Month: September 2020

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl

Author: Jonathan C. Slaght

Reviewer: Greg McCann

A book about owls? Sure, owls are cute, they’re cool, they’re even interesting—but read a whole book about them?

Okay let me put your mind at rest: first, this is a book about the study and conservation of not just any old owl but the world’s largest: the Blakiston’s Fish Owl of the Russian Far East . This species is found only in the mountains and valleys along the Russian Sea of Japan coastline, in Hokkaido, Japan, and perhaps in a small corner of northeastern China. And equally as important, when a book is about nature conservation, it’s almost never exclusively about the natural history and ecology of that species alone. What you get in Owls of the Eastern Ice is so much more—colorful and often hilarious portraits of vodka-soaked village life in remote outposts, adventures involving gunning cars across raging rivers at just the right angle in the hope that the current can carry the vehicle downstream and land it on the other side where the washed-out road should be, and jungle dramas involving tigers, deer, and, of course, the topic at hand: the Blakiston’s Fish Owl.

The owl, in addition to being huge and having a dietary preference for feasting on the fresh masu salmon of remote Russian rivers, must be one of the worlds most beautiful birds. Its “electric yellow” eyes blaze from beneath of pair of pointy, tufted ears on a body of luxurious and billowy, creamy-brown feathers that seem like they could hide a person’s body.

At one point the author, Jonathan Slaght, climbs a tree to have a look in a nest, flushing the “glowering” female in the process. He conducts a quick check, photographing a newly hatched chick, and twenty minutes after he’s back on the ground and, he thinks, a safe distance away. Then, turning his binoculars back to the nest and its mother finds himself “meeting her direct stare at ten times magnification.”

Personally I relished Slaght’s portraits of the eccentric Russians living in this little-visited corner of the world. He meets hermits who sleep in wooden pyramids for the alleged “power” that can be (so they say) harnessed by dozing off in these Egyptian-like structures, while also encountering many scenes in which the effects of vodka have intoxicated the entire population of a village.

In one episode told by the author—who has dedicated his live to the study of the bird—his scientific team drive by a home in which a man is shouting from behind the glass of his living room window, gesticulating and jabbing desperately in the direction of the home’s front door. Slaght’s friend and fellow researcher Sergey reluctantly unlock the front door—from the outside—and: “The man exploded out like a long-caged beast. The jerky, frenzied motions of his dash past Sergey, through the yard, and into the street indicated a mind too hysterical for any coordination.” Sergey explains moments later: “His old lady locked him in so he wouldn’t go drinking.”

I attended Slaght’s 2017 talk on tigers, leopards, and the Blakiston’s Fish Owls in Minneapolis in 2017, and his passion and dedication helped to spur my interest in birds. Back in January this year, before Covid-19 disrupted international travel, I was in the mountainous jungles south of Lake Toba in Sumatra, where we encountered four massive, critically endangered Helmeted Hornbills, which we both heard and saw. It was a rare privilege and an exquisite pleasure to hear this species’ maniacal call-cackle overlaid onto the primal growls of Rhinoceros Hornbills gliding in to a perch, along with the frenzied chants of Siamang gibbons, somewhere in the distance. Indeed, these days when I’m in the field I find myself equally excited to spot birds as I am to discover what type of mammals that have appeared in front of our camera traps.

Owls of the Eastern Ice was recently “long-listed” for the 2020 National Book Award, and I feel that now, more than ever, when tens or hundreds of millions are shuttered up in lockdowns amid the pandemic, that this is the time to learn about the mysterious and little-known fellow creatures of our planet; to explore from home about far-flung regions where creatures such as the Blakiston’s Fish Owl live. It is also the time to learn about, cherish and reignite our love for local wildlife—something my son and I did as we bought binoculars and spent many a morning and afternoon birdwatching in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York state, earlier this spring. Maybe, just maybe, with books like Slaght’s to read, and with extra time to appreciate the natural world, we’ll all come out of this the better—both people and the planet.

September 29, 2020
Land Ahoy

With Covid and other life events taking their toll Rory Hunter, an Australian living in Hong Kong, chose a unique way to socially isolate and heal: a solo boat journey home. Along the way he recorded his experiences in a blog called Seeking Solitude, from which this entry is taken.

I’ve been able to have a restful day getting in a couple of naps to rebuild my strength from the previous few days. The islands of Yap, Palau and various atolls are all within sailing distance so pose somewhat of a navigational challenge. These islands mark the halfway point in this open ocean stage of the Pacific, so it’s a great milestone and one I’m very happy to achieve after the recent challenges. There’s a very long way to go though, and I’m still not at the halfway for the entire journey, which gives me a reality check and forces me to focus on the tasks ahead.

Its 2pm and off in the distance I see land for the first time in fourteen days. It’s Ulithi atoll and I’ve sailed further south than the rhumb-line just so I can take a look. I smile from ear-to-ear upon its sight and shout in joy. I’m surprised at how happy it makes me, the sight of land. I’ve dreamed of exploring atolls like this, having the place entirely to oneself and spending days under water on the untouched reefs—swimming, diving, fishing and surfing—enjoying the safety of the waters and the beautiful colours and marine life. I wonder if I should stop, just for a night?

I think I see another boat in the distance and wonder if the occupants would like some company over dinner? I’d certainly love some human contact. Maybe they even have cold beer! I bet they’d have some good stories to share and I’d love the conversation and interaction. I fanaticise about seeing some people, talking and laughing together for about an hour, but as we get closer I see that it’s a wreck and my dreams need to be put on hold. There’ll be plenty of time for that type of sailing in the future. For now, I need to focus on the task at hand, getting to Pioneer Channel and out of the northern latitudes.

Life is always greatest at the margins. I see lots of birds and sea life with fish jumping all around. I throw out my line and get a strike almost straight away. I didn’t hook it properly though, so it’s gone after a few minutes. I don’t have to wait long before the next strike. It’s a decent sized Dorado and after 20 minutes I get him close enough to the boat that I can see the bright yellows and greens of its skin. Just at the last moment the hook pops out and I see him swim away gracefully. I have plenty of food, so I thank him for the fight and try again. I get one more strike before nightfall but can’t seem to hook this one either, so I cook up various root vegetables and make a delicious hash while dreaming about the one (or three) that got away.

Moonrise is a blood orange tonight, as it slowly appears over the horizon, framed by dark clouds with even a palm tree silhouetted in the foreground, and it more than makes up for missing it the night before.

I think about all the change that has taken place in the world these past few months, much of which will impact an entire generation. Our great depression, the hundreds of millions of people who have lost jobs, the millions of businesses that have shutdown, many never to reopen. I count myself amongst the lucky ones. I wonder what’s happening back in the ‘world’. At least for a minute, then remind myself that ignorance is bliss and to enjoy this unique moment of solitary detachment.

In many ways today was just what I needed. I got some much-needed rest and a solid (and surprising) morale boost from seeing land for the first time in two weeks. I ended the day happy and in good spirits. Dumb luck wins again.

September 25, 2020
Breaking Needles in Broken Veins

Luke Hunt, on the road to recover, questions those who query the rights of the elderly during these Covid times—in this, the second part—of his personal medical account.

Part ll.

“Covid, senicide and shades of Hitler in the ranks of the self-entitled.”

Near death experiences are not that uncommon but doubts over the veracity of such stories are understandable, particularly in a world riddled with self-righteous petty indignations and expressed all too loudly as the new coronavirus took hold.

But as I awoke there was a second doctor who was watching over me and with a reassuring smile he reminded me to thank Dr Kraipope for saving “you, you nearly succumbed twice”.

Asked whether I had contracted Covid-19 – at that point the diagnosis was incomplete – he laughed, saying: “Nooooo, you’re four, five, six times worse than that”. Hardly encouraging.

The following days, weeks and months were difficult. More blood tests, more needles. I actually ran out of veins. They were all broken. My weight dropped from near 90 kilograms to under 70.

I was locked down in hospital and then home for about two months amid a crazy mix of symptoms that were similar to Covid-19; respiratory issues, blood clots, pneumonia.

My only access to the outside word was a television fixed on CNN and the Internet where the plight of the human race was unfolding as the new coronavirus took hold and leaders like the US president Donald Trump crashed to an unprecedented level of incompetence.

Covid-19 was the common cause, lockdowns were enforced and the world as we knew it flipped from great freedoms to house detention and it continues to bring out the best, and the worst in too many people.

But what stunned me, were the horrible attitudes expressed about old people as if some kind of Darwinian experiment was being played out through the new corona virus. I never realized so many people simply didn’t care about their plight.

Scorned and blamed for quarantines, right wing twits were prepared to put business before health as one Texas governor suggested grandparents should be willing to die for the sake of the economy.

In the online world – where every expert, every idiot and everyone in between can express themselves badly – such attitudes are all too easily amped-up.

In Australia and the Covid hotspot of Melbourne, one on-liner points out that total Covid deaths announced for Victoria today were one female in her 80s, three females in their 90s and one female in her 100s, and this does not justify lockdowns.

That prompts responses like: “Mate, just because they were old, doesn’t mean their lives are worthless.” and then: “Why not ban death hazards altogether. No cars. No skateboarding, cycling, hijinks or hipsters. Then we can all die of nothing.”

The attitude is ‘people should ignore the science, do as they please and if the elderly die off a bit earlier than they otherwise might have then that’s an acceptable price to pay so that the rest of us can carry on as usual’.

There’s a mangled argument in there. A sizable minorityare saying the elderly are too prone, too inconvenient, too expensive, and too old to treat. Unworthy of care, besides they’re going to die soon, anyway. Expendable.

But why stop there? Why not just abandon all help and hope for the elderly in all circumstances, relieve society of their burden and everyone else can go to the football or do as they please.

That would remove awkward questions like who decides who dies and when.It’s actually called senicide, a disturbing, Hitleresque word which means the killing of elderly or their abandonment to death, which makes the issues that exploded out of lockdowns with the stir-crazy protestors of the Black Lives Movement look rather petty.

Humans don’t do Darwin, animals do. Humans – perhaps not all – have ethics and culture. That’s how we sort out the bullies and how people look after society as a whole. I never did get to the other side so I can’t vouch for it but at 57 I went close.

I’ll be forever grateful for the doctors, nurses and the caring people who helped me, whether I last another 10, 20 or 30 years. They were professional, ethical and served according to the needs of the patient. It’s the type of care all people should be entitled to, including the old.

There could be exemptions. Those advocating senicide come to mind.

ENDS PART TWO

September 10, 2020
Dancing with Mortality in the Time of Corona

A near-death experience raises a question for Luke Hunt—international correspondent and author—’should I stay or should I go?’

“… my life review – a euphemism for near death experience or NDE – really didn’t do it for me.”

As the new coronavirus took hold about 100 people were doing what they do best, sorting a barbecue, the last to be held in the garden of House Nine on Street 830 in Phnom Penh, my home for the last eight years.

Old friends and the odd luminary – famed correspondent Jim Pringle among them – indulged in a hedonistic mix of food, music and intoxicants of choice on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

It was on the eve of lockdowns. Government quarantines, social distancing, face masks and must have sanitizers were still over the horizon. Hugs, kissing and the odd dance were still allowed.

Two weeks later I collapsed with severe abdominal pain, fever and volcanic chills.

My doctor, Gavin Scott, listened to my gut with his stethoscope and said: “I can’t hear anything at all. Nothing.” Gratefully, I couldn’t feel anything either but the look on his face said too much.

My organs were shutting down as I was rushed into ER at Royal Phnom Penh Hospital then five hours later into an ICU with suspected salmonella or typhoid as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, up-ending and closing-out life as we knew it.

Dr Kraipope Jurapaiboon got it. As my internal organs were nearing retirement he did the charts. A stomach inflammation reading of one to three is considered normal, five is high.

I was clocking around 265.

The ICU resembled a NASA control room. Ten electrodes connected me to the EKG. Three intravenous needles delivered a milk substance and antibiotics. There was a catheter, assisted breathing and four or five staff on hand 24/7 as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Needles and blood tests followed more needles, more blood tests and CT Scans.

Kraipope diagnosed salmonella leading to complications, which included pneumonia with pulmonary embolisms in both lungs, peritonitis, thrombosis on the liver, kidney stones and diverticulitis resulting in a perforated colon.

That infected my stomach and sent me into sceptic shock, twice.

Blood was turning into sludge and clots, of which I was blissfully unaware. The morphine – a must have at the next barbecue – was terrific.

But as the bells and whistles sounded from my ICU, I instinctively knew exactly what was happening and I was ready to go. I also had the best view. I could see Kraipope, another doctor and a team of nurses dart to my bedside. I was impressed.

I was looking at them from just above, then drifted towards the window as my life review, also known as a near death experience or NDE, began to rewind through a montage of black and white photos.

It was entertaining, I liked my life but like too many of the photographs I’d taken over the previous decades my NDE was in large parts dreadfully out of focus. There was a light that ran in a curve out through the window and up, and I was overwhelmed by a comfortable urge to follow. Just go.

I hesitated for a nano-second. My life review looked a bit clumsy. It lacked clarity. It was a bit like my old school report cards: “Could do better”.

Then I thought of friends and family. Mum had passed barely 12 months earlier leaving a tribe of grandchildren behind and I didn’t need to add to their anguish by buggering off so soon afterwards.

Last and least, I didn’t want that concrete skeleton – the Booyoung construction site next door – to be my last picture of a planet blighted by environmental destruction.

I shot upright. Literally; awake, throughly alive and totally aware.

ENDS PART ONE

September 7, 2020
A river running out of time – the mighty Mekong reduced to a trickle

Luke Hunt, writing for The Article, details the crisis facing the Mekong River system and its unprecedented implications for the region in 2020.

In his book, River of Time, Jon Swain evoked brilliantly the heady beauty of Indochina and the great Mekong Delta in the very south of Vietnam, where the river finally meets the South China Sea. He also captured the terrifying uncertainty as the Vietnam War came to an end and the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh.

The plot twists and turns against a backdrop of jungle and the fabled Mekong River, which in full flood covers an area larger than Belgium. As Swain wrote: “Some rivers are so still, so complacent, so dead that they leave one’s heart indifferent. The Mekong is not one of them. To see it in full spate as it thunders over the Koh Khong falls in a welter of foam in the rainy season, is to know its awesome power.”

But the stuff of legend is fading fast. Drought, climate change and the construction of vast dams are threatening a river system that traverses five countries and feeds 70 million people, many of whom live hand to mouth.

For a second year in a row, the Mekong River is at a record low, reduced to a trickle when it should be heading into a full flood. Water levels are down by two-thirds. Rainfall for the three months of the current wet season is down by about 70 per cent.

Where the river meets the sea, at least two of 12 tributaries have closed. Salinity is creeping further inland, threatening 850 already endangered fish species. Fishermen complain that their daily catch has been reduced to a kilogram or two, barely enough for the village cats.

It’s an unprecedented man-made problem, which the military-backed governments and one-party states of mainland Southeast Asia are choosing to ignore as Beijing and financial institutions pour billions of dollars into hydro-electricity, which brings profit for the powerful few. According to the Stimson Center, the US think tank, a cascade of dams in China and Laos is in the process of construction. By the time is has been completed, there will be 400 dams.

Fish ladders were introduced into the river, to help migrating fish to reach their upstream breeding grounds, but there is little evidence that these have worked. A report by Eyes on Earth has accused China of hoarding water. Beijing denies the charge.

Meanwhile, climate change has exacerbated the impact of the Indian Ocean Dipole, a phenomenon similar to the El Niño weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean and sometimes known as the Indian Niño. This has meant unusually cooler than average sea surface temperatures across the eastern half of the Indian Ocean and warmer water in the west cause floods in East Africa and drought in Southeast Asia. This phenomenon historically occurs once every 17.3 years — but scientists are forecasting its frequency will increase to once every 6.3 years over this century, due to carbon emissions and excess energy in the atmosphere.

Normally, at this time of year, the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia swells as flood waters rise, then reverses course flowing back into the Mekong River. It’s an annual event that ties Khmer superstitions with harvests and prosperity.

For the first time in living memory that hasn’t happened and the usually sanguine Mekong River Commission (MRC) has found its voice, forecasting that “extreme drought” is now expanding across northern Cambodia, southern Laos and into central Vietnam. It described the plight of Tonle Sap as “very critical” with water depths across the Lower Mekong Basin below the minimum levels recorded in 1960 and 2019.

“The current low flows could have severe impacts on Cambodia due to a loss of fisheries and irrigation potential,” said An Pich Hatda, chief executive of the MRC Secretariat in Vientiane. “It is time to walk the talk and to act in the common interest of the entire Mekong River Basin and the affected communities”.

That means a total rethink of how people live, what they eat and where they call home. The Dipole will reverse and floods are sure to follow, made all the worse by hoarding and too many upstream dams which would be forced to unleash torrents of water. Whether the generals and politicians like it or not, they have made a mess of the Mekong River.

Swain’s memoir is about to be made into a movie, and the author’s own favourite line is: “I have never been able to stand on its tall banks and look down at its great sweep of moving water without the urge to go round the next bend to explore the wonders that may be in store.”

If the producers want to shoot on location they might want to hurry up. Time is running out.

September 2, 2020