Life Saves the Planet Blog:
Animals Animals in relation to climate change are both affected parties and crucial contributors to ecosystem resilience. Climate change impacts animal populations through altered habitats and resource availability. Conversely, animals like beavers play vital roles in climate mitigation. By constructing dams, beavers enhance water retention, which benefits plant life, aiding in carbon sequestration and aquifer replenishment. Other species, such as barn swallows and monarch butterflies, are indicators of ecosystem health. Understanding and harnessing the symbiotic relationship between animals and their environments is key to fostering sustainable ecosystems that combat climate change.
Animals in relation to climate change are both affected parties and crucial contributors to ecosystem resilience. Climate change impacts animal populations through altered habitats and resource availability. Conversely, animals like beavers play vital roles in climate mitigation. By constructing dams, beavers enhance water retention, which benefits plant life, aiding in carbon sequestration and aquifer replenishment. Other species, such as barn swallows and monarch butterflies, are indicators of ecosystem health. Understanding and harnessing the symbiotic relationship between animals and their environments is key to fostering sustainable ecosystems that combat climate change.
Regenerative Grazing: A Compelling Climate Strategy
Most of what you hear climate activists talk about when it comes to beef or cows is methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas and cows emit methane as part of their digestion process. What you don’t hear is that this is primarily a problem of the commercial cattle industry and that nature has an ingenious…
Art for Nature
The first memories of my childhood that I can recall is that of me sitting on my bed with a blank sheet of paper and a box of crayons, making lines and circles and shapes of all kinds as the warm sunlight flooded in through the windows of the apartment. Painting was something I was…
Kachana Station: A Home for Donkey-Led Restoration
In northwestern Australia, far from roads or major cities, a herd of wild donkeys carries a valuable promise. This remote region is the Kimberley, home to Kachana Station, a family-owned holistically managed landscape. The Henggelers have overseen Kachana Station for decades, and their management techniques have brought benefits for the soil, wildlife, and local climate. …
Miyawaki Forests and the Meaning of Regeneration
As many people know through firsthand experience, we planted the Northeast’s first Miyawaki Forest last weekend. After several months of planning, discussion, and organization, we gathered in Danehy Park in North Cambridge to create the forest. This was the part I participated in, but like so much of our work at Biodiversity for a Livable…
Lessons from a Monarch Butterfly
What can we learn from the monarch butterfly? A few months ago, as the new year rolled in, I reflected on the way we humans use holidays and calendars to mark time’s passage, and how this might look to other creatures whose life span and sense of time is very different. For example, most monarch…
Barn Swallows and the Tyranny of Small Decisions
Barn Swallows, birds who eat insects as they scurry across the sky, are disappearing. This isn’t surprising, I suppose, given that they are among the 2.9 billion birds lost across species in the United States – representing one third of the bird numbers we had 50 years ago. What did surprise me is how we…
Beavers As Partners – Focus of the Valley Green Journal
FIX LINK AT BOTTOM Jan Lambert’s Quick Take: ‘Beavers As Partners’ is a community service focus of The Valley Green Journal in helping communities find non-lethal solutions to human-beaver conflicts, especially with the use of beaver deceiver flow devices to prevent flooding. Abstract: Beavers As Partners is a campaign to raise awareness of the critical…
Help Save Beavers!
Jan Lambert’s Quick Take: If you love beavers you need to meet Sharon Brown, a beaver advocate who raises orphaned beaver kits as their “mother” and even takes her babies for swimming lessons! Abstract: Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife (BWW) is an educational nonprofit that has been helping people enjoy the great benefits of coexistence with…
State-of-the-Art Beaver Deceiver™ in Marlboro VT
FIX LINK Jan Lambert’s Quick Take: Beavers are nature’s water engineers; they create and preserve wetlands vital to ecosystems. When beavers and human activities conflict with each other, there can be a win-win solution for both the beavers and the humans! Be sure to check out Skip’s website! Abstract: A win-win solution to human-beaver conflict…
Why everyone – vegetarians and vegans included – should be passionate about Holistic Planned Grazing
Happy New Year! Over the holiday season, I had the luxury of sharing many meals with family and friends, including latkes and apple sauce; Tofurkey and yams; and locally caught shrimp and farm-raised oysters. In discussing my work, I was asked several times, “But how can you not eat meat and be so passionate about Holistic…