Osero Sopia Bird Camp, Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
Insect Respect
Agronomist Caterina Luppa watches black soldier flies reproduce at Bugslife, a firm in Perugia, Italy, that is turning fly larvae into animal feed. LUIGI AVANTAGGIATO
We have featured this subject a few times over the years, especially once we started showcasing one such product. I acknowledge I am still not a total convert to an insect-centric diet, but every story like this draws me in, however slowly:
Edible Insects: In Europe, a Growing Push for Bug-Based Food
Marco Meneguz, an entomologist with BEF Biosystems in Casalnoceto, monitors black soldier flies as they mate. During mating, “the males gather in a courtship ritual characterized by fights and competitive displays,” he says. The blue light helps the flies see each other better. LUIGI AVANTAGGIATO
To rein in emissions, the E.U. is looking to insects as an alternate source of protein for livestock and people and is easing regulations and subsidizing makers of insect-derived food. In a photo essay, Luigi Avantaggiato explores the emerging bug food industry in northern Italy.
The European Union recognizes it has a meat problem. The bloc has no easy way to curb the climate impact of its livestock, which eat soybeans grown on deforested lands and belch heat-trapping gas. According to one estimate, Europe’s farm animals have a bigger carbon footprint than its cars.
Trent Barber, a technician at BEF Biosystems, vacuums up 200 pounds of fly larvae that are plump after two weeks of feeding on food scraps. The remaining food waste, now rich in excrement, will be sold as compost to farms. LUIGI AVANTAGGIATO
In this photo essay, Luigi Avantaggiato explores an unusual solution to this dilemma that is now gaining traction — feeding insects to livestock and, potentially, people. The European Commission says that insects could replace soy-based animal feed, helping to slow deforestation, or even supply an alternate source of protein for humans. Studies show that insects can furnish the same amount of protein as livestock while using as little as 10 percent of the land and producing as little as 1 percent of the emissions. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-capped Vireo
The Nature Conservancy’s Love Creek Preserve, Bandera County, TX
Basketry, Craft & Art
A coiled basket by Louisa Keyser (Dat So La Lee) of the Washoe people of Nevada, titled “Our Ancestors Were Great Hunters” (1905), with an oval degikup form, was made for the curio market. Her work comes to the Independent 20th Century fair this week. Donald Ellis Gallery
When craftwork is treated as artwork, valorization is the word that comes to mind. Not all craft is art, nor need it be; but we applaud the impetus of the Independent 20th Century fair. If this is your interest, and you are in New York City, the fair is open:
The Artistry of Her Baskets Is Complex. So Is the Story Around Them.
A couple recognized the Washoe weaver Louisa Keyser’s prodigious talent and spun myths to promote it. But her fortitude shines in work that today can be seen in museums and at the Independent 20th Century fair.
A portrait of Louisa Keyser, the most famous Washoe basket maker, who helped transform a utilitarian craft to fine art and was promoted at the time as a “princess” by a couple who sold her work. Donald Ellis Gallery
The Native American baskets sold in the early 1900s out of Abe Cohn’s Emporium, a men’s clothing store in Carson City, Nev., were exceptional. They were woven by Dat So La Lee, said to be a “princess” from the nearby Washoe people whose royal status permitted her alone to utilize a special weaving style.
The truth was less exciting. Dat So La Lee preferred her English name, Louisa Keyser. She was a Washoe woman, but the tales Cohn and his wife, Amy, spun about her — her esteemed heritage, her meeting with the Civil War general John C. Frémont — were myths. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Helmeted Guineafowl
Samburu Nature Reserve, Rift Valley, Kenya
Not Just Not A Good Look
By identifying the malpractice of a group of businesses, this report highlights the concept of perverse incentives. It looks bad, and it seems fair to say that it is bad:
PRIVATE EQUITY PROFITS FROM DISASTER at the Expense of Workers, Communities, and Climate
Executive Summary
As climate change accelerates and impacts more communities around the world, the need for skilled labor in the disaster restoration industry grows. Increasingly, private equity firms seeking high returns for themselves have come to dominate the disaster recovery sector, reducing workplace standards, overcharging communities and exploiting disasters to extract fees and profits without regard to the workers and communities harmed by their practices. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Chestnut-bellied Rock Thrush
male
Kumaon Hills, Uttarakhand
Fungi & Fireproofing
Mycologist Zach Hedstrom sprays a spore-infused liquid to inoculate debris from forest thinning.
Inside Boulder Mushroom’s laboratory, a refrigerator houses an array of agar plates containing diverse mycelium cultures.
We have paid attention to mycological wonders for long enough that surprises are rare; but they happen. Stephen Robert Miller’s reporting, with photography by Jimena Peck were published in the Washington Post and came to our attention by way of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, which is where you can read the entire article:
How mushrooms can prevent megafires
Thinning forests to prevent fires produces a lot of sticks and other debris, which also pose a fire risk. In Colorado and elsewhere, scientists are using fungi to turn those trimmings into soil.
Overgrown stands of lodgepole pine are a risk for megafires. Thinning the stands simulates the effects of a natural fire but also generates a large amount of biomass, called “slash,” which can also fuel forest fires.
If you’ve gone walking in the woods out West lately, you might have encountered a pile of sticks. Or perhaps hundreds of them, heaped as high as your head and strewn about the forest like Viking funeral pyres awaiting a flame.
These slash piles are an increasingly common sight in the American West, as land managers work to thin out unnaturally dense sections of forests — the result of a commitment to fire suppression that has inadvertently increased the risk of devastating megafires. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Yellow-naped Parrot
ChatGPT & Whale Chat
Sperm whales communicate via clicks, which they also use to locate prey in the dark. Illustration by Sophy Hollington
Thanks to Elizabeth Kolbert for this:
Researchers believe that artificial intelligence may allow us to speak to other species.
David Gruber began his almost impossibly varied career studying bluestriped grunt fish off the coast of Belize. He was an undergraduate, and his job was to track the fish at night. He navigated by the stars and slept in a tent on the beach. “It was a dream,” he recalled recently. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was performing what I thought a marine biologist would do.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Senegal Coucal in Flight
Sanaga River, Cameroon
Turmeric, Biopiracy & Fighting For What’s Right
Agung Parameswara/Getty Images
During our seven years living in India, plenty of posts on this platform referred to turmeric due to its culinary value. Its value to our wellbeing is a more recent focus of attention, and we appreciate the fight to keep it accessible to all:
How one man fought a patent war over turmeric
Back in the 1990s, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar was in his office in New Delhi when he came across a puzzling story in the newspaper. Some university scientists in the U.S. had apparently filed a patent for using turmeric to help heal wounds. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Bolivian Spinetail
Sacambaya River, La Paz, Bolivia
Museum Loot Going Home
Earl Stephens, who goes by the Nisga’a cultural name Chief Ni’is Joohl, center left, and members of a delegation from the Nisga’a nation pose beside a 36-foot tall memorial pole during a visit to the National Museum of Scotland on Monday. Andrew Milligan/Press Association, via Associated Press
The legitimacy of museums possessing artifacts from other cultures is not inherently dubious, but as the Parthenon marbles example has demonstrated, there are plenty of reasonable questions. This story about a museum’s move to the better side of history is worth a read:
The pole is soon to be moved to British Columbia on the west coast of Canada. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Totem Pole Taken 94 Years Ago Begins 4,000-Mile Journey Home
The 36-foot tall memorial pole has spent almost a century in a Scottish museum. Now it will be returned to the Nisga’a Nation in Canada.
Almost 100 years ago, a hand-carved totem pole was cut down in the Nass Valley in the northwest of Canada’s British Columbia.
The 36-foot tall pole had been carved from red cedar in the 1860s to honor Ts’wawit, a warrior from the Indigenous Nisga’a Nation, who was next in line to become chief before he was killed in conflict. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Ludwig’s Bustard
Namibia
Migratory Birds Across The Americas
I rarely read comments from other readers on articles, but for some reason I did on this one; they are almost as interesting as the article itself:
For Migrating Birds, It’s the Flight of Their Lives
America’s birds are in trouble. Since 1970, nearly 3 billion birds have vanished from the skies over North America. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Yellow-browed Tit
Kumaon Hills, Uttarakhand
Credibility & Carbon Credits
Sapo National Park in Liberia. Under a deal now being negotiated, Blue Carbon would sell carbon credits from the park. EVAN BOWEN-JONES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
For the decade during which the market for carbon credits has been on our radar, concerns about credibility have been lurking. Now this:
In New Scramble for Africa, an Arab Sheikh Is Taking the Lead
A company established by a Dubai sheikh is finalizing agreements with African nations to manage vast tracts of their forests and sell the carbon credits. Critics are concerned the deals will not benefit Africans and will just help foreign governments perpetuate high emissions.
A forest in Mbire, Zimbabwe that is generating carbon credits. Blue Carbon has signed a memorandum of understanding with Zimbabwe to sell carbon credits from its woodlands. CYNTHIA R. MATONHODZE / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
A prominent sheikh in the oil-rich Gulf state hosting this year’s UN climate negotiations, COP28, is heading a new rush to capture and sell carbon credits by managing tens of millions of acres of forests across Africa. Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a member of the royal family of Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), wants to sell those credits to rich governments in the Gulf and elsewhere, so they can offset their carbon emissions to help them meet their carbon pledges under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black Sawwing
Yaoundé, Cameroon
The Price Is Not Right For Groundwater
Not all natural resource utilization problems are simply a matter of pricing the resource correctly. But clearly it matters. Water hogging is apparently more widespread than we thought, and the price is clearly not right on this resource. This first in a series on the causes and consequences of disappearing water, by Mira Rojanasakul, Christopher Flavelle, Blacki Migliozzi and Eli Murray, has excellent interactive features to help understand these challenges:
Center-pivot irrigation. Farming is a major groundwater user. Loren Elliott for The New York Times
America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow
Overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide, a New York Times data investigation revealed.
GLOBAL WARMING HAS FOCUSED concern on land and sky as soaring temperatures intensify hurricanes, droughts and wildfires. But another climate crisis is unfolding, underfoot and out of view.
Most American communities also rely on wells for tap water. Rebecca Noble for The New York Times
Many of the aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation’s water systems, and which have transformed vast stretches of America into some of the world’s most bountiful farmland, are being severely depleted. These declines are threatening irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a whole.
The New York Times conducted a months-long examination of groundwater depletion, interviewing more than 100 experts, traveling the country and creating a comprehensive database using millions of readings from monitoring sites. Continue reading
Organikos 