Dear PiPl Friends,

Perhaps many of you are also deliberating over how to share joyful stories in these terribly turbulent times. Does it seem tone deaf to share creature stories when so many people in our country are experiencing so much pain and instability. I wonder if it is even wanted, to write about the beauty of the wild creatures and their habitats when there are countless people who are living through heartbreaking and wholly unplanned challenges in their everyday lives.

We take care of a seven-year-old child, our granddaughter. I imagine how the dismantling of so many worthwhile government institutions will impact her over her lifetime. Putting an anti-vaccine zealot in charge of the Department of Health, freezing funding for medical research and for soft power programs like USAID, the elimination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies, destroying the relationship between our closest neighbors and allies, gutting environmental protections, and the dismantling of the Department of Education are at the top of my list. Two days ago, it was announced 12  million in federal funding to feed school children and support local farmers in Massachusetts will be cut. The funds were to be used locally to provide healthy food to child care programs and schools and to create new procurement relationships with local farmers and small businesses. How immeasurably deadly and hypocritical to claim the aim is to make ‘America Healthy Again,’ while simultaneously cutting off food assistance programs. What is healthy about parading a child cancer survivor before Congress while at the same time, eliminating funding for childhood cancer research. When is it going to end? Can it end when half of the Congress are without courage and two thirds of the Supreme Court consistently vote along extreme hard right partisan lines? Who can stop the madness when two of the three branches of our three part checks and balances democratic system have simply gone supine in the face of the insatiable greed of a few madmen?

How will the firing and hiring freeze impact the National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service ability to protect wildlife at treasured places like the Cape Cod National Seashore and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge? The cuts in staffing will have a devastating effect on important research projects that conserve wildlife. And how will the cuts impact the day to day operations? “Outdoor recreation is a $1.2-trillion business sector where public-private partnerships create an outsized return on investment and boost local economies—every federal dollar invested in NPS generates fifteen dollars of economic activity—so there is nothing effective nor efficient about attacking our parks. ” – Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey.

I was very inspired during my recent trip to California to visit our daughter. She and I visited a number of wildlife habitat “hotspots,” and at all these special places, there were volunteer  docents explaining to people the animal behaviors they were witnessing. The Elephant Seal docent even had a large photo book of the seal’s behaviors and there are docents at Snowy Plover breeding sites twelve hours a day!

We are bracing for the devastation to wildlife during the upcoming breeding season. As I am writing this, it occurred to me that we can look at this mess as a call to action. Even though it may only seem like a drop in the bucket, one meaningful way to help is to become an ambassador for wildlife.  I am not suggesting that volunteering replaces staffing but that during this national crisis, can we think about where else help may be needed?

It will soon be nesting and breeding season here in the north east. This past week we have seen an influx of a true harbinger of spring, the boldly beautiful male Red-winged Blackbirds announcing their arrival. The females will be along, seeming to always arrive after the males. The winter resident ducks have begun departing our shores and in these last weeks here have been pairing off with a chorus of varied courtship whistles and squeaks. The beloved sound of Spring Peepers will soon join the chorus, too. Our penny whistle Piping Plovers will begin returning by the end of the month. We are keeping our hopes up that handicapped Mom and Super Dad will make the arduous journey north for a tenth season. If not them, they have left us with new generations of PiPls to care for.

While in California, we were very fortunate to see signs of spring’s arrival all along the Pacific Coast, from wildflowers blooming  to mother and baby Sea Otters. I plan to write more about the story of the extraordinarily positive impact the conservation measures enacted to protect endangered Sea Otters has had on the California coastal ecosystems, not only restoring the dying kelp forests, but also helping to revitalize the very unhealthy Pacific coast salt marshes.

Over the course of the several days that we were able to see Sea Otters, four moms and their pups were swimming quite close to shore. The females are exquisitely nurturing, spending the first six months with their pups (and in some instances, up to a year), and teaching them everything they know. Each mom has different strategies for foraging, passing these behaviors down from one generation to the next. We filmed some really adorable imitative behavior, including a pup pretending to whack open a mollusk to extract seafood, just like Mom.

Keeping hope alive.

xxKim

P.S. Please email me or leave a comment if you would like to join our volunteer Plover Ambassador program this summer. And please join us Sunday, March 23rd, for a screening of The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay at MAGMA.

Even though the mother’s milk is super rich in fat, about 20 to 25 percent, the pups need to nurse throughout the day. They alternate between the two nipples located on her lower abdomen. The pups also begin eating solid food soon after birth but are not weaned until about six months of age. The Moms are very relaxed during nursing, grooming both their own forepaws and the pup’s wide webbed feet (that look more like flippers).