We could all use some good news right now, so I’m starting this newsletter with some positive news about the Constantine Mine/Palmer Project, which threatens the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve.
I’m also happy to report that tourism has returned to Haines and Skagway and Rainbow Glacier Adventures is once again going strong. With this newsletter, I’ll provide a few updates on happenings at RGA and also share my latest natural history musings.
HOLD THE PRESS!!!!!
My book, Where Eagles Gather, the Story of the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, Haines, Alaska, continues to evolve. Since the first printing in 2015, we’ve sold over 4,000 copies. We’re almost sold out so I had to get another order in before next summer.
One of my goals with this book has been to provide updates on threats to the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, especially the Constantine Mine. They say “timing is everything.” I’d been working on the next version of the book and sending the publisher updated text and new images. On November 19th, 2024, I told the publisher to go to press. The very next day, November 20th, I was stunned to hear that DOWA, the Japanese smelting company that has been bankrolling the Constantine mine for years, had just decided to pull out! This was big news. I picked up the phone and talked with the publisher and they agreed to a last-minute revision. Today, I want to share this news with you as it will appear in the book:
Constantine Metals was the junior Canadian mining company that operated the project from 2006 to 2020. By late 2020, Constantine’s stock prices had dropped and their prospects looked grim. In 2021, DOWA Metals and Mining, a Japanese smelting corporation, injected US $8.8 million into the mine and assumed majority interest. American Pacific Mining (APM), another Vancouver-based junior exploration company, bought out Constantine’s interest, and APM kept the project moving forward.
In November 2024, APM announced DOWA was leaving the project, giving up its entire stock holdings to APM plus US $10 million, in exchange for future zinc options. After DOWA leaves, APM will only have funding for about one more year of operation, after which they will need a new investor or be forced to cease development of the Palmer Project.
This is a significant setback for the mine, but it does not mean that the Palmer Project is dead. The Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve will not be protected until the upstream waters are protected. The first step is stopping the mine, the next step is to protect upstream. I plan to continue my work educating the public about this unique and special part of our planet.
RGA update
Rainbow Glacier Adventures continues to thrive. We have a dedicated team of guides and our photography, wildlife viewing and rafting tours are very popular. Personally, I get out on the Chilkat River every April to train our guides and I regularly row river trips through the summer months. I’ve come to realize that years progress in a spiral, not a circle. Each season is similar to the previous year. But each year builds on the previous years. Insights and impressions are colored by the entirety of what has come before. I’ve been running the Chilkat River since 1987, and still love it!
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The Goshawk Helps Me to See
by Joe Ordonez
It’s funny that I’ve lived across Mud Bay, outside of Haines, Alaska, for decades and missed a big annual event. Was it because I wasn’t paying enough attention, or was it because the event was muted in the past and recently gained momentum? Sometimes you need someone or something to grab you by the shoulders and give you a shake to wake you up to see what’s right in front of you. In this case, it was an immature northern goshawk that woke me up.
When I returned to Haines last spring, I was walking home and noticed something that looked like a large bird sitting in the grass. As a naturalist, I’ve learned to pay close attention and keep focused if I see something that catches my eye. I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at something in nature that I thought was a bird or wild animal. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be something else, like a stick, rock or bush. As I approached this “bird”, I changed my mind. I convinced myself that it was not a bird, but a stick. The reason I changed my mind was because the size and shape of this “bird” made me think, if it was a bird, it would have to be a bird of prey. But reasoning and experience told me that a bird of prey would more likely perch on one of the many rocks in the Bay. As a predator, this would provide a better view of any potential prey. This “bird” was down low amidst the ryegrass.
The tide rises and falls. Water periodically covers the mudflats of Mud Bay, carrying driftwood of various sizes and shapes with it. As the tide goes out, these driftwood sticks get stranded up and down the bay. Since I didn’t expect a bird of prey to be standing in the grass, I assumed what I saw was one of these sticks. I convinced myself it was a stick. It had to be a stick.
Then the stick flew away!
I didn’t get a good view of this bird and I wondered what it was doing there on the grass. I checked around but didn’t see, hear or smell anything unusual that might have attracted it to that patch of grass. As I walked home, I tried to work out the puzzle but had no luck.
The next day, I saw a bird in the same spot. This time I walked slowly, and I could clearly see its hooked bill with my binoculars. By that, I knew it was a bird of prey, but it was one that I couldn’t readily identify. What struck me was its wonderfully streaked breast. I approached quietly and stealthily, but didn’t approach too closely, so as not to disturb it.
When I got home, I looked in my bird book and identified the it as an immature northern goshawk. I am familiar with goshawks; they are in the group of birds known as accipiters. Accipiters are famed for their ability to hunt and capture other birds on the wing. Goshawks are secretive birds that spend most of their time in the forest. Their short, broad wings and long, straight tail give them the ability to make sharp turns as they chase birds through a maze of trees. Since these are forest birds, I was surprised to see this one out on the mudflats. What was it doing?
The next day, the goshawk was back at the same spot.This time I could see that it was eating something. Since accipiters are known bird-hunters, I figured it had captured a duck or some other bird. But what it was eating didn’t look like a bird. There were no feathers floating around, there were no obvious wings- the shape of the body did not look birdlike. Was this goshawk eating a fish? That might be something for the record books. I’d never heard of goshawks eating fish. I went to one of the best online sources for bird info, The Cornell Lab All About Birds website and read:
American Goshawks eat a wider range of prey than other accipiters, including birds, mammals, and reptiles, as well as insects and occasionally carrion. Tree and ground squirrels, snowshoe hares, jackrabbits, and cottontails are the main mammal prey. Goshawks also eat large birds such as Dusky, Sooty, Spruce, and Ruffed Grouse, along with Pileated, Black-backed, American Three-toed, and Hairy Woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, Williamson’s Sapsuckers, and corvids including Blue Jays, Canada Jays, Steller’s Jays, and crows. Look for piles of feathers on the forest floor that may indicate a low “plucking perch” near a goshawk nest.
Excited that I was witnessing the potential first record of a goshawk eating a fish, I looked more closely at what this bird was eating. Then I saw a leg! Fish don’t have legs, so that ruled out any type of fish. What was it eating?
The goshawk was next to a little pond in front of my house. Fresh water flows from a nearby stream and mixes with salt water brought in by the tides.The mixing of fresh and salt water creates a rich zone that attracts wildlife year-round- I’ve seen great blue herons silently waiting to strike, dowitchers probing the mud with their long bills, and mallards straining food off the pond’s surface waters.
As I scanned the surface of the pond, I saw two eyes peering at me. The eyes were about an inch apart. Then I saw another pair of eyes. Then another. The water was clear enough I could make out some legs, and I realized that the pond was filled with toads! I had seen toads before in the nearby grass but never in this pond. It turns out, April is when boreal toads (Anaxyrus boreas) move into the ponds of Southeast Alaska to mate and lay their eggs.
I noted that the literature did not show any records of goshawks eating toads. Was this a “first?” Could this be my claim to immortality? With some additional research, I found amphibians listed as part of the goshawks’ diet. So this discovery couldn’t be my claim to immortality. But maybe I’m the first one to witness this behavior in Alaska? Would that count?
Why the big preoccupation with immortality, anyway?
I guess as one gets older, it’s easy to think about one’s legacy. Which brings up all kinds of questions about the meaning of life, the responsibilities we have toward one another and towards the next generation, and towards our planet. It’s easy to get depressed when you start considering what is happening to our planet. Fortunately, my spirits have recently been lifted by reading a book by Charles Eisenstein entitled, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. It’s a dense read, and I found every page full of wisdom.
How do you distill an entire book down to a few sentences? How do you distill an entire life down to one epitaph? It’s not really possible. But the biggest takeaway I got from Eisenstein’s book is that we have a choice- we can choose a philosophy based on connection, or stick with the predominant philosophy based on separation. A philosophy of connection can serve as scaffolding to help us climb our way out of the pit of problems that currently plague us.
Connection- yes, I see how the pond, the toad, the goshawk, and I are all connected. I feel it, too. It’s easy for me to feel connected to fellow naturalists, environments, photographers, musicians, and philosophers- those who are like me. It gets harder when I try to apply that same philosophy to the rest of humanity. How about those who espouse a different, and even a diametrically-opposed philosophy to mine? How do I reconcile with them?
Eisenstein talks about how most of us see and experience life from a personal level. We think of our own body looking out at the world with our own pairs of eyes and we think that others look at the world through their own pair of eyes. Another way to look at life, he says, is to imagine we are all one being- that your two eyes and my two eyes and all our collective human sets of eyes are looking out at the world together, from one great inter-connected being.
Instead of looking at the pond and seeing one toad with its one set of eyes and a separate toad with its one set of eyes, I began to think of the pond as one being. All the eyes of all the toads looking out from the pond at the same time were the eyes of that one “pond” being.
A gathering of toads is called a “knot of toads.” The naturalist inside me began to wonder, has there been a knot of toads like this in the pond every spring since I built my house on the beach back in 1990? Or are these toads experiencing a comeback from a previous population decline? Or have conditions changed and these are the first toads to breed in this particular pond?
I don’t know the answer to these questions, it’s another “natural history mystery”. But it’s the questions, not the answers, that drive me forward. One thing is certain- I’ll be looking for toads in the pond, and a goshawk in the ryegrass, next April when I return to Haines.
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I hope you and I get a chance to see each other in 2025. But whether we see each other face-to-face or not, I want to take this moment to wish you:
Warm Holiday Greetings from all of us at Rainbow Glacier Adventures and the entire Ordóñez family!
