Week 3 Questions

The most memorable engagements I've had with the non-human world came last summer when I worked as a Piping Plover Steward. The piping plover is an endangered species of shorebird, and my job was to educate the patrons of the beach about the birds and to keep them out of fenced areas where the birds nested. The main reasons for the plovers' decline is commercial development on beach fronts and human disturbance. One of my duties was to locate nests and build protective barriers called exclosures to keep out predators and humans. In the 10 to 15 minute race to get an exclosure up, the parents of the eggs would be close by performing their "broken wing" defense mechanism. An adult will flap its wings close to the ground and run around a predator so it thinks it is injured--therefore a predator will go after the weak adult rather than an egg or chick. These particular parents were extremely protective and they did their broken wing dance from the time we showed up at the site 50 yards away, to when we ran back to our truck to watch with binoculars if the birds sat back on the nest. While we were erecting the exclosure one parent was flailing right beneath my feet, and flapping its wings on my shoes and legs. It made the process frustrating and difficult, but in the end I was touched by the birds fearlessness of trying to attack something hundreds of times bigger and stronger, for its eggs. After these particular eggs were hatched, I monitored the chicks closely, but realized the parents of the chicks did not need any help in protecting their family.
Some other memorable experiences that I have to mention from this job--
covering a rouge squirrel with (harmless!) pink fluorescent powder, watching plover eggs hatch, seeing a pregnant pilot whale washed ashore, and rescuing a orphan baby plover from the wind and rainstorm.

I think "saving nature" is something people must engage in for the future of our planet, and therefore humankind. Directly contributing to this cause as a plover steward, I felt like I did make a difference in the well-being of this plover population. To save nature on a global scale, however, will take much more. We need to stop human encroachment into the wilderness and the overuse of natural resources. Fossil fuels must be phased out for a world powered by clean, sustainable energy. Humans need to realize that nature was here first, its sole purpose is not to meet the needs of human consumption.
I think this quote by Dave Foreman sums humans effect on nature very well: "Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are the cancer on nature."