Three

Cerulean Blues

I pulled into a parking spot in front of Percival Hall, the oddly shaped building that housed West Virginia University’s Division of Forestry and Natural Resources. I’d arranged to meet Dr. Petra Wood at two o’clock, but because of my paranoia about being late, I arrived almost half an hour early. The sun shone high and bright in a cloudless sky, and a gentle breeze swept down the hill from WVU’s greenhouses, lifting my hair away from my face.

I pushed through Percival Hall’s glass doors and my arms goose-bumped in the cool of the air-conditioned lobby. I’d only been in this building a few times before, but it was exactly how I’d remembered it. Wooden display cases with glass panes lined one of the wood-paneled walls, which were hung with framed portraits of official-looking men. A flat plasma screen hung from the ceiling, and every few seconds the message on it changed from “WVU Forestry Ranks Top 10 in Research Citations” to information about the upcoming graduation ceremony to pictures of smiling students. I sat down on a chair beneath the screen and watched a woman across the lobby spread navy blue cloths over rectangular tables. Every few minutes a student, backpack slung over one shoulder, would amble through the lobby and exit to the beautiful spring afternoon.

I glanced at the clock on the wall and chewed on my bottom lip; I still had fifteen minutes to wait before my meeting with Dr. Wood. For the tenth time that day, I mentally ran through each of my previous interactions with her. The one that stood out, of course, was the time I saw her deliver the presentation on cerulean warblers at the Audubon Society meeting several years before. I opened my folder and flipped though highlighted copies of scientific articles. I’d recently reread and partially memorized Dr. Wood’s published research projects, most of which focused on cerulean warbler habitat in southern West Virginia. Her titles included: “Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica cerulea) Microhabitat and Landscape-Level Habitat Characteristics in Southern West Virginia”; “Cerulean Warbler Abundance and Occurrence Relative to Large-Scale Edge and Habitat Characteristics”; “Cerulean Warbler Use of Regenerated Clearcut and Two-age Harvests”; and my favorite, a report submitted to the USGS Biological Resources Division Species-At-Risk Program, “Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica cerulea) Microhabitat and Landscape-level Habitat Characteristics in Southern West Virginia in Relation to Mountaintop Mining/Valley Fills.” I hoped I knew enough about the birds and her research to not embarrass myself.

As I shuffled through the papers, Dr. Wood suddenly emerged from a nearby hallway, clutching a coffee mug and a notebook. She did a double take when she saw me, then smiled. I’d forgotten how tall and thin she was; when I stood to greet her I felt short and a bit stumpy.

We decided to go outside and enjoy the warm spring weather, and we sat down across from each other at a table near the entrance to Percival. Suddenly this project became more real to me; while I loved and obsessed over charismatic, elusive cerulean warblers, here was someone who’d devoted years of her life to researching them. Because of my overactive nerves, I babbled incoherently at Dr. Wood for almost twenty minutes about friends we had in common, my husband Jesse, veterinary school, the weather. She listened politely and smiled often; eventually, nervous energy expended, I took a deep breath and asked how she’d first become involved with cerulean warbler research.

“I actually kind of just fell into it, in a way,” she said, smiling and pushing her brown hair out of her eyes. “When we first started out doing mountaintop mining research, our project was to look at wildlife populations and how they changed in reclaimed areas versus forested areas.” In addition to cerulean warblers, Dr. Wood’s research included projects on bald eagles, American woodcocks, wood thrush, wood rats, and other species. (I thought it curious that she shared a name with so many of the species she studied, but I kept that to myself.) She continued, “Around that same time, people started talking about cerulean warblers, so one of the things we looked at was how many cerulean warblers there were; we noticed that in the intact forest we had a lot more birds than in the fragmented patches of forest that were left on the mines. And it kind of kept building from there.”

Dr. Wood’s research has shown that in this part of the United States—Central Appalachia—cerulean warblers preferred to nest within large tracts of mature forest on ridgetops. One of the most significant threats to cerulean habitat in this core breeding area is, obviously, mountaintop removal coal mining, the focus of several of Dr. Wood’s projects. Begun in the late 1970s, this surface mining practice “removes” layers of the mountain to reach the coal within. Once a company secures the necessary state and federal permits and determines that coal lies within a mountain, it clears away all the trees and other vegetation. Sometimes the trees are sold for timber, but other times they are simply pushed into a huge pile and burned. Then the coal company drills holes on the mountain’s surface, into which high-powered explosives are dropped; the resulting blasts destroy the top of the mountain to expose thin coal seams. Usually, the former mountaintop (now reduced to dirt and rocks called “spoil”) is pushed into surrounding valleys and hollows. These valley-fills often bury headwater streams and cause problems for nearby communities with increased erosion and run-off; local residents complain of structural damage to their homes from the blasting, contamination of their drinking water because of the landscape changes, and an increase in flooding. Once the top layers of the mountain have been removed, heavy equipment scrapes coal from the now-exposed seam. The coal is then trucked to a processing plant, where it’s cleaned up and ground down to burnable size before being shipped off to power plants, where it (along with coal recovered from deep-mining and other methods) is converted into 50 percent of our nation’s electricity.

When an entire Appalachian ridge (and its mature hardwood forest) is removed, so is critical cerulean warbler breeding habitat. Some of Dr. Wood’s research in southern West Virginia focused specifically on how ceruleans reacted to deforested “reclaimed” mine sites; the results revealed that the density of their breeding territories increased with distance from the mine’s edge. In other words, not only do mountaintop removal mines destroy cerulean habitat outright, but they also make nearby remaining habitat less hospitable.

Despite the obvious problems caused by mountaintop removal coal mining, Dr. Wood pointed out that it probably wasn’t solely the loss of habitat in Appalachia that was affecting ceruleans. “A lot of bird species need forested habitat,” she said, again brushing her hair out of her eyes, “the cerulean is just one of them. But there’s something going on with this bird. A lot of species are declining, but this one’s really declining more quickly, and we don’t know if it’s the habitat here, or if it’s wintering habitat, or migratory habitat. It very well could be all three. But,” she continued, slowing down for emphasis, “the only place where you can produce more birds is in the breeding season in the breeding habitat. If we keep letting the habitat degrade here, then we’re going to add to the decline. Our job is to keep the breeding habitat and help out more birds to offset the ones that”—she paused, opening her hand and making a sweeping gesture—“you know.”

“Right,” I nodded. “The ones that don’t make it back here.”

While all the factors that could be affecting cerulean warblers in their wintering and migratory habitats are not completely understood (and perhaps not yet identified), most biologists agree that the loss of primary forest is a major contributor. Ceruleans spend the winter months on the forested slopes of the northern Andes Mountains, where they devote much of their time to foraging for insects in the canopy of broadleaf evergreen trees. Biologists in Colombia estimate that 60 percent of this ideal forested habitat has been converted to other uses; however, they admit that their model might be too generous, and as little as 10 percent of preferred cerulean habitat may actually remain in the northern Andes.

Many primary Andean forests have been razed to make way for agriculture, especially coffee plantations. In South America, coffee was traditionally grown in the shade of canopy trees. In recent years, however, many shade-grown coffee operations have been converted to full-sun. Coffee shrubs do grow more quickly in the full sun (meeting the coffee demands of the United States and other countries), but they also require additional pesticides and fertilizers because nature’s pesticides—the insectivorous songbirds that live in the shade trees—don’t frequent the tree-less plantations. While primary Andean forests are probably ideal for wintering cerulean warblers, the birds have also been known to thrive in the canopies of trees that provide shade for coffee plants. Shade-grown coffee farms not only provide a winter home for ceruleans, but they reduce the need for potentially dangerous chemicals, making them safer for the farmers and nearby human residents, too.

The breeze picked up a bit and threatened to whisk my papers off the table. A blue jay called Thief! Thief! from a nearby tree. I tied my unruly hair in a knot in an attempt to keep it out of my eyes.

I asked Dr. Wood if she thought any non-habitat factors could be contributing to the cerulean’s decline. “Well,” she began, “climate change could be affecting things. Climate change could affect the cerulean’s food resources. Or changing weather patterns. This year we had that really weird late snow and cold weather, and the birds came back a lot later. Since their nesting was delayed this year, how is that going to affect their nesting success? Just the act of migration, too—trying to fly in these changing weather patterns—could affect their population numbers.” Dr. Wood sipped her coffee and continued. “Contaminants are also an issue for some species, but I guess we don’t really know about that with ceruleans.” She thought for a moment, and then nodded. “I think as far as their decline, most people think it has something to do with habitat, because habitat affects both survival and reproductive success.”

The “most people” Dr. Wood referred to were her fellow members of the Cerulean Warbler Technical Group, which, she explained, “is an ad hoc group of people interested in cerulean warbler conservation. Some state people, some federal people, university people, and industry people. Pat Keyser, a biologist who used to work for a timber company, was one of the main people who got the group going.”

The wind kicked a stapled stack of pages across the table. I squealed and jumped, trying to slap my hands down on the sheets before they blew away. Dr. Wood laughed, and once I’d collected everything, she continued. “The thought was, no one’s going to stop timber harvesting. Everybody uses trees and timber products.”

“Yeah,” I said, restacking the sheets, “look at all this paper.”

She nodded and laughed again. “And it’s not going to go away. But the timber companies want to be responsible, too. They don’t want a spotted owl situation, where it’s the timber company against everybody else. So we thought, maybe there would be a way to start proactively doing conservation for this bird and have everybody work together instead of having everybody fighting each other.”

This of course sounded like a good idea to me, even though I remained skeptical.

“One of our ideas,” Dr. Wood continued, “was that since the timber industry is not going to go away, can we make it less damaging to the birds? Ceruleans seem to require some kind of structure in the forest canopy—gaps, for instance—but once a forest starts maturing, you get a closed canopy. Until the forest reaches old-growth conditions, you don’t get that canopy structure back. And getting to the old-growth stage takes a really long time. So, we thought, instead of viewing timber harvesters as the bad guys, is there a way to design timber harvests to benefit ceruleans and possibly other forest birds? Can you actively manage for the kind of canopy gaps that would exist in an old-growth forest?”

I nodded slowly, still silently skeptical. But the Cerulean Warbler Technical Group probably did have it right—certainly folks in the timber industry didn’t hate trees and wildlife, and people working together instead of at odds with each other stood a better chance of being successful. I wondered, however, where the coal mining industry fit in with the group’s vision. I understood and respected the efforts of the timber industry in this situation; several of my friends worked as foresters, and for the most part they were genuine outdoorsy types who enjoyed hiking in the woods more than they enjoyed cutting them down. But I couldn’t find many redeeming qualities of mountaintop removal coal mining, and I doubted a mining company would willingly abandon a potential site because of some breeding warblers. Still, I admired the congenial and cooperative spirit of the group; I hoped they’d be able to help the birds.

“At the first cerulean meeting,” Dr. Wood continued, “we sat down and identified research needs and information gaps and tried to figure ways to address them. There had been a lot of anecdotal information that ceruleans seemed to like canopy gaps—they seemed to like a heterogeneous canopy structure—but there hadn’t been specific studies looking at that. So we set up the same study in seven different areas.”

In one of these seven areas, the Lewis Wetzel Wildlife Management Area, Dr. Wood’s doctoral student Greg George and a team of field technicians were currently at work. I’d be visiting them the following afternoon. Another one of the seven study areas was located in the Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area in eastern Tennessee; I had plans to travel there later in the summer.

“In each of our study areas,” Dr. Wood explained, “we have four different forest plots with three different intensities of timber harvest and one unharvested control plot. What we wanted to do was to say, ‘OK, if you go in and do a really light harvest, and just take out a few trees here and there, and make a few canopy gaps, how do the birds respond to that?’ That’s not a timbering method that’s used much, though. But there’s another method, called ‘shelterwoods,’ where you end up with about 40 percent of the canopy left, and that’s used a lot in Appalachia. And then there’s a clear-cut plot, where they take most of the canopy, since that’s used a lot in timber harvesting, too. We also have uncut buffer plots on either side to determine when we start seeing edge-effects.”

I nodded again, and Dr. Wood smiled. “So that’s the basic study design. We’ll look at the different harvesting intensities and see if there’s an optimum range where the timber companies can make money without screwing up the forest for the birds. We had two years of data collected before the harvests went in this winter. All the harvests were completed, so now the research teams are monitoring the post-harvest forests. They’re doing point counts, looking for the presence or absence of birds, spot-mapping, looking for nests, and doing some banding. They’ll also try to look at return rates in future years to kind of get at the survival question.”

“That all sounds great,” I agreed. I re-wound my hair into its knot and watched two blue jays hopping after each other on the lawn in front of Percival Hall. Something I’d read in the article “History of the Cerulean Warbler Technical Group” stuck in my mind: “The basic premise of the group was to develop a broad-based, technically sound approach to conservation of the Cerulean Warbler, preempting the contentious and unproductive approach that could otherwise result if the species is listed.… Too often in the past, endangered species conservation issues and listing actions have been characterized by controversy, misinformation, mistrust, and gridlock.”

The first time I’d read this, I thought, of course there’s controversy and mistrust. And there always will be when the public learns about the ways industries abuse our natural resources. Was the article implying that if the cerulean warbler were listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, the industry people would stop cooperating? Or was the article suggesting that the group was formed in anticipation of the cerulean’s listing, to get the recovery process underway early? It sounded to me like the group generally opposed listing the cerulean warbler as “threatened,” and they hoped to work to conserve the species without the additional protections of the Endangered Species Act.

I was probably naïve, but I had confidence in federal legislation designed to protect wildlife. I’d grown up hearing about Endangered Species Act success stories like the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon, the California condor, the humpback whale, and the grizzly bear. In addition to the legal protections required by the ESA, listed animals often become media darlings; what elementary school science class doesn’t talk about the decline and subsequent recovery of the bald eagle? The ESA and resulting attention even made the California condor—an enormous carrion-eating vulture with a naked, bulbous head—somehow loveable.

The story of the petition to list the cerulean warbler as “threatened” is an interesting one. On October 30, 2000, in response to the cerulean’s steady decline, the Southern Environmental Law Center and twenty-seven other organizations, including the National Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, The Sierra Club, and The Wilderness Society, filed a petition under the Endangered Species Act to list the bird as a federally threatened species. Combined, these twenty-seven organizations boast more than two million members. In addition to a discussion of the natural history of the species, the fifty-page petition summarizes scientific research on the birds’ decline and provides justifications for listing it as threatened.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service defines an endangered species as “one that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range”; they define a threatened species as “one that is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.” The SELC petition argues that the cerulean fits this definition: “Long term Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) trends, many recent studies, peer-reviewed scientific papers, and state and federal agency reports indicate that the decline of the Cerulean Warbler continues and that the threats to its habitats and existence are severe, pervasive, and ongoing.” Not only would listing the bird as a threatened species help conserve the remaining population, but it would require the service to designate habitat critical to its survival and recovery. The petition continues: “This listing and designation would prohibit federal land managers from engaging in clear-cutting or other fragmenting activities which might jeopardize the species or adversely impact its critical habitat. Moreover, all federal agencies would be charged with affirmatively promoting and restoring the forests so as to promote the recovery of these warblers, which in turn would benefit the many other birds and other species which depend on intact forests for survival.” That sounded splendid to me; it sounded like it would be a significant hurdle for mountaintop removal operations.

According to the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service had ninety days to review the petition before making a preliminary decision about whether or not there was substantial information to warrant moving to the next stage, which included gathering information and a more thorough review. After receiving the cerulean petition, the service took almost two years—until September 2002—to announce their “ninety-day finding,” which it published in Volume 67, Number 205 of the Federal Register. It found “that the petition presented substantial information indicating that listing this species may be warranted.” The service asked the public to submit comments on the petition by January 21, 2003. According to the Federal Register, “After considering the comments and information submitted to us during the status review comment period following this 90-day finding, we will issue an additional finding (i.e., the 12-month finding) determining whether listing is in fact warranted.”

Twelve months passed, then another twelve months, and then another twelve months, but no “12-month finding” was issued. In February 2006, more than three years after the service was required to make a decision, the Southern Environmental Law Center submitted a Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The Complaint “challenge[d] Defendant’s failure to issue a finding on Plaintiff’s petition to list the Cerulean Warbler as a threatened species.” It contended that the Secretary of the Interior’s and the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “failure to process [the] petition…frustrate[d] efforts to protect the Cerulean Warbler and its habitat…” They asked that the court compel the defendants to issue a finding. On August 7, 2006, a stipulated settlement agreement was reached; the service agreed to submit a twelve-month finding by November 30, 2006. On November 28, 2006—more than six years since the original petition and more than four years late—the service decided to deny the cerulean warbler protection under the Endangered Species Act. It cited budget shortfalls as the reason for the delay.

The service published its decision in the Federal Register, Volume 71, Number 234. While it agreed that the cerulean warbler had declined at an average annual rate of 3.2 percent over the last forty years, and it “anticipate[d] continued, gradual decline of this species,” it “[did] not believe this species [was] likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.” The service “also conclude[d]…that abundance will remain high enough that the species effectively is in no danger of extinction in the near term.…” Essentially, it argued that even though ceruleans are expected to continue to decline at a rate of about 3 percent a year, there were still too many of them to warrant a listing as “threatened.” The service reasoned that if there were about four hundred thousand ceruleans left in the world, in one hundred years there would still be twenty thousand. Since the likelihood of extinction in the “foreseeable future” seemed low, the service did not believe that cerulean warblers qualified for additional federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Interestingly, the service acknowledged in the Federal Register that “large-scale habitat loss is occurring in the core of the species’ range, Kentucky and West Virginia, where mountaintop coal mining and valley fill operations through 2012 are expected to remove 567,000 ha (1.4 million acres) of suitable forest habitat.” It continued, “The total cumulative forest loss from these activities will likely eliminate breeding habitat for 10 to 20 percent of the total cerulean warbler population currently occurring within that core area. The loss of breeding opportunities for birds in this area may have a disproportionate effect on the species’ total population size.” These statistics do not seem to consider the areas of forest already altered by mountaintop removal mining; by many accounts, more than four hundred Appalachian peaks have been blasted away since the late 1970s.

As the service explained, “Reclamation at mountaintop mine sites has focused on erosion prevention and backfill stability and not on reclamation with trees. The compacted backfill material that is normally used for reclamation hinders tree establishment and growth. … As a result, natural succession by trees and woody plants on reclaimed mine land…is slowed.” Instead of listing the species, the service suggested another route: “The conservation of the cerulean warbler could be improved by additional focus by the regulatory programs under SMCRA [Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act] and section 404 of the CWA [Clean Water Act] on the additional protection and improved reclamation of the species’ habitat.” But where will this “additional focus” come from? The Office of Surface Mining refuses to comment on whether or not the benefits of mountaintop removal coal mining are worth the environmental costs. Its website states that while this question “is certainly valid…for debate, it doesn’t fall within [its] ability to address”; however, in 2004 the Office of Surface Mining partnered with scientists, industry representatives, citizens’ groups, and all seven Appalachian coal states to launch the ambitious Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI).

ARRI’s mission is to restore hardwood forests on mined lands in the eastern United States. Unlike the currently popular reclamation methods, ARRI advocates a methodology known as the Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA). This approach encourages reclamation with forests instead of grass-covered plateaus. Dr. Patrick Angel, a forester and soil scientist with the Office of Surface Mining, explained the FRA to me this way: “Basically, first of all, select the very best growth medium, whether that’s topsoil or sandstone, and secondly, don’t compact it. Keep it loose. Maybe just do one pass with a light dozer instead of twenty. Scientists have figured that compaction of surface mines is the most limiting factor for reforestation.” Currently, as the Fish and Wildlife Service stated in the cerulean ruling, most mine reclamation involves densely packing and terracing the soil to prevent landslides. ARRI’s solution is to use trees to prevent erosion instead.

Dr. Angel continued, “The third concept in our methodology is to be very careful in what kinds of grasses and legumes we put down, because some of those are pretty aggressive—fescue, sericea lespedeza—they can smother out little tree seedlings. There are many grasses and legumes that are compatible with small trees, like birdsfoot trefoil.” Reclaiming mines with fast growing, invasive grass species makes the sites appear green; unfortunately, the grass species currently popular with mine companies do not allow much else to grow on the sites. “The fourth step,” Dr. Angel told me, “is to plant two types of trees. The first category is early successional species—dogwood, redbud, black locust, Virginia pine—for wildlife purposes and soil development. And the other category is native hardwood high-value species, like white oak and red oak, yellow poplar, and black walnut, too. We never were able to talk about black walnut and strip mine reclamation in the same breath until the scientists we’ve partnered with showed us how to do it. And the fifth step—the last step—is to plant the trees right, by hand, the old-fashioned way.”

Dr. Angel, who in 1972 began working as a state mine inspector in Lecher County, Kentucky (where the mountains are “as steep as a mule’s face”), before securing a job with the federal Office of Surface Mining in 1978, wholeheartedly believes in ARRI’s potential for reforesting old strip mines. In addition to the possibility of oaks, maples, and walnut trees, ARRI has been working with the American Chestnut Foundation to restore the near-extinct trees to Appalachia. Almost all of the United States’ American chestnuts had disappeared by the 1940s, victims of an accidentally introduced Asian blight. Since American chestnuts can no longer thrive in their native range, the American Chestnut Foundation has worked hard to develop back-cross trees that are fifteen-sixteenths American chestnut and one-sixteenth Chinese chestnut; ARRI hopes to plant these trees, which will look and “act” like American chestnuts but will be blight-resistant because of the Chinese portion, on reclaimed mine sites. While the foundation has not yet produced mass quantities of these trees, Dr. Angel claimed that this program had the potential to be “the biggest ecological restoration ever,” because “we’re talking about restoring an entire ecosystem that was dependent on one species.”

Restoring American chestnut trees—and native Appalachian hardwood forests in general—to old surface mine sites sounds like responsible, appropriate reclamation; ARRI’s ambitious plans will certainly help future cerulean warblers repopulate formerly unusable portions of their range. I hope ARRI’s reclamation approach will become the norm; in the meantime, however, huge swaths of forested mountains were still being leveled for “cheap” electricity.

I wondered: Without the additional protections of the Endangered Species Act, would the cerulean warbler be doomed to a fate of gradual, steady decline? Or could their decline be turned around by the Cerulean Warbler Technical Group’s collaborative research projects without added federal protection? Would industries such as lumber and coal mining really cooperate to help save such a tiny creature? I felt in my deepest heart of hearts that protecting wildlife species—no matter how small or delicate or seemingly insignificant—was vital to the health of our planet and to our own health. But it didn’t seem that the coal industry even cared about humans who resided near their mines. The situation made me feel a bit desperate.

The breeze gusted down the hill again toward Percival Hall. I leaned back on the wooden bench and asked Dr. Wood if she had any wisdom about the “so what” factor.

“You mean, ‘So what if we lose all the ceruleans?’” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well,” she smiled, pushing her hair out of her eyes again, “to me, they’re not ‘the canary in the mine’ or anything, but they’re a part of the system. If we start losing pieces of things, where will we stop?”

I smiled back at Dr. Wood. I couldn’t agree more. Although the cerulean’s situation was complex—not only because of its steep and steady decline, but also because of the polite disagreements about how to best help the species—it seemed that everyone involved had the same goal: to conserve cerulean warblers, and to make sure they didn’t disappear from our forests and mountains.

As I walked back up the sidewalk to my Jeep (after expressing my deep and eternal gratitude to Petra Wood), I felt that I had a much clearer understanding of the big cerulean picture. I was ready to take the next step; it was long past time for me to see an actual cerulean, in the flesh.