Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘conservation’

Unexpected Wild Animal Travel

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 20, 2014| 2 Comments »

John sent me a collection of photographs showing that a small mongoose-like animal hitches rides on rhinos and other large creatures in previously unrecorded behavior.

George Dvorsky writes at io9, “Earlier this month, conservationists working in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park were very surprised when they reviewed photos snapped by their camera trap. Images revealed a mongoose-like genet hitch-hiking on the backs of at least two different species of animals — behavior never seen in the mammal.

“Zoologists have observed cowbirds riding on the backs of cattle to pick off their parasites, along with egrets grazing on the tiny creatures that collect on wildebeest. But mammals riding on the backs of other mammals? Not so much. At least not outside of humans and their domesticated animals. That’s what makes this recent discovery so unique.

“The Conservationists write at their blog, Wildlife Act Team:

This series of photographs depicts a large spotted genet on top of two individual buffalo. One of the buffalo seemed to be unimpressed with the genet and can be seen turning around and thus shaking the genet off. The other buffalo was quite content to let the genet “tag along” for an evening stroll. The genet seemed to have spent this particular evening riding buffalo!”

More here. Lots of pictures.

Read Full Post »

Compost That Banana!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2014| 2 Comments »

Discouraging as it is to read that many children won’t eat the healthful food schools are now providing, I take heart that at least they are learning to compost.

Al Baker writes at the NY Times, “The sad voyage of fruits and vegetables from lunch lady to landfill has frustrated parents, nutritionists and environmentalists for decades. Children are still as picky and wasteful as ever, but at least there is now a happier ending — that banana-filled bin is a composting container, part of a growing effort to shrink the mountains of perfectly good food being hauled away to trash heaps every year.

“New York City’s school composting program, kicked off just two years ago by parents on the Upper West Side, is now in 230 school buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and is expected to more than double in size and reach all five boroughs in the fall, with an ultimate goal of encompassing all 1,300-plus school buildings. …

“The hope is that by building up composting in school, the city will help the environment, instill a sense of conservation in schoolchildren and, critically, save some money. The city paid $93 per ton in 2013 to dump in landfills, up from $68 in 2004. Composting saves the city $10 to $50 per ton, because the cost is offset by the sale of the end product, according to the Sanitation Department.” More here.

I tend to think kids will eventually eat something nourishing if that’s what’s available and they’re hungry. All I know is my kids eat everything now that they are grown-ups. (Still laughing that John came home from college and said, “How come you never told me I like mushrooms?”)

Photo: Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Read Full Post »

Art vs. Fossil Fuels

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »

No matter how much you like your routine or how pleasant your surroundings, sometimes you just have to get up and go out. Today I needed a change of scene so, in spite of the freezing temperatures and high wind, I went to look at some art.

The Design Museum is not far from my office, and the folks there come up with lots of good projects. I blogged here about their Street Seats, an array of public benches designed by creative people from around the world.

This being Design Week in Boston, I decided to check out the exhibit space they are using in a new apartment building called 315 on A, a lovely renovation of an 18th century warehouse for coffee.

The new exhibit is called Green Patriot Posters and features handsome posters from professionals as well as the pretty impressive results of a school poster contest on the conservation theme.

Many of the posters explicitly reference WW II posters. You know: “Loose lips sink ships” and all that. Here, the posters urge viewers to pursue a more sustainable way of life and fight global warming. More.

Be sure to check the poster over the left shoulder of the woman speaker in this video. That was my favorite in the show because it made me laugh out loud. I think you can see a Paul Bunyan figure with an ax. He is looking at the tree he was going to cut with an uncertain expression as the tree is growing out of his foot.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Heath Hen, Where Art Thou?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2014| 4 Comments »

An old, falling-apart film of a heath hen has been unearthed.

Why is that thrilling? The heath hen is extinct.

Writes Carolyn Y. Johnson in the Boston Globe, “The bird stamps its feet on the ground, taking mincing dance steps through the corn stubble. Neck feathers flare like a headdress, and the male puffs out his neck, making a hollow, hooting call that has been lost to history.

“These courtship antics are captured on a silent, black-and-white film that is believed to be the only footage of something not seen for nearly a century: the extinct heath hen.

“The film, circa 1918, is the birding equivalent of an Elvis sighting, said Wayne Petersen of Mass Audubon — mind-blowing and transfixing to people who care. It will premier Saturday [March 8] at a birding conference in Waltham.

“Massachusetts officials commissioned the film nearly a century ago as part of an effort to preserve and study the game bird, once abundant from Southern New Hampshire to Northern Virginia. Then, like the heath hen, the film was largely forgotten.

“Martha’s Vineyard is where the last known heath hens lived, protected in a state preserve. But the last one vanished by 1932. …

“Jim Cardoza, a retired wildlife biologist who worked for the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, said that for him, the film holds lessons about how conservation efforts have evolved.

“ ‘The thing that is striking to me is the habitat of the animal — it looks like they’re out in corn fields and open areas and things like that,’ Cardoza said. ‘That isn’t what the birds really inhabited — they were a scrub-land species.’ Conservationists at the time, he said, ‘didn’t know what the habitat requirements of the species even was.’  ”

Read the rest of the article and watch the film here.

I love the idea of a long-rumored, valuable film finally being found. It’s a great story. It’s also an argument for better filing systems.

State of Massachusetts woodcut, 1912. The fancier heath hens are males.

Read Full Post »

Rescuing a River

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2013| 7 Comments »

When a river is full of trash, polluted, and maybe locked in a below-street culvert,  returning it to glory may seem too great a task. But that is what cities around the country are doing, “daylighting” urban rivers, cleaning them up, and ensuring they become the featured assets they were meant to be.

Sometimes this starts with just one person.

John tweeted an article about such a person today. CNN’s Kathleen Toner and Erika Clarke wrote from Memphis, “In the past 15 years, Chad Pregracke has helped pull more than 67,000 tires from the Mississippi River and other waterways across the United States. But that’s just scratching the surface.

“He’s also helped retrieve 218 washing machines, 19 tractors, 12 hot tubs, four pianos and almost 1,000 refrigerators.

” ‘People intentionally dumped [these] in river and also littered,’ Pregracke said. ‘Even 100 miles away, [trash] will find its way into a creek or a storm drain and into, ultimately, the Mississippi River.’

“For Pregracke, removing this debris has become his life’s work. Sometimes called ‘The Rivers’ Garbageman,’ he lives on a barge about nine months out of the year with members of his 12-person crew. Together, they organize community cleanups along rivers across the country.

” ‘The garbage got into the water one piece at a time,’ Pregracke said. ‘And that’s the only way it’s going to come out.’

“It’s a dirty job, but Pregracke, 38, took it on because he realized that no one was doing it. It began as a solo effort, and over the years his energy, enthusiasm and dedication have helped it grow. To date, about 70,000 volunteers have joined his crusade, helping him collect more than 7 million pounds of debris through his nonprofit, Living Lands & Waters.”

More here. You can vote for Pregracke as Hero of the Year if you click there.

Read Full Post »

Marines Saving a Few Good Turtles

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I am happy that the Wall Street Journal kept its front page human-interest stories after all when Murdock took over. Today’s feature opened up a side of the U.S. Marines I knew nothing about — protecting endangered species.

Ben Kesling writes from Twentynine Palms, California, “U.S. Marines are taught to overcome obstacles with a minimum of help. But when some Marines prepared to charge a hill in a training exercise here a few months ago, they were forced to halt and radio the one man who could help them advance: Brian Henen, turtle expert.

“The troops were ‘running up the hill and firing at targets,’ Mr. Henen said. ‘Some of the tortoises like the hill also. The Marines don’t want to hurt the tortoise, so they call us and we go in and move it.’

“Mr. Henen, who has a doctorate in biology, is part of a little-known army of biologists and other scientists who manage the Mojave desert tortoise and about 420 other threatened and endangered species on about 28 million acres of federally managed military land.

” ‘There’s a lot of people who don’t recognize the amount of conservation the Marine Corps does,’ said Martin Husung, a natural-resource specialist on the base. ‘A lot of people think we’re just running over things.’ …

John Brent, base environmental manager at Fort Benning in Georgia, says, “‘It’s a well-kept secret’ that biologists are drawn to work on military bases … There’s a chance to do terrific work.’ ”

More.

Read Full Post »

Prisoners Saving Endangered Frogs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 28, 2012| 2 Comments »

Kirk Johnson writes in today’s NY Times about efforts to make time in prison more constructive, both in terms of sustainable practices that control prison costs and in terms of inmate improvement.​ The endangered frog program in Oregon, which requires perfect behavior from participating prisoners, is especially intriguing.

Johnson writes, “Mat Henson, 25, serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for robbery and assault, and his research partner, Taylor Davis, 29, who landed in the Cedar Creek Corrections Center here in central Washington for stealing cars, raised about 250 Oregon spotted frogs in the prison yard this summer.

“Working with biologists, Mr. Henson is now helping write a scientific curriculum for other frog-raisers, in prison or out. A previous inmate in the program, released some years ago, is finishing his Ph.D. in molecular biology. …

“The program’s broader goal of bringing nature and sustainable practices to prisons is echoed across the nation as states seek ways to run prisons more cost-effectively.

“Utilitarian practicality led Wisconsin in 2008 to begin having inmates grow much of their own food. And federal energy rules are pushing the goal of zero-net energy use in federal prisons by 2030.

“Indiana and Massachusetts have become aggressive in reducing energy and water consumption and waste in their prisons, and tough renewable energy mandates in California are pushing alternative generation and conservation at prisons there, said Paul Sheldon, a senior adviser at Natural Capitalism Solutions, a Colorado-based nonprofit that works with government agencies and companies on sustainability issues. …

“There may be some intangible benefits for inmates who are being exposed to the scientific process, many of them for the first time, said Carri LeRoy, a professor of ecology at Evergreen State College in Olympia, and co-director of the Sustainability in Prisons project.

“Science, she said, is about procedural order, point A to point B, with every step measured and marked for others to check and follow. And when the focus of that work is a creature that undergoes a profound metamorphosis from egg to tadpole to adult, the lesson is also one about the possibilities of change. In a prison, Professor LeRoy said, that is a big deal.

“ ‘This image of transformation, I think, allows them maybe to understand their own transformation,’ Professor LeRoy said.”

Read more.

Photograph: Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

Read Full Post »

Nature for All Ages

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2012| 2 Comments »

A friend is helping to build a playscape, a playground for all ages and abilities that takes advantage of the natural environment‘s restorative qualities.

My husband and I went to see where the playscape is emerging with a boost from the state’s Community Preservation Act. It is located over by Gowing’s Swamp, a lovely wooded area with native plants once cataloged by Thoreau. We walked on a hilly woodland path around the swamp and took note of Canada Mayflowers like tiny bottle brushes and a starlike white flower with six long, narrow leaves growing out from the stem at the same height. (If I’d had my camera, I’d have uploaded a picture at MisterSmartyPlants.com.)

The Sudbury Valley Trustees oversee Gowing’s Swamp, and have this to say about it:

“Gowing’s Swamp, named by Thoreau for its landowner in the mid-1850’s, is an 8.9 acre acidic wetland complex located in a protected, glaciated hollow on the eastern side of a glacial kame known as Revolutionary Ridge.  A kettlehole bog, at the southern end of the wetland, contains specialized plant communities that are locally rare in Southern New England.  The natural area provides habitat for a diverse range of wildlife.

” ‘Unlike any other bog in New England, Gowing’s Swamp found its way into American literature by virtue of significant passages in Thoreau’s Journal,’ says botanist Ray Angelo, and has been visited and studied regularly over the last 160 years by Concord naturalists, literary and historical scholars, and has been the subject of ongoing scientific studies.” More here.

Photograph of Gowing’s Swamp: Sudbury Valley Trustees

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts