October 23 - Arcata Sunrise Cross Country Championships
October 25 - RISE EVENT - Spirits & Spirits - Lost Coast Rotaract's Walking Ghost Tour of Old Town Eureka - 3 times available!
October 25 - Southwest Eureka Rotary's "Vampires' Ball" at the Eureka Inn - 7 pm
October 27 - Firehouse Demolition & Construction Party - 12:15 pm
October 31 - Our last Foundation Final Friday meeting of 2014 - bring your checkbook!
November 1 - Help prepare Marylee's and Allan's Garden for the winter - 10 am to Noon
November 1 - RISE EVENT - Foundation Dinner North in Crescent City - 6 pm
November 20 - A Taste of the Holidays
Announcements
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| Trabalho |
Speaking of "trabalho", President Barbara said that the previous weekend's Adopt-A-Highway foray was a success, and we had help from North Bay Rotaractors! Thanks to the people in the photo below - Elena Flores, Ashleigh Diehl, Maggie Kraft, Katie Uemura, John Gullam, Barbara Browning, Carol Vander Meer, and Kyle Visser. Hmmm ... who'd I leave out? Oh, yeah - the photographer, Scott Heller!
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| The Cleanup Crew! |
A letter to the editor from Sunriser Maggie Kraft was published in a recent edition of the Rotarian Magazine. Maggie wrote in response to an article about making up. She described her experiences when she was serving with the Peace Corps in Botswana, and the make ups she did when she traveled to Europe.
Please help ensure the success of our Backpacks for Kids program by signing up to help fill the bags after one of our meetings, and/or by agreeing to pick up the food or deliver the packages to the schools. Check your inbox for the email with the link to sign up.
A Taste of the Holidays is just a few weeks away. Be sure to work with your team to get a raffle item (valued at $150+) and sell those tickets. Event Chair Ron Sharp sent out an email with the link so you can sign up for your "day-of" role as well.
The Foundation Dinner will take place on November 1st. It's not too late to sign up to attend, but if you can't make it, you can still purchase raffle tickets. The full value of each ticket is credited to your Paul Harris account, so be sure to see Terri Clark soon!
Brenda Bishop is the Executive Director of Humboldt Domestic Violence Services, and last Friday she reminded us that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. She said that there is a national campaign to end domestic violence and sexual assault - the "No More" campaign. For more information, check out No More's Facebook page, or the HDVS website.
New Paul Harris Fellows
The Rotary Foundation does great things, supported by our donations. And few Rotarians stop contributing after reaching Paul Harris Fellowship status. Many, like Romi Hitchcock Tinseth, share the Fellowship with their loved ones. Last week, Romi's daughters Sky and Zoë became Paul Harris Fellows, too! Pass it on!!
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| Barbara, Romi, Sky, Terri, and Zoë |
Last Friday, Tomas Chavez recognized Tami Camper-Dart. He said that he called Tami's husband Chris and got a few "fun facts" about her. She was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, and she has family roots in Montana and Switzerland. She loves to work out, and she raises bees to make her own honey. (Tomas is hoping that some of that honey makes its way to one of our Foundation Auctions.)
Tami loves to visit Yellowstone, and she loves the outdoors in general - backpacking with her family is a favorite activity. She also loves to go to Vegas with her husband, and she is "constantly riding her bike". She also likes to work around the house, and they recently completed a remodel of their home. She also works on her landscaping, including a large pond on their property.
Tami and Chris have four children: sons Cameron, Nolan, and Caleb, and daughter Audrey. They currently have another daughter added to the mix - Exchange Student Mozara.
Chris said that Tami is a loving wife and mother, and that she is always looking for ways to "give back". She wants to help people, and "she's the big reason why we have Mozara now". She attended college in Mexico, and the experience was transformational, and she wanted to share that feeling with Mozara.
Mozara came up to tell us that "Tami is a time-finder". She explained, "She finds time to do everything." She deals with the house and the four kids at home. "She works a lot," Mozara said, "and she likes to work out a lot. She doesn't know how to relax (I'm trying to teach her) ... and she has a huge heart." Mozara also said that Tami has "an adventurous spirit".
She told us, "I came to the United States, and I got a second Mom. There's no words that I can say ..." [Here, Mozara was fighting back tears.] "She's awesome. And there are no words that I can say to tell how well-received I was in Tami's house. She's just awesome. I'm going to thank her for the rest of my life."
Reintroducing Condors to the North Coast
Last week's Featured Speaker was Chris West, Senior Wildlife Biologist with the Yurok Tribe. Chris was born in California, and has lived in Humboldt County for the past 12 years. He received his bachelors degree in Biology from UC Santa Cruz, and then interned with the Ventana Wildlife Society, where he helped reintroduce and manage condors near Big Sur. He attended Humboldt State, where his work towards his Masters Degree involved the risks faced by captive-bred condors after reintroduction. He began working for the tribe in 2008, focusing on the feasibility of condor reintroduction and community outreach.
Chris said that he hoped to provide an overview of the reintroduction program, which has been going of for the past six years. He began by describing the California condor,
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| Chris West |
Condors are monomorphic, "which means that males and females look alike". They are generally monogamous, mating for life, and breeding pairs produce one egg every other year. The egg hatches after just under two months, and the chicks fledge 6 to 7 months after hatching. Condors reach sexual maturity at 5 to 6 years of age. The long reproduction cycle is a disadvantage to condors, since the loss of a condor chick or an interruption of the cycle can be devastating. The cycle also makes recovery from low population numbers problematic.
"Condors are obligate scavengers," Chris told us. "They only feed on dead things; they don't take any live prey, so those stories about them flying off with kids and livestock are not true." He also noted that their heads vary quite a bit in
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| California Condor |
Historically, condors occupied much of the country, especially along coastal regions. By the time Europeans arrived in North America, their range was limited to the west - Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, and Utah, and parts of British Columbia, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and Baja California. By the 1950's their range had been reduced to coastal areas from Monterey to Santa Barbara.
Condors are currently being reintroduced in parts of that area, along with sites in Arizona and Baja California. The Yurok reintroduction project would place the species back in what Chris calls "the heart of the range". That is, condors would be back in an area that is roughly the center of their range when Europeans arrived.
Chris told us that the condor is very culturally significant to the Yurok Tribe. He showed an early photo of tribal members performing a White Deerskin Dance, with several participants wearing regalia adorned with condor feathers. The importance of the condor to the tribe was stated by former Yurok Tribe Council Member Richard Myers, when he said, "[The condor] can soar the highest, so we figured that was the one to get our prayers to heaven when we were asking for the world to be in balance."
The Tribe's reintroduction assessment examines the two biggest threats to condor recovery, which are organochlorine pesticides and lead toxicosis. The pesticides (mainly DDT and its derivative DDE) are generally less prevalent in local marine life than in Southern California, according to recent studies. When ingested by raptors scavenging on the remains of marine mammals, these contaminants reduce the crystalline layer of the raptors' eggs. This layer is important in regulating moisture and gasses within the egg. Since this is less of a problem in our area, reintroduction seems more feasible here.
The issue of lead toxicosis is an important issue, however. Lead toxicity is the leading cause of death among reintroduced condors. Chris noted that eagles have a similar sensitivity to lead, but they lay two or three eggs per year on the average, four to six times the rate of condors.
Chris's team trapped turkey vultures and ravens in this area to serve as surrogates for condors. They found that these birds showed levels of lead that would be dangerous to condors. So the project has begun an outreach program to educate hunters about the use of ammunition that does not contain lead. A recent law was passed that bans using lead ammunition for hunting, and it is scheduled to be fully implemented by 2019.
Since there may be some impediments to that implementation, the Yurok Tribe (and other organizations) has begun a "Hunters As Stewards" program, which uses outreach presentations and ammunition demonstrations to educate hunters about the advantages of using non-lead ammunition. Participants are encouraged to voice their concerns and the program works to answer those concerns.
The Tribe has distributed over 800 boxes of non-lead ammunition to hunters; held eight hunter education courses; and provide information via local news outlets, gun shows, festivals, and banquets. They have also contacted over 30 ammunition retailers, discussing available products and giving them sample non-lead ammunition.
Chris and other biologists for the Yurok Tribe are also working on a project to map potential condor habitat. They are factoring in the distance from population centers, distance from roads, slope angles, vegetation, age of the forest, elevation, and distance from power lines. Chris showed us two potential reintroduction sites, each of which had the right mixture of prairie and forest.
The Tribe has now signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the California Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Ventana Wildlife Society to proceed with condor reintroduction in Northern California and Yurok Ancestral Lands. The project has lots of partners on board, and this seems to be an excellent location.
For more information and updates, check the Yurok Tribe's Condor Program web page.
