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arkayn wrote:

resedit wrote:

I5 about 5 miles north of Redding is currently closed due to flooding.
We are getting some serious rain this month.

Looks like the current system is through for tonight, but it looks like you have more coming in if the forecast for Klamath Falls give any clue. Doppler radar out of Medford looks to be clear for tonight though.

I'm really hoping this saves the population of Rana cascadae in the Lassen area.

There use to be so many of them, vertebrate museums didn't even think twice about collecting 40 to 50 specimens from the same locality on the same day.

The first thing to negatively impact them was trout - trout were planted in lakes the frogs use, which meant the end of the frogs in those lakes (they evolved without trout as a predator, the tadpoles recognize garter snakes as predators but not trout). Fortunately they also breed in temporary pools that can not sustain trout, and they have stopped planting trout - but the trout are breeding on their own.

However, the remaining frogs fell victim to disease, it seems that many of our agricultural pesticides greatly reduce the ability of many amphibians to resist disease. Even worse, some common amphibians (IE our treefrogs) do just fine and thus act as carriers for the diseases that are wipe out the frogs that no longer resist them.

On top of that, the dry years we have had meant the temporary pools where the frogs can breed that were free of trout either did not exist or were too shallow for them to breed, there is no evidence of the remaining frogs (estimated at less than 100) have bred during the last few years.

Hopefully this rain will get them breeding. The recommendation is to bring them into captivity to save the species, but doing so with adult frogs has a high mortality rate as the added stress results in even less resistance to disease. Taking tadpoles into captivity has a much higher success rate.

Sorry for going so off topic - this is a bigger concern for me than the farmers.

The problem they are facing is that with the remaining frogs, they are too spread out for gene flow - seven in one pool, nine in another, etc. - with the distances between them too great for gene exchange (I believe they only travel at most a kilometer or so from where they were spawned). By taking tadpoles into captivity, they can manage the population and release the offspring to give gene flow to the remaining pools allowing them hopefully to re-expand their ranges naturally so they have gene flow again.

They really don't want to take frogs from the trinity alps for gene flow because it appears that the Lassen cascade frogs may actually be a distinct species. Frogs are funny that way - two distinct species can look identical but have evolved differently to the point where one can survive where the other can't and biological barriers (infertility or low fertility) of gene flow between the clades exist. More research is needed, but more research requires taking tissue samples which they can't do with a population on the brink of extirpation. Unfortunately it can be very difficult to get usable tissue samples from specimens that have been preserved for decades.

Anyway, what they want to do is take the cascades frogs from the threatened by not critical trinity alps and develop a captive breeding system that works before they use Lassen cascades frogs, but there may not be time to do that. If the rain results in successful reproduction leading to froglets, that gives them some breathing room timewise because the frogs have a lifespan of about 10 years or so, so they can practice with the trinity alps populations and then use the future offspring of this years froglets in 4 or 5 years to start a captive program for artificial gene flow.

These frogs have survived and repopulated after the mountain blows, as recently as the early 20th century, it takes trout planting and farming pesticides to wipe them out ...

Farmerkev wrote:

resedit wrote:

Sorry for going so off topic - this is a bigger concern for me than the farmers.

Unless you intend to eat those last 100 frogs and pull a Jesus so they feed millions, you might think about reordering your priorities.

Once the frogs are gone they are gone.
We can easily produce enough food for everyone to eat without using the pesticides that kill the frogs, and killing the frogs off will have other impacts as they are rather low on the food chain and are a staple for so many other vertebrates.

For example, garter snakes are beginning to decline as a result of the reduction of frogs. Garter snakes don't only eat amphibians, they also eat rodents, and are eaten by other rodent eaters (IE king snakes etc.)

The loss of the frogs could result in less rodent predators long term resulting in an increase of rodents.

And no - an increase in rodents will not equate to an increase in rodent predators that currently depend upon frogs and frog predators as a large part of their diet. Garter snakes, for example, while they do eat young rodents, only the few that reach monster size (and that is happening less often due to roads and increased traffic) eat full grown rodents - and they are born small enough they really need the amphibian diet until they reach a size of 14 to 15 inches or so.

These cascade frogs aren't the only ones in trouble - the Sierra Mountain Yellow-legged frog has lost 90% of its former range (90% of the known breeding sites where vouchers have been taken no longer have them) and the Mountain Yellow-legged Frog is virtually gone.

If you take a look at how fat this country is, clearly we produce more than enough food.

The pesticides causing the loss of frogs is also causing the loss of bats, a natural pest predator.

There are plenty of reasons to change the way we farm, even though it will result in fewer pounds of produce per acre.

But it doesn't matter for the topic at hand because the rainfall is good for both frog and farmer.
The pesticide issue - I wouldn't be surprised if the myriad of pesticides we are using is causing human health problems as well. Peanuts. Why the smurf is it that allergies to peanuts is on the rise?

I don't know that pesticides in our food is responsible, but it wouldn't surprise me. If we go back to a more organic method of farming, it is good for the environment and may be good for the people as well. Sure, food will cost more. Boo hoo, parents can no longer afford to put a HDTV and PS3 in each bedroom, and some kids may need to *gasp* share a bedroom. Cry me a river.

No more sea food then.

Or the sea kittens?

And when you go surfing or such at the beach, any children that you subsequently have will have 9 heads.

JakeTheTall wrote:

Save the frogs, but drill, baby, drill off the coast.

What's the deal with it?
Drilling off the coast provides much needed revenue, and we already do it with equipment still in place from before the ban that is more likely to have a problem (in fact I think there was a smaller spill at the same site as the '69 still in 2008) - equipment that would have been removed had the deal gone through.

We already ship oil - and as the Exxon Valdez incident demonstrates, that itself is an extremely big danger. That was the biggest oil spill in US history if I'm not mistaken, and it was transporting oil to California. Pump more of it ourselves and we need to import less, reducing the shipping transportation vector of oil spills.

Off shore drilling can be done safely and ecologically.

Norway's annual output of 1.6 billion barrels of oil comes exclusively from offshore drilling. Oil and natural gas are transported through a network of sub seafloor pipelines. Norway is the home to the world's largest natural gas drilling platform.

And the truly remarkable fact is that Norway has built this robust offshore oil and gas drilling industry alongside large and thriving fishing and tourism industries.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26931

The problem in the US is an anti-oil agenda.
It doesn't matter that it can and is done safely and ecologically around the world, there is an anti-oil agenda in the US.

We can no longer afford that agenda.

Alternative sources of energy are a great notion and we should pursue them, but it is stupid to abandon oil when they are not yet in place and look to be years and years off. We still are dependent upon oil, and since we are dependent upon oil, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to get that oil domestically.

Bat wrote:

resedit wrote:

..it is stupid to abandon oil when they are not yet in place and look to be years and years off. We still are dependent upon oil, and since we are dependent upon oil, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to get that oil domestically.

Once more, with feeling... new platforms take HOW long to build?

A lot less than the timetable for moving to a serious working alternative energy source.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology seems to me to be the most promising (bio-diesel fails in cold weather and uses quite a bit of water to produce) delivery system, but viable fuel cell technology is probably more than a decade away from affordable mass production, and still needs an energy source to generate the hydrogen - right now, nuclear plants are the most likely candidate - though they may be able to bio-engineer yeast to eat scrap wood/paper and fart hydrogen (there's a microbe inside some termites that can do it, they may be able to transplant the capability into yeast so we can use a fermentation process much like what is done with beer).

However - it will be at least a decade, probably longer, before hydrogen fuel cells are realistic alternative to oil.

resedit wrote:

Bat wrote:

resedit wrote:

..it is stupid to abandon oil when they are not yet in place and look to be years and years off. We still are dependent upon oil, and since we are dependent upon oil, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to get that oil domestically.

Once more, with feeling... new platforms take HOW long to build?

A lot less than the timetable for moving to a serious working alternative energy source.

So you've had no idea while arguing this. As I've noted three times now, it takes that long, a decade, to put up an offshore platform and get it operational. You keep missing that. It made, makes, the mantra of 'Drill, baby, drill' not just erroneous, but disingenuous from those who know- almost certainly including McCain, and likely oil-state Gov. Palin, tho the latter's ignorance is often hard to measure. And it's something you should know before continuing your energy policy arguments. (And alternative energy sources, plural, would be more accurate, since wind, solar and more all figure in).

At that rate I expect you missed my posts on the '67 IAF strafing incident and industrial espionage, too. They were only up once, and together.

However - it will be at least a decade, probably longer, before hydrogen fuel cells are realistic alternative to oil.

There have been some quite-interesting breakthrus in fuels cell tech recently, since you mention it.