A Traveler's Log


Toucans and Hornbills represent the unexpected in travel, wildness, delight, and surprise. Where they live, other wonderful animals and plants flourish.

Travel entails new experiences - new sounds, different smells, surprises, sensations not like those at home. Some ideas, feelings, and impressions must be recorded immediately or they are lost; others are best recollected in tranquility (with a nod to Wordsworth).


Bethought: to think; to remind (oneself); to remember
Images and scenes bethought - evoking the moment and reliving it.
Why in the World? Where in the World?

Monday, December 16, 2013

Urge to See #1

Urge to See - #1

Let us go then you and I in search of Toucans and Hornbills
into the blue or the green -  anyplace wilderness exists

Let us go then where peace comes dropping slow
in bee loud glades or
wherever churrs whirs chirps whistles caws
prevail

Let us go then you and I 
When the day dawns
with rosy fingers and the morning chorus
When stygian night has fallen
In search of
wrens and owls
In whatever land they roost, nest
Whatever air they ply

Let us go then you and I in search of
auroras and orcas,
baboons and periwinkles
and catch tigers in red weather

So let us go then you and I
to fulfill our urge to see
to bear witness
to do what we can do, for

We are here as on a darkling plain
Where ignorant armies 
Clash by day and night
And the world,  (so various, so beautiful...) the earth, the planet suffers and is undone.


Thanks to: T.S. Eliot (Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), William Butler Yeats (The Lake Isle of Innisfree), Homer (Various works), Wallace Stevens (Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock), Matthew Arnold (Dover Beach).

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Resilience, Enthusiasm, and Philo 3 Elephants Killed in Samburu, Kenya: Bloody Ivory

Samburu Elephants


Elephant in Samburu 2003 (Samburu, Kenya. 2003. Photo:KESDonahue)


We've been to Samburu Reserve in Northern Kenya twice, once in 1999 and then again in 2003.  It is one of my favorite places in the world. The thorn scrub forest with its scattered acacia trees, rare branching palms and open vistas has a primeval appeal. Many different species live here and as we drove the dirt tracks wending through the Reserve, we saw most of them, including the marvelous Gerenuk, feeding completely upright on the overhead leaves. The most marvelous of all are the elephants; frequently in small groups, they amble and eat, they lounge in the shade, they enjoy a late afternoon bath or drink of water, often touching each other, clumping together reassuringly. They are easy to see and wonderful to just watch. I would return, if I could, hoping to see elephants.

Elephants in Ewaso Ng'iro River in the late afternoon, Samburu, Kenya. (Photo:KES Donahue)

Enjoying the river. Samburu. (Photo:KESDonahue)
After the Bath, Mother & Baby Elephant. Samburu (photo:KESDonahue)




Elephants, Samburu (Photo: KESDonahue)


Elephants in Samburu (Photo:KESDonahue)

Blood Ivory
Three elephants from Sanburu were  profiled on March 13, 2013 in the New York Times (See the link below for the article). They had names and were recognized by the people, the researchers, who studied them and loved them.  Two females, Resilience, aged 41, and her niece, Enthusiasm, aged 16, riddled with bullets by poachers, died last year; one young male, Philo, aged 15, was killed in January.  So now they are dead and somebody in China or some other Far Eastern country (Thailand excluded as of this moment) gets some bit of a gory carving for their shelf.  We condemned blood diamonds and we should howl and condemn blood ivory since it really is drenched in blood. 
 
Even on Reserves, Scant Protection for Elephants:
Three Stories From One Region. By Samantha Strindberg and Fiona Maisels.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/17/sunday-review/even-on-reserves-scant-protection-for-elephants.html?_r=0

After reading this article, I recognized in myself a self-serving, anthropocentric idea that all the individuals of different species of mammals (and others as well) are interchangeable; they are automatons in a way. I did not recognize them as individuals, as sentient beings, with thoughts and feelings.  Seeing one was just as good as seeing another. I couldn't tell them apart, so I supposed that they couldn't tell each other apart or miss each other. Research has disabused me of these ideas. Individuals of other species are just that--individuals; when they die, they are mourned and missed, by others of that species. 

When I looked at my photographs of elephants in Samburu, Kenya, I saw elephants, not recognizable individuals -- interchangeable pieces to be taken for granted living in this Reserve and there for me to see--for all human tourists to see and enjoy. Now, after reading the article in the New York Times, I am mourning individuals I may have met and, given their age and longevity, I could have met in future visits if they had not been slaughtered for their ivory.

The elephants I "met" and photographed may still be there; they may be fine, but there is every chance that that is not so and that they have been butchered for their ivory.


Elephants with Ivory, Samburu. (Photo:KESDonahue)







 

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Polar Bears



The Ultimate Indulgence
Visiting a Dangerous Place
in Safety 


Male looking up at us in the lodge (Photo: Donahue)
Twelve years ago we spent several days near Hudson Bay outside of Churchill, Manitoba. Our destination was a "lodge" parked in the snowy isolation of the tundra. It consisted of  a “train” of connected bedrooms, dining room, and lounge car - all on wheels.

Great White Bear Lodge (Photo: Donahue)


 It was designed to be stationed/parked for optimal polar bear viewing each season. For whatever reason there were only 14 of us plus our guide in the lodge, giving us plenty of room to spread out and a window on the snowy world for everyone.



Safe at 10 feet about the snow-covered ground, we watched the bears wander through or settle down by the big tires. All were waiting for the Bay to freeze so they could go where seals breed and lounge on the ice; all were hungry for a first good meal after many months of fasting. They nosed around the lodge, perhaps hoping that some tidbit (perhaps a careless tourist) would fall and give them something.

Our most faithful companions were a mother with two 1-year old cubs. Polar bears often have twins, and sometimes triplets, although if times are lean, the smallest of the cubs dies before reaching a year. They stayed close to each other, often touching, snuggling, or nuzzling.
Mother and two yearling cubs
(Photo: Donahue)






Mother and Cubs (Photo: Donahue)


Cubs pacing along near mother
(Photo: Donahue)


Snow on noses
(Photo: Donahue)

Large male hanging out near the Lodge
(Photo: Donahue)


At times a large male would arrive and the female and cubs would move off. Males will kill cubs. For us, watching from above, hands and arms kept well within the lodge, we sipped coffee in the morning, and wine in the evening. This is the extraordinary luxury of eco-travel; visit and briefly live in dangerous and harsh environments and see things that in the past only explorers and zoo visitors would see.

Arctic weather prevailed. Being secure and warm, I delighted in the blizzard-like conditions - the wind blew the snow sideways. Snow seemed to muffle sound even though the wind was gusting steadily. When it stopped blowing and snowing, it was silent - very cold and silent. Ah - but we had good food and drink and warmth - we were in our element and the polar bears and others were in theirs. Ours was a bubble.





Another option for polar bear viewing was to stay in Churchill and take a tundra buggy and drive out for the day.  I felt quite superior in our lodge as the "mobile tourists" gathered around "our" lodge viewing "our" polar bears. Eventually, they left, leaving us in the white quiet with the bears.

Tundra buggies from town and unconcerned polar bears
(Photo: Donahue)
In November 2000 I was not particularly aware of climate change and global warming. We spent time and money to see polar bears and whatever else came by. I recollect it with pleasure. However it is a pleasure now tempered with sadness. We returned home and serendipitously a photo article came out in the December National Geographic ("Bear Beginnings: new life on the ice" by Norbert Rosing, Dec. 2000). The photos of a mother and her new-born triplets were marvelous and endearing. Only in the last paragraph did the author raise the spectre of climate change, writing, "Sadly all is not well in the bear's realm." Now, 12 years later, it is clear that polar bears are in trouble due to warming of the arctic region.

I have loved nature films since watching the Disney films in the 50s. In a contrived way (I now know and probably suspected then) I was introduced to nature on the prairie, the desert, the arctic, the jungle, and more. Many of us trace our fascination and love of the environment to these films. I have watched many nature films and over the years, and a noticeable pattern developed in the "plotting." First, reveal the wonders and marvels of nature, then discuss the fly in the ointment - the threat to the eden just revealed. The pattern is so pervasive because the reality of the looming disaster is so evident and pervasive.  I now find it difficult to watch all of a nature film. I do watch however, but I do it out of obligation; I feel obligated to not look away at what we are doing. If we are going to destroy environments and all the species that live in them, we need to take responsibility - to bear witness and report.

Two young males waiting for the freeze (Photo: Donahue)
From the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species 
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22823/0

"Polar bears rely almost entirely on the marine sea ice environment for their survival so that large scale changes in their habitat will impact the population (Derocher et al. 2004). Global climate change posses a substantial threat to the habitat of polar bears. Recent modeling of the trends for sea ice extent, thickness and timing of coverage predicts dramatic reductions in sea ice coverage over the next 50-100 years (Hassol 2004). Sea ice has declined considerably over the past half century. Additional declines of roughly 10-50% of annual sea ice are predicted by 2100. The summer sea ice is projected to decrease by 50-100% during the same period. In addition the quality of the remaining ice will decline. This change may also have a negative effect on the population size (Derocher et al. 2004). The effects of sea ice change are likely to show large differences and variability by geographic location and periods of time, although the long term trends clearly reveal substantial global reductions of the extent of ice coverage in the Arctic and the annual time frames when ice is present.

While all bear species have shown adaptability in coping with their surroundings and environment, polar bears are highly specialized for life in the Arctic marine environment. Polar bears exhibit low reproductive rates with long generational spans. These factors make facultative adaptation by polar bears to significantly reduced ice coverage scenarios unlikely. Polar bears did adapt to warmer climate periods of the past. Due to their long generation time and the current greater speed of global warming, it seems unlikely that polar bear [sic] will be able to adapt to the current warming trend in the Arctic. If climatic trends continue polar bears may become extirpated from most of their range within 100 years."

So like today's nature films, first the wonder then the despair - tempered with hope - I hope.