Opinion: Donald Trump Is (Not) For The Birds

In the last few days there has been a seismic change in the way the United States deals with climate change.

It is ignoring it.

Here is the reporting of the New York Times:

President Trump announced [Thursday] afternoon that he was officially erasing the scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human life by warming the planet. The move largely cuts off the federal government’s legal authority to address climate change through regulation.

Following the lead of a president who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” the administration is directly challenging the overwhelming scientific consensus. Presidents of both parties have warned of the dangers of climate change for decades.

At issue is a 2009 determination called the endangerment finding, which the government has used to justify regulations on greenhouse gases. Lee Zeldin, who leads the [Environmental Protection Agency], called today’s move “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.”

The administration claimed it would save auto manufacturers and other businesses an estimated $1 trillion, although it has declined to explain how it arrived at that figure. The Environmental Defense Fund estimated the rollback could lead to as many as 58,000 premature deaths.

(Alen Hunjet, StockPhotoBoard.com)

What Trump did, according to the BBC, was revoke the Obama-era "endangerment finding" that held that pollution harms public health and the environment. For almost 17 years, the U.S. has used that scientific finding as the legal basis to establish policies to reduce emissions from cars, power plants and other sources of planet-warming gases.

"This radical rule became the legal foundation for the Green New Scam," Trump said, using a term popular with Republicans for describing Democratic environmental and climate policies.

So 58,000 early human deaths caused by an increasingly warmer planet where we've been having hotter summers, more widespread drought and more destructive hurricanes is a "green new scam." 

As an American who loves her country, I hate this radical change by a man who has no regard for anything except his own ego and making a few million bucks for his companies while in office. But as a birder, I am extremely saddened and worried about what will happen to the environment, especially the birds, now that fighting climate change is no longer an American imperative. 

As the oceans warm, the creatures that need to live in cold water have been moving north. So have the birds, whales and fish that feed on them. As icebergs melt, the oceans will continue to rise and threaten coastal communities. That includes my hometown of New York City.

Spring will come earlier. According to Roger F. Pasquier, in his book "Birds in Winter": "While short-distance migrants are leaving their wintering site sooner and returning there later, long-distance migrants, affected by day length, have not shifted their schedule as much. On arrival in spring, however, they find the season more advanced, often to the point where the food they give their young is no longer widely available. Resident birds in the same habitat have begun nesting weeks earlier, remaining in sync with the emergence of the prey they feed their young. The migrants least able to accelerate their schedule are the species most declining."

This was written in 2019.

Birds and animals that once lived in southern regions, such as the red-bellied woodpecker and the northern mockingbird, have been living in the north for years. Armadillos native to Central and South America are now moving beyond the American south, where they could be warm and find lots of insects to eat, to the warming midwest.

Says Pasquier: "The most visible impact of climate change in wintering birds has been the shift in their range. Many species of middle latitudes are migrating less far, if at all, and their range in both winter and summer has moved poleward. Ground foragers can now survive the winter in places where snow cover used to make feeding difficult. Waterbirds are not limited by areas that once froze for months of winter..."

President Trump has done many things to harm many people since he was re-elected in 2024, and he is not much better when it comes to Nature. He wants oil drilling in the arctic. He wants oil drilling off America's coasts. He tried to scuttle wind power projects. He ordered the Defense Department to use more coal-based electricity. He has ordered the Energy Department to pay coal plants to stay online. He has proposed major changes to the Endangered Species Act to eliminate many protections. Once he was re-elected he again pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accords on climate change. (He did this during his first term, in 2017, but President Biden reinstated the U.S. in 2021.)

His way to "Make America Great Again" seems to be all about making America a sick place where businesses can operate unregulated and with impunity and Nature is a profit center, the rest of the world and all that live in it be damned. 

Even NASA, a part of the U.S. government, recognizes the seriousness of climate change.

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Europe has been taking climate change seriously, because it is the fastest-warming area on Earth. But the relationship between Europe and the U.S. has been changing under Trump. Besides pulling the U.S. out of the climate accord he has threatened to take the U.S. out of NATO and has been obsessed with controlling Greenland, a protectorate of NATO member Denmark.

Ironically, climate change is causing Greenland's ice sheet to melt at an accelerated rate, leading to rising sea levels and having an impact on local ecosystems and communities. The warming temperatures also threaten traditional livelihoods, particularly for the Inuit population, as fish stocks decline.

Trump does not care about any of that. He does not care about ecosystems and communities. He does not care about Inuits or fish. He claims he needs Greenland to protect the U.S. from potential threats from China and Russia. What he really wants, I believe, are the rare earth metals needed for technology, which Greenland has in abundance and the U.S. is no longer getting from China.

In a word, sad.

When Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

-- Yogi Berra

As more trees are cut down and more buildings are put up in urban and suburban areas, I've noticed it is rare to have a static piece of open space. It has to feature more things for people to do rather than boring stuff like walking, listening to the birds or sitting quietly on a bench.

These pieces of open land have to include soccer fields, playgrounds, areas for "special needs" people, cross-country running tracks and the occasional field hockey rink. This is known as "mixed use."

Boardwalk under construction at Great Swamp
(Margo D. Beller)

I can understand the need for such facilities. As there is less open land and more people living in new developments, those creating a park know residents need a place to run the dogs or get the kids outside to play in a supervised environment. It adds to the "quality of life," and is an attractive incentive to move to that development.

What I don't like is the effect of such thinking at federal "refuge" areas. 

There is a school of thought that if land is opened to more people, they will want to protect it. Or people who approve the construction of a park want to justify the cost because you can't collect property taxes on land where no one lives or works. In a state like New Jersey, where property taxes are the highest in the U.S. because they are used to pay for so many services, the latter is no small thing.

So, for instance, you have the Central Park of Morris County, created out of the old Greystone Hospital that was closed because of horrendous conditions. Empty stone buildings were taken down, including the historic Kirkbride Building, and the fields opened for soccer, cross-country running, even disc golf. The state had sold the land to the county for $1 at a time when people were yelling for affordable housing to be put on this huge piece of property. The park people won out, thankfully for me and my small town abutting the land, and the park is usually filled with people. If I go there birding, it is early in the morning and never on a weekend during school months.

Here's another example of how the law of unintended consequences could come into play.

In the central part of northern New Jersey lies a 12-square-mile piece of open land that is known as the Great Swamp. Most of it is overseen by the U.S. government through the National Park Service, with sections that became county parks run by adjacent Morris and Somerset counties. Private groups, such as the Great Swamp Watershed Association, also have a hand in making sure people are enjoying themselves responsibly, although park rangers do the enforcing.

Great Swamp entrance, not far from a network of boardwalked
trails (Margo D. Beller)

Half of the property is maintained as "wilderness" where the land is left alone for the most part - mud, overgrowth and all. There are no cinders on the trail, no boardwalks, very few signs. There are birds - wonderful birds - in season as well as deer, fox, possum and sometimes bear, among others.

The other half of the swamp is "managed." Fields are periodically burned to get rid of invasive plants or to open an area to a field bird like the woodcock.The main road through this part was once a real residential street. Little by little the federal government bought up the land. As people moved out the houses were knocked down. That empty road has become a tour road, allowing cars to drive through the sanctuary. Half the road's stretch is paved, the rest unpaved. In another part of the managed area trails are boardwalked to allow people to get to blinds or, in one case I'll get to, an "observation" area.  One particular trail in this part of the Swamp tends to get a lot more people who "find nature" while wearing sneakers or other footwear not suited for mud. On weekends and holidays they bring their kids, who usually rush ahead of them shouting.

Overlook, replacing a blind
(Margo D. Beller)

I avoid this particular trail.

The Swamp, located in the midst of suburbia, serves the same function as New York City's Central Park - a large area in the middle of a concrete jungle where migrating birds can rest before pushing on or arrive to spend the winter. Back in the 1960s, no doubt in the name of "progress," there was a serious move to make the Swamp the New York metro area's fourth airport. Protesters, led by Helen Fenske, fought over many years to get that plan blocked. 

When the Friends of Great Swamp decided to leave its old center at one end of the tour road to refurbish a larger property at the other end, the new visitor center was named for Fenske.

It is what is now taking place across the road from the center that sparked this musing on unintended consequences.

The old center was small. It had a bookstore, a bathroom and a kitchen where visitors could get a cookie, coffee or a glass of water. It had a very homey air about it. Outside were bird feeders, which attracted many birds as well as some of their predators, including a redtailed hawk and a kestrel. 

However, as a place where it could draw large numbers of people for lectures and showcase everything the Swamp has to offer, it was considered insufficient. After the Fenske center opened the old house was taken down. 

The larger center does not offer coffee and cookies. It has a larger bookstore, more bathrooms and more meeting areas, but is not particularly homey. There are still feeders, positioned so those inside can look through a plate-glass window without disturbing the feeding birds.

Winter, Great Swamp (Margo D. Beller)

When the Fenske Center opened several small trails were put in. However, another, much longer trail was soon blazed on the other side of the road. It was dubbed the "White Oak Trail" because, as my husband and I discovered when we walked it one winter, it leads to some huge oak trees several hundred years old. That winter the trail was icy, and I'm sure it became muddy in spring.

Now, it is being boardwalked.

The managed part of the Swamp, as I said, has long had boardwalked trails. And, unfortunately, there was precedent for taking a trail and making it more accessible with boardwalks. One trail I walked all the time was boardwalked until you came to the woods. Then you continued on to a blind. This trail is now fully boardwalked. No more trying to get around ankle-deep water after heavy rain. No more tripping over tree roots. 

No more old blind either - it was removed for a large "observation platform" named for a local environmentalist. It has plenty of seating. More people troop over there, climb the steps, look over the tall reeds at the distant waterfowl. When I am up there, which isn't as often anymore, most of those who come up do not stay long because they are not birding, they are only walking to the end of a boardwalked trail.

On the White Oak trail, before it was paved.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

As for the White Oak trail, even tho it is not completely boardwalked people are already on it. Perhaps one day MH, with his balky knees, and I will do it, too, if only to see what birds are still hanging around the area and check in on the old oaks (like the one in the photo above).

But I think something is lost when you open up an area like this in the name of making it "accessible" and getting people "back to nature." More people mean more erosion, more noise, less opportunity to stand in a truly quiet area.

I guess I am being selfish in wanting governments to leave parks alone. During Covid, this part of the Swamp was one of the few areas not closed down by a misguided federal government and thus available to people who needed to get out during a time of great fear. We came, too, and found the tour road crowded with cars, people walking (many with dogs on a leash) and riding bicycles. People fought over parking places. Cars crawled along the road, just like during rush hour.

It is nowhere near that bad now. But it could become that way again, and that is what I dread. 

Dark in August

 If a story is in you, it has to come out.

-- William Faulkner, author of "Light in August"

August is not my favorite month. 

I've written of this before. I still feel the need to complain, especially this year when we are going through a prolonged drought (after a year of too much rain) and the garden I've worked so hard to make beautiful is suffering. (It does not help when the leaders of this country can't come to anything resembling agreement on climate change, much less any other issue.) 

Lots of reminders of death come to me in August, even in good garden years. My favorite grandmother and one of my good friends died in August. My mother, gone these many decades, was born in August. The days are becoming visibly shorter - by this time next week, the sun will set in my area before 8 p.m. Already the sun is rising later in the morning each day.

Flowers from my fading garden,
likely my last bouquet this year.
(Margo D. Beller)

August is when my family would take a vacation during a time when it seemed everyone was taking vacation, so my father could close his medical practice for two weeks. But we knew when we returned we'd have to start getting ready to go back to school after Labor Day, at the beginning of September. From there it would seem like no time at all before the end of the year and the need for a new calendar.

Drying dogwood leaves (Margo D. Beller)

At my age, August has become a time of suffering, particularly this year.

Last year at this time, my cancer treatment made me so sick I could barely function. There was also so much rain that even if I had been able to spray the weeds growing between the paving stones on my front walkway I could not. And so they grew, so thickly you could not see those stones.

Weeds between paving stones. At least
you can see the stones. (Margo D. Beller)

This year has been the complete opposite.

We have already suffered through several heatwaves. The last one was from late July into early August, then we got a few days off. Now another one has started. Worse, we have had no significant rain for some time. I gambled, based on last year, and did not have the sprinklers turned on. Now my grass, like most of my neighbors', is brown and dormant. The trees that would've also benefited from a deep lawn watering are showing the effect of the drought, and that makes me feel very bad. 

Drying butterfly bush leaves. (Margo D. Beller)

The apple and pear trees have been shedding leaves for weeks. Half the dogwood leaves are dried and brown, tho' still attached to the branches. There will be no red berries this year - putting out fruit takes too much energy. The viburnum did form berries but they are still green and the ripening seems to have stopped. Shrubs are wilting. The ferns have dried to a crisp. 

The heat has kept me inside most days, except for the early morning when I can sit on my porch and listen to the yard birds. As I've said before, they can do very well without my help (tho' I do provide a water dish) and, judging by the young I've seen and heard, have been very successful this year, despite the conditions.

Drying canna leaves. The plants should've
flowered by now. (Margo D. Beller)

Even the weeds have stopped growing, at least in those areas where I pulled them when we had a couple of cool mornings. However, in the areas behind the deer netting they are very much alive and in some places close to obscuring the perennials I have tried to water every so often. The butterfly bush has flowers but the leaves are showing brown. The cannas in their pots have brown edges on the foliage and have not flowered. (Plants in pots need more water than plants in the ground.)

The daisies bloomed nicely but now they
are ready to be cut back. (Margo D. Beller)

I know, this is not the first dry season we've had but it feels different. Some parts of my state have been inundated with rain. Mine has not. And most of the country is dealing with some level of drought as waterways dry up and fires rage, including in some of our most famous national parks. 

The world is warming by a few degrees each year. The summers are hotter and drier. While I complain in New Jersey, other areas in the western part of this country are being consumed by forest fires sparked by years of drought. (Meanwhile, others are literally drowning in rain.) 

The peppers are now doing well in the heat. 
So are the basils nearby. (Margo D. Beller)

So I get it. And even in my yard some things are doing well in the heat, as long as I water them. The bugs that beset my pepper plants are gone so the plants have recovered and are finally going to provide me with some vegetables. There have been no white flies this year so the basil plants are growing extremely well, the best since I started growing basil in pots. The many sedums I have growing - daughter plants that have been rooted from the original plant, all behind netting I reinforced to keep out the deer - are starting to put out flowers, right on schedule. (These plants are succulents, so they retain moisture.)

But those are the exceptions. Otherwise, I am surrounded by death and dying and I have resigned myself to waiting for the next cool morning to cut back the perennials and then hope conditions are better next year for them to grow and thrive. 

There are berries forming on the viburnum but
they are far from ripe. (Margo D. Beller)

That is the main reason why I dislike August. I can't stop it. 

August is inevitable. Its heat and humidity sap my strength. The weeds and dried-out plants make me feel I can't keep up with the needs of my garden. The song says, who'll stop the rain. I can't start it. The darker early mornings will return and make it harder to get up and do what needs to be done every day. Soon it will be winter and I can only hope we have some rain by then, and even some snow (but not too much, please).

Ultimately, August reminds me of my mortality. 

Dust in the Wind

Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. -- Ecclesiastes 1

Nothing is permanent in this world. This is a law of nature that transcends all things, including blowhards about to become President of these United States.

In my little New Jersey town I only have to walk a few miles to what used to be the property of the state-run Greystone psychiatric hospital. I have not written much about Greystone lately because once the old Kirkbride building came down, all the protests and shouting ended. The hospital moved to state land at the western-most part of the property and the much of the rest was sold for $1 to become Central Park of Morris County.

Kirkbride, as it was. (Margo D. Beller)

MH and I took our walks, thinking it odd that there was just a lot of space at the end of the road behind a storm fence instead of the hulking, stone building, a building it took close to a year to take down because it was put up to last.

There had been plans to build housing here, doing lip service to the preservationists by promising to use part of the old building to house a mental health museum. However, the whole plan died, thankfully. It would've created too much traffic and cost to provide services in one of the few, large, open spaces in a crowded part of northern Jersey. 

The other day I drove us to the end of the road and discovered the fences were gone and big boulders or huge tree logs lined the edge to keep out ATVs. However, there were no signs saying people could not walk in there. And that is what we did.

Looking south -- The ground had been frozen but recent rain made it muddy and spongy in parts. (Margo D. Beller)

Looking north -- It is hard to believe I am standing where one of the largest, continuous foundations in the world once stood. (Margo D. Beller)

Looking west -- You can't see it well here but there is a road between the hill and the field. On the other side of the road and to the right is what is now Greystone hospital. (Margo D. Beller)

Looking east -- You can see the rocks and logs put in to keep ATVs out. Beyond is Central Ave. heading back to my town. (Margo D. Beller)

I stood on this field for a long time, even as MH went back to the car. It took a very long time to take the building down, remove the mountains of stones, fill in the former foundation, put in grass and then leave it all alone until it was deemed time to remove the fences, that the danger to people like me was past.

I stood here, thinking of the human condition. Here was this huge building, built to last as I said, and then it's gone, as if it never even happened.

Dust in the wind.

We can build our monuments to ourselves, our legacies, but when circumstances intervene - a change in presidential administration, global warming, a nuclear holocaust or just everyday dying - it all means absolutely nothing in the long run.

This field, where I look forward to hiking and looking for birds when winter is finally done, is proof of that.