Month: April 2025

“No Direction Home”

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

(I recently wrote this over at Substack – yes, I’m still struggling with where to land – but I felt the post ought to be here, too, because of its importance. I hope you will read and go to the Federal Register site and comment. Thanks.)

Suppose a group of people came to your house and stole the roof from over your head. “What??!” you might protest, but they tell you they needed the shingles. Shortly after, a crew plows up the easement in front of your house, and water shoots up from the broken pipes, then subsides to a trickle. Eventually you sit in your house, unharmed, but with no protection from the elements and no water. The police tell you that you have no recourse, because none of these people physically hurt you.

That is what the Trump regime plans to do to species protected under the Endangered Species Act. A proposed rule would re-define “harm” to only mean “taking” a protected plant or animal. Changing or degrading its habitat would not fall under the definition of harm. Only such things as trapping or killing the animal, or digging up an endangered plant, would qualify as “harm.”

Sand dune/shinnery oak habitat in Monahans Sandhills State Park

The beneficiaries of this, of course, are extractive industries. Loggers can log and the spotted owls just have to deal with it, because if nobody is shooting owls out of the sky, no harm done. In the Permian Basin of Texas, industries can go on mining sand for fracking, and the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard will have to learn to live on caliche roads and patches of remaining bare sand. I visited the area last year, writing about the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard for Green Source DFW. Researchers have found that this lizard requires very specific habitat that includes sand dunes and a low, shrubby oak species called shinnery oak. If you remove that habitat, the species cannot survive.

Over a year ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as endangered, but a loophole in the law allowed them to defer setting aside any habitat for it. (The Monahans Sandhills State Park provides some good habitat, but the whole park is only 3,840 acres.) The land in Texas west of Midland and Odessa is like a big outdoor industrial park crisscrossed with roads and sand trucks, sand mining sites in the spotty areas where dunes are found, drilling sites and the network of caliche roads connecting them. A lizard could look around in most places out there and see no direction home.

Sand mining operation near Kermit, TX

So, back to our analogy, if you were an endangered species, industry could come steal your roof, dig up your water pipes, and leave you with no food, water, or shelter, and according to the current regime you would be completely unharmed. To further quote Bob Dylan, “How does it feel?”

From a conservation biology perspective, it’s fair to say that all species depend on certain conditions to survive. The more they are habitat specialists, the narrower the range of conditions that they need in order to survive. That is, if they are adapted to very specialized diets or ways of living, they can’t just decide to be more flexible and live outside those requirements. The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard did not just decide it liked sand dunes and shinnery oak and would be annoyed if they couldn’t get them. Over a long span of time, generations of these lizards survived by making use of that habitat and only that one.

Regarding this proposed rule change, you can submit a public comment before May 19th here. I really hope that you will. With the Musk-Trump regime, it is too easy to conclude that since they don’t care what we think, it’s a waste of time. But that’s not quite true. They don’t care unless we speak up in large numbers, signifying a big wave of opposition that they cannot ignore. Enough of us, acting together and persistently, might still have an impact.

Also, giving up on telling them what we think reminds me of the first of Timothy Snyder’s lessons for resisting tyranny: do not obey in advance. Staying quiet teaches them the extent of their power, and it is also a kind of signal to our neighbors and friends that there is no point in resisting.

There are over 1,300 species federally listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and a number of them occur in Texas (including the Ocelot, Mexican Long-nosed Bat, Golden-cheeked Warbler, Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Louisiana Pinesnake, Salado Springs Salamander, Comal Springs Riffle Beetle, Hinckley’s oak, Neches River Rose-mallow, and many more). I hope we won’t leave them “on their own, like a complete unknown.”

(Apologies to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”)

Sanctuary!

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

This new trail at Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge is a favorite. I have walked it in winter with those bare tree limbs reaching up towards the sky and beautiful patterns of shed leaves on the ground. Now I have been there when it is greener and darker with all those new leaves shading the ground. The trail winds among the tree trunks and I can hear the quiet and the birds and the soft crunch of footsteps. That quiet and the new leaves as well as the carpet of old ones makes for a woodland sanctuary. A protected woods becomes a protective place for all who walk there.

I remember the 1939 film – “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” – in which Quasimodo rescues the wrongly condemned Esmeralda and flees to the cathedral, crying “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” Notre Dame is a place of safety and protection from a corrupt French Chief Justice. Both the disfigured Quasimodo and the Romani girl Esmeralda are safe within its walls.

I respond to the prairies, woods, and wetlands as places of safety and protection, sanctuaries from thinking about the current regime and worrying about how it will play out. Extrajudicial abduction, defiance of courts, hate and scapegoating, wrecking the economy that sustains us, and on and on. We might imagine that, like Esmeralda, we all need to be taken to some place of safety, away from the worst of our fellow humans.

At the same time that such things are going on in human society, the sun keeps rising each morning, birds sing, water flows, plants give us oxygen and food, and there is quiet and peace in the woods and fields. I am very thankful that they are part of the world. As Robin Wall Kimmerer said, “Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy” (Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 327).

Sanctuary! I need to be in such places. I must do whatever good that I can in the world, and then for a time I need the shelter of nature.

Flowers of Dakota Mock Vervain

And so I went to the nature center yesterday, the day before Earth Day. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky, and a Northern Cardinal’s call was joined with those of other birds in the patch of prairie where I started. The temperature was still in the 70s, but not for long.

In the meadow with butterflies and bird song

After a time in the trees, the trail entered a big meadow or prairie surrounded by trees. This, to me, is the heart of this trail. There were flowers visited by butterflies – a Common Buckeye, several Goatweed Leafwings, and over by the bench, a Painted Lady. Once I settled in, I saw some species of sulfur flying and fluttering a little above the tops of the grasses. Most of the time the nearby air traffic did not disturb the place, so I could hear the Northern Cardinals and also Carolina Wren, Carolina Chickadee, White-throated Sparrow, and Tufted Titmouse (much of the identifying was with the Merlin app, but even if they were not identified the songs in the meadow were beautiful).

From there, the trail meandered through the woods some more. Sometimes I got on the ground to examine mushrooms; other times it was to see a small jumping spider. There were more flowers: Smallflower Desert-Chicory, Fraser’s Wild Onion, and at the end, a few patches of Texas Bluebonnet in clearings as the woods opened onto another prairie.

Unidentified mushrooms
Paradise Jumping Spider
Smallflower Desert-Chicory
Texas Bluebonnet

When I reached the end of the trail, the marsh boardwalk was a short walk away, and so I headed down to the marsh. Black Vultures were examining some exposed mud, a Great Egret flew by close to the boardwalk, and at some lotus stems in the shallow water an Eastern Phoebe perched. Then it flew to a nearby spot, disappeared, and returned. Once it dipped to the water’s surface, apparently to capture something. It is a busy life for a Phoebe on the hunt.

The Eastern Phoebe, scanning for insects

It was three hours well-spent. We all need this kind of sanctuary, and such places can be an important sort of self-care. I wish everyone could take an hour or so and be held in the peace and beauty of places like this. If you can, go and sit for a while in mindful stillness or walk the trails and notice the unending stream of wonderful things that you will find.

Elegies for Animals

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

Our responses to losses and extinction of our fellow creatures should reflect our complete selves, not just what we make of the losses intellectually but also how they resonate in our hearts and souls. When a species is gone, it should pull from us something beyond what is measured in statistics. Birds do that, as you can hear in the magnificent elegy by Christopher Tin, called The Lost Birds. It’s a collection, a heartbreaking instrumental theme memorializing the Passenger Pigeon (“Flocks a Mile Wide”) and songs, some with original lyrics and some drawing on others’ poems such as “Hope is the Thing with Feathers.” Those lost birds, our distant relatives, deserve memorials such as this.

Of course, it’s not just birds. Many of our other animal relatives are disappearing, and some of them have eloquent advocates. Wolves have passionate defenders, and even the Monarch butterfly inspires legions of helpers planting milkweed for their caterpillars. 

Amphibians and reptiles have captured my interest and affection all my life. A great many are declining, and the loss of many amphibians has been deemed an extinction “crisis.” At least, it’s a crisis as seen by herpetologists and some others. Turtles are disappearing, too, along with many reptile species. 

You can see where I am headed. No elegies for the disappearing Louisiana Pine Snake or the Yangtze Giant Softshell Turtle. Our culture does not elevate them in that way. The flight of birds symbolizes freedom for us. Our cultural stories equate birds with hope; a dove with an olive branch signifies peace, and those feathered wings remind us of angels. The snake, in Western culture, brings up temptation, fall from grace, and being condemned to crawl on the belly. We have to look elsewhere, like Asia or Indigenous Americans to find some positive cultural meanings.

Speckled kingsnake

My point is not a resentment of birds, just a wish that we could do for other animals what we’ve done for birds. I wish we had stories and images in our culture that found more positive inspiration and affection for the animals without beautiful songs and wings, with no soft fur or expressive eyes. It would make it easier for us to find room for them in the family of living things. It might give a little boost to our willingness to go out of our way to conserve them, and maybe we would need fewer elegies.

Small Wonders

/ Michael Smith / Leave a comment

I’ve added another downloadable “Letter From the Woods,” this one is about a recent walk at LBJ National Grasslands. The link takes you to a PDF of that letter that you can download, print, and share if you like. Or, if you would prefer, I posted it yesterday at Rain Lilies on Substack, and you can see it here. Either way, have a look and see how great it was to visit the grasslands again!

About Empathy

/ Michael Smith / 1 Comment

I’m writing again to kids and to anyone else who is interested, about the values that can shape our lives if we choose them. Like empathy.

So – empathy. The thing that lets us know that a classmate is going through something bad, even if they say they’re “fine.” And also lets us share a friend’s joy. The ability that lets us connect with each other, lets us care about each other in a meaningful way.

Empathy is our ability to understand what it is like to be another person in their situation – to sense what their emotions and thoughts might be. If you see someone being bullied, see their expressions and hear their voice, you might feel some of their fear, pain, and anger, and want to help them.

What is it like to be small and have a hurt? And to have someone who is there for you?

It’s not the same as “sympathy,” which is having concern for someone but without the emotional part that happens when we feel what they are feeling. Empathy connects us through emotional understanding, while sympathy really does not.

If you look these things up online, some places in social media and websites don’t get it quite right. There’s some good information here and here. And I learned a good bit about these things during my career as a Psychological Associate. Empathy is crucial to what was required in that career.

I guess a person who is worried about being seen as weak or vulnerable has no use for empathy or else would find it hard or uncomfortable. It amazes me that some politicians and some churches are saying that empathy is a problem, or even a sin.

When Elon Musk says that empathy is a “bug” and a “weakness,” he is wrong. Empathy helps bring about the kind of connection and trust that holds relationships, communities, and societies together. Right now, as a society, very many people are isolated from each other and mistrustful of most others. We need to have relationships in which the other person “gets” us.

It would be great to have more face-to-face relationships that include empathy, making us feel understood by a wider group of friends and people in the community. I think we would feel less isolated and mistrustful of everyone else we see. And wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?

Looking around me right now, I see too many people who have no time or desire to understand others except to use them, who act as though getting through the day means shoving people aside, and who desperately want to be invulnerable, untouchable, armor-plated like a superhero. Empathy would mean sometimes opening yourself to difficult feelings, connecting so that it could matter – a lot – how another person is doing. You can’t do that with armor on. (You can and should do it while maintaining some sort of “boundary,” but that’s for another discussion.)

So I hope you will grow up being strong enough and wise enough to have empathy for others. Being with someone when they need it, without giving advice or trying to “fix it” and quickly move on, but instead just being present so they don’t carry what they’re carrying all by themselves.

I’m not sure how I managed to write the above without bringing in one of Bruce Perry’s books, Born for Love (written with Maia Szalavitz). Not that I wanted it to be a long essay with a lot of references, but this is a popular, readable book by a psychiatrist who I regarded as a rockstar earlier in my career when I heard him speak and read his books and articles. So, if you can take the time, go get this book!