Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2015 i Audubon Magazine

Lilac-crowned Parrots and Redmasked Parakeets are thriving in the United States, but their wild relatives in their native ranges are in trouble, due largely to the pet trade and deforestation. On a warm November afternoon, Brooke Durham paced outside the El Cajon Valley Courthouse in San Diego, her topknot of pink-highlighted dreadlocks bouncing as she strode back and forth. Durham was there to spring 18 prisoners, all temporarily held in pet carriers on the ground. She was less anxious about breaking the law than about how the captives—parrots that grew up on the streets of Southern California—would fare once they were set loose. Durham and her team of accredited bird caregivers had nursed these vibrant green birds (all from the genus Amazona and native to Mexico, Central, and South America)…

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, disturbing photographs of Brown Pelicans coated in oily sludge played nonstop on TV news and ricocheted around the Internet. Now American White Pelicans, which migrate inland (unlike their brown relatives), seem to be revealing the far-reaching consequences of the disaster more than 1,400 miles from the Gulf, at Marsh Lake on the Minnesota River, where 12,000 to 14,000 pairs nest in May and June. Biologists from North Dakota State University and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources have been collecting samples in the form of eggs and the odd-looking bill knobs, or nuptial tubercles, that pelicans shed after mating season. The scientists are analyzing the samples, looking for evidence of chemicals from both the oil and the dispersants used…

WE’RE ABOUT TO SEE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CHANGES in more than half a century to the most important regulations that cover birds. At 97 years, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) is among the oldest wildlife protection laws on the books. Its creation was one of the National Audubon Society’s first major victories, and in the years since its enactment, the MBTA has saved millions, if not billions, of birds from depredatory human activities. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has announced that it will be strengthening the implementation of the act to better protect birds from modern-day threats to ensure that the MBTA remains as powerful and effective as possible. Every day countless death traps across America needlessly kill birds in horrible ways, from electrocution to drowning in…

EARLY VICTIM On May 20, the day after the Santa Barbara spill, an oiled Brown Pelican fights for its life in the surf at Refugio State Beach.…

UNCERTAINTY WAS KING FIVE YEARS ago in the Gulf of Mexico, from the moment the BP Deepwater Horizon rig blew, killing 11 men, and for the next 87 days, as hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil spewed into the Gulf. By late June I had grown sick of other people telling the story, so I picked up an assignment from an environmental magazine and headed off to see the disaster for myself. For the next month I toured the tar-balled coasts, hitched a helicopter ride with the Cousteau film team to see the rig and the giant oil slicks, and talked with local fishermen and politicians while observing the media circus that I was part of. Traveling along the marshes and barrier islands, I had the deep sense…

Following nature’s inspiration wherever it may lead has been part of RISD’s philosophy since its founding nearly 140 years ago. THE TWO NAKED, MIDDLE-AGED MEN scowl; they can tell I’m not where I belong. I entered this room on the top floor of the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab expecting to sit in on a Drawing from Nature class. (The Audubon prints on display were a promising sign.) I imagined I’d find art students at their easels, analyzing the bones of some obscure mammal or, better yet, learning how to load specimens into the lab’s new scanning electron microscope. Instead, the “nature” these two dozen kids are drawing from turns out to be of the nude human variety. I quickly back out of the room, and head to the front desk,…

On tuesday, may 19, a rusted pipeline broke, smothering Santa Barbara’s beaches and tides with a dense blanket of warm oil. The onshore pipe, operated by Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline, leaked more than 100,000 gallons of oil; 21,000 of those gallons poured into a drainage ditch, under a freeway, and into the Pacific. It was the worst local spill since 1969, when a Santa Barbara Channel drilling rig blowout sent a catastrophic 4.2 million gallons of crude onto area beaches and helped give rise to the modern environmental movement. And it occurred along one of the most ecologically pristine and fiercely protected places on earth. Swarming with seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, kelp forests, and migrating whales, the crystal clear, reef-filled waters of the undeveloped Gaviota Coast are one of…

MARK HAUBER DOESN’T FIT THE classic field-biologist archetype. A professor of animal behavior and conservation at New York City’s Hunter College, Hauber has been collecting data at his study site for five years. Yet his clothes aren’t wrinkled, stained, or moldy (they’re actually crisp and black); he’s not covered in scratches or insect bites; his face is clean-shaven and his haircut fresh. He lacks the thousand-yard stare that marks longtime researchers toiling in remote locales. But then his site isn’t exactly the norm either— it’s a former city dump. And though the 2,200 acres of meadows, woodlands, and marsh that comprise the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island’s western shore can look deceptively bucolic, there’s no escaping the fact that approximately 150 million tons of garbage—everything from dirty diapers and…

BOOKS, EYEGLASSES, OLD CAMERAS, INDUSTRY, ARCHITECTURE—THESE ARE THE TYPES OF OBJECTS AND themes often found in Harry Campbell’s geometric illustrations of abstract concepts. Organic subjects are a relatively new focus for the Maryland-based artist, whose work, created with a tablet, a stylus, and a computer, is inspired by Picasso and other late 19th and early 20th century painters. “For me, it’s necessary to constantly explore and take risks, not go with something that’s comfortable,” he says. “I like Audubon’s Band-tailed Pigeon because there are two of them; they’re a couple, like mirror images. I liked having that balance with the branches and the leaves. So I took the birds almost as they were drawn by Audubon and reworked the composition, making a ball out of the branches, like a cage.”…