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February 2020 Newsletter
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Manjulika Das, our Newsletter Curator and Editor, has joined the Sustainable Business Network as their Membership and Marketing Coordinator. We wish her the best. She will surely be missed by all!
I'm John Minkle, your new newsletter editor, and I'm looking forward to sharing with you the good news from planet Earth. It's so often lost in the din of mainstream noise, but so important in leading us to the bountiful, sustainable and peaceful world we all long for.
Our Blessed Unrest conference is drawing closer (April 18-19, 2020), and we have a wonderful group of speakers who will inspire you with the powerful effects of nature's solutions to eco-destruction and climate chaos. Solutions that you, your friends and neighbors can do wherever you live (see, for example, the new book by Doug Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope). People all over the world are at work saving their local life-support systems - everyone can join them!
And . . . we're pleased to announce Volume 3, Number 2, the sixth issue of our Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming. We continue to collect literature from across the sciences that demonstrates what thousands of regenerative land managers already know: Nature holds the solutions to our self-imposed ecology and climate woes - all we have to do is pay attention. And, of course, stop fighting with each other and act - for everyone's benefit.
Photo credit: Katarzyna Korobczuk, Unsplash
As always, check us out on Facebook to keep up with projects all over the world that seek to heal, revive, and celebrate life on Earth.
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In this Issue:
- Farmers Return To Ancient Method: Fighting Pests By Planting Wildflowers Instead of Using Chemicals
- What If We're Thinking About Agriculture All Wrong?
- Interview with George Scarlett
- Compendium Notes: Ongoing accumulation of plant diversity through habitat connectivity in an 18-year experiment
- Upcoming Events
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Farmers Return To Ancient Method:
Fighting Pests By Planting Wildflowers
Instead of Using Chemicals
Growing flower strips to encourage predators of pests to thrive. Photographer unknown.
Wildflowers have many ecological benefits. The absence of wildflowers creates barriers to pollinator migration and problems with genetic diversity within species. Conversely, more areas where wildflowers can thrive allow pollinators to disperse geographically. Biodiversity increases in areas where wildflowers exist, as more species are able to thrive and support the ecosystems they are part of.
Farmers are becoming increasingly aware of the damages pesticides have on healthy ecosystems and how using wildflowers to increase biodiversity can be an alternative to pesticides that has many other benefits as well.
Read the full article here. .
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What If We’re Thinking About Agriculture All Wrong?
New Forest Farm. Photo: Karen Vanek
Three annual plants provide 60% of the world's calories. Complex forest ecosystems have been destroyed to make way for these crops which must be replanted every year. Imagine if the perennial forests we have been destroying were the food producers we were looking for all along! Mark Shepard, author of Restoration Agriculture, pioneered tree-based agriculture in Wisconsin, and Marcia Mayer likewise revived the art and promise of acorns on Kea Island in Greece. In response to the question, “Will acorns and other forest fruits be the future of staple foods?,” Mayer said, “I think it would be folly if they weren’t.”
Read the full article here.
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George Scarlett: Teaching Young Kids about Climate Change
It is difficult to teach kids about climate change. George Scarlett is taking a different approach.
“So much of the conversation tells us that our fate and the future of a healthy planet requires that humans gain control, that nature is the victim,” he said in a recent interview for TuftsNow. Scarlett, a developmental psychologist and a Senior Lecturer & Tisch Fellow at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development goes on to say, “But nature is the solution.” Ecosystems work “to pull carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the ground.”
Photo: Kathleen Dooher
Scarlett mentions Biodiversity for a Livable Climate as an inspiration for this way of thinking, which seeks to “promote the power of the natural world to stabilize the climate and restore biodiversity to ecosystems worldwide.” Students from his class Children, Nature, and the Development of Earth Stewards. participated in Bio4Climate's 2018 conference on Climate, Biodiversity, and Survival: Listening to the Voices of Nature, and further inspired Scarlett to pursue ways to develop earth stewardship in young people. A most promising project is the website, Tomorrows's Earth Stewards, with articles on programs and methods being used around the world to support children’s and youth’s development as earth stewards. You can read about the inaugural edition of the website in Nick Woolf's recent interview with George for Eliot Pearson Voices. Future editions will add stunning artwork as well as more about programs working with urban children and youth.
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Compendium Notes
Here's another excerpt from our Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming.
The article below is from our sixth issue, January 2020, Vol. 3 No. 2 (pp. 26-29):
Ongoing accumulation of plant diversity through habitat connectivity in an 18-year experiment, Damschen et al. 2019
This long-term experiment measured the difference in colonization and extinction rates of connected habitat fragments versus isolated fragments. The connected fragments were linked by a narrow (150m by 25m) strip of habitat. These habitat corridors increased the biodiversity of connected fragments by 14% after 18 years compared to their isolated counterparts.
"In a large and well-replicated habitat fragmentation experiment, we find that annual colonization rates for 239 plant species in connected fragments are 5% higher and annual extinction rates 2% lower than in unconnected fragments. This has resulted in a steady, non-asymptotic increase in diversity, with nearly 14% more species in connected fragments after almost two decades. Our results show that the full biodiversity value of connectivity is much greater than previously estimated, cannot be effectively evaluated at short time scales, and can be maximized by connecting habitat sooner rather than later [Damschen 2019: 1479]"
The authors note that 70% of the world’s forest area is within 1 km of an edge - meaning Earth’s forests are very fragmented. They stress that connecting habitat fragments is critical to the success of habitat and biodiversity conservation.
"Conservation plans that ignore connectivity, such as plans that focus solely on habitat area, will leave unrealized the substantial, complementary, and persistent gains in biodiversity attributable specifically to landscape connectivity [Damschen 2019: 1480]."
Damschen, Ellen I., et al., 2019, Ongoing accumulation of plant diversity through habitat connectivity in an 18-year experiment, Science 365, https://science.sciencemag.org/
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Upcoming Events
Blessed Unrest: Growing a Future
for Life on Earth
An extraordinary conference at
Tufts University, Medford, MA
9am - 6pm, April 18-19, 2020
More information here . . .
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If you're interested in the integrity of organic food, check out this conference in lovely Hanover, NH. An incredible lineup of speakers and a passionate audience.
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Healing the World in 18 Months
Working on our selves, our communities,
and our places for massive change
A workshop with Bill Reed and Jim Newman on Saturday, March 28, 2020, 9 am - 3 pm Democracy Center, Cambridge, MA
More information here . . .
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Last But Not Least. . .
You're concerned about the current state of the Earth, and we are working for you, our young people, and the diverse web of life we all rely on.
Not to put too fine a point on it, we just want to say that we're a small non-profit doing BIG things.
Your support and involvement are very important! Please . . .
. . . and a monthly donation is easy on your budget but is a major contribution to our work.
Many thanks!
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