Minneapolis has a "Buckthorn Removal Singles Club"

When we moved into our present home 25+ years ago, I spent the better part of three summers grubbing out invasive buckthorn from the small woods behind the backyard (in subsequent years, native wildflowers have emerged in the same soil after the canopy-creating and water-stealing rascals were removed).  I later volunteered at the University of Wisconin Arboretum nearby for several buckthorn-removing projects.  So it makes perfect sense to me to see that in Minnesota, this worthwhile and productive activity has been turned into a social activity.

Cooke had recently noticed buckthorn overtaking a local park. It reminded him of how dating apps have invaded the social scene, choking out more natural methods of partnering up. What if he could entice singles to do habitat restoration with the prospect of meeting other eco-minded eligibles?..

The BRSC’s collectivist concept resonated in a post-ICE-resistance Minneapolis. It paired fun with education and do-gooderism, like other quirky, homegrown social events such as the Great Northern festival and the Wedge Cat Tour. Unlike bars and clubs, prowling with apex predators, the BRSC was a safe space where participants might unashamedly tuck pants into socks.

More information at the Minnesota Star Tribune (photo credit Richard Tsong-Taatarii)

"The Grab" is a quite remarkable documentary

This is an actual documentary about the real world, not a fictional docudrama about an alternative earth.  The trailer is fairly explanatory.  For those who want a single sentence rather than a 2-minute watch, this is about ultra-rich people and government entites gaining control of the food and water resources of the world.  

The scary part: the maneuvers being employed worldwide are legal.  For example, someone buys large holdings of land in Arizona, then puts down wells capable of withdrawing water from the aquifer at a rate of thousands of gallons per minute, uses the water to grow a crop, and send the crop to a waterless country elsewhere.  Arizona has no law forbidding the taking and using of their aquifer.  People want cropland - they go to Africa, bribe or strong-arm a tribal elder to take land that has since forever been held in common by the peoples there, and install megafarms, displacing the indigenous inhabitants to the sprawling cities.

Not fun to watch.

Creating ponds for wildlife

I don't have access to saltwater tidepools, so in my world the most fascinating microenvironment is that of a freshwater pond.  I was therefore delighted to read an article about a fellow who is turning his earthmoving skills into creating ponds de novo on the English countryside.

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 realises 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 – the excavator “becomes an extension of yourself, it just flows,” he says – 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.”

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.

Kudos to this fellow for shifting from creating golf courses to creating wildlife ponds.  And kudos to the farm family that has hired him to do the work.  Reminds me of the people who install wildlife guzzlers in the desert.

Santa Marta, Colombia.  An activist demonstrating during a conference aimed at transitioning away from fossil fuels.  Photograph: Iván Valencia/AP, via The Guardian.

Odd structure found "in the middle of nowhere"

I was delighted to discover what it is and was impressed to note how well-designed and constructed it is.  Read all about it at the whatisthisthing subreddit.

A new existential threat to lemurs

"...in their native Madagascar, the endangered animals are facing a growing threat: City-dwellers with cash to spare love to eat them. They say that the meat from fruit-eating lemur species tastes sweet and that consuming these primates promotes strength and good health. The meat from these tree-dwellers is valued for its cleanliness and “purity.” The startling revelation comes from the first-ever assessment of Madagascar’s urban lemur trade. Conducted over the past four years, it concludes that more than 10,000 lemurs were sold for pricey dishes across 17 cities in the country...

Though dining on wild species from African forests often evokes people trying to survive hunger in desperate situations, this new work suggests that people from a wealthier rung of society in Madagascar, those making perhaps thousands of U.S. dollars a year, are a distinct threat to these endangered primates...

All buyers and sellers included in the survey reported they were aware of the illegality of the trade and feared being caught, jailed or fined. But the economic benefits motivated their actions. They were also aware of how rare the animals were becoming. More than half of the interviewees said they expected to have fewer lemurs to trade in the future because of declining populations..."

An amazing walk down a driveway

Members of the Southern Wisconsin Butterfly Association report their butterfly sightings to a website that is open to the public for viewing.  A set of companion pages provide information on the characteristics of butterflies of the region.

The above report from this past week [2018] caught my eye because of the abundance and the diversity of butterflies observed in just a couple hours in the space of only a half-mile walk down a driveway in southwestern Wisconsin.

Seeing butterflies on a driveway (on the sand/gravel - not on the adjacent vegetation) is not an unexpected experience in itself.  The phenomenon is called "puddling" because after a summer rainshower butterflies gather at barren locations in search of minerals (especially sodium) and other trace nutrients that are not obtainable from the nectar sources in flowers.  I photographed this cluster a couple summers ago at Crex Meadows -

- and I had difficulty driving down the roads there without running into butterflies.

What amazed me about the list at the top of this post was not the number of butterflies, but the diversity of species present.  With the exception of the large fritillaries and the Red Admiral and a couple others, these are not long-distance migratory butterflies.  Most of them have a rather limited range for their lifetime, and since their needs are specific with regard to food plants for their larva, the implication is that there must be a wide range of microhabitats present close to this driveway (woods, fields, meadows, wetlands, prairie).

Marcie O'Connor maintains Prairie Haven, a repurposed 500-acre farm that she has been "unfarming" for years.  Unfarming does not mean neglecting - it refers to an active and labor-intensive process of letting the land revert back to its natural set of habitats, which requires attention to invasives and selective controlled mowing and seeding.  She describes the process at this link; elsewhere on the website she provides inventories of the incredible variety of butterflies, moths (82 species in one night), and other animals (and plants) they have observed at Prairie Haven.  The website is well worth a visit for those interested in conservation of natural resources and habitats.

Addendum 2025:

This is the butterfly count at Prairie Haven for one day in the midsummer of 2025.  Note that this is an official NABA count, so there are multiple observers likely stationed at or walking through different areas on the farm, but the variety of species is truly remarkable.

Spogomi explained

Spogomi, a Japanese litter-picking sport, has come to the UK. Invented in 2008, it was intended as a competition to encourage people to clean up public spaces. It is now played in schools across the country as people gamify collecting rubbish.

Sarah Parry, a 29-year-old doctor from Glasgow, is part of the reigning world champion team. The British team beat the Japanese in Tokyo in 2023, the last time the competition was held, when she and her two teammates managed to bag 61lbs (28kg) more rubbish than the host country.

The teams have 45 minutes to collect as much litter as possible, then 20 minutes to sort their litter. Teams are awarded points based on the type of litter and its recycling category...

Litter-picking may sound like a peaceful pursuit, but it can be strenuous.

“It is very physically difficult,” Parry said. “I have run 33 marathons and the sorest my legs have ever been is after winning the Spogomi World Cup two years ago.

“It’s a lot of very fast walking and you are carrying a lot of awkward-shaped items and using different muscle groups, and it’s heavy litter and it was very hot in Tokyo when we competed. We collected over 50kg so you have to carry that between you while power-walking through a busy urban area.”

It's rather sad that this sport exists.

Colorful "rocks" found in a Georgia yard

From the discussion thread at the whatsthisrock subreddit:

OP, that looks like cement-solidified-and-stabilized industrial waste, possibly from dye, glaze, or pigment manufacturing.

Going back to the 1950s, manufacturers have mixed their hazardous wastes with concrete to solidify and bind it to prevent it from migrating off-site or into waterways, and to allow it to be disposed of as solid waste. I can clearly see a thin layer of plain cement on the bottom and top of those pieces. Industrial dyes and pigments back in the 20th century contained manufacturing by-products like dioxins and toxic heavy metals used as colorants.

Please err on the side of safety and dispose of whatever you collected. It could be very old and full of bad stuff. If the in situ concrete is breaking up, perhaps call the county environmental agency to let them know.

The future of clean energy

Selections from a gallery of photos at The Atlantic showing the enormous scale of solar energy projects in China, which currently has 74% of all clean energy projects under construction worldwide.  Mountains, deserts, lakes, and industrial sites like the cattle feedlots are being covered with solar panels.  

Meanwhile the Trump administration is "Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry."

An argument that birders and bikers should be more like hunters

Excerpts from an op-ed in the Minnesota Star Tribune:

In a few weeks, some 200 Minnesota birders will flock to the Salt Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Lac qui Parle County near the South Dakota border... How much, you ask, will the birders pay to visit Salt Lake and similar important wildlife meccas?  Nothing. Nada. Zero.

Meanwhile, the wildlife photographer Bill Marchel of Brainerd — who is a birder by any definition — will need a virtual billfold full of licenses this fall to hunt on Salt Lake and nearby WMAs.  Required will be a $22 small game license, an $8.25 state duck stamp, a $25 federal duck stamp and an $8.25 pheasant stamp.  Salt Lake WMA’s 768 acres were, in fact, purchased by the Department of Natural Resources using money raised by hunting and fishing license sales... 

“Unfortunately,” Henderson said, “birders in Minnesota are so used to getting a free ride from habitat created by hunters that they’ve become accustomed to it. In every season other than fall, when hunters are on WMAs — which they’ve mostly paid for — birders are the biggest users of these areas."..

What does Johnson pay to ride on Minnesota’s more than 4,000 miles of paved bike trails?  Nothing. But, like a lot of bikers, he’d be glad to chip in.  “In fact, I believe I should help pay for the trails,” he said.

Minnesota bikers — like the state’s birders, and in fact hikers and others — can thank hunters and anglers for the nearly $700 million in Clean Water, Land and Legacy funds that have been spent building, improving and expanding the state’s parks and trails since 2010.

And birders can thank the same hunters and anglers for the $1.7 billion spent on Minnesota wildlife habitat and related projects in the same years...

As hunters and anglers continue to decline as a percentage of the state’s population, more Minnesotans of common interests are needed to join the conservation fight. 

Monarch dieoff caused by pesticides

The major risk to Monarchs is from habitat/food plant loss, but a recent article at the Xerces Society website emphasizes the dangers of pesticides.

On January 25, 2024, volunteers stumbled upon a devastating scene: scores of dead and dying monarch butterflies scattered across the lawn of a private property adjacent to the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary overwintering grove in California. While volunteers periodically encounter both live and the occasional dead monarch on the ground near the grove, several details about this incident struck them as unusual. 

Most notably, the dying butterflies were spasming, a symptom commonly observed in response to pesticide poisoning. The number of butterflies involved was also alarming, as approximately 200 out of the nearly 2,000 monarch butterflies overwintering in the sanctuary at the time were affected. While some of the monarchs were scattered across the lawn, the majority were grouped in several piles parallel to the edge of a nearby building. These grouped butterflies showed no signs of predation or rodent caching, suggesting that something else was responsible for their unusual positioning...

The analysis by USGS revealed that the monarchs had been exposed to a variety of pesticides including multiple insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides. On average, each butterfly contained residues of 7 different pesticides in their bodies. Three extremely toxic pyrethroid insecticides were each found at or near lethal levels in the tested butterflies...

Given the timing, location, and profile of pesticides detected, it is likely that the monarch’s deaths were caused by an unreported or untraceable pesticide application by a local resident or business.

The article concludes with some recommendations, including these:

Do not apply pesticides to open flowers or when monarchs and other pollinators are active.   

Keep in mind that organic pesticides are not necessarily safe for monarchs and other pollinators. For example, the organic pesticide, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), is highly toxic to monarchs and other butterflies. 

Remember that pesticides applied to impervious surfaces (such as driveways, walkways, patios, and building exteriors) can wash into vegetated areas and contaminate plants and soil.  

Be aware that pesticides used to control “household” pests such as termites, ants, cockroaches, and spiders can also be deadly to pollinators and other beneficial insects.

Last summer crews of workers went through our neighborhood, offering to spray homes and yards for "pests." I watched as they used long-handled sprayers to treat walls ten feet off the ground, to kill ???what. 

Speaking truth to power

Embedded above are the closing moments of an inauguration prayer directed toward Donald Trump, delivered by The Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde, who is the Episcopal bishop of Washington.

The full text of the sermon is here.

Following the sermon, the president attacked Budde online, labelling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a lengthy social media post early on Wednesday. He argued that she had “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and described her tone as “nasty”.

Trump characterized the service as “boring” and “uninspiring”, and asserted that Budde and her church “owe the public an apology.”

Trump's allies joined in the criticism -

The Georgia representative Mike Collins suggested on social media that Budde “should be added to the deportation list”, while the Fox News host Sean Hannity called her a “so-called Bishop” who turned the service into a “woke tirade” and described her prayer “disgraceful” and filled with “fearmongering and division”. 

Yes, because we should deport Americans who express standard Christian values and use them to criticize us. FFS.

Budde said an interview with the New York Times that she felt her sermon offered a “perspective that wasn’t getting a lot of airtime right now” and a perspective of Christianity “that has been kind of muted in the public arena”.

“To plea for mercy is actually a very humbling thing to do,” she said.

“I wasn’t demanding anything of him. I was pleading with him, like, can you see the humanity of these people?

Following her sermon and the Trump response, the Episcopal Church as a whole has issued a "Statement on Creation Care," urging adherence to the Paris Agreement.

I'll leave comments open for a while, but if the thread devolves into a flame war, I'll close it.

President Eisenhower's farewell address (1961)

YouTube link.

Wikipedia summary.

Best known for his precient comments on the military-industrial complex, the speech also cautions against mortgaging the future of our grandchildren for immediate gains:

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Fulltext here.

Related:  His Republican administration imposed a 91% marginal tax rate on millionaires, and in 1963 he opined that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary.

Reposted from 2019 because today I found a video in the National Archives discussing Eisenhower's role and intention in crafting the speech.  

Blood-red water in the mountains of Peru

The embedded image is a screencap from a title gif at The New York Times.

For thousands of years, the glaciers were replenished with ice in the winter. But they have shrunk by more than 40 percent since 1968, uncovering rocks that, when exposed to the elements, can trigger chemical reactions that leach toxic metals into the water and turn it acidic...

Deglaciation above Lake Shallap, the headwaters of Shallap River, has exposed more than 380 acres of the Chicama Formation, which is rich in pyrite, an iron sulfide. As meltwater trickles across the rocks, the pyrite transforms into iron hydroxide and sulfuric acid, a corrosive chemical that releases heavy metals from the rock into the meltwater, Dr. Loayza said.

Pure water has a neutral pH of 7; Lake Shallap now has a pH of less than 4, nearly as acidic as vinegar. It also contains lead, manganese, iron and zinc at levels that surpass environmental quality standards...

This process is causing major problems for fish, wildlife, vegetation, and humans living downhill from the drainage.  I wonder if similar events occurred during the centuries of Inca rule of this region.  The image of what appears to be blood cascading down from some mountain sites might have had a profound effect of native theology.

The source link has a long discussion of the situation and lots of photos.

Hurricane aftermath in a mountain forest

Posted for my family in Asheville, whose home avoided major damage, but whose community is devastated.

And I'll add this video of a lake covered with debris:

What happens to the ecosystem of a lake in that situation?  One would have to assume that there are no resources available to clean the lake by removing the debris, which will start to decay.  The light and oxygen levels in the water will be inadequate for aerobic life.  The stench will probably be incredible.  Recreation and tourism will be at a standstill for years.

Addendum:  Amazing improvement in the lake since I posted this, thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers.  See the video at the link in the comment by reader Marc B.

The Bann cross worked !

"The Bann Cross, which was placed in 1818 at the base of the Aletsch Glacier by Jesuit priests hoping to stop its advance. The glacier can now be seen at the left, in the far distance."

Image and text from a rather nice photoessay about shrinking Swiss glaciers in The New York Times.

Prairie strips on farmland

"The little tracts of wilderness grow on Maple Edge Farm in southwest Iowa, where the Bakehouse family cultivates 700 acres of corn, soybeans and alfalfa. Set against uniform rows of cropland, the scraps of land look like tiny Edens, colorful and frowzy. Purple bergamot and yellow coneflowers sway alongside big bluestem and other grasses, alive with birdsong and bees.

The Bakehouses planted the strips of wild land after floodwaters reduced many fields to moonscapes three years ago, prompting the family to embark on a once-unthinkable path.

They took nearly 11 acres of their fields out of crop production, fragments of farmland that ran alongside fields and in gullies. Instead of crops, they sowed native flowering plants and grasses, all species that once filled the prairie.

The restored swaths of land are called prairie strips, and they are part of a growing movement to reduce the environmental harms of farming and help draw down greenhouse gas emissions, while giving fauna a much-needed boost and helping to restore the land...

Researchers counted 586 acres of prairie strips on farmland across seven states in 2019. As of last year, they had spread to 14 states, filling 22,972 acres.

While the acreage accounts for a tiny fraction of the Midwest’s farm fields — Iowa alone has roughly 30 million acres of cropland — researchers said the strips had disproportionately positive impacts...

Soil erosion and surface runoff plummeted, as the prairie plants held soil in place and transpired water. Levels of nitrogen and phosphorus carried in surface runoff from adjacent cropland decreased by as much as 70 percent, absorbed instead by the prairie strips, resulting in less water contamination. The prairie strips created better conditions for helpful bacteria, resulting in dramatically lower levels of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas generated by chemical fertilizer, compared to cropland without prairie strips. The strips also drew twice as many native grassland birds and three times as many beneficial insects, compared to fields that had not been rewilded...

In late 2018, the prairie strips initiative got perhaps its biggest boost when it was included in the federal Conservation Reserve Program. That meant that farmland owners who converted some of their acreage to prairie strips could collect money from the federal government. According to the Agriculture Department, the average payout for prairie strips is $209 per acre each year...

Still, federal payments for prairie strips can end up being less than revenue from livestock or crops. An analysis from Iowa State University found that even with government help, prairie strips generally cost farmers around $64 an acre a year, because of factors such as cost of conversion and taxes..."

Embedded image cropped for size from the original at The New York Times.

Your biodegradable, renewable, sustainable T-shirt may start in an old-growth forest

"You might think that wearing a top made from wood pulp would give instant eco-credentials – it is renewable, biodegradable, and, having once been a tree, it has soaked up some carbon along the way. What’s more, it’s not plastic. This is why many brands are opting for viscose, Lycocell, acetate and modal – soft, silky, semi-synthetic fabrics made from tree-pulp – as an apparently more sustainable option... Except that the chances are that your wood-pulp top may not be so green...

In total, about 300m trees are logged globally each year to make viscose, sustainably or otherwise. These fabrics go by the rather geeky term, “man-made cellulosic fibres”, or MMCFs. Demand for viscose, the third most used fabric in fashion (after polyester and cotton), is expected to double over the next eight years, says Rycroft: “Many brands are looking for a substitute for polyester or virgin cotton, but it’s trading one environmental disaster for another.”

“Significant amounts” of viscose come from endangered forests in Brazil, Canada and Indonesia, says Rycroft. “We’ve also noted old-growth forests in Australia – koala habitats – disappearing into the viscose supply-chain. 

More information at The Guardian.