Oxley Creek Common, Brisbane
Under A White Sky
The continuing struggle to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes system has included solutions ranging from electrified water barriers to thrillingly impractical suggestions like stopping them with flying knives. Nerissa Michaels/Illinois River Biological Station, via Detroit Free Press
We have not featured any of her work since this review of H is for Hawk but we are happy to see her in print again with this review:
Can We Patch Up the Natural World We’ve Hurt?
UNDER A WHITE SKY
The Nature of the Future
By Elizabeth KolbertA few years ago YouTube recommended I watch a video with the word “carpocalypse” in its title. I clicked the link — of course I did — and stared in awe at what resembled a mash-up of a video game, nature documentary and war movie. I saw a river full of fish leaping from the water like chaotic piscine fireworks and men in speedboats yelling and holding out nets to catch them as if they were wet and weighty butterflies. Fish hitting people in the face, fish landing in boats, fish flapping between people’s feet in a mess of slime and blood. Continue reading
Costa Rica
Bird of the Day: Eastern Meadowlark
Pygmy Hogs In Assam
The pygmy hog is still endangered but a reintroduction programme in Assam, India, has given it a greater chance of survival
A highlight of seven years living and working in India was a brief visit to Assam to review the land holdings of an investor who was considering having us assist with the development of a conservation-focused lodge. I did not know about this endangered species at the time, but its current status brings a good vibe to my day for more than one reason:
Pig in clover: how the world’s smallest wild hog was saved from extinction
A pygmy hog enters the wild from the release enclosure in Manas reserve. Photograph: Goutam Narayan
The greyish brown pygmy hog (Porcula salvania), with its sparse hair and a streamlined body that is about the size of a cat’s, is the smallest wild pig in the world, and also one of its rarest, appearing on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list as endangered. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Green-throated Mountain-Gem
Santa Rosalía, Guatemala
Promoting PIMBYism
A good method for converting so-called NIMBY opponents of turbines and other renewable-energy infrastructure would be to give locals a stake in the enterprise’s economic success. Photograph by Simon Dawson / Bloomberg / Getty
“No vote for wind power advocates” – wind power opponents’ election poster for the 2017 parliamentary elections. Source: windwahn.com
We have giant turbines along the ridge at the top of the mountain where we live. I enjoy looking at them, not because they are pretty, or perfect, but because they represent progress. I never had the NIMBY inclination. If the turbines were in my face all day, every day, or if I had some sense that they were affecting my property value, perhaps I would feel differently. I had thought of the acronym PIMBY, thanks to those turbines uphill from us, before reading this, but am glad to see it is a thing. Thanks, as always, to Bill McKibben for his newsletter’s role in getting us to see further down the road:
The Shift to Renewable Energy Can Give More Power to the People
The pandemic has driven a lot of people outdoors: reports show that park visits are up around the world and parking lots at hiking trails are packed. That’s understandable—by now you’d need to chop down a sizable forest to print out the studies showing that time in nature reduces stress, cuts healing times, and enhances the functioning of the immune system. As Sadie Dingfelder wrote in the Washington Post in December, “I’ve always found it relaxing and rejuvenating to be outdoors, but the anxiety and isolation of the pandemic, the uncertainty of civil unrest and, oh, I don’t know, the potential crumbling of American democracy have made me crave nature like a drug.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-and-rufous Flycatcher
Ooty, Tamil Nadu
Lemons To Lemonade, African Locust Edition
A chicken tucks into crushed desert locusts at a farm near the town of Rumuruti, Kenya
The Guardian shares a photo documentary of a lemons-to-lemonade story with locusts as the lemons. Click the title below, or any image, to go to the story:
Kenya is facing its worst plagues of locusts in decades. Since December 2019, huge swarms have caused devastation across east Africa
Turning plagues of locusts into chicken feed – in pictures
The biggest swarms of the insects in a generation have devastated crops and grazing across Africa but are now being turned into sustainable, high-protein animal fodder and fertiliser
A net is used to harvest desert locusts near Rumuruti, Kenya. A 100 sq km swarm can eat what 3.5 million people would eat in a day
Bird of the Day: Rose-throated Becard
female – Macaw Lodge, Costa Rica
Food Giants Exploiting Addictions
Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, by Michael Moss. Random House
I have made progress, but not enough, changing my diet. Reducing meat consumption by more than half was challenging, but with more vegetarian restaurants and more vegetarian recipes being shared, tasty meatless is easier. I have succeeded more at eliminating processed foods than I have in becoming vegetarian, with maybe 80% processed foods eliminated. But on occasion I have slipped, put something crunchy in my mouth, and end up feeling like an addict on a binge. Barbara J. King, last seen in our pages nearly seven years ago, graces National Public Radio (USA) with another review, There Are So Many Flavors Of Potato Chips; ‘Hooked’ Looks At Why, that helps me understand the challenge I am up against:
Around the corner from where I live in small-town Virginia is a Kroger’s grocery store. According to its website, the store sells 20 flavors of Lay’s potato chips: classic, wavy, wavy ranch, baked, barbecue, sour cream and onion, salt and vinegar, lightly salted, cheddar and sour cream, limon-flavored, honey barbecue, sweet southern heat, dill pickle, flamin’ hot, flamin’ hot and dill pickle, cheddar jalapeno, jalapeno ranch, lime and jalapeno, kettle-cooked, and kettle-cooked mesquite barbecue. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Red-legged Honeycreeper
Costa Rica
Todo Bajo Del Sol, Reckoning With Mass Tourism
One of the early images in Todo Bajo el Sol shows a group of fishermen hauling their boat on to a beach that will eventually be given over to the towels and umbrellas of foreign holidaymakers. Photograph: Penguin/Random House
Thanks to the Guardian for this review. I had not even heard of this novel yet, let alone had a chance to read it. But since my last 25 years have been dedicated to helping places avoid the pitfalls of mass tourism, I look forward to reading it:
Todo Bajo el Sol: Spanish graphic novel explores history of mass tourism
Ana Penyas’s book tells story of three generations of a family whose lives reflect Spain’s socioeconomic transformation
Alfonso, one of the novel’s protagonists, is rewarded for his hard work as a waiter. The box contains a souvenir plate that reappears at the end of the book. Photograph: Penguin/Random House
The opening pages of a new graphic novel charting Spain’s long, profitable and often counter-productive relationship with tourism show four fishermen hauling their boat on to a Mediterranean beach already in the early stages of occupation by the new breed of foreign holidaymakers.
While the fishermen, rendered in monochrome to reflect their looming obsolescence, heave their boat ashore, a tourist, drawn in colour, sits beneath the shade of his beach umbrella and prepares to study a guidebook produced by the Franco regime. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Guatemalan Tyrannulet
Guatemala Highlands
Noble Planta, Partnership In Plants
Listening to your plants may be easier than listening to your loved ones, “Noble Planta,” a short documentary about a long partnership, suggests.
I saw the name Markovic, and was intrigued. It has the ring of being from somewhere in the former Yugoslavia. I started the video, and was as certain as could be without further investigation–the accent sounds like those from my years working in Croatia and Montenegro. But then I got pulled in to the story of this short video, and can tell you it is a short amount of time abundantly well spent. If you know any people, especially couples, who practice/share a passion for plants–their growing needs, the desire to promote them to others–you might want to take a look at the video above, and maybe share it with them. Or if you know any couples in business together, also, maybe share it. Read on to understand:
Caring for Plants, and a Marriage, in “Noble Planta”
By
Film by
The inside of Noble Planta, Ched and Maria Markovic’s shop on Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, is a green world, full of leafy, spiky vegetation. The pandemic seems to be good for business. Matthew Beck, who directed the short documentary “Noble Planta,” about the Markovics’ relationship with each other and their photosynthetic merchandise, recently visited. “Ched mentioned that people are spending so much time inside right now that going to get a plant seems a little more important at the moment, in an emotional or a spiritual way,” he said. In Beck’s film, Ched often talks about the care and feeding of plants as an almost mystical pursuit. But the documentary is about something more complex than the soulful rewards of gardening. While Ched extols succulents and waxes poetic about soil, his wife, Maria, can be seen glowering from behind a layer of fronds, a scathing look on her face. When Ched delivers an especially enthusiastic speech about plants’ sending messages to their keepers, she finally pipes up with a simple “B.S.!” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Wompoo Fruit-dove
Kuranda, Tablelands
Iconic Geological Formations
Old Harry Rocks in Dorset. Photograph: Adam Wearing/Getty Images/500px
Thanks to the Guardian for this long read on rocks and the people who dedicate their lives to studying them, and informing we lay people about them:
Rock of ages: how chalk made England
Swathes of England’s landscape were shaped by the immense block of chalk that has lain beneath it for 100 million years. For a long time, even geologists paid it little heed – but now its secrets and symbolism are being revealed
The Seven Sisters cliffs in East Sussex, England. Photograph: eye35.pix/Alamy
On the British Geological Survey’s map, chalk is represented by a swathe of pale, limey green that begins on the east coast of Yorkshire and curves in a sinuous green sweep down the east coast, breaking off where the Wash nibbles inland. In the south, the chalk centres on Salisbury Plain, radiating out in four great ridges: heading west, the Dorset Downs; heading east, the North Downs, the South Downs and the Chilterns. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Scarlet-rumped Tanager
female – Macaw Lodge, Costa Rica
Ancient Trees & Magnetic Field
Radiocarbon from a 42,000-year-old kauri tree in New Zealand helped unravel Earth’s last magnetic upheaval. JONATHAN PALMER
Science magazine is accessible for most lay readers, even if their articles occasionally include a word we have never heard of, such as paleomagnetist:
Ancient kauri trees capture last collapse of Earth’s magnetic field
Several years ago, workers breaking ground for a power plant in New Zealand unearthed a record of a lost time: a 60-ton trunk from a kauri tree, the largest tree species in New Zealand. The tree, which grew 42,000 years ago, was preserved in a bog and its rings spanned 1700 years, capturing a tumultuous time when the world was turned upside down—at least magnetically speaking. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Least Sandpiper
La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico
What BlackRock Really Means
Click on text above to go to the article at Politico
BlackRock, shmackrock. Now we can see clearly that advocating for market solutions, BlackRock’s CEO just meant that he did not want any public solutions to the climate crisis, because those would be inconvenient for him and his shareholders. Phooey on that. We should have been more skeptical, rather than optimistic, about what the financial titan meant all along, which Bill McKibben hinted at a couple months ago:
Annals of a Warming Planet
On Climate, Wall Street Out-Orwells Orwell
It was likely too much to hope that the Biden Administration, as it tries to get a handle on climate change, might find some help from Wall Street. Instead, last week, we saw financial heavyweights turn in a performance so rigid and so short-sighted that it makes one wonder whether capitalism in anything resembling its current form can, or should, survive. Continue reading
