Living Lightly
By
LILLIAN VALLEE
13. Pelicans by Moonlight
When we first moved to the La Loma area almost twenty years ago the junior high schoolyard across the street had no sprinklers and was flood irrigated, a practice left over from the land’s previous incarnation as a walnut orchard. Whenever the water was pumped to the surface, the field was covered with minnows, pollywogs, frogs, toads, and other creatures that could manage a life cycle in those precarious conditions. The seasonal wetland created by the irrigation attracted a lot of wildlife: residents from the remnant oaks in the neighborhood and migrants just passing through. The smelly water was also a magnet for kids who loved wading in it and catching whatever there was to catch. The more efficient sprinkler system eliminated the smelly soup teeming with living things, the kids flushed with excitement, and the cafeteria for flocks of magpies and gulls. The most enchanting feature of the playing field, however, was its night life: bursts of white wings and wild cries denoting killdeer, hoary bats and nightjars that seemed to graze a nose or ear to catch a plodding moth; and diminutive screech owls calling softly to one another or suddenly blinking down at you from a wire if you pretended to be a hooting paramour.
We took a lot of late evening walks then and would sit on the bleachers in the schoolyard to track seasonal constellations and other, smaller movements. Once, just once, we saw a line of pelicans sail across the bright, broad face of a full moon. It was midnight, and we couldn’t have been more surprised if we had seen the silhouette of Santa and his reindeer. Since then I have seen American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) looking like snow drifts on a pond, spiraling up on thermals, and drowsing on small islands in the marshes, and each time I marvel at the pure lyricism of what many consider to be a rather “homely” bird.
Largest of North American birds and larger than its endangered, maritime counterpart, the Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis), the White Pelican is set apart by a nine foot wing spread, black flight feathers, and a yellow-orange bill. While Brown Pelicans plunge dive along ocean shores and bays for their supper (mainly anchovies, menhaden, and sardines), the White engages in cooperative fish drives with other pelicans in freshwater ponds, lakes, and lagoons. “American White Pelicans,” said one biologist, “are sophisticated, energy-saving experts.” They will take the most circuitous routes in order to exploit every rising current of warm air.
“A wonderful bird is the pelican,” goes the children’s rhyme, “His beak will hold more than his belly can.” And it is the pelican’s expandable pouch, attached to the rim of the lower mandible, which gives this very old bird, with a lineage stretching back forty million years, the practical air of a shopper bringing his own bag to the grocery store. Using their pouches, pelicans scoop up fish and water, eject the water, and swallow the fish. If a pelican gulps down a very big fish, it will not fly so it can digest the lucky meal; if it is disturbed and must fly, it will cough up the fish and fly hungry. A pelican pouch can hold about two and half gallons of water (almost 18 pounds) before the liquid is released. Believe it or not, pelicans have to exercise these pouches to keep them elastic. According to David Sibley, they throw the head back with the bill open (called the “longitudinal stretch”) or even tuck the head down and turn the pouch inside-out over the breast.
The pouches are also used to hold regurgitated fishy soup to feed chicks who “dive” into the pouch, which rests against the parent’s breast. According to Hans Biedermann’s Dictionary of Symbolism, these regurgitated meals inspired the lofty misperception that adult pelicans “were ripping open their breast to offer their blood to their young. In this way the pelican came to symbolize the sacrificial death of Christ, as well as parental self-denial.” In medieval bestiaries there are hymns beginning, “Pie pelicane, Jezu domine” (“O merciful pelican, Lord Jesus”). Pelican parents are, in fact, so devoted that some have been known to fly 100-150 miles to find food for their offspring. The pelican also functioned as a symbol of “selfless striving for purification.”
The sacralization of the pelican, lost to us now, was equaled by its vilification in North America in the early twentieth century when it was seen as depleting fishing waters and killed en masse before biologists proved that the size and type of fish pelicans ate differed greatly, in most cases, from fish people desired. The populations that survived the killing, wing breaking, and nest stomping were further diminished later in the century by water contaminants and avian diseases resulting from greater and greater concentrations of birds on smaller and smaller parcels of habitat.
Ideal habitat for freshwater pelicans is a productive, shallow lake or pond with islands, inaccessible to predators. The nests are simple mounds fashioned from bits of dried bulrushes or other reeds. The young are utterly helpless for ten to eleven weeks, until they fledge. The islands in Tulare Lake were once ideal breeding grounds, but there are no such colonies left in the Central Valley today; the small flocks of Whites we see now are Pacific Flyway migrants roaming in from as far away as British Columbia to forage in Central Valley rivers and wetlands; some continue on to the Salton Sea, Mexico, and even Central America. Pelicans are hypersensitive to human or animal disturbance and will abandon their nests if people or coyotes intrude or if there is not enough food to procreate successfully. In one recent and spectacular example at Chase Lake, North Dakota, twenty-eight thousand pelicans abandoned the largest breeding colony in North America for reasons biologists have not quite figured out.
The foraging strategies of the White Pelicans are interesting because the coordinated fishing involves group synchronization of bill lowering, for example, or wing beating to direct the movement of the prey. The pelicans might swim in a linear or semicircular formation, driving the fish toward the shallow shoreline. Or two groups might “mirror” each other moving the fish into the narrowing space between them. Cooperative drives make good sense because they result in greater catches than solitary foraging.
As impressive as pelican parental devotion and conservation of resources is pelican loyalty to place: there are many accounts of their returning to the same place over and over again, even after mass killings, even if the body of water they remember is gone. Such is the case in the Tulare Basin, people tell me. Every year the pelicans keep circling and circling; every year they look for Tulare Lake. Is it too much to hope that some day the pelicans will have their way, that the lake will be there, and that both pelican and lake will be restored as symbols of our “selfless striving for purification”?
Sources: Conversations with Donna Withers, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Stillwater NWR and Dan Anderson, UC Davis; Hans Biedermann, Dictionary of Symbolism; Herbert Clark, Northern California Birds; Diana Wells, One Hundred Birds and How They Got Their Names; and David Allen Sibley, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior
Places to see pelicans locally and to learn more about them: San Joaquin, San Luis & Merced National Wildlife refuges (Beckwith, Wolfsen, and Sandy Mush roads, respectively, the first in Stanislaus County and the last two in Merced County, 209/826-3508)
Lillian Vallee is a Professor of Literature and Language Arts at Modesto Junior College.
By
SASHA RETFORD
There are over 300
different varieties of bananas in the world. The common consumer has likely had
contact with only two of these, the dwarf Cavendish and later, the gran michelle.
These varieties were chosen by the few banana corporations dominating the
market, not for their rich taste or quality, but their practicality in the mass
production of visually enticing and profitable, massive bananas found in
supermarkets across the United States and Europe. In the center of these
unpeeled bananas, exists a history of environmental and worker exploitation,
continuing today to produce the perfect picturesque for privileged breakfast
tables.
Since the late 1900’s
Central America has been the leading exporter of bananas to northern developed
countries. In Costa Rica, the United Fruit Company gained large political and
economic power when Minor Keith, from Boston, Massachusetts, built a railroad
and began developing plantations on the Atlantic coast. Costa Rica was the
leading exporter of bananas to the world market for many years; today it’s
second only to Ecuador. Around 42,000 hectares of banana plantations dominate
the Caribbean landscape with ownership concentrated in only a few, transnational
companies including Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte, which control two-thirds of
the market worldwide. With corporate cost externalized, growing bananas in
Central and South America is highly profitable. Environmental costs and
workers’ rights become concerns only of the debt-laden and often corrupt
southern countries.
The environmental impact
created in mass-producing these common bananas is high. The space for
plantations in Costa Rica is obtained by deforestation. In the 1950’s,
rainforest cover still existed approximately 90 percent while today only 25
percent remains. All life-forms on earth are dependent on this dense
vegetation’s creation of oxygen. While a number of activities are responsible
for this deforestation, banana plantations are perhaps the greatest. Transformed
into large banana mono-crops, the plants are more susceptible to invading
insects and disease. In the late 1940’s a devastating fungal disease resulted
in abandonment of many plantations and additional deforestation to create new
plantations in other areas (especially the Pacific coast) of Costa Rica. To
combat this threat, banana corporations have dumped toxic chemical and
pesticides onto the land. They also cover the banana blossoms with chemical
laden plastic bags, which often enter the marine systems and threaten endangered
species such as the Leatherback sea turtle, which confuses the plastic for
jellyfish. Chemicals entering the ecosystem have rendered the soil lifeless,
contaminated water and killed wildlife while threatening the health of
plantation workers.
On Friday, October 8 2004
students in the Friends World College program went to a Dole plantation and
talked to members of the Sindicato
de Trabajadores de Plantaciones Agrícolas (SITRAP), the Union
of Agricultural Plantation Workers, an underground union, to witness
first hand the situation of banana workers. Though invisible during an hour
visit to the plantation, SITRAP organizers in Siquirres
City later described the long hours, minimal pay and health problems facing many
workers. In the 1970’s notorious case against Standard Fruit Company, over
2,000 workers became sterile from contact with DBCP, a fungicide outlawed in the
United States and subsequently shipped to Central and South America. According
to Carlos Argalas of SITRAP, Conter, applied to the roots of the plant, is the
most dangerous chemical currently used. Many workers have developed skin
allergies; we were shown pictures of horrific birth deformations. Beside toxic
exposure, injuries in the field are common, especially accidents with machetes,
and back problems result from transporting 20-25 bunches of 120 pound banana
clusters. Without a proper union, workers who are injured or issue complaints
are immediately fired.
The movement towards
unionization began with Marcus Garvey in the 1910-20’s. However, as plantation
owners recognized the union organization threatening profits, an anti-union
movement began in Costa Rica. During the 1970’s the U.S. supported,
church-based Solidarista organization
began to replace worker represented movements throughout many industries. Solidarista
is now the only option available to banana workers. However, instead of
addressing wage, hours or health issues, Solidarista
works to pacify workers by providing work incentives (such television sets),
send some children to overseas universities and provides in-plantation housing.
Organizers in the union SITRAP are forced to work underground to address workers
issues.
The environmental and
social consequences of large-scale, transnational banana throughout Central and
South American cannot be addressed separately. We were repeatedly reminded Costa
Rica is the most democratic and environmentally conscious country in the region;
the condition in other countries is unfathomable. Yet the problem extends beyond
borders and banana. Within the current context of globalization and the world
market, diversity is slowly giving way to monocultures. Thai professor Yos
Santasombat states that, “At present more than 80 percent of all the food that
the world population lives on comes from a mere 15 species of domesticated
plants and animals.” Furthermore, only 20 plant species have a steady market
demand. Farming techniques such as permaculture, which promotes utilizing
diversity and different plant properties to provide natural, organic defense to
insects, can drastically reduce negative environmental impacts. Decent wages,
work hours and healthcare must also be considered for the workers. Companies
unwilling to respect workers’ rights seem less likely to address problems of
environmental pollution and degradation. These issues must be addressed
together. Within the context of capitalist societies, creating a conscious
dollar can make a strong impact.
ACTION:
For more information on SITRAP
and their struggles, visit www.wdmscotland.org.uk/bananas/fenacle.htm
The
author is a student in the Friends World College program in Costa Rica, and is a
former Modesto Peace Life Center board member.
