Wildlife Refuges vs. National Parks

In honor of National Wildlife Refuge Weeks (which was this past week), I thought I would say something about this system of federally-owned lands that include 552 refuges spanning 150 million acres in all 50 states. I first stumbled upon a National Wildlife Refuge 3 years ago and have now had the opportunity to visit or work in 7 in four states. I've had the privilege to meet people who have worked in several of them, each with their own unique characteristics:

• the world's largest wintering elk herd (National Elk Refuge)
• the smallest deer (Key Deer) and turtle (bog turtle) species in North America (Key Deer Refuge and Great Swamp)
• oil spills (Breton Island)
• unexploded ordnance (Plum Tree Island)
• nuclear waste (Johnston Atoll)
• Superfund sites full of PCBs, chromium, lead, asbestos, rocket fuel, and who knows what else (too many to mention)
• active volcanoes (Alaska Maritime)
• tropical rainforest (Hakalau)
• sandy barrier islands that change shape every few months (Monomoy)
• an urban skyline (Minnesota Valley in Minneapolis, John Heinz in Philadelphia)
• habitat for migratory organisms of all sizes, including bats, whales, sea turtles, manatees, whooping cranes, wood ducks, sturgeon, and even butterflies

No other agency is the world has purview over such a wide array of conservation-related issues. That said, many Americans aren't completely aware of their wildlife refuges. They're often confused with privately-owned preserves, parks operated by local governments, and wildlife rehabilitation centers. However, the most common system that the NWRS is confused with is the National Park Service. Now, I enjoy a visit to an NPS-run site (I last counted 39), but the Park Service is NOTHING like the NWRS. They might both have pretty animals running around them and employ people who wear uniforms, but there's are several differences between the two.
America's national wildlife refuges are run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), whose main mission revolves around conservation of biodiversity and natural resources. The refuge system is only a small part of the FWS, which also operates fish hatcheries, lists and protects endangered species, and responds to environmental catastrophes (most famously the Deepwater Horizon disaster and other oil spills, but also including forest fires). Wildlife refuges are specifically designed to protect biodiversity, both directly (a cave that contains the only habitat of an endangered fish) or indirectly (a wetland used by migrating birds). The Park Service protects landscapes and historic sites for recreational purposes. Of course, there is some overlap between the two. NPS has sites such as Everglades National Park, an enormous wetland of key significance, and Yellowstone, a tremendous habitat for a variety of wildlife. Likewise, refuges such as Chincoteague in Virginia get a significant number of tourists.
One obvious characteristic that differentiates the refuge system from national parks is the emphasis on management for biodiversity. Refuge operations are designed to protect natural resources; national parks are designed to serve visitors. Refuges often clear grasslands and fields to encourage habitat succession or alter water levels to create plant growth. I’ve heard of entire refuges closed for a couple days due to prescribed burns, invasive plant spraying, or controlled hunting. I even know of a refuge that closes much of trail system during the winter when bird populations are at their greatest to protect them from intrusion by visitors; in a national park, the trail would probably be open to allow visitors to see the birds. Similarly, many refuges that aren’t located within an hour or so of a major metropolitan area don’t have a visitor center, or any visitor services at all. They simply don’t make a huge effort to attract any because it’s not a priority.
Finally, here’s my more biased distinction between refuges and parks. National Parks are places you go if you want to drive beyond a gate and instantly be dazzled. You can see dramatic geological formations, ancient Pre-Columbian ruins, majestic forests, and historic buildings where history was shaped. All you have to do is get there and walk around. In comparison, National Wildlife Refuges are places where you can go for an hour and not see anything. You can be at one for a couple hours and not see anything. If you don’t make an effort to look and don’t have any patience, you’re not going to see anything. But suddenly, there will be moments that you won’t find anywhere else: three bald eagles fighting over an opossum, two snapping turtles engaged in territorial fighting, the eerie call of an American Bittern echoing miles across a wetland, or a peregrine falcon flying across a beach. Then, as suddenly as the moment started, it disappears, and you’re back to sitting in the marsh.
Thanks for reading.

The Social Network: What’s All the Buzz About?

I don’t get to see dramas in the theaters very often. I enjoy watching dramas with great acting, but I just can’t get anyone to see them with me (with the exception of the time I dragged my family to see Precious). So, after hearing the buzz about The Social Network, I searched around for a week until I finally found someone to go see it. Having never read a review of it (I usually don’t), I expected it to be an overdramatic, overacted attempt at making programming nerds look cool. Instead, what I found was an overdramatic and intricately crafted muddle of a film.

In The Social Network, David Fincher portrays the interpersonal struggles that accompanied Facebook during its rapid initial growth. The focal plot involves the growing divide between the reserved and quite Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his outwardly confident but misguided companion, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). I must say that I’m not a huge fan of Jesse Eisenberg. He’s one of a growing class of actors who seem to exclusively play pale, skinny, and awkward white boys unsure of their direction or purpose and who spend most of their time staring blankly at the ceiling with their hands in their pockets (along with Michael Cera). If you’ve ever seen Eisenberg in The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland, or Zombieland, you probably wonder if he can play anything else. That said, I was really confused with where his character was going. What is he trying to get at? Is he seeking revenge on the upper echelon of Harvard social structure? Or is he just another bored techno-geek?

Meanwhile, Andrew Garfield provides a stunning performance as Saverin, Zuckerberg’s initial business partner. It’s easy to feel sorry for him as he slowly becomes estranged from the company, but it’s painful to see how shortsighted he really turned out to be. Garfield plays a smart and keen entrepreneur who unfortunately grows more and more out of place as the story progresses, and yet he continues to be completely oblivious. In any other situation, Saverin's drive to push the company forward by monetizing it probably would seem to be the right decision, but, like Zuckerberg, he really doesn't have a clue what's going on, and it subtly shows.

As for the rest of the movie and its actors, I founded to be so dramatic to the point where it was almost tiring to watch. There’s a two-minute long scene of a Harvard rowing team competing against a Dutch boat accompanied by an industrial version of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (thanks, Trent Reznor) that left me perplexed as to what the preceding montage had to do with anything. I don’t know if it was intended as such, but I couldn’t stand the performance of Armie Hammer as both Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. It was like Tweedledum and Tweedledee walked into an Abercrombie catalog. There are similar moments of short bursts of emotion or random details that seem out of place. Yet, I enjoyed the striking cinematography and clever filmmaking overall. The movie made powerful use of lighting, accented by the eerie glow of computer screens.

As a self-admitted nerd who went to quite possibly one of the most introverted and technology-obsessed universities in the country, I’m often frustrated at the media’s portrayal of us as bespectacled, wired-in slobs with nasal voices and tendencies to quote obscure comic books and down 2-liter bottles of mountain dew on an hourly basis (think Big Bang Theory). Thus, I snickered to myself at the details that reminded of my tech school moments: the scenes of Eisenberg running through the snow in shorts and flip-flops (there was always that guy), writing equations on the window with a dry-erase marker when there was a lack of paper, and alcohol-induced bouts of programming rage (I think I even participated in a coding drinking game once). On a personal level, it was satisfying to see college portrayed at least remotely like I remembered it.

The The Social Network is an intricate and complex drama that tells the story of a couple of guys who watched as they changed the world and didn’t know what to do about it. At times, it strives too much to create tension, with characters that are defined by extreme personalities. When I first heard of this concept, I thought it was going to be social commentary on alienation and tensions of relationships due to dependence on technology. On the surface, The Social Network seems nothing like that: simply the story of the early beginnings of Facebook and their struggles. However, in detailing Zuckerberg and those who surrounded him, The Social Network is a story of characters with internal conflicts struggling to interact.

Thanks for reading...

Note: This was my first movie review. Ever. Comments are appreciated.
EDITED 10/10 1100: Grammar and formatting

Happy little moths

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon some of the coolest animals I've ever seen. Hanging off of the butterfly bush in front of my house was the following scene:

I found myself wondering what on Earth these things are and what they were doing. Rather than actually tell you up front, let's go through a little thought exercise. What was amazing about this incident is that the two insects didn't move the whole time. At all. I got pretty close to take these pictures and even used the flash, but nothing startled them. Thus, I was able to examine them very well by sight. So let's get to it:

1) What Phylum/Class are they? It's pretty obvious to me. They have six legs, two pairs of wings, and segmented bodies. That means they are members of class Insecta, the insects.

2) What order of Insecta are they? The two pairs of wings rule out several orders, including Diptera (flies). The hind and forewings overlap and are of strikingly different sizes, ruling out a bunch more, such as Odonota (dragonflies and damseflies), Plecoptera (stoneflies), Neuroptera (lacewings), Trichoptera (caddisflies), etc. They're also really fuzzy, which doesn't happen in too many orders in North America. At this point, I've narrowed it down to Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, and ants) and Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths).

3) It's all in the wings. After reading my last line and seeing the above picture, you may have thought "What kind of a butterfly or moth has clear wings? It must be a Hymenopteran." Sure, you've probably never seen a butterfly with clear wings. However, have you ever seen a wasp with a big fat body and small eyes? I think not. Upon closer examination (a decent picture of which requires a microscope or very specialized camera), I discovered that the darker portions of the wings are covered with scales. Hymenopterans do not have scales, so it must be a Lepidopteran.

4) It's a moth. Butterfly antennae have little knobs at the end. Contrary to popular belief, some moths are indeed active during the day.

4) But wait, there's more! I thought it would be impossible to identify these further without a magnifying glass. I forgot that I had my insect book inside, so I ended up cheating a bit. I went online, looked up moths with clear wings in Virginia, and found the answer almost instantly: genus Hemaris, the clearwings.

As for the behavior, it's probably some sort of mating. Yes, moths have sex. I can't exactly prove it (I didn't feel like picking one up and poking around inside it), but I don't know of anything else that would keep two insects in that position and not allow them to get bothered. I've seen similar situations with cicadas and grasshoppers that barely move if they are disturbed while mating.

On a side note, I've been getting back into Photoshop a little more. I dropped it for a while after visiting my sister's art show last year and realizing how easy it is to over-edit everything. However, in this situation, a bit of editing is necessary to accurately portray the subject. The lighting was funky, with shots from the front of the moths appearing too bright with flash or too dark without it. So, I took the following shot...

... and did some cropping and color saturation.

I also found it impossible to get a good shot from head-on. The picture below is probably the best I took, and still turned turned out pretty badly.

So, I utilized the over-used "Shadows and Highlighting" tool to bring out some features of the moths.

You can see how tiny its eyes are (just under the antennae), and there even appears to be some of its probscis visible. This pretty much confirms that it's not a wasp; I can't imagine a wasp head looking anything like that.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Maybe it'll get you to look at insects a bit differently, and not just as brown things buzzing around lamps. Thanks for reading!

Really quick update...

I moved again. I temporarily transferred to another refuge about 3 weeks ago. I've spent the past three weeks trying to write something meaningful about my new experience. I was going to publish a post yesterday, but I scrapped it because it could have gotten me fired. I decided that I really can't blog about my work anymore, or at least for the time being, because I don't really agree with the reasoning behind what I currently do. I still do my job and do it well, and I respect the decisions made by people above me. However, I was finding it hard to clearly state my intentions in a blog post, and I don't want to have my message misconstrued.
In other news, I'm going to take wildlands fire training next week. It's actually quite scary for me. It's something I've wanted to do since I was about seven, but I'm pretty sure I'm not really qualified to be a firefighter, physically or emotionally. I guess that's why it's called training.

Thanks for reading.