Green Week: Cat people

Reports of big cats roaming the wilds of southwestern Rhode Island are nothing new. During the past decade, folks in rural South County have called the Independent with sightings of mountain lions in their backyards. They're convinced, and they're vocal, but so far they don't have proof in the form of photographs, video or other viable evidence (although one cougar watcher claims to have a skull, scat and pictures of tracks to indicate that panthers prowl in these parts). Arguments against the big cats: They don't show up as roadkill and, strangely, they don't seem to go on cat-like killing sprees, terrorizing domestic animals or wildlife. Conspiracy theorists believe that state environmental management officials know the cats are here in limited numbers. They point to the fact that for years officials were reluctant to admit that black bears were back, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. (All it took to silence the doubters was for one bear to go public a couple of weeks ago, eluding officials from Narragansett to North Kingstown, turning all of Rhode Island into bear paparazzi. But "Fluffy" the bear, like the Warwick manatee from two summers ago, wanted no part of the publicity, and high-tailed it to Connecticut.) We know that mountain lions once hunted here, and they are increasing their range throughout the U.S. With the emphasis on cleaning up the environment over the past few decades, preserving wilderness and preventing toxic chemicals and pesticides from polluting air, water and soil, wildlife has made a comeback, even in the second-most-densely populated state in the union. Rhody is exploding in deer (a.k.a. big cat food) and a state that was once logged to near baldness is now more than two-thirds forested (a.k.a. cougar cover). So maybe it's not a matter of if but when for the first documented case of the Eastern puma returning to Rhode Island. After all, the only thing that matters to all animals except humans is habitat, not borders.

Green Week: Beetlemania

If someone made a bug's life version of "CSI," the American burying beetle would star as the forensic investigator. Say a mouse dies on Block Island. Within an hour, the beetle would be on the case. The only difference between the TV detectives and the Block Island bug is that once the beetle finds the corpse, the show is over and dinner is served. The insect can smell a dead mouse from two miles away. Carrion eaters aren't the most loveable creatures on Earth, but American burying beetles are on the endangered species list, and Block Island is the extent of their range east of the Mississippi, so in one way or another they are the envy of almost every other species of Rhode Islander.

The Roger Williams Park Zoo, as part of its beetle conservation program, breeds them in captivity, monitors them in the wild and even transplants some of the Block Islanders to Nantucket. Zookeeper Lou Perrotti, speaking to me a few years back, admitted that most people think the beetle's stalk-strip-secrete-and-devour approach to dead animals sounds more like a horror show than fine dining, and are skeptical that they're worth saving. "The usual response is, 'You're doing what? Shouldn't you be getting rid of these things?'" Sharon Begley's column in last week's Newsweek quotes Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, praising the bug: "Think of the potential if we could mimic that for finding earthquake victims." According to Perrotti, saving, not squashing, the beetle is one of those big-picture deals. "If there were no more insects then life on this planet, including us, wouldn't last a month."

Green Week: Making the cut

The endangered species list contains 1,985 species of plants and animals recorded as either "endangered" (next stop: oblivion) or "threatened" (hanging out at the rest area just before the exit). Most of the media attention and charity love goes to totemic animals like wolves, whales and polar bears or greeting card/desk calendar models like the Karner blue butterfly. Few people are clamoring to "Save the Dung Beetles." The very idea of saving species has critics among the top end of the predator food chain, who argue that millions of species have been wiped out since the planet first exploded with life. That's true, of course, with the one major distinction being that those were acts of nature and the cosmos, not the conscious behavior of a single species that can't be sure of which links in the environmental chain are essential for its own existence.

Sixteen Rhode Island species are listed on the Endangered Species Act. Some are residents (the American burying beetle), others visit annually (a variety of whales and sea turtles), while a few make rare or rumored appearances - the wildlife equivalent of celebrity sightings (Eastern puma). Up until March 28, the gray wolf was on the list. In Wyoming (the state out West not the village in southwestern Rhode Island), a few days after the wolf came off the list, 16 were shot dead, including a limping canine known to locals as "Hoppy." So now that wolves are no longer endangered, they're being slaughtered in mass numbers. Memo to other species: Do not leave the list. Thriving can get you killed.

Green Week: Tick doc

A 24-minute documentary about ticks and the diseases they can pass on to humans, titled "Hidden in the Leaves," has just been released at the height of tick season. It was written, directed and narrated by Mary Healey Jamiel, who teaches film media at the University of Rhode Island. The film features the work of Dr. Thomas Mather, professor of entomology and director of the Center for Vector-Borne Disease. Rhode Islanders, Mather said, live within "the heart of tick country" and encounter ticks routinely "in their own backyards." Now playing at libraries across the state, the film will air on R.I. PBS Channel 36 (Cox 8) throughout the month. A couple of nuggets that won't make it into my story in this Thursday's Independent:

Unlike most Rhode Islanders, Mather doesn't look romantically at those 150,000 miles of stone walls lining the southern New England landscape. "Rodent condominiums," he calls them. And, given his choice, one of the last places on Earth he'd vacation is Nantucket. "I call it Nanticket. It's kind of a tick-infested hell hole."