#native ecosystems

[sarahmackattack]

I made orbstructrions for making PollinatORBS (née seed bomb, but everything's so violent in the world, I didn't want the CHILDREN to see the word bomb. Or me. I don't want to see the word bomb if I don't have to. I am 35.)

Will the teachers I email this to use this worksheet? Maaaan who knows. Does the pollinatORB I drew kinda look like a turd thats being rolled by a dungbeetle? YEAH A LITTLE. But. Whatever kids. We're going with it.

Help a little bug near you. Look up native plants in your area. Plant a couple of em. Whisper to the first bug you see that you're happy to see them.

You can download the instructions here.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

I am still decompressing from four days of driving, but I am intensely pleased that I got to spend a few hours walking the full six-mile loop at Konza Prairie Biological Station in the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. I've been to plenty of old-growth forests, but this was my first time getting to explore an old-growth tallgrass prairie, and the oak groves that often form in low-lying areas. It was saved from being plowed under by all the dolomite stone just under the soil which made agriculture too difficult, other than cattle grazing. After driving for hours through cornfields and pastures full of non-native pasture grasses, it was such a relief to be able to immerse myself in a place that looks much like this entire landscape did for thousands of years. I know they're still doing restoration work there, since fire suppression has caused some imbalances, and of course the extermination of bison, but it's one of the best examples of North American tallgrass prairie still available today.

I have a lot more thoughts ruminating about this experience, but for now, enjoy a few pictures.

[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.

[delicatelysublimeforester]

Learn About Invasive Grasses: National Forest Week Discussion

🌲✨ Exciting Announcement for National Forest Week 2024! ✨🌲 Join us from September 22-28 as we celebrate National Forest Week with a special theme: “Two-Eyed Seeing: Welcoming all knowledge to sustain our forests.” This year, we’re embracing diverse perspectives to ensure the health and vitality of our precious forests. 🌿 Flag Raising Ceremony: Sunday, September 22Kick off the week with a…

[headspace-hotel]

by the way (i sadly cant share this document cause it was sent to me personally and i dont think its online) i've been reading a compilation of earliest writings by European settlers about Kentucky and its fucking wild

the main thing they mention is the river cane, everywhere. Cane cane cane cane cane on every page. Canebrakes stretching for miles and miles, dark woodlands of massive trees spaced wide apart with canebrake as the understory

But also they talk a lot about: Huge fields of strawberries that seem to turn red in spring with all the strawberries getting ripe. Raspberries. Groves of American plums, even some AN ACRE big just a huge patch of plum trees. Cherry trees. Huge grape vines growing up one in every four trees. Persimmons and pawpaws. Walnut trees. Hickory trees. Oak trees. And sugar maples. EVERYWHERE. And the canebrakes absolutely TEEMING with turkeys, passenger pigeons and quails

Reading the descriptions of looking out into a valley and seeing herds of 200-300 bison frolicking in the clover and river cane almost makes me want to cry...

It's crazy how much they talk about plum trees because plum trees are so rare now!

Really it's wild seeing how abundant the edible woody plant species and berries just-so-happened to be when Europeans first came. Right?

To me it seems like obvious pieces of evidence that indigenous people were actively cultivating this land. It was a landscape scale agriculture fully integrated with the ecosystem.

Even more so because it started to collapse very soon after settlers came. The sugar maple trees were mostly killed by settlers hacking indiscriminately into them with hatchets for maple syrup making without caring about the trees survival, the livestock running loose destroyed the native clover and cane causing invasive grass to grow back, and the bison...reading about the bison is so sad!

The wasteful slaughter of bison began very early. Lots of writers talk about other settlers killing bison just to say they killed one, or killing several of them and barely taking one horse load of meat from them, or seeing traders killing bison by the hundreds just to take the most valuable parts and leave the body to rot...And the writers knew it was wrong! but they couldn't stop the others from doing it. So bison were basically gone from around Lexington before 1800 :(

Settlers even killed the bison for wool--this was fascinating to me, they described making their cloth out of nettle bast fiber and bison wool. Native Americans also used bison wool for textiles, but as far as I know they didn't kill them for it (tho i reckon they might have used the wool on a bison they killed)...the wool peels right off in big clumps in the spring. Same thing with mountain goats, indigenous peoples would just gather the mountain goat wool when it naturally shed. But the settlers were killing bison to shave the wool off and it said only the young ones had good wool so if they killed a bison that didn't have good wool on it they would just kill another one.

They destroyed the river cane not knowing that bamboo was strong and useful for practically everything. Destroyed the native pastures of buffalo clover, Kentucky clover, running buffalo clover and God knows what other extinct or undiscovered clovers. And now wild strawberries and raspberries are hard to find, American plums very rare, persimmons rare...

The settlers didn't understand this land, didn't try to understand it, they were full of greed and just tried to force their idea of agriculture and their idea of society onto it, and watched in bafflement as the natural abundance and beauty of the land around them fell into decay and ruin from their abuse.

[ravensvalley]

#UndisturbedEcosystems

… preservation is crucial for maintaining the balance of our natural world. It includes benefits such as flood control, water filtration, and carbon sequestration which help regulate the effects of climate change, and contribute to human well-being and mental health.

@BenAdrienProulx July 30, 2024.

[smiggles]

People are allowed to do whatever I guess but me personally

if I hear you willingly let your cat outside without a leash

I WILL think you're cringe af

[mortemilla]

odo sketches

[joy-haver]

Honestly, I think we need to talk more often about the exotic pet trade. It’s such a threat to wild populations of animals all over the world. Anytime i see a post on here that’s like “look at this cute animal you probably haven’t heard of!” I weep over the truth that the more people hear about it, the more they will poach it from the land.

And I ask myself…why are people doing this? Why are we trying to take these often endangered animals from their habitat even as we know it won’t help them?

And I think to my own self. When I was 19, working in an exotic pet store, having just left a childhood full of times in the woods and farm animals. I came to a city that felt like it had none of that. The little glass boxes felt like encapsulations of the nature I had grown up around and sorely come to miss. If I couldn’t have it outside, I thought, I would have it inside. My coworkers and I all talked and watched videos about building little ecosystems for our little pets. It felt exciting. It felt connecting.

But the issue is that these aren’t ecosystems. They are often perpetual death machines of capture, and they often lead to disruption of the native ecosystems you’re actually yearning for. Hell, look at Florida. Hundreds of invasive animals, including everything from great large pythons to little isopods, all brought in through the pet trade. Look at Australia. Species decimated by poaching. Read about all the little monkeys of the world, and what we have done by owning them.

There are entire industries wrapped up in the poaching of wild animals, the breeding of them, the housing of them, the feeding of them. Even some of the most well respected and supposedly ethical people in the trade still think there are different ethics for breeders and normal keepers. They store their animals in minimalistic tiny enclosures. Thousands upon thousands of rats and crickets are bred just to maintain the feed supply to the trade and its customers, creating an endless wheel of suffering and disease conditions. And I must ask, why? For what purpose? It’s not conservation. These aren’t concerned groups creating sanctuary populations for wildlife reintroduction. They aren’t growing things for food, or leather, or research. All of those we can discuss the ethics of, sure, but at least then there is a reason. What is the reason here? Just to have a hollow stare at a sad creature and pretend that is love? Just to propagate more environmental destruction with our ongoing thievery of peat moss and orchids for our tanks?

And still then are the collectors. I’ve met people with hundreds of animals placed in shoe storage racks, living their lives for no purpose other than the occasional glance and the feeling of having a hoard.

We all feel so disconnected from the environment that we are willing to rob other areas of the world, we are willing to further endanger these species we love, we are willing to terrorize the ecosystems we are unknowingly in, all due to our incredible and violent loneliness.

But this is a solvable problem.

Learn to live where you are. Learn to love the things you can find around you. Plant native plants, you will see native birds and wildlife. If you don’t have a yard, offer to care for the yard of an older neighbor, if they will let you use native plant landscaping in exchange. If you truly cannot connect where you are, to its people and to its ecosystems, then research somewhere and move. But don’t live your life with one foot out the door, hating where you are and doing nothing, dreaming or elsewhere and never leaving.

You do not need to collect rare morphs of isopods. My friend, I see so many beautiful native ones outside in the habitat I have helped manage for them. I see swallowtail butterflies and chimney swifts and solitary bees and little snakes and salamanders and anoles. I learn their species names and watch their behaviors. I see what they eat, where they hide, what times of year they are around. And I feel, finally, connected. Everything I was looking for in the commodity of exotic pets, I found in the reality just outside my door. I have nurtured it and it has nurtured me.

Owning that cute monkey won’t fix you. But having a relationship with the ecology around you just might begin to.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

The United States is a large country that--even if you only look at the contiguous 48--covers almost a thousand Level VI ecoregions, each one unique. Many people won't recognize anything beyond basic biomes, like "forest" or "wetland", and even among those who are familiar with old-growth forests, the idea of an old-growth prairie or desert may be surprising.

This is why I get frustrated with bureaucratic attempts to "solve" ecological problems. The most well-known is probably Trump's suggestion that we just "rake" the forest (no, Finland doesn't actually do that.) But the problem with having politicians in general in charge of legislation regarding complex ecosystems and their denizens is that they generally don't have enough knowhow to understand the parameters and needs of a given location, or why it's important to preserve that place as it is.

Moreover, decision-makers have a tendency to place the claims of industry officials from logging and mining companies as being of equivalent authority as scientists who have spent decades studying how a given ecosystem works within a localized ecoregion. Sure, a logging exec knows how to make money from trees, and they may understand something about tree farming, but they rarely know even a fraction of what an ecologist knows about why trees can't just grow in isolation--at least not if you want them to be healthy. And when you put people who have zero experience in a given field in charge of the federal department overlooking management of that field? There should be a requirement that cabinet members have relevant training and experience, as with any other job. (Knowing how to cut down trees or how to sell them does not mean you know how a forest works.)

At a time when our government here in the US is swiftly defunding scientific research, it is more important than ever that those of us who are either professional scientists, citizen scientists, or other advocates educate others on the basics of ecology. We need to ensure that the existing body of research is preserved, and advocate for increased funding. Otherwise we're just going to end up with more and more federal decisions being made in full ignorance of established science, and with profit as the only priority.

[reasonsforhope]

"In Northern California, a Native American tribe is celebrating the return of ancestral lands in one of the largest such transfers in the nation’s history.

Through a Dept. of the Interior initiative aiming to bring indigenous knowledge back into land management, 76 square miles east of the central stretch of the Klamath River has been returned to the Yurok tribe.

Sandwiched between the newly-freed Klamath and forested hillsides of evergreens, redwoods, and cottonwoods, Blue Creek is considered the crown jewel of these lands, though if it were a jewel it wouldn’t be blue, it would be a giant colorless diamond, such is the clarity of the water.

Pictured: Blue Creek

It’s the most important cold-water tributary of the Klamath River, and critical habitat for coho and Chinook salmon. Fished and hunted on since time immemorial by the Yurok and their ancestors, the land was taken from them during the gold rush before eventually being bought by timber companies.

Barry McCovey Jr., director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, remembers slipping past gates and dodging security along Blue Creek just to fish up a steelhead, one of three game fish that populate the river and need it to spawn.

Profiled along with the efforts of his tribe to secure the land for themselves and their posterity, he spoke to AP about the experience of seeing plans, made a decade ago, come to fruition, and returning to the creek on which he formerly trespassed as a land and fisheries manager.

“To go from when I was a kid and 20 years ago even, from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands … is incredible,” he said.

Part of the agreement is that the Yurok Tribe would manage the land to a state of maximum health and resilience, and for that the tribe has big plans, including restoring native prairie, using fire to control understory growth, removing invasive species, restoring native fish habitat, and undoing decades of land-use changes from the logging industry in the form of culverts and logging roads.

“And maybe all that’s not going to be done in my lifetime,” said McCovey. “But that’s fine, because I’m not doing this for myself.”

The Yurok Tribe were recently at the center of the nation’s largest dam removal, a two decades-long campaign to remove a series of four hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River. Once the West Coast’s third-largest salmon run, the Klamath dams substantially reduced salmon activity.

Completed last September, the before and after photographs are stunning to witness. By late November, salmon had already returned far upriver to spawn, proving that instinctual information had remained intact even after a century of disconnect.

Pictured; Klamath River flows freely, after Copco-2 dam was removed in California

“Seeing salmon spawning above the former dams fills my heart,” said Joseph L. James, chairman of the Yurok Tribe, the leaders of the dam removal campaign along with the Karuk and Klamath tribes.

“Our salmon are coming home. Klamath Basin tribes fought for decades to make this day a reality because our future generations deserve to inherit a healthier river from the headwaters to the sea.”

Last March, GNN reported that the Yurok Tribe had also become the first of America’s tribal nations to co-manage land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding involving Redwoods National Park.

The nonprofit Save the Redwoods bought a piece of land adjacent to the park, which receives 1 million visitors annually and is a UNESCO Natural Heritage Site, and handed it over to the Yurok for stewardship.

The piece of land, which contained giant redwoods, recovered to such an extent that the NPS has incorporated it into the Redwoods trail network, and the two agencies will cooperate in ensuring mutual flourishing between two properties and one ecosystem.

Back at Blue Creek, AP reports that work has already begun clearing non-native conifer trees planted for lumber. The trunks will be used to create log jams in the creek for wildlife habitat.

Costing $56 million, the land was bought from the loggers by Western Rivers Conservancy, using a mixture of fundraising efforts including private capital, low interest loans, tax credits, public grants and carbon credit sales.

The sale was part of a movement called Land Back, which involves returning ownership of once-native lands of great importance to tribes for the sake of effective stewardship. [Note: This is a weirdly limited definition of Land Back. Land Back means RETURN STOLEN LAND, PERIOD.] Studies have shown around the tropics that indigenous-owned lands in protected areas have higher forest integrity and biodiversity than those owned by national governments.

Land Back has seen 4,700 square miles—equivalent to one and a half-times the size of Yellowstone National Park—returned to tribes through land buy-back agreements in 15 states." [Note: Since land buyback agreements aren't the only form of Land Back, the total is probably (hopefully) more than that.]

-via Good News Network, June 10, 2025

[eldritch-bf]

The real mystery of the reanimator universe isn’t how Herbert died and came back in 2/3 movies but how they managed to get that iguana through international customs

[nando161mando]

[lavendercowboyart]

Plant native plants for a healthier ecosystem! 🪱✨

[farmerstrend]

Why Smallholder Farmers in Western Kenya Are Championing Native Tree Restoration

Smallholders in Western Kenya strongly support native-tree restoration due to long-term benefits for landscape restoration, productivity and livelihoods, new research shows. Digital tools and community buy-in are successfully backing restoration projects A farmer waters seedlings along the Nzoia River in Siaya, Kenya. African nations have grand ambitions to green up landscapes with trees; the…