Poopitalism: The Exploitation of Dung

Street Smart Naturalist · Sep 17, 2026 · 7m · transcript

Marjorie reminded me that I hadn’t written about poop in a while. Sadly, that is correct, so I thought I’d remedy the situation. Her comment came when we were walking along an ocean beach and observed a small outcrop of rock covered in generations of deposits by the residents. In this case, the producers were primarily Brown Pelicans and Brandt’s Cormorants though I suspect that various species of gulls and perhaps a crow or two also contributed to the whitewashing of the islet.

I have seen and smelled (particularly below the visitor center at Cape Disappointment where the aroma of fishy poop…