How did wheat take over the world?

I was smitten by the wheat fields of Montana in high school. My dad and younger brother and I were headed to Glacier National Park when the rolling fields stretched from the horizons to capture my heart. I was sure that some day I'd live that far from town and drive tractors on fields that big. But I didn't wonder why there was so much wheat in Montana or how the crop I wanted so badly to raise affected the ecology of the area. 

Montana State University professor Catherine Zabinsky has thought about those things and wrote a book about them. My recent review  of Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop is in the current Issues in Science and Technology. 

I was living 35 miles from town when I wrote the review, but I wasn't on a Montana wheat farm.

Yellowstone cutthroat comeback

Many stories about troublesome exotic species are tragedies. Some of the endings have been written: an exotic fungus wiped out the American Chestnut and brown tree snakes have driven more than half of Guam’s birds and lizards to extinction. Other stories are long-running dramas: water hyacinth clogs waterways in the southeast U.S. and Mediterranean fruit flies damage fruits, nuts, and vegetables around the world.

My latest article, The Cutthroat Comeback in Big Sky Journal, is an inspiring fish tale of gaining ground against a troublesome exotic species. Lake trout are large and efficient predators that eat native Yellowstone cutthroat trout. Yellowstone National Park is using population modelling and commercial gillnetters to reduce lake trout numbers in Yellowstone Lake, while researchers develop effective methods for controlling lake trout eggs. With the help of their friends, the native cutthroat trout are reclaiming their high, cold home waters.

April is the best time to spot cheatgrass die-offs

Cheatgrass die-offs might sound alarming, but few people in the West are sorry to see cheatgrass gone. This exotic annual grass spreads into sagebrush grasslands where native shrubs and grasses are missing or weakened. When fire comes, dried cheatgrass burns readily and spreads fire among native plants, killing or damaging them. But when cheatgrass dies out in an area, seeds of longer-lived native plants can get started without competing with this invasive exotic grass.

Cheatgrass die-offs are easy to spot in April. For bonus points, you might also find the army cutworms that create them by eating each grass shoot as it comes up. The bare die-offs stand out against the surrounding cheatgrass, which is having a growth spurt in the warm temperatures and plentiful moisture of spring.

Die-offs can be almost completely bare, where native shrubs were killed by fire and cheatgrass moved in. These are an alarming sight.

Die-offs in areas with native shrubs (sagebrush and saltbushes) are a little harder to spot. You'll see shrubs without any herbaceous plants growing underneath them. The shrubs might be missing a good portion of their leaves, as they are here.

To find cheatgrass die-offs look for:

1. Bare areas where cheatgrass grew in previous years, with or without shrubs.

2. Sharp borders to bare areas, changing abruptly from bare soil to normal-looking cheatgrass.

3. Native shrubs, if present, missing most of their leaves: army cutworms also climb shrubs and eat leaves.

4. Gray-green larvae hiding during the day under cowpies and plant litter or in the soil.

If you find cheatgrass die-offs, seize the opportunity to seed native plants and revegetate these areas.

Light on the Devils: Coming of Age on the Klamath

Light on the Devils pulled me in and made me want to know more about the people and places it described.

After reading Louise Wagenknecht's book, I searched aerial photos to track her family's moves from Hilt, California, downriver to Happy Camp, and then to Seiad Valley during the 1960s. I wondered where her high school classmates committed suicide, died in vehicles rolling off mountain roads, gave birth between junior and senior years, and dropped out to work in the timber.

Then I searched topographic maps for the Three Devils peaks of the book's title. I traced the path of the Klamath River through the forests of northern California, where Wagenknecht's stepfather laid out clear cuts in old growth timber. I looked for the roads and bridges built to "get out the cut"—infrastructure the cut didn't pay for. I planned a road trip to see how the clear cuts were filling in and search for remaining old growth trees.

Between the crescendos of tragedy—floods, fires, and logger deaths—Wagenknecht records the steady bass beat of disappearing old growth timber and degraded watersheds and wildlife habitat. At the height of the post-World War II timber boom, a neighbor remembers California condors and Wagenknecht's family moves into a house with a large supply of kindling: veneer peeled from old growth pine.

But I didn't need a guide to follow Wagenknecht's journey from science geek kid who loved animals, through her dismay and disbelief when her stepfather tells her women can't be veterinarians and his co-worker tells her women can't fight fires—after she had just fought one, and on to her decision to attend college. She saw the contradictions in growing up female and told the world, and herself, that she wanted to be a science teacher—a nice, acceptable job for a high school valedictorian.

At home, Wagenknecht's stepfather decreed she would spend time doing her hair and nails, plus three agonizing hours a week holding up the walls and reading album covers at high school dances. But she, the oldest child, was also his hunting and fishing companion. She was the one who helped him fell trees for firewood and then split, load, and unload the fuel. She made a good hand and he made a good teacher. Despite their conflicts at home, they reached détente in the woods.

This book describes Wagenknecht's path toward a career with the Forest Service—which included fighting fires—and her détente in the woods with society.

Hunting the ancient agave

Agaves spend much of their lives as toothy, spikey plants we avoid while hiking. Most agaves bloom only once, throwing their heart and carbohydrates into raising an exorbitant stalk of fragrant flowers that ripen into dry fruits stacked with flat, black seeds. We're captivated by the transformation from spikey to florescent.

Wendy Hodgson makes agave seeds fly in Cascabel.

However, for over 8,000 years, people have harvested agaves just before flowering, usurping the carbohydrates in the stem for human food and beverage. The leaves also provide fibers for rope, baskets, bags and sandals.

Although people have used agaves continuously in Mexico, the plants' cultivation and culture faded from what is now Arizona by the 18th century. Residents of the Middle San Pedro Valley have periodically wondered if we could grow agave in our area. After all, Sobaipuri Native American agave fields dot our community, and wild agaves grow in the valley.

When this question came up again last winter, we learned that survivors of pre-Columbian cultivated agave had recently been found in our area. Wendy Hodgson and her colleague Andrew Salywon, both with the Desert Botanical Garden, named the new species Agave sanpedroensis. Wendy and Andrew even suggested that this low-water-use crop could be revived to diversify agriculture and stimulate new industries in the U.S. Southwest.

Agave sanpedroensis.

We contacted Wendy, who was as eager as we were to connect. In January 2019, she told a packed Cascabel Community Center about the eight (and counting) species of formerly cultivated agaves she and her colleagues have found. In February, dozens of people braved blustery weather on a follow-up field trip. Wendy explained how she recognizes the different species of agaves and outlined how we can help her survey the plants in our valley.

Wendy and Andrew work with archaeologists, who have documented extensive agave fields at many sites in central and southern Arizona. Rows of rocks along contour lines slowed runoff across the fields and rock mulch piles reduced evaporation. Near the fields, archaeologists find knives used for removing leaves and roasting pits where agave stems, or "heads," were baked to sweetness.

The plants we see today are genetically identical to those the Sobaipuri and other groups developed to suit their needs. Unlike their wild relatives, these cultivated agaves produce little or no seed. Instead, the plants reproduce vegetatively, usually by pupping, to produce offspring identical to the parent. Cultivated agaves are also sweeter than their wild relatives and their leaves are easier to cut.

After surviving drought, insects, and rodents for centuries--or millennia--climate change and development threaten these rare plants. As cultivated crops, they fall into a protection gap: the Endangered Species Act protects only wild species and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act protects only inanimate artifacts.

Wendy fears that these recently discovered, living storehouses of information on people, culture, and plants could be lost. She is helping residents of the Middle San Pedro Valley learn about the ancient agaves in their area and work to protect them.

You can help agaves and bats in southern Arizona

Step outdoors on a warm southern Arizona night and you might be swept up in what naturalist Ralph Waldt calls a "bat tornado" of winged mammals. Residents routinely wake to find that the clouds of bats have drained their hummingbird feeders overnight.

Although nectar-feeding bats are most noticeable in the area, only two of the 30 bats native to Arizona feed from flowers; most Arizona bats eat insects. Both nectar-feeders, Choeronycteris mexicana (Mexican long-tongued bat) and Leptonycteris yerbabuenae (lesser long-nosed bat), visit Cascabel during warm months.

World-wide, the more than 1,300 bat species represent almost a fourth of the over 5,400 mammals. Bats have the agility to catch and eat prodigious amounts of night-flying insects and to pollinate night-blooming flowers atop tall agave stalks and columnar cacti.

Agaves and cacti provide bats a nectar meal in exchange for pollen the bats inadvertently carry among plants. The bats move with the blooms, from southern Mexico in winter to the grasslands of northern Mexico and the southern U.S. in summer.

This elegant partnership evolved over millions of years and is crucial to the survival of both partners. Currently, bats and agaves are both threatened by climate change and the loss of agaves to land clearing, development, and the harvest of wild agave for bacanora, the agave liquor of Sonora.

The lesser long-nosed bat is the more imperiled of the two nectar feeders in this area. Although this bat was removed from the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2018, these pollinators are still at risk due to the decline of their nectar sources.

The Borderlands Restoration Network (BRN), in Patagonia, Arizona, works with many partners to protect bats by increasing their agave food supply. You can help both agaves and bats by participating in two of these projects.

BRN and volunteers track the effects of climate change on two native agaves in our area through the USA National Phenology Network's Flowers for Bats campaign. Many plants are blooming earlier as our climate warms. If bats migrate from Mexico on their usual schedule, but Agave parryi and Agave palmeri bloom earlier, the bats might arrive to find nothing to eat.

BRN replants agaves lost from the southwest U.S. and northwestern Mexico as part of Bat Conservation International's Agaves for Bats campaign. Each year, BRN collects agave pups and seed to grow thousands of agaves for planting by landowners.

If you haven't experienced a bat tornado, keep your hummingbird feeders full for the night shift, watch when agaves flower in your area, and plant some agaves at your place. Then step outdoors on a warm southern Arizona night and wait for the whirlwind.

An entomological who dunnit

Jeff Lockwood's book, Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect That Shaped the American Frontier is available on Amazon, where I reviewed it.

Scientific understanding usually shuffles along in the two-to-three-year steps of graduate student research projects. Big, intriguing mysteries take longer to resolve, but are more fun to research—and more interesting to read about.

Jeff Lockwood tackled the mystery of why the Rocky Mountain locust went extinct at the dawn of the 20th century. The species' periodic irruptions rivaled the bison in terms of biomass and the 1875 outbreak still horrifies young readers of Laura Ingles Wilder's, On the Banks of Plum Creek. Then the insects disappeared.

In his book, Lockwood recounts the challenges of sleuthing out a big mystery. Big research projects require new research techniques and years of soul-crushing work counting, dissecting, measuring, and recording data. Papers describing new research findings are sometimes rejected by academic journals; colleagues sometimes snicker. Unearthing the Rocky Mountain locust's secrets required field work at remote high elevation "grasshopper glaciers" reached by difficult climbs in foul weather.

Big research projects need lots of brains and lots of backs. Lockwood doesn't hog the limelight; he credits his employees, students, and colleagues for their inventions and insights. Field research is carried out by people, so it's a social activity, which Lockwood captures. A twenty-five-mile hike, completed in the dark, isn't quite as bad when you're not suffering alone, and joy shared at discovery is joy multiplied.

Other ecological changes in the late 19th century might have been linked with the locust's disappearance: decline of the bison, changes in climate, or reduced burning by Native Americans. Lockwood guides readers through the possibilities and explains why he rejects each. He focuses instead on the ecological bottleneck of limited egg-laying sites in valleys of the northern Rocky Mountains. Lockwood determines that when settlers plowed and grazed these areas, they destroyed the locust's eggs, and with them, the species. The culprit was settlers, in valleys, with plows, by accident.

Although the Rocky Mountain locust's sky-filling swarms are gone with the thundering bison herds, Lockwood ends his book by wondering if a few individuals may live incognito in less disturbed valleys of the Rockies. Another big, intriguing mystery.