Costa Rica
USA Environmental Policy Opinion Landscape
It is political season, which can be overwhelming. But it has moments of inspiration. Karin Kirk at Yale Climate Connections summarizes the landscape of opinion on key environmental issues:
Six incredibly popular climate policies
The majority of registered U.S. voters support electrification and renewable energy.
A strong majority of registered voters support certain policies aimed at tackling climate change, according to recent research by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (the publisher of this site) and the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.
Here’s a summary of these results. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Snowy Egret
Granger Lake Willis Creek Park, TX
With Rewilding, Markets Are Not Everything, But Are A Key Ingredient
Rewilding can support the development of a wide range of nature-based businesses. NEIL ALDRIDGE
Places can have a particular taste, maybe one that is even iconic, and coffee was the obvious tool in our taste of place toolkit for decades. When it came time to focus on these products as our primary work we drew on some earlier experiments.
One was with honey and the other was with wine. All that was long before coming home to Costa Rica to launch Organikos.
Lunch provided with products from the Wild Côa Network during the ERN-EYR event in the Greater Côa Valley. The Wild Côa Network, which now comprises over 50 members, is driving the development of nature-based enterprise in and around Portugal’s Greater Côa Valley. NELLEKE DE WEERD
We are about to introduce two new products, and one has a story that mixes conservation and rewilding. So, in this story that follows we sense something akin to the Organikos products in our Authentica shops:
Nature-based business networks take off across Rewilding Europe landscapes
Helping nature heal can lead to prosperous local economies. Nature-based business networks are being developed in a growing number of our rewilding landscapes, enabling businesses and communities to benefit from nature recovery in a sustainable way. This, in turn, is generating more support for rewilding.
The network effect
Today, nature-based business networks are a growing feature of Rewilding Europe’s expanding portfolio of rewilding landscapes. These bring businesses together under a shared rewilding vision for the landscape, facilitating the creation of new tourism packages, helping to close gaps in tourism experiences, and creating new economic opportunities. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Barred Antshrike
Female
Morro do Aquário, Brazil
Bird of the Day: Long-eared Owl
Seewinkel National Park, Austria
Groundwater Springs & Habitat
A spring in a forest in Bavaria, Germany. IMAGEBROKER.COM GMBH & CO. KG / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Thanks to Yale e360 for publishing this article by Christian Schwägerl, whose influential book The Anthropocene was published one decade ago:
As World’s Springs Vanish, Ripple Effects Alter Ecosystems
Springs, which bring groundwater to the surface and support a host of unique species, are disappearing globally, victims of development and drought. Researchers are working to document and map these life-giving habitats in an effort to save them before they are gone.
A tufa spring in the Neumarkt region in Bavaria, Germany. CHRISTIAN SCHWÄGERL
Strong winds sweep over the Rhön, a vast region of rolling, forested hills and pastureland in central Germany. Undeterred, Stefan Zaenker, leading a group of four volunteers, runs through his checklist alongside a forest road. Are rubber boots disinfected to prevent introducing potentially harmful microorganisms into the wetland? Are the team app and GPS functioning correctly? Have enough flags been packed?
Left: A flag marks a helocrene spring in the Rhön region of Germany. Right: Stefan Zaenker takes a sample from a spring. CHRISTIAN SCHWÄGERL
When all is in order, Zaenker, 56, leads the group into a soggy alder forest. Its mission for the day: to locate and map as-yet-undiscovered springs and document any species inhabiting them.
A senior conservation official for the state of Hesse, Zaenker considers springs so important for human life and biodiversity that he — along with volunteers from the Hesse Association for Cave and Karst Research — spends much of his spare time conducting large-scale searches for them in the Rhön, which includes the German states of Bavaria, Thuringia, and Hesse, and in a nearby national park. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Coal Tit
Mt Falakro, Greece
The Garden Against Time, Reviewed
It always comes back to the commons. Thanks to Naomi Huffman at The Atlantic for bringing this book to our attention:
What Gardens of the Future Should Look Like
In her new book, Olivia Laing argues that the lives of all people are enriched with access to land they can use freely.
On a Sunday afternoon in May, the Elizabeth Street Garden, a serene public park wedged between Manhattan’s SoHo and Little Italy neighborhoods, was filled with people undeterred by the gray sky and spitting rain. Visitors sat at tables among fuchsia azaleas and yellow irises, and in the shade of loping old trees, talking, eating pizza, and drinking iced coffee. A painter faced an easel at the back of the garden and composed a watercolor. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Great Kiskadee
Beeville, TX
New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, Chestnuts & Apples
This spring, 160 chestnuts resulting from crosses made from large, standing American chestnut trees with natural blight resistance were planted at the botanic garden. Troy Thompson
Growing up in New England, apples and chestnuts were part of why autumn was my favorite season. During seven years living in walking distance of the Cornell orchards, apples remained a highlight of autumn well into adulthood. We have family who live in Boylston, so a visit to see this restoration project is now on my wish list. Thanks as always to Margaret Roach for all the gardens on that list:
At the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, in Boylston, Mass., the grafted heirloom apple trees are already big enough to bloom. But fruit isn’t expected for a few more years. New England Botanic Garden/Megan Stouffer
How Do You Restore a Chestnut Forest or an Apple Orchard? Very Slowly.
This botanic garden is determined to bring back the American chestnut tree and heirloom apples that taste like those grown 500 years ago. It won’t be easy.
“Explore what’s in bloom now,” exclaims a banner on the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill’s website. And, indeed, there is much to see. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Double-banded Sandgrouse
Namibia
Popcorn’s Origin Story
(Credit: vainillaychile/iStock via Getty Images Plus) The ancestor of maize was a grass called teosinte.
Since it is one of my go-to snacks, I frequently wonder about this, and appreciate the sleuthing by Sean Rafferty at SUNY Albany, and Discover magazine for publishing it:
Could a spill by the cook fire have been popcorn’s eureka moment?
You have to wonder how people originally figured out how to eat some foods that are beloved today. The cassava plant is toxic if not carefully processed through multiple steps. Yogurt is basically old milk that’s been around for a while and contaminated with bacteria. And who discovered that popcorn could be a toasty, tasty treat?
(Credit: Yeti studio/Shutterstock)
These kinds of food mysteries are pretty hard to solve. Archaeology depends on solid remains to figure out what happened in the past, especially for people who didn’t use any sort of writing. Unfortunately, most stuff people traditionally used made from wood, animal materials or cloth decays pretty quickly, and archaeologists like me never find it.
We have lots of evidence of hard stuff, such as pottery and stone tools, but softer things – such as leftovers from a meal – are much harder to find. Sometimes we get lucky, if softer stuff is found in very dry places that preserve it. Also, if stuff gets burned, it can last a very long time. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Streak-throated Woodpecker
Pullaveli Falls, Tamil Nadu
Really, SpaceX?
Starship, the upper stage of SpaceX’s new rocket, at its launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas. Conservationists are concerned with the environmental impact space operations have on the area.
After assurances about protecting the environment, damage was done. They declined responsibility (the words they used included “…it’s cool”). Not cool:
Wildlife Protections Take a Back Seat to SpaceX’s Ambitions
A New York Times investigation found that Elon Musk exploited federal agencies’ competing missions to achieve his goals for space travel.
As Elon Musk’s Starship — the largest rocket ever manufactured — successfully blasted toward the sky last month, the launch was hailed as a giant leap for SpaceX and the United States’ civilian space program.
Figure 9. LETE 1 showing both eggs with large holes/cracks and dried egg contents emerging on June 6, 2024.
Two hours later, once conditions were deemed safe, a team from SpaceX, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a conservation group began canvassing the fragile migratory bird habitat surrounding the launch site.
The impact was obvious.
The launch had unleashed an enormous burst of mud, stones and fiery debris across the public lands encircling Mr. Musk’s $3 billion space compound. Chunks of sheet metal and insulation were strewn across the sand flats on one side of a state park. Elsewhere, a small fire had ignited, leaving a charred patch of park grasslands — remnants from the blastoff that burned 7.5 million pounds of fuel.
Most disturbing to one member of the entourage was the yellow smear on the soil in the same spot that a bird’s nest lay the day before. None of the nine nests recorded by the nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program before the launch had survived intact.
Egg yolk now stained the ground. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Common Firecrest
Megisti Lavra, Greece
Celebrating Voices Of The Americas
We missed the 2024 INDIGENOUS VOICES OF THE AMERICAS –CELEBRATING THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN. Our calendars are already marked for next year, based on what we see from this year’s celebration:
Across the Western Hemisphere, thousands of Indigenous communities are sustaining traditional practices and contributing to a more equitable future. Today, these individuals and nations define who they are, through their own stories in their own words.
In 2024, Indigenous Voices of the Americas: Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian highlights living traditions of Indigenous peoples. At its core, the program honors contemporary and traditional creative expressions, celebrations, and community connections that feed new possibilities for Indigenous futures. The program is co-presented by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National Park Service.
We would not have known about it except for this article (thanks to National Public Radio, USA):
Bolivian women skateboarders — wearing traditional garb — demonstrate their skills on the half pipe. Ben de la Cruz/NPR
It’s a rather unusual skateboard lesson.
Little girls are lined up to learn to balance on a board on a half-pipe ramp. The teachers are young women from Bolivia, in their teens and 20s, wearing traditional garb as a tribute to female strength. Their outfits do not seem as if they are ideal for skateboarding: Each skateboarder wears a beribboned bowler hat and a poofy skirt. Among the eager disciples is Poppy Moore…
Bird of the Day: Keel-billed Toucan
Petén, Guatemala
The Market For Travel Books
photograph: getty images
A reminder of the reasons for travel writing‘s staying power:
Why travel guidebooks are not going anywhere
Despite predictions that the internet would kill them
They declared that it was dead—or, if it wasn’t dead yet, it soon would be. The cause of the malady was viral: first blogs, then influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Red Crossbill
White River Lake, TX
Organikos 