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#environment
wachinyeya · 3 days
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CA Redwoods to Be First National Park Co-Managed with a Native American Tribe That Used to Own it https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ca-redwoods-to-be-the-first-national-park-co-managed-with-a-native-american-tribe-that-used-to-own-it/
questionable headline aside this is good news
The Yurok will be the first Tribal nation to co-manage land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed on Tuesday by the tribe, Redwood national and state parks, and the non-profit Save the Redwoods League, according to news reports.
The Yurok tribe has seen a wave of successes in recent years, successfully campaigning for the removal of a series of dams on the Klamath River, where salmon once ran up to their territory, and with the signing of a new memorandum of understanding, the Yurok are set to reclaim more of what was theirs.
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iztea · 3 days
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a good strong wind will keep you honest
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spnstillstudies · 2 days
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46/327
S3E02, “The Kids Are Alright”
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There's been a recent increase in the removal of old dams and other barriers on salmon streams on the west coast of the U.S. While last year's removal of part a weir from McKay Creek wasn't as dramatic as the removal of dams on the Klamath River, the results of the removal are very promising.
The weir was installed about thirty years ago due to the creek being drained by a nearby reservoir. Unfortunately, its design meant that salmon could no longer go higher up the creek to their historic breeding grounds.
The power of nature's resiliency--if we give it the chance to recover--was evident in the fact that this past February saw the return of the salmon to the creek for the first time in three decades. What's even more exciting is that scientists found not just a few redds (salmon egg nests), but seventy-two of them in a six mile stretch of the creek above the weir! That's incredibly impressive, considering how long salmon were blocked from that area.
Here's to more projects like these giving our salmon a fighting chance for survival in spite of everything we've thrown at them over the years.
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good news guys! you can now enter your postcode here to see how much shit is in your local river!
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reasonsforhope · 23 hours
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"An estimated six million tonnes of used coffee grounds are created annually. Most go to landfill, generating methane and CO2, or are incinerated for energy.
It’s an obvious waste of a byproduct still rich in compounds (if not flavour). On a domestic level, try directing your cafetiere contents to your garden, not your bin: used coffee grounds are excellent as an addition to home compost bins and wormeries, a mulch for roses and a deterrent to snails. And on a global scale, science might have the answer.
A new study in the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology suggests that used coffee could hold the key to a pressing environmental problem: agricultural contamination.
How could old coffee grounds solve agricultural pollution?
Scientists from Brazil’s Federal Technological University of Paraná found that leftover coffee can absorb bentazone, a herbicide frequently used in agriculture.
When old coffee grounds are activated with zinc chloride, their carbon content becomes 70 per cent more efficient in removing the herbicide.
The study’s tests involved bentazone dissolved in liquid and treated with activated carbon from used coffee grounds, to see how it affected onion root tissues called meristems. All plants grow from meristem tissue and a plant’s development is disrupted when its meristems are damaged.
If the test can be replicated on an industrial scale, it would be an environmental double whammy: diverting coffee waste from landfill and preventing damage to wildlife and nature from herbicides.
Why is bentazone a problem?
...The UK’s Environment Agency cites bentazone as having the potential to affect long-term water quality and lead to an increased need to treat the UK’s drinking water sources. The herbicide has been shown to impact human health if it is inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin.
While this is only preliminary research and more studies are needed to determine efficacy of activated coffee grounds on a global scale, it’s a promising start. The authors of the study say their results “suggest a circular economy solution for spent coffee grounds that are currently discarded without any recycling or reuse system”. We can all drink to that."
-via EuroNews.green March 25/2024
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solarpunkwitchcraft · 20 hours
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"Merrimack Station, which is New England’s last running coal plant, will stop operating in 2028.
Granite Shore Power announced the closure of the Bow plant as part of a settlement agreement signed Wednesday, resolving litigation brought by the Conservation Law Foundation and the Sierra Club. Granite Shore Power will commit to shutting down coal-fired generators at the Schiller Station in Portsmouth by 2025. Currently, that plant has the capability to burn coal but hasn’t used its coal-fired generation since 2020.
Merrimack Station is a peaker plant, used to provide power on the region’s hottest or coldest days. In New England, coal makes up less than 1% of the region’s energy.
Granite Shore Power says the two plants will become “renewable energy parks.” Schiller Station is set to host a battery storage system that can provide power to the grid when there’s a lot of demand, and could serve as storage for offshore wind power.
Merrimack Station is expected to host about 100 megawatts of solar, along with more battery storage."
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scientist-price · 1 day
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practice-history · 2 days
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queerbrownvegan · 3 days
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I have found that I should not have to make people feel comfortable when they are comfortable making people uncomfortable.
-qbv
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wachinyeya · 3 days
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An Indigenous woman from the Inga community in the Condagua reservation in Putumayo, Colombia, is leading the struggle against a Canadian mining company that plans to mine the community’s sacred mountains for copper and molybdenum.
Within Soraida Chindoy’s territory is the Doña Juana-Chimayoy páramo, where eight rivers have their source and where there are 56 lagoons. The site, where the Amazon rainforest and the Andes meet, is sacred to the Indigenous population.
Her campaign against mining was borne of tragedy. In 2017, she and her family were among the almost 22,000 people affected by the landslide in Mocoa, when Mother Earth provided a stark warning as to why it is so important to take care of her.
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taikk0 · 5 hours
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Poster for art class! Task was to make a poster about environmental advocacy. I've been procrastinating on this poster for MONTHS because I couldn't find the right inspiration, and now, I still haven't.
But at least it's finished now!
Sketch:
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rebeccathenaturalist · 18 hours
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Okay, y'all, it's rant time again. Buckle up.
A new report just came out from Public Citizen highlighting the dangers of using apps and AI foraging guides for identifying mushrooms, particularly when mushroom foraging. It's the latest in a string of warnings that are fighting against a tide of purported convenience ("just take a picture and get your answer instantly!")
I've ranted about this since last August, and I also wrote up a detailed post on how to identify an AI-generated foraging guide. I'm also including info on the limitations of apps and AI in The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants, and Fungi Wherever You Go. I'm not just saying this to toot my own horn--it's because nature identification, and teaching it to others, is literally what I do for a living. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart.
I teach a very, very specific sort of identification class; whether we're focusing on animals, plants, fungi, or all of the above, I walk people through a detailed process of how to observe a given organism, make note of its various physical traits and habitat, and use that information to try to determine what it is. I emphasize the need to use as many sources as possible--field guides, websites, online and in-person groups, journal articles, etc.--to make absolutely sure that your identification is solid.
And every year, I get people (thankfully, a very small minority of my students) who complain because my two-hour basic mushroom hunting class wasn't just five minutes of introduction and one hundred and fifteen minutes of me showing slide after slide of edible mushrooms. There are so many people out there who just want a quick, easy answer so they can frolic in the woods and blithely pick mushrooms like some idealized image of a cottagecore herbalist with a cabin full of dried plants and smiling frogs or something.
While I do incorporate a bit of information on getting started with the app iNaturalist in my classes, it is as only ONE of MANY tools I encourage people to use. Sure, it's more solid than most apps because, in addition to the algorithmic I.D. suggestions it initially gives you, other iNaturalist users can go onto your observations later and either agree with your I.D.s or suggest something different and even explain why.
And yet--even as great as iNat is, it and its users can still be wrong. So can every other I.D. app out there. And I think that is one thing that the hyper-romanticized approaches to foraging--and nature identification in general--miss. In order to be a good forager, you HAVE to also be good at nature identification.
And nature identification is an entire process that requires you to have solid observational and critical thinking skills, to be able to independently research using many different types of tools, and be willing to invest the time, patience, and focus to properly arrive at a solid identification--if not to species level, then as far down the taxonomic ladder as you can realistically manage. (There's a reason even the experts complain about Little Brown Mushrooms and Damned Yellow Composites!)
People mistake one single tool--apps--for the entire toolkit. They assume any book they find on Amazon is going to be as good as any other, and don't take the time to look up the author to determine any credentials or experience, or even whether they actually exist or not. It doesn't help that the creators of these products often advertise them as "the only [book/app/etc.] you need to easily identify [organism of choice]!"
I mean, sure, the world isn't going to end if you never question the birdsong results on the Merlin app, or if you go through life thinking a deer fern is just a baby western sword fern. But when we get into people actually eating things they find in the wild, there's often no room for error. There are plants and mushrooms that can kill you even if you only eat a tiny amount. And even if they don't kill you, they may make you wish you were dead for a few days while you suffer through a whole host of gastrointestinal nastiness and other symptoms.
There aren't any shortcuts if you want to be safe in your foraging. You HAVE to be willing to do the work. And any teacher, author, or product that says otherwise isn't being ethical. I'm glad to see more people speaking out against the "fast foodization" of foraging in regards to overreliance on apps and the existence of AI foraging books; I just hope it's enough to prevent more people from getting sick or dying.
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intersectionalpraxis · 3 months
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I am once again at a loss for words. From @/ democracynow [@/ JoshuaPHill on X. 12/22/23.] [Image description: "Satellite imagery shows Israel's razing of Gaza agricultural land." A 'before' picture shows an aerial picture of lush green fields and areas of healthy crops, as well as the location of a greenhouse. An 'after,' photo shows an aerial view of a completely desolate land -there are no crops, no greenhouse, and no greenery.]
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