‘Pollwatcher” – A story of a mini ecological disaster

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/30/970521/-A-story-of-a-mini-ecological-disaster

Sat Apr 30, 2011 at 07:52 AM PDT

by pollwatcher

When we think of global warming, we think of sea levels rising and ice caps melting and maybe more and bigger hurricanes.  Big events that will probably happen decades in the future.  But maybe the effects of global warming can manifest themselves on many, many micro scales with even more disastrous results, and maybe it's happening right now.

Here in the west, the pine trees are being devastated by a pine bark beetle because the winters just don't get cold enough anymore to kill them.  In Alaska and northern latitudes the permafrost is melting and disrupting the lives of indigenous people who depend on frozen ground.  Spring is coming early in many parts of the country and fall is coming later.

Of course it's almost impossible to attribute any single weather event, or even an entire years weather events to global warming.  But since this isn't an article to be published in a scientific journal, and this is a Democratic blog site, I'm going to do it anyway.  

I live in a small valley in the western mountains.  Anyone familiar with the western mountains realizes that entire mini ecosystems can develop in very small areas due to the effects of the mountains on weather.  I happen to live in a valley of about 50 square miles that is one of those mini ecosystems.  

Our valley is rich with wildlife.  Moose, Deer, Pronghorn, and Elk are among the big animals.  Bear, Mountain Lions, Coyotes, and one of the most ferocious of all, Badgers, are some of the predators.  Golden Eagles, Bald Eagles, and many types of hawks are also abundant.  We also have plenty of smaller critters such as Ferrets, Marmots, and most important of all, the Richardson's ground squirrel.  The squirrel is a keystone species in the valley, and typically there are about 25 per acre.

Our weather is weather of extremes.  Even as I write this the temperature is 14 and the wind chill is -15, which is exceptionally cold for this time of year even for around here.  This winter we had below normal snow and more wind than I want to see again.  Last winter was the one that was exceptional.  We had around 15 feet of snow, but we had 3 major snowstorms.  It wasn't so much that the snowstorms were all that unusual, but it was when they came that was really strange.  The first storm of 2 1/2 feet came in late October.  The next one of 3 feet came in December.  And the last one of 3 1/2 feet came in mid April. Getting snow in October and April isn't that unusual, but getting storms that dump that quantity of snow at those times of year is really weird.

Back to the Richadson's ground squirrel.  These critters are usually considered pests by most of the people around here, but to most of the predators, they're usually considered lunch.  They hibernate in burrows in the ground during the harsh winters.  They usually go into hibernation in mid September, and come out in mid April.  In Early April, the Eagles and Hawks and Coyotes all start showing up for what to them is a real feast.

Now that 2 1/2 feet of snow in late October came early enough where most of it melted into the ground.  The 3 foot snowfall in December was more typical of a big winter snowstorm.  But the 3 1/2 foot snowfall in mid April, just as the ground squirrels were coming out of hibernation, was absolutely devastating.

The ground was already saturated and the rapidly melting April snowfall soaked the burrows and forced the squirrels out of the ground.  A grey squirrel on top of white snow, is like covering yourself with honey and crawling into a bear den.

It was a slaughter!  Eagles and hawks were diving out of the sky and scooping up the squirrels like kids in a candy store.  And then came the Ravens.  They came in flocks.  Ravens are typically more scavengers than predators, but the squirrels were so plentiful that they would grab a squirrel, take a few bites, then would go get another. The Coyotes became scavengers because the Ravens left so much behind that it was easier to eat the leftovers than to chase one down.  Ravens are really smart birds, and I even saw one dig into the ground and pull a squirrel right out of the ground.

By the end of the first week, 98% of the ground squirrels were gone.  Within a couple more weeks, they were ALL gone.  Every single one was gone.  Driven to extinction.

With the main food source gone, the Eagles and Hawks were soon gone also.

The Coyotes around here are really plentiful.  We like to go out on a summer evening and just listen to the several packs in the valley call back and forth to each other.  I call them the Coyote choir.  By early summer, with no ground squirrels, the choir went silent.

Then it was the Badgers turn.  They usually show up in early summer.  Watching a Badger dig for a ground squirrel is really something to see.  When you go for a walk around here you usually have to be careful that you don't step into a Badger hole.  But not last summer.  We were lucky to see a couple Badgers all summer.

And then other, more subtle effects started showing up.  The Pronghorn come up the valley in late spring to calve.  They are usually followed by the Coyotes looking for an easy meal.  But the Coyotes depend on the ground squirrels while they're waiting for the Pronghorns.  With no ground squirrels, there were fewer Coyotes.  With fewer Coyotes, there were more Pronghorn calves that survived.

Even the plant life change.  The squirrels usually eat the tops of grasses, and will stunt most of the grass.  Without any squirrels, the grass grew tall and much of it went to seed.  With taller grass, herds of Elk were coming out of the forest in the middle of the day to graze on the lush grass.  Being well fed, more Elk survived the winter this year.

So with the extinction of one small pest, things changed in a big way.  I'm sure over the course of several years, ground squirrels from somewhere else will find their way into the valley, and things will slowly go back to the way it was.  Or, maybe not.

All this occurred because of 2 very unusual snowstorms.  I know it was an El Nino year, and we typically get heavy snow in El Nino years, but this was different.  We are seeing more and more of these unusual weather events, and it's impossible to understand the local ecological effects these severe events are having.  How many other valleys are changing?  How many more will change as extreme weather events become more and more common?  When does the change become more than a valley, more than a mountain range, more than a continent?

We may think rising oceans and melting Polar caps when we think global warming, but it's more, a lot more.  And one day we will look out the window and see that things have changed.  And with those changes, our lives and the lives of our children will have changed, forever.