Obsession

This is becoming a real big thing with me lately, eh? As I posted below, just when I bitch about U.S. coverage, another good piece comes along. Yosemite now provides more evidence of the warming. Thanks to an early, meticulous biologist, present day scientists discover the changes. Study this, Bu$hCo.

"On the east side of the Sierra, Grinnell and his assistants only saw pinon mice below 7,000 feet, a finding confirmed by other researchers throughout the central part of the range. Patton's group found numerous mice frolicking in the talus slopes of Lyell Canyon, 10,200 feet above sea level and about eight miles from the nearest Grinnell sighting. The distance was too great to be the work of just a few wandering individuals; it was clear to Patton that the range of the pinon mouse, and its habitat, were far different now than in 1915.

"'They're common, and they're easily identified,' says Patton. 'If they had been up here before, (Grinnell and his compatriots) would have seen them.'

"The new Yosemite crew has uncovered more changes. Four other small mammals have expanded their turf in the park, increasing the upper limits of their ranges by an average of 2,000 vertical feet.

"The alpine chipmunk, two high-elevation ground squirrels -- including the Belding's ground squirrel, known as the 'picket pin' for its ramrod-straight alarm posture -- and a small relative of the rabbit called the pika have retracted their haunts uphill, drawing in the lower edge of their ranges by an average of 1,700 vertical feet. At least two species of small mammals, a chipmunk and a wood rat, have dramatically shrunk the overall size of their ranges, and are now extremely rare in the park.

"Ornithologist Andrew Rush, who recently revisited the Grinnell sites in Yosemite, also saw and heard some surprises. In Lyell Canyon alone, he recorded 17 bird species not mentioned by the Grinnell team, many of them riparian and wetland species more familiar at lower elevations. Some of these species, such as the blue-winged teal and the mallard, were even breeding in the canyon's high-elevation meadows."