A Memorial for the Planet

When I was young and we worried about nuclear annihilation while habitat destruction was a good thing and global warming was unheard of, I used to joke that only things that begin with the letter C would survive in the future: cockroaches, crows, coyotes, and crabgrass. To my deep sorrow, I have lived to see my prediction beginning to come true, though not because of nuclear war. 

Artist Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Civil Rights Memorial, is now working on a memorial for the planet. It is a memorial that exists in many forms and many places, but the one I have experienced is on the web at www.whatismissing.net. As with any memorial, her project commemorates those who have died, in this case, entire species of plants and animals. When I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, my heart was filled with grief, and the What Is Missing Memorial has the same effect.

We are in the midst of the largest number of extinctions since the loss of the dinosaurs. One in five mammals, one in three amphibians, one in eight birds, and one in three freshwater fish are currently facing extinction. Human alteration of the planet is the major cause. For example, one and a half acres of rainforest are being destroyed every SECOND by human beings for timber, farm land, and other resources, often by the transnational corporations. They could be completely consumed by 2050. These facts are horrifying and a cause for great sorrow, even despair.

As part of the What Is Missing project, individuals are invited to submit their memories of the losses they have seen. I started to think about what I could submit, and it turned into a very long list. This issue requires an essay.

Born in 1944, I grew up in postwar Los Angeles, in tracts of postwar housing in Rosemead and Whittier. There was still plenty of undeveloped land, and in our back yards we could easily find frogs large and small, horned lizards (“horny toads” we called them), swallow tailed butterflies, monarch butterflies, white and yellow and silver butterflies of all types, crickets, Jerusalem crickets, green caterpillars and black caterpillars, grasshoppers and katydid nymphs, stink bugs, red and black beetles, lady bugs, black widows and many other kinds of spiders, pill bugs, and many kinds of birds. I know about these creatures because at one time or another I captured them and studied them. However, as a child, I did not pay attention to plants or moths or very small creatures, but I am assuming they have gone missing, too. And as a child, I did not know the species of birds,  but I do remember flocks of Cedar Waxwings in those days. There were no starlings or pigeons. 

More than sixty years later, most of these creatures are no longer found in back yards. I occasionally see one of them while hiking in “natural” areas, but even there they are quite rare. They are mostly missing. The population of the Los Angeles area has more than tripled in those years, and housing and development have covered most of the land. Clearly, human-caused habitat loss is the main reason for the disappearance of the animals I remember.

About five years ago, I went to stay in Idyllwild for a painting workshop. The people there said that the prior winter and the current summer had been incredibly dry. The lush Idyllwild with multitudes of birds and bugs that I remember from 30 years ago was brown and dusty and eerily quiet. Because of the drought, there were virtually no insects -- no creaking crickets or buzzing flies or bees, not even any ants. No insects meant no birds. The dead silence at night was disturbing.

In the last 15 years in Seal Beach, I have seen a rather sudden loss of animals and biodiversity. When I first moved here, where we are just a couple of blocks from a National Wildlife Refuge, there were many hawks, turkey vultures, skunks, and coyotes in the neighborhood. There was an occasional opossum and raccoon. On the drive east on Westminster Boulevard through the Naval Weapons Station, we often saw four to ten hawks sitting on the telephone posts. We drove by fairly quickly, but I think they were almost all Red Tailed Hawks. We had a pair of baby skunks in our backyard for a few days and another time one got trapped in our garage. Our neighbor ran out of her house one day, screaming about a huge rat, because a young possum had gotten into her kitchen. A raccoon ate all the goldfish in our pond one night. The awful smell of a run-over skunk was not infrequent.

There were lots of butterflies and many Mourning Cloaks. One time there were literally hundreds of Mourning Cloak caterpillars climbing out of the neighbor’s tree and crawling up walls and bushes to form cocoons. A large flock of starlings had a feast and ate the majority, but still some butterflies did emerge later. However, I haven’t seen a Mourning Cloak anywhere in Seal Beach since. 

There were spiders, especially these unusual red and green spiders that showed up every fall and made long webs everywhere each night. There were many crickets, some of which got into the house and kept us awake. There were frogs, especially on “The Hill,” where you could hear all their croaking and chirping and peeping on a summer evening. 

About seven or eight years ago, the numbers of all of these creatures suddenly took a nosedive. They were just gone. I asked the manager of the wildlife refuge what happened to all of the hawks, and he said they had just migrated and would be back. They never came back. As a result, we are currently experiencing a population explosion of ground squirrels. There’s still evidence of an occasional coyote, but obviously not enough to stem the ground squirrels.

What happened? Despite official denials, I suspect there was some poisoning going on in the naval weapons station. I think it is likely that there were efforts to eliminate the skunks and other nuisance animals and that hawks ate the poisoned animals. However, also about that time, the Hellman property was developed.  Over 50 mansions were built on Seal Beach Boulevard, across the street from the entrance to the Naval Weapons Station, effectively cutting off the Los Cerritos Wetlands (a very degraded wetland) from the wildlife refuge. It could be a coincidence that the numbers of animals fell suddenly about the same time as this development, but it could also be that this disruption of the habitat was the “tipping point” that led to the collapse of wildlife numbers.

In just a few short years, the vast majority of wildlife in our Seal Beach neighborhood has gone missing. I find this very depressing. When I read articles on the environment, I begin to despair. Maya Lin hopes that her What Is Missing project will increase people’s awareness of the issue and show them ways that will slow the habitat destruction and species extinctions. In the summer 2012 issue of Living Bird, Maya Lin is quoted as saying, “We need to stay really optimistic. Because the alternative is, what, we give up? I’m not going to tell my kids that I didn’t try really hard. Because the woods that I grew up with were so magical. And I want to try to get some of that back.” 

A great many animals have disappeared in my lifetime on this planet, and I have witnessed this loss in my own neighborhoods. But there is still plenty of crabgrass and cockroaches. Crow numbers are currently high, although the crows almost went missing during the West Nile epidemic. Coyotes also seem to be plentiful in some parts of the country. My joke has come back to haunt me.