Ain't love grand? Once courtship and mating are over, the female hornbill finds a tree hollow and seals herself in with dung, fruit and pellets of mud.

I love our hornbills. Situated in the Rainforest section of the Zoo, between our gibbons and our chimps, they are often overlooked, yet I find them fascinating.

The female has the bright blue gular pouch (an expandable throat sac, used for short-term storage of food) and the male has the pale yellow version.  Like all hornbills, they have a distinctively large and down-turned beak.  These Malayan Wreathed Hornbills are one of the 54 species found in Asia and Africa.

Their dramatic nesting ritual is what makes them so interesting. Once courtship and mating are over, the female finds a tree hollow and seals herself in with dung, fruit and pellets of mud. The male gathers the pellets from the forest floor and swallows them, later regurgitating small saliva-cased building materials. He then gives them to the female who stays inside the nest leaving a slit for a window big enough to receive food and materials. For the next 6-8 weeks the male feeds the female through this opening. She does not emerge until she has molted and re-grown fresh feathers and her young has grown and become feathered, as well. Then, both mother and child knock down the wall and appear on the scene, happy and healthy. Last year the public was enthralled, as our hornbills participated in this ritual.

The zoo is concerned with the status of hornbills in the wild, and since 2004, the Oakland Zoo Conservation Fund has worked with a fantastic program coordinated by the Hornbill Research Foundation. Besides collecting data, the foundation has launched a Hornbill Nest Adoption Program, which works to foster conservation of these beautiful birds. Illegal logging and the poaching of young birds for the pet trade are the key issues facing hornbills. The Nest Adoption Program employs local people to look after the hornbills in their nests and collect scientific data about them.

When you adopt a nest, you get a wonderful pamphlet of information about the hornbill, a map of the location of your particular nest, a profile of your guard and, my favorite, a break down of what food the male brought to the female (2 figs, .3 millipedes, 1 lizard).

This summer, eighteen Oakland Zoo teens and staff will embark on a journey to visit Thailand and will spend a day at Khao Yai National Park with the intention hope to spot birds, nests and learn first hand about the project.  They will also visit with the Young Bird Conservation Club, which creates Hornbill art to sell to zoos for their Conservation Projects. To prepare for their trip, these inspired have been attending workshops and raising funds to adopt two nests of their own.

Back at the zoo, the summer will be filled with more hornbill conservation action as ZooCamp 2009 has adopted the species as their official summer animal. With a hornbill on the front of their t-shirt and the Hornbill Research Foundation logo on the back, all campers will be learning about this animal and the project that supports them. Each camper has also contributed a bit of their camp fee into the program and will surely leave camp with the contribution of knowledge and compassion for these incredible birds.

Come by and visit our hornbills, join us this summer at ZooCamp ,or adopt a nest yourself (http://www.zoo.org/conservation/hornbill.html).

Who's more energy efficient with the dishes– you or your dishwasher? Image: Ronan_tlvA microwave oven is the most efficient way to heat water for a cup of tea, hot chocolate, or coffee. True or False?

Now as a regular morning coffee drinker who uses a kettle and a gas stove to heat water for coffee (not instant– yuk! I use a coffee filter cone and PEET's coffee, of course) instead of the microwave, since our microwave is an old piece of inefficient junk that takes forever to heat water, I thought that buying a new microwave would make me a more energy efficient coffee drinker. But I was wrong!

Jennifer Mitchell-Jackson, while a graduate student at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, measured the energy use of an average microwave oven, an electric stovetop, and a gas stovetop to heat up a mug of water. Turns out that an electric stove uses 25% less electricity than an average microwave oven to heat a mug of water. A gas stove is less efficient and uses more energy than a microwave oven, but depending on the cost of gas, it might cost less to heat a mug of coffee with gas compared to the microwave.

It is more efficient to wash dishes by hand than it is to use a dishwasher. True or false?

How many arguments has that one caused! The research to dispel this myth came from Germany. Rainer Stamminger, a professor of household and appliance technology and his colleagues at the University of Bonn, gathered more than 100 volunteer dishwashers with varying skill levels and dishwashing styles in a laboratory, and measured the amount of water and energy each used to wash big stacks of dirty dishes. He then washed similar dirty dishes in dishwashers and measured the dishwashers’ water and energy use.

His conclusion: The machine is more efficient than the hand. In general, the dishwashers used much more water and somewhat more energy than the dishwashing machines. Some test subjects used 53 gallons of water to clean 12 place settings! But there is a wide variation in the styles and economics of hand dishwashing.

Clearly, a new, efficient dishwasher is best. But if you can’t afford one, or like to spend a lot of time with your hands in soapy water, Stamminger and company have some suggestions:

• Remove large dish scraps with a fork or spoon.
• Do the dishes soon after a meal before the food has dried on the plates (get your dinner guests involved).
• Do not pre-rinse your dishes under running tap water (same goes for dishwasher use).
• Use a hot-water sink for washing and a cold-water sink for rinsing.
• Use just the amount of detergent recommended by the manufacturer.

And put that coffee mug in the dishwasher when you're done.

Seahorses are sold as expensive ingredients used in
traditional Chinese medicine.
When I was a kid I rode horses and was an avid ocean swimmer, and I absolutely fell in love with all sea creatures. But there was a special place in my heart for the one that seemingly combined my land and sea passions, the seahorse. Come to think of it, I don't think I actually thought these undersea chimeras existed in real life…in my mind they lived in storybook land along with unicorns and Mr. Tumnus. I mean, I never saw a real one…so how could I know? But these days kids are getting familiar with the real deal thanks to the hard work of a handful of public aquariums, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Steinhart Aquarium, The National Aquarium in Baltimore, The Shedd Aquarium, and The Birch Aquarium among others.

Not surprisingly, I jumped at the chance to produce the Quest "Seahorse Sleuth" story, but I will admit that the process of making this piece was demoralizing, to say the least. I spent days in San Francisco’s Chinatown trying to get shop owners who sell Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to talk to me about their trade, and specifically about seahorses. I must have visited 20 or so stores, multiple times, and I saw many hundreds of dried seahorses and thousands of shark fins, not to mention enormous piles of antlers, skins, penises, and whole dried animals. Though I tried many different approaches, no one would talk to me…I was clearly an outsider and not to be trusted. (Had I managed to garner the trust of one of the shop owners, I would have certainly included them in the piece). This experience made me even more impressed and appreciative of the hard work that the folks at Project Seahorse are doing, and exhausted at the thought of how far they still have to go to convince fisherman and governments around the world not to decimate their seahorse populations.

But whereas Project Seahorse must be measured and careful in their approach to these conversations about TCM in order to make headway, I feel that in this blog I can be more forthcoming about my feelings about the use of these animals, and all animals, in TCM.

Of course TCM has a rich history dating back at least 2,000 years, and at least a quarter of the world's population uses this form of medicine. I myself find acupuncture and herbal remedies to be very helpful and do not wish to debunk the efficacy of at least those two parts of the tradition. But I personally draw the line at the use of animals, because I'm a huge animal lover, and I am absolutely appalled at the use of endangered or threatened species for any use. This planet may have seemed endlessly bountiful 2000 years ago, but today we can no longer afford to take the survival of non-human species for granted. To add salt to the wound, it is my understanding that China does not, as of yet, perform the kind of rigorous testing of these products that we must perform for drugs in the U.S. to determine their effectiveness. (This is why we get products from China with arsenic in them, for example). One of the main uses of dried seahorses (and many other dried animals) in TCM is for male virility, though I do not believe there have been any studies that actually prove it has any effect on virility. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s dumbfounding that a country with an official one-child policy, which has led to female infanticide levels that have caused a significant gender imbalance in China, thinks they need to ingest threatened and endangered species to improve the potency of their male population. Let's put the pieces together here folks.

Ok, I'm going to get off my soapbox now, since I'm getting into territory that I am certainly not an expert in. But I did want to present this topic for open discussion – since that's what blogs are for. But before you get too riled up, let me suggest a few websites for further research.

First of all, learn what you can do to help save seahorses by signing on to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seahorse Conservation Page. You can also brush up on the specific uses of Endangered Animals in Traditional Chinese Medicine with this informative paper on Encyclopedia's “Advocacy for Animals” site.

TRAFFIC (The Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network) has a new Chinese-language textbook aimed at raising awareness on how to best protect threatened species used in TCM. Lastly, check out The World Wildlife Fund’s FAQ page on Traditional Chinese Medicine.

And that’s just to get you started…the web has plenty of information on this topic…read it and tell your friends!

Watch the Seahorse Sleuths television story online.

Recent articles in USA Today and California's Flex Your Power e-Newswire discussed the phenomenon known in energy efficiency circles as "take back" or the "Snackwell Effect" (see "Consumers Can Sabotage Energy-Saving Efforts," and "The Snackwell Effect: Consumers Sabotage Energy-Saving Efforts").

Stanley Jevons first described the take back effect in 1865, so this is nothing new. Jevons observed that new efficient steam engines decreased coal consumption, which led to a drop in coal prices. But the lower prices meant that more people could afford to use coal, and so coal consumption increased.

The "Snackwell Effect" takes it's meaning from the habit of people on diets who eat lots of low-cal snacks that add up to many times the calories of a regular snack. The example given in both articles mentioned above is a West Virginia couple that bought an energy efficient washing machine to replace their old inefficient one. Their energy bills were no different after the conversion. Turns out they were doing more loads of laundry, even washing one piece of clothing in one load, because they were lulled into complacency by their energy efficient purchase.

I asked Jim McMahon, the head of the Energy Analysis Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), about the Snackwell Effect and appliance energy use. I recently heard him speak about the great efficiency gains made between the first energy crisis brought on by the Arab oil embargo in 1973, and today. Those gains are significant; refrigerators today use about half the energy on average than they did in the 1970s. "This effect [Snackwell Effect] has been studied for a long time, [it was] formerly called the rebound or take back effect," he says. One 2001 study concluded that for every gain in energy efficiency, about 10% is taken back by an increase in energy use. Greater air conditioner efficiency, for example, may mean that people lower their thermostats, since they expect their energy bills to be lower, and this eats into the efficiency savings. "I think that there are a number of energy-using devices where consumers do not exhibit the Snackwell effect, such as refrigerators or televisions. In those cases, in my view, the usage behaviors are unrelated to the cost of energy, at least for most households in the United States," says McMahon. He does admit that more study is needed in this area. A 10% take back effect is significant, but certainly not a barrier to serious energy efficiency improvements.

Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, a sociologist, studies human behavior and energy use for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). "The relationship between energy efficiency and energy consumption is not as straightforward as it may initially appear and as some people like to portray it."

The trends show that: 1) residential energy consumption increased by roughly 57% between 1970 and 2005; and 2) residential energy consumption per capita increased by only 7%".

According to Ehrhardt-Martinez, a bigger problem than the 10% of energy lost due to the take-back effect-or the Snackwell Effect-is the proliferation of energy using, albeit more efficient, devices in American homes; lifestyle choices, such as the dramatic increase in the size of homes while families got smaller; population increase; and the "invisible" energy, such as standby power or phantom loads, that is hidden from consumers. "However," says Erhardt-Martinez "if we were able to combine efficiency improvements with better lifestyle choices (i.e. smaller, more energy efficient houses), smart purchasing behaviors, and improved information mechanisms that allowed consumer to actively manage their energy consumption, then we could have a much more dramatic impact on both household level consumption as well as state and national level consumption."

Lions and humans are in conflict in the wild parks of Uganda

Last October, I gazed out at the expanse of Queen Elizabeth Park, in Uganda, close to the comfy Mweya Safari Lodge where we were staying. The landscape was beautiful, peaceful…and kind of empty. Though we had seen a large and lovely herd of elephants the evening before, on this fine, clear morning, the habitat was clearly missing one of the most important parts of the eco-system: predators. All we could find were tracks.

We gazed down at the enormous cat foot prints, still clearly cut into the mud, and looked to Dr. Ludwig Siefert, a Makerere University lecturer, lion ecologist and our guide for the day. He explained the situation to us: The footprints belonged to a lovely female lioness who was clearly recently here, and tragically was no longer. This lioness, like many other predators in the area, had met a painful death by poison.

Later that day, we came across 3 juvenile lions, scruffy and likely to be hungry; they had lost their chief bread winner.

Our night drive also proved surprisingly empty. Dr. Siefert and his team sent hyena calls into the starry night, only to receive a quiet response. Eventually we saw four hyenas. Great news, except that our teen trip in July had observed thirty of them. It seemed likely that many hyenas were killed in the three months that had passed since then. This is not what we expected when we came to Uganda.

But we could guess what had happened to all these predators. Local Basongora herdsmen, or pastoralists, choose to graze their cattle inside the park, although they have access to lush pasture outside the park. The lions, searching for food, find cattle grazing in their habitat and naturally do what a lion does: have lunch. The Basongora solution for lions, leopards and hyenas that prey on their livelihood: put poison on carcasses and leave them as bait. The poison often includes furadan, an agro-chemical which causes a painful and not so quick death.

Death of magnificent predators is not the only issue with the practice. Eventually the hotels, restaurants and tour companies will face a loss of tourists.

The planet faces many cases of human-wildlife conflict, especially as the human population grows, habitats shrink and humans and animals are forced to live even closer to each other. Yet there are quite a few inspiring examples of solutions that honor the fact that all parties, human and non-human, must be granted health, space and means to eat. Other African countries are finding solutions to similar problems. When all parties work together, there are indeed solutions.

It is our hope that the ecologists, pastoralists, park rangers and predators find one in Queen Elizabeth Park. We sure would like to return.

To contact Dr. Siefert and support his work: lion@vetmed.mak.ac.ug.

This 1928 home in Albemarle County, Virginia recently
underwent a renovation through the EarthCraft Virginia
existing homes renovation program. After the renovation,
electricity use dropped by 24% and energy costs dropped
by 42%.

Home Energy Magazine is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special May/June issue. We're taking the opportunity to look back at the past several decades of energy policy in America, and look ahead to what may come. Here's a sneak preview of some of what we're thinking.

Alan Meier, Senior Executive Editor, and Steve Greenberg, Technical Editor, among others, lived through the first energy crisis precipitated by the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and its aftermath. They remember the sudden interest in energy efficiency and renewable energy; the proliferation of solar water heaters on the roofs of homes that broke down quickly, had no one trained to fix them, and have become rusted monuments to the best of intentions gone wrong; the sudden and short lived gain in the average car’s fuel efficiency. They also recall some major successes: the huge and lasting increase in appliance efficiency, especially refrigerators; the success of the Energy Star program; and California’s progressive Title 24 building standards.

Alan, in a yet-to-be-published editorial, has been musing on what will happen after the billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have been spent on building and retrofitting more efficient and sustainable buildings. Will it be the same three steps forward, two steps back pattern that we’ve seen before? Not so, according to Alan, if we:

Steve came up with some powerful images to stimulate our thinking about the future of energy efficiency:

We've been on a ramp with a rather gradual (and usually upward, with notable exceptions) slope. Suddenly the ramp gets so steep it looks like a wall. If we make it to the new, much higher level, what does the terrain look like? Do we go off a cliff, completing a boom and bust cycle the likes of which we've never seen? Or is there a reasonable ramp down to a sustainable level?

I lived through the lines for gasoline, though I couldn’t yet drive. I've observed the resulting interest in miles per gallon instead of horsepower; the return to a horsepower-mentality; and the recent switch back to a concern about miles per gallon. My family had a great experience with our new-fangled heat pump in the early 70s. My Dad, an engineer and all-around handy man, first got me interested in how houses and cars work during that time. I guess I vote for a steep, but not impossible ramp up in efficiency, followed by a less intense, slow and gradual climb that continues for a long time, with sudden jumps due to new, undreamed of (or only just dreamed of) technology. The pressure will come from high energy prices and people starting to feel the real effects of global warming and unhealthy air. I don't think these things will change anytime soon.

Learning at the tidepools. Credit: Amy Gotliffe

This question comes up endlessly in the world of environmental education. How do you inspire a person to learn, care and then take action for the environment? As someone whose professional goal is to inspire earth stewardship, I often ask anyone who will answer this big question.

Many are active stewards because they formed a connection with nature during childhood. This bond is deep, instinctive and primal, and was merely coaxed out by a particular, yet often simple experience outdoors: playing in the woods, on the rocks, in the creek, in the garden, in the dirt, up the tree, with the roly polys, in the ditch, in the pond, in the vacant armory (ok that was me), etc. Somewhere deep inside, a door was opened to the potential to really care. This is why Nature Deficit Disorder is so disturbing, as we wonder if children growing up void of trees and ditches and ponds have forged the same bonds.

When a child's natural curiosity is nurtured by an adult, they will likely develop an even stronger connection. Some will have this head start, yet it is never too late.

So, how does a person then become an active steward?

One model is practiced by Roots & Shoots, the activism branch of the Jane Goodall Institute, and that is: Knowledge, Compassion and Action. All three experiences, in no particular order, can lead to a sustainable behavior change. Take caring for frogs as an example and consider three different people and paths to change:

• Sam is academically inquisitive about frogs and conservation, and is self-motivated to research the subject on the internet. He begs his parents to take him on a local frog conservation program and through this action develops a deep compassion for frogs.
• Stella read a non-fiction story about a particular pond that was suddenly quiet one season, after years of being a frog croaking Mecca. She feels compassion for this species and habitat and attends a lecture on the subject. Once in the know, she donates funds to a frog conservation project.
• Nik is neither interested nor compassionate about frogs, but finds himself on a service learning outing with his 9th grade class. There, he sees dead and floating frogs with his own eyes and collects frog eggs with his own hands. The experience inspires him to pay attention in class the next week and learn more about it, eventually leading him to feel greater connection and compassion.

With this model in mind, I suppose my job is to ensure that all three options are easily available to our visiting students and guests. So I encourage all you attend an adult lecture or ZooCamp program, take action with the Arroyo Viejo Creek Keepers, or feel compassion by staring through long eyelashes into the deep brown eyes of a camel… or frog.

Amy Gotliffe talks to the Snare Removal Team at the Budongo
Snare Removal Project. The Oakland Zoo has supported them
since 1991.When you think of a zoo, what comes to mind? Animals in habitats? Children? Goat petting? Have you ever thought of zoos as supporters of wildlife conservation in the field?

It is time you did.

Zoos are actually one of the biggest supporters of field conservation for habitats and animals. In fact, as I write this on my laptop, I am looking around a giant conference room jammed with people from all over the world, representing zoological institutions, conservation organizations, NGOS, donor organizations and superstar field biologists. The bi-annual ZACC Conference (Zoos Committing to Conservation) is a  way for zoos to connect with, partner with and support the wild cousins of their captive population. As we wait for the final speaker to present, the room is buzzing with inspired ideas and concrete plan-making.

Zoos and aquariums support conservation in a variety of ways, big and small. They raise and donate financial support, send medical, educational and operational supplies to projects, raise awareness through lectures, classes and publications, donate expertise by sending vets and other staff to project sites and sell indigenous wares in their gift shops. They band together with other zoos in their ecosystem to work on local conservation issues, breed and release species and provide medical attention to local wildlife. They also exercise their most valuable resource, education.

There are many admirable conservation organizations around the world, but zoos have a unique advantage: they welcome 175 million people through their gates each year. These families or individuals, on a nice, affordable day out, can be exposed to conservation messages at a variety of levels. In fact, zoos were ranked among the top most trusted messengers of wildlife conservation.

Awed by a view of an African elephant walking an expansive habitat, moved by the gaze of a chimpanzee studying their expression, amazed by the magnificent coat of a tiger playing in water, a person cannot help but be opened by these individual beings. In this open state of mind, an encounter with a docent, teacher, presentation or educational signage about conservation issues and solutions, can lead a visitor down a path from knowledge and compassion to action.

The last presentation of the afternoon, a rhino project, has just spoken and has ended by thanking the zoos of the audience, stating that much of their funding comes from the generosity and care of zoos. This has been the closing sentiments of most presenters. As we have reached a critical time in the history of conserving wildlife, now is the time for all of us to care and take action. It is fortunate that most zoos do just that.

The Oakland Zoo is proud of our commitment to support local, national and international field conservation. Check www.oaklandzoo.org for more information.

The Bush Administration has recently passed dozens of so-called "midnight regulations" - last-minute rules and amendments. Many of those new laws affect the environment, including a change to the Endangered Species Act that has California environmentalists deeply worried.

Listen to the Last Minute Rules radio report online.

Snow leopardRecently I had to return several bird specimens to the Ornithology and Mammalogy department at the Academy. This project afforded me an opportunity to go into the pelt and bird room. The room, essentially a large refrigerator, was a brisk 58 degrees and packed with all sorts of wonderful specimens. Birds of all kinds stood picturesque on shelves while pelts of lions, tigers, bears among other mammals lined the walls several feet deep.

Specimens were sorted into taxonomical groups with relation to each other. Some specimens were a century old if not older, including an elephant skin shot in Africa by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1908. As mammals are my greatest love in natural history, I was in awe of the great variety of specimens. One specimen in particular took my breath away. Buried below the pelts of tigers with their massive paws was the smaller and more elusive Uncia uncia better known as the Snow Leopard. The first thing that struck me about the pelt was the length of the tail. For balance on the slippery climes of mountainous central and South Asia, snow leopards use incredibly long tails for balancing while stalking their prey of mountain goats, wild sheep, and small mammals. They will traverse up and down perilous cliffs in pursuit of prey and do so with an extraordinary balance. Watching Planet Earth recently, I was enthralled watching live footage of an actual hunt on a cliff. The speed and agility of these animals is incredible.

It was studying the Snow Leopard that made me fall in love with the big cat family and set me on a course to learn about conservation. I had to give a report in fifth grade about the cat and I still can remember drawing the body out on the board to show that the tail was usually the same length as the cat's body. I was so nervous during the talk that my lips trembled giving me a horrible stutter through out. Yet, that was the first time I became really passionate about an animal and ultimately conservation. I remember thinking "This leopard could become extinct in my lifetime…"

This is still a very likely scenario, although they are now on the "Red List" of endangered species. There are only about 7,500 Snow Leopards in the wild and fewer than 700 in zoos around the world. This animal is a perfect example of an animal's needs and habitat battling against the needs of a local people and economy. Protection of the Snow Leopard includes research and tracking. It also includes education and empowering the villagers that share a habitat with them to protect them as well. Poaching of Snow Leopards has been one of the main causes for their demise. Historically they have been hunted for their thick fur and killed as a pest because in lean years they kill the goats and sheep of local villages. Conservation groups like the Snow Leopard Trust understand that conservation is not only about research but creating economical and educational opportunities for local people who live with these animals. I am hoping conservation endeavors will continue to protect animals living in the wild. It would be a shame if in my lifetime Snow Leopards were only noted as pelts hanging in museums like the Academy.