The Ragged Edge of the World (30 page)

As we made our way a constant parade of herons, egrets and kingfishers passed ahead of us. Orlando counted twenty-five species of birds in the first hour alone. We stopped at a deep pool, the site of one of the river's tributary springs, and I dove into the shimmering, cool water. Like the river, the pool teemed with fish. I held my breath and dove down, but it was pointless trying to find the bottom; Orlando said that scuba divers had gone down as far as 200 feet and still not found the inflow point.

The next day we returned to explore a different part of the park. We entered at Salinas, formerly a commercial salt flat that has been returned to nature, and then went toward the beach at the Bay of Pigs. While the day before we had been surrounded by lush vegetation, today we were closer to the ocean, where it was drier. Once again Orlando began calling out birds he spotted. “There's a pewee . . . a black hawk! . . . a West Indian woodpecker . . . Wilson plover! . . . green woodpecker.” We were then joined by a guide named Osmani—“The best in the park!” boasted Orlando with his irrepressible exuberance.

Osmani tried playing a tape of the trogon, the Cuban national bird, with its long scalloped tail, blue-green back, red belly and white front, but had no luck in attracting any. We headed farther into the swamp, where Osmani seemed to be looking for something particular. He led us to a stand of dead palms and, peering around, found the one he wanted and began scratching its trunk. After a moment he heard something. “She's coming up,” he whispered in Spanish.

A moment later a tiny suspicious head appeared at the top of the hollow trunk. While trying not to scare the bird, Orlando could barely control his excitement. “This is the bare-legged owl [properly
Otus lawrencii
]!” he whispered. “It's a very good record.” Trying to convey the significance, he explained, “If sighting a trogon is worth a dollar, the bare-legged owl is one million dollars!” He went on to say that only the Cuban pygmy owl is smaller; it might actually be the smallest owl in the world.

We then headed deeper into the swamp and toward the Bay of Pigs. Orlando said that he has documented 115 species just along this road. As we drove I spotted a tall bird with a white chest perched on a stump in the wetland. I tried to point it out to Orlando, but it flew off before he turned around. With typical exuberance he thrust a bird book into my hands, and I riffled through, trying to find a match. When I did, both he and Osmani laughed, as I was pointing to the ivory-billed woodpecker. Count this as a dubious and unconfirmed sighting.

As shallow ponds proliferated we began seeing more and more stilts and other wading birds, their legs almost impossibly thin to enable them to stand more easily in flowing water. We finally reached Playa Largo, the beach at the bottom of the Bay of Pigs and the site of the abortive CIA-sponsored 1961 invasion. Setting aside the question of whether the Cubans had been tipped off to the plan, by simply wading out I could see that this was a terrible place to launch a major offensive. I could walk out hundreds of yards, and still the water was barely knee-deep, meaning that any landing craft would have to disgorge its soldiers far offshore, and they would be terribly exposed as they made their way in.

Clearly Zapata is better suited as a refuge for migratory birds, American crocodiles, whistling ducks, iguanas and hundreds of other species than it is for invasions. Earlier I'd spoken with Martin Acosta, another Cuban ornithologist from the University of Havana. He described how Zapata and other wetlands in Cuba are vital as a refugium for the whistling duck, the pink flamingo, the wood stork and many other birds that are under severe stress elsewhere in the Americas. As much as the world needs Cuba as a laboratory for sustainable living in a post-fossil-fuel and economically constrained world, it also needs Cuba's ecosystems as a haven for animals, birds, plants and trees that are under siege everywhere else.

What will happen to Cuba after Fidel dies is unknowable. Ironically, there is faint cause for hope in the strict adherence to ideology of Cuba in contrast to the Soviet Union. There the so-called
nomenklatura
and KGB were corrupt and self-seeking by the time of the collapse, and they promptly set about divvying up the spoils as communism gave way to cowboy capitalism. While ruthless, Cuban intelligence officials are more idealistic, and if nationalism rather than greed prevails as Cuba opens, there's hope for Cuban nature.

And so I left this place, a place that is so beautiful and yet has endured so much pain. I left feeling elated, and even six years later, I can't think back upon this trip without smiling. Whatever happens after Fidel and the countdown end, I hope whoever is in charge realizes what priceless treasures the nation possesses in both its ecosystems and in such protectors as Antonio Perera, Orlando Torres and Martin Acosta.

O
n a beautiful warm January evening on Midway Atoll, which sits smack dab in the middle of the Northern Pacific at the extreme western end of the Hawaiian chain of islands, I stood with Stuart Brown and Stacy Koslovsky, two Duke University graduate students, on a small bluff, beyond which lay a perfect white sand beach that ended at the atoll's lagoon. The spot we'd chosen was next to one of the many impromptu runways that Midway's millions of albatross use for takeoffs—a stretch of sand that ran downhill between two clumps of beach shrub toward the lagoon. As the day moved toward sunset there was a noticeable uptick in activity, and we prepared for the best show in town. Laysan albatross (the most numerous species on Midway) are rather clumsy on the ground but magnificent in the air. Built for gliding over thousands of miles of the Pacific, they need the long runways to get enough lift from their six-foot wingspans.

Albatross waiting to take flight formed a rough line at the beginning of the runway. When a bird's turn came to take its shot, it careened down the path, feet flapping as it tried to get airborne. Birds would occasionally wander across a runway during a takeoff, leading to graceless collisions and many near misses. Every so often, an albatross would abort its attempt and end up in a face-plant in the sand. Young albatross seemed to be hanging around the runway, and Stu and Stacy speculated that the juveniles considered it a good place to pick up mates. (Because the birds mate for life, they tend to be very choosy, as is evident from their elaborate courtship rituals.) Some confirmation of this hypothesis came in the form of a couple of albatross performing the Laysan's courtship dance just off to the side of the runway. The dance looks like a variant of “Hand Jive” from
Grease,
although performed with the head and neck rather than the hands. Stu, who had been coming to the spot for several days, shook his head sadly, observing, “Relationships formed near the runway tend not to last.”

If albatross takeoffs are nerve-racking, landings are even more fraught with peril. As I walked back to the former officers' quarters where I was staying, I watched the birds come in. For an albatross, every landing is an emergency landing. Finding a spot to land is difficult enough, since every available bit of land on Midway seems to have a nest. Unless there's a stiff wind to land into, they have to put on the brakes immediately on touchdown, and quite often this, too, ends up in a face-plant.

The whole panoply was endearing, even heartwarming, not least because the albatross now own Midway. There's a lot of tragedy at the ragged edge of the world, but the story of Midway suggests that every now and then tragedy can set the stage for something wonderful.

Nearly a century ago, the apostate Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky quipped, “You may not be interested in War, but War is interested in you.” The reductio ad absurdum of this insight applies to Midway Atoll, which existed as a largely ignored and very remote republic of seabirds before it was swept up by the gathering storm of World War II in the 1940s. The unlucky fate of this subtropical atoll was to figure prominently in the strategic plans of both Japan and the United States.

If Japan was either to invade the United States or set up a buffer to protect its shores, its military needed a foothold in the North Pacific. Conversely, unless the United States had a major airfield and naval base well west of Hawaii, it would de facto cede most of the Pacific to Japan, and at the same time leave U.S. western shores vulnerable to surprise attack. Thus did an atoll whose previous human visitors had been egg and feather collectors (who in short order killed off most of its birds and turtles) find itself at the epicenter of one of the great conflicts of the twentieth century.

Now, almost miraculously, Midway is once again a republic of birds. I've been to a number of places where wild animals are trusting of humans, but perhaps none so unlikely as Midway Atoll. After more than a century of abuse at the hands of man—first being slaughtered for their feathers by hunters, then being paved over by Seabees, then shelled by the Japanese during World War II, and finally Osterized by the engines of the planes of the U.S. Strategic Air Command during the Cold War—the albatross and other birds don't seem to bear a grudge. Maybe that's because they've won.

Albatross have succeeded where the Japanese military failed and have successfully taken over the island. And they did so in a way that Mahatma Gandhi would applaud—through passive resistance. It's only fair that they are now dominant, given that they have ancestral rights to Midway, but it's still both eerie and wonderful to see how the birds have been able to enforce an avian eminent domain and build their nests on every available open space, including the middle of the island's paths. It's no mean trick for a bird to domesticate a superpower. Even more touching has been the gracious way in which we humans have surrendered control of this much-fought-over place. The story of Midway shows that sometimes it's good to have a superpower as a friend.

I got the chance to visit Midway in January 2008, when I was invited to accompany a group of graduate students from Duke University's Nicholas School of Environment on a research trip to the atoll, where they would pursue their studies of marine and coastal issues. My invitation came from Bill Chameides, an atmospheric scientist who had recently taken over as dean of the school. Bill had had to cancel the trip at the last minute because of a bad case of the flu, and so the faculty duties fell to Andy Read of Duke and Dave Johnston of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Hawaii, both highly regarded experts on marine conservation. Also offering insights to the students (and me) were the wildlife biologists; the refuge manager, Barry Christian; and park rangers stationed on the atoll. The graduate student contingent consisted of eight young women and one young man.

For me the students were like a jolt of vitamin C from the moment I met up with them at the University of Hawaii. I've given lectures at a number of campuses and occasionally taught courses over the years, and I've come to the conclusion that one of the greatest compensations of teaching is the sheer surplus energy of intellectually curious young minds. Forget about elixirs and fountains of youth, the concentrated energy of the young—if they are engaged in something that excites them—is a proven tonic.

Our point of departure was the Honolulu airport. From the outset it was obvious that Midway was governed by a different set of priorities. We had to fly in by night, for instance, and the 1,250-mile trip was made doubly long because only propeller-driven planes are permitted to fly into the atoll, and then only once a fortnight. The inconvenience for humans is all part of concierge-level service for the birds. The logic is that the millions of birds that nest on Midway are mostly settled in by night and therefore less likely to have encounters with planes during takeoffs and landings. Moreover, prop planes are more maneuverable and require less runway on landing, which also serves to minimize bird deaths. Just before we landed, a fire truck came out to run interference in front of the plane and encourage sleepy albatross to move out of the way.

We flew to Midway on a chartered Gulfstream G-1 that had been making the round-trip to the atoll for decades. During the five-hour flight, Dave Johnston gave me the amusing history of how these stringent restrictions came about.

With the end of the Cold War, the fate of the necklace of atolls that linked Midway to the Hawaiian chain moved into conservationists' field of vision. Heedless development, tourism, and both witting and unwitting introduction of exotic species had already wreaked havoc on the ecology of the main islands. With no human inhabitants, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands offered a tempting opportunity to set up a refugium for some of the chain's many indigenous species.

Discussions about the fate of the islands got going in earnest after 2000, and the very surprising hero of the second battle of Midway was none other than George W. Bush, a consensus pick as the president with the worst environmental record in American history.