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Posts Tagged ‘environment’

Iceland Starts to Rethink Whaling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 29, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Steffen Trumpf/picture-alliance/dpa/AP/File.
The whaling ships Hvalur 9 and Hvalur 8 in port, August 2019, in Reykjavík. Gradually, Icelanders have been rethinking whether they want to be part of the violent whaling hunt.

Deep, ingrained national behaviors can change. Take, for example, the acceptance of whaling among Icelanders. Will the big whaling countries’ populations be next?

Mark Sappenfield writes for the Christian Science Monitor, “For more than 40 years, Kristján Loftsson has fought a battle that most outside Iceland want him to lose. This week, he might have gotten his toughest foe yet: Iceland itself.

“Mr. Loftsson owns Hvalur hf., Iceland’s lone whaling company, and for much of the past few decades, its greatest success has been survival. Through moratoriums, protests, sabotage, and even the collapse of the market for Icelandic whale meat, Mr. Loftsson has endured. Iceland remains one of three nations with commercial whaling, along with Norway and Japan.

“[In September], however, Iceland’s ruling coalition proposed a potential revision of whaling laws that could lead to a ban. It comes at the end of a summer with a significant sprinkling of drama. Workers at Hvalur controversially played the national anthem as they butchered one whale, and the Icelandic coast guard dramatically raided an anti-whaling vessel at sea.

“It points to a nation hanging in the balance.

In 2003, 75% of Icelanders supported whaling. This year, 33% do, with 41% against and 26% neutral or indifferent.

“The ambivalence shows the uncertain prospects for the legislative efforts to ban whaling. But it also shows that the tides of public opinion in Iceland are changing. This summer’s pitched battles for public opinion were only the beginning.

“Sitting in a Reykjavík café, Mr. Loftsson does not give the appearance of a man against the world. He chats easily about growing up in the company his father founded. By age 13, he was a mess boy, cleaning the floors. Two years later, he was a deckhand, climbing into the crow’s nest. …

“He notes that fin whales are not endangered in the North Atlantic, and he dismisses scientific findings that show whales to be highly intelligent, social animals. ‘It’s just something they make up,’ he says, speaking of the opposition.

“For years, Mr. Loftsson’s greatest ally has arguably been Iceland’s sense of independence. The nation has never been afraid to go its own way, and for many Icelanders, whaling has been a token of that defiance. …

“But for others, the playing of the national anthem amid cries of ‘Áfram Ísland’ (‘Forward, Iceland!’) went too far. …

“The broader shifts in support for whaling have been coming for years. Videos of whale kills made public in 2023 shocked many Icelanders – showing the brutality of the hunt, which can involve multiple explosive harpoons, sometimes over an hour or more.

“ ‘Everyone could see how horrible the hunting is,’ says Valgerður Árnadóttir, co-founder of Hvalavinir, an Icelandic organization that seeks to protect whales. ‘It is impossible to hunt in a humane way.’

“Shannon Mann’s hope was to stop this year’s hunt altogether. She was on the ship Bandero this July as part of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation’s worldwide efforts to stop whaling. Instead, she ended up being detained and deported.

“For several weeks of cat and mouse, the Bandero tried to find either of Hvalur’s two ships to interfere with the hunt, but the Icelandic coast guard helped keep their whereabouts secret.

“At last, running low on supplies, the Bandero tracked one Hvalur ship into Iceland’s territorial waters. Mr. Loftsson claims the Bandero tried to sink the Hvalur vessel by ramming it. Ms. Mann disagrees, saying the Bandero never came within two nautical miles. ‘No one was ever at risk. We’re not out to hurt anyone.’

“Within hours, the Icelandic coast guard had helicoptered a team onto a boat in the area and boarded the Bandero. The ship remains in Iceland, docked in the fishing town of Akranes north of Reykjavík, where Nick Bohnet has taken over and is trying to persuade Icelandic authorities to let the Bandero leave. “

More at the Monitor, here. No paywall, but please consider subscribing.

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A Win for Indian Country

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 19, 2026| 1 Comment »

Photo: Angel White Eyes.
At the sacred prairie of Pe’ Sla in South Dakota, indigenous and environmental groups banded together to halt drilling. They chased out the mining company one week.

As one indigenous leader tells the story, “All we had were our prayers.”

But according to Shilpi Chhotray at the Guardian, protesters “knew it was bad optics to drag an Indigenous prayer camp off a mountain on camera.”

She begins, “When two Oglala Lakota scouts heard drilling was expected to begin on Pe’ Sla, the sacred prairie in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they set out on back trails. They needed to find out where. That’s when they saw a deer break ahead and a red-tailed hawk soar above them – less like a coincidence than being led, the scouts said. Over a rise, they came upon a road freshly cut to the dirt. They followed it, past a parked truck. ‘Oh my god,’ one of them said, seeing a drill turning. ‘They’re drilling now!’

“What happened next was something that almost never happens in Indian country: a coalition of tribes and organizers banded together and drove out a mining company in a matter of days.

‘We’re just not used to winning,’ said Dr Valeriah Big Eagle, who directs the Black Hills work of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy nonprofit based in Rapid City. …

“The fight to protect ancestral land from mining is a common one, and the struggles are often long, hard and lost. In March, the government handed Oak Flat, an Apache holy site in Arizona, to a copper company to gouge out one of the largest mines in North America – a transfer the tribe is still in court trying to reverse. In April, the Senate voted to strip protections from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, a watershed in Ojibwe treaty territory where the bands still hunt, fish and gather; the battle has since moved to the statehouse. The consequences of losing aren’t abstract: poisoned water, sacred ground turned to open pit, and the lasting health toll extraction leaves on Native land while the profits flow elsewhere.

“But at Pe’ Sla, what the Great Sioux Nation calls the ‘heart of everything that is,’ the coalition broke the pattern, moving on every front at once. It was a lesson, they said, in what organized power can still win.

“The threat arrived the way these things usually do: as paperwork. On 27 February, the US Forest Service quietly approved exploratory drilling by Pete Lien & Sons, a local mining and construction-materials company. They could drill 18 boreholes on national forest land, at least 10 of them inside a two-mile buffer around the central meadow that the tribes and the agency had agreed to protect. It was waved through with a ‘categorical exclusion’ that skipped environmental review on land prayed over for thousands of years.

“Pe’ Sla holds a sacred place in the world of the Great Sioux Nation. Wizipan Little Elk Garriott – the president of NDN Collective and a former Interior department official – describes it beginning with the sky. It is where Fallen Star came to Earth, and where, in a world scoured by fire and water, the people went inside to survive and later emerged. It’s also where traditionally foraged plants like the timpsula, the prairie turnip with its short spike of purple flowers, grow, and its root, high in calcium, is the real gift. Pe’ Sla is a church, a pantry and a pharmacy at once – the ceremony, the food and the medicine all right there in the ground. The ground that was almost drilled open.

“What the company was drilling for only sharpened the insult. Graphite is a ‘critical mineral’ of the energy transition, the stuff in electric-car batteries. Which means the drills boring into the birthplace of a people were there to help save the planet. …

“Even though the permit drew broad opposition – from tribes, local officials and the public – the Forest Service granted it anyway. So the coalition of tribal nations, the NDN Collective and two environmental groups escalated.

“The legal front moved first: in early April, NDN Collective, the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance and Earthworks sued the Forest Service, and nearly every tribe in the Dakotas filed a second suit of their own. But the courts were slow and the company was quick. When Pete Lien & Sons learned a restraining order had been filed, it went to round-the-clock drilling, boring as many holes as it could before a judge ruled. …

“Before dawn on 30 April, organizers sent up a drone and found the company had moved overnight, its crews now on two lit pads across the highway. The convoy had already set out – a caravan of about a dozen vehicles strung along the highway under a high, bright moon. With the ground still frozen, they climbed the Forest Service roads. At the only road in, 40 of them blocked the way behind them and put their bodies on the drill pads so no rig could run.

“ ‘It was supposed to be one day, to make a statement,’ Robert Bordeaux, a Sičáŋǧu Lak̇ot̄a poet who joined the occupation, told me for Peace & Riot. ‘It went so well we decided to stay.’

“For seven days, they lived on those pads – intergenerational by design: a youth council out front and elders anchoring the camp. They held it through helicopters overhead, three lines of police and private security, and a night that fell to 10 degrees with no fires because the hills were experiencing a drought. They stayed warm with hand warmers and each other. Even then, the scouts said, the camp felt strangely calm – held, protected – as if the relatives they’d prayed to were with them. …

“On 4 May, a federal judge halted the drilling, finding the plaintiffs were likely to prove that the Forest Service had unlawfully waved through a supposedly under-a-year project whose permit required three years of work. Still, the organizers didn’t leave – they didn’t trust a company that could pay a fine to stop. Days later, Pete Lien & Sons wrote to the Forest Service withdrawing its plan.”

More at the Guardian, here. The Guardian notes that “the story was supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.“

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At-Risk Youths Meet Nature

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 5, 2026| 2 Comments »

Photo: Shandra Back.
Danny Chaparro at Bayer farm in Santa Rosa, California’s Roseland neighborhood where he hosts outdoor activities for young people through LandPaths.

A California organization is doing some great work with young people drawn to gangs.

Shandra Back writes at the Guardian about LandPaths, which “takes at-risk youth out of their concrete, urban environments and into the natural one, offering many their first encounters with the land.” She begins with one of the participants.

“Alejandro Elizarraraz stands in the middle of a grassy field with a saw in his hands. On a hillside overlooking the lush forests of northern California, the 18-year-old cuts back brush and branches as a way to help prevent wildfires.

“ ‘We’re going to give the tree a high fade cuz it’s 10 feet,’ he said, grinning. …

“Wiping rain and sweat from his brow, he leans into the last branch, hears a crack, and lets out a whoop as it falls to the ground. His black Nike Air Force squelch through mud as he carries the pieces to a large pile, which will later be burned to eliminate fuel for future wildfires.

“He grew up in the northern California city of Santa Rosa, nearly 60 miles north of San Francisco. While the surrounding region is best known as a destination for wine, redwoods and rugged coastline, the city also has high levels of gang activity.

“The city has also been touted for its innovative youth violence prevention work. Now, it’s pioneering a new strategy: outdoor youth violence‑prevention programs that use the natural beauty of the region as a way to mitigate gun violence.

“Working with the city, LandPaths, an environmental conservancy non-profit, takes at-risk youth out of their concrete, urban environments and into the natural one, where they hike, camp and explore the natural wonders of Sonoma county, offering many of them their first encounters with the land. …

Elizarraraz pulls back the hood of his poncho for a better view of the mist-filled hills. ‘Like, damn,’ he said. ‘I feel amazed when I see all of this.

“Ocean Song/Meyers preserve, the coastal prairie and oak woodland where LandPaths hosts some of its programming, is only a 45‑minute drive from the neighborhood Elizarraraz grew up in. But the high schooler, who started in the program last year, says he had never spent time outdoors before he started working with the group.

“ ‘I never had a personal connection with nature,’ he said. Most Saturdays he would stay inside and watch TV. Now, things are different. …

“Like many teens who come through LandPaths’s violence prevention program, Danny Chaparro grew up in Roseland, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Santa Rosa with a long history of gang violence. For more than a decade he has worked in youth violence prevention, showing young people that a kid from Roseland who looks like them can grow up to lead a prosperous life. …

“As LandPaths’s new audiences manager, he oversees programs that bring underserved communities out into nature. Chaparro always knew he wanted to uplift the community he came from, but never imagined his job would be bringing at-risk youth into outdoor spaces he himself never explored. …

“ ‘If you look around,’ he said of Roseland, ‘everywhere that you see, there isn’t a mountain view in your sight.’

“But since the violence prevention program was created early last year, he’s already seeing the effects of connecting teens with the natural world. …

“During his work at other organizations, Chaparro said many young people would walk into the building, sit down and stay put the whole time. But LandPaths, he says, brings out a different side of them. ‘I’ve seen some of those same youths now through my time at LandPaths show up to a preserve and start running and climbing a tree and just being a kid.’ …

“Some of the students who came to LandPaths were so enthusiastic that after graduating from the program, Chaparro hired them for another initiative that teaches environmental stewardship skills. One of them was Elizarraraz. The Young Stewards program is a part-time outdoor program that has teens work on trail building, habitat restoration and land-stewardship projects in Sonoma county.

“Out of more than two dozen Saturday sessions, Elizarraraz has never missed a day. The consistency matters because Chaparro knows the struggles many young Latino kids are navigating outside these programs: the lack of a stable income, the influence of gangs, a parent who’s always working, easy access to guns. …

“Chaparro recalled a night-time walk when the students were getting rowdy and messing around. So he set them to a challenge: two minutes, no talking, just staring up at the stars. As the students settled in, staring up at the open sky, two minutes passed, then three, four, five. Chaparro stopped the timer and let the silence expand.

“Later, in a reflection circle, he asked them why they let the time stretch longer than the challenge. Many told him that ‘they’ve never felt that much peace.’ “

More at the Guardian, here.

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Golf-Course Builder Gets into Rewilding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2026| 2 Comments »

Photo: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian.
Shaun Hancox, the “Picasso of Ponds,” says the excavator “becomes an extension of yourself, it just flows.“

I find the rewilding movement (taking developed land and returning it to nature) inspirational for several reasons. Of course it benefits the environment but it also reminds me that it’s possible for humans to reverse some of the damage they create.

Patrick Barkham writes at the Guardian about a guy in the UK who is using his golf-course building skills in a new way.

“He is known as ‘the Picasso of ponds’ but the tableaux being created by Shaun Hancox in a boggy field in Somerset currently looks more like a building site. An orange and black excavator is rhythmically removing lumpy clay soil and sculpting it into brown banks.

“The result looks like a scar of bare earth on what was once green pasture – but the magic happens as soon as rain fills the newly created depressions. Plants seed swiftly, invertebrates and amphibians rapidly find the water, and life explodes.

“Britain has lost at least 400,000 ponds over the past century, according to the Freshwater Habitats Trust. A similar number remain but many are overgrown, degraded or affected by nutrient pollution.

“Everyone realizes we’re in a sorry state with freshwater and it needs to be addressed,’ says Hancox, of Creative Wetlands, a contractor who has dug scores of new ponds for charities and rewilding projects across Britain.

“Hancox acquired his skills … digging landfill sites and golf courses for his family’s groundworks company. ‘My original job was a shaper on golf courses. We travelled all over, to Portugal, Germany, Belgium, building bunkers and drainage – everything really that wasn’t good for wildlife. I’ve always had a massive interest in wildlife, so we’ve got to the stage now where we want to put something back.’

“Building golf courses helped Hancox become a master of pond creation. … He says, ‘A golf ball rolls very much how water moves. When you’re putting in a wildlife pond, you look at the landscape and give your pond the best chance of holding water and doing what it should do. It’s the same if you’re doing a fairway – you want to shed the water or get it into a drainage system or into certain areas. The shapes of the ponds are almost golf course bunkers but in a more rustic, natural way.’

“At Heal Somerset, a 185-hectare (460 acre) former dairy farm being turned over to nature by the charity Heal Rewilding, Hancox is digging four new ponds, including one double-bowled pond 30 metres in diameter.

“The ponds are specifically for great-crested newts, which have been found in low numbers on the farm but have no suitable ponds in which to breed. Usually within a year of being created the ponds fill with aquatic life, including damselflies and dragonflies, and provide food and shelter for birds, from moorhens to house martins, who feed on the insects and use the pond-side mud to build nests.

“Crucially, these new ponds are not connected to any river system, which can wash nutrient-rich or polluted water into them. Instead, they are charged by clean rainwater or clean groundwater, enabling more delicate aquatic plants to thrive.

“Pete Case, of the Newt Conservation Partnership, says: ‘You can fiddle with rivers all you like but pond creation is the simplest and cheapest way of bringing clean water back to the landscape.’ …

“Case is full of praise for Hancox’s skills. The partnership, a coalition of the Freshwater Habitats Trust and the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust, identifies new pond sites, builds and monitors them. It is funded by the NatureSpace partnership, whereby housebuilders pay to create replacement terrestrial wetland habitat or ponds that are lost or damaged by development. This project, which operates across 70 local authorities in England, ensures that any new pond habitat is maintained for 25 years, with the ponds inspected and the landowner receiving an annual payment to manage it.

“It guarantees that they will be suitable for newts in 25 years’ time,” Case says. The partnership assesses the surrounding land to check it will meet newts’ needs. ‘When it comes to newt conservation, everyone focuses on making a pond, but newts spend two-thirds of their life on land. If you don’t get that bit right, they aren’t going to do so well.’ “

Oh, my goodness! Don’t you love that there are humans who create and sustain an organization called the Newt Conservation Partnership?

More at the Guardian, here.

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Nature Gets a ‘Seat on the Board’

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 25, 2026| 1 Comment »

Photo: The Financial Timees/Mark Cocksedge.
The castle sits on a hill above the Tamar estuary; the manor house dates to 1808. Owners House of Hackney are intentional about doing right by Mother Nature.

In 2010, our sorry high court confirmed the principle of corporate personhood in the US, leading to the injection of a flood of business money into our election system. One of the consequences has been the difficulty of electing candidates who care about climate change, conservation, or the environment. So I suppose that giving something like voting rights to Nature, the topic of today’s article, is only fair. I wish it were happening here, not just in the UK.

Tiffanie Darke at the Financial Times writes, ” ‘Nature has the best designs’ has long been the lodestar of interiors brand House of Hackney. And when co-founders Frieda Gormley and husband Javvy M Royle moved to the Castle of Trematon, Cornwall, in 2019, they set about papering, carpeting and upholstering in the joyous cacophony of botanical prints for which the brand is celebrated. …

“Letting nature in took a different approach outside: there was to be no digging, no glyphosate, no more foreign planting.  But with the move, their love of nature evolved into a more serious project. Fifteen years after they founded the brand with the purpose of championing craft, nature and community, they began ‘to hunger for meaningful change.’ … Which prompted the question: what if nature could redesign the business?

“The House of Hackney is now termed a ‘regenerative business’ — one that ‘puts in more than you take out,’ says Gormley, and that uses the systems of reciprocity on which nature thrives to construct its models, both internal and external.

“Its decision to appoint ‘Mother Nature and Future Generations’ to a board director role has become a case study at Harvard Business School. ‘Giving voice and decision rights to the environment and the future do not tend to be well represented in either business or government,’ says Harvard professor Peter Tufano.  Working with the True Price Foundation, a Dutch organization that has been providing sustainability-focused accounting services to companies, governments and institutions since 2012, House of Hackney assessed its impact through an Integrated Profit and Loss (IP & L) framework. This accounts for four types of capital : produced (the financial and physical assets), natural (the health of ecosystems and resources), human (the wellbeing of people) and social (the strength of communities and relationships). …

“While the company’s [negative] impact was laid bare, the path to reduce it was clear. And so House of Hackney set itself up as a live experiment, hoping to be a trailblazer that would prove business can actively regenerate a resource-depleted world, and act ethically in a corporate environment. How it has attempted this, through governance, culture and design, is the subject of a new book, In the Company of Nature, written by Gormley. …

In 2022, British beauty brand Faith in Nature became the first business to appoint a board position to nature.

” ‘For a product line that is of 99.5 per cent natural origin, it was initially “a creative act,’ ” says brand director Simeon Rose, and figuring out the legality took ‘a lot of bloody-mindedness.’ The work of the Rights of Nature movement, which had succeeded in securing rights for a river in New Zealand, offered a template, while the groundwork was executed by Brontie Ansell of Lawyers for Nature with the Earth Law Centre.

“Ansell became House of Hackney’s guide. Both companies were already B Corp, but neither felt that went far enough. ‘Consumers are sick to death of the sustainability narrative. People want to see more effort, more responsibility, more leadership,’ says Ansell. ‘Charities have to show public benefit and increased public wellbeing, but business just needs to make money. Why not eat away at the fringes of that divide? Let’s have businesses that have a greater purpose.’ …

“ ‘We don’t have ambition for non-purposeful growth, we are happy to stay as an incubator brand,’ says Gormley. … ‘We do the experimentation that other companies can use. And we enjoy the process: the day-to-day creativity of designing beautiful things, but also designing beautiful systems.’ ”

More at FT, here.

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More Countries Harvest Rainwater

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 16, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne Bearne.
Above, Nancy Elena Quiros Correa, who says the climate in Medellín, Colombia, has become hotter and wetter. Many neighbors collect containers to store rainwater for washing clothes and flushing toilets.

Remember my recent post about storing rainwater in garden fences (here)? Well, ingenuity is not limited to the Netherlands. People around the world are realizing that climate change calls for storing water. In Medellín, Colombia, violent gangs are no longer getting all the attention, and residents are free to work on the normal challenges of life.

Suzanne Bearne explains at the Guardian.

“In his home on a steep hillside in the neighbourhood of Golondrinas in Medellín, Róbinson Velásquez Cartagena stands proudly next to two large tanks of water – a rainwater harvesting system he designed and built to help reduce the risk of flooding and landslides.

“It is one of the nature-based solutions that Velásquez and others in the community have proposed as part of a disaster risk and climate crisis adaptation plan for Comuna 8, a growing informal settlement of 150,000 people in Colombia’s second-largest city. …

“Neighborhoods such as this, where brick houses with corrugated metal roofs are densely stacked on unstable ground, are susceptible to landslides and floods. In 1987, a devastating landslide killed 500 people in the area.

“Organizations and residents such as Velásquez Cartagena came together and, in 2020, began to develop the Local Agreement for Inclusive Climate Action, in line with the Medellín city council’s Climate Action Plan. …

“The plan was formally launched in August 2023 by several organizations, including Medellín’s disaster risk management department (DAGRD), the housing and habitat committee for Comuna 8, and Heriot-Watt University in the UK. …

“The plan comprises eight measures to address climate risks, including managing rainwater, reforestation to control erosion and sedimentation on hillsides and in ravines, and establishing eco-gardens and agroforestry systems. While the city aims to implement similar plans across all 21 comunas, challenges remain in securing government support and funding for grassroots initiatives.

” ‘I started the rainwater harvesting system because I wanted to prove that it can reduce the risk of disasters by reducing the water that runs on to the streets, which can flood when it rains,’ says Velásquez Cartagena, a community leader. … His system collects water from the rooftop drainage and stores it in containers; he then uses the water for his washing machine and toilet.

“Originally a disaster-management scheme, the plan was expanded by the community to [outline] climate risks and vulnerabilities, a heat map, past floods and landslides, responsible stakeholders and action points.

“ ‘In the plan, there are nature-based solutions, with several that are not that expensive or hard to make,’ says Velásquez Cartagena. …

“In the El Pacifico neighbourhood, Nancy Elena Quiros Correa oversees a small 9 metre by 3 metre (30ft by 10ft) plot that was set up as a community tree nursery last year.

“ ‘The nursery will prevent rocks from falling, soak up water when it rains, and increase biodiversity,’ she says. …

“Other projects include a rainwater-harvesting system installed at a local community center last year and an ecological restoration garden.

” ‘The garden will restore nature and stabilize the land,’ says Harry Smith, a professor in global urbanism at Heriot-Watt University, who has worked with Comuna 8 on environmental projects for the past 10 years. ‘But it also stops one of the problems they have there, which is land invasion as people continue to build new homes on land that has been sold illegally by armed groups.’

“While the plan was being approved, the community ‘hit the ground running,’ says Smith. ‘They wanted to do some pilot projects to show that they don’t need to wait for the municipality to come along and do things.’

“Velásquez Cartagena is working with community leaders to produce a user-friendly guide to the plan, with engaging graphics, that can be printed and shared on social media. …

“Juan David Moreno, the head of the technical team at DAGRD, says: ‘The work in Comuna 8 was a pilot, and we developed it for the rest of the communities. … In some communities, you have different needs,’ says Moreno. ‘We assessed the terrain, the community needs and the different hazards. … The main lesson from Comuna 8 was that we needed to work closely with the people, as they live in the territories and know the local hazards.’ …

“Despite all of their work, Quiros Correa still has reservations about what the plan will achieve. ‘I now have a more realistic view of the local government actions. Everything that we have achieved here has involved fighting and negotiating with the local government.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here. What is your community doing? In our town, anyone who builds hard surface like a macadam parking lot is now responsible for controlling water runoff.

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The Miracle of Tiny Gardens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 29, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: Annette Hornischer/American Academy in Berlin.
Kate Brown, MIT Professor and author of Tiny Gardens Everywhere.

It’s reassuring to think that small actions of many people can have a significant influence on what happens in the wide world.

In April, Kendra Nordin Beato of the Christian Science Monitor interviewed Kate Brown, a woman used to thinking very big, about how small improvements to improve urban living can play a role in saving the planet.

“Kate Brown, a professor of environmental history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an award-winning author,” says Beato, “has examined the wake of large-scale disasters and the massive challenges they create.

“On a smaller scale, Dr. Brown is also an avid gardener. Her most recent book, Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City, probes gardens as small patches of resilience, resistance, and regeneration.

“By studying histories of select European and North American urban gardens, she explores how these spaces helped to build communities centered on cooperation and mutual support. They also hold a promise, she says, for cities as places of sustainable food production. …

Kendra Nordin Beato
“What drew you, as an environmental historian, to this subject of urban gardening?

Kate Brown
“I wrote two big nuclear histories – and then about the environmental and health effects of Chernobyl, which were profound. As I worked on these big histories, I would think, once people find this out, it is going to change everything. And then it doesn’t.

“Countries are threatening each other as if it is the Cold War all over again with nuclear weapons. And then I started to think that maybe part of the problem, maybe these big histories – problems on a planetary scale – add to our sense of anxiety, apathy, you know, that we can’t do anything about it. I can’t get a U.N. resolution passed. So what can we do? We can do something on a very local level; we can do something in our own backyards.

“I love to garden. As you see in the book, my friend and I decided to plant a food forest around this mothballed school. And there I was, out in the street, and I got to know my neighbors in this really amazing way. I had lived there for 15 years and all it took was just to be out with a shovel in my hand to meet the guy who is always a porch sitter and get to know the kids who are running around. So that’s where I started to connect the simple act of planting a garden – especially in a visible place, whether that’s a front yard or public land – with community.

Beato
“One theme in your book explores how regenerative it is to extract life from seemingly little pockets of wasteland. …

Brown
“We call gardening recreation for a reason: because it’s fun. Gardeners find it fascinating to go out, mess around, see what happens, see what works. And it’s the small scale of it that makes it enjoyable, not drudgery. 

“Gardeners work with the environment. You treat your soil well; every worm is sacred. I abandon my garden every summer here in Cambridge [Massachusetts] for two months. I pack in the seeds, I set up a sprinkler that goes off at 5 every morning, and I have a lot composted from my kitchen compost. And when I come back, there’s really no space for weeds because all these plants – the beans are growing in the squash, the melons I didn’t even plant are vining their way around the potatoes and the garlic – all I have to do is come back and harvest, because this little space is self-propagating. …

Beato
“Why do you think gardens can strengthen, as you call it, civil societies?

Brown
“Not all community gardens are the same. [For instance, consider 19th-century factory workers in Berlin who] go to the edge of the town and they see all these sand dunes, basically. And so they take manure and the scraps from the brewery and the scraps from the sugar beet factory, all this organic material, and they build soils. … First it’s these miserable little gardens on sand, these poor little struggling plants. But then, within 10 years, they’re quite lush. And then, in another 10 years, most of the infrastructure is botanical. And so, people come together in these self-actuated communities, and they are living there, too. They start to build the sinews of what we would now call a social security network. They take up collections for people whose shacks burned down, unemployment collections, microloans to one another, and these places become very resilient. They weather war and famine. …

“We just did a YouGov Poll and asked a cross section of Americans what they do with their front-yard gardens. And 16% of Americans use their front yards to grow food. Then we asked: Did you get a lot of pushback? Did your neighbors complain? … Most of them – well over 60% – said, ‘Oh, my neighbors just compliment me. And a lot of them ask for advice because they want to do the same.’ So we found that these front-yard gardeners clustered together. Once somebody broke the mold, others wanted to follow. And so, we’re thinking there’s a quiet revolution against the institution of the American lawn that’s going on regardless of political affiliation. 

“In case you are thinking, ‘Oh, this can’t happen in a big country. This can’t be part of modern life,’ think of the Soviet Union [when it was a] nuclear superpower. By the 1990s, 96% of the potatoes people were eating were coming from tiny garden plots. We can go a long way toward feeding ourselves with these tiny urban spaces.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Releasing Bats in Ukraine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 27, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: Dan Bashakov/AP.
A volunteer of the Ukrainian bat rehabilitation center shows the wing of a rescued bat to people before returning bats to the wild in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 4, 2026.

I wonder how some celebrations emerge and become yearly events. Do they start with one person or family being excited about something — perhaps the return of a certain bird in spring — and the next thing you know, a whole community is having annual cookouts and parades?

Derek Gatopoulos and Vasila Stepanenko at the Associated Press and have a story about an annual celebration in Ukraine, war or no war.

“As night falls over a nature park on the edge of Kyiv,” they write, “children crowd around volunteers who carefully open cloth bags and release bats into the twilight.

“As each one takes flight, snapping through the air, more than 1,000 spectators cheer and applaud — families, off-duty soldiers, and bat enthusiasts, a few dressed in Goth outfits.

“Hundreds of bats, many rescued from war-torn areas in the east of the country, were released [in April] at one of multiple events around Ukraine planned to coincide with the arrival of spring.

“ ‘This is important for us as an organization because these are on a red list of endangered animals. Preserving them is very important,’ said Anastasiia Vovk, a volunteer at the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center, which organized the release. All 28 bat species in Ukraine are listed as protected animals due to declining populations.

“For many attendees, the event offered welcome relief and an excuse for a family outing after a harsh winter marked by subzero temperatures, nightly Russian drone and missile attacks and crippling power cuts.

“Late Saturday, children, many wearing bat-themed T-shirts and hats, watched as volunteers fed the animals mealworms with tweezers before letting them go. Some were allowed to wear gloves and handle the bats themselves.

“ ‘Life goes on despite the war,’ said Oleksii Beliaiev, a 54-year-old Kyiv resident who attended with his family. … Beliaiev runs a small printing business and spends time volunteering for army projects.

“The war has displaced animals as well as people. Buildings destroyed by shelling damage bats’ shelters, and explosions terrify the tiny mammals, experts say.

“ ‘In winter, bats hibernate, and if they are disturbed, they can die. They reproduce slowly — one or two offspring per year — so populations recover very slowly,’ said Alona Shulenko, who headed Saturday’s release. ‘As natural hibernation sites disappear, bats move into cities, into cracks in buildings and balconies. But repairs or destruction of these places can kill entire colonies,’ she said.

“All Ukrainian bat species are insect-eating and legally protected. … The charity says it has rescued more than 30,000 in total, including 4,000 bats last winter.

“ ‘We are all living in wartime, and everyone has their own struggles,’ Shulenko said. ‘But we are doing what we know best. … If we stop what we are doing, thousands of bats will die.’ ” More at AP, here.

I know some of you may be thinking, “Ugh. I really don’t like bats!” So I can’t leave this topic without saying a word about why bats are important.

Much of the information below applies to bats globally, not just in the US.

“Few of nature’s animals are as misunderstood as bats. We at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [FWS] want to set the record straight and help others understand the importance of bats. Though often feared and loathed as sinister creatures of the night, bats are vital to the health of our environment and our economy. …

“Bats play an essential role in pest control, pollinating plants and dispersing seeds. Recent studies estimate that bats eat enough pests to save more than $1 billion per year in crop damage and pesticide costs in the United States corn industry alone. Across all agricultural production, consumption of insect pests by bats results in a savings of more than $3 billion per year. While many bats eat insects, others feed on nectar and provide critical pollination for a variety of plants like peaches, cloves, bananas and agaves. In fact, bats are the sole pollinator for the agave plant, a key ingredient in tequila! A third bat food source is fruit, leading to yet another important role in the ecosystem – seed dispersal. Fruit-eating bats can account for as much as 95% of the seed dispersal responsible for early growth in recently cleared rainforests.

“Unfortunately, bats are declining across the globe. Many bats are needlessly killed because people do not understand the important role bats play in a healthy ecosystem. For bats that hibernate in caves, the need for winter shelter during hibernation puts them at another disadvantage. Human activity resulting in loss of habitat and disruptions during hibernation are detrimental. Making matters worse, a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome has claimed the lives of more than 5 million bats since its discovery in 2006 and has spread across North America at alarming rates. …

“Across the continent, we’re working with partners to protect bats, research treatments to halt the spread of white-nose syndrome and raise awareness about just how incredible, and vulnerable, bats are. More than 15 bat species are currently listed as federally endangered, threatened or under review in the candidate or petition process under the Endangered Species Act. … One recent study led to the discovery of a large summer roost for Indiana bats in Missouri — a single tree was providing refuge to more than 150 endangered Indiana bats!”

More at FWS, here.

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Beauty Salon Fights Waste

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 19, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: John Francis Peters/The Guardian.
Easton Basjec and Melissa Parker, founders of Scisters Salon & Apothecary in San Diego, California, on 18 March 2026. Together, they’re showing how salons can help the environment rather than contribute to waste.

My hairdresser is very thoughtful in her daily life about health and the environment. Of course she knows that there are an awful lot of unhealthful chemicals in the salon business. I wonder if the owner of her workplace would be up for making a switch like the San Diego salon in today’s story did.

Michaela Haas writes at the Guardian, “The first thing you notice when you walk into Scisters Salon & Apothecary is what isn’t there. No wall of glossy plastic bottles. … No sharp chemical tang or aerosol haze. The only trash can is a tiny basket that mostly collects coffee cups and gum wrappers clients bring from home.

“Instead, the shelves of this southern California salon are lined with large refill containers of shampoo and conditioner, houseplants dot the space, hair clippings are swept away for compost, and the air carries a trace of bergamot and vanilla.

” ‘It’s the smell people comment on straight away,’ says co-founder Melissa Parker. ‘They walk in and say: “It smells good in here.” ‘ …

“Parker and her co-founder Easton Basjec opened Scisters 15 years ago in a strip mall in La Mesa, about 9 miles east of San Diego. Since then, they’ve built it into one of the region’s most prominent low-waste salons, diverting, they say, up to 99% of its refuse from landfills.

“The beauty sector is a dirty business. Salons in North America send an estimated 63,000 lbs of hair to landfills every day, along with hundreds of tons of used foil and leftover hair dyes, according to Green Circle Salons, a Canadian recycling and recovery organization. On top of that, many products used in salons contain chemicals like formaldehyde and lye that carry potential health risks.

“But Parker and Bajsec have staked their business on the idea that beauty doesn’t have to come at the expense of the planet – or the people in the salon.

“The two business partners, both native to San Diego’s East county, met while working at another salon before attending business school together at a local community college. In 2010, they opened their own seven-chair salon and named it Scisters in a nod to their close friendship.

“For years, the business – which has seven employees and serves up to 22 customers a day – operated much like any other boutique salon, carrying more than 150 products from a large corporate brand and offering the full range of services. …

“The turning point came several years later, after Bajsec watched a documentary about the zero-waste movement and began questioning the beauty industry’s environmental footprint. Around the same time, Parker developed serious health problems that her doctors linked to prolonged exposure to salon chemicals.

“Several studies have found that hairdressers’ exposure to harmful chemicals such as formaldehyde, ammonia and sulfates puts them at a higher risk of asthma, skin conditions, reproductive illnesses and cancer. Eventually, a naturopath warned Parker she might have to stop working as a hairstylist, a prospect she found ‘terrifying.’

“But rather than walk away from the beauty business altogether, Parker and Bajsec set out to transform their salon.

“First they took a hard look at the services they provided and products they carried. They stopped offering perms because the treatments release formaldehyde, a carcinogen. And they decided to move away from the big-name shampoos and conditioners they’d been selling. …

” ‘We knew that if we switched to products that didn’t perform as well, we risked losing clients,’ Parker says.

“The pair enrolled in online formulation design courses and developed their own line. The process took years, Bajsec says. ‘Stability testing, packaging, preservatives – we had no idea how complex it was.’

“Element, which they launched in 2019, is made in a California lab and sold in refillable glass and aluminum containers. It boasts recognizable ingredients such as organic aloe, wheat protein and castor oil. Parker and Bajsec encourage customers to use the salon’s ‘jar library’ – a collection of donated and sanitized pasta sauce or salsa jars – to purchase refills. …

“ ‘I spoke with the local waste company and convinced them to accept hair scraps for composting,’ Bajsec says. … She and Parker started washing and recycling foils rather than sending them to the dump. Instead of waxing, Scisters began to offer sugaring – a hair-removal technique using a compostable paste made from sugar, water and lemon. … In the bathroom, customers use washable cloths rather than paper towels to dry their hands. Parker and Bajsec also rethought their energy use, switching to LED lights and installing Ecoheads sprayers for their shampoo bowls. …

“They found that some compromises are unavoidable. Scisters still offers hair bleaching, which releases ammonia, a chemical linked to respiratory and gastrointestinal irritation. … They mitigate the fume’s potential harms with ‘industrial air filtration, open doors, and air-purifying plants such as snake plants. …

“Parker and Bajsec ship the plastic waste they do produce – about two boxes a year, they say – along with excess hair dyes and broken stylist tools, to Green Circle Salons for specialized processing. Bajsec said they pay Green Circle $200 per box of waste – which she said she’s happy to do for the peace of mind knowing they’re not going straight to the dump.

“Though the transition to reducing their waste – namely developing the Element line – required an initial upfront investment, Parker says it has paid off. ‘Overall, it’s actually less expensive….

” ‘Going green has been the greatest thing we’ve done for our business financially,’ Parker says. ‘We accidentally created a point of differentiation.’

“Denise Baden, a professor of sustainable business at the University of Southampton … who has been working with salon owners for more than a decade to help them incorporate sustainable practices, says hairdressers are uniquely positioned to influence their communities. ‘The practices they model in the salon and the message they give to their clients about how to adopt ‘greener’ hair practice in their homes have the potential to make a world of difference.’ ”

It’s a big step, and probably one that needs the whole staff on board, but I imagine that there are customers who would seek out such salons.

More at the Guardian, here.

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Conservation Helps Butterflies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2026| 5 Comments »

Photo: Marco Ugarte/AP.
Every fall, millions of the butterflies travel nearly 3,000 miles from Canada, across the US and finally to western Mexico. :

Can I give up avocados? Will it make a dent in the loss of butterfly habitat in Mexico?

Well, I have cut back of what I buy in the supermarket, but so far, if you buy it, I’ll eat it. Not much of an activist, am I?

Oscar Lopez at the Guardian explains what’s happening in Mexico.

“The population of monarch butterflies in Mexico increased 64% this winter, compared with the same period in 2025, offering a glimmer of hope for an insect considered at risk of extinction.

“The figures, released [in March] by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico, showed that the area occupied by monarchs expanded to 2.93 hectares (7.24 acres) of forest from 1.79 hectares (4.42 acres) the previous winter, the largest coverage since 2018.

“ ‘The monarch butterfly is the symbol of the trilateral relationship between Mexico, the United States and Canada,’ Mexican environment minister Alicia Bárcena Ibarra said at a news conference. … ‘Its conservation is a collective commitment we must maintain for the future.’

“Every fall, tens of millions of the butterflies travel nearly 3,000 miles from Canada, across the US and finally to the forests of western Mexico. There, the orange insects cover entire trees and flutter through the air in spectacular fashion.

“But a combination of habitat loss from deforestation, climate crisis and the use of herbicides has seen their numbers plummet over the last 30 years.

“In the US, the increasing use of herbicides like glyphosate and dicamba has seen the amount of milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat, drop considerably, with butterfly numbers also plummeting as a result. …

“In Mexico, the spread of avocado farming in the state of Michoacán has seen vast swaths of forest lost to illegal logging, driven partly by organized crime groups who have infiltrated the highly profitable avocado trade.

“Compared with a peak of nearly 18.21 hectares (45 acres) in the winter of 1995, the area covered by monarchs in Mexico today is just a sliver, and well below the 6.07 hectares (15 acres) that scientists say are necessary for the species’ survival.

“The involvement of cartels in logging has at times become deadly: in 2020, Homero Gómez González, one of the best-known monarch butterfly conservators in Mexico, was found dead, with his family suspecting he was murdered by organized crime groups intent on clearing the monarch’s habitat.

“Still, conservation efforts have slowed logging in recent years: from a peak of nearly 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of forest in 2003-2004, just 2.55 hectares (6.3 acres) between February 2024 and February 2025 were affected.

“ ‘One of the greatest achievements of this work is that illegal logging in the core zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve has been virtually eradicated since 2008,’ María José Villanueva, WWF Mexico’s director, told reporters. ‘This means that the forests that represent the fundamental habitat for the monarch butterfly’s hibernation are being protected and conserved.’ ” More at the Guardian, here.

You know, in terms of making a dent, one thing that seems to have changed for good, at least in my area, is property owners’ hostility to milkweed. I know this didn’t happen overnight, but it really seems like overnight milkweed is actually featured in flower gardens and front-yard landscaping.

Anther hopeful example of a lot individuals doing a little.

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When a Critter Is Not Really Extinct

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 20, 2026| 2 Comments »

Photo: Carlos Bocos.
According to the Guardian, the pygmy long-fingered possum was last known to have lived in West Papua until about 6,000 years ago. 

It’s always good news to me when long-disappeared animals turn out not to be extinct — even if I never knew enough in the first place to be worried. I do know that many species are disappearing rapidly, so it’s comforting when scientists find that one they’d given up on is still around.

Adam Morton wrote about this at the Guardian recently. “Researchers led by the Australian scientist Tim Flannery have made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: that two charismatic marsupial species that had been thought extinct for 6,000 years are alive in rainforest in remote West Papua.

“The pair are rare examples of ‘Lazarus taxa’ – species that disappeared from fossil records in the distant past that are later found to have survived. [Do note the choice of the word “Lazurus”!]

“One of the species is a striped possum with an extraordinarily elongated fourth digit, twice as long as the rest of its fingers, that it uses to extract and feed on wood-boring insect larvae. Fossil records had previously indicated the species, known as the pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai), lived in Australia’s central Queensland region about 300,000 years ago but seemed to have vanished during the ice age. Before the recent discovery, it was last known to have lived in West Papua until about 6,000 years ago.

“The other is a ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis), which is closely related to the Australian greater glider but with unfurred ears and a strongly prehensile tail used for gripping. It was first described by the late Australian zoologist Ken Aplin, who pieced together fossil fragments found in West Papua late last century. Flannery’s research team found the species was still living in the rainforest and identified it as part of a newly described taxonomic group, or genus, of marsupials. …

“Flannery is best known as a climate campaigner and the author of the international bestselling The Weather Makers, but he made his name in science as a mammalogist and palaeontologist working in New Guinea and Pacific islands. He says the likelihood of finding one mammal species that had been thought gone for millennia was ‘almost zero.’ The chances of finding two? ‘It’s unprecedented and groundbreaking, really, to find two Lazarus taxa,’ Flannery says.

“The 70-year-old says the identification of a new genus, in particular, felt like a ‘lifetime achievement, shared with all our many other co-authors.’ …

“Both species live in lowland mountain forests on the sparsely populated Bird’s Head peninsula, also known as the Vogelkop, in the north-west of the Indonesian-controlled part of New Guinea. Their existence was established through photographs taken by local and independent researchers, fossil fragments and, in the case of the long-fingered possum, a museum specimen that was collected in 1992 but initially misidentified. …

“The long-fingered possum was photographed in 2022 by Carlos Bocos during a trip to the area by the organization mammalwatching.com. A ring-tailed glider was captured by Arman Muharmansyah by the side of a river in a forest belonging to a palm oil company in 2015, and photographed by Ichlas AlZaqie from Orangutan Foundation Indonesia.

“The discoveries are detailed in a special edition of a peer-reviewed journal published on Friday by the Australian Museum, edited by Flannery and the museum’s former chief scientist, Kristofer Helgen. …

“They are in part a result of Flannery’s repeated trips to the Vogelkop, where he works with Indigenous elders, researchers from the University of Papua, the Global Wildlife Fund and the Minderoo Foundation to protect forests from logging and leave them in the control of traditional owners. He says the research underscored the importance of preserving the area’s unique environment.

“David Lindenmayer, an ecologist and professor at the Australian National University who was not involved in the research, says … ‘It’s fantastic to see new species still being discovered and it shows the importance of some of these rainforests in very remote parts of the world where there hasn’t been much study in the past.’ …

“The ring-tailed glider is considered sacred by some Vogelkop clans, who believe it is a manifestation of ancestors’ spirits. Rika Korain, a local Maybrat woman and a research co-author, says the species could not have been identified without the help of traditional owners. ‘This connection has been essential,’ she says.

“Flannery says the discoveries are evidence the Vogelkop was once a part of the Australian continent that had later become part of New Guinea. The link is the subject of another paper in the journal, and may have wider implications. ‘Its forests may shelter yet more hidden relics of a past Australia,’ he says.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Saving a Nigerian River

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 19, 2026| 6 Comments »

Photo: Ogar Monday.
Unity High School students in Nigeria hold conservation signs and copies of the book The Loud Cry of the Ogun River.

It’s good to be reminded that many of our planet’s troubles can be alleviated by good education. It’s especially true when children grasp an idea and take it home. In my own family, I have seen the influence of environmentally oriented children. After a while, efforts to, say, compost food scraps become so embedded in family culture it’s hard to tell anymore if it’s parents or kids who are behind them.

Today we learn how students in Nigeria are influencing grownups to clean up a polluted river.

Ogar Monday reports at the Christian Science Monitor, “Ugonna Nkemjika is reading aloud from a storybook as a classroom of rapt children follows along. When she turns the page to an illustration of a river clogged with plastic bottles, a student’s hand shoots up.

“ ‘Yes, Blessing?’ Ms. Nkemjika says to the girl.

“ ‘Is this our river?’ the girl replies.

“Ms. Nkemjika nods, and the room falls silent. The students, who attend Catholic Comprehensive High School on the outskirts of Abeokuta in Nigeria’s southwestern Ogun state, have crossed the Ogun River countless times. Some have fetched water from the river; others have watched fishers cast their nets into it. Yet for many of the students, this is the first time they are being asked to reckon with the peril their river is in – and how they can help.

“Ms. Nkemjika is a volunteer with Project Conserve Ogun River (COR). The Loud Cry of Ogun River, the book open on the students’ desks, seeks to explain the river’s decline in terms children can absorb. Solomon Ekundayo, who founded Project COR and wrote the book, believes training adults to protect their natural resources is vital but that teaching children will yield results for generations to come.

“ ‘When children learn about conservation, they carry it home,’ Mr. Ekundayo says. ‘They question their parents. They challenge what feels normal. Over time, that knowledge becomes culture.’

“The Ogun is Nigeria’s fifth-longest river. It stretches nearly 480 kilometers (298 miles), beginning in Oyo state and running through the Ogun region before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean via the Lagos Lagoon. In addition to fishing, residents use the river for irrigating crops, drinking, and bathing. 

“As a child, Mr. Ekundayo regularly crossed the Ogun River with his mother, watching fishers ply their trade and kids play along its banks. But his understanding of conservation did not come until much later, after he began studying geology at Ahmadu Bello University and embarked on an externship involving freshwater conservation. As part of the program, supported by the National Geographic Society and the Nature Conservancy, he was asked to study a river system, and thought immediately of home.

“But when he returned to the Ogun River, he barely recognized it. The water was darker and filled with plastic waste and untreated sewage. Fishing activity had plummeted, and in some areas, the stench alone kept people away.

“ ‘I saw more plastic than fish,’ Mr. Ekundayo recalls. …

“In late 2022, Mr. Ekundayo launched Project COR. From the outset, he thought that river cleanups alone would not be enough. The deeper challenge, he believed, was environmental literacy. 

“ ‘People don’t connect dumping waste into the river with illness or flooding,’ he says. ‘No one ever explained it to them in a way they can understand.’

“So Mr. Ekundayo turned to storytelling. He drafted the text for The Loud Cry of Ogun River and worked with Project COR volunteers to illustrate it. Throughout the book, the river speaks. 

“ ‘I used to breathe the fresh air of mother nature,’ the river says in the expanded online version. …

“Child-friendly word puzzles reinforce key ideas, and concepts such as biodiversity are broken down into simple language. The book also weaves in Yoruba proverbs to pass conservation lessons on ‘in a familiar cultural way,’ Mr. Ekundayo says. At the end, the book contains a pledge for students to sign, committing to environmental protection.

“Saviour Iwezue, founder of Team Illuminate, an organization that is raising an army of young environmentalists across Nigeria, agrees with Project COR’s approach. She says many environmental campaigns fail because they overlook how behavior is formed.

“ ‘Children should not be seen only as future leaders, but as also capable of influencing what happens around them today,’ Ms. Iwezue explains. ‘If you want sustainable change, you change values,’ she adds. ‘And values are most malleable in childhood.’

“Teachers in Ogun state have noticed changes in students’ attitudes toward the river, thanks to Mr. Ekundayo’s book. …

“Says Ashade Adepeju, a teacher at Catholic Comprehensive High School, ‘Now they point at the illustrations and say, “That’s our bridge!” or “My father fishes there!” ‘

“Teenager Adebayo Firefunmi says he used to throw plastic pouches of water, commonly sold by Nigerian street vendors, into the river after drinking them. … ‘But when I learned what plastic does to the river, I felt bad.’ Now, he says, he discards trash responsibly and reminds his friends about the ‘three Rs of reduce, reuse, and recycle,’ when he sees them littering.

“Project COR’s efforts include the wider community, too. The group’s volunteers have run campaigns to get residents to stop dumping waste into the river, and have set up informal dump sites that are easily accessible by shoppers at the popular riverside market. The group also has supported school environmental clubs and youth volunteer groups, many led by students who now organize cleanups themselves.

“Mr. Ekundayo still crosses the Ogun River regularly. … On his most recent visit, he noticed something he hadn’t seen in years: fish swimming freely.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Fossil Fuels Have Health Costs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2026| 5 Comments »

Photo: Seed Global Health.
Dr. Vanessa Kerry (second from left) speaks at the Foreign Policy event at the World Health Assembly in Geneva in May 2025. Under her leadership, Seed Global Health has helped educate more than 45,000 doctors, nurses, and midwives in seven countries.

We humans are inconsistent critters. Today we’re panicking that the latest stupid war is messing up our oil markets (and I get it: we still need oil), but we seem to downplay just how bad oil really is for us.

At the environmental radio show Living on Earth, we learn what fossil fuels are actually doing to our health.

“The burning of fossil fuels is linked to some 300,000 deaths in America every year, not to mention the related carbon emissions that promote global warming. Dr. Vanessa Kerry directs Global Health and Climate Policy and teaches at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health. She is also the World Health Organization Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health and joins host Steve Curwood to discuss the major health costs and lost opportunities linked to pollution.

Steve Curwood
“There’s been a shift in messaging from environmental groups regarding the impact of air pollution on environmental health. Discuss what that means in terms of the effectiveness of helping people understand the impact of the environment on their daily lives.

Vanessa Kerry
“There’s a group that calls [climate change] the greatest hoax of our time, and there are others that are really trying to think strategically about what is happening on this earth in ways that aren’t just degrees Celsius. Health has been a really important piece — how extreme heat puts you at risk of flaring your diabetes or your lung disease or your heart disease. …

“But I think there’s another step that we can also take to help people really understand what we’re up against in climate change, which is that these health impacts that we’re seeing cost us money, because if you are too sick to go to work, or you can’t breathe, or your child has an asthma attack, and you can’t go to work because you’re taking them to hospital, that’s lost income. We know, for example, that the United States is losing 100 billion in productivity from extreme heat already now, and that’s supposed to go to 500 billion in the next 20 years. So these, it’s very real. And I think for those that can’t even think about health, understanding the economic bottom line and how it affects your pocket is something that I think is universally related and understood and very real.

Curwood
“If it’s that much of a health danger, climate change is almost an aside. …

Kerry
“Without question, the burning of fossil fuels is driving our risk through multiple pathways. Particulate matter is co-emitted with the greenhouse gasses and … not only do you breathe it in and can it cause issues in your lungs, but actually particulate matter can cross into your bloodstream, lead to increased risk of heart attacks, worsen your blood pressure, increased risk of strokes, cause all sorts of other problems. …

“Beyond the direct impacts of fossil fuels, people who are paying out of pocket for catastrophic health costs related to this are therefore losing access to nutrition, ability to send their children to school, access to other resources. … We know that we’re going to see upwards, you know, 44 million people are going to fall into poverty from the health impacts of climate change alone, according to the World Bank, in the next 20 years.

Curwood
“If air pollution has such a tremendous impact on us, health-wise and economically as well, why aren’t we talking about this more in America?

Kerry
“The Harvard School of Public Health and Department of Environmental Health is actually looking at that exact question. … And there’s lots of data out there that tells us that investments in health actually have higher returns.

Curwood
“To what extent are the massive impacts of air pollution on public health part of the reason that we have such a huge economic divide in this country? …

Kerry
“When you look at who lives in urban cities, in heat deserts, where it can be absolutely crippling to live in high heat, it’s often people of color or people in poverty. And so there’s a massive divide that is happening where we are exacerbating inequity, not just in the United States, but globally. …

Curwood
“The Heritage Foundation in Washington claims that climate change alarmism (quote, unquote) is discouraging families from having children. …

Kerry
“It’s really actually the perpetuation of misinformation. … How we communicate a conversation which is fact-based, scientific, ground in truth … is a really critical question.”

More at Living on Earth, here. And whiled we’re on the subjec t, I want to be sure everyone knows about the heeroes of Cancer Alley in Louisiana, who just dont’ care if fighting the Power is impaossible, They do it and succeed. (Click here.)

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The Disappearing Prairie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2026| 5 Comments »

Photo: Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The American bison is a well-loved symbol of the prairie, and for good reason. Bison provide important ecosystem services.

I have blogged several times about Frank and Deborah Popper’s insights on the loss of population in the industrial Midwest and the idea of returning former urban areas to prairie, a kind of Buffalo Commons. (See one post, here.) It’s an optimistic concept: Instead of crumbling under the loss of “the way things were,” we can learn not only to accept the change but feature it.

But what if the prairie itself is disappearing? The environmental radio show Living on Earth investigates the role of agribusiness.

“The American prairie is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, with numbers of species rivaling even a tropical rainforest. But today, just one percent of eastern tallgrass prairie remains, and western shortgrass prairie is disappearing at a rate of more than a million acres a year. Author Josephine Marcotty joins host Paloma Beltran to discuss her book Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie.

Paloma Beltran
How did the idea for Sea of Grass first come about?

Josephine Marcotty
Growing up, I really had little or no contact with the prairie because it was gone. … I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and the prairie was something I read about in books like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but not something that I had experienced. So it was only when I started exploring the prairie that was left and understanding what we had lost that inspired me to write, not only about agriculture, but about what we were losing by expanding agriculture in the Midwest.

Beltran
Can you describe the American prairie for us? You know, what does it feel like to visit such a place and what makes it special?

Marcotty
The tallgrass prairie, which is now almost completely gone, used to be an extraordinary place where grasses would be taller than a standing person, and in order to see over the top of them, you had to stand on top of a horse. It was a place where people could get lost, and often did in those tall grasses, or in the massive wetlands that used to occupy a third or 25% of the mid part of the country. It was an extraordinary place full of animals that we no longer have, wolves and bears and other carnivores, extraordinary birds. So I mean, the thing that I like about a prairie is the immense silence. All you hear is the sound of wind, and that enormous sense of space that you get, which is very similar to [being] out on a great lake or out on an ocean. …

Beltran
Let’s talk about one of the main characters in your book, the buffalo. …

Marcotty
They are what biologists call a keystone species on the prairie. They have been around for millions of years. … They were huge. And they shared the grasslands with giant sloths and other animals that you know have long gone. But over time, they became a key part of the grassland ecosystem. So they come through and they eat the grass short and that creates an environment that’s conducive to birds that like short grass, or insects that need short grass, and then they move on, and then the grass grows taller, and then that becomes an ecosystem for other animals that like taller grass. One of the things that they do is they wallow.

If you’ve ever been to Yellowstone National Park or any other park where you can see bison, you’ll see them roll over and just create these huge clouds of dust, and then when they leave, there’s a little wallow. Those wallows are really important for collecting water when it rains, and scientists have found that there’s unique species of animals and insects that will live in and around those wallows when they collect water. Bison, they carry seed across thousands, hundreds of miles when they eat the grass, and then they move the seed up to other parts of the of the grassland. …

Prairies create a whole universe of organisms around them, and that’s an excellent way of sequestering and processing carbon, of sequestering and processing nitrogen, both of which are very important for world health in terms of air pollution and in terms of climate change. The world’s grasslands contain more carbon than humans have released since the Industrial Revolution, more than the planet’s forests and atmosphere.

[But] we’re plowing up about a million acres a year, and that’s the equivalent of adding 11.2 million cars to the road every year. … For many, many decades, intensive agriculture stopped at around the 98th parallel because it was too dry in the West to really graze crops properly. And instead, that’s why we have cattle there. That’s because it was good country for cattle and bison. But through genetic technology, we now are creating seeds like for corn that is much more capable of withstanding severe weather, that can thrive in dry conditions. … And the profits from that are much greater than from growing cattle. So you can sell a piece of land that has been plowed for much higher price than you can sell it if it hasn’t been plowed. …

What’s driven the loss of grasslands … is just growing corn for our gas tanks.

More at LOE, here.

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Mardi Gras Regrets

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 21, 2026| 1 Comment »

Photo: Grounds Krewe.
In the interest of environmental protection, barriers were set up to block discarded Mardi Gras parade throws and party trash from going down storm drains.

New Orleans likes to have fun, and whether it’s a funeral with a brass band playing “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” men high-stepping in feathers to welcome the New Year (Mummers), or the abandon of Mardi Gras before the solemnity of Lent, parades produce litter. A lot of litter.

That’s why environmentally oriented New Orleanians have decided to do something about cleaning up.

As Jackie Delamatre writes at the New York Times, “In recent years, the city’s huge, weekslong party has been producing more waste than ever: an average of 1,123 tons per year for the last decade, according to the city’s Sanitation Department.

“ ‘It’s an environmental catastrophe,’ said Brett Davis, who runs a nonprofit group, Grounds Krewe, that’s trying to make Carnival greener.

“The New Orleans area is especially vulnerable to climate change because of hurricanes and coastal erosion. Yet, for weeks of ebullient parading, which culminate on Tuesday, those problems are forgotten as float riders fling plastic beads, cups, doubloons and foam footballs at teeming crowds. In the moment, these baubles can seem like treasures. Within days, though, what was caught, as well as the excess left on the streets or dangling from oak trees like Spanish moss, ends up in the trash.

“Now, a coalition of nonprofit organizations, city officials and scientists is trying to clean up the party. … It’s not just that all this party detritus is swelling landfills. A 2013 study found that more than 60 percent of Mardi Gras beads contained unsafe levels of lead. And in 2018, the city discovered 46 tons of beads clogging catch basins that are essential for clearing floodwaters. …

” ‘When I was a kid, we caught everything that came off the floats,’ Mr. Davis said. ‘There was a big hoopla about who was going to get it. Now it’s a carpet, a river of waste.’ …

“Mr. Davis came to believe that, by reusing beads, he was just ‘recirculating toxic, plastic junk no one wants,’ he said. Now, he has pivoted to waste prevention, building a catalog of sustainable throws.

“To date, he has sold more than $1 million of these festive but practical items, including jambalaya mix, native flower starter kits and plant-based glitter. He has also recruited a cadre of volunteers, from fifth graders to retirees, to help package the goods.”

Read at the Times, here, about scientists inventing sustainable Mardi Gras beads containing okra seeds. Imagine yourself cooking the okra you grow in your gumbo and reliving happy New Orleans memories.

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