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Land
Last week we got a chance to visit Clagett Farm, one of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s working farms that supports the development of sustainable agriculture practices. The farm raises vegetables, fruits, beef cattle, and sheep and supports a Community Supported Agriculture program as well as a tree farm. We write a lot about farming and […]
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The Hill reports that an advisory committee recommended to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt that he should privatize campgrounds within national parks, cut benefits for senior visitors, and allow food trucks into Parks as a way to bring increase money coming into the Parks system, according to the panel’s memo.
Why This Matters: This recommendation is likely to be extremely divisive — with environmental groups and advocates for seniors arguing that this is likely to hurt low and middle-income Americans and benefit the President’s rich benefactors.
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As climate change continues to alter rainfall and water sources for farmers across the country, some farmers are turning to an ancient farming technique called dry farming to help cope with the changes. As Oregon Public Radio reported, dry farming relies on the moisture that’s stored in the soil from winter rainwater. It’s successful in […]
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Native American tribes are using litigation, lobbying and protests to push back against Trump administration policies that would damage their lands and their way of life.
Why This Matters: Native American tribes are uniquely positioned to challenge some of the Trump administration’s most aggressive moves to develop (timber harvest, mining, oil and gas drilling) on federal lands. Often these cases are thrown out because the plaintiffs are found not to have a sufficient “interest” in or connection to the government’s action — but when it comes to the destruction of sacred sites, that argument really does not work. And once these lands and sacred sites are spoiled by development, they cannot be restored.
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Past scientific studies have found that ecosystems with high biodiversity are better able to face the threat of climate change than those with fewer species. However, after the UN’s landmark report from earlier this year showing that 1 million species are at risk of extinction, it’s become more urgent to understand how plant and animal […]
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by Raleigh Kitchen, Membership and Outreach Manager, St. Simons Land Trust The issue of conservation is a topical one. You hear about it on the news, read it in the paper, and sometimes feel overwhelmed by the amount of lands, waters, and wildlife in need of it. Conservation feels like a big […]
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Land use and agriculture have recently gained attention as a means to store more carbon in the ground and help fight climate change. However, in the United States, while federal programs do exist to help farmers better manage their soil (most notably the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)) there are too many farmers […]
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The Paris Climate Agreement mentions climate mitigation (reducing our emissions) and adaptation (learning to live with the damage done) but nowhere does the agreement broach the subject of climate restoration: as Quartz explained, the idea of rehabilitating the atmosphere to its pre-industrial state. However last week at the UN, an event convened by the Foundation […]
Continue Reading 359 wordsSodium cyanide “bombs” or M-44s are devices used to kill predators by the USDA’s Wildlife Services in Western states where ranchers complain that these animals kill their herds. This outdated method of killing “nuisance” animals is not only inhumane but also not effective in protecting livestock. Additionally, these devices also kill pets and nearly killed […]
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On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that the President told subordinates they should “take the land” and could break the law in order to get the border wall completed because he would “pardon” them – a statement the White House later claimed was just a joke.
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We’ve written before about the City of Los Angeles’ efforts to help protect endangered mountain lion populations in the city. There had been several ideas about how a wildlife corridor might be built in a city as bustling and populated as LA, but now officials are one step closer to building the world’s largest wildlife […]
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Chris Kilham, is an ethnobotanist and a former Explorer-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has visited the Amazon 35 times, working in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and French Guiana to support the forests, rivers, people, wildlife, foods, and medicines that are part of the Amazon’s rich ecosystem. We asked him about the impact of […]
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