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| Port Arthur, TX, credit: AP |
The end-of-the-world weather the US is experiencing has been impressive to say the least. Hurricane Harvey, officially the largest and most destructive rainfall event in the country's history,
dumped over 51 inches of rain on metropolitan Houston, displaced thirty thousand people, and killed seventy so far. Hurricane Maria has devastated Puerto Rico with 110 mph sustained winds.
(Cat4) Scientists will not categorically state that global warming caused Harvey. Attributing causes to something as chaotic as weather is problematic.
They will say, however, that global warming causes the atmosphere to hold a lot more water vapor, and elevates sea temperatures which leads to more intense precipitation events.
Then there is plight of Atwater's prairie chicken. Just southwest of Houston is the Atwater Prairie Chicken Reserve, home to the last forty-two birds of this species known to survive in the wild. When a species population is that low, a single extreme event like Harvey could cause an extinction. The exact state of the refuge is not known because flood waters have made it inaccessible and refuge personnel are dealing with their own flood damage. Prairie chickens are small and nest on the ground, so they are particularly susceptible to floods. When the last major storm poured 8-12 inches of rain on the refuge, it nearly washed them away forever.
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| a hatchling, courtesy USFWS |
Fortune smiled on the species. All twenty adult birds being held in pens pending release into the refuge on September 1st were gathered up and sent to the Houston Zoo for safekeeping. At last report the birds were doing fine and gaining weight. Every year conservationists release about 300 captive bred birds into the coastal plain of southeast Texas. For these birds to see their second birthday is noteworthy, for they must survive predators like skunks and snakes who eat their young, and even
vicious fire ants, which in a flood survive by rafting their bodies together by the thousands to float to new territory.
