Twenty or so years ago Mom and Dad sorted through boxes of old family photos and scanned about a hundred of them, added labels, and put them on a cd for me. This is one of my favorites. It was taken in front of their living quarters on Fort Richardson in Anchorage. where Dad served for two years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Since it was peacetime (between the Korean and Vietnam Wars) Mom was able to go with him.
Last year I wrote this chronicle of that piece of our family history, and it was published in a military anthology titled Holes in Our Hearts. It was a fun project (I hope Dad enjoyed it as much as I did) and gave me an excuse to ask him lots questions about life in Alaska in the 50s. It also spurred us on to plan a trip north.
Dad, Dave, and I are leaving for Anchorage tomorrow morning. We’ll spend a week traveling to Denali National Park, Fairbanks, and Tok where Dad worked for two summers during college for the Alaska Road Commission.
On our return trip to Anchorage, we’ll stop for a couple of days in the town of Valdez on Prince William Sound.
I hope to see some wildlife along the way, so stay tuned.
My first visit this year to the Albuquerque BioPark was a few weeks ago on a sunny April Saturday. Lots of other folks had the same idea so I couldn’t stand and watch the resident Mexican wolves as long as I would have liked. I did get this short video before I had to give up my viewing spot to another visitor.
While taking photos a little girl next to me asked, “What’s he doing?” but she was not satisfied with my response, “Oh, just walking around.” She thought about it a minute and came up with a more satisfactory answer, “He’s looking for prey.”
Although it was a little early for pups, I was hoping to get an idea of whether or not there might be a new litter at the zoo this spring. What I saw was three adult wolves in the public display.
In an email exchange with Lynn Tupa, the BioPark manager, I learned that Archer (born at the zoo in 2019) and two females were the wolves I saw. Four sibling wolves are also at the zoo but are off-exhibit and are not visible to the public. No breeding was recommended for any of these wolves so no pups this year. To prevent unintended pregnancy, female wolves are implanted with birth control.
A few days after my visit, the ABQ BioPark issued this press release which included exciting news for the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program–a new large, off-exhibit habitat will be built, construction starting this spring. Once complete it will enable the BioPark to increase its efforts in the wolf surrogacy program. Surrogacy is a big part of the recovery effort and focuses on breeding Mexican wolves in captivity and placing pups into the dens of wild wolves to be raised along with their own pups.
The most recent survey of Mexican wolves living in the wild indicated a population of 257 wolves.
Great news for Nancy Charles-Parker and Ferol Kolons, cited for giving water and food to cats at Queens’ Marketplace on April 18th after a feeding ban had been put in place to protect endangered nēnē that had discovered the cats’ feeding stations.
Charles-Parker and Kolons were represented pro bono by their attorney, Susan Regeimbal, who agreed with Deputy Prosecutor Matthew Woodward when he moved to dismiss the case. He was quoted as saying “. . . the vast majority of cats have been relocated.”
Funds had been raised for both women’s legal defense by Kohala Animal Relocation and Education Services (KARES) and the founder of the organization, Debbie Cravatta, quoted in the article, stated “that money will go to animal rescue, pet food for shelters, spay neuter, veterinary services for stray animals, etc.”
That is good news for cats, but it doesn’t solve the problem of the Queens’ Marketplace cats. Although a West Hawaii Today article last week said that 64 cats had been adopted, the two rescue groups—AAO and HAKA—doing lots of hard work to capture, spay/neuter, vaccinate, and rehome the felines estimated there were still about 100 remaining. One hundred cats that aren’t getting food or water.
The rescue groups have said they will begin trapping again once they have more adopters lined up.
Thanks to West Hawaii Today for continuing to report on this story as it develops.
Local television station KITV 4 Island News broadcast the story linked below back in May. It takes a look at a group of volunteers caring for a colony of cats in Hilo, on the other side of the Big Island.
According to this story 64 cats have been captured at Queens’ Marketplace. They were spayed/neutered and vaccinated before going to adopters who will kennel the cats for a period of time until the felines become used to their new surroundings. Two rescue groups worked together on this first phase, Aloha Animal Oasis (AAO) and Hawaii Animal Kuleana Alliance (HAKA), and will resume trapping as they find homes for the cats. These groups need volunteers, donations, and of course, adopters!
This letter to the editor published yesterday June 7, 2023. Mr. Chraminski volunteers with AdvoCATS so he has firsthand experience with feeding and caring for a colony of cats.
Cat issue’ spreads
The feral cat issue has reached Keauhou Shopping Center area.
The AdvoCATS group has been leading cat feeders as part of their catch/neuter/ release program, and in the six years I have been a feeder, the population has declined — except not as fast as it should due to irresponsible cat owners dumping cats there.
Now Kamehameha Schools, the property owner, and mall management are making it a trespassing crime to continue feeding the cats.
Their solution is that now the 30 or so cats will wander the whole mall, starving, looking for handouts, and management will then scrape up the carcasses, I guess.
Where is all the animal-control money just allocated going, and why are they not leading to solutions including for cats, mongooses, pigs and goats that run feral all over town now?
Even trapping and euthanizing is more humane than starvation.
Below is an unpublished letter to the editor that I submitted to West Hawaii Today on May 15th. Note: I don’t know why my letter wasn’t published but I have noticed that the paper doesn’t print many letters from readers. I could have posted the text of my letter it in the comment section of one of the stories listed below but I preferred to publish it here along with links to all of the recent stories.
My first visit to Waikoloa Beach Resort (WBR) was in the early 2000s. Queens’ Marketplace was still on the drawing board and the lone nēnē I saw lived behind glass at the Hilton. Snorkelers, golfers, and stargazers all found something to love. And where we go, the cats follow.
Charmed by the loveliness of the Kohala Coast my husband and I became frequent visitors. I’m a landlubber at heart so I spent my time not on the beach but behind it visiting a colony of cats, talking to volunteers who took care of them. I also looked, in vain, for Hawaiian stilts, coots, and ducks, the native water birds that had once lived in and around the nearby fish and anchialine ponds. None of those endangered birds were found at WBR when the 1985 environmental impact study was drafted. The study mentioned the observation of one feral cat.
On my visits over the last couple of years I began to notice a few nēnē. It was a surprise since Hawai’i’s state bird had not been mentioned in the environmental impact study, but it was good to see that they were recovering, attracted not to the natural habitat but to grassy lawns and other landscaping at hotels and golf courses.
After my early April visit, the nēnē discovery of cat food in the Queen’s Marketplace parking lot made the news. The conflict that ensued resulted in a feeding ban. Volunteers are now working to capture and rehome cats.
I am concerned about the wellbeing and safety of the nēnē but I am haunted by the thought of starving cats that are also being denied water. Isn’t there a better way for us to resolve a situation that was created when we humans began to work and play here?
Paula Nixon Santa Fe, NM
Here are links to the four articles published by West Hawaii Today between April 25th and May 24th. The first three are what prompted my letter. The stories are behind a paywall but by signing up for a free digital subscription I think you can read up to seven articles a month.
Briefly, the issue is that a group of free-roaming cats lives behind Queens’ Marketplace in WBR. ABay Kitties is a nonprofit group that was providing food and water in the parking lot for the felines. Sometime in the last few weeks Hawai’i’s state bird called the nēnē (pronounced nay-nay) discovered the cat food and began to frequent the area putting them at risk of harmful encounters with humans and cats. The nēnē is listed as an endangered species by Hawai’i’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) but has been downlisted from endangered to threatened by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
On the basis of the protected status of the nēnē, the DLNR has outlawed any feeding of the cats behind Queens’ Marketplace. ABay Kitties along with another nonprofit group, Hawaii Aloha Animal Oasis is working to trap and find homes for as many of the cats as possible.
Two women were cited in mid-April for setting out cat food after DLNR ordered the removal of feeding stations in the parking lot at Queen’s Marketplace. Their names were released in the May 24th story above. They are due in court on June 13th.
I’ll post an update when new information becomes available.
This tiny piñon tree is about 10 inches tall with new shoots that are 3 inches long! It sits downhill from a couple of mature piñons, one of which was our first Christmas tree after we moved into our house in 2000.
We had a good winter this year with lots of snow in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Most of our piñon and juniper trees look healthy and have new growth. But the outlook is still dire. Drought and rising temperatures are making these trees vulnerable along with another threat that Sara Van Note wrote about in this article Unraveling the Plight of the Pinyon Jay. According to Van Note, “Pinyon jays and piñon pines are wholly interdependent–the piñon nuts provide essential sustenance for the bird, and the jay offers critical seed dispersal for the tree.”
In the 28 years I have lived here I have rarely seen a pinyon jay. Much more common is the squawky Woodhouse’s scrub jay. He loudly announces his arrival at the birdfeeder and takes over the backyard. My guess is that it was one of these jays who cached a piñon nut and forgot to come back for it.
Here’s hoping it will be a good year for piñon nuts and my local scrub-jays. I don’t see as many of them as I used to but maybe a bumper crop of nuts will bring them around.
For now, I’ll be watching this sprout and giving it a little extra water over the summer months.
It needed no pity, but just a crumb, something to hop toward. —Gary Whitehead
Yesterday morning I spotted a rabbit outside my kitchen window. It was dragging its right rear leg, bent at an odd angle–maybe grazed by a car or nipped by a coyote. One more worry.
It reminded me of this poem about a bird missing a leg. Turns out I’m not the only one who frets about a scrub jay with a deformed beak or a mule deer with a big hole in its ear.
I know that rabbit is just fine without my help, but after breakfast I took a wrinkled Newtown pippin from the fridge, left over from last year’s farmers market, and placed it where I had seen the rabbit, in view of my makeshift desk, the kitchen table, and now I’m waiting.
It took longer than usual, at least in part because of the government shutdown in December and January, but the population number for 2018 was finally released in early April . The news was good–at least 131 Mexican wolves are living in the wild in the U.S. That’s 17 more wolves than a year ago.
Photo by Paula Nixon
1/23/18
But, wolf deaths were also up–21 in 2018 versus 12 in 2017. One wolf that did not survive the year was M1676, pictured above. My story about M1676’s journey was published here by Earth Island.
In the end I left my binoculars and field guide at home. The trip was a short one for Dave to attend a convention in Orlando where we stayed on International Drive (I-Drive)—an eleven-mile strip of chain restaurants, outlet malls, and amusement parks—not an obvious place to look for nature.
April was a hectic travel month with one day between west and east coast trips, so I only had time for a quick glance at a map before we repacked our suitcases and ran for a flight to Florida. A wildlife refuge had caught my eye, but it wasn’t until my first morning in Orlando that I got a chance to check it out more closely.
Dusky Seaside Sparrow by John James Audubon
St. Johns Refuge is located 45 miles east of the city, established in 1971 along the St. Johns River to protect the habitat of the endangered dusky seaside sparrow. The little songbird has since been declared extinct. The refuge is maintained today for several other threatened and endangered species but is closed to the public.
On my second day I was drinking a cup of coffee at a sidewalk table when I noticed the ducks. Mallards—youngsters, I think. They were foraging in the planter between I-Drive and the parking lot. Two of them got into a scrap just before one of the females waddled into the parking lot to cross over to another landscaped area, no different from the first: crape myrtles, honeysuckle, monkey grass. I held my breath as she dawdled, crossing the driveway leading to the Starbuck’s drive-thru. I feared a caffeine-deprived, late-to-work commuter would come wheeling in and run over her, but she made it. The others were wise enough to fly across the drive into the Walgreen’s flower bed. When I left a group of noisy crows had gathered on the roof to lecture the invading ducks.
Photo Credit: Paula Nixon
A few hours later at a bustling outdoor mall this guy with the crazy hairdo caught my eye. It took me a moment to figure out he was a fledging—a starling, I think. I stopped and watched from a distance as his mom encouraged him and he made a short clumsy flight up to an awning. Shoppers hurried through the plaza never giving the birds a second glance. When Mom disappeared the youngster was stuck, couldn’t remember how to get his wings moving. I forced myself to leave, certain she was nearby and would soon return to continue his flying lessons.
And that was the highlight of my trip to Orlando—not bad for never straying more than a few blocks off of I-Drive!
To Eat Just Once: Remembering a Ranger Lecture at Yellowstone National Park For Mel
After they kill, the wolves eat just once.
The pack, all tooth and jaw, with ribcages that jut
like opened Texas toothpick knives, feasts.
Their gray bellies fill and sag with new meat.
They used to eat twice or even three times
from downed prey, a straggling old deer or a slow fawn—
their dead eyes, like tumbled obsidian, still catching light—
the body dragged into an old tree
or quickly buried and left for later.
However, ranchers started poisoning
hidden carcasses so that at the second
meal, the wolves, bloated with pain,
would die. Some, however, did live
and taught the others to eat just once
and leave like a swift wind,
a scattered gray line galloping into night.
—Kevin Rabas Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano
I am ending where I started, at the beginning of April, with a poem about wolves. I have never met Kevin Rabas, but he was kind enough to allow me to reprint the full text of his poem. In this interview with KCUR 89.3 he offered three tips for writers.
Thank you Kevin and congratulations on being named the next Poet Laureate of Kansas!
