#ECOSYSTEM

[nando161mando]

[reasonsforhope]

"A tribal-led nonprofit is creating a network of native bison ranchers that are restoring ecosystems on the Great Plains, restoring native ranchers’ connections with their ancestral land, and restoring the native diet that their ancestors relied on.

Called the Tanka Fund, they coordinate donors and partners to help ranchers secure grazing land access, funds needed to install and repair fencing, increase their herd sizes, and access markets for bison meat across the country.

That’s the human part of the story. But as Dawn Sherman, executive director of the Tanka Fund, told Native Sun News, they’re “buffalo people” and these four-legged, 2,000 lbs. “cousins” are equal-part-protagonists.

The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet, of which just 1% remains as it was when the Mayflower arrived.

“Bringing buffalo back to their ancestral homelands is essential to restoring the ecosystem. We know that the buffalo is a keystone species,” said Dawn Sherman, a member of the Lakota, Delaware, Shawnee, and Cree.

“Bringing the buffalo back to the land and to our people, helps restore the ecosystem and everything it supports from the animals to the plants to the people. It’s come full circle. That’s how we see it.”

As Sherman and the Tanka Fund help native ranchers grow their operations, everyone is well aware of the power of the bison to transform the environment: just as nations across Europe are, who are reintroducing wood bison to various ecosystems, for all the same reasons.

Sherman points out the variety of ways in which buffalo anchor the prairie ecosystem. The almost-extinct black-footed ferret, she points out, lived symbiotically with the bison, and with the latter gone, the former followed—nearly.

The long-billed curlew uses bison dung as a disguise to hide nests from predators. Deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk all rely on bison to plow through deep snows and uncover the grasses that these smaller animals can’t reach.

Everywhere the bison hurls its massive body, life springs in the beast’s wake. When bison roll about on the plains, it creates depressions known as wallows. These fill with rainwater and create enormous puddles where amphibians and insects thrive and reproduce. Certain plants evolved to grow in the wet conditions of the wallows which Native Americans harvested for food and medicine.

Native plants evolved under the trampling hooves of millions of bison, and that constant tamping down of the Earth is a key necessity in the spreading of native wildflower seed.

Indeed, Sherman says some of these native ranchers are bringing bison onto lands still visibly affected by the Dust Bowl, and already the animals are acting like a giant wooly cure-all for the land’s ills.

Since 2020, the Tanka Fund, in partnership with the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the Nature Conservancy, has overseen the transfer of 2,300 bison from Nature Conservancy reserves to lands managed by ranchers within the Tanka Fund network.

“[T]he more animals that we can get the more of that prairie we can restore,” said Sherman. “We can help restore the land that has been plowed and has been leased out to cattle ranchers.”"

-Article via Good News Network, February 13, 2025. Video via Tanka Fund, July 17, 2024.

[headspace-hotel]

There is so much we don't understand. Springtime, out in the meadow. Everybody all over the dandelions--- flies, ants, tiny bees, even tinier bees so minuscule they're like black and jewel-colored particles without a closer look.

Get down on hands and knees--- you start to see the world. The tiny bees, a glittering blue-green color, slide down between the pollen-coated anthers of the dandelions into the crevices of the petals like miners sliding down into narrow shafts. The big bees make it look so simple. For the tiniest bees, a dandelion is a place more than it is a food. The bee's body is sleek like a suit of armor, and solidly shiny blue-green instead of having the distinctive stripes of many other bees.

Can I learn the name of this bee? To see the bee and to know it, you have to look very silly lying on the ground among the dandelions, looking closely at the things too small to be important. It is a mere particle, just a Bug, rather than a stereotypical fluffy yellow and black bee. It is complex and beautiful; its metallic and glittering exoskeleton, its transparent wings, its articulated and sensitive antennae.

"We have to save the bees, they are important," people say, but if we don't look closely, who is to say what is a bee and what isn't? And when we do look closely, isn't everything important?

[wachinyeya]

European bison released in England’s ancient woodland have doubled in number since 2022, and the woodland has gotten healthier since, reviving previously extinct beetle species and increasing sightings of dormice and reptiles. And England isn’t the only European nation getting bison back in business: In the 1920s, there were just 54 European bison after intense hunting over millennia, but thanks to re-wilding efforts there are now around 10,000, mostly in Russia and Belarus. RTBC

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

The new law aims to restore at least 20% of the EU's land and seas, with specific targets including reversing the decline of pollinators and restoring 25,000 kilometres of rivers to free-flowing conditions. This target is instrumental to align EU policy with global commitments made by almost 200 countries to restore and protect at least 30% of our planet’s degraded ecosystems by 2030. The legislation solidifies Europe's leadership in global biodiversity restoration and protection efforts, setting a powerful example for the rest of the world.

This law is in many ways the first of its kind and creates legally binding restoration targets for various ecosystems throughout the EU.

[solarpunkbaby]

[yellydany]

Commission for @irazel ! Really love how this one came out! Was very fun to design a flying fish/shark inspired dragon 🐉🌊🐟 (not to mention dragons are my favourite!)

[pepperjunkie]

Jungle pond..

[wojakgallery]

Title/Name: Ecosystem Wojak Wojak Series: Skeleton Wojak (Variant) Image by: Unknown Main Tag: Skull Wojak

[noosphe-re]

We experience the sensuous world only by rendering ourselves vulnerable to that world. Sensory perception is the ongoing interweavement: the terrain enters into us only to the extent that we allow ourselves to be taken up within that terrain.

David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

[protectoursharks]

How about the Port Jackson and its adorable smile! I think more people should know about it!

Love your blog! 🦈💖

Thank you so much!

Port Jackson Shark // Heterodontus portusjacksoni

These cute sharks grow to be approximately 1.65 m (5.4 ft) and are found exclusively in the waters of southern Australia. The conservation status for these sharks is unknown, but their eggs have a high mortality rate (only about 11-22% survive) because of high predation.

Unlike a lot of sharks, the Port Jackson shark doesn't have a mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth. They have a front row of small, pointed teeth that lead to wide, flat teeth in the back. These teeth are handy for catching and then breaking the shells of mollusks and crustaceans.

[entheognosis]

[reasonsforhope]

"In a major move for rivers up and down the land, last week it was announced that Sussex’s River Ouse is set to be granted its own rights. 

A new charter that has just been approved by Lewes district council officially recognises the Ouse as a living entity. Based on the Universal Declaration of River Rights, the charter gives the waterway eight rights, including the right to flow, to be pollution-free, to have native biodiversity and to undergo regeneration and restoration. 

The decision to give the Ouse legal personhood was actually made two years ago when the council passed a rights of river motion. In the two years since, the likes of Lewes district council, Environmental Law Foundation, Ouse and Adur Rivers Trust and Southwood Foundation have all worked together to create the charter. 

Matthew Bird, director of the Love Our Ouse campaign, said: ‘This is a momentous moment for the river and goes some way towards recognising that the river is an entity in its own right and that its voice needs to be represented in decisions which affect it. The river faces numerous challenges including pollution, climate change, over use and development.

‘The Charter provides a common framework through which to address these challenges which we hope the other major stakeholders on the Ouse will feel able to endorse. We hope Lewes District Council’s decision to support the Ouse Charter will encourage communities throughout the UK to pursue charters for their local rivers.’

Emma Montlake, co-director of the Environmental Law Foundation, added: ‘By supporting the Rights of Rivers, Lewes District Council has set a precedent that could transform the way we safeguard our rivers. The River Ouse is an essential part of the region’s ecosystem and cultural heritage—this decision ensures a better future for the River’s health and protection.’

The charter isn’t actually legally binding just yet. The next stage will involve working with statutory agencies, communities and landowners along the river to make sure that that the new rights are implemented."

-via TimeOut, March 3, 2025

Note: This is part of the broader Rights of Nature movement, and I believe the first natural body to be granted personhood/rights in Europe [edited for accuracy 3/12/25]. (Let me know in the comments if there have been others!) It's a whole new paradigm for how to view nature - and grants us a new set of powerful tools for legally defending nature from degradation and pollution. In other words, this is pretty exciting. Read more about the Rights of Nature movement here and here.

[headspace-hotel]

POND

The mud. The slime. The algae. The rot. The floating mats of algal goop and biofilm. The warm and stagnant water. The green. The wriggling. The mosquito larvae and gas bubbles. The squelch and plop and bubble and float.

I dug the hole. I scooped out the mud. I planted the rushes, the sedges and cattails, the arrowhead and bugleweed, ludwigia and willow. I dragged the logs. I placed the flat rocks.

The roots of the rushes knitting together a lush mat in the warm mud. The disgusting muck increasing in complexity and biological activity. A sludge of decomposition and decay, stagnant and slimy, but the pond is beginning to transcend my ability to understand it. An assemblage of organic miscellany, nasty, unhealthful, and chaotic, but there is an emergence of higher levels of order and functionality.

I dug a hole in the mud. The hole in the mud assembled itself into a poem. No one can understand the poem. It is not beautiful, but it is compelling.

The mosquito larvae. The diving beetles. The dragonflies, craneflies, tree swallows and frogs. The pond is inhabited and visited. The robins gather mud in their beaks. The lightning bugs rest on stems of the rushes and blink their green messages. My pond. My ecosystem.

[prinsomnia]

✷ purest thoughts ✷

if this resonates with you, feel free to support this lil creacher living paycheck to paycheck! ► my ko-fi page ☕️