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Summary
Summary
"We all live in particular places and at particular times, but when we act with family and friends to preserve a local slice of nature, we are, together, saving the planet." -- Natural History Magazine
Can each of us, as stewards of our land, make an environmental difference that can be seen, felt, and measured? Scott Freeman emphatically says yes, and in Saving Tarboo Creek he explores how we can all do it by making small changes over time. Saving Tarboo Creek masterfully blends two stories of the Freeman family's effort to reclaim a small patch of the planet: one, a tale of the realities of rehabilitating a degraded fish run in what was once an old-growth watershed; the other, an account of human resource use over time and what that history means for the future. Based on the land ethics found in Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac , Saving Tarboo Creek is both a timely tribute to our land and a bold challenge to protect it.
Author Notes
Scott Freeman teaches biology courses at the University of Washington, where he received a Distinguished Teaching Award. He worked in environmental education and international conservation before completing a PhD in evolutionary biology at the University of Washington and conducting post-doctoral work at Princeton University as Sloan Fellow.
Susan Leopold Freeman grew up outside West Lafayette, Indiana, and attended DePauw University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a BFA.
In 2004, the Freemans bought 18 acres along Tarboo Creek, on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, and began reforestation and salmon stream restoration work in conjunction with the Northwest Watershed Institute and Jefferson Land Trust. His family now owns and manages over 240 acres of forestland in Jefferson County, all protected by conservation easements held by Jefferson Land Trust.
Reviews (3)
Booklist Review
Freeman comes to land conservation in two ways: he's a biologist with a longstanding devotion to the land and also married into the Leopold legacy. Aldo Leopold, renowned ecologist, was his wife's grandfather, and Carl Leopold, a plant physiologist, was his father-in-law. These giants inform much of the book and the work that Freeman and his family perform as they try to reclaim a creek and a surrounding patch of land in northwest Washington State. Freeman explains in clear, nonjudgmental prose what is lost when farmland and forests are cleared for development, and the losses are great. As soil is disturbed, whole ecosystems are laid waste, and invasive species too often find purchase. To reestablish an ecosystem is not only backbreaking work but it is a guessing game. It's not just development that threatens ecosystems, though. Our tastes and technology drive destruction, too. Readers may never feel good about ordering salmon again after considering the global cost. Thought-provoking and unsettling, this highly readable book is made lovely by homey drawings sprinkled throughout.--Curbow, Joan Copyright 2017 Booklist
Choice Review
This book is eloquently yet simply written for readers of all ages and levels to enjoy. In a time when the news is bleak, and society runs people ragged with texts, e-mails, and appointments, this book is a grounding influence. In ten simple chapters accented with graceful illustrations, Freeman (biology, Univ. of Washington) chronicles his family's and community's quest to restore a damaged creek in the Puget Sound basin to its former role as a haven for spawning salmon. In the process of this ultimately uplifting narrative, Freeman reminds readers that although nature is complex, it is also simple, and when people embrace its values, even the seemingly impossible can be accomplished. Though brief, Saving Tarboo Creek allows readers to draw their own lessons and inspirations from the story, and the references offer direction for further study. This volume will be an excellent addition to a public library collection and serve as a good read to get young people interested in environmentalism, conservation, or the biological sciences. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers.--Donna Marie Braquet, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Library Journal Review
In healing the land, the Freemans heal themselves. That land, purchased in 2004, covers 18 acres of salmon and upland habitat along Tarboo Creek on Washington state's Olympic Peninsula. The spirit of Aldo Leopold, the father of environmental ethics, suffuses this book. First, the family ties: Freeman (biology, Univ. of Washington) is married to Leopold's granddaughter, who illustrates the text. Their work has many parallels to Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; even the place names resonate (the setting for Sand County Almanac was near Baraboo, WI). There is plenty of practical advice here: how to make (for the salmon's sake) a straight stream crooked; which tool to use when slicing heavy turf; or why, when selecting trees for transplantation, restorers must consider climate change. Certain habits of mind need also to be nurtured, first and foremost a keen sense of observation. Freeman demonstrates this throughout, with fine descriptions of the land's flora and fauna. VERDICT Perhaps few readers possess the wherewithal to get their own 20 acres restored, but this book still speaks powerfully to those who have ever dreamt of it, or even to small landowners looking to do something ecologically beneficial. For those seeking verities on leading more fulfilling lives, there's that, too.-Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Introduction My uncle Carl Holtz farmed in southeast Wisconsin for forty years. But before he started farming, he went to the University of Wisconsin to row on the crew team. While he was a student there he took a course on wildlife biology--then called game management--from a professor named Aldo Leopold. During the semester, each student was required to have a brief one-on-one conversation about the course with Leopold in his office. More than twenty-five years later, my uncle told me about that meeting: "I sat there like the dumb jock I was back then, you know. Professor Leopold was asking me about this and that, and I had absolutely no idea what he was driving at. But then something caught his eye out the window, behind his desk. He looked at it for a moment, then turned to me and asked, 'Carl, what bird is that?'" "I had no clue, of course," he laughed. "But years later I realized it was a palm warbler, migrating through." My uncle was a big man, with hands the size of salad plates. He held them up. "Leopold knew I wasn't going to go on to graduate school or become a wildlife biologist. He just wanted me to look up and notice things." Uncle Carl put his hands down and nodded at me. "And so I have--ever since." Outside my window in Seattle right now, a flock of bushtits is feeding in the bare branches of a birch tree. Some are upside down; some are right-side up. They are flitting, fluttering, jumping. Then they disappear all at once--diving into the cover of a nearby Douglas-fir tree. Now they're back. A moment later, they're gone--until tomorrow. These birds are adults and juveniles. They are neighbors from the previous year and new immigrants to the neighborhood, and by now are well acquainted. The members of a winter flock like this one find each other in late summer and stay together until the following breeding season. Although bushtits dominate this particular group, there are also some golden-crowned kinglets and at least one chestnut-backed chickadee. Around here, it's common to find northern juncos, black-capped chickadees, and hairy woodpeckers in the mix, and sometimes even ruby-crowned kinglets. You can find these types of mixed flocks almost anywhere you go in the world. In Japan, there would be marsh tits and great tits and goldcrests--close relatives and look-alikes of North America's chickadees and kinglets. The Eurasian treecreeper and Eurasian nuthatch would take the place of our brown creeper and red-breasted nuthatch; Japanese pygmy and great-spotted woodpeckers would stand in for our downy and hairy woodpeckers. In the lowland rainforests of southern Ecuador, all Hades breaks loose. There may be twenty-five species and forty or more individuals in a mixed foraging flock like this. In addition to woodpeckers and woodcreepers, there will be several types of antwrens, a handful of flycatcher species, and a bouquet of tanagers: yellow-throated, blue-winged, orange-eared, blue-browed, and bay-headed, among others. The colors streak from branch to branch. They are dazzling, brilliant, sublime. Typically, each species in a mixed flock will be eating something slightly different, in a different part of the vegetation. Out my window, the bushtits glean from the tiniest twigs; chickadees pick at branches; brown creepers probe the trunk's furrowed bark; hairy woodpeckers rap at spongy, rotting spots in the wood. When these little gangs appear, moving slowly but steadily through the trees, the woods look like Central Park on a summer Sunday. You'll find every size, shape, color, and linguistic group imaginable among birds--all moving and jostling, going about their day. For a mixed flock like this, there is knowledge in numbers. Large flocks can draw on the collective wisdom of fifteen or twenty memories, finding food in obscure locations when ice and snow coat the branches and ground. There is safety in numbers, too. If a sharp-shinned hawk dove into this birch tree and surprised the group, the little birds would scatter like shot--making it hard for the predator to draw a bead and snatch one from the air. And to avoid surprise, many eyes are better than two. In black-capped chickadee flocks, individuals that notice flying predators give a high-pitched "seet" call; in response, the others dive for cover. But if the predator is sitting, the spotter gives the "chick-a-dee" call and adds "dee's" to indicate the degree of danger. Biologist Chris Templeton and co-workers figured this out by bringing live predators into a large outdoor aviary where a chickadee flock was living. Chickadees are little--almost as tiny as bushtits--and it is the small, agile killers like saw-whet owls and northern pygmy owls that worry them the most. In the experiments, small predators could elicit a string of five "dee's" or more. But big, lunking hunters like great gray owls, which strike fear in the hearts of snowshoe rabbits and grouse, got only a "dee" or two--barely more than the response to a harmless, seed-eating bobwhite quail. Follow-up work by other biologists showed that Carolina chickadees do the same thing. Excerpted from Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family's Quest to Heal the Land All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Dedication | p. 8 |
Introduction: Noticing Things | p. 11 |
A Stream Is Born | p. 19 |
Trees | p. 37 |
Salmon | p. 55 |
Planting Season | p. 83 |
Blood, Sweat, Tears | p. 111 |
A Working Forest | p. 125 |
Damnation | p. 139 |
Wild Things | p. 163 |
A Natural Life | p. 181 |
Acknowledgments | p. 194 |
Referenes | p. 195 |
Index | p. 217 |