B sent me a picture last week from Rialto Beach.
I looked it up. Text back: "Marbled murrelet."
"Yep."
A dead marbled murrelet.
I start reading about marbled murrelets. Everything2 doesn't have much. "Closely related to the murres." Got it.
Oh, look, here is a "Rangsta Rap" about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twKl_z--aEk. Oh, my.
This says that they nest in old growth trees. The population dropped 40% in the decade following 2000, so they are an endangered species and Washington State has to have a plan to protect them. Washington State had to work with the sawyers and the murrelet protectors: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/state/article235295937.html.
There is a lot of logging going on right now. The price of timber is way way up. The murrelet protectors keep working: https://www.conservationnw.org/news-updates/state-forests-benefit-all-the-people/.
B says that he's found one murrelet in the forest. Out of the next and on the ground and not quite flying. He left it alone. "It was not in old growth."
He drove me around to see all the beautiful leaves in October and pointed out large stretches of old growth still standing. He also took me to watch a friend's new machine, which can process a huge tree, shaving off the bark and cutting it to whatever lengths are needed. The logging trucks haul, doing 50mph or more, along the curves at Crescent Lake, communicating with each other.
We still use wood, we are still building, my house is built of wood. And yet I hope the murrelets survive.
environment