The arrival

Today was our 3 pm meetup at Jackson Hole airport, which is actually within Grand Teton National Park. So far, I can say it's going to be a good group. Five are volunteers sponsored by UBS, and five are ordinary folks from all over the country. One man mentioned that it was his 19th Earthwatch expedition! Another is an amateur birder who keeps a "life list" of all the birds he's ever identified. More on the team as we go along, I promise.

We bumped our way down an unpaved road in the Teton Science school van to our lodging, set in a small valley between two hills covered in sage. Four words to describe it: high class. Low maintainence.

Built 5 years ago, each building is passive-solar and environmentally friendly. Our rooms are shared, with a bathroom and shower. Everything is clean, bright and neat as a pin--not like the spidery, mildewy camps of my youth. My roommate, Laura, is an amiable research scientist from Baltimore on her holidays.

After we arrived, we were admonished to drink more water. Apparently, getting dehydrated is a common tourist mistake here at 6000 feet. I gulped it down. We moved on to a tour, found the dining hall, and had an informal skills assessment (who can use GPS? Two-way-radio? Excel?) I'm proud to say the UBS volunteers had the Excel skills covered.

Then, we were each issued binoculars and assigned daily tasks. Guess who has slop hound duty at dinner tomorrow?

Tonight, my duties are to read through the protocol information we were given today, covering the finer points of searching for nests and recording the data when we find them. (Tip: Use all your senses!)

Tomorrow is Skills Day. Basics of birding, species identification, and using satellite photos to identify terrain.
I can't remember the last time I went to bed this early on a Saturday night, but I'm not complaining.

The Earthwatch Fellowship

As part of UBS' environmental initiatives, the company generously sponsors the fellowship, making it possible for selected employees--and a teacher from a local partner school--to volunteer to take part in actual field research. The fellowship includes sharing the lessons with a local partner school in a community service project as well as with colleagues upon return.

The mission is arranged through the Earthwatch Institute, a nonprofit that supports scientific research by pairing projects with volunteers. They offer projects all over the world in the hopes of not just furthering environmental research, but also communicating the importance of this work to interested people, who will, in turn, share their knowledge with friends and family (and you, dear colleagues.)

The wildlife experts my team of volunteers will be working with are all from the Teton Science Schools, an educational orginazion based in Jackson Hole, WY.

Read the details of the mission here, and check out the lodging where volunteers on the trip will stay. Check back here to follow the mission with daily updates (connectivity willing) from July 26 through August 2nd.

Why songbirds matter

If you walk into the backyard of your grandmother's house, and listen carefully, you probably wouldn't hear the same birdsongs that she did as a girl. And nobody knows exactly why.

I've just finished some of the required reading for the Earthwatch trip. In Where Have All the Birds Gone? John Terborgh makes the case for the dire situation of tropical songbirds, which are disappearing rapidly from North America. Like socialites, they flee to warmer climates during the winter months, and return north only when the weather is more friendly. This makes them doubly susceptible: their habitat may be destroyed on either end.

And it has been, devastatingly so. Forest clearcutting in Peru, lowland vegetation cleared for sugarcane in St. Kitts and the Antilles, marshes drained for parking lots in New Jersey: combined, these all change the birdsongs you hear when spring arrives.

(Scientists think that there are probably fewer amphibians, snakes and so on, but nobody misses them. A forest without pleasing bird chirps is another matter, and we are talking about birds, aren't we?)

So why study birds? It's a shame we have fewer, sure. But people have needs, you say, and you can't stop building, or using resources, just to keep habitat pristine. What does taking birdie roll call accomplish?

It tallys the costs.

Human-driven change is inevitable, but as a society we have to acknowledge both its benefits and costs. Terborgh points out that it's the business of science to make predictions. As any scientist knows, you must have the right data before you can convince anyone with your predictions.

To make decisions about the future, we must have trustworthy data to understand what our continued actions will mean. Only once we have an informed view of the facts of climate change can we, as a society, make an informed value judgement on the best use of our resources.

As well-sheltered folks who have everything we need to sustain ourselves, we know the benefits of our actions. When we study songbirds, and look for reasons for their dwindling numbers, we are tallying the cost to the climate and its species, including ourselves.

This trip, and this blog, is part of that tally.

What's so grand about the Tetons?

Just about everything. Wyoming's jagged Tetons are fault-block mountains, pushed up as the earth split along a north-south fault line. They're topped by some of the oldest rock in North America--up to three billion years old. Brash upstarts, the Tetons themselves are only 12 million years old, compared to the rest of the Rockies, which have been around for about 60 million years. The valley floor is at an elevation of about 6,000 feet, with the mountains soaring to over 13,000 feet.

If you speak French, you may be wondering about the name Grand Tetons. (If you don't, just close your eyes and think of Dolly Parton.) Lonesome males on Donald McKenzie’s 1811 expedition to the area--apparently inspired by the soaring peaks--are thought to be responsible for this controversial naming.

Our fieldwork will be in mixed cottonwood and conifer sites
throughout the valley, on both public and private lands, because birds don't respect park boundaries very well. Two sites are within Grand Teton National Park; the others are in forested areas near Jackson, Teton Village, and Wilson, WY.


The area is hemmed in on three sides by mountain ranges: the Teton Range to the west, the Snake River Range to the south, and the Gros Ventre Range to the east. Yellowstone National Park is considered the area's northern border.