Our World and Everything in It

This Sunday’s article in the Detroit Free Press about conservation easements was pretty enlightening to me. I thought I’d share it. I don’t think I’m the only one who wishes their property would remain as is into the future. I don’t want anyone cutting down my apple, pear, and cherry trees, or anything else I’ve nurtured to grow. I want the wooded parts to stay wooded, and the animal habitat left alone.

The couple in the article has acreage on Beaver Island outside of Petoskey where many of the locals see the encroaching development. This couple decided to keep their property as is in the future by getting a conservation easement. This is an agreement that limits development, and protects property forever.

Hurray. There is something a private property owner can do to keep development to a minimum and protect wildlife habitat forever. I’m thinking about all the wild open fields that use to be near my house that went the way of subdivisions that are only half filled. All that habitat, trees, grass, bushes, and shrubs were mowed down to create those egg frying concrete subdivisions by summer, that really turn bleak and empty in winter. I’m thinking about what a conservation easement might have done. With only half the houses, these same subdivisions might have retained small areas of woods, open grasses, bogs, and huge, ancient trees that can’t possibly be replaced in a hundred years.

I also think of all the people I know that bought property “up north” in Michigan for the express purpose of being in the boonies. That list of people is growing. As it grows, the wild areas shrink, clearing areas for the homestead.

The couple in the article said that we as individuals have to protect the land. Well, if you’re someone who wants the view out your window to remain that way, you may want to try for a conservation easement.

For more info: http://www.smlcland.org/about.php

I was looking for cures to get rid of all types of weeds in my lawn that have become prevalent in just the last couple of years like Creeping Charlie, Henbit,Violets, Wild Strawberries, etc. I’m not a fan of spraying if I don’t have to and figure I need to know why I’m getting so many of these weeds or I’ll just be dealing with it all over again year after year. Well, it seems I need to fertilize my lawn more to keep Creeping Charlie at bay. So I’ll go the natural fertilizer route or whip up a Jerry Baker concoction. But I was still curious where all these weeds are coming from. I had a pretty nice lawn not long ago.

It seems America is being inundated with imported invasive species of plants and trees that will have a terrible impact on our own native plants and trees in the near future. I had no idea that the nice maple trees in my yard are probably the invasive type called Norway Maple. As a matter of fact, one website that offered a guide to the imported/invasive plants and trees said: “Many of the plants in this guide are popular, even beloved, landscape plants, but it is now clear that they pose a threat to our environment.” It’s because these plants significantly reduce the number of plant and animal species on any site they invade. The fact that they are in our yards is a sign that over the past 100 years or more they have indeed spread.  http://www.mdflora.org/publications/invasives.htm.

I couldn’t believe all the new and different weeds popping that I have that are on that list. And the list is for the mid Atlantic region! That says something about climate change. Now I’m not about to cut down my maples and I have a sneaky suspicion they’re Norways because I have too many maples willy-nilly in my yard. But one of them shades the front of my house from the summer sun, and two are on the bank by the dock.

As for getting rid of these weeds, I found all types of natural ways to combat them on the Internet. For instance, I know enough to weed whip before weeds go to seed,  but it seems there is a magic time you can mow some weeds and they won’t come back. So, depending on the type of weed you are trying to control, you may not need any chemicals at all. Whack them at the right time in their lifecycle and kill them dead for good.

For my Creeping Charlie problem I could apply a herbicide when it flowers, but it seems this weed is sensitive to borax according to the blogsite Hobby Lawn Care. The website gives the formula to make your own borax concoction. It said: “…dissolve 8 ounces of borax in 4 ounces of water. Then dilute the solution in 2.5 gallons of water.” This is supposed to be sprayed on 1000 sq. ft. of lawn, “no more, no less.” That scares me a little. Too much borax prevents desirable plants–like grass?

http://www.hobbylawncare.com/browse/lawn-pests

And if all else fails, I can just eat my lawn. That’s right. I found a website with a recipe for Wild Weed Salad and Dressing. I have everything I need except nasturtium. I used to grow nasturtiums, but that was long ago. I think nasturtiums are just watercress. The lawn violets I have aplenty. They add a peppery taste to a salad. Dandelion greens I’ve already eaten before, but I don’t know about the lamb’s quarter. It’s a little too hairy for me. Everything else on the list of ingredients seems fine, but I just can’t imagine the taste of the added mint, with basil, with garlic. I’m thinking peppery/garlicky taste, which would be really good with the honey and apple cider vinegar dressing.

Read the recipe: http://gorhamgarden.blogspot.com/2007/06/weed-of-day-no-2-henbit.html

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Good news for the world’s second largest rainforest as the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced its intention to designate over 50,000 sq. miles of it as protected area. That’s quite a big improvement over the approximate 8500 sq. miles that is currently protected or conserved.

The Congo Basin in Central Africa is 700,000 sq. miles of tropical forest that extends across six countries. Area wise, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC is the third largest country in Africa and contains the largest part of the Congo Basin forest. The DRC is not only establishing new protected areas but also insuring sustainable use by the inhabitants. This is the amazing part. Some of the indigenous inhabitants are Pygmies. And even though many of the Pygmies cannot read, GPS units designed for non-literate people allow them to participate in mapping the forest. In their travels they locate resources, like edible and medicinal plants, and other significant areas. The Pygmies select an icon to mark an area, and the GPS records the data for resource maps.

The rainforests in the DRC contain all types of species of plants to animals including chimpanzees, white rhinos, and the famous mountain gorillas. It will take a concentrated effort by many nations to accomplish the task of keeping this vast area protected. As it is now, many of the rangers and people concerned about the forest have disappeared, either killed or driven off from the Second Congo (civil) War from 1998 to 2003. It’s the second deadliest war since WWII. I did not know that.

The announcement was made in Bonn, Germany, which is host for the Convention on Biological Diversity or CBD. The CBD believes:

Protected areas are the foundation for safeguarding ecosystems, species and genes in all their

abundance and diversity. Protected areas are the backbone for the stability and functioning of

ecosystemic processes and the provision of ecosystem services such as natural carbon storage,

water cycles, pollination, control of diseases and flood control. Properly designed and

managed protected areas support livelihoods of local communities and strengthen local and

national economies. Protected area networks are our “Safety-Nets for Life on Earth”. Thus the

establishment and long-term maintenance of protected areas is in the interest of humanity and

requires a common effort of the global community. The CBD Programme of Work on

Protected Areas is a global framework for the establishment of comprehensive, representative

and effectively managed national and regional protected area systems. Parties agreed to close

the gaps in the existing systems, enhance management effectiveness and secure adequate

financing.

 

The “Life Web Initiative” aims at supporting the implementation of the CBD Programme of

Work on Protected Areas through enhancing partnerships at a global level. The purpose of the

initiative is to match voluntary commitments for the designation of new protected areas and

the improved management of existing areas with commitments for dedicated (co-)financing of these areas.

 

The German minister thinks these new protected areas of rainforest in the Congo should become part of “Life Web.” Germany is presently providing the Congo Basin region with over 53 million euro for protection. The concept of Live Web is a good read and may be the wave of the future where industry and nature will exist well together.

Read more about the Congo rainforest and Live Web Initiative @

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2008/2008-05-27-02.asp

http://www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/cop/hls-cop-09/other/hls-cop-09-lifeweb-de-en.pdf

While I was on the NASA website I couldn’t help but click on ” Forests Damaged by Hurricane Katrina Become Major Carbon Source.” That article stated that, “a research team has estimated that Hurricane Katrina killed or severely damaged 320 million large trees in Gulf Coast forests, which weakened the role the forests play in storing carbon from the atmosphere. The damage has led to these forests releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” The satellite pics in the article show the devastation from Katrina. It was quite a wipe out.

The NASA article also stated that “[t]he carbon cycle is intimately linked to just about everything we do, from energy use to food and timber production and consumption. [] As more and more carbon is released to the atmosphere by human activities, the climate warms, triggering an intensification of the global water cycle that produces more powerful storms, leading to destruction of more trees, which then act to amplify climate warming.”

So one event, like a massive hurricane, results in deforestation and decay that cause more CO2 to be released, and more overall warming for more massive hurricanes. Destructive cycle seemed to be formed rather easily. Not good for us.

Read more and check out the web short “In Katrina’s Wake” @ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2007/katrina_carbon.html.

I just came to the realization this morning that I’m a geek. I doubt anyone but those extremely close to me would ever consider me a geek, because I didn’t. But I’m writing a fiction book that deals with space and as part of the research; I clicked on the NASA channel this morning. Oh, I’ve visited this channel before but it never occurred to me how long I linger there. I actually sit mesmerized by this world of space, science, and math that face it; most of our population knows absolutely nothing about and could care less.

My interest in the NASA channel isn’t the only thing however that qualifies me as a geek. Lately, I’ve become more and more interested in alternative sources of energy, particularly the many experiments with hydrogen. And I actually liked advanced math in college. Huge algebra problems were like puzzles to be worked, and I fanatically worked them. I even took an electricity class at Community College for the fun of it. Now something is clearly wrong here when only five people signed up for the class and after the instructor outlined what everyone would be doing, including algebra, the final class tally turned out to be me and another guy who had to take it. I’m a geek aren’t I?

That’s probably why I was anxious to read the pdf files of the latest findings that were reported from NASA today via telecon by a panel of experts ranging from terrestrial ecology to atmospheric and oceanic sciences relative to:

Changes to Earth’s ecosystems [that] are evident in recent research that employs NASA remote-sensing data. Panelists [discussed] several topics, including the impact of shrinking Arctic sea ice on marine ecosystems, how invasive species alter the biochemistry of local ecosystems, the role of climate change on the length of growing seasons and ecosystems, and seasonal changes in phytoplankton and the consequences on marine ecosystems.

It’s amazing what is seen from satellite devices, and how these global views allow scientists to analyze a situation. As these views are recorded over time changes become evident. Linking all the info from different components of the global warming equation like Arctic ice melt, rainforest changes, results of deforestation and fires, and marine biology is what has been necessary since the whole global warming theory began. Gathering data like that from all types of sources, and then combining it in a productive way to see how one system affects another over the globe is a daunting task, but satellite technology looks to tackle all of that in the future.

Check out the sight and the pdf files of different topics discussed.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/ecosystem_research_briefs.html.

Click on News and Features on that page also to get the latest from NASA about polar bears and loss of habitat:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/polar_bears.html

I just wrote about Colorado’s forests being decimated by beetles whose populations are out of control due to global warming. They are killing lodge pole pines with other evergreen trees at risk also, while the Bush administration pushes to end the Roadless Rule that will decimate one of the largest forested areas in the country, which is in Idaho to the mining, oil, and lumber industry.  The big picture for the wolf kill, buffalo kill, and mustang roundups is getting clearer isn’t it? Alaska, Wyoming, and Idaho are some of the states with huge forests at risk without this rule, and the same states that are home to the slaughter of these animals. If these animals remained protected, their habitat couldn’t be touched. They must be removed for the next phase of this unethical, and unscrupulous plan to take place! So now we should see clearly we’ve been lied to again about the reasons for the slaughter.

The intelligence and ethics level of this administration has hit an all time low by destroying the very trees that help remove CO2 from the air and protect us from baking at a time when many of our trees have been destroyed already by fires and floods over the past two years, and on the heels of the Colorado lodge pole blight. We need more trees, not less. Do we see Europe attacking their landscapes as we do? http://www.15years.gov.si/backround-information/biodiversity/.

We cannot afford to let this happen in the interest of big money because once our forests are gone, they are gone forever. And don’t think that once oil, lumber, and mining interests move in they will simply stop with a new president in office. This is the march of the wealthy destroying our country in their last ditch effort to get a stronghold before this administration is through. The sad thing is we haven’t even begun to practice conservation. We haven’t unleashed the alternative energy innovation we already have. This is the same type of unintelligent, quick-triggered decision-making that ignored any and all alternatives that got us into a war, which is costing us dearly. We must unite to keep this type of movement from advancing until we see this administration exit. 

The Heritage Forest Campaign explains:

Spanning 58.5 million acres in 38 states, America’s national forest roadless areas contain some of our nation’s last pristine forests. From the expansive wilds of the American Southwest and Northern Rockies to the colorful deciduous woods of New England and the Appalachians, these last tracts of unspoiled backcountry provide habitat for wildlife, headwaters to rivers, and unparalleled recreational opportunities for millions of Americans.

The state of Idaho contains over 9.3 million acres of National Forest roadless areas - the most of any state outside of Alaska.  Idaho’s roadless backcountry makes up the core of the last intact forest ecosystem in the lower 48 states - the last place where all of the native plants, fish and wildlife - from the smallest plant to the largest predator - can still be found.

In 2001, the U.S. Forest Service issued the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protects Idaho’s and all of the country’s national forest roadless areas from most logging and new roads being built for mining, coal, gas, logging and other development. The rule was the result of almost three years of deliberation that included 600 public hearings and more than 1.5 million written comments submitted with the overwhelming majority supporting the complete protection of all remaining roadless areas.

The American public has continued to support this policy, and has repeatedly opposed proposals to reverse or weaken it.

Please join forces for OUR heritage, OUR land, OUR wildlife, and OUR vision for the future not the powerful big money interests that seek to take every last pristine piece of God’s country we have left.

Sign a petition to Chief Gail Kimble to save our forests. There is an April 7th deadline so please sign on for a unified voice: http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/idaho_roadless/i3u8iui227b7jnew?
 

Many of us had lovely ash trees in our yard once upon a time, and there are many parks around Michigan that have yet to clear out all of the ash trees that died from the ash borer, a simple bug.
Well, there are a lot more bugs to come and we can thank global warming for it.

Colorado is bearing the brunt of an increase in bark beetle bugs that have killed millions of acres of lodge pole pines. These pines are exactly what their name describes, tall, tall trees pine trees whose needled branches are disproportionately at the top third of the entire trunk, think Q-tip. The bottom portion of the trunk is a straight shot of wood, used to build log lodges.

An article on abcnews.com stated 1.5 million acres are already wiped out and all of the lodge pole pines may be gone in 3 to 5 years. It said the infestation was first noticed in 1996. What the heck takes so long for our agencies to act on anything? I lost my ash tree, and the whole time Bayer brand systemic spray would have worked. By time I applied anything to my tree, it was already too late. I know what I found for news before that. Our state officials said nothing worked against the ash borer…so people failed to act. State officials were wrong!

Colorado officials said, “the infestation was concentrated in five northern Colorado counties straddling the Continental Divide and has reached southern Wyoming.” The amount of trees taken by the beetles increased 1500 percent last year and “forest officials attributed the spread of the beetle to warm winters and drought. Susan Gray, group leader for forest health management with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, said only 20-below-zero temperatures for a sustained period can kill the beetles.” Keep an eye on your spruce trees! Spruce and aspen pines are susceptible to the beetle also.

To add insult to injury relative to our trees and forests, the Bush administration looks to weaken the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This rule protects millions of acres of trees in Idaho against the oil, natural gas, timer, and mining industries. According to Earthjustice, Idaho contains more unspoiled wild forest than any state outside Alaska, providing the last intact forest habitat for countless fish, wildlife, and plant species. These areas are enjoyed by hunters, anglers, hikers, and all who treasure the backcountry. Earthjustice disclosed why Bush is pushing the Roadless Rule aside:

The administration’s proposal will open the door to logging millions of pristine acres, risk dangerous toxic contamination from mining, degrade clean fish-bearing streams and important wildlife habitat, and fail to live up to the public’s overwhelming desire to protect all of these areas for future generations.

This forest giveaway could lead to 545 million tons of phosphate being mined on nearly 8,000 unspoiled acres near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Any increase in phosphate mining would worsen the already serious problem of selenium poisoning in local streams and aquifers. Selenium is an extremely dangerous contaminant known to cause birth defects, which bio-accumulates in the food web — persisting for centuries after entering the environment.

Read more about this and sign a petition to stop President Bush before he weakens the Roadless Rule even more. We’re already losing trees and a lot of our landscape from extreme weather, i.e., floods, fires, tornadoes, and now bugs. Does the Bush administration have a clue about conservation? Do they even care? Trees protect us from the sun, and take CO2 out of the air for Pete’s sake, and the powers that be want to give them away to big money.

About the pine beetle infestation:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4133205

More about Bush sidestepping the Roadless Rule: http://www.earthjustice.org/our_work/campaigns/roadless_rule.html
Sign the petition to save our national forests: http://action.earthjustice.org/campaign/roadless_ID_0308
 

As I write my 84-year-old mother, who is visiting, is occupied at my kitchen counter checking all my ballpoint pens for use. She wanted some Crazy Glue, and in my search through my junk drawer, I decided to pull the neat little organizer tray out of there. By time I stacked what had fallen out of that neat little organizer tray and piled it on top, it no longer had any semblance of an organizer tray. She volunteered (I think she’s bored) to test all the pens. None of them, so far, are dried up. Which leads me to accumulation and what many of us do with it.

I told her that maybe I could give the excess pens to a nursing home, hospital, office, etc., anything but the landfill. She replied “How about a school?” Right, how about a school? We read about underprivileged kids everywhere that don’t have the money to buy school basics. Instead of this massive waste we’re creating on earth by being a “toss and buy new society” why aren’t we doing more recycling everywhere? Do those with nothing demand brand new? I’m using used stuff all over my house and I’m not underprivileged. Sorry, no pride here. If it works, I keep it shined up and use it. My car is 8 years old. I just don’t think people who get free stuff are all that picky. I’m not talking about passing down junk, but…

Take for instance one of my biggest pet peeves, flowers, shrubs, and trees for sale everywhere this time of year. It’s appalling what happens to most of this stuff. Frank’s Nursery is out of business now, but my mom and I saw them throwing 2-3 year old trees, beautiful trees, in the garbage bin. We asked if we could have them. Nope, something about posting losses keeps nurseries like this from giving those trees away. So as a loss, they are a tax write-off. Fine, but so is donating to charity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that all those beautiful plants that overflow everywhere, every spring end up in the garden at some nursing home, children’s play yard, and how about those subdivisions I wrote about that look like you could fry an egg on the sidewalks for lack of trees?

We need to realize when we see all this glorious growth every spring and everywhere that most of the time what took much labor, water, earth, nutrients, and as much as 5 years of time to become a substantial tree or shrub is tossed like garbage for the almighty dollar. True the losses qualify as a tax write-off but does it ever occur to anyone that maybe we should cut back on growing too much of this stuff in lieu of saving the labor, water, and earth for other things like restoration of all the forests that are burning or for more farmland for food sources instead. After all, do we really need every food market, hardware store, department store, and even gas stations selling flowers, trees, or shrubs?

 Since I saw those trees hit the garbage bin years ago, the view of all the flower markets overflowing every spring makes me about as sad as seeing all the road-kill. I’ve raised a tree from a twig. Try it sometime and see if you don’t find yourself caring for that particular tree as if it were your child. To see a twig grow to a tall, strong, glorious tree that shades my yard and me against increasingly hotter summers is not much different than raising any other living thing. We need to take notice, appreciate, and nurture all living things to include the plant kingdom. There may come a time where we will no longer be able to grow anything. We’ll miss the green things.

One of my blogs was about the forests lost to forest fires and that it was really odd to see the woods of Minnesota burn since the state is noted for its many inland lakes. Then I read that the global warming impact of forest fires in our western states is the equivalent of a more severe hurricane season in the gulf. But hurricanes are over in a few days, forest fires can burn for months. About.com stated: “Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Arizona found four times as many large wildfires occurred in Western forests between 1987 and 2003 compared to the previous 16 years.”

Everything about fires has increased due to global warming. The latest fires burned 6.5 times more land, increased from around 8 days to 37 days in duration, and the whole fire season has expanded 78 more days. Here’s the interesting part. You know there are television personalities like Regis Philbin who make fun of a one degree weather change, but most of the increase in our fires corresponds with a simple 1.5 degree rise in temperature out west during the same time frame of 87 to 2003. The slightly warmer temperatures lead to longer, drier seasons that are ideal for a flash fire.

This is the first study that links global warming and forest fires. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The researchers examined U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service records of every forest fire that burned at least 1,000 acres from 1970 to 2003. They found that of 1,166 fires in that period, four-fifths of them, or about 900, occurred after 1987.” The article went on to say, “Steven Running, a professor in the School of Forestry at the University of Montana who wrote an accompanying article about the report for Science hopes to include Westerling’s findings in a report on the ecological consequences of climate change for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

I don’t doubt that sooner or later science will find a link between all major eruptions on earth such as volcanoes, and earthquakes with the rise in hurricanes, flooding, fires, etc., that are due to man’s impact on this same environment with some form of pollution. We simply haven’t given much thought to our ever increasing world population in ratio to its output of pollution. Imagine if every growing population turned into a capitalist society like ours where demand for everything under the sun in huge amounts is an everyday occurrence. Capitalism to me is more a throw away society than a recycling society right now. It doesn’t have to be that way, however. We’re into supply and demand and haven’t caught on that some of the supply can come from what has already been used. It’s simply not a good thing for the earth to start from scratch every time when there is perfectly good base material out there to be recycled.

This has just given me an idea to blog about what is currently offered in the recycled goods market and for what use. I do know that recycled plastics offer picnic tables, park benches, and even parking curbs out of high density plastic material instead of wood that rots or concrete that eventually cracks. Every Parks and Recreation Commission in all cities should be looking into recycled products like these for all of our recreational areas. It would make all of us feel a little better about all the plastic products we consume and throw away into a trash dump versus the local park or for some future use wouldn’t it? We should see how truly efficient we can be. After all our country should be viewed as a business and isn’t that the essence of business anyway to garner the greatest profit with the least overhead, and the least waste?
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