That morning, Moriarty, an Oregon State University graduate student in the department of fisheries and wildlife, working on her thesis on the movements of martens (Martes americana), had been reviewing photos taken by one of her thirty motion-activated cameras in the mountains north of Truckee, California. As she scrolled through the usual candid-camera cache of wind-driven branches, squirrels, coyotes, ermine, and the occasional bobcat, she came across a photo of something quite unique: the hind end of a wolverine, an animal that hasn’t been documented in California for nearly ninety years.

The last known California wolverine was shot in 1922, making Moriarty’s discovery nearly as thrilling for the biological community as the ivory-billed woodpecker re-sighting in Arkansas in 2004. “It’s exciting to have verified confirmation of a wolverine, because there have been hundreds of unconfirmed sightings over the years,” says Moriarty.

Wolverines are the largest terrestrial members of the weasel family; they look like small, long-legged brown bears with large cream-colored stripes running down either side of their bodies. Their tendency to be fierce towards other creatures has earned them nicknames such as “devil bear” and “skunk bear.” Wolverines are very solitary, wide-roaming animals, and are thus difficult to study and count in a consistent fashion. There are estimated to be fewer than 500 wolverines left in the continental United States, although the federal government does not consider them an endangered or threatened species. Subspecies of wolverine exist in northern Europe and Asia as well. Despite low population estimates, it is still legal to trap them in Alaska and Montana.

California once had what biologist Shawn Sartorius of the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s office in Helena, Montana, dubs “a pretty special population of wolverines,” which were more closely related to Eurasian wolverines than other populations in North America. “They were probably isolated in North America for quite a long time before European colonization,” he explains. The reappearance of a lone wolverine in California instantly raised questions about its background: had someone released a once-captive animal or had a wild individual migrated from afar?

“The nearest known population of wolverines is about 600 miles away,” says Kevin McKelvey of the US Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. He points out that DNA analysis of Sierra Nevada wolverines from museum collections makes it clear that migration between isolated populations has rarely happened in the past. Moriarty explains that wolverines are known to travel long distances—upwards of fifty miles in a day—but 600 miles is a new precedent.

“Wolverines are associated with alpine habitat and don’t usually come below the tree line unless they’re roving males. That means they’re highly dependent on latitude and climate,” Moriarty says. Since the wolverine she caught on camera was indeed an adult male, it’s possible that he was a migrant trying to claim new turf. That would be good news for the expansion of the species, if he could only find a female to share his new digs. “If the wolverines could recolonize the Sierras,” says McKelvey, “it would represent a major increase in their US population and range.”

It became clear to Moriarty that she needed DNA from this wayfaring stranger to determine whether or not he actually belonged to the historic California population. A massive search team to find him, or at least hair or excrement he’d left behind, was put together, including fifteen scientists, two California Department of Fish & Game staff, and myself. The search employed snowmobiles, snowshoes, cross country skis, and even dogs—not hunting dogs, of course, but canines trained to find scat. Special bait stations with several motion-sensing cameras pointed at a hunk of deer meat were set up in hopes of snapping more photos. The stations also included hair snares, since DNA can be gathered from follicles.

In the end, we covered over 150 miles of Sierra Nevada backcountry terrain via human power. Although we never had a live sighting of the wolverine, the baited cameras did snap a few more action photos, and hair and scat were retrieved. DNA tests ultimately proved that the wolverine was most closely related to the Rocky Mountain populations and not a California native.

Word of the displaced beast rapidly spread around the nation. Local TV stations were right on the scene, and then NPR, CNN, and NBC began picking up the story. People began to ask, what might a reappearance of wolverines in California mean for an area that isn’t used to having them around? Armand Gonzales, wildlife program manager with California’s Department of Fish & Game, points out that the major industries in the Truckee and Tahoe areas—residential development, commercial timber harvest on public and private lands, and outdoor recreation—could be affected if wolverines move back into town.

“[If] we’re able to conclude with reasonable certainty that there is more than one, and they are possibly reproducing, then the regulatory oversight of projects like development and harvesting in the area will become much more complex,” Gonzales says. “This would have a direct monetary effect on the local economy, would require redirecting staff time to deal with the additional regulatory oversight, and possibly restrict the timing and location of winter recreation.” He says that the agency continues to receive unconfirmed reports of wolverine sightings.

Historically, wolverines and humans rarely tangled for territory. “Wolverines tend to live in places that are remote from human habitation and even tend to be remote from things like timber harvest,” says Sartorius. “They live very high on mountain slopes so there aren’t a lot of things that people do in wolverine habitat that affect wolverines.” That could change, however, as climate alters. Global warming is an increasingly unpredictable wild card for people who study and manage wildlife. According to current climate models, major ecosystems are slated to undergo range shifts in the coming years, and the animals in those habitats will have no choice but to move, seeking suitable places to live, or perish. “The potential for these types of movements occurring are going to increase with the effects of climate change,” says Gonzales.

So what will state wildlife managers do in the coming days of habitat reshuffling? “Animals showing up in their historic range will not be considered invasive but do have the potential to disrupt the status quo of the ecosystem that has evolved since the animals’ disappearance,” Gonzales points out. “We are working on a climate change adaptation strategy that will address some of the range shifts that may likely occur. We hope to identify and conserve key reserves that possess high potential for resiliency and biodiversity. Then we can plan linkages between them, including linking habitats at higher elevations and altitudes.”

Although the wolverine is listed as an endangered species in California, it still receives no protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. In fact, says Moriarty, “Ironically, wolverines were denied federal protection the very same day that the wolverine was photographed in California.” In part, the federal Fish & Wildlife Service decided that such protections were not warranted because the species isn’t “geographically discrete”—in other words, the population within the continental United States is not totally separated from populations in Alaska and Canada.

While Moriarty’s finding excited biologists, Sartorius points out that it isn’t likely to have much of an impact on future decisions about federal protection. “This wolverine wasn’t a native of the historic [California] population, and it was a male,” he explains. “They are the kind of individuals that are of least conservation value because you can’t establish a population with an individual male. It would have been of much more conservation interest had it been a female.”

Prior to nixing federal protection for the wolverine, the Bush administration also dodged conservation responsibilities for several species that are distributed across North America under the rationale that our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, will protect them. Unfortunately, Canada has been late to the conservation table, implementing its Species At Risk Act in 2003, and the only protective action to speak of in Mexico is largely due to prodding from US organizations.

The nonprofit conservation group Defenders of Wildlife, along with other groups, filed a lawsuit on September 30 challenging the denial of federal protection for wolverines. As Jamie Clark, the group’s executive vice president and the former director of the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Clinton administration, wrote in a press release reacting to the federal government’s decision to deny federal protection to the species, “The future of the wolverine depends upon the US Fish & Wildlife Service doing the job that it was entrusted to do: protect and recover imperiled wildlife within our borders.”

But even if the wolverine were to be listed as a federally endangered species, many believe the Endangered Species Act’s teeth are being systematically knocked out by the Bush administration in its final days. Currently, any project undertaken by a federal agency must include consultation with experts at the Forestry and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service, which independently decide whether a project is likely to threaten a protected species or its habitat. However, under the leadership of Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, the Department of the Interior—the agency that enforces the Endangered Species Act—has decided that these consultations are no longer necessary, and that federal agencies have the expertise to review their own construction and development projects.

These legislative changes will put an end to some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects. In other words, the Endangered Species Act will be weakened in the name of finishing a job under budget and on time. “Kempthorne is attempting to accomplish anti-ESA legislation through regulation that he couldn’t get passed through Congress back in 2005,” says Kim Delfino, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife. “It’s an attempt at a parting shot by the Bush administration before the November election.”

As the climate changes and snowpacks in northern latitudes shrink, Moriarty believes that government protection and habitat preservation will be key for the wellbeing of the wolverines who depend on alpine environments. “When studying animals with such an expansive geographic range and ability to move beyond international boundaries, it’s very important for us to continue research while preserving critical habitat such that we can sustain biodiversity,” she says.

Unfortunately, the wolverine she caught on camera didn’t stick around long enough to be a part of much research; despite our search, he disappeared. Some researchers lament that more efforts weren’t made to capture, radio-collar, and track the wandering wolverine to find out where he came from and what he was doing here. “To me, this highlights the need for much better understanding not only of where wolverines live but how they navigate between these areas. We know almost nothing about wolverine dispersal routes,” says McKelvey.

“This was such a rare event,” agrees Jeff Copeland, McKelvey’s coworker at the Rocky Mountain Research Station. “My guess is that this individual came there with the primary goal of finding other wolverines. At some point it will fail to do so and will probably attempt to return to its area of origin. How interesting it might have been to be able to track that movement.”

Scientists hoping that wolverines are indeed staging a return to the Sierras can do no more than hope that my friend’s mysterious visitor will wander back… and this time bring a pal.

California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard program mandates that twenty percent of our power must come from renewable sources by the year 2010 and 33 percent by 2020, so by some standards, getting part of that power from the sea is a smart bet. The ocean is not only the largest potential source of renewable energy on the planet, but one of the most reliable, since its wave action is always “on” in a way that wind and the sun are not. Extracting energy from it produces no carbon dioxide, and a new ocean power industry could conceivably create a multitude of clean-tech jobs. All that energy “going to waste” on our northern coastline is beginning to look good to private companies hoping to exploit the waves and tides. But a tangled bureaucratic web, and a number of hard-to-answer questions about ocean energy’s impact on the marine environment, still loom in their way, and it’s made observers wonder if ocean power is worth the trouble.

The principle behind ocean power is no novelty to Californians; Sutro Baths, operated by tidal action, opened in 1896 in San Francisco. Tides pumped water uphill through canal works blasted into the rocky shore just below the north end of the Cliff House near Sutro Cove. The water emptied into six bathing tanks, with the tides capable of moving 1.8 million gallons per hour during high activity.
But using the ocean waves or tides to generate electricity is a much newer idea, and one that’s highly adaptable. Wave power can be harvested by several methods: one device looks like a regular buoy but as it bobs in the waves, it acts as a piston. Water is drawn into the center of the cylinder when a wave pushes the buoy upward. As the wave drops, the water is pressurized and forced out. The compressed water turns a turbine, which creates energy that moves from an underwater cable to the power grid.

Another means is an underwater arm that is pushed around in circles by wave action. Then there’s the Pelamis wave energy converter, which looks like an enormous chain of linked sausages floating on top of the water. Each of the “sausages” is a horizontal buoy, and power is generated in the joints between them. As the waves move the buoys back and forth, the motion of the joints is translated into power. Tidal energy, on the other hand, harkens back to those giant dams: stick a turbine in the path of the running tide and let the movement of the water spin the blades.

There are both environmental and bureaucratic impediments to ocean power, however—and opponents maintain that ocean energy’s barriers are greater than those of other renewables. Among them: it’s expensive, there’s great confusion and disparity as to the applicable licensing agencies, there’s a lack of clarity as to whether tax breaks or subsidies afforded to other renewables apply to ocean energy, and no certainty as to property rights. The last touches on a particularly prickly question: who owns the real estate, when that real estate is open water?

All these questions came into play starting in February 2007, when British Columbia-based ocean energy developer Finavera attempted to establish a pilot project off the coast of Washington state in Makah Bay. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted a conditional permit in December 2007, which was then challenged on the grounds of property rights, the Clean Water Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Endangered Species Act (in particular, due to concerns about the welfare of the marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird species), tribal water quality (part of the installation is on land owned by the Makah tribe). In March 2008, FERC gave the company a preliminary go-ahead for the pilot project, but points relating to the Clean Water Act and the Coastal Management Act remained to be defined—and this is all before the environmental review.

How energy-harvesting devices might impact the ocean environment is hard to determine, since there are very few sites active in the world. Many are in Europe; the US has only a handful of experimental sites, including Makah Bay. Few of the new proposals on the table in California have made it far enough through the development pipeline to warrant environmental impact studies. When I expressed frustration with the lack of information to Sam Schuchat, council secretary of the California State Coastal Conservancy, he replied, “I think you’re having trouble finding documents because I don’t think there are any, or many. As far as I know, no ocean power proposal has gone through the [full] permitting process in this country yet, so no research has been generated.”

However, scientists are certainly already pointing out troubling possibilities. Last autumn, Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center hosted a workshop on the ecological effects of wave energy, at which fifty scientists mulled a host of unknowns. Among the items up for discussion: the possibility of marine mammals, seabirds, large fish or turtles becoming entangled in cables, of the structures affecting fish by changing migration routes or attracting predators, of chemical pollution as paints, metals and hydraulic fluids leach into the water over time, and of the projects changing the shoreline itself by altering the water’s currents and sediment distribution.

A report summarizing the workshop’s discussion sessions outlined dozens more far-reaching concerns. For example, because power generation will create electrical and magnetic fields, it could have a disruptive effect on species like salmon, crab, rays, and sharks that rely on electromagnetic fields to navigate and find food. Additionally, the noise coming from buoys, cables or the facilities themselves could confuse or disrupt the feeding habits of animals like whales and dolphins, or become so troubling to some kinds of acoustically sensitive fish that they leave the area. The result would be a “sound barrier” surrounding the facility that animals would avoid, and that could create its own problems: the disappearance of some fish species would deprive animals further up the food chain of their prey, and gray whales that head further to sea to avoid the noise could become a better target for killer whales. Perhaps one of the most surprising species that could be affected by wave farms? Surfers. Extracting energy from waves would make them smaller as they roll in towards shore.

The OSU gathering is not the only one to have flagged concerns about ocean power. A group of policymakers and scientists assembled by the University of Cambridge in 2008 identified “disruption to marine ecosystems by offshore power generation” as one of the top 25 environmental threats to the UK of the future, along with climate engineering, controlling invasive species with engineered viruses, and nanomaterials. This April in New York, the Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference also devoted a panel to discussing environmental questions.

Even those in the ocean power business aren’t quite sure what environmental effects it could have here in California, mostly because none of them are far enough along in the proposal process to have done an environmental impact report yet. Because of the confusion over regulation and licensing, the application process has been ill-defined, to the point, says Johanna Partin, renewable energy manager at SF Environment, a city agency, that “It’s not entirely clear yet where in the process an environmental assessment should take place.”

Yet companies abroad, farther along in the scheme of things, point out that environmental impact assessments are likely to take place at the very end of the process, because they’re so expensive that they’re not worth doing until the project is a sure thing. “With a price tag in excess of 500,000 UK sterling [US $900,200] they are not undertaken until deployment becomes a reality,” says Michael Burrett of Embley Energy, Ltd, a British ocean power company that has developed a floating wave energy converter called the Sperboy, which is now moving into the full-scale prototyping stage. In addition, says Partin, “European companies have federal backing for their work, whereas here in the US there are very few federal dollars for ocean power. Our ocean power is mostly privately funded.”

Environmental questions about the local effects of wave power are likely to remain unanswered until more of the proposals for California projects work their way through the development pipeline—and it’s a very long one. Getting a preliminary permit for a hydrokinetic project entails a three-year period in which a company is allowed to perform a pilot study. During this period the permittee conducts investigations and secures data necessary to determine the feasibility of the proposed project. Wording in the permit specifically prohibits irreparable damage to the site. After the three-year period has passed, the project may be scrapped, enter yet another round of study, or go forward via application for a commercial-sized project license. The company determines the first two options, while the commercial license must be approved by FERC.

So far, preliminary permits for ocean power sites have been granted in ten US states and several others are pending. Here in California, says Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, “There have been six preliminary permits granted by FERC for ocean power projects in the state of California: one for tidal power in the San Francisco Bay [beneath the Golden Gate Bridge], four wave power permits out of Humboldt Bay [near Eureka], and one wave permit off the Mendocino coast [near Fort Bragg]. There have been no commercial project licenses issued in the state of California as of yet.”

Thus far, the only US commercial project license—the step after a preliminary permit—granted by FERC is to the still-disputed project by Finavera at the Makah Bay site in Washington state. A preliminary draft environmental assessment for the Makah Bay project acknowledges that development could create ecological, land use, and aesthetic conflicts, and enumerates a few pre-emptive environmental measures included in the proposal, including making sure that marine life can’t be sucked into the pressurized water flow, and putting attachments on buoys to make sure that seabirds and mammals don’t perch atop them. Yet overall, the review gives the proposed project a thumbs-up, concluding that it would not alter currents, water quality or shoreline erosion, and would not pose a danger to wildlife.

However, FERC’s permitting process is far from the only hoop to be cleared before power-generating devices go in the water. Says San Francisco’s Partin, “For the proposed tidal power project under the Golden Gate Bridge, there are an additional sixteen local, state, and federal permitting agencies that have to be applied to before we can ever start producing commercial power.”

When it comes to projects further out to sea, there may be even more regulators. FERC is currently the federal regulatory body in charge of hydrokinetic power, although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains control over ocean thermal energy conversion (creating energy from the movement of the ocean’s thermal layers), and judging from conference documents, NOAA wants a larger role in other ocean energy projects. Other possible players are the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates offshore wind energy, and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore oil and mineral exploration. FERC’s jurisdiction is limited to inland and near shore activity but Partin explains that there is debate about exactly where “near shore” ends. She says that the permitting procedure now being used for ocean power is based on large-scale inland hydro, which doesn’t address the ocean’s specific issues. In fact, several federal and state regulatory agencies and experts are calling for FERC to come up with a permitting process suited to ocean power.

Despite the regulatory nightmare, private companies are still lining up for a shot at what could become a very lucrative California industry. “Finavera Renewables Inc. and California Wave Energy Partners, LLC have preliminary permits for the waves coming into Humboldt Bay,” says Bedard. Utilities giant Pacific Gas & Electric is in the planning and permitting phases of a research venture called WaveConnect. “This permit is for two sites, one out of Fort Bragg in Mendocino County and the other out of Eureka in Humboldt County, where technology development companies can place their equipment for testing and showcasing and hook into PG&E’s underwater cable that connects to the grid,” Bedard explains. On September 30, PG&E received a $1.2 million grant from the Department of Energy to develop wave energy in the two North Coast counties. The project beneath the Golden Gate Bridge teams the city of San Francisco with PG&E as well as with Oceana, a tidal energy technology development company.

Just how much power can these companies harvest? Well, that’s debatable. A 2005 study conducted by EPRI raised hopes by claiming that an average of 35 megawatts of extractable tidal power flowed under the Golden Gate Bridge, enough to power around 1,300 homes. “Much to everyone’s dismay, a subsequent study conducted by the URS Corporation reported only one and a half megawatts of extractable power,” says Partin. “The large discrepancy had a lot to do with the estimates of what percent of the power could be extracted with no major environmental impacts. The original study was using between ten and fifteen percent where current estimates are closer to five. Another issue is that these estimates are site-specific. We were disappointed in those numbers, but it’s still something that the city wants to be supportive of. If we can be helping to promote ocean power and other renewables around the world, we’re still looking into it as a possible demonstration site.”

With all of the unknowns facing the new industry—the cost, the energy yield, the environmental impact—it’s hard to tell what role ocean power will play in California’s quest for renewable energy. “Is it worth it?” Partin muses. “The answer is, we don’t know yet.”

When I returned to Berkeley, I realized the true scope of what had happened. The mass media did a fine job of covering the triage, but what happens now that the frenzy is over? After the “oil on beach” signs have disappeared and volunteers have gone back to their daily lives, oil is still traveling in our open ocean, up and down our coast, lurking in the substrates of our bays, and polluting the environment for all of its inhabitants.

Humboldt State University ornithology professor Dr. Mark Colwell, who specializes in the ecology of water birds, says that the spill happened at an exceptionally bad time. “Because the spill took place just as many waterfowl and shorebirds reached us from the Arctic and places in between, the scope of the event was greatly magnified,” he says. There are around 800,000 birds that call the habitats of the San Francisco Bay home, and as the winter migrants pour in, those numbers creep steadily past the million mark. “The majority of the surf scoter population winters in the San Francisco Bay, and a large percentage of western grebes as well,” Colwell says. “This spill will drastically affect the population dynamics of those species and several others.”

California has the advantage of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network (OWCN), with its seventeen years of experience, no fewer than 2,000 active volunteers, state funding acquired through a tax levied on oil companies, and 25 wildlife rehabilitation centers, including the International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC) in Fairfield, at which I volunteered. To put this largesse in perspective, the Gulf Coast has about half as much coastline as California, yet has no equivalent organization to administer wildlife care despite 850 to 1,000 oil spills per year. The Oregon and Louisiana coastlines have no response organizations, and Washington has only a small rehab facility with no washing capability. Fortunately, California’s globally recognized team consults and responds to environmental accidents worldwide.

The first day that I volunteered at the IBRRC, state spill expert Cindy Murphy reminded us of oil’s disastrous effects. “Birds are directly poisoned by getting oil on themselves, which mats down their insulative feathers and leads to hypothermia in the fifty to sixty degree waters of the bay,” she said. “When water birds get hypothermia they waddle to shore where they spend their time attempting to preen the oil out of their feathers.” Cold birds on the beach are vulnerable to predators and unable to obtain nourishment—but, as Murphy points out, it’s also why rescuers are able to collect them.

There are other dangers from oil: migrants from the north arrive tired, skinny, and hungry. As they forage on plants, invertebrates, and fish in the muddy substrates, they ingest whatever their food has been exposed to—in this case, bunker fuel. Merely getting some grub means being exposed to toxins, including floating oil in tidal fluctuations that coat sediments with fuel, and weathered tar balls that settle on beaches and the bay floor.

A small percentage of the oil from the Cosco Busan spill was removed from the bay. The rest will degrade slowly or remain sequestered in the marine ecosystem. Most forms of oil degrade through dispersal into miniscule particles, exposure to oxygen, or exposure to the sun’s rays. When bunker fuel is spread out on the water’s surface, the volatile portion will evaporate into the atmosphere while the rest will form tar balls and sink to the floor or wash ashore. It can also become a frothy sludge of water, air, and fuel that travels around until it weathers away or lodges in a protected harbor. The Exxon Valdez spill demonstrated that oil can remain in an environment for decades if it makes its way into an area protected from the elements. The dramatic and rugged beauty of our coastline—the rocky crevices, boulders of all shapes and sizes, gravelly shores, and shellfish beds— creates physical barriers to the breakdown of oil.

In the thick of the rehabilitation effort, IBRRC was a cacophony of wailing birds, high pressure hoses, the clomping of ill-fitting rubber boots, and volunteers trying to communicate over the hubbub. After signing in and watching a quick safety video, new volunteers were whisked off to find a workstation that coincided with their abilities. Whether you worked in the kitchen sterilizing feeding and watering tubes (oil-drenched birds are often dehydrated and starving and must be nourished by tube until they are able to feed themselves), helping with vet checks and stabilization, siphoning holding tanks, or washing birds, egos were checked at the door. Everyone did the jobs they were assigned and then looked around to see if there was anything else they could do.

My duties included washing birds and feeding tubes, tossing herring to clean birds, and filling out pre-release evaluations. On my last day, I spent the better part of the morning assisting Mike Ziccardi, a professor of clinical wildlife health at UC Davis, by wrangling a wily surf scoter so he could give it a physical, a vitamin, and take a few drops of blood.

Ziccardi is a global authority on the long-term health impacts for birds that come into contact with oil. “Oil exposure can affect every system in a bird’s body—neuro, liver, kidneys, blood, reproductive,” he says. In addition, he points out, “Oil can have a large effect on every aspect of the reproductive process, from mating, to the number of eggs laid, to how many make it to hatching, to chick survival, all of the way down to the reproductive success of those offspring. As long as the oil is out there in the environment, you’re going to see decreases in reproductive success.”

While we know that oil is bad for birds, we know less about how well rescued birds fare once they are returned to the wild. Ziccardi estimates that the average survival rate for birds after California spills is between 50 and 75 percent. “We are working to find out more about whether rehabilitation really works for oiled animals, or if it mostly serves to make people feel better,” says spokesperson Sylvia Wright of UC Davis, whose Wildlife Health Center administers the Oiled Wildlife Care Network.

It’s a tricky question: should oiled wildlife be rehabilitated, or would all the work, resources, and money be better used for activities that we know will result in conservation gains? If there had been no rehabilitation in this spill, nearly eighty percent of the surf scoter population in the West could have been exposed to oil contamination, according to the Western Ecological Research Center. IBRRC director Jay Holcomb argues that many rehabbed birds have a very good chance of survival. “We have documented many survival stories, but it is very difficult to follow up on seabirds that live in colonies in remote areas. We receive less than a one percent return rate on banded birds and especially seabirds that live in colonies that sometimes range in the millions,” he says.

IBRRC has also rehabbed and released many shorebirds—dunlin, sanderling, piping plovers, and snowy plovers. Studies of the 32 oiled snowy plovers captured and released after the New Carissa spill on the southern Oregon coast in 1999, showed that the rehabbed birds had normal life spans and breeding activity. Hunters have turned in bands from oiled ducks years after they had been rehabilitated.

To provide a more accurate way to track survival rates, during the rescue efforts that followed the Cosco Busan spill, Ziccardi and his team placed radio tags on sixty surf scoters, sea ducks that were one of the hardest hit species. “We have a pilot doing overflights of the bay two to three times a week, and we hope to be able to follow them at least through March when they leave the area,” he says. “Hopefully the batteries on some of the transmitters, as well as the scoters carrying them, will last an entire season, and we can track them the whole time.” The radio transmitters emit a unique signal if the animal stops moving, presumably at death. Ziccardi says, “With the transmitter we can locate the scoter’s carcass for a necropsy and learn about why it didn’t make it.”

Ziccardi finds it hard to even guesstimate how many birds were affected by the spill. “There are many factors to consider,” he says. “This time of year is tough, and birds are in poor body condition.” He adds that the state’s Department of Fish & Game is building a natural resource damage assessment model. “They gather as much data as they can about the search effort in the field and survival of treated birds and come up with an estimator of how many birds we collected in terms of how many were actually exposed. The correction factor can range anywhere from one in five to one in a hundred. California’s correction factor is pretty low due to the huge effort that we put into collection.”

By Wright’s calculations, 1,084 live birds were collected. Of those, 652 died or were euthanized and 418 were released, either at Tomales Bay or Half Moon Bay. In January, there were still fourteen birds at IBRRC. Volunteers collected another 1,851 dead birds on the bays’ beaches and marshes. Rehab survival is a maze of complicated issues but, according to Ziccardi, the most important factors include immediate availability of facilities, equipment and supplies, and pre-trained personnel.

The trauma will not be limited to the Bay Area. The bay is a stopover for birds on the Pacific Flyway. “This migratory route extends from the northern expanses of Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina,” Humboldt State’s Colwell says. “Few birds travel its entire length, but several species cover a large part of it biannually, in the spring and the fall.” Point Reyes Bird Observatory naturalist and co-founder Rich Stallcup told me that the surf scoters that winter in the bay will travel up the coast this spring on their way back to the Arctic, stopping in Humboldt Bay, Coos Bay, Willapa Bay, and Puget Sound, among other bays and estuaries. Western and Clark’s grebes were also heavily affected, and the majority of the bay’s grebes will spend the breeding season in Clearlake.

Most birds travel roughly the same path, and the situation at stopovers affects the rest of the route: if there is terrific feeding at one stopover, birds arrive well-nourished at their next destination and fertilize the area with nutrients. The toxicity of the current situation will be transferred by winged couriers to other locations and to populations of the Pacific Flyway for many generations to come.

In 1992 Congress mandated that all ships with a fuel capacity of 158,000 gallons or more be fitted with a double hull by 2015. This date was accelerated to no later than 2010 after the Erika incident in 1999 that shed over six million gallons of heavy fuel oil off the coast of France. With a fuel capacity of 1.8 million gallons, the Cosco Busan was far above the minimum for a double hull. This new disaster occurred only two years before the new mandate will take effect—and its impact will last for decades.

Allen provided the missing piece of the puzzle. Everyone at Fish & Game is just too darn busy to talk. Officers who fill the 361 law enforcement positions statewide provide the front line for wildlife—and they also try to pick up the slack generated by 70 positions lost to budget cuts. And that’s just the law enforcement segment. Similar stories abound throughout Fish & Game. There’s way more work than employees can handle.

Fish & Game breaks the state up into seven regions, with regions one, two, and three in Northern California. When I reached Sandy Morey, manager of region two, she told me the web site is out of date and she no longer holds that position, though that was news to her staff. The managers of the other two Northern California regions did not return calls. An unnamed entry-level biologist that I managed to reach called me on his own time in hopes that his story might ring alarm bells.

He expressed his bewilderment that he was only the second biologist to be hired in five years. A hiring freeze was in effect during former governor Gray Davis’ term, and it seems to have continued under Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Because of tight budgets, the biologist says that management scrutinizes each expenditure. “We have to get three bids on any item over $100. If I want a new pair of waders, I have to go to at least three different places for prices, submit that to management, and wait for an answer before I can buy them. In the meantime, I’m working in leaky waders. Valuable time and money are wasted in the process.”

Most of the money that Fish & Game receives is directly tied to the national and state economy. According to Allen, when there is a shortage within the state, California’s budget is augmented by the general fund. “If the economy is doing well, then the department does well,” he says. “The bottom line is money. The funding issue is a yearly rollercoaster that every state department has to ride.”

The main problems with a fluctuating budget relate to planning and administration. Since positions are often cut as a result of funding shortages, there should be a number of open positions, waiting for the boom years. This is not the case. If a position remains vacant for more than six months for any reason (funding shortages, retirement, illness), it is eliminated. And then, say both Allen and the biologist, it’s “darn near impossible” to reinstate those positions. So officers and scientists end up doing mountains of paperwork, either trying to reinstate positions or filling the gaps left by downsized jobs.

The end result is that the department’s mandate—to protect fish and wildlife—suffers. Long-term investigations and stakeouts are hard to manage with such a short staff, and yet that is often the only way to crack operations such as the black market traffic in abalone. “The illegal commercialization of red abalone remains a serious concern,” says Nancy Foley, Fish & Game’s chief of law enforcement. California’s fragile abalone populations declined from a high of more than 5.4 million pounds of commercial abalone in 1959 to a low of 229,000 pounds in 1992. Abalone commerce was banned in 1997. Currently only free diving, where divers hold their breath, is allowed during a limited recreational season with daily and annual limits. Abalone poaching is a very difficult activity to police, and recent crackdowns of black market sales in San Jose and Cupertino demanded the efforts of forty wardens. Allen sums up, “The major problem facing Fish & Game—both for law enforcement and biology—is the ever-increasing population and development of California.”

Every new piece of legislation creates even more duties for already over-extended wardens and biologists. September’s designation of the Central Coast Marine Protected Area is the first of five regions to be protected along the California coast under the Marine Life Protection Act. The lofty aims of this landmark program mean Fish & Game must create a new infrastructure for research and enforcement related to the act.

And meanwhile, the number of game wardens in California is one per 185,000 residents, the lowest in the nation. Says the biologist, “There are no serious advancements being made. It’s basically about keeping your head above water.”

You must be mistaken—your well is spring-fed and you had it tested for mineral and bacterial contamination before you purchased the property. You test again, and this time the sample indicates serious diesel contamination. Further investigation leads to a “fake house” nestled in trees on the other side of the creek. The building looks like a residence, but it’s only home to several hundred marijuana plants. The diesel tank for the system’s generators—necessary to power about forty 1,000-watt lamps, some on eighteen hours a day, some twelve—is leaking gallons of diesel into the soil, the creek, and the groundwater.

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman tells this story about a family in Piercy. It’s becoming more common in the new climate of large-scale illegal grows, indoors and out. The quiet-seeking family listened to generators running day and night, smelled diesel exhaust, and learned more about bad installations than they ever hope to know: The grower used a polymer tank connected to the generators with PVC pipe and wire clamp connectors. Neither the tank nor the pipe and fittings are rated to hold petroleum products. The Hazardous Materials unit ends up at situations like this, and landowners are responsible for the clean-up costs. Assuming there is a landowner. Often grows happen on remote tribal, BLM, or national forest lands, and taxpayers foot the bill.

According to a 2006 report by Dr. Jon B. Gettman of Shepherd University, California leads the nation in indoor and outdoor marijuana production. It is the state’s largest cash crop, generating nearly $14 billion, more than grapes, vegetables, and hay combined. Moreover, production has increased ten-fold in the last 25 years. Much of that production takes place in marginal and remote areas, where ATVs power up hills to tiny outcrops, generators thunder day and night, and water trucks suck water out of tiny creeks.

Humboldt County supervising environmental health specialist Melissa Martel says that diesel bioaccumulates in aquatic species and continues up the food chain. “The coating action of diesel oil can kill algae, insects, fish and birds,” she says. “Studies indicate that 50 percent of fish will die when exposed to about 1 teaspoon of diesel in 25 gallons of water.”

Diesel setups are so prevalent that Martel gives advice on setting up safe fuel conveyance systems. “The growers that we investigate aren’t the peace-loving, organic-growing hippies that you might imagine. We find 100-KW generators with multiple 10,000-gallon diesel storage tanks sitting on the ground, commonly in a creek drainage with good riparian coverage, with makeshift piping, hoses, and no seismic support. Not surprisingly, grows are too frequently discovered by CDF or local volunteer fire [fighters] when the grow and surrounding trees are on fire.”

Mendocino County fisheries biologist Cynthia LeDoux experiences other difficulties related to large grows: her own safety is at risk. On a number of occasions, she has abandoned stream monitoring related to watershed and fisheries restoration and recovery because of large grows. Once she and her colleague were removed from a research site due to a 16,000-plant operation nearby. “Migrants are being helicoptered in by cartels,” she says, referring to Mexican drug cartels that have recently begun growing in Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, and Lake counties. “The California Department of Fish & Game doesn’t deal with many large-scale grows because of the major possibility of violence.” These dangers extend beyond law enforcement and game wardens down to biologists and the general public.

Henry Alden, vice president of Walala Redwoods Inc., agrees that there is “an increasing trend of full-time growers who aren’t local and are more violent.” There have been reports from many parts of Northern California of hikers and equestrians being threatened and even shot at as a result of stumbling upon a pot plantation. Allman says, “These large grows are always well off the beaten path. We were on a helicopter bust of 34,000 plants. There must have been twenty people living at the site who scattered when the helicopter came. They lived there all summer, putting all manner of waste into the soil and water.”

The danger extends to wildlife. Allman describes deer, squirrel, and raccoon carcasses found near grow sites. “The animals are going to go for the greenest thing around come fall. In this case, it’s the foliage of large marijuana plantations.” Growers put out poison or shoot the animals.

The presence of rats creates another problem. “They’ll chew the stalks of the plants and girdle them,” says Allman, so the growers use poison pellets. “The rat ingests the poison and goes to get a drink at a nearby stream,” Allman says. “Rat poison is activated by water. The poison kills the animal close by, and when the body decomposes, 100 percent of the poison is carried directly into the watershed.” Raptors and vultures eating the rats can also be poisoned.

Allman says that a mature pot plant can use up to 15 gallons of water per day: “If there are 100,000 plants in Mendocino County, then come fall time, that’s 1.5 million gallons of water per day.” Often growers suck water directly from creeks; one observer saw ten rafts floating in Outlet Creek, which supports several salmon species. Each raft was equipped with a generator powering a submerged pump connected to camo-painted pipes extending up a hill to an outdoor grow.

The plantations require high levels of nitrogen fertilizer, often bat or seabird guano. Enormous numbers of bags of soil are necessary to fill the pots and grow-bags many growers use; area nurseries sell soil by the truckload. Allman says, “To avoid suspicion, most of these bags don’t make it to the landfill. They stay at the grow site along with whatever other waste materials are produced by plantation caretakers. There should be a California redemption value for soil bags.”

Some operations go beyond the careful placement of grow-bags and pots. “Some bulldoze large areas of land to create a sunny clearing, often at or near the tops of hills,” Allman says. Creeks and rivers below are flooded with silt once winter rains come. LeDoux has witnessed first-hand the devastation this can cause to breeding salmon and other fish. Erosion and contamination combined with fertilizer-laden runoff and water drafting does not bode well for fish species in some of Northern California’s most remote creeks and rivers. “The cumulative effect of illegal marijuana cultivation on fish in these streams is a serious issue,” she says. “We need a think-tank on this whole problem. It needs to be addressed as soon as possible.”

Allman wants to clarify one point: “There is a ser-ious distinction to be made. Many medical [legal] marijuana growers are some of the most responsible citizens around. They buy soil in bulk, use rat traps instead of poison, water with timers and drip systems. They have very little physical impact on the land. I’m not up against legal growers. The ones I’m concerned with are the ones polluting the environment in the name of huge profits. The plants are seasonal, but the environmental damage lasts forever.”

Is it time for a Green-Growers stamp or the think-tank LeDoux proposes? Organic and sustainable growing practices are well suited to this hardy plant. Cartels, diesel generators, and poisons are not. Consumers can demand the greening of the green, and move growers in the direction of environmentally friendly marijuana.

Four series of six speakers talk about their programs, and after each series, the speakers retire to their respective tables in the back, so the audience can descend upon them for more questions and discussion. Major issues are purposefully spread across the four panels, says Ecology Center Executive Director Martin Borque, because this strategy promotes “the cross-fertilization of special interest groups.” As the environmental movement has grown, it has diversified and become specialized. This format desegregates the specialties, reuniting climate change with waste, water, food, land use, and transportation issues.

The first speaker to cause a stir was the City of Berkeley’s climate action coordinator, Timothy Burroughs—nicknamed the “Measure G guy.” Measure G was approved by 81 percent of Berkeley voters in November 2006. It mandates 80 percent decrease from 2000 levels of greenhouse gas emissions in Berkeley by 2050. Burroughs broke down greenhouse gas emitters into broad categories: 50 percent from transportation, 25 percent from home energy consumption, and 25 percent from business and institutional energy consumption. He presented a short list of workable, long-term solutions that everyone can do. Those ideas and others suggested by residents are featured on the web site www.berkeleyclimateaction.org.

Martin Edwards from the Cooperative Grocery (COG) piqued curiosities with his Bay Area-centered food revolution. While food cooperatives are not new in this corner of the world, the concept’s last major bastion, the Co-op, closed in 1988. The COG promises to bring “fresh, local, seasonal, sustainable,” food to neighborhoods ill served by grocery stores. The new cooperative is a stickler: all products must meet at least six of nine criteria that define sustainability. The COG harkens back to earlier forms of cooperative groceries, wherein members were required to work a few hours at the grocery to keep prices low. But COG is also reinventing the co-op for the wired generation, offering online shopping and a blog. The new store on the Berkeley/Emeryville border opens the first week of November.

CNN-dubbed hero and Boing Boing-proclaimed champion of DIY culture James Burgett founded the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, which recycles computers and electronics while providing ex-convicts with jobs (see Spring 2007 for more). Burgett has personally prevented thousands of tons of toxic waste from entering our landfills, but the resource center is in trouble. Due to recent rezoning of the West Berkeley industrial area, he may have to close up shop to make way for car dealerships along the freeway. To learn how you can help the Alameda County Computer Resource Center and the people who are its motherboard, visit its web site at www.accrc.org.

The Bread Workshop provided pastries, and Clark Kerr Dining catered lunch; both are certified Green Businesses. Three Stone Hearth, a “community-supported kitchen,” offered closing snacks. The positive outlook and energy were fortified by dozens of local businesses, organizations, and agencies dedicated to Berkeley’s green vision. The summit’s most stringent critic, organizer Amy Kiser of the Ecology Center, judged the event a success. “This year, many attendees traveled from other cities and states to learn about all the sustainability projects and initiatives happening within Berkeley,” she says. “So much is possible within a single municipality! It’s gratifying to export our best ideas.”