In the July 26th issue of the New Yorker magazine, there is an excellent story by novelist Jonathan Franzen called “Emptying the Skies” about illegal songbird market hunting and trapping in the Mediterranean nation of Cyprus. Franzen, who is apparently as effective a journalist as he is a fiction-writer, accompanies a group called the Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) as they try to free warblers and flycatchers and other species from “lime sticks,” a trap made from a long switch coated in sticky sap that bird poachers place in orchards and anywhere that birds gather. The poachers’ goal: a bagful of songbirds for sale to restaurants and markets for pickling or to make ambelopoulia, a platter of fried little birds that has been a traditional delicacy in the Mediterranean since the 16th century. One restaurant owner in the story who serves the illegal ambelopoulia likens the dish to natural Viagra, of course. (Rhinos being hard to come by on the Mediterranean, fried-up little birds must suffice.) The result: what was once a traditional rural delicacy is now a booming underground business catering to more affluent Cypriots and tourists, and the bird populations are going down fast. Law enforcement seems uninterested.

Franzen also visits the nation of Malta, where it is estimated that about 12,000 people hunt songbirds for food and sport and mounts (there is plenty of illegal trapping, too, according to the story). Malta is in the middle of a major migration path for European songbirds, so millions of them have to pass through every spring, which is when the majority of hunting traditionally has taken place. Not surprisingly, killing so many songbirds on the way to their breeding grounds means that there are a lot fewer birds these days, not just in Malta, but in the countries where the birds spend the other seasons. The fight is on, between the legitimate- or at least licensed- hunters and the anti-hunters from Malta and from all across the European Union. Meanwhile, most in the story agree, the illegal shooters and trappers are hard at work, spring, summer and fall, with enforcement of the laws protecting the birds as lax as ever. The hunters interviewed seemed unable to set aside their differences with the anti-hunters (maybe that would be impossible), even though both want there to be more birds, and more protection. Both groups seem unable to get law enforcement to actually enforce the laws protecting the birds that remain. It’s a Mexican standoff- or in this case a Maltese one. There’s not much discussion of habitat in it, either.

But as I read the story, I kept on thinking- why has the US been so different than this? Why have our hunters been the driving force behind conservation and preservation of habitat for almost 100 years (whether our own antis want to admit it or not)? We whacked out the passenger pigeon, decimated (at least, since decimation means killing one in ten) the plovers, curlews, etc. Almost polished off the buffalo and the grizz. But we brought them back, and made sure that they had habitat. We paid for the National Wildlife Refuge System with Duck Stamp money, and so on (and on, and on). We Americans seem to feel an obligation to the animals that we hunt- that if you are not in some way making sure it goes on, you don’t feel right about taking them. There’s nothing in Franzen’s story to suggest that the Cypriots or the Maltese hunters or the poachers feel any similar obligation.

What makes us different? I have my own ideas, but I’d like to hear what F&S readers think.

I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately about the clearing and straightening of creeks, and how that produces a wide range of negative effects, from the devastating floods that occur when stormwater that used to be absorbed by trees and wetlands and blunted by meanders and bends suddenly comes freight-training downstream, to the dry and sterile creekbeds that are left behind after the raging waters have scoured the habitat and wreaked havoc further down.

So I was fascinated when my friend Bruce Farling of Trout Unlimited sent me this old DuPont ad that celebrates the virtues of straightening creeks with dynamite. I honestly don’t think that people are much different today:  we still yearn for the simplest answer, demand to make straight what nature made crooked,  make flat what the world has made steep, even long after we understand the tremendous costs of those desires and the projects that make them real. What we have become better at, though, is covering up, using softer language to describe the destruction of natural places. Nobody in 2010 would make an ad like this one.  And yet the destruction continues. The bald-faced honesty of the DuPont ad is almost refreshing.

Call it a "Mission Accomplished" moment for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Minutes after NOAA released a Wednesday report intimating nearly three fourths of the 4.9 million barrels of oil BP spewed into the Gulf of Mexico was either removed or otherwise no longer a threat, the marine science community was charging the barricades, claiming major combat was far from over.

"It gives the impression that somehow, most of the oil is gone, and therefore no longer a problem," said Ian McDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University who has studied the Gulf for decades.

"Well, they use 'dissolved,', 'dispersed', ‘degraded.’ But the bottom line is this: The oil has not left the building. You might not be able to see much of it floating on the surface, but it's still in the water. "

To be fair to NOAA, this controversy may largely be the result of lay media misinterpreting the report. A Bloomberg News piece stated this: “About 74 percent of the oil that leaked from BP Plc’s damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico is no longer in the water, according to a U.S. government report."

That's not exactly what the report said. 

If you crunch the numbers in the report’s pie chart, you'll see that only 27 percent has been quantifiably accounted for--17 percent direct recovery, 5 percent burned, 3 percent skimmed.

It's all those other numbers--especially the figures associated with "dispersed" or "dissolved" and "residual."

"None of those mean the oil has left the Gulf, they just mean it's in the ecosystem in a form other than the black stuff that comes out of the well," said Dr. Bob Shipp, marine scientist at the University of South Alabama, and chairman of the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council.

"The many different components of the oil are still there. And it's there in record volumes, at depths where it doesn't degrade quickly. It's in the ecosystem where it is a threat up and down the food web.

"We don't know what the impacts will be, certainly not the long-term impacts. So anyone who thinks this is over is really being misled."

Dr. Jerald Ault, University Miami researcher, said much of the oil that was hit by dispersants at depth has been diffused into the water column in the north central Gulf, an area critical to a wide range of important species. The particles are microscopic in size, but can contain a lethal punch for animals as large as giant tuna and possibly whales. "This is an area used as a spawning ground by giant bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna, some of the billfishes and many others," Ault said. "We know eggs and larvae will die if they come into contact with these components (of oil).

"The real worry is that we don't know where this is going. There is a lot of oil out there still. Maybe you can't see it, but it's still there, and will be for a very long time." Even the 26 percent "residual" is a lot of oil--almost 44 million gallons. And some of it in black sticky form washes up on parts of the Louisiana coast every day.

"The bottom line is that 26 percent of the estimated release remains as an oily phase," said Pedro Alvarez, chair of the civil and environmental engineering at Rice University." This does not mean the remaining 74 percent of the spill has been 'solved.' Most of that has not been removed as implied by the report. Most of that 74 percent is still in the water, migrating and spreading and also possibly degrading."