Western Fence Lizards (Blue Bellies) -- Lyme Disease Control in Ticks ???

In 1998, a pioneering study led by UC Berkeley entomologist Robert Lane found that a protein in the Western fence lizard’s blood killed Borrelia bacteria, and as a result, Lyme-infected ticks that feed on the lizard’s blood are cleansed of the disease-causing pathogen.

Image - John Lindsey

Image - John Lindsey

As a kid I was always went nuts about catching both lizards and snakes. But lizards more often and different kinds of lizards. Amazing how even today as you look at the photo above, little boys are still attracted with catching and holding lizards. Sadly the modern world's time wasting electronic devices has captured the attention of most kids and generally being outdoors is in many cases not an option. Of course the most common lizard where I come from is the Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis). They are everywhere. We also called them Blue Bellies because of the deep pretty blue on their under bellies. But back in 2011 researchers discovered something even I never knew about the abundantly common Western Fence Lizard. They play an ecological role in hosting ticks at a small juvenile stage of the tick's life cycle. And ticks that feed off Western Fence Lizard blood acquire a protein which destroys the Borrelia bacteria which causes Lyme Disease. Here are some quotes from the article and I'll provide a link so you can read the entire research report.

"Western fence lizard’s blood killed Borrelia bacteria, and as a result, Lyme-infected ticks that feed on the lizard’s blood are cleansed of the disease-causing pathogen. Moreover, research has found that up to 90 percent of the juvenile ticks in this species feed on the Western fence lizard, which is prevalent throughout California and neighboring states."  

"The lizard is thus often credited for the relatively low incidence of Lyme disease in the Western United States. The new UC Berkeley-led study put that assumption to the test experimentally."

Photo - Gary Nafis

Interestingly, the researchers found that the Lizards accommodate ticks with a specialized fold in their neck called a “mite pocket.” Wow, I never knew that when I was a kid in the 60s and never knew to look for any ticks period. But remember, we're not talking about adult ticks, these are tinier ticks in the infancy stage of life known as nymphal stage. So in a nutshell, in 4 or 5 plots where those lizards were already being studied, many were removed from an area and substitute animals like woodrats and pocket mice were checked to see if they became the new host for the juvenile ticks.

"The researchers found that in plots where the lizards had been removed, ticks turned to the female woodrat as their next favorite host. On average, each female woodrat got an extra five ticks for company when the lizards disappeared.  However, the researchers found that 95 percent of the ticks that no longer had lizard blood to feast on failed to latch on to another host. 

“One of the goals of our study is to tease apart the role these lizards play in Lyme disease ecology,” says Swei, who is now a post-doctoral associate at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York. “It was assumed that these lizards played an important role in reducing Lyme disease risk. Our study shows that it’s more complicated than that.”  

Notwithstanding the results in this new study, Lane pointed out that the Western fence lizard are key to keeping infection rates down among adult ticks. “This study focused only on the risk from juvenile ticks, specifically those in the nymphal stage,” he said. “The earlier finding that adult ticks have lower infection rates because they feed predominantly on the Western fence lizard at the nymphal stage still holds.”  

“In attempting to decrease infectious disease risk, we need to remember the law of unexpected consequences,” said Sam Scheiner, program director in the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research through the joint NSF-NIH (National Institutes of Health) Ecology of Infectious Diseases Program. “This study demonstrates the complexity of infectious diseases.”

(Berkeley News)

Lizards in your yard are a really good thing

Image - Orange County Register

There was a great article in the Orange County Register in 2010 about the benefits of having various Lizard species living as residents within your garden and landscape. Amazing photo above where a Western Fence Lizard is gulping down a Jerusalem Cricket, which frankly to me looking at one up close, is one of the most sinister looking bugs I've never wanted to touch. Wicked looking jaw and mouth parts and stickery claws which clasp onto anything tightly. Hence I've always refused to touch one. But look at that lizard. No apparent fear there. Here's parts of the article:

"Settle down everybody. A backyard lizard invasion has not begun. OK, maybe it has, but no reason to panic. Alligator lizards, Western Fence lizards and even the occasional side-blotched lizard are feasting on summer bugs and living large reptilian lives in our residential back yards. Yay for lizards!" 

“Lizards are not poisonous, harmful or anything other than interesting,” said Steve Bennett, vector ecologist at Orange County Vector Control. “In fact, during the mating season it is fun to watch the males doing their push-ups to show off, or squabbling over girlfriends.”  

Lizards are considered beneficial companions consuming more than their share of crickets, cockroaches, ants, beetles and sometimes flies if they can catch them.  But most lizards are usually more prey than predator. “In the wild they don’t live more than a year or two,” Bennett said. “In captivity they can live much longer.”  

Cats, birds, even black widows will make a meal out of a lizard, especially when the lizards are young and small. To the gardener the lizard is a constant companion, sitting on rocks, scurrying under shrubs, getting out of the way when the garden hose goes on. Or not. Lizards don’t seem to mind the occasional squirt from the hose, perhaps because like other reptiles, lizards can’t control their body temperature. A cool sprinkle in August probably feels good.

(Orange County Register)

But getting back to these ticks. The adult ticks dangle on the tips of grass and other low-lying vegetation like shrubs in a host-seeking posture called “questing.” In this position, they spread their two front clawed limbs wide open and wait patiently for hours, or even days, for unsuspecting critter to brush by so they can dig their metal-like mouth parts into their host and gorge themselves on it's blood. Contrary to what some people may believe, ticks don’t jump or fly. And when it comes to keeping an eye out for ticks, at least the adult ticks can easily be seen, unlike ticks in the nymph or juvenile life stage, when the tick is about the size of a poppy seed and difficult to spot. Juveniles usually do not climb grass or shrubs while host-seeking. Instead, they lurk closer to the ground on top of leaf litter on the forest floor, a perfect location to attach to lizards. In fact, research has shown about 90 percent of hosts for tick nymphs are reptiles rather than small mammals or birds. This is truly amazing, because I never knew this before and would never have suspected lizards all this time offered such an amazing checks & balances service in the natural world.

BlueJay Barrens Blog: Steve Willson & Lone Star Ticks

Image - Steve Willson - May 2022

This article by Steve Willson came out May 3rd 2022. Dealing with the Lone Star Ticks and what they look like when first hatched from eggs. Extremely tiny and for most people would go unnoticed unless you were very sensitive.

https://bluejaybarrens.blogspot.com/2022/05/lone-star-ticks.html

Some Other Interesting Facts About Lyme Disease & Ticks (Take with a grain of Salt)

Opossums: Where Lyme disease goes to die

Where foxes thrive, Lyme disease doesn’t

PoughKeepsie Journal

Taal Levi, a researcher at Cary Institute

The interesting thing here is Coyotes will kill foxes, not for food, but as a competing predator. Where that happens there is a rise in Lyme disease because the Fox (Red & Grey) are small mammal (mice, rats, etc) predators which are often carriers & spreaders of the disease. While I don't like those Coyote hunting contests, there is nevertheless an incredible out of control overpopulation of Coyotes. Removal of Wolves a century ago brought this on. 

Poughkeepsie Journal Archive: Where foxes thrive, Lyme disease doesn't

"Taal Levi, a researcher at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, talks about Lyme disease and how ecology — specifically, the interplay between wildlife species — affects the spread of infectious disease. Mice are especially good carriers of Lyme disease because their immune systems don't fight off the pathogen and they don't groom ticks off their bodies. (unlike opossums that remove as much as 96 percent). Foxes are highly effective at killing mice - statistical data shows that as fox populations go down, the incidence of Lyme goes up."

Great Vimeo Video: Where foxes thrive, Lyme disease doesn’t

Image - Matthew Twombly (NPR)

Clearly there are literally millions of things about our planet's natural world that scientists flat out do not understand. What possitive role do ticks play in Nature ? Yeah I know, Ticks ? There are countless synthetics that industrial science has invented to rid us of what appear to be pests, without considering what role humans may have played in ecosystem imbalance and whether it could be reversed. Our entire human experience of life is one of either cooperation or competition with all the other living things on Earth. But when humans alter their environment, they also alter the behaviour of other living things. Take for example the Zika Virus & the mosquito, Aedes aegypti. Wasn't always a pest and in fact most mosquitoes weren't until people altered environments they shouldn't have. In fact scientists now know that mosquitoes didn't always attack or bother humans, rather the mosquito's specific targets were almost exclusively animals and even then they played a role in ecosystem management. But something changed and humans were the cause of that change. The reality is that all such parasites and aggressor pests grew out of a system that was originally designed to be completely sustainably cooperative but was suddenly transformed and turned into a competitive disarray.

Fabricating Unscientific Fables for Corporate Business Interests

Throughout history people have killed whatever annoyed or inconvenienced them, even other humans. Hence the practices of killing what we don't like or cause us to lose profit has only escalated with the invention of synthetic science-based pesticides. The ignorance on how nature really works became further distorted when a scientific label was attached to many living things about 150 years ago when something called "Argument from Poor Design" was fabricated to prop up a new worldview and given as a gift to mankind by Charles Darwin. Darwin never used science for all his examples of poor design, but rather he employed metaphysical and faith-based religious concepts to justify the new worldview. I get the idea of being turned off to much of Christendom's track record, etc, I do I get it. But to trash nature to justify an argument for another worldview ??? 😕

 

“Folks who ain’t got ideas of their own should be mighty careful whose they borrow…”

Old Cowboy Saying 

No truer words than that. Look throughout history at all the supposedly intellectual ideas and philosophies mandated as truth by this world's elites which later turned out to be purely based on gross human ignorance and incompetent understanding of how they think Nature really works and we've all been paying a high price ever since as a result. 

More Reading References on the Subject

Murray Suuer M.D. - "Lyme Disease and Lizards Los Angeles"

Before & After Photos: What do you see as different ???

This isn't Rocket Science. Yet almost everyone misses the obvious! 😕 If it was a Rattlesnake, you'd be dead. 😲

Image - Steve Schmollinger (1973)

This was posted on a Facebook page by a user in the group, Abandoned Rails. The member, Jon Severson, provided tis commentary:

"At the east side of Pipestone Pass, Montana the Milwaukee Road had a passing track and small yard named "Donald". East-west meets were common here and since US Hwy 12 crossed over the Continental Divide at this location as well photo opportunities were easily to achieve. In August of 1973 Steve Schmollinger captured a tremendous photo of the Butte helpers (Boxcabs) that have just cut-off from the eastbound train they have assisted over the pass. A track inspector follows the eastbound on the main to eliminate any fires started by sparks from her locomotives before they get out of hand. Forty-four years later nothing remains of the tracks, trains or railroaders at Donald. Abandoned in March of 1980 the Milwaukee fled its Western Extension in the hopes of returning to its Midwestern roots and surviving. Aquired by the Soo Line, the Milwaukee and its once strong engineered route to the Pacific has faded away among the rocks and pine trees."

Yup, sure enough that was interesting. No argument that it now looks different with no railroad tracks, trains and their crews. But what else can you see that's different ? In the Abandoned Rails group, not one person picked up on the dangerous Mojave Green Rattler in the photograph. Okay okay, there's not really a Rattlesnake, but something equally as dangerous and life threatening. Anybody else notice the dead and dying forest ? 😟

Image - Jon Severson (May 2017)

I'm seeing numerous before (historical) and after (present) photos from almost every physical location on the planet irrespective of the subject matter being discussed and what I notice first is the change in the vegetation health in the wild. For most folks this sad anomaly goes right over their heads. Why ??? Because apparently these days debating various versions of failed political ideologies of one over another on Social Media sites, watching who wins the World Cup or Super Bowl, or any other worthless time wasting endeavour etc appears to hold more importance to one's short attention span these days than if there will ever be a tomorrow. In other words "they take no note" of the world around them and where it's really headed. And many of the worst offenders are those who claim to be a champion of Nature. Yet, as we see in other photos like the one below, on a small scale some positive change for restoration is possible. Especially in one's own urban landscape. Unfortunately at the present time this can only be done on a small scale. Oh yes, such small scale activities get a lot of P.R. as success stories, but generally these projects are milked for all their donations drive worth. The idea of something on a grander global scale is often nothing more than a fantasy dream. In other words, don't hold your breathe for real world viable change.

Before & After Image - CEEweb for Biodiversity

The main failure of the eco-organizations who claim they just want to change the environment for the better is that they see the world through the corrective lenses of multiple materialistic fixes. You know, sign the petition, vote for my guy, protest & occupy a specific location for media attention, claim to have the moral high ground even when you're miles away from it and completely ignore the real causes of environmental ruin. Gain what appears to be massive amounts of followers through social media sites, advertise for more followers to join your organization, even if the majority of followers are fake (appearances are everything), then keep those followers stirred up and angry with misinformation as you beg for more and more donations to fight the good fight. There is a text below taken from 2 Timothy 3:1-5 which highlights with glaring detail the true causes behind environmental degradation. You can verify the truthfulness of those words as you flick on the television and watch any brand of nightly news. Yup, it's just that simple. As long as humans display such traits globally, the Earth will never heal. And the amazingly no one group is targeted over another as to fault. Both the Secular (not open to any agreement) and Religious (having a form of godliness, but proving false to it's power) elements which make up mankind bare major bloodguilt responsibility for global environmental ruin.

"But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but proving false to it's power; and from these turn away."

Think and look harder the next time somebody posts before and after photos  😟

Northern Arizona University: Mycorrhizal Fungi boost nutritional value up the Food Chain

Plants, and bacteria, and fungi! Oh My!

Image - Wanderlust Travel

Nancy Johnson collecting soil samples in the Serengeti

Nancy Johnson, an Northern Arizona University ecology professor, contributed field samples to a global-scale study of the biogeography of Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, also known as AM fungi. Johnson is listed as an international co-author on the paper. These fungi support 80 percent of plant species, including crops, by capturing nutrients from soil. Johnson said understanding how different species of AM fungi are distributed around the globe is important because of the vital roles they play in the ecosystem. These researchers gathered 1,014 fungi samples from six continents, and what they discovered was surprising. “Our study suggests that most species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are found all over the world, which is rather unusual among organisms,” Johnson said. “The question is, how do they get everywhere?”

Abstract: The global biogeography of microorganisms remains largely unknown, in contrast to the well-studied diversity patterns of macroorganisms. We used arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus DNA from 1014 plant-root samples collected worldwide to determine the global distribution of these plant symbionts. We found that AM fungal communities reflected local environmental conditions and the spatial distance between sites. However, despite AM fungi apparently possessing limited dispersal ability, we found 93% of taxa on multiple continents and 34% on all six continents surveyed. This contrasts with the high spatial turnover of other fungal taxa and with the endemism displayed by plants at the global scale. We suggest that the biogeography of AM fungi is driven by unexpectedly efficient dispersal, probably via both abiotic and biotic vectors, including humans.

WCS WILDLIFE PICS OF 2017

The complex Serengeti ecosystem, which spans 12,000 square miles extending from northern Tanzania into southwestern Kenya, is home to millions of animals, including 70 species of large mammals. It is a hotspot for mammal diversity—including herbivores such as wildebeest, zebra and gazelles that graze on grasses and trees, as well as lions, crocodiles, leopards and hyenas that survive by preying on the grazing herbivores.  

A (New Study) published in the Journal of Ecology by a team of Northern Arizona University researchers shows the food web supporting this remarkable variety of wildlife would appear very different without the nutrients supplied by arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. The interdisciplinary study, authored by graduate students in NAU’s School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability  —Bo Stevens, Jeffrey Propster, Andrew Abraham and Chase Ridenour—along with assistant professor of informatics, computing, and cyber systems Christopher Doughty and Regents’ Professor of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability Nancy Johnson, quantifies the importance of AM fungi in the soil of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

Illustration by Victor Leshyk

Artist’s depiction of the Serengeti food web with normal AM (left)
 and a hypothetical food web without nutrient inputs from
 these important symbioses (right).

AM fungi, a type of mycorrhizal fungi, penetrate the roots of grasses and other plants native to the Serengeti. Considered natural biofertilizers, AM fungi provide their host plants with water, nutrients and pathogen protection in exchange for photosynthesis. The symbiotic relationship between AM fungi and plants, which has evolved for millions of years, is critical for the uptake of essential plant nutrients such as phosphorus. In turn, the nutritional quality of the plains’ grasses and trees influences the biomass of the herbivores and their predators.  

By creating an ecosystem simulation that enabled the researchers to measure the biomass of AM fungi across a natural soil fertility gradient and estimate the contribution of mycorrhizal symbioses to the biomass of all plants and animals in the Serengeti, the researchers were able to estimate the animal biomass that results from phosphorus supplied to plants through AM fungi.  

This study shows the contribution of mycorrhizal symbioses to the growth and nutritional quality of grasses cascades through the biomass of large grazing mammals and their predators. Although AM fungi amount to less than 1 percent of the overall living biomass in the Serengeti, their predicted nutrient inputs into the food web doubled animal biomass.  

“It’s really surprising that a small group of microbes can have such a large impact on an entire ecosystem,” said Stevens, lead author of the study. “We always knew that mycorrhizal fungi were important for grass nutrition in the Serengeti. Now we can say how important they are for the nutrition of animals up the food chain, from zebras to lions.”

(Source)

"The answer my friend is isn't blowing in the wind"

Image - Roeselien Raimond

Image - Earthcrew Inc

The main subject of this research was certainly mycorrhizal fungi, but not the type that produces truffle or mushroom formation that we are used to seeing. This fungi was endo-mycorrhizal fungi which produce large propagules which don't necessarily move through soil pores as easily as the tinier microscopic spore of the ecto-mycorrhizal truffle which can explode with a cloud of brown powder we see in real life. This spore dust can even travel for miles and land in numerous places along the way. These spores are so tiny that they can move and be washed downward into the soil during rain storms where roots can make contact and colonize. But not the propagules of endo-mycorrhizal. Personally I always thought their movement was facilitated by animals like pocket gophers, maybe various insects etc. But this research was still interesting given that we accept endemic species (plants, animals, birds, fish, etc) around the globe to specific geographic locations, but many of these same identical endo-mycorrhizal species apparently are everywhere around the globe. How did that happen ??? 😲 Given that they don't exactly blow in the wind like all the exploding puffball ecto-mycorrhizal spores, how do they move and travel ??? Maybe it's the soil scientists doing it with their field trip sample collections 😄

Take this species of endo-mycorrhizae in the photo at left here is found in most popular commercial Mycorrhizal inoculent blends offered by many companies. Glomus deserticola fungi are found everywhere around the globe, even Siberia. I assume it was given the name because it was first recorded and given the name from it's first documented location in the southwest. It's an important fungal species, because they are found in nearly all terrestrial habitats, including arable land, deserts, grasslands, temperate, boreal, tropical forests, and tundras. Anyway the mode of movement is still very intriguing and fascinating. Next time you hear someone recite an old chant of, "You don't need to inoculate because the spores are just everywhere out there in the air," don't believe them. Inoculate anyway. 😉 Now, let's consider another important possibility of spore travel that the researchers mentioned above left out.

NASA Earth Observatory: "Smoke's Surprising Secret"

credit: US Air Force photo

 Forrest Mims II is a very well known, "Citizen Scientist," who had no formal academic training in science. And yet Forrest Mims has had a successful career as a science author, researcher, lecturer and syndicated columnist. His series of electronics books sold over 7 million copies and he is widely regarded as one of the world's most prolific citizen scientists. He does scientific studies in many fields using instruments he designs and makes and he has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, often with professional scientists as co-authors. Much of his research deals with ecology and environmental science. A simple instrument he developed to measure the ozone layer earned him a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1993. In December 2008 Discover named Mims one of the "50 Best Brains in Science." But's it's Forrest Mims' daughter who steals the show here with her simple experiment on how fungal spores can travel great distances which is related to the subject I'm posting here. It's ashame the researchers never referenced this important experiment published by NASA.

(Image by Mark Gray, GSFC)

(Photograph by Forrest M. Mims III)

Sarah Mims, a teenager from Seguin, Texas, studied how smoke and dust that arrived over her hometown from thousands of miles away from Mexico's. By her senior year in high school, she had already made some surprising discoveries. This Satellite image from the days Mims conducted her experiments revealed smoke from fires in Central America flowing over the Gulf of Mexico and into the Texas sky. Blue-gray smoke stretches from the bottom center of the image toward Texas at the upper left. The bright region extending towards the top of the image from the Yucatan Peninsula is the sun glinting off the ocean’s surface. This image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. 

(Digital Scans by Sarah A. Mims)

Sarah Mims exposed Petrifilms that you see in the photo above outside of her Texas home in April and May of 2002. She was expecting to find micro-organisms carried by Asian dust. Instead, colonies of bacteria and mold (right) grew on days when the air was filled with smoke, not dust. Under a microscope Sarah Mims found fungal spores along with chunks of black carbon or the individual particles of smoke. Once she knew the micro-organisms were associated with smoke, not dust, she needed to find their source and that's wheere NASA's satellite images helped pinpoint the source of the smoke. So this is yet another travel means of microbes globally. How endomycorrhizal propagules reach the soil surface from underground is another mystery. Still, this is interesting.

(Source: Earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeSecret)

Earlier Relevant References on the same subject from the Northern Arizona University

(Image courtesy Victor O. Leshyk)

"Ectomycorrhizal fungi (the mushrooms connected to the roots of the tree) increase the uptake of nitrogen by the plant, even when that nutrient is scarce in soils. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (associated with the grass roots on the left) do not provide that advantage to their host."

NAU’s Hungate co-authors research report published in ‘Science’

Credit: mdd/Shutterstock

Study of Serengeti soil may provide model for increasing productivity of croplands in U.S. (2011)

Mycorrhizal Fungal Blend Producing companies

Mycorrhizal Applications Inc

Image - Valent

Valent: MycoApply® EndoPrimeTM

Burn Baby Burn - Fire Ecologist Celebrate Fire Season

"Life goes on though, and fires are not unnatural"

Margarethe Brummermann

Image - CNN

Annimated Graph - USA Today

The quote at the top of the post is from Margarethe Brummermann, Biologist from Dortmund Germany who resides in the Tucson area. She had written a post about Mount Lemmon which towers above Tucson to the north. I made a comment on her page about how my wife and I had driven up to Mount Lemmon last year May 2016 and how sad we were to see so much of the forest destroyed by wildfires. I made mentioned how I had first visited Mount Lemmon back in the late 1970s and there was hardly ever a scene where wildfire had damage anything. There was always the occasional snag here and there, but forests and even the high desert scrub were always able to recovery properly. That has all changed now. But her reply to me was simply, "Life goes on though, and fires are not unnatural." Her viewpoint is reflective of most all fire ecologists who champion fire as natural, yet often times have a hard time differentiating between human (especially if Native American) and lightning caused fires. Earlier this year, Fire Ecologist, Jennifer Balch, and other researchers revealed that 84% of all wildfires are human caused. Oh, but it get's even worse. They found that the actual figure for California, Oregon, Washington and on up to British Columbia in Canada is actually a figure at 90% human caused. So it question begs, is that something we should consider natural or unnatural ??? I only ask because humans today are considered unexceptional and nothing more than animals if you read the latest scientific literature on the subject. Don't get me wrong here, I don't believe anything as asinine as that. But it does reveal how an ideologically driven worldview can infect and distort the practice of Science and create ignorance as opposed to understanding. Historically, the majority of wildfires on Mount Lemmon have had a human cause. This has also exacerbated theproblem of  human introduced non-native, Buffel Grass, to invade clear up through the Saguaro Forests into the mid-elevation ranges of the Mount Lemmon. Here is that interesting finding regarding the human 90% origined cause of most wildfires at present.

Science Magazine: "Who is starting all those wildfires? We are"

Aaryn Olsson, University of Arizona

Last year when we traveled up the Mount Lemmon highway, we were greeted all along the way by an overwhelming sea of Buffelgrass which blanketed all areas of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson. Researchers say warming temperatures and fewer winter freezes are helping the invasive plant spread, posing a threat to saguaro cactuses and other native plants. The Tucson Sentinel even had an article with a chilling title, "Arizona without Saguaros? As climate warms, desert's future uncertain." The Saguaros are such an iconic symbol of Arizona and the Sonoran Desert. But they cannot take wildfire. They have no protection against it. I can't hardly imagine them being eliminated permanently.

Grant Martin/Cronkite News Service

Bromus tectorum, an invasive species commonly called “cheatgrass,” grows in an area of the Coconino National Forest burned in a 1996 wildfire. I strongly dislike Cheatgrass. This is the invasive noxious weed whose stickers you have to pull out of your socks every so often down the trail when you go on a hike.

Grant Martin/Cronkite News Service

Researchers say this area of the Coconino National Forest, which burned in 1996, is decades away from returning to its native state, if it ever does. They say rising temperatures have weakened trees, raising the potential for devastating wildfires that will open the door to invasive species. Don't expect recovery anytime soon.

Image - Getty Images

I remember reading the fire ecology literature some time back in 2006. There was an account written by Arizona Historian Marshall Trimball of the old west in New Mexico, when a Cavalry Officer was complaining to his superiors about his men smoking cigarettes and dropping them along the trail as they all rode horseback. The problem was they were starting grass fires from their careless bad habit. Of course this was in the 1800s, when Indians still existed and practiced their ecological conservation with fire. Yet hsitorical writings from the 1800s relay that they used fires to war against their enemies. Not exactly eco-friendly. I know, it destroys the narrative. This 1800s is the time period for celebration for most fire ecologists who champion how natural the forested ecosystems all were back then because of Indians. But as I've questioned this before, if fire ecologists were looking at the world back then and telling us how natural wildfire played in ecology of all plant community systems, how did they reconcile white European Soldiers starting fires with their cigarette butts ? Was that a good thing for Nature ? How did this factor into their research of what was good for the plant community environment ? Native Americans generally get a free pass on why they started fires and they really shouldn't. See the post, Dances With Myths. But now what about the white man back then ? Today there is a movement to down grade human beings as not being so exceptional. Mankind is now being considered nothing more than animals equal to everything else. Does this now mean that the research on wildfire causes being 84% human fault provide us a new designation of the term, "Natural"   ??? 😲 Would it mean that humans carelessly throwing down a cigarette butt today should now be considered perfectly normal behaviour ??? 😟 We seem to be living in a time period of redefining everything from it's historical normalcy.

But what about all those heavy Rains 🚿 ??? Didn't things get better ??? 🌳

Image - Pismo Hotels

This year's rainy season of 2017, California experienced one of those unprecedented rainy seasons, after four years of serious intense drought. But everyone cheered Hooray 🙌 and celebrated with waving pom poms that all was well again in California again. The drought was now over, or was it. Indeed, heavy rains came, even to the point of major flooding events up and down the state. While there were some very clear catastrophic negatives, one of the great joys of all that rain brought out a spectacular display of wildflower blooms. Starting in early March, flowers popped up all across Southern and Central California and produced some seriously spectacular scenery. The photo opportunity didn't go unnoticed nor wasted by many of the non-profit eco-activist groups hoping to cash in on a fund raising opportunity by posting pics on their website's & Social Network pages indicating that Nature seemed to have rebounded from the jaws of death. Or you know, that old Jurassic Park Cliche (a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought) "Life found a way." Except that things really were'nt all that rosey as they advertised. First, some of the people were a little too anxious about getting out there first with they cameras. Then it appears that much of the water came in so fat and furiously, that most of it raced back to the Pacific Ocean like a bullet train. Some water did fill up many of the State's reservoirs, but the surrounding landscape didn't have great percolation into the hills and mountains. 

Roger C. Bales

Even Merced hydrologist, Roger C. Bales, who advocated & pushed for increased logging in the Sierra Nevadas which he claimed would stop water hog trees from gulping down precious water which would have otherwise ended up in streams and rivers causing reservoirs to fill for his agricultural buddies to use downstream (See the Modesto Bee article: Overgrown Sierra forests gulping water that could flow to Valley ), jumped up and down when the rains came. Why ??? Because now his story has changed. He now claims to have been proven right because the 130+ million dead trees caused by the out of control bark beetle outbreak didn't have a chance to suck all that water which ended up in the streams and rivers and filled all the reservoirs. This is a farce folks. The great lack of water over the past five years had zero to do with there being too many trees sucking & gulping all the water down and had everything to do with the State's worst mega-drought in years. It hadn't rained in those five years (or extremely little rain coupled with high Temps) and with or without trees water eventually won't run in creeks, streams and rivers to fill reservoirs. Even a child gets that. I knew this from viewing early on all the photographs of dried dead invasive weeds and not all that long after the flowers died that the drought was not over. Now look where they are over there with heat waves and no more rain. Plus as indicated at the top of this post, lookie where we are now with the 2017 Wildfire season stats. So have things really changed for the better ? Nope, same old same old. 😏

Look, I refuse to celebrate and worship fire as some kind of animist Creator the way most fire ecologists worship it. Yes fire has always existed and is a reality in the natural world and can be used as an excellent tool for correcting problems along with other management tool like thinning forests in any ecosystem if done properly. And I've actually done that. But mostly humans have misused and abused fire, even the so-called experts. Prior to 2006 I never read much of anything about the science discipline of fire ecology, although I worked with people in the US Forest Service back in the 1980s who did prescribed burns. But I've also fought them tooth and nail against many of their ideas which are complete failures when it comes to reforestation techniques. Take the Fire Ecologist insistence that fire is needed for the wild seed germination. For example, Tecate Cypress is one of those trees in which Fire Ecologist have insisted for decades needs fire in order to propagate itself. Prior to reading their literature, in all my 30+ years of outdoors exploration experience and seed collecting, I never found this to be true of Tecate Cypress. There are numerous circumstances under which the seed is dispursed or spread and germinates fine without the need of fire within old growth chaparral which hasn't burned in a couple of hundred years. Same with Arizona Cypress. Fire is not always necessary, but you cannot tell them this. Science is not supposed to be about working in a Lab and venturing outdoors once in a while on a couple token field trips to make the research look legit. You have to live outdoors with nature. Look, I am not credentialed. I have no alphabet soup initials behind my name, nor some fancy coveted title before my name. Thank God. That allows me the freedom of not being shackled to a dogma and infected by the worldview biases and flawed presuppositions common to the Scientific Orthodoxy's industrial business model. I'm just one of 6+ billion people on Earth subjected to the negative consequences of inept decision making from a world leadership which has been weighed in the scales and found deficient. But it's allowed me to view things from a periferal viewpoint as opposed to tunnel-vission. 

Image from H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock

BTW, here is an example of Prairie Fire and a Steam Locomotive, 1872, whose smoke stacks belched cinders (pre-spark aresters) and started numerous prairie and forest fires in the days of the old west. Wonder if that was ever factored into the fire ecologist fire is a creator research ??? This video below from China's still operational locomotives servicing coal mines just question begs, "Do fire ecologists who insist that  fire is a natural necessary healthy component of plant ecosystems ever factor in human stupidity as part of that natural component mechanism ???" I know I know, because the Indians did it! 😕

Fire sparks of Steam in Sandaoling Coal Mine Railway China

References I've written for seed germination, not entertainment, just practical real world application and fun:

Seed Germination & Old School Ideology vrs How Nature Actually Works

How do ecosystems regenerate when Fire is absent ? Aw, the possibilities!

Breaking News: Fire Ecology Updates, Bird digestion aids Seed germination & Ed Morgan deserves an Acquittal

What We Need Here is Wildfire to Propagate !!!

Santa Lucia Coast Range & Big Sur California: An Environmental Wreck ???

While news reports have focussed on Nature, the real spotlight should be aimed at human mismanagement of the region, from the region's land management policies right on down to the average land owner

Image from YouTube

Image - nbclosangeles.com

This iconic image above is of Bixby Creek Bridge along central California's Big Sur Coastline. This region is one of the prettiest gems for which tourists are attracts people to visit California. This bridge is probably the most photographed feature on the Cabrillo Highway (Route 1) in California. But the area has also had a long troubled history infrastructure issues here along this coast highway. During this past year (2016) it has been a tough time to for visiting tourists and even tougher challenge if you are a local permanent resident or business owner. For almost a year they have been isolated completely from the outside world. First, there has been a long period of drought, with this region listed on maps as being far above the rest of the state's "severe" & "extreme" designations to the high rating of "exceptional." As time went on, that extreme designation on the map spread, but has always been exceptionally bad between San Francisco & Santa Barbara in the coastal mountin ranges. Second, there was the  Soberanes Fire (& multiple other fires) which started on July 22nd 2016. On August 2, officials announced that their investigation found that the fire had been caused by an unattended illegal campfire. While no suspect was identified, Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo said that, if an arrest were made, the culprit could be charged with negligence and manslaughter. Yeah that's right, someone died. And finally third, after 5 years of intense exceptional drought, this past 2016/17 record rainy season brought the mud and landslides. Bridges gone, roads collapsed and massive slides of whole mountainsides coming down obliterating everything in it's path. Now while Nature certainly played a role, it's often the lack of foresight in planning and critical mistakes in decision making during the crisis which exacerbate these problems which has a domino effect later on. In this particular post (Part I), I'll mainly focuss on the Soberanes Fire & human error.

Image by Stan Russell - The Big Sur Blog

Looking north from Soberanes Point about 10:30 PM, 7/23/16
Working its way down steep canyons towards Highway 1

This fire at it's very beginning blitzed through an area I had first discovered back in 1985 called Palo Colorado Canyon north of Big Sur which is well hidden from most outside tourists unfamiliar to the region. Locals know exactly where this area is. This place was a beautiful hidden paradise when I first found it back in 1985, but it's mostly gone today. My second trip there in 2014 which you can read from the link above, I also wrote about an amazing phenomena from this region where streams and rivers still ran even after years of exceptional drought. The question was why ? Especially since I did point out the numerous dead trees I saw first hand back up in that canyon in 2014. In 1985 there were no dead trees. But there are a combination of two natural components that allow streams and rivers to flow here even without normal winter rains & absence of summer monsoonal rains that the interior part of the state experiences and that would be Hydraulic Descent & Fog Preciptiation which is the very reason water sources are so dependable here. But human error changed all that. Here is a blog account and discussion by locals in the Big Sur area about the problem of illegal campfires on June 30th 2016 just a couple of weeks before the July 22nd 2016 Soberanes Fire. 

Xasauan Today Blog - Because Nature Bats Last

Image - Xasauan Today Blogger

The Campfire Conundrum 

"On a Sunday walk along the Pine Ridge Trail during Level IV fire restrictions in 2013, we looked at dozens of fire rings and couldn’t find a single one that hadn’t been used the night before."   

"Level III fire restrictions are currently in effect in the Los Padres National Forest. This means that all wood and charcoal fires are completely prohibited outside of a few designated Campfire Use sites (in designated car campgrounds). Smoking and recreational target shooting are similarly restricted. Lanterns and stoves may only be used with a Campfire Permit."   

"This isn’t a secret. Signs informing the public that campfires are prohibited abound. In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that fire danger is obviously quite high, campers light dozens of fires along Big Sur’s backroads and trails every single night."  

"What gives?  My guess is that it’s a function of the same human failing that prevents us, in so many contexts, from seeing how seemingly harmless individual behavior can have a devastating cumulative effect. The campfire builder likely perceives, correctly, that there is little chance that his or her fire will be the one to cause a conflagration. After all, it’s probably fewer than one in a thousand illegal campfires that becomes a wildfire. To these campers, the suggestion that they are endangering life, property and forest resources seems uptight and exaggerated."

Follow the rest of the story and comments section discussion about the potential for disaster (HERE) and keep in mind that three weeks later that devastating Soberanes wildfire started and burned for four months from July 22nd thru October 28th when it was declared 100% contained with only some hotspots still to be dealt with in the fire perimeter. But this wasn't the only damage done to the area. Despite heroic efforts by firefighters, much damaged was done by the Bull Dozer construction of Fire or Fuel Breaks along almost every major ridge, even some impossible access areas on the edge  of wilderness. And these were not just one or two bulldozer blades wide fire breaks, these were often 5 or 6 blades wide or more. Admittedly this is a tough wild extremely steep rugged impossible canyon terrain. But the problems they created in attempting to stop the wildfire will be with this area for a long time to come.

Image - Big Sur Kate Blog

Well, you can google more Bull Dozer fuel break cutting work on the Soberanes Firelines and many more done far away from the actual firelines in anticipation of the fire breaking out and making big runs which quite often did happened. There were so many big equipment companies called to fight this fire that the region in some places looked like an all out war preparation by a German Army Panzer Division. Maps at the time showed an extensive networks of bull dozed fireline roads everywhere which seriously did look like Battle Plan maps and I suppose they really were. But the real damage here was to the underground mycorrhizal grid and infrastructure of both native tree and chaparral root systems which took centuries for this part of the natural world to construct. An Absence of the mycorrhizal grid will be a major invite over the next few years for non-native noxious weeds to grab a foothold which will eventually become permanent residents into this once pristine untouched landscape.

Image - Cal Fire San Benito-Monterey Unit

Crews work on putting in control lines for the Soberanes Fire
 near Big Sur, California in this August 4, 2016

 (Vern Fisher - Monterey Herald)

Bulldozers work on a fire break in the Rancho San Carlos area
 of Carmel Valley while fighting the 23,568 acre Soberanes Fire
 on Wednesday, July 27, 2016 just five days after the fire began

(Vern Fisher - Monterey Herald)

A private contractor dozer operator works a fire line
 west of Cachagua in August 2016

 (David Royal - Monterey Herald)

Panzer Divisions Dozer Crews cut a containment line on
Daniel’s Ridge east of the Old Coast Road as firefighters
battle the Soberanes Fire in Big Sur

Photo from CAL FIRE

The dozer that rolled over on the Soberanes Fire in 2016,
killing Robert Reagan

"Both a private contractor and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) were issued citations by California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) related to a fatality when a dozer rolled over. Robert Reagan, 35, of Friant, California, was killed while fighting the Soberanes Fire south of Monterey, California July 26, 2016."   

"Minutes after Mr. Reagan began operating the piece of equipment for Czirban Concrete Construction on contract to CAL FIRE, it rolled over. Not wearing a seat belt, he was thrown from the cab and was killed when the dozer rolled onto him."

(Source; wildfiretoday.com)

Sadly the Army of bull dozer operators used to stop this wildfire and save property owner dwellings not only took it's toll on the environment, but also one bull dozer operator's life. Often times and especially in terrain like this, many firefighters are asked to do impossible tasks at the risk of their very lives. I've previously written about and voiced my opinion about firefighters having to risk their lives for people who have built buildings on property with impossible death trap access. The image below I watched on television Live in May 2014 where wildfire in San Marcos, California in 2014 which moved towards one hilltop Mansion which was surrounded by more than a dozen giant dead Aleppo Pine trees in the homeowner's landscape. Nobody should be made to risk life and save that and homeowners who choose such locations should accept the inevitable. You can read that post below here:

Image - NBC San Diego

Should Firefighters be expected to save Homes which are located in fire trap geography and where the owner cared less about landscape hygiene ?

After any Wildfire the Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) assessment would have conducted a survry and an implementation clean-up & repair work would be on-going for perhaps months. 

Inciweb.com

Excavator moving previously cut vegetation to cover fireline.

inciweb.com

Excave placing vegetation material on fireline

Inciweb.com

Working on suppression repair

Inciweb.com

Brush and cut vegetation from suppression repair work.

After it's all said and done, this is the result of clean-up repairs. Areas where the wildfire were untouched are repaired from a human eye-candy appeal point of view where brush is placed on top of the fuel break scar to hide it and provide some measure of runoff control with the next seasons winter rains. What they don't tell you and probably most of them are ignorant of or if the know, view it as trivial, the mycorrhizal fungal network grid which previously supported native chaparral and trees has been erased and obliterated under the ground. The scar is now ripe for take over by non-native invasive annual grasses and other noxious weeds which were generally kept in check by the former fungal network, but now that this has been removed, a bacterial soil system has replaced it and this scenario is what annual weeds will thrive under. Some scars will be left untouched like this once below from the Sherpa Fire. It will be viewed now as a strategic fuel break for fighting future wildfires. But given some months it could later look like older historical fuel breaks which are densely weed infested and will move future wildfires along more rapidly. Like this one below in Southern California.

Inciweb.com

West Camino Cielo Fuel Break, Los Padres National Forest

Image - Chaparral Institute

Trabuco Ranger District of the Cleveland National Forest
fuel break along the ridgeline of the Santa Ana Mountains

Other victims in nature weren't so lucky to escape. An irreplacable world record Pacific Madrone is gone forever 

Photo: California Department Of Fish And Wildlife

Image - Mine 2014

Pacific Madrone
(Arbutus menziesii)

The largest madrone tree in the United States in 2007 (left) and in 2016 (right). The tree, located in Joshua Creek Canyon Ecological Reserve in Monterey County, was severely burned in the Soberanes Fire. A giant in Big Sur registered as the largest of its kind in the nation appears to be a casualty of the devastating wildfire. Madrones really have no defenses against wildfire other than resprouting from the trunk base after being burned up. They have a very thin bark much like that of a Manzanita. Even when they get older and have the characteristic rugged bark like the old growth one above, they are no match for a wildfire. Most likely in youth this one above was burned and resprouted from the truck. This is proven by the fact is has multiple trunks. I've photographed young Madrones in Palo Colorado Canyon and they will start out as a single trunked tree. Much like the one on the right that I photographed in 2014. But once burned, that single trunk Madrone becomes a multi-trunk resprout from it's stump's base. Sadly though this time around, the Soberanes fire was just too hot and appears to have burned down deep into the rootsystem and surrounding soil.

Image - Dr Aljos Farjon

Santa Lucia Fir (Abies bracteata)

The other potential for wildfire victim here is the highly restricted habitat belonging to the Santa Lucia Fir or Bristlecone Fir (Abies bracteata) which is endemic to the central California Coast Ranges. Many of the largest known pocket woodlands of Santa Lucia Fir at various locations (particularly Ventana Wilderness) were effected by both wildfire and Forest Service backfires. But even still at this time there has not been a lot of assessment on the conditions or status of this Santa Lucia Fir in some of the remote regions. Perhaps this year will change that. The other danger for all plants which endure an extreme or rather in this case "exceptional" drought designation for four or five years is at the end of that period trees will have produced less seed/cones (offensive strategy) as opposed to putting all it's resources into survival mode (defensive strategy) for the adult tree itself, so that when a fire does come along and wipes a forest out, there is very little release of seed resources to counter the damage caused by the catastrophic event. This goes with every tree and shrub caught in the middle of massive unprecedented drought followed by wldfire. Change could be permanent and sometime irreversible. So time will tell. This particular tree has been hit hard by previous fires in the past, but again we will have to wait and see. 

Some Local Blogger References for Central California which are far better than Main Stream Media Outlets

Big Sur Kate's Blog: Big Sur News & Events – Road Conditions & Fires

Xasauan Today Blog - Because Nature Bats Last

And what about the next big bit of bad news ??? 

And Finally the Rains Came and Deluged all of Californnia!

ABC 10 News January 2017

I won't spend any time on this portion of the ongoing disaster to this region. That will be in my second post. I mainly focussed here on Nature and what has taken place, although it has to be acknowledged that many many homes and commercial buildings were lost which devastated the human population here. But the misery and inconvenience continue and it's still not over. But maybe there is some good news as far as infrastructure repair if anyone out there is paying close attention. Stay Tuned!

Big Update: While Palo Colorado Canyon seem to be spare numerous Wildifre, January 2022 is a different story. Imagine wildfire season starting in a January

https://www.montereyherald.com/2022/01/22/wildfire-in-palo-colorado-causes-residents-to-flee/