One thing about growing up in the mountains you can sure pick up some unique memories especially if you spend a lot of time exploring the mountains. My childhood friend and I were a regular Louis and Clark.
We were fortunate enough to grow up during a time when TV and radio were the primary sources of electronic entertainment. Atari was around but it wasn’t something we sat in front of the TV for hours engrossed in. To us it was more of a novelty. If we were sitting in front of the TV it was either dark outside or pouring the rain.
At any rate, we spent a lot of time exploring the mountains. On some of those trips any small standing dead trees we would pass we would try and push them over. They weren’t big trees, the biggest was probably only about 4 or 5 inches in diameter but it was fun to hear them crash to the ground. Yes… I said fun.
On this one particular day we were hiking along a deer trail heading nowhere in particular when we came up on this perfect tree to push over right beside the trail. The tree had been standing dead for a long time. The top was already down and what remained was about a ten foot tall dead hollow stump.
We started pushing on the dead tree and got it rocking back and forth pretty good when five flying squirrels came out of the top. I had never saw a flying squirrel before and all of the sudden they seemed to be everywhere.
Northern Flying Squirrel
I don’t know what I expected but the little critters definitely didn’t fulfill my picture of a flying squirrel. They were a lot smaller than your average squirrel and they didn’t fly per se, it was more like gliding. But boy could they glide.
The Northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus) is one of two species of the genus Glaucomys, the only flying squirrels found in North America (the other is the somewhat smaller Southern flying squirrel, G. volans).
Flying squirrels are nocturnal and small so I would imagine even someone who spends a lot of time outdoors could go their whole life and not see one. But if you are lucky enough to cross paths with a flying squirrel you will find yourself amazed by their aerial acrobatics as they glide from tree to tree. It would be an experience you likely wouldn’t forget either.
Finally we reach the reason for this post…
From the Center for Biological Diversity –
The West Virginia northern flying squirrel needs your help. These unique gliding mammals have survived for eons in the high-elevation forests of Appalachia that are a relict of the Ice Age. But now, because of global warming, logging and other threats, the squirrel desperately needs the protections of the Endangered Species Act to survive.
Those protections are under threat from the Obama administration, which is appealing a court ruling obtained by the Center that overturned a 2008 decision to remove endangered species protections for the squirrel.
Please tell Interior Secretary Salazar to withdraw the government’s appeal and maintain needed protections for the West Virginia northern flying squirrel.
I’ve walked through hollows that have been ravaged and left for dead by the logging industry and I’ve walked across fields of stone where mountains have been removed by the coal industry, sometimes these atrocities butting up against each other, and I wonder about the life that was there before. What happened to it? Was it forced to migrate? Was it all killed?
The West Virginia Northern flying squirrel could very well be the poster child for cause and effect.
I hope you click on the link above and add your voice. These little critters only fault is relying on an ecosystem that is being systematically destroyed by industry. For that they don’t deserve extinction, they deserve protection.
Photos best viewed in high definition!!
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When one tugs at a single thing in nature; he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
