The year ended with fire, ice — and hope

Depending on where you were in the world, 2019 ended with either melting, sweltering, muds, floods, bangs, burns, or ice.

Farmers took a big financial hit with 10 million acres of cropland going unplanted. The New England Outdoor Writers' Association was struck by the loss of Dr. Hal Lyons, who drowned in a boating crash, ending an outdoors career that affected and inspired countless sportsmen. Then, fierce weather hit us yet again.

By Thanksgiving snowstorms had shut down airports from Denver to the East Coast. Hurricane-force winds hit the Oregon coast, while California continued to ignite, destroying wildlife habitat and eliminating 40% of their mountain lions' range.

Thankfully, after a 15-year fight, conservationists finally won the battle to help our dwindling herring populations. Midwater trawls, the major culprit, must now set their nets 20 miles or more off Cape Cod -- and 12-miles out elsewhere from Canada to Connecticut. The new regulations will immediately help tuna, whales, striped bass, as well as recreational anglers.

November personally ended with a bang -- but the wrong kind -- when a huge, 8-point buck collided with my son's boat trailer near the Cape Cod Canal.

December began with a school-cancelling, record-book snowstorm, which hammered the first several days of our shotgun deer season.

Opening morning was snowshoe time. Most hunters couldn't even get out of their driveways or negotiate unplowed streets. Those who did often found no place to park at their hunting area. Not just out-of-shape hunters overheated wading through the snow. A very few hunters reveled in the snow, though, having the rare privilege of being able to track their deer Maine-style.

The expletive-eliciting snowstorm continued through a second morning, further dashing the plans of most deer hunters. Fitchburg and Peru were inundated with more than 2 feet of the white stuff. Veteran hunters heard the fewest shots ever during an opening week. Meanwhile, sea duck hunters and party boat crews cursed pounding winds that kept them tied to the dock for most of the period.

With their seeds buried, ground feeding birds like cardinals, sparrows, and juncos emerged from the forest, positioning themselves underneath feeders for the finches to sloppily scatter seeds below for them.

As with every big snowstorm, our area hospitals had more than a handful of severe snow-blower injuries to sew up.

Meanwhile, Norway became the world's biggest killer of whales, topping the combined tally of Japan and Iceland. But there were other whale killers. On Dec. 5, a sperm whale died and beached in northern Scotland. Its belly was filled with 220 pounds of plastic. A Cuvier's beaked whale was found dead in the Philippines with 100 pounds of plastic in its belly. A pilot whale was similarly found beached in Thailand with 80 plastic bags in its gut.

Meanwhile, another sperm whale was found dead on the beach in Spain with 64 pounds of plastic, rope, net, and a jerrycan in its belly. The tragedies all highlighted the valiant efforts of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. They annually host a fundraiser banquet to recover lost, abandoned, or discarded fishing gear from the ocean. The Center has admirably succeeded in recycling or incinerating for electricity over 85,000 pounds of nets, rope, traps, buoys, cable, and monofilament that would otherwise have endangered our marine wildlife.

On Dec. 13, sportsmen unfortunately lost Randy Julius. Hunter, fisherman, outdoor writer, heart-and-soul of the New England Outdoor Writers' Association as its longtime president, and educator of thousands into our tradition, Julius and his wife were enduring life-threatening health challenges. He had long suffered from unendurable tick-borne diseases and took his own life.

Weather continued erratically here. Wildlife struggled to find food under the snowpack. Deer resorted to eating landscaping. Then two days of warm rains melted everything.

Warm temperatures also brought out the first evening flights of winter-moths, numbers of which seemed down from last year. Bizarrely, on Dec. 15, an extremely out-of-range rufous hummingbird, which should have been wintering in Mexico, was mist-netted and banded behind a Grafton residence.

An ice storm, followed by single digit temperatures, subsequently created a winter wonderland of crystal-coated branches that remained two full days. Ponds froze, providing safe footing for our season's first ice fishing.

Meanwhile, regulators lowered the 2020 bluefish limit to three-per-day. The species has been grossly over-fished and often wasted. "For-hire" fishermen will be allowed to keep five. The old 15-fish limit, in place since 2000, just couldn't be sustained.

New federal regulations also came out for striped bass. Commercial and recreational fishermen will need to reduce the catch by 18%. Circle hooks, which cause far less mortality than conventional hooks, will be mandatory for bait users. Additionally, a slot limit of one 28- to 35-inch fish will be imposed. Each state will have the freedom to modify the means by which it attains the essential 18% reduction.

New state regulations also came out prohibiting coyote hunting contests. Legislators were frustratingly slow in approving the use of crossbows for all. Several states have that liberal regulation, which immediately improves archers' accuracy and helps keep more hunters -- especially older hunters and women -- involved in our tradition.

Birders were meanwhile gifted sightings of far-out-of-range western tanager, chat, Townsend's, black-throated gray, and orange-crowned warblers.

Demand and prices for Massachusetts furs further declined as anti-trapping groups successfully pressured many of the biggest fashion houses to exclude furs from their offerings. California stunningly became the first state in the country to prohibit the sale of furs.

Scientists meanwhile projected that the Gulf of Maine will, without urgent action, soon heat up to New Jersey-shore temperatures, drastically diminishing our fishery, and decimating our cold-water-dependent lobster industry.

China and India continued to build coal plants, while Brazil and Saudi Arabia proved especially complicit and politically obstructionist in dealing with climate change. Finally, two-thirds of polled Americans believed the scientists and understood that global warming is human-caused.

By Christmas week, white-tail bucks had ceased all fighting for mates. By month's end, 40% of the bucks recorded on our trail cameras had shed their antlers. Bucks resumed peacefully eating together with a singular purpose -- to survive the winter.

Party boats out of Rhode Island -- when they could get out -- were jigging up more cunner than they could ever remember. Cunner, which often live among much-sought tautog in winter, often eat fragments of the latter's leftovers. They're consequently similarly delicious, but lacking in respect and popularity because they're small. Cunner don't yet even have a place in our state's fish-records book.

As oceanic warming intensified, ice storms advanced farther north, locally replacing snow storms more frequently. Fractures from slips and finger damage from slushy-clogged snow-blowers increased. December ended dangerously here with yet another ice storm turning the end of the black powder deer season a fizzler.

Nothing outdoors in 2019, though, rivaled the environmental catastrophe of epic wildfires in Australia. More than 1 billion animals, many of them already endangered, were tragically scorched. Their toll will rise when survivors look for food and cover in a wasteland of ash. The country's coal-supporting, climate-change-denying prime minister, Scott Morrison, was vilified for his anti-science, anti-reality stand and his under-funding of his country's firefighting capabilities.

December ended here with 112 cold-stunned sea turtles being rescued on Cape Cod beaches. Back in the 1970s, an average of 10 would be rescued. Rising surface water temperatures have attracted them dangerously farther north, making their longer return to Gulf of Mexico beaches to winter and nest a fatal challenge.

As melting glaciers leaked and spewed from both poles, New England poet Robert Frost's wondering whether the world would end in fire or ice came to mind. If it does end, we can blame ignorance, greed, and a collective lack of courage to act.

The last five years were all the hottest ever recorded on our planet. We'd have to go back 3 million years to see the same amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Throughout 2019, the oceans were warmer than ever. One fact became clear: politics and changing weather will continue to profoundly impact the great outdoors and wildlife. But there are glimmers of hope even as America's leadership fiddles.

On Dec. 20, the Dutch Supreme Court ordered its government to cut the nation's greenhouse gasses by 25% from 1995 levels. For the first time in history, a government is being legally required to fight climate change. Don't expect President Donald Trump, who claims windmills cause cancer, to lead our government in Holland's direction.

We're likely in for a rough ride in 2020. Hold on tight. Better yet, show your love for our natural world by exerting your conservation responsibility. Demand that our elected leaders -- Republican and Democrat -- act on behalf of our wild outdoors and our children's future -- not just on behalf of short-term profits.

We sportsmen and naturalists together can make all the difference.

--Contact Mark Blazis at [email protected].

Calendar

Friday-Sunday -- New England Fishing Expo. Boxboro Regency, 242 Adams Place, Boxboro. Meet fishing pros, the latest gear and educational seminars. $12 adults; children 12 and under free. Info: nefishingexpo.com

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