparing a portion of the backyard for planting vegetables this spring. There are several old concrete stepping stones which I was removing for the soon-to-be-garden. Six of the stones had the usual subterranean invertebrate fauna under them - termites, earthworms, Argentine ants. But underneath one of them was an adult giant water scavenger beetle (Hydrophilus triangularis). When I picked up the stone, it began crawling around, but did not fly away. I suspect it flew into the backyard during some night time rainstorms a few weeks ago. Giant water scavenger beetles are very common in the Sacramento Valley, and it is not uncommon to find them at lights, especially mercury vapor lights, during the winter rainy season. In southern California they are rare, in twenty five years of collecting there, I found only one dead one at Point Mugu Naval Air Station.

This week I attended the California/Nevada Amphibian Population task Force's 2009 Annual Meeting at the Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory. There were several talks about the decline of amphibians in the Sierra Nevada. It appears that pesticides, especially in areas downwind of the Central Valley where the application of chemical agents on crops exceed 500,000 kilograms a year, have resulted in the reduction or loss of these animals. Some of the biologists at the meeting had found that these chemicals are toxic to tadpoles of certain Sierra Nevadan frog species at parts per billion levels (note: one part per billion is equal to about one teaspoon of water in a standard residential swimming pool!). It struck me that these pesticides also could be impacting the the monarch butterfly. In an earlier post, I speculated that ranchette and urban development in the foothills had caused the tremendous decline of this insect at their coastal California wintering colonies. The number of butterflies at sites such as the famous Washington Park in Pacific Grove, Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, and Ellwood in Santa Barbara, are dramatically smaller than ten or twenty years ago (all anecdotal - no hard numbers). But pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos, malathion, diazinon, and their toxic breakdown products could be the culprit in the semingly steady decline of the number of monarch butterflies at the wintering colonies in the Golden State. Perhaps pesticides blown in to the Sierra Nevada and foothills from the Central Valley are killing the eggs, larvae, and pupae of Danaus plexippus, just as these chemicals are killing amphibians.

Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish an Wildlife Service

UCD professor again trades beer for butterflies

By Niesha Lofing

Sacramento Bee Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008

Free beer for a butterfly?

Indeed.

Arthur Shapiro, a professor at University of California, Davis, has launched his annual Butterfly-for-Beer contest and is hoping someone soon will turn in a live Cabbage White butterfly.
The contest, which has been going on for 38 years, rewards the first person to turn in a live Cabbage White with a pitcher of beer or its cash equivalent, a UC Davis news release states.
What's in it for Shapiro? He gets more biological data on the butterfly.

The Cabbage White butterfly, Pieris rapae, lives in the Central Valley and is white or buff-colored, about 1 1/4 inches long and might have a few black spots near the edges of its outer wings. Its underside is yellow with a gray hue. It often is spotted in vacant lots and by the side of roads where wild mustard grows, the release states.

Shapiro, who teaches evolution and ecology courses for the university's entomology department, has found that the butterfly is emerging about a week earlier than it did 30 years ago, a shift caused by climate warming, he says.

In past years, the first sightings of the butterfly ranged from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22. This year, the first specimen was caught Jan. 19. Cool, wet and cloudy conditions seem to delay the butterfly's appearance, while sunny and warm days speed it up, the release states. The contest is limited to adult butterflies captured outdoors in Sacramento, Solano or Yolo counties.

Butterflies must be brought alive to the receptionist in the Evolution and Ecology office, 2320 Storer Hall, with full information about the time, date and place it was found.
If a butterfly is captured on a weekend or holiday when the department office is closed, it can be stored alive for a few days in the refrigerator.

"Almost every year someone brings one in in May or June and asks 'Did I win?'" Shapiro wrote on his UC Davis-hosted Web site.

Charlie Bear's Note: I saw a fresh male cabbage white butterfly at the Yolo Bypass on December 11, 2007. I should have caught it and taken it to Art Shapiro for the beer!

The photo is from Wikipedia

Return of the Yellow-billed Magpies (?)

This afternoon, at about 1600 hours I was pleasantly surprised to see there were 12 yellow-billed magpies (Picea nuttalli) at the top of my neighbor's 70-foot redwood tree. These birds were once abundant and common in my neighborhood in Sacramento (about 3 miles east of the State Capitol). Flocks of 50+ magpies were not unusual. I have DVD footage I took about 5 years ago of about 80 of them and a large flock of crows (Corvus corax) in the redwood tree "fighting" with each other. Their screeching and calling at each was so loud and agitated that early Sunday morning that they woke me and Truman up! They are highly intelligent and social birds; their antics are amusing. When I watered my front yard with a lawn sprinkler during the hot Central Valley summers, flocks would land and they would take turns drinking water from the hose. But since West Nile Virus hit the area, you now only see one or maybe two or three yellow-billed magpies at a time. And that rarely. When I see the lone individual or pairs of them now, I often wonder how the behavior of these animals has been changed. I am a trained biologist, but I can not help but think that these highly social animals must be terribly lonely and confused by the loss of their comrades. So, I was sure glad to see the flock of these characters arguing and fighting with each other today! I am told that corvids are especially vulnerable to the disease. I have thought that West Nile Virus reached North America through the tremendous international trade in African parrots. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the disease first struck this Country in the New York area - JFK is a major Port of Entry for wildlife from foreign countries. Here in Sacramento, the crows, a corvid, dropped in number, but seem to be slowly recovering. They like to spend the night up on Richards Blvd north of the State Capitol, and you can see 100s of them perching on buildings and telephone lines, and walking around on the ground searching for food or socializing with each other. I hope the yellow-billed magpies are developing immunity to West Nile Disease as they are one of my favorite birds.

The photo is from MagpieMonitor.org which is run by the U.C. Davis Veterinary School.