Leptonycteris curasoae yerbabuena, Lesser Long-Nosed Bat, the USDA’s July 2006 “Pollinator of the Month”, visiting Carnegiea gigantea, Saguaro cactus. Each Saguaro flower blooms just one night. The shape of the flower and the muzzle of the bat have co-evolved to adapt to each other. The Lesser Long-Nosed Bat is an endangered species.
Source: Bat Pollination
Photo by Merlin D. Tuttle, Bat Conservation International.

This past Monday, July 17, the USDA Forest Service launched a new section on their Web site:

Celebrating Wildflowers is a season-long series of events for people of all ages who love our native plants. Activities include wildflower walks, talks, festivals, slide programs, coloring contests, planting events, and seminars that emphasize the values and conservation of native plants. – Home Page

USDA Forest Service botanists and other specialists around the country have contributed to the editing, content, construction, and maintenance of this website. The site is dedicated to the enjoyment of the thousands of wildflowers growing on our national forests and grasslands, and to educating the public about the many values of native plants. – About Us

I haven’t had time to but glance over the material. The site is visually attractive and very well organized, encouraging exploration and browsing. For example, the home page provides links to Forest Service Regions, states, and specific National Forests and Grasslands.

(However, the Eastern Region page doesn’t list any “Wildflower Viewing Areas” in New York State! Perhaps the explanation is that there is only one National Forest, Finger Lakes, in New York. But still …)

The menu includes links for both native gardening and invasive plants. There are sections with activities for children and resources for teachers. Language is clear and simple while not “dumbed down.”

Props to the Native Plant Conservation Campaign for bringing this to my attention.

Links:

• USDA Forest Service, Celebrating Wildflowers
• Native Plant Conservation Campaign
• Bat Conservation International

The closest I’ve ever knowingly been to a clambake was seeing photos years ago of an über-bake in Martha Stewart Living magazine. Nonetheless, as best I can determine from this map I live and garden in Clambake Nation. (I think the Cape, Long Island, and NYC are in the little “nose” at the southern end.)

Image: Gary Nabhan and the RAFT project

To document, preserve, and celebrate the incredible diversity of America’s edible plants, animals, and food traditions, seven of the most prominent food, agriculture, education and conservation organizations in the United States came together under Slow Food USA in 2005 to launch RAFT, the country’s first eco-gastronomic conservation project.
– RAFT: Renewing America’s Food Traditions

Gardeners can help preserve the horticultural and cultural treasures of heirloom foods by growing some of them in their own gardens. Choosing open-pollinated varieties of fruits and vegetables over hybrids (eg: “F1” and such) and harvesting your own seed is economical, sustainable, and lets you select those which perform best in your garden year after year. And planting native fruits such as pawpaw, persimmon, and plum also provide food (if you’re willing to share), shelter and habitat for native species of birds and other critters.

But I really wish I had the room for some Navajo-Churro sheep. They’re so beautiful!

Links:

• ARK of Taste: list of endangered foods.
• Slow Food USA (Why “slow”? What’s the opposite of “fast” food!?)
• Slow Food NYC

This is very cool. Be sure to follow the link to the NOAA site to view the animated GIF of this.

Large Mayfly Hatch Caught on Radar Friday June 30th

A large mayfly hatch occurred along the Mississippi River Friday evening, June 30th. The hatch began just after sundown, around 9 PM, and continued through the early morning hours. Those with plans outdoors Friday evening on and along the Mississippi River certainly noticed the huge swarm of mayflies, and their attraction to light. Some roads across the Mississippi River in and around La Crosse were covered with bugs, piling into “drifts” on bridges over the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Local businesses with high intensity lighting soon found large piles of dead mayflies accumulating under the lights by midnight. Below is a radar loop from the National Weather Service’s WSR-88D Doppler Radar in La Crosse. Notice the rapid increase in radar echoes along the Mississippi River channel…occurring simultaneously the entire length of the channel. The ambient wind flow was from the south on Friday evening, with the entire swarm of mayflies drifting north with time. The radar loop starts just before 9 PM CDT and ends around 1030 PM CDT.

Props to Unhindered by Talent and Pharyngula for bringing this to my attention.

Students at New York’s High School for Environmental Studies … are among 31 students and mentors participating this year in The Nature Conservancy’s Internship Program for City Youth. One hundred fifty students from the High School for Environmental Studies and the Brooklyn Academy of Science and Environment have participated in the program since it launched in 1995.
…
The program provides hands-on experience in conservation work, fostering knowledge about environmental issues and encouraging students to consider conservation-related careers. In addition to completing four 40-hour paid work weeks, students visit area colleges.
The interns are expected to arrive July 10, and will work on projects related to The Nature Conservancy’s native plant nursery until Aug. 1, when they depart to visit three Massachusetts colleges.
…
Much of the work the New York interns will undertake on Martha’s Vineyard centers on The Nature Conservancy’s efforts to restore native ecosystems in order to bring back species that have declined or disappeared as a result of habitat destruction or degradation.

Links:

• The Nature Conservancy
• High School for Environmental Studies
• Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment High School

When: Tuesday, Jul 11, 2006, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Where: Brooklyn, 274 15th Street, corner of 6th Ave

Note: It’s not mentioned in the NYC Parks announcement, but the location is a large, beautiful and active community garden.

Learn new information about improving the conditions in your gardens using sound methods aimed at avoiding the use of chemicals except for when absolutely necessary. Find out how to increase yields with IPM, give plants what they need to be healthy, prevent the causes of diseases, and work with beneficial insects in your gardens. Get advice on how to recognize and assess pest problems as they occur, learn about plant culture, selection, and physical means of control.

Registered GreenThumb gardens will be eligible to receive integrated pest management books.

When the topic comes around – more often than you might think – I often joke that when I die, I want to be composted. Seems that others have the same idea in store for me, or someone.

The 93-acre Greensprings Natural Cemetery is the first of its kind in New York and one of just a handful in the United States, where interest in “green” burial is just taking root.
…
At Greensprings, where a plot costs $500 plus a $350 fee to dig the grave, bodies cannot be embalmed or otherwise chemically preserved. They must be buried in biodegradable caskets without linings or metal ornamentation.

The cemetery suggests locally harvested woods, wicker or cloth shrouds. Concrete or steel burial vaults are not allowed. Nor are standing monuments, upright tombstones or statues.

Only flat, natural fieldstones are permitted as grave markers (they can be engraved). Shrubs or trees are preferred.
…
– CNN.com – ‘Green’ burial offers a plot with a view – Jul 2, 2006

I like the “shrubs or trees are preferred” part. Reminds me of the Native American technique of burying a fish beneath the “three sisters”: corn, beans and squash.

Surprising to me, this is not something new. Greenspring’s links page lists several other “natural” cemeteries across the United States, including South Carolina, Florida (watch that high water table), and California. No markers? No problem, just load up the coordinates into your GPS device.

I joke about being composted, but only half so. My ideal would be cremation with my ashes scattered in the Atlantic Ocean. No reason to take up valuable real estate. Okay, maybe use some of the ashes for a top dressing on the flower beds.

But then the cremation itself would be consuming fossil fuels, or at least releasing sequestered carbon, and contributing to greenhouse warming. Maybe a “natural” burial would be lower impact after all. And if I could help give a good start to a young oak, I could die knowing that my life had been good for something.

Links

• Greensprings Natural Cemetery Association

Summary: Not worth the download.

Digital Nature Guide is free software that allows you to make and to view natural history guides.

You can make a field guide for any type of animal or plant. When viewing a guide you can select species on the basis of characters or geographical distribution. A guide can include species texts and other illustrations.

It’s a nice idea: I would like to be able to collect the photographs I’ve taken over the decades and assemble them into a nice field guide, with my own notes on the dates and locations of the photographs, descriptions of the plants (or animals), linsk to other sources, and so on. The software notes that it has a “flash card” feature, which would be nice for me to be able to print off and study with.

However, the software is completely standalone. You can only run it on your own computer. There’s no ability that I can find to even print the photographs or text. The “flash card” feature can only run within the program, one species at a time. There’s no way to publish or export the information to any other format or make it available to any other program.

You can view a list of species alongside the photographs. But you can sort the list only once. Once you take any other action, the program reverts to its default sorting, which is random as far as I can tell.

The non-standard, non-resizeable windows and frames, inability to zoom in on images, buttons rendered as text boxes … all of this adds up to a poor and non-intuitive interface, one which does not encourage the sort of exploration and experimentation which a field guide should.

Far better results are available from mashing up combinations of existing public services, such as flickr, technorati, del.icio.us, and so on. It would be more accessible, it would be more shareable, the data at least would be open to further search and transformation, and the interfaces would be ones with which folks are already familiar.

IUCN, the World Conservation Union, reported today:

The turning point will be some time this year: for the first time in human history, more people will live in cities than in rural areas. By 2050, an estimated 80% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. This has far reaching consequences on biodiversity, as city dwellers use natural resources of surrounding and remote regions, and people get further alienated from nature. In this context, urban conservation is an important tool for environmental awareness raising and education.

Countdown 2010, an initiative launched by the IUCN Regional Office for Europe, is presently supporting the development of a pilot project on urban conservation. The cooperation is coordinated by ICLEI, the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives.

At a workshop from 26-28 June 2006 in Rome, hosted by RomaNatura, representatives from five cities met to finalise the development of the pilot project called “Local Action for Biodiversity”. The pilot group, which will eventually include 15 cities, includes Cape Town, Durban, Rome, Tilburg, São Paulo, Los Angeles and Havana. These cities plan to pioneer a global programme on urban biodiversity, as a contribution to the 2010 biodiversity target.

– IUCN, July 3, 2006, Countdown 2010 supports urban conservation

The corresponding ICLEI report is dated June 28, 2006 on their Web site:

ICLEI’s Local Action for Biodiversity Initiative gained momentum this week when biodiversity managers of ICLEI Members met with ICLEI, IUCN, and Countdown 2010 to develop the structure and workplan for the three-year pilot project.

The two day meeting, held from 26-28 June in Rome (Italy), was generously hosted and supported by RomaNatura, the municipal park management organization of the City of Rome.

ICLEI Members that were represented were: Cape Town and Durban (South Africa), Rome (Italy), São Paulo (Brazil) and Tilburg (Netherlands). Short reports were also presented by Los Angeles (USA) and Zagreb (Croatia).

– ICLEI, June 28, 2006, Planning underway on ICLEI’s Biodiversity Initiative

However, I could find nothing regarding “urban conservation” on the IUCN, ICLEI, nor the Countdown 2010 web sites, other than these announcements. There may be more information available from the identified pilot cities themselves. New York City, unfortunately, is not among them.

Urban biodiversity is linked to wider concerns about biodiversity and general conservation efforts:

• As more and more people live in urban areas, their connections to nature, and the values they ascribe to it, are determined by the species they encounter locally in urban settings rather than those “in the wild.”
• Biodiversity is linked to general environmental justice issues. Urban neighborhoods of lower socio-economic status are associated with lower biodiversity.
• Urban areas, as major ports of entry for international trade, are the “patient zero” for new infestations of invasive species.

Urban gardeners can have a huge collective impact on biodiversity. The more I garden “as if” I live in a natural area rather than an artificial one, the more my choices reduce my gardening “footprint,” support and develop local diversity, and amplify that local diversity through my neighborhood and beyond.

Links:

• Countdown 2010
• International Council for Local Environment Initiatives (ICLEI), Local Governments for Sustainability
• Urban Habitats
• World Conservation Union (IUCN)

Carnival of the Green #33 is up on Jen’s Green Journal, and yours truly is in it:

Flatbush Gardener (Xris) reviews for us the book Eco-friendly Living in New York City and focuses on some of the book’s gardening tips for city dwellers.

Some minor quibbles:

• I didn’t (yet) review the book. It was reviewed in Science & the City from the New York Academy of Sciences.
• The gardening tips are all things which I do, or would like to do, in my garden with respect to two of the five general tips offered in the book review: reducing water use, and reduce, reuse, recycle. I didn’t get them from the book.

That aside, I’m proud to be listed. This is my first carnival. I’m no longer a “virgin.”

Links:

• Carnival of the Green is coordinated by City Hippy and Triple Pundit
• Jen’s Green Journal
• New York Academy of Sciences, Science & the City
• Green Apple Guide

People who have been exposed to pesticides are 70 percent more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those who haven’t, according to a new study. The results suggest that any pesticide exposure, whether occupationally related or not, will increase a person’s risk of the disease. This means that using pesticides in the home or garden may have similarly harmful effects as working with the chemicals on a farm or as a pest controller.
… Previous small-scale human studies had suggested a link between pesticides and Parkinson’s, but this new study is the first to establish a clear correlation in a large patient population.
– Study Bolsters Link between Pesticides and Parkinson’s, Scientific American

Links:

• Annals of Neurology