The lakes of Massabesic, Squam, Umbagog, Winnipesaukee: their Abenaki names conjure up romantic images of New England waterways from ages long past.
Yet each has a modern history, too. For example, Winnipesaukee is New Hampshire’s largest lake and was featured in the 1981 film, “On Golden Pond,” and in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Our Town.” These near-pristine bodies of water are just four of the Granite State’s 944 lakes and impoundments as popular for their recreational opportunities as they are for their utilitarian uses. Such water resources, linked to their distinctive human and natural histories, are often microcosms for our troubled relationship with the planet.
These four lakes carry a damning secret only partly unraveled by the scientific community during the past few years. Despite the seeming unspoiled nature of their watery habitats, the populations of Common Loons in these lakes have declined for reasons unknown. But we scientists have our strong suspicions.
It’s all about hidden risks.
Common Loons are stealthy fish-eating waterbirds built like torpedoes to pursue their prey. They prefer to breed on quiet, often remote lakes in the northern United States and Canada. Their eerie calls, echoing across fog-enshrouded summertime lakes, epitomize the deep wildness of nature. And – here’s a key point about those hidden risks – they are easily susceptible to human disturbances: biological, chemical, and physical. Noise, shoreline development, boat traffic, pollutants, invasive plants and pathogens can all exert a subtle, but disproportionate influence on their survival. But a casual glance at their habitats registers only a pleasing waterscape – a naïve reaction at best, as if our emotional rejoinder somehow affirms an all-is-well environment in the Northeast. The truth, however, appears dark and complex.
Between the fall of 2004 and the spring of 2005, Squam Lake loons declined in numbers unprecedented for any large lake in the history of monitoring loons throughout New Hampshire. In Umbagog Lake, researchers noted a precipitous population crash (both in terms of outright numbers of paired adults and in productivity) back in 2001 and 2002 from which the species has not fully recovered. To date, no one knows what happened there. In recent years, the loons in Massabesic and Winnipesaukee Lakes have also struggled with productivity but not so dramatically as the populations in Squam and Umbagog. Now scientists are testing various ecosystem models to find the causes for such population drops and to put forward management decisions to prevent future declines from the suspected heavy, but otherwise unseen, burden of contaminants.
When we witness the disastrous consequences of a Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown or a Deepwater Horizon oil spill, understandably, we react with indignation and incredulity: “How can industry have allowed such an egregious lapse of stewardship?” Such catastrophes are graphically nauseating. But what about the unseen effects of humanity’s impact on the natural world? What about those hidden risks in air, soil, and water that can only be detected through long-term monitoring of a world that otherwise appears to be hale and hearty?
For example, mercury is a common pollutant with well-recognized bioaccumulative and neurotoxic properties at very low levels. Given off in its gas phase, elementary mercury has an average atmospheric residence time of nearly six years before it’s absorbed by aquatic life and enters the food web. With estimates of 2,400 tons of mercury per year released into the atmosphere from human activities worldwide (coal-burning power plants and artisanal mining, for example), it then becomes a particular threat to children and pregnant women. According to the US EPA, more than 60,000 infants may be born in the United States each year at risk of mercury-related learning and developmental problems because their pregnant mothers inhaled volatile mercury compounds or consumed mercury-contaminated fish.
The multitude of hidden risks in the environment – biological, chemical, and physical – can be an insidious conundrum for us scientists. We’ve “seen” them via our microscopes, probes, mass spectrometers, computer models, and statistical analyses; but the public shows little awareness of these monsters of our making emerging from the shadows. Invasive species, newly-emerging pathogens, and pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, petroleum, and plastics – these are all surreptitious calamities in the Northeast and beyond.
Unfortunately, according to a new poll by Associated Press (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/poll-big-bang-big-question-most-americans), many Americans overlay a big question mark on some of the authority that scientists have traditionally proffered society at-large. No one seems to doubt whether smoking causes cancer or whether mental illness is a medical condition, but about four out of 10 Americans refuse to accept human-accelerated climate change or that life on Earth evolved through a process of natural selection. Thus, when it comes to the big questions about life and living, many Americans seem to have lost their confidence in the veracity of the science behind the issues.
Why? And why at this critical time of decision-making?
The poll highlights the so-called iron triangle of science, religion, and politics where, presently, science is its weakest leg. The public’s views on science seem tied closely to what we can see with our own eyes. The closer the issue, and the less complicated, the easier for the public to believe: the link between smoking and lung cancer, for instance. Further, the force of concerted campaigns to discredit scientific fact (e.g., evangelical rants against evolution or pro-industry ads for “clean coal”) is a stark persuasion during our age of uncertainty.
My two-fold solution to this poser: improve science education, especially in environmental studies, and get the scientific experts into the classrooms, churches and temples, conference centers, bookstores, and civic gatherings across the nation. Now. We can no longer afford the rituals of isolated privilege in the scientific community. Confronting the world’s hidden risks requires the active engagement of scientists as important stakeholders in the issues of our day. For all our sakes.
H. Bruce Rinker, Ph.D.
Ecologist, Educator, and Explorer
[email protected]
