Posts by Joe Eaton
Pombo’s Promise
“Pombo’s bill would reverse thirty years of progress. It would rip the heart out of America’s most important wildlife law.”
Urban Oasis
Palm trees are a favorite barn owl nesting site. But they aren’t always a good choice.
Turquoise Threads Among the Gold
Younger than you’d think, it’s one tough little fish
Dwellers on the Fringe
Birds—and the meaning of life—take center stage in Mark Bittner’s engaging and bittersweet tale, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
Wild Card
Sneakers, streakers, jacks, and machos furtivos: males of some species have found more than one way to work the game of evolution.
Planet Garden
The chameleon, according to malagasy folklore, keeps one eye on the past, the other on the future. This would make it an appropriate totem for those who practice ecological restoration.
Deadfall, Windfall
As a marine biologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Shana Goffredi has seen extraordinary things.
A Stick in the Mud
I’m on a bench facing an ivy-covered fence, half-watching the black-and-yellow-banded wasps patrolling near ground level, ready to move if they get too chummy.
Between the Vines
To wine country environmentalists who have seen natural communities displaced by an ever-expanding grapescape, the notion that vineyards can be viable wildlife habitat is like calling parking lots habitat.
Along for the Ride
In the last few months, two things happened that got me to thinking about salamanders.
The War at Home: Tanks vs. Tortoises
On the eve of war with Iraq, the Pentagon launched a less-publicized offensive in Washington. The Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative (RRPI) targets five basic environmental laws that have allegedly hindered military training.
The Best of Enemies
Predator and prey species shape each other. As Robinson Jeffers put it: “What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine/ The fleet limbs of the antelope?” (Actually, if it was the pronghorn antelope he had in mind, it appears that the tooth in question belonged to a long-extinct North American cheetah, but that’s another story.)
Consequences
Late November in the Solano County farmlands: Up ahead on the gravel road there are two vehicles on the shoulder and a huddle of birders with spotting scopes.
Stranger in a Strange Lake
At the visitors’ center at Clear Lake State Park, past the diorama of Pomo village life and the cutaway diagram of Mount Konocti’s volcanic innards, there’s a wall– mounted aquarium displaying some of the lake’s fish.
Distant Relatives
In the summer of 1872 — the year Grant defeated Greeley for a second term and the Credit Mobilier scandal broke; the year Luther Burbank developed his eponymous potato and Aaron Montgomery Ward invented mail-order merchandising; the year General Meade, the victor of Gettysburg, died and Rasputin, Bertrand Russell, and Calvin Coolidge were born — the botanist Asa Gray came out to California to see the redwoods and giant sequoias.
