A California prionus beetle. Sounds sort of like a fuel-efficient car made jointly by Toyota and Volkswagen, doesn’t it?

I found this huge beetle (more than two inches long) near my woodstove a couple of weeks ago, and Inverness Park biologist Russell Ridge identified it for me. The prionus beetle is usually described as a “boring insect,” not because it’s mundane but because its larvae feed on the roots of trees, often killing them. The larvae can reach four inches long and be as big around as your finger.

Among the trees they attack are oaks, populars, black walnut, some fruit trees, and some conifers. Their range extends from Central California to Alaska.

Western gray squirrels are common sights on this hill, but they disappear so fast when they see a human that it took me months of trying before I managed to photograph one.

Except in stands of redwoods, gray squirrels can be found in trees throughout Marin County. This one is on my deck.

Gray squirrels breed in early spring and have a gestation period of approximately two months. Although females typically give birth in hollow trees or other hidden spots, they move their young into nests of leaves and twigs (called dreys) within a few days.

Dreys such as this one on the property of neighbors George Stamoulis and Carol Waxman are often lined with grass or moss.

In late fall and early winter, squirrels hide acorns in a variety of places to feed on during lean months. However, not all the hidden acorns are recovered, and gray squirrels are often credited with inadvertently planting oaks around the West.

Young raccoons up a tree.

These kits are about four months old, and every night their mother leads them on hunts around my cabin. Because I see them only after dark, I have to use a flash to photograph them. The raccoons don’t seem to notice the flashes, but my results nonetheless have been uneven.

For most of my 35 years as a newspaper man, I shot photos with film, and I’m still learning the fine points of digital photography.

In recent months, two problems in particular been been bugging me: white specks caused by shooting through windows and digital “noise,” tiny dots of color where there should be none.

Fortunately, I’ve become friends with a San Francisco photography student, Jasper Sanidad (right), who contributes to The Point Reyes Light, and he is now my coach.

For example, when I had been photographing nocturnal creatures, I’d usually tried to remain unseen behind closed windows, but Jasper noted that dirt on the windows was a large part of my problem.

In addition, he told me, I’d been depending too much on my camera’s zoom to show the critters up close.

Because my flash was too far from the animals, Jasper explained, my camera wasn’t picking up enough color detail, and the noise in my photos resulted from the digital system trying to provide what wasn’t there.

What I needed to do, he added, was to get closer to the creatures myself and keep my zoom at a wide angle. That would eliminate the noise.

As it’s turned out, Jasper was right, but what a surprise! I was able to shoot my nightly raccoons at close range, I discovered, mainly because they walked right in the kitchen door when I left it open to avoid shooting through the glass.

Notwithstanding the crisp images I could get by having the raccoons so close at hand, I didn’t really want them in the house. So I threw some bread out the door, and they went back outside to get it.

More than 40 peaceful demonstrators, mostly from West Marin, walked from Sacred Heart Church in Olema to Point Reyes National Seashore headquarters Sunday in a last-ditch effort to discourage the the park from killing its few remaining fallow and axis deer. Despite public opposition, the park two weeks ago announced eradication was about to resume.

Opposition to Park Service plans for killing the fallow and axis deer has been so widespread that National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher in 2005 temporarily placated the public with assurances that eliminating all 1,000 deer would take 15 years. There would be plenty of time to find other approaches for controlling herd sizes between now and then, he told a public meeting.

But, like so many of Supt. Neubacher’s public statements, the assurance was untrue, and late last fall, the park set out to kill off all 1,000 as quickly as possible.

Moreover, the brutal way in which the first 800 or so deer were killed, many left in the wild to suffer long, agonizing deaths from gut wounds, offended hunters as much as the general public.

Eventually, US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, three other Bay Area members of Congress, Lynn Woolsey, George Miller, and Anna Eshoo, and Lt. Governor John Garamendi all called for a moratorium on the killing while the use of contraception was studied.

But Supt. Neubacher was as quick to thumb his nose at members of Congress and the lieutenant governor as at members of the public. A bureaucrat who thrives on defiance, Neubacher two weeks ago rejected contraception studies by the Humane Society of the United State, which is willing to help administer the birth control. He instead announced he would proceed with the killing posthaste.

In trying to justify his nativistic eradication of un-American deer in the park, Supt. Neubacher’s administration, as most West Marin residents realize, fabricated the problems the deer were supposedly causing.

The most notable untruth was that the few fallow (right) and axis deer were out-competing the park’s native blacktail deer. In fact, the park and land immediately around it has, if anything, an overabundance of blacktail deer, as evidenced by all the roadkills. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com)

But then, Supt. Neubacher may be one of the most dishonest public officials around that isn’t in prison; witness his deceitful, bully-boy attempts to drive Drakes Bay Oyster Company out of business. Here’s a press release distributed last week by the Business Wire. I’ll be coming back to the topic in future postings:

MARIN COUNTY’S DRAKES BAY OYSTER CO. ABUSED BY GOVERNMENT AGENCY, ACCORDING TO U.S. DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT

Business Wire, July 23, 2008

REPORT SHOWS NATIONAL PARK SERVICE USED FALSE INFORMATION, BUREAUCRATIC RED TAPE IN ATTEMPT TO RUIN MARIN COUNTY BUSINESS

SAN FRANCISCO — A report issued by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior has concluded that the National Park Service knowingly used false scientific data to bolster its attempt to drive a local oyster company from the Point Reyes National Seashore area.

The investigation conducted by the Inspector General reveals that Park Service officials made false scientific claims, misled other federal authorities and attempted to hide data that called into question the veracity of the Park Service’s case. The report details how the Inspector General’s Computer Crimes Unit recovered an email apparently deleted by the National Park Service’s lead scientist that showed the government agency was knowingly misrepresenting environmental data.

Park Service officials are accused of engaging in a campaign of intimidation and disinformation to damage the operation of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company. Investigators concluded there is no scientific evidence to support Park Service claims that the oyster company was responsible for pollution or damage to the environment.

Drakes Bay Oyster Company was purchased in 2004 by Kevin Lunny [at left with oyster “seed”] along with his brothers, Robert and Joe Jr. The Lunny family owns the Historic G Ranch and has been a fixture of the Point Reyes community for more than 60 years. The Lunnys are committed to organic ranching practices and policies that protect the environment in western Marin County. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com)

The Lunny family says it will now seek “restitution for interference and harm to its business.” The family praised Senator Dianne Feinstein for demanding justice in this case of alleged government abuse of a small family business.

“With the Inspector General findings, we at last have vindication of the Lunny family after four years of frustration and government abuse,” said Sam Singer, a spokesman for the Drakes Bay Oyster Company. “The Lunnys purchased Drakes Bay Oyster Company with the full intent of restoring a Point Reyes business and contributing to an important local industry. What the National Park Service tried to do here in misleading the Marin County Board of Supervisors and penalizing citizens at the expense of the truth was nothing short of outrageous.”

“This report shows that the National Park Service under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Interior fabricated and falsified the science to drive Mr. Lunny and his family out of business,” said Mr. Singer. “This report is devastatingly critical and calls into question Interior Secretary’s Kempthorne’s newly announced ethics policy. We expect wholesale changes in the Department to come from this unfortunate episode.”

In April 2007, Park Service officials had threatened to seek civil and criminal charges against the Lunnys, claiming that their oyster beds were harming seals, damaging eelgrass and polluting waterways. “Based on the research conducted by several scientists, the Inspector General concluded that the data used by the Park Service was flawed and unreliable,” said Mr. Singer.

[Kayakers use the oyster company premises for a haulout site.]

“My family and my business have been harmed,” said Kevin Lunny. “The Inspector General detailed numerous instances where science was manipulated, facts were distorted, and false accusations were made. All we wanted to do was improve a local oyster company and contribute to the Point Reyes community. We are encouraged by the Inspector General’s report but the federal government has farther to go in atoning for what happened here. The Park Service has broken trust and good faith with the ranchers, farmers, and citizens of West Marin.”

“In the end, this is about private citizens standing up to abusive treatment by their government,” Mr. Lunny said. “We said all along that the Park Service was in the wrong and now we have been proven right. The Lunny family has lived, farmed, and ranched in Point Reyes for more than six decades. We supported the Seashore’s creation and enjoyed an outstanding relationship until recently. It is our hope and prayer that the Park Service will work with us to reestablish a positive relationship.”

One of the luxuries of being retired is that I can do all the late-night reading I want, and I’m continually being amazed by what I read.

Remember the shortwave radiomen in those old movies about World War II: “Come in, Rangoon! Come in, Rangoon!” When I was a kid, the family’s floor-standing radio had shortwave bands, and I recall the fun I had picking up broadcasts from far and wide. But like everything else from that era, shortwave radio faded out, or so I had thought.

The London-based Economist reported June 21 that while shortwave radio has pretty much gone off the air in Europe and North America, it’s still widespread in Asia and especially Africa. The BBC World Service, for example, has a worldwide radio audience of 182 million, of which 105 million still listen on shortwave, The Economist reported. In Nigeria, shortwave use is actually growing.

‘Pride in Craftsmanship‘ photographed in San Rafael.

While visiting Rome some years ago, I ended up staying across the street from what appeared to be a one-building country .and it wasn’t the Vatican. A sign on the front said, “Knights of Malta,” and I could see parked cars with Knights of Malta license plates in the building’s courtyard.

All that came to mind after the inner council of this order of monks, also known as Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order, elected Friar Matthew Festing, 58, of Great Britain its new grand master to replace Friar Andrew Bertie, who died in February.

The “sovereign” Knights of Malta, who do international aid work, have 12,500 members worldwide but no territory of their own, Napoleon having seized the Island of Malta from them in 1798. The order actually began in 1080 AD, took part in the Crusades, and after the Christian defeat ruled first over Rhodes and then over Malta.

Not only do the Knights of Malta have their own license plates, I read last week that they issue their own passports, have their own flag (right), stamps, and currency, actually are widely recognized as sovereign, and have diplomatic relations with 99 countries.

For two centuries after the loss of Malta to Napoleon, the nation had no country, merely headquarters in downtown Rome, until 1999 when the government of Malta agreed to let the knights repossess historic Fort St. Angelo for 99 years. As a result, the Knights of Malta/ Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order, is probably the only sovereign nation in the world that leases its homeland.

The National Audubon Society, which once romanticized the West’s wild horses, now calls them “feral equids” and wants thousands of them killed, as does the US Bureau of Land Management, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The Times noted there are 33,000 wild horses roaming BLM lands from Montana to California, and another 30,000 have been rounded up and are in holding facilities until somebody wants them. From the perspective of a mustang used to the wilds, this is probably like incarceration at Guantanamo Bay. From the perspective of BLM, continuing to spend $26 million a year to take care of all the horses it rounds up (below) is far too expensive.

The Science Conservation Center in Montana, meanwhile, has written a rebuttal to the Audubon Society, saying that contraception would be better than killing to control the number of wild horses. But BLM itself, The Times reported, stands accused of having little interest in contraception.

Does any of this sound familiar?

For BLM substitute National Park Service; they’re both agencies of the Interior Department. For Audubon Society, substitute Marin Group of the Sierra Club; they’re both for the birds. For the Science Conservation Center, substitute the Humane Society of the US; they both oppose the Bush Administration’s applying to wildlife its “Just Say No” antipathy toward contraception. And for wild horses, substitute white deer; nativists dislike both animals for supposedly being non-native, even though they’ve been in North America for centuries.

A fallow deer (commonly called a white deer) and her fawn. Photo by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com

Just how long has each species been in North America? George Washington released this country’s first white deer on his farm at Mount Vernon. Unfortunately, the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service appears to dismiss our first president as some distant, benighted fellow. As for the horse, it “began evolving on the North American continent 55 million years ago, before crossing the Bering land bridge and spreading through Asia and Europe, the June 28 Economist reported.

Spaniards reintroduced horses into North America during the 1500s, and they spread across the West. “In the 1700s there were so many mustangs in Texas that maps marked some areas merely as “Vast Herds of Wild Horses,” The Economist added. However, from 1920 to 1935, “hundreds of thousands of mustangs were sent to slaughter to provide cheap meat.”

BLM says there’s not enough forage for 33,000 wild horses on their 29 million-acre range and wants to kill 6,000 of them. Claiming there wasn’t enough forage for 1,000 exotic deer in their 75,000-acre range, the Park Service last year shot roughly 800 of them. Last week, the Park Service said it will soon shoot the rest.

I’m surprised by how frequently West Marin residents say one reason they hope Obama wins is that it would allow the Democrats to clean house in the Department of the Interior. Blood-lust, defiance, and vengeance have come to epitomize the department’s land-use management. These are not traits most of the public will tolerate forever.

With National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher saying to hell with members of Congress, the lieutenant governor, and most West Marin residents, he’s going to kill deer, a peaceful protest is scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday. Demonstrations will gather at the Sacred Heart Church parking lot in Olema and walk a quarter mile north along Bear Valley Road.

To every creature there is a season. At the beginning of May, the blacktail doe that hangs around on this hill brought out both of this year’s fawns for the first time. Sunday night, it was Mrs. Raccoon’s turn to bring out her four kits.

My kitchen door has become a regular stop on Mrs. Raccoon’s evening rounds.

From the first time she showed up a couple of years ago, her begging has mainly consisted of standing on her hind legs with her front feet on the glass of my kitchen door.

Some nights I throw her scraps, and over the years I’ve learned what she likes and doesn’t.

She won’t eat dog food or fruit. She definitely likes fish and (unseasoned) meat scraps. But her favorite fare is bread — not that healthy, whole-grain stuff but cheapo bread with the consistency of cake.

Three kits hide behind the woodbox on my deck Sunday. I later got out a tape measure and found the gap they’d been in is only four inches wide.

Mrs. Raccoon and two kits beside my woodbox Tuesday night. The youngsters are about the size of six-month-old housecats.

Late in the evening, a male raccoon (left) sometimes shows up begging, but he’s more skittish and is easily intimidated by Mrs. Raccoon if she’s around. Which is probably why he usually waits until she’s gone.

For three weeks last month, I watched helplessly as he contended with a tick attached to the bridge of his nose. Finally, he managed to scrape it off but lost a couple of patches of fur in the process.

“Raccoons do not live together as mated pairs,” the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium in Florida notes on its website. “The males mate with as many females as possible. During the breeding season… females find a den. The male raccoon locates a female and, if she is willing, moves into her den for a short period of mating. Afterwards, the male resumes his wandering lifestyle.”

Two kits prowl my deck Tuesday. Young raccoons are also called “cubs” or “pups,” and some people refer to “kits” as “kittens.”

“Raccoons may breed any time during the late fall into early spring,” reports a posting by the San Diego Natural History Museum. “The gestation period lasts about two months, and the young are born between December and April. A litter may have two to seven young, with an average of four. The eyes open at about three weeks. Although the pups begin to forage and hunt with the mother within two months, she will care for them for almost a year.”

My neighbor George Stamoulis this past week pointed out another bit of nature nesting on our hill. Several of George’s pine trees have limbs overhanging Campolindo Road, and at the end of one limb, a colony of baldfaced hornets have built a nest the size of a Crenshaw melon.

Baldfaced hornets, which are found throughout North America, are really a type of wasp and distinct from European and Asian hornets. They are in the same scientific order as yellowjackets, Vespidae, and somewhat resemble them.

The hornets haven’t attacked any of us on Campolindo Road, but George is worried that a delivery truck will knock the nest down. So far, however, even the garbage trucks have managed to miss it. Good thing because the “worker” wasps, infertile females, are extremely protective of their nests and will repeatedly sting anyone who disturbs it. (The males, “drones,” have no stingers.)

Baldfaced-hornet nests, which have been known to reach three feet tall, are made of a paper-like material the worker wasps produce by chewing old wood. Starch in their saliva binds the wood fibers to create the paper.

“Every year young queens that were born and fertilized the previous year start a new colony and raise their young,” Wikipedia notes. “This continues through summer and into fall. As winter approaches, the wasps die, except for young fertilized queens which hibernate underground or in hollow trees. The nest is generally abandoned by winter, and will most likely not be reused.”

Homage to Rembrandt. Former Inverness resident John Robbins, who built the Horizon Cable system in West Marin, at my dining-room table Wednesday just before sunset.

Not much news here from this past week, just a few stories and mostly unrelated photos. The first story occurred, appropriately enough, after dark on Friday the 13th.

Kathy Runnion, who heads the cat-rescue group Planned Feralhood, was riding with me to the No Name Bar to in Sausalito for an evening of jazz when I drove past the Ross Police Station along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard about 9:15 p.m. The traffic light at Lagunitas Road up ahead was green, but as we approached the intersection, Kathy suddenly exclaimed, “Do you see that? Look out!” There was a thump, and Kathy cried out, “Oh, my God! That car hit her!”

I glanced over at the far curb just in time to see a pre-teen girl collapsing on the pavement. I immediately stopped, as did the oncoming driver that hit her. The girl was apparently leaving an event at the Marin Art and Garden Center, and parents who had been at the center, along with a policeman, immediately converged on the scene.

The girl was obviously in shock and may have been briefly knocked out, for she kept screaming, “What happened?”

“You were hit by a car,” the officer repeatedly explained. Within minutes, paramedics and an ambulance arrived. I later called the Ross Police Department to relate what Kathy and I had witnessed. Kathy had seen two girls in the road, jaywalking in the dark. One retreated to the curb when she saw the oncoming car. The other girl, however, tried to run across the street. If she’d been a second or two faster, the oncoming driver probably wouldn’t have struck her, but I probably would have. Our cars were virtually side by side when the accident occurred.

The policeman I talked with said the girls’ view of oncoming traffic had been momentarily obscured by a third car, which was turning left. Fortunately, he noted, the oncoming driver was able to swerve just enough to avoid hitting the girl head-on, so her injuries were not too severe. Nonetheless, the incident left me shaken. I pass all this along for the obvious moral: don’t jaywalk on a busy boulevard after dark, and if you’re a driver, keep your eyes peeled for those that do.

The blacktail doe and two fawns that live on this hill spend part of every day in my pasture. The fawns are now about 10 weeks old. I shot this family photo Thursday.

My next story isn’t grim despite its violent conclusion. As it happens, when I sold The Point Reyes Light 32 months ago, I had been storing two of the newspaper’s old computers in my basement. They were obsolete and ready for recycling, but I didn’t want to throw them out until the hard drives were erased. In these days of identity theft and cyber-crime, leaving personal and business records on the hard drives would seem to be asking for trouble.

On Monday, using the computers’ erase function, I tried to write over the hard drives with zeroes, the usual way to clear a hard drive. But the old software soon froze. What to do? I called Sheila and Michael Castelli, who a few years ago moved from Point Reyes Station to Taos. She builds websites, and he’s a computer techie.

Mike gave me advice for resuming the erasing, but Sheila soon emailed me that Mike had come up with a simpler, low-tech solution: take out the hard drives and smash ’em. The only problem with that was I’d never tried to disassemble a computer and wouldn’t know a hard drive if I saw one. So I wrote back for more advice.

On Tuesday, however, it occurred to me to call Marin Mac Shop in San Rafael, where a techie told me he’d remove both hard drives for a total of $49.50. I crammed the two computers, two monitors (one of them huge), a plate burner, and other gear into my Acura and, with its rear end sagging, drove over the hill.

Marin Mac Shop needed less than five minutes to remove both hard drives, and I was back out the door and on my way to ReNew Computers. The electronics-recycling center is hard to find. It’s located at 1241 Andersen Drive, Suite J, a small space in one of the non-descript industrial buildings south of downtown; however, the staff was friendly, and the dropoff was free.

Back at home, I followed Mike’s suggestion and destroyed the hard drives with an ax. I pass all this along as one solution to the vexing problem of what to do with old computers.

This last story is a pretty good indication of how I live these days. My long-term houseguest Linda Petersen has a 15-year-old dog, a Havanese named Sebastian. As I’ve noted before, he’s virtually deaf and legally blind, but he’s very sweet.

In recent months, unfortunately, Sebastian has taken to begging at the table, and given his advanced age, neither of us has had the heart to turn him down.

My dining-room table sits next to a window, and just outside the window is a woodbox. Linda and I were eating dinner Thursday night when her little dog as usual came over and stood with his front paws on my leg, wanting to be fed. At that moment, Mrs. Raccoon climbed onto the woodbox and began vulching over my shoulder, hoping I’d throw her some pieces of bread.

“Only in this cabin,” I said to Linda, would we have a pet dog and a wild raccoon begging at the dinner table simultaneously.” Linda then took over feeding table scraps to Sebastian while I got up and threw some bread out the kitchen door to Mrs. Raccoon. I pass all this along as a warning as to what can happen once you start feeding dogs and raccoons from the dinner table. They give you no peace.

Supt. Don Neubacher of the Point Reyes National Seashore and park biologist Natalie Gates have been misleading the public about alternatives to the park’s current program to eradicate exotic deer. That was the word this past week from the senior vice president for wildlife of the Humane Society of the United States.

The Humane Society of the US, as well as the Marin Humane Society, Wildcare, and In Defense of Animals, has criticized the National Seashore’s eradication of non-native fallow and axis deer as cruel and unnecessary.

Thirty years ago, the Citizens Advisory Commission to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore held a series of public hearings to decide the optimum size of the two herds. Wildlife experts from around the country took part, as did hunting organizations and West Marin residents.

Commissioners, who were appointed by the US Secretary of the Interior and mostly nominated by Bay Area local governments, ultimately decided the ideal herd size was 350 deer apiece.

That quota was erratically maintained through culling until 1994 when Neubacher (right) became superintendent and stopped the culling. At that point, the fallow herd in particular began growing.

In 2002, the citizens’ commission expired, and when the Neubacher Administration decided to eradicate the deer, no public hearings were held. When a public meeting was finally held, the public had to content itself with listening to panelists picked by the park. By way of avoiding a general discussion that might have worked out compromise acceptable to most of the public, the park divided the crowd into focus groups, with opposition to slaughtering deer treated primarily as a marketing problem.

The fallow deer, native to the Near East, and the axis deer, native to South Asia, have been on Point Reyes since 1948. The park opened in 1965.

Citing the herds’ growth and their ancestors’ having been non-native, the Neubacher Administration in recent months has been attempting to eradicate all 1,000 to 1,200 of the deer.

About 180, including only a handful of axis deer (as seen in photo below by Trish Carney), still survive.

Animal-rights groups have urged the National Park Service to manage the herds’ sizes with contraception.

The Neubacher Administration has responded that the hunting company it has hired hasn’t been having much success with the contraceptive it’s using, GonaCon.

National Seashore officials made misleading statements in dismissing the effectiveness of the contraceptive, PZP, used to manage herds at other parks, the Humane Society notes.

Here are the Humane Society’s “clarifications and explanations” of recent public claims made by [biologist] Natalie Gates and [Supt. Don] Neubacher at Point Reyes National Seashore.

By John Grandy, PhD, Senior Vice President (right), The Humane Society of the United States

1. With regard to the PZP contraceptive [supposedly being] outdated and less advanced:

PZP is fully tested and completely safe with the adjuvants [pharmacological agents added to a drug to increase its effect] and techniques I recommend in my report, as the numerous peer-reviewed papers I cite demonstrate conclusively. These studies have been conducted over more than 15 years and have included all phases of the reproductive cycle.

There is no comparable data for GonaCon [the deer contraceptive used by the hunting company hired by the park, White Buffalo]. There is no published peer reviewed literature regarding the safety and efficacy of GonaCon and the adjuvants used with it. And there are numerous anecdotal reports of death and/or abscesses or ulcerous lesions in animals treated with GonaCon and its adjuvant.

True, PZP has been in use longer, but the safety and reliability are proven without question.

Surviving fallow deer. Ear tags show that two of the does have received contraception. (Fallow deer photos by Ella Walker)

2. With regard to Natalie Gates’ comment the [Humane Society’s] White Paper approach would not be effective and that it is not practical to use only contraception to eliminate all non-native deer.

These are simply self-serving rephrasings of material in my report that allow her to give the answer she wants people to hear. The paper does not suggest that all deer in the park can be eliminated using the PZP contraceptive. In fact, it clearly states exactly the opposite. What it does suggest and indeed proves with peer-reviewed literature is that a deer population as small as the one that now exists (~)180 can be conscientiously and effectively managed to meet the National Park Service’s biological objectives for vegetation in the Point Reyes National Seashore with PZP.

3. With regard to the cost of the PZP contraceptive versus GonaCon: We do not know what GonaCon costs. I summarized the cost of PZP based on peer-reviewed literature and our direct experience, as follows:

The PZP vaccine and darts are relatively inexpensive; actually less than $50 per treatment (primer dose at $21 plus booster does at $21 plus two darts at $3; and that is only for the first year. Thereafter the cost is about $25 per year). The primary cost in such programs is labor to administer the vaccine (Rutberg 2005).

At Fire Island National Seashore, where deer were accessible and capture for tagging [right, as is being done in the Point Reyes National Seashore] was not necessary, treatments took 1.4 hours per deer (Naugle et al. 2002). At another site, contraceptive darting took 1.6 hours per deer (Rutberrt et al. 2004).

The [National Seashore’s] environmental-impact statement assumes six hours per inoculation (p. 37). Even at six hours per doe, treatment of 80 does would take 60 person-days per year (citations in my report).

Frankly, the National Park Service estimate of the cost of PZP vaccination is based on nothing but speculation and is grossly inaccurate, as this peer-reviewed information shows.

4. With regard to statements from [regional Park Service director Jon] Jarvis and [National Seashore Supt.] Neubacher regarding the need to kill a few deer as part of a contraceptive program.

It may be necessary to euthanize one or more of the deer currently treated with GonaCon if their reported symptoms are causing such pain and suffering that this is the only alternative. If deer are treated with the PZP contraceptive, there is no need to kill, immobilize or tag these deer if the protocol used successfully with white-tailed deer at Fire Island National Seashore is followed.

5. With regard to Neubacher’s claim that he is simply following federal legislation.

It is, of course, true that Neubacher is acting under his interpretation of the broad authority of the enabling legislation and subsequent amendments for Point Reyes National Seashore even as he attempts to eliminate the deer. It is surprising, at the least, that axis and fallow deer were not designated a cultural and historic resource at the time the National Seashore was created. Indeed, numerous reports of past activities at the National Seashore, as well as annual reports, suggest that they were often treated as such, even if they were not so designated.

However, to remove any ambiguity regarding their importance as a cultural and historic resource for the park and environs, we suggest including a rider such as I suggested in my report (Page 12) to designate fallow and axis deer a cultural and historic resource for the Point Reyes National Seashore and require that they be managed as such.

This approach has been successfully followed in Assateague Island National Seashore and Cape Lookout National Seashore.

California Lt. Governor John Garamendi, who served as Deputy Secretary of the Interior in President Clinton’s Administration, has joined the battle to save the Point Reyes National Seashore’s few surviving fallow and axis deer.

A copy of a letter from the lieutenant governor to the regional director of the National Park Service was provided to this blog today, Monday, a day after 75 people marched from Sacred Heart Church to the Vedanta Society Retreat in Olema to protest efforts to eliminate the deer.

Park Supt. Don Neubacher last year brought in a hunting company to eradicate the two herds on grounds they are non-native and that the herds had (not-surprisingly) been growing since he stopped culling them upon becoming superintendent in 1994.

In his letter to Neubacher’s boss, Jon Jarvis, Pacific-West Regional Director of the National Park Service, Garamendi describes the eradication program as “a serious mistake on many levels.”

Sunday’s march (seen here being assembled at Sacred Heart) capped a week when the political tide began run in favor of the deer.

For months Supt. Neubacher had defied objections from groups ranging from hunters to the US Humane Society, who are offended by the hunting company’s cruel practices that cause many deer to suffer long and agonizing deaths.

Last week, US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, and three other Bay Area members of the House, Lynn Woolsey, George Miller, and Anna Eshoo, jointly called for a six-month moratorium on the eradication program.

The moratorium would give the Park Service time to review US Humane Society studies on managing herd sizes with an easily administered contraceptive known as PZP.

In his letter, the lieutenant governor not only calls for a moratorium on the killing, he recommends that the Park Service “accept the fact that the non-native deer have established themselves and that a modest herd be kept in the [National Seashore].”

The letter was a followup to a phone conversation Garamendi (pictured) previously had with the regional director. The Park Service is, of course, part of the Interior Department, and as a former top official of the department, the lieutenant governor knows Jarvis well.

Here is the letter written by Garamendi:

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR JOHN GARAMENDI

May 6, 2008

Jon Jarvis
Pacific-West Regional Director, National Park Service
United States Department of the Interior
One Jackson Center
1111 Jackson Street, Suite 700
Oakland, CA 94607

Dear Mr. Jarvis:

Thank you for taking my call and your attention to the Fallow and Axis Deer issue at Point Reyes National Seashore. Based on our conversation, I understand that the National Park Service (NPS) will not attempt to eradicate the deer population in the spring or summer. However, the NPS contractor will, in the month of May and beyond, conduct investigations on the deer herds to determine the effectiveness of contraception, health of the animals, and other related issues. I further understand that a very limited number of deer may be killed to further the investigation.

I recognize that this amounts to a temporary cessation of the eradication program and that the eradication will continue in the fall. Therefore, I urge you and the NPS to consider a different solution to the non-native deer issue. I recommend that the NPS accept the fact that the non-native deer have established themselves and that a modest herd be kept in the NPS area. This herd should be managed so as to maintain a constant number of animals.

The NPS should undertake the necessary to studies to determine herd size and management techniques. The existing herd, which I understand to be quite small, should be allowed to exist while this study is underway.

The bottom line for me is that it is a serious mistake on many levels to eradicate the entire population of Fallow and Axis deer at the Point Reyes National Seashore. If I am incorrect on my understanding of the NPS and their contractor’s program for the spring and summer, please let me know immediately. Thank you for considering my position for the long-term management of the herd.

Sincerely,
JOHN GARAMENDI
Lieutenant Governor

State Capitol, Room 1114, Sacramento, California 95814

The marchers’ destination was the Vedanta Retreat because the hunting company has been using it as a staging area for its eradication program.

The Hindu retreat, which is surrounded on three sides by the National Seashore, has given the hunting company permission to use its property for a variety of purposes, as long as any killing is carried out elsewhere.

On Sunday, Ella Walker of Olema (at left) complained about this to Swami Vedananda, aka Warner Hirsch (in center with back to camera), and Estol T. Carte (to his right), the Vedanta Society’s president.

Citing Hindu beliefs, Walker said that in allowing the park’s hunters to use Vedanta land, the retreat was complicit in the deer’s deaths. The Vedanta leaders responded by citing National Seashore claims that the eradication program is righteous.

The demonstrators had hoped to meet with the Vedanta leaders within the retreat but were told they could not enter the land beyond a small bridge near Highway 1.

The Vedanta Society had a security guard on hand, but the protest was somber and orderly, with none of the demonstrators showing any desire to force their way into the retreat.

Driving down Campolindo Road last week, my houseguest Linda Petersen spotted a western pond turtle on the pavement, so she stopped and took it off the road. (Photo below by Linda Petersen)

In mid-to-late spring, western pond turtles go in search of mates, which may explain this turtle’s wandering. Notwithstanding their name, western pond turtles are usually found around slow-moving bodies of water.

By creating stockponds, however, ranchers have now provided many pond turtles with actual ponds for habitat. This is good because the western pond turtle is on the federal government’s list of threatened species. There’s no shortage of them in Northern California, but they have mostly died out in Washington and British Columbia.

More cold-blooded carnality in the road: I found this western fence lizard in my driveway Tuesday. Her courtship having already concluded, she may be carrying as many as 17 eggs. Around eight would be more typical, but her condition appears so gravid my guess would be higher.

California newts, meanwhile, are reaching the end of their mating season. The skin of a newt such as this secretes a neurotoxin, tetrodotoxin, that is hundreds of times more toxic than cyanide. Newts, by the way, are amphibians.
Other amphibians native to West Marin include salamanders, red-legged frogs, and Pacific tree frogs such as this. Female tree frogs in West Marin are nearly finished laying this year’s eggs, which hatch in three to four weeks.

Tree frogs depend largely on camouflage to escape predators. Notice how the facial stripe hides this frog’s eyeball. In addition, the frog’s color changes as it moves around. But unlike the chameleon, which changes its color to match background colors, the Pacific tree frog’s color depends on how moist or dry its location is.

This garter snake is warming himself on my driveway. Like lizards and turtles, snakes are reptiles, and both reptiles and amphibians are characteristically cold blooded, which raises a couple of questions. Why are some animals cold blooded? Are there any advantages to it?

Clearly explained answers, I discovered with surprise, can be found on the website of NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, which has created an online “infrared zoo.” Few of us would expect the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to be in the zoology business, so NASA tells why some of its staff are:

“Although our specialty is infrared astronomy, we feel that a first step in understanding the infrared universe is to learn what the world around us looks like in the infrared and to understand the unique knowledge that can be gained by viewing our world in a different light.”

Having said that, NASA goes on to explain the advantage of being cold blooded (such as this Pacific gopher snake on Campolindo Road) vis-à-vis being being warm blooded. Here are some excerpts:

“Warm-blooded creatures, like mammals and birds, try to keep the inside of their bodies at a constant temperature. They do this by generating their own heat when they are in a cooler environment, and by cooling themselves when they are in a hotter environment.

“To generate heat, warm-blooded animals convert the food that they eat into energy. They have to eat a lot of food, compared with cold-blooded animals, to maintain a constant body temperature….

“Cold-blooded creatures [like this Pacific ring-necked snake I found in a rotten log] take on the temperature of their surroundings. They are hot when their environment is hot and cold when their environment is cold…. Cold-blooded animals often like to bask in the sun to warm up and increase their metabolism….

“There are many advantages to being warm-blooded. Warm-blooded animals can remain active in cold environments in which cold-blooded animals can hardly move….

“Warm-blooded animals can… seek food and defend themselves in a wide range of outdoor temperatures. Cold-blooded animals can only do this when they are warm enough…. Cold-blooded animals also need to be warm and active to find a mate and reproduce….

“Being cold-blooded, however, also has its advantages. Cold-blooded animals [like this arboreal salamander] require much less energy to survive than warm-blooded animals do….
Many cold-blooded animals will try to keep their body temperatures as low as possible when food is scarce.”

It occurs to me that all this may have implications for coping with mankind’s energy crisis. The cold-blooded approach would be for everyone to consume less but be less active in order to get by on less energy. The warm-blooded approach would be to keep consuming in order to stay warm, safe, and active, but this requires continually finding new sources of energy. When you file ’em together, which class are you in?

Blacktail deer forage around my cabin on a daily basis, and I’ve often posted photos of them. But apropos May Day, I had a new experience last Thursday with my cloven-hoofed neighbors.

A doe brought this spring’s offspring into my field. They were the first fawns I’d seen this year, and they ultimately provided me with an opportunity to photograph a one- to two-week-old fawn at close range.

As it happened, I’d gone out on my deck to take in the afternoon when I spotted a doe grazing just below me. Soon it nosed around in some tall grass, and up jumped two fawns.

The fawns followed their mother through the grass to my driveway, where she surveyed the surroundings before leading them into the open.

Continuing to photograph them, I followed the three until I caught their attention, and the doe with one fawn (seen here) ran off.

The other fawn, however, may have been to tired to stay with them. It simply wandered into tall grass, which happened to be next to my driveway. As can be seen in the photo above, the grass was far taller than the tiny fawn walking through it.

The fawn might have been expected to seek out a secluded spot in which to rest and not be seen, but this one lay down only a couple of feet off the edge of my driveway not far from where I was standing.

As is evident in the photo above, the fawn was well camouflaged by its spots, and even when I walked up to it, the fawn remained motionless. “It probably thought it was invisible,” Point Reyes Station biologist Jules Evens told me with a laugh Monday. When I walked away from the fawn without touching it, that impression was probably confirmed.

The fawn was so well hidden, in fact, the only way I could get a clear photo of it was by shooting directly down with the grass slightly parted. Even then, the fawn remained absolutely still.

I quickly departed, and for more than half an hour after I left, the fawn lay curled up beside my driveway before its mother returned and led it away.

If a fawn is continually stressed, Susan Sasso of Olema told me, it needs its mother’s licking, as well as her milk, when she returns, for both calm the young creature. Susan, who rehabilitates sick, injured, and orphaned fawns for Wildcare, noted that fawns can die of excessive stress.

At facilities on her property, Susan at present is feeding four very young wards every four hours seven days a week. This exhausting schedule will slow down in a few weeks, but the fawns will be in her care until sometime in August. She does it every year.

Here Susan (at left) and another Wildcare volunteer, Cindy Dicke of Olema, prepare to release a fawn in Chileno Valley.

It was one of six that in 2006 grew up on Susan’s property and then were trucked to Mike and Sally Gale’s ranch for release. The fawns were sedated for the trip but quickly revived once they had received wake-up injections.

Blacktail deer in West Marin are just beginning their fawning season, Susan noted. In total, she has received five fawns, but one, which arrived in bad shape, soon died. The other four, however, are healthy and putting on weight, Susan said.

Wildcare, for which Susan volunteers, ended up with these fawns for a variety of reasons. One was orphaned when its mother died in childbirth; another became separated from its mother after getting caught in a culvert; construction workers separated two from their mother…

“When the fawns are one to two weeks old,” Susan noted, “the mothers leave their babies for a while and graze until their udders are full.” So if you too find a fawn by itself, Susan said, “don’t bother it.” In all likelihood, its mother has simply left for a few minutes to pick up some milk and will be back shortly.