The Angry Cauldron

On “good” bad days, the shells lay open at the bottom of the river, shimmering in the refracted sunlight. Their insides, pearl white and picked clean of flesh, flicker against the dark riverbed like a beacon, alerting the world above to a problem below.

“That’s what we look for in die-offs,” says biologist Jordan Richard, standing knee-deep in the slow-flowing waters of the Clinch River in southwest Virginia. He points at a faint shape submerged about ten feet upstream. “I can tell from here that’s a Pheasantshell, it’s dead and it died recently. The algae development is really light.”

The Pheasantshell is a freshwater mussel; a less-edible version of its saltwater cousin that spends most of its inconspicuous life part-buried in riverbeds, blending in with the rocks and filtering the water around them.

In recent years though, biologists and fisherman noticed something was wrong. On sections of the Clinch and other waterways in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, dead mussels were turning up on shores and could be seen glinting from the river bottom. Surveys revealed more fresh dead or dying mussels half-buried and rotting in still-clasped shells.

“It would take you 20 to 30 seconds to go from one dead one to another to another,” says Richard, who works with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), in Virginia. “And it’s been like that week after week after week [every fall] since September 2016.”

On the Clinch River alone, hundreds of thousands are believed to have perished, a mass mortality event that has baffled scientists and alarmed ecologists.

Freshwater mussels, like pollinators and trees, are critical to their larger ecosystems and the world around them. They create habitat for other species, like freshwater coral reefs, and help maintain the structure and rigidity of the waterways they call home. They scoop up algae and nutrients, processing and concentrating them for others to eat.

Nature’s ‘Brita Filter’ Is Dying and Nobody Knows Why

Scott Wheeler was born and raised in what’s known as the Northeast Kingdom, the rugged and beautiful countryside where Vermont abuts Canada. Even so, he didn’t realize he was supposed to check in with Canadian immigration authorities when driving across the border recently.

Two polite, officious Mounties tell him to make a U-turn and follow them back to the port of entry where he’s questioned about his intentions inside Quebec. He explains his mistake, and eventually, the Mounties return his identification and he’s free to go.

“That’s pretty much life on the border; it’s changing,” Wheeler says, resignedly.

While the southern border gets all the attention with President Trump’s massive wall and the backlog of desperate asylum-seekers stuck in Mexico, things are tense on the northern border with Canada, as well. The number of illegal crossers is on the rise. And residents complain that heightened security has changed the character of the once-neighborly frontier.

“It’s even confusing for a local to understand,” says Wheeler, a former state representative and history buff who publishes the Northland Journal. “Back when I was growing up, you could come across the border with a wave to the border agents.”

“It’s a barrier, and we feel it”

In the past two fiscal years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has logged a 400% jump in apprehensions of people crossing illegally from Canada. That’s the biggest increase anywhere along the 5,525-mile northern border.

Border authorities made it harder to cross freely after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but things have gotten even stricter since President Trump took office.

Consider Canusa Avenue — the name is a hybrid of Canada and USA. The international boundary runs for a third of a mile along this street. This is where Wheeler inadvertently turned into Canada.

There are 14 houses, with Americans living on the south side of the street and Canadians on the north. Two residents recently met on their respective sides of the white boundary line.

“We cannot leave our street on our own free will,” says Janice Beadle, who describes herself as a retired snack bar owner, dairy worker and maple syrup maker.

U.S.-Canada Border Community’s Culture Changes As Security Tightens

In New Book, Journalist Alleges Russian Links To Mysterious Deaths Abroad

Journalist Heidi Blake on the Russian state’s development of tools for assassination

Putin has, in a very concerted way, poured [resources] into a number of laboratories in which government scientists just dedicate their lives to the development of weapons and poisons, which are designed to kill without leaving a trace. We know that the Russian state has a whole armory of poisons, which are designed to trigger, for example, fast acting cancers or to trigger cardiac arrest — or even psychotropic drugs, which are designed to destabilize enemy targets, to mood altering substances, which can create the appearance that the person has plunged into a very deep and profound depression.