Globe Trotters: Trash Mars a Monument and a Rare Bird Visits Texas

They say it’s a small world. Apparently if you are a bird or a bunch of trash that is the case.

Today I bring you two stories of long-distance travel.

Trash Piling Up at our National Monument

Last week we were all abuzz about President Bush’s designation of three new national monuments in the South Pacific Ocean, preserving precious marine ecosystems for perpetuity. That made for a total of four marine monuments established during the Bush administration. The first, in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), called the Papahanaumokuakea (Pa-pa-hah-now-mo-koo-ah-keh-ah) Marine National Monument, is spectacular – as these student pictures from a Duke field trip show.

A view of Kure Atoll, part of four national marine monuments President Bush has set aside for conservation. More than 300,000 miles of ocean ecosystems are now protected by federal law, but trash coming from the oceans is a persistent problem in some of these areas.

But there is one aspect of the NWHI monument that’s not so spectacular – trash. Because of the nature of ocean circulation and the monument’s proximity to the Pacific garbage patch, trash from all over the world ultimately washes up on the shores of our precious marine monument. The frustrating part of this story is that when the NWHI were declared a monument, funds for removing the trash were apparently cut back, exacerbating the problem. Let’s hope we do a better job taking care of the new marine monuments. (More about the trash from a student blogger who helped with cleanup last year.)

The Pine Flycatcher Caught Chilling in Texas

Birders have reported a unique event – the first U.S. sighting of the empidonax affinis, a small 5-inch yellow-chested bird known as the pine flycatcher. The bird’s natural habitat is in the forests of south Mexico and Guatemala, but this month a pine flycatcher has appeared in Choke Canyon, Texas. Its presence has the birdwatching community all atwitter, and it has been reported that birders from around the nation are flocking to the Choke Canyon to have a look for themselves.

Our Texan pine flycatcher appears to be all alone here. And while I understand the bird tends to be a loner, I wonder what it's going to do all by itself here in the United States. More important, I wonder why it made the long journey north. Speculating, I am inclined to think of global warming – warmer temperatures encouraging northern migrations, and loss of habitat. On the other hand maybe it’s a normal occurrence, a statistical rarity but all part of the natural processes that lead to the spread of species to other niches. Sort of like ocean circulation.