02/07/05

LC050207

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's the only home they've ever known. Now these buffalo are
being moved halfway across the country. How will they survive?

Sonny Sky Hawk>> There's plenty of land for them to graze and
plenty of grass for them to eat and a lot of tender care that's
given.

Jimi Castillo>> I kind of think that they may have to turn in
their bikinis and trade them off for a fur coat or something
(laughter).

Val>> And then, lofty ideas meet hard science. We'll take you
to the highest research station in North America and it's right
here in California.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Catalina Island has a problem: too much of a good thing.
What is that good thing? No, it's not tourists. It's buffalo.
If you've ever ventured beyond the quaint Port of Avalon, you'll
know that the island is dotted with buffalo. Now how do you get
more than a hundred buffalo off an island? And how did they get
there in the first place? Vicki Curry went to Catalina to find
out.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> It's like a scene from an old western.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Complete with a Native-American ceremony.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> But this isn't a Hollywood movie or the Great
Plains. This is Catalina Island, the remote interior that
tourists seldom explore. For eighty years, it's been home to
hundreds of buffalo, but today their island stay is coming to an
end. They are returning to their original home on the Great
Plains. A Tongva Indian spiritual leader, Jimi Castillo, is
blessing their trip.

Jimi Castillo>> The ceremony was to send them on their way on
their journey in a good way and that they arrive safely.

Vicki Curry>> The buffalo were being moved to an Indian
reservation in South Dakota. Sonny Sky Hawk is a representative
from the Rosebud Lakota Sioux tribe.

Sonny Sky Hawk>> That's where they originated and the buffalo
are sacred beings to our people. For centuries, they have been
the sustenance of our people and our existence has always
depended on them.

Vicki Curry>> About a hundred buffalo are making the trip.
It's a move that will help both Catalina's ecosystem and the
diminishing bison herd in the Midwest. The buffalo don't really
belong on an island, so how did they get here? Like so many
other Southern Californians, they came to be in the movies.

Ann Muscat>> They were brought over in 1924, a very small herd
not many more than a dozen, to be part of a movie called "The
Vanishing American".

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> But as so often happens in Hollywood, the buffalo
scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, never showing up in
the finished film. Ann Muscat is with the Catalina Island
Conservancy who has studied the buffalo carefully over recent
years.

Ann Muscat>> Then they were left on the island and they
multiplied over the years. We think the maximum size of the
herd was probably in the four hundred to five hundred range.

Vicki Curry>> Over the decades, the buffalo became a beloved
fixture roaming the picturesque hills and canyons. But no
matter how well they adapted, an island is still foreign terrain
and the Conservancy found that both the island and the buffalo
were suffering. The buffalo were over-eating the island's
native plants and they spread non-native plants by carrying
seeds in their thick coats. But they're not just hurting
Catalina. Catalina is also hurting them.

Ann Muscat>> We know that they have a smaller average size than
the mainland herds. We know that they calve at a slightly lower
rate and the blood serum work told us that they show some
evidence of dehydration and malnutrition.

Vicki Curry>> The Conservancy study determined that the island
can sustain only one hundred fifty to two hundred bison. Any
more would have to go. In the past, that meant selling the
surplus animals to ranchers on the mainland.

Ann Muscat>> They'd go to an auction house and people would buy
them for breeding purposes or to go to slaughter.

Vicki Curry>> But this time, the buffalo escaped that fate.
About a year ago, the Rosebud Lakota heard through the grapevine
that a hundred buffalo needed a home. Their own buffalo herd
was dwindling, so why not bring the Catalina bison to South
Dakota? Only one problem: it's an expensive proposition costing
about $75,000. The Rosebud Lakota doesn't have a lucrative
gambling business, so they turned to the Morongo Indians of
Southern California who have a successful casino. The Morongo
were pleased to help.

Maurice Lyons>> If the gaming can help us do things like this,
I'm more than happy to do it. You know, it's something that
native to native we can do for them.

Vicki Curry>> Another tribe, the Tongva, are indigenous to
Catalina and performed the blessing at the start of moving day.
About nine a.m., the final roundup begins, but buffalo were not
like cattle. Gathering them up from across the island took
about a month. Lenny Altherr was in charge of the roundup.

Lenny Altherr>> We'd bait the animals in with grain, with
molasses and hay and we'd pretty much trick them into the catch
pens, as we call them, at the big end of the corral.

Vicki Curry>> To get the buffalo moving, the wranglers jump
around and make noise. It's a job made easier by their herd
mentality. The animals like to move in a pack.

Lenny Altherr>> And that's what we tried to do, try to keep
them in a group. That way they'll stay together. If you don't
keep them in a group, they'll tend to separate and go all
different directions.

Vicki Curry>> Buffalos spook easily. In this case, when one
animal got scared and turned around, all the others followed.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> But usually they run willingly from one pen to
another and finally up a chute and into a truck. It will take
an hour for the trucks to drive from the corral to the dock. At
last, the buffalo with the help of a police escort appear from
around the bend. The unusual cargo has attracted a crowd. The
trucks make their way to the beach near Avalon and onto a steel
barge. Finally, the barge pushes off and the bison begin their
trip. From here the buffalo sail to Wilmington and then
continue by truck to their final destination in South Dakota.
The entire journey is about thirty hours.

So how will they do in South Dakota? If a test case is any
indication, they'll do very well. In 2003, a group of Catalina
bison was successfully moved and adapted quickly to their native
land. This new group won't be reunited with their old friends.
Instead, they'll join a herd of about a thousand buffalo on the
Rosebud reservation.

Sonny Sky Hawk>> And we're hoping that the resurgence of the
new buffalo herds that come onto our lands, maybe we'll be able
to replace and enhance some of the buffalo herds that are
existing on our lands today.

Vicki Curry>> The tribe is especially interested in Catalina's
buffalo. Even though they're smaller, they have one thing going
for them: isolation.

Ann Muscat>> Our bison turn out to be genetically from very
healthy and pure stock. We don't have crossing with cattle as
many of the bison herds on the mainland do.

Sonny Sky Hawk>> They're not going to be used. They'll become
part of us as a people. They're not there for slaughter or
anything. They're there to enhance the bloodlines of the
existing herds.

Vicki Curry>> Still, you might wonder if the buffalo were
reluctant to leave the warm Catalina climate for the snowy
plains of the Midwest.

Ann Muscat>> Everyone is so worried that, when they get to
South Dakota, the cold is just going to be too much for them.
But if you think about it, these animals have evolved over
thousands of years to live in environments where there are more
seasonal changes than we have here on Catalina.

Jimi Castillo>> I kind of think that they may have to turn in
their bikinis and trade them off for a fur coat or something
(laughter). They're going to have to acclimate quickly, but I
also understand that they do acclimate quickly.

Ann Muscat>> They do very well. They grow a thicker coat, they
put weight on and they blend in with the herds that are there.
So they're doing quite well.

Vicki Curry>> The seventeen hundred mile journey for these
buffalo will deliver them to their natural habitat, ease the
burden on Catalina's ecology and give the South Dakota herds new
blood.

Sonny Sky Hawk>> There's plenty of land for them to graze and
plenty of grass for them to eat and a lot of tender care that's
given to them based merely on the fact that they're sacred
beings to us.

Vicki Curry>> And for that reason, the Rosebud Lakota has vowed
that these buffalo who once lived on a resort island off the
coast of Southern California will live out their natural lives
here in their ancestral home. I'm Vicki Curry for Life and
Times.

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Val>> I'm here at the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles and
they've got a tough job fighting the AIDS epidemic. But it's
made even tougher because many African-Americans believe that
the spread of AIDS is part of a government conspiracy. Phill
Wilson is the founder and Executive Director of the Black AIDS
Institute. His weapon against the AIDS epidemic is the truth,
truthful information about the virus that is hitting African-
Americans especially hard. Phill, you have an especially big
job, you and the Black AIDS Institute, because you're dealing
not just with the medical aspects of this epidemic, but some
myths and conspiracy theories. Tell us, what do people believe?

Phill Wilson>> Well, you know, it's interesting nearly twenty-
five years with this epidemic how little a lot of folks know
about HIV and AIDS and the persistent myths and misconceptions
and even conspiracy theories about HIV and AIDS.

Val>> There were some studies that came out that actually
documented and quantified the percentage of people -- I think
there's about a quarter of African-Americans actually believe
the HIV virus was created in a government laboratory?
Intentionally created?

Phill Wilson>> Exactly. Not only that, many African-Americans
believe that our government is out to get us. But it's
important to understand the root of those suspicions, you know,
and not to just dismiss it as crazy people. The truth of the
matter is that the African-American experience, you know,
actually informed how much we trust our government, for example.
You know, you can't deny that slavery was real and is a matter
of national policy, that Jim Crow happened, that the Tuskegee
syphilis trials happened, that there was voter suppression
during the 2000 election, that the policy brutality of Rodney
King happened.

So for all of these reasons, you create an environment where
people are suspicious. So then you have this deadly disease
that it appears to many folks all of a sudden the African-
Americans are being disproportionately impacted. Sadly, it
didn't happen all of a sudden. It's grown over time. You know,
fifteen years ago, African-Americans represented twenty-five
percent of the new HIV-AIDS cases. Today we represent fifty-
four percent of the AIDS cases.

Val>> Wait, say that again. Blacks represent fifty-four
percent of all the current AIDS cases?

Phill Wilson>> Fifty-four percent of the new HIV-AIDS cases in
America are in the black community.

Val>> Even though black communities are only thirteen percent
of the population?

Phill Wilson>> Only thirteen percent of the population. One of
the things that the Rand Corporation found is that many African-
Americans believe that there is already a cure and they're
withholding the cure from poor people. Now that's an exact
parallel to the Tuskegee trials.

Val>> And I understand that many African-Americans also believe
that the virus was created in a government laboratory and
distributed intentionally by the CIA?

Phill Wilson>> Exactly, exactly.

Val>> For basically purposes of genocide.

Phill Wilson>> Purposes of genocide.

Val>> So how do you fight these kinds of beliefs that you know
are like urban legends that continue on and on and on?

Phill Wilson>> Well, one of the things is that you acknowledge
their root of suspicion. You kind of say, you know, because
people believe in this conspiracy does not make them crazy, but
you kind of teach people about the facts. One of the things
that we have to do in black communities is increase the
infrastructure and the capacity to deal with HIV and AIDS, to
increase the number of credible voices, you know, to get more
elected officials involved, to get the clergy involved, to get
actors and hip-hop artists and young people to talk about HIV
and AIDS.

Val>> And that's what they're doing with these:

PSA>> "There's a saying that goes when America catches a cold,
black folks get pneumonia."

PSA>> "You know what? That's exactly what's happening with
HIV."

Val>> PSAs featuring popular black entertainers. They're part
of the Institute's new campaign called "The Time is Now".

PSA>> "And you can put an end to that just by simply getting
tested. Be safe. Don't be sorry."

Val>> Steve Villana is head of Cable Positive, a group that
gets the PSAs on black-oriented cable channels.

Steve Villana>> Celebrities have credibility. So when you have
folks like Matthew St. Patrick and Queen Latifah who are out
there with the message of education and awareness and urging the
community to come in and get tested, it can make a difference.
It can save lives.

Val>> Steve and Phill are optimistic that their combined
efforts will help dispel belief in a conspiracy. Do you think
these voices in particular will be good at cutting through and
kind of slicing down this whole conspiracy thing that exists
within the African-American communities?

Steve Villana>> All you can do is tell the truth. All you can
do is present the facts. There are a lot of theories,
conspiracy theories, that for lack of better information, get
out there. Unless you have a believable source and credible
information, then those conspiracy theories can kind of grow
like mold on bread.

Phill Wilson>> And we have an ambitious goal. We want to stop
the HIV epidemic in black communities in five years. That's our
goal. I don't know if we'll make it or not, but we're going to
give it our best. You know, certainly by having that as a goal,
we'll be much closer than we are now. I fundamentally believe
that we can change the trajectory of this epidemic in five years
by engaging all stakeholders. You know, the motto of the Black
AIDS Institute is "Our people, our problem, our solution". You
know, AIDS today is about black people. They're our people.
That makes it our problem and, at the end of the day, nobody can
save us from us but us.

At the end of the day, the only way we're going to stop this
epidemic in black communities is by black people taking
ownership of this disease and taking leadership to say, you
know, this is happening to us. Maybe not only us because
clearly it's not just black people, but to the degree that black
folks are impacted. We're going to be at the table. We can't
fight this disease if we're MIA, if we're missing in action. We
can only fight this disease if we're engaged at every step of
the process.

Val>> Well, Phill Wilson, thank you so much for your work.
Best of luck with a very, very important campaign.

Phill Wilson>> Thank you.

PSA>> "We got to take care of ourselves. I want everybody to
go out there and just get tested. Make sure everything is all
good and then it's going to be all good."

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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Val>> From Catalina Island to the eastern edge of California.
That's our next stop. It's a place few people have been to, a
research center in the White Mountains. Scientists love it
because it's got dry air, high elevation and year-round access,
perfect for research and experiments. The research center is on
the east flank of the White Mountains near the Nevada border.
On a clear day from the fourteen thousand foot summit, you can
see Utah. This is an excerpt from the documentary "In the
Shadow of White Mountain" produced by Rich Wargo of UC San Diego
TV.

Narrator>> "The realm of the Bristle Cone Pine, a survivor from
the Pleistocene, the great ice age that dominated the earth for
nearly two million years. They flourished when saber-tooth and
mammoth roamed this land and the first fragments of human
societies emerged. Near here, its location kept secret for
protection, is the Bristle Cone that was hundreds of years old
when the Great Pyramids were built. It has seen empires fall
and species vanish into time and it is surrounded by others that
rival its age. As far as we know, these grizzled Methuselahs
are the oldest living organisms on earth.

[Film Clip]

Yet looking around, it's a wonder that anything survives here.
At this altitude, the air is thin, containing only about sixty
percent of the life-sustaining gases that are present at sea
level. For every organism, this means stress. For animals,
there is less oxygen. For plants, there is less carbon dioxide.
Temperatures tend to extremes with frigid nights even in the dog
days of summer and dry Antarctic-like conditions through the
winter. Water is hard-won here. These mountains receive less
than fifteen inches of total moisture all year as snow or in
sparse rainfall that evaporates quickly in the thin dry
atmosphere.

This entire mountain environment is shaped by these extremes.
Little air, little water, freezing cold and scorching heat.
Despite this, life succeeds, even thrives, in this environment,
prevailing for millennia like the Bristle Cone or bursting forth
in a seasonal frolic like the marmots and other animals that
live here. What can these mountains tell us about life,
ourselves and perhaps our future? And how do we come to
understand these things? One way is to understand life in this
environment by observing those who live here and those who
experience its extremes.

That was the dream of some eager University of California post-
doctoral and graduate students fresh from their service in World
War II. Led by Nello Pace, a young Berkeley Assistant
Professor, this group of physiologists and doctors-to-be had a
vision for a modern laboratory to study human responses to this
harsh high-altitude environment. Their vision? Establishing a
laboratory at the foot of the mountains in the Owens Valley
would provide the perfect base camp.

At only four thousand feet in altitude, there would be no
significant effects on human performance. The Navy already had
a rustic laboratory in the White Mountains at Crooked Creek at
10,150 feet. This provided basic shelter for Pace and his crew
to do their first high-altitude studies and they would continue
to expand the facilities there. But their main goal was to
build a completely new facility that would allow them to do the
same experiments that were possible in a modern research
laboratory on a university campus.

A site was identified on the east flank of Mount Barcroft at
12,450 feet. There this small hardy group lived in spartan
quarters and worked twenty-four hour shifts in the thin air to
erect an undistinguished Quonset building to house researchers
and laboratories. Their vision became reality. Thus were
planted the seeds of the University of California's White
Mountain Research Station.

The facilities at Barcroft were soon followed by the Summit
Laboratory at 14,246 feet, still the highest laboratory in North
America. The station now provided two facilities where
researchers could bring subjects to altitude for extended
periods. One of the first studies at the Summit Laboratory,
subjects were required to spend twenty days restricted to the
very top of the mountain with only the rustic stone quarters of
the laboratory and less than half an acre of bare rock as their
home during the study.

Similar studies are still conducted using the unique facilities
of the Summit Laboratory and continue to make significant
contributions to physiology, particularly in the study of heart
and lung diseases that diminish the body's capacity to get
enough oxygen. Over the years, the station has become well-
known for these contributions to physiology, but they now
involve myriad and sometimes surprising subjects."

Craig L. Frank>> I studied a Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel
because this is a particularly good species to work with if
you're interested in studying hibernation. If you're interested
in studying constraints on a particular process such as
hibernation, it would make sense to look for those constraints
first where that process is most pronounced and hibernation is
certainly pronounced at Barcroft.

Narrator>> "In the field at Barcroft, he tests this hypothesis
by monitoring individual squirrels throughout the year. Extreme
environments are different for every living thing. For the
squirrels, it is a severe and prolonged winter season. For
other creatures, it may be living at the edge of their natural
range where conditions can barely support their existence.
Observing creatures living in either of these extremes may tell
us much about change.

The Sierra Bighorn Sheep is a unique subspecies, distinct from
the Rocky Mountain and Desert Bighorns. It now clings to
existence here in the Sierras, its numbers plummeting during the
last century."

John Wehausen>> We started out with something in the
neighborhood of seventeen or more herds of sheep scattered along
Sierra Nevada from Sonora Pass south and, by the 1970's, we were
down to three. Why did we go from seventeen-plus to three? I
would say probably the major factor has been domestic sheep. If
you have domestic sheep contact Bighorn Sheep, and these are
healthy domestic sheep, the Bighorn will come down with fatal
pneumonia.

Narrator>> "Although control of the domestic sheep population
has diminished the threat of disease, it has taken its toll."

John Wehausen>> The future of this animal and the success of
this animal is ultimately to get them back to most or all of
their native range, and certainly the science in this case has
made a huge difference in where we have come already with this
animal.

Narrator>> "The White Mountain Research Station, extending
science into this realm of extremes so that we can understand
the tales this land can tell."

[Film Clip]

Val>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at
Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

He's a familiar face in Los Angeles, first as police chief, then
as a City Council member. Now Bernard Parks wants to be mayor.

Bernard Parks>> When I grew up, there were certain dreams I had
and I was able to fulfill some of them. I don't see families
today having those dreams. I don't know many families that
actually believe that they can own a house in the city of Los
Angeles or that their kids can.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.