#the rewilding reports

[clanoffelidae]

my predictions for the ice ghost

arakie: -hits foot- OW FUCK-

lynx: this is so sad quancee play despacito

~~~

quiller: over two-thirds of the sealion people that you knew are now dead

lynx: NOT poggers :'(

~~~

arakie: time for your final exam. what is tik tok?

lynx: a song by ke$ha

arakie: you've done well. there is nothing left for me to teach you. my time has come. -disappears in a flurry of snow-

lynx: -playing a bad recorder version of 'my heart will go on'-

[reasonsforhope]

"England is celebrating the first pair of beaver kits born in the country since they were reintroduced back into the country’s north last year.

Landscape managers in England are beside themselves with surprise over the changes brought about by a single year of beaver residency at the Wallington Estate in Northumberland—with dams, mudflats, and ponds just appearing out of nowhere across the landscape.

Released into a 25-acre habitat on the estate last year, the four beavers at Wallington are part of a series of beaver returns that took place across the UK starting in 2021 in Dorset. Last year, GNN reported that Hasel and Chompy were released into the 925-acre Ewhurst Estate in Hampshire in January 2023, and the beavers that have now reproduced established their home in Wallington in July.

“Beavers are changing the landscape all the time, you don’t really know what is coming next and that probably freaks some people out,” said Paul Hewitt, the countryside manager for the trust at Wallington. “They are basically river anarchists.”

“This time last year I don’t think I fully knew what beavers did. Now I understand a lot more and it is a massive lightbulb moment. It is such a magical animal in terms of what it does.”

It’s believed that the only animal which alters the natural environment to the same extent as humans is the beaver. Their constant felling of trees to construct dams causes creeks to build up into pools that spill out during rainfall across the land, cutting numerous other small channels into the soil that distribute water in multiple directions.

Hewitt says that in Wallington this has translated to a frantic return of glorious wildlife like kingfishers, herons, and bats.

Recently the mature pair of beavers mated and produced a kit, though its sex is not yet known because beavers don’t have external genitalia.

These beaver reintroductions have led to a raft of beaver sightings around the country. Those at the National Trust working to rewild the beaver back into Great Britain hope the recovery of the landscape will convince authorities to permit further reintroductions to bigger areas."

-via Good News Network, July 16, 2024

[wachinyeya]

Tiny Indian Ocean Island Shows How Quickly Seabirds Recover When Invasive Predators Are Removed https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tiny-indian-ocean-island-shows-how-quickly-seabirds-recover-when-invasive-predators-are-removed/

18 years after rats were eradicated, Tromelin Island off the coast of Madagascar is a thriving colony of seabirds once again.

The same story happened over and over during the age of exploration: Europeans brought rats or rabbits on board their ships and dumped them on delicate, pristine island ecosystems.

Hundreds of islands became desolate wastelands this way, damage that has for the most part been reversed, as GNN has reported, in one of the greatest conservation stories ever told.

Now, this small teardrop of sand, rock, and palm trees in the southern Indian Ocean, is the most recent example of conservationists being able to completely rewild a landscape back to a period before European contact.

Spanning just 1 square kilometer, Tromelin Island is now home to thousands of breeding pairs of 7 seabird species like the masked and red-footed boobies.

By 2013, these two species had doubled in number from the precarious, rat oppressed lows of just a handful in 2004. In the subsequent 9 years, white terns, brown noddies, sooty terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters, and lesser noddies all came back on their own initiative.

Matthieu Le Corre, an ecologist at the University of Reunion Island, told Hakkai Magazine how, in some cases, restoring seabird populations can be a tricky thing based on the particular species’ nesting habits.

On other islands where Le Corre has worked, they’ve had to install robotic bird calls and life-size replicas to convince the birds the island is a safe place to nest again. But Tromelin Island needed no such help, since these terns, noddies, and boobies are much more dispersed in their nesting patterns.

“In terms of conservation, it’s a wonderful success,” Le Corre says.

[justalittlesolarpunk]

I’ve teased it. You’ve waited. I’ve procrastinated. You’ve probably forgotten all about it.

But now, finally, I’m here with my solarpunk resources masterpost!

YouTube Channels:

Andrewism

The Solarpunk Scene

Solarpunk Life

Solarpunk Station

Our Changing Climate

Podcasts:

The Joy Report

How To Save A Planet

Demand Utopia

Solarpunk Presents

Outrage and Optimisim

From What If To What Next

Solarpunk Now

Idealistically

The Extinction Rebellion Podcast

The Landworkers' Radio

Wilder

What Could Possibly Go Right?

Frontiers of Commoning

The War on Cars

The Rewild Podcast

Solacene

Imagining Tomorrow

Books (Fiction):

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness The Dispossessed The Word for World is Forest

Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Phoebe Wagner: When We Hold Each Other Up

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

Brenda J. Pierson: Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology

Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro: Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

Justine Norton-Kertson: Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology

Sim Kern: The Free People’s Village

Ruthanna Emrys: A Half-Built Garden

Sarina Ulibarri: Glass & Gardens

Books (Non-fiction):

Murray Bookchin: The Ecology of Freedom

George Monbiot: Feral

Miles Olson: Unlearn, Rewild

Mark Shepard: Restoration Agriculture

Kristin Ohlson: The Soil Will Save Us

Rowan Hooper: How To Spend A Trillion Dollars

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing: The Mushroom At The End of The World

Kimberly Nicholas: Under The Sky We Make

Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass

David Miller: Solved

Ayana Johnson, Katharine Wilkinson: All We Can Save

Jonathan Safran Foer: We Are The Weather

Colin Tudge: Six Steps Back To The Land

Edward Wilson: Half-Earth

Natalie Fee: How To Save The World For Free

Kaden Hogan: Humans of Climate Change

Rebecca Huntley: How To Talk About Climate Change In A Way That Makes A Difference

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac: The Future We Choose

Jonathon Porritt: Hope In Hell

Paul Hawken: Regeneration

Mark Maslin: How To Save Our Planet

Katherine Hayhoe: Saving Us

Jimmy Dunson: Building Power While The Lights Are Out

Paul Raekstad, Sofa Saio Gradin: Prefigurative Politics

Andreas Malm: How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Almanac For The Anthropocene

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

William MacAskill: What We Owe To The Future

Mikaela Loach: It's Not That Radical

Miles Richardson: Reconnection

David Harvey: Spaces of Hope Rebel Cities

Eric Holthaus: The Future Earth

Zahra Biabani: Climate Optimism

David Ehrenfeld: Becoming Good Ancestors

Stephen Gliessman: Agroecology

Chris Carlsson: Nowtopia

Jon Alexander: Citizens

Leah Thomas: The Intersectional Environmentalist

Greta Thunberg: The Climate Book

Jen Bendell, Rupert Read: Deep Adaptation

Seth Godin: The Carbon Almanac

Jane Goodall: The Book of Hope

Vandana Shiva: Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture

Amitav Ghosh: The Great Derangement

Minouche Shafik: What We Owe To Each Other

Dieter Helm: Net Zero

Chris Goodall: What We Need To Do Now

Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stephanie Foote: The Cambridge Companion To The Environmental Humanities

Bella Lack: The Children of The Anthropocene

Hannah Ritchie: Not The End of The World

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

Kim Stanley Robinson: Ministry For The Future

Fiona Mathews, Tim Kendall: Black Ops & Beaver Bombing

Jeff Goodell: The Water Will Come

Lynne Jones: Sorry For The Inconvenience But This Is An Emergency

Helen Crist: Abundant Earth

Sam Bentley: Good News, Planet Earth!

Timothy Beal: When Time Is Short

Andrew Boyd: I Want A Better Catastrophe

Kristen R. Ghodsee: Everyday Utopia

Elizabeth Cripps: What Climate Justice Means & Why We Should Care

Kylie Flanagan: Climate Resilience

Chris Johnstone, Joanna Macy: Active Hope

Mark Engler: This is an Uprising

Anne Therese Gennari: The Climate Optimist Handbook

Magazines:

Solarpunk Magazine

Positive News

Resurgence & Ecologist

Ethical Consumer

Films (Fiction):

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

The End We Start From

Woman At War

Black Panther

Star Trek

Tomorrowland

Films (Documentary):

2040: How We Can Save The Planet

The People vs Big Oil

Wild Isles

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

Generation Green New Deal

Planet Earth III

Video Games:

Terra Nil

Animal Crossing

Gilded Shadows

Anno 2070

Stardew Valley

RPGs:

Solarpunk Futures

Perfect Storm

Advocacy Groups:

A22 Network

Extinction Rebellion

Greenpeace

Friends of The Earth

Green New Deal Rising

Apps:

Ethy

Sojo

BackMarket

Depop

Vinted

Olio

Buy Nothing

Too Good To Go

Websites:

European Co-housing

UK Co-housing

US Co-housing

Brought By Bike (connects you with zero-carbon delivery goods)

ClimateBase (find a sustainable career)

Environmentjob (ditto)

Businesses (🤢):

Ethical Superstore

Hodmedods

Fairtransport/Sail Cargo Alliance

Let me know if you think there’s anything I’ve missed!

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - July 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735! (Or check out my new(ly repurposed) Patreon!)

1. Thai tiger numbers swell as prey populations stabilize in western forests

“The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data. […] The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007. […] A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year.”

2. Work starts to rewild former cattle farm

“Ecologists have started work to turn a former livestock farm into a nature reserve [… which] will become a "mosaic of habitats" for insects, birds and mammals. [… R]ewilding farmland could benefit food security locally by encouraging pollinators, improving soil health and soaking up flood water. [… “N]ature restoration doesn't preclude food production. We want to address [food security] by using nature-based solutions."”

3. Harnessing ‘invisible forests in plain view’ to reforest the world

“[… T]he degraded land contained numerous such stumps with intact root systems capable of regenerating themselves, plus millions of tree seeds hidden in the soil, which farmers could simply encourage to grow and reforest the landscape[….] Today, the technique of letting trees resprout and protecting their growth from livestock and wildlife [… has] massive potential to help tackle biodiversity loss and food insecurity through resilient agroforestry systems. [… The UN’s] reported solution includes investing in land restoration, “nature-positive” food production, and rewilding, which could return between $7 and $30 for every dollar spent.”

4. California bars school districts from outing LGBTQ+ kids to their parents

“Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the SAFETY Act today – a bill that prohibits the forced outing of transgender and gay students, making California the first state to explicitly prohibit school districts from doing so. […] Matt Adams, a head of department at a West London state school, told PinkNews at the time: “Teachers and schools do not have all the information about every child’s home environment and instead of supporting a pupil to be themselves in school, we could be putting them at risk of harm.””

5. 85% of new electricity built in 2023 came from renewables

“Electricity supplied by renewables, like hydropower, solar, and wind, has increased gradually over the past few decades — but rapidly in recent years. [… C]lean energy now makes up around 43 percent of global electricity capacity. In terms of generation — the actual power produced by energy sources — renewables were responsible for 30 percent of electricity production last year. […] Along with the rise of renewable sources has come a slowdown in construction of non-renewable power plants as well as a move to decommission more fossil fuel facilities.”

6. Deadly cobra bites to "drastically reduce" as scientists discover new antivenom

“After successful human trials, the snake venom antidote could be rolled out relatively quickly to become a "cheap, safe and effective drug for treating cobra bites" and saving lives around the globe, say scientists. Scientists have found that a commonly used blood thinner known as heparin can be repurposed as an inexpensive antidote for cobra venom. […] Using CRISPR gene-editing technology […] they successfully repurposed heparin, proving that the common blood thinner can stop the necrosis caused by cobra bites.”

7. FruitFlow: a new citizen science initiative unlocks orchard secrets

“"FruitWatch" has significantly refined phenological models by integrating extensive citizen-sourced data, which spans a wider geographical area than traditional methods. These enhanced models offer growers precise, location-specific predictions, essential for optimizing agricultural planning and interventions. […] By improving the accuracy of phenological models, farmers can better align their operations with natural biological cycles, enhancing both yield and quality.”

8. July 4th Means Freedom for Humpback Whale Near Valdez, Alaska

“The NOAA Fisheries Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Hotline received numerous reports late afternoon on July 3. A young humpback whale was entangled in the middle of the Port of Valdez[….] “The success of this mission was due to the support of the community, as they were the foundation of the effort,” said Moran. [… Members of the community] were able to fill the critical role of acting as first responders to a marine mammal emergency. “Calling in these reports is extremely valuable as it allows us to respond when safe and appropriate, and also helps us gain information on various threats affecting the animals,” said Lyman.”

9. Elephants Receive First of Its Kind Vaccine

“Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus is the leading cause of death for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) born in facilities in North America and also causes calf deaths in the wild in Asia. A 40-year-old female received the new mRNA vaccine, which is expected to help the animal boost immunity[….]”

10. Conservation partners and Indigenous communities working together to restore forests in Guatemala

“The K’iche have successfully managed their natural resources for centuries using their traditional governing body and ancestral knowledge. As a result, Totonicapán is home to Guatemala’s largest remaining stand of conifer forest. […] EcoLogic has spearheaded a large-scale forest restoration project at Totonicapán, where 13 greenhouses now hold about 16,000 plants apiece, including native cypresses, pines, firs, and alders. […] The process begins each November when community members gather seeds. These seeds then go into planters that include upcycled coconut fibers and mycorrhizal fungi, which help kickstart fertilization. When the plantings reach about 12 inches, they’re ready for distribution.”

July 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[tomorrowusa]

A lot of people won't like hearing this, but the meat industry is terrible for this planet.

Last weekend, Elon Musk posted one of his more outrageously false tweets to date: “Important to note that what happens on Earth’s surface (eg farming) has no meaningful impact on climate change.” Musk was, as he has been from time to time, wrong. As climate experts rushed to emphasize, farming actually accounts for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Musk spewing disinformation is not exactly news. But even by his standards, his contention regarding livestock agriculture and climate was on a par with George Santos's fantasies.

The tens of billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals we raise and slaughter for food annually account for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from cow burps, animal manure, and the fertilizer used to grow the corn and soy they eat. More than one-third of the Earth’s habitable land is used for animal farming — much of it cleared for cattle grazing and growing all thatcorn and soy — making animal agriculture the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss globally. Deforestation causes emissions itself, but it also represents a missed opportunity to sequester carbon. If that land were “rewilded,” or retired as farmland, it would act as a carbon sink, sucking massive amounts of climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere. But we keep clearing more and more forestland, especially in the Amazon rainforest and elsewhere in the tropics, mostly for beef, pork, and poultry.

Yep, livestock grazing accounts for almost a third of our usable land.

The message regarding livestock agriculture just isn't getting out.

Madre Brava also conducted a media analysis that found that between 2020 and 2022, less than 0.5 percent of stories about climate change by leading news outlets in the US, the United Kingdom, and Europe mentioned meat or livestock. Last month, two groups that work on issues related to animal agriculture — Sentient Media and Faunalytics — published an analysis with similar findings. The organizations looked at the 100 most recent climate change stories from each of the top 10 US media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN, and found that 7 percent mentioned animal agriculture. Of that 7 percent, most only discussed how climate change-fueled weather events like droughts, floods, and heatwaves impact animal farmers. “Across the 1,000 articles we examined, only a handful of stories reported in depth on the connection between consuming animal products and climate change,” the researchers wrote. The media is an easy target, and some criticism is deserved — it’s a disservice to readers to largely ignore a leading cause of the climate crisis. Part of the problem is that the media, like everyone else, operates in an information environment in which the meat lobby downplays and in some cases suppresses the full extent to which burgers, ribs, and chicken nuggets pollute the planet. But journalists could be doing more to cut through the noise.

We need to speak up more ourselves. Entrenched interests and powerful lobbying groups are not shy about promoting livestock businesses which harm the planet.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the industry’s leading lobby group, runs a “climate messaging machine,” food journalist Joe Fassler recently wrote in the Guardian, that trains influencers to confuse the public and downplay beef’s emissions. The list goes on. Last year, leaked documents showed that delegates from Brazil and Argentina successfully lobbied the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to remove any mention of meat’s negative impact on the environment, or recommendations for people in rich countries to reduce their meat consumption, in its recent report. Meat giant Tyson Foods spends a much bigger share of its revenue than ExxonMobil lobbying Congress to stop climate policy. Outside the animal rights movement, there aren’t many voices pushing back against these narratives. The US environmental movement has largely shied away from campaigning to reduce meat and dairy production, with some leaders outright rejecting the notion that we need to eat fewer animals. Policymakers largely avoid the issue too.

We have a lot of catching up to do – and fast.

“The food conversation is probably about 20 years behind the energy conversation, and it is catching up, but it’s not visceral to people in the way energy is — that they immediately know energy is a climate issue,” said Michael Grunwald, a food and agriculture columnist for Canary Media, in the Sentient Media panel discussion. But time is in short supply. Experts say that if we don’t change what we eat — especially reducing beef and dairy — we can’t meet the Paris climate agreement of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less.

In addition to publicizing the issue, we can lead by example. Eating less meat or even no meat lets people know we're serious about what we're saying.

There will be pushback from the industry and also from populist blowhards. We can imagine at least one saying something like: "Hunter Biden wants to steal your double cheeseburger. SAD!"

But no discussion of carbon emissions is complete without talk of livestock agriculture and its effects.

[cognitivejustice]

170 European Bison reintroduced to Romania’s Țarcu mountains could help capture and store the carbon released by up to 84,000 average US petrol cars each year.

By grazing a 48 square kilometre area of grassland in a wider landscape of 300 kilometres squared, they helped to capture an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon each year. That is around 10 times the amount that would be captured by the ecosystem without the bison.

The report’s authors note, however, that this figure could be up to 55 per cent higher or lower. The higher figure is the equivalent of around 84,000 US petrol cars annually and the median average is 43,000 cars.

They do this through a combination of evenly grazing grasslands, recycling nutrients which fertilise the soil, dispersing seeds and compacting the soil to prevent carbon from being released. Researchers say that, having evolved alongside this ecosystem for millions of years, their removal has upset the delicate balance, causing carbon to be released.

“Rewilding in this way is now clearly a major option for policymakers in the face of rapidly accelerating climate change.”

[climatecalling]

By allowing existing trees to grow old in healthy ecosystems and restoring degraded areas, scientists say 226 gigatonnes of carbon could be sequestered, equivalent to nearly 50 years of US emissions for 2022. But they caution that mass monoculture tree-planting and offsetting will not help forests realise their potential. “Conserving forests, ending deforestation and empowering people who live in association with those forests has the power to capture 61% of our potential. That’s huge. It’s potentially reframing forest conservation. It’s no longer avoided emissions, it’s massive carbon drawdown, too,” said Tom Crowther, the head of the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich. He said thousands of different project and schemes were needed to preserve and revive forests. “It can be achieved by millions of local communities, Indigenous communities, farmers and foresters who promote biodiversity. It could be agroforestry for cacao, coffee or banana, natural regeneration, rewilding or creating habitat corridors. They’re successful when nature becomes the economic choice. It’s not easy but it’s doable.” ... “There is still only a finite amount of land to dedicate to forests, and ability of trees to sequester carbon is limited. The reality is that we need to slash fossil fuel emissions, end deforestation, and restore ecosystems to stabilise the climate in line with the Paris agreement.”

[goretier]

I'm really excited about the green knight and I think I can guess what full animal is, but what is Warm Gun? 👀👀👀

Hi Vio :3 it’s some more little Helmut/the soldier I’ve had cooking for months and have never given my full attention. I’ve only got about 700 words that I like but it’s about the soldier cleaning his guns and then Helmut cleaning him! Or, it will be. Right now it’s about the firing range, lol. Here’s what I’ve got if you’re interested :9

Heinrich had an outdoor range put in soon after the Soldier came to live with them. Helmut remembered the groundskeeper shaking his head as a team of contractors dug up and plowed flat a thick stripe of land where the edge of the forest abutted their wide, grassy lawn. The smell of fresh and wet dirt lingered in the air for months after, even though the men had it finished within a week.

It was sort of simple in design, Helmut would guess. Just a single, very large dirt impact berm, with a thick concrete back and heavy wooden sides containing it to the left and right. It had no permanent firing stand so the Soldier could be made to set up at any distance from paper targets or ballistic gels and unload hundreds of bullets in an afternoon.

In summertime his father might have a tent erected along the firing lane if it pleased him to supervise his practice. Helmut would watch from his room as teams of servants relayed between the tent and the back kitchen door like a trail of ants, carrying trays of sandwiches, carafes of chilled wine, and stacks of paper for his father, and olive green ammo boxes for the Soldier by the hand truck.

By the end of the Soldier’s first summer in their care the hard-packed earth before the targets was glittering with casings all down the range like gold in a dry riverbed. The sheer volume of spent rounds made cleanup impossible, and as such the groundskeeper only allowed his most decrepit lawnmowers to pass over the dirt there when the grass and wildflowers began to return. And though the land was forever changed, eventually the scar began to fade.

Surprisingly, the rewilding didn’t bother his father much; the Soldier kept a three-foot wide lane of dirt stamped clear up and down the length of it well enough. Depending on the season his boots were caked in mud, dry-brushed with pollen, or dusted with silt, and sometimes invisible up to the ankle when the Siberian bugloss began to crowd against the edge of his well-worn lane.

Helmut liked to stand in his Soldat’s desire path while he worked, clutching his headset tight to his ears and squatting in the dirt to pick over the casings left to rust between volleys. He felt like an archaeologist holding up brass arrowheads to Soldat for identification, wading knee-deep in a dig that would rival the Royal Cemetery at Ur in a young boy’s mind.

Entire summers might pass for him there in the weeds and wildflowers, dirt under his fingernails and gun smoke in his hair in the shadow of his most dedicated protector, listening to the endless practice until his own shoulders stopped flinching with every pull of the trigger.

The pageant of firearms was endless, too. Helmut didn’t care much to note them all, and oftentimes he wondered if the Soldier cared either. They were all deadly in his hand no matter the manufacturer or style. Helmut had seen him rip open ballistic dummies with little micro 9mms that were practically invisible in his thick palms just as handily as a Barrett M82A1M.

Well, he hadn’t exactly seen that one happen. After a rusted old car had been dragged up the lawn and parked in front of the berm, Heinrich had ordered him into the mansion as Soldat slung the rifle over his shoulder and walked half a mile into the tree line. Even then the sound of the report had made him jump through his skin and clap his hands to his ears. He fired it ten times, and the range was closed for repairs for an entire week while Soldat was away.

Still, despite the glut of weapons to choose from, there was always just one type of gun strapped to his thigh. Helmut would stare at the back strap of it sometimes where it was peeking out of the holster and always smelling of gun smoke.

A SIG-Sauer P220ST pistol chambered in .45 ACP. It was two-toned just like the man who carried it; a standard black frame with a shining steel slide. A mismatch, yes, but handsomely paired. Lucky that it fit together better than he did, where his scars were red and angry still.

[bumblebeeappletree]

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison journeys to Senegal to see a movement of forest gardens which are contributing to Africa's Great Green Wall. Andrew accompanies the organization Planet Wild to visit the excellent work of Trees for the Future. Planet Wild is funding the planting of 40,000 trees in this project so we are here to assess the system and report on the situation on the ground.

💬 🔜 🌳 Comment to plant a tree! — Planet Wild will plant one extra tree for everyone who leaves a comment below before the end of 2023. Let’s plant some trees together!

Planet Wild is an amazing community that is restoring the Earth through the power of Youtube!

I highly recommend to checkout their channel. Their rewilding videos are truly fascinating. Click here to watch:

/ @planet-wild

Trees for the Future:

https://trees.org/

Andrew Millison’s links:

https://www.andrewmillison.com/

https://permaculturedesign.oregonstat...

JOIN THIS CHANNEL to get access to uncut video content and live Q & A sessions:

/ @amillison

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE NEWSLETTER:

https://share.hsforms.com/1X79TznHYRC...

[reasonsforhope]

Masterpost: Reasons I firmly believe we will beat climate change

Posts are in reverse chronological order (by post date, not article date), mostly taken from my "climate change tag," which I went through all the way back to the literal beginning of my blog. Will update periodically.

Especially big deal articles/posts are in bold.

Big picture:

Mature trees offer hope in world of rising emissions (x)

Spying from space: How satellites can help identify and rein in a potent climate pollutant (x)

Good news: Tiny urban green spaces can cool cities and save lives (x)

Conservation and economic development go hand in hand, more often than expected (x)

The exponential growth of solar power will change the world (x)

Sun Machines: Solar, an energy that gets cheaper and cheaper, is going to be huge (x)

Wealthy nations finally deliver promised climate aid, as calls for more equitable funding for poor countries grow (x)

For Earth Day 2024, experts are spreading optimism – not doom. Here's why. (x)

Opinion: I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore. (x)

The World’s Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think (x)

‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief (x)

Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View (x)

Young Forests Capture Carbon Quicker than Previously Thought (x)

Yes, climate change can be beaten by 2050. Here's how. (x)

Soil improvements could keep planet within 1.5C heating target, research shows (x)

The global treaty to save the ozone layer has also slowed Arctic ice melt (x)

The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past (x)

Scientists Find Methane is Actually Offsetting 30% of its Own Heating Effect on Planet (x)

Are debt-for-climate swaps finally taking off? (x)

High seas treaty: historic deal to protect international waters finally reached at UN (x)

How Could Positive ‘Tipping Points’ Accelerate Climate Action? (x)

Specific examples:

Environmental Campaigners Celebrate As Labour Ends Tory Ban On New Onshore Wind Projects (x)

Private firms are driving a revolution in solar power in Africa (x)

How the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu drastically cut plastic pollution (x)

Rewilding sites have seen 400% increase in jobs since 2008, research finds [Scotland] (x)

The American Climate Corps take flight, with most jobs based in the West (x)

Waste Heat Generated from Electronics to Warm Finnish City in Winter Thanks to Groundbreaking Thermal Energy Project (x)

Climate protection is now a human right — and lawsuits will follow [European Union] (x)

A new EU ecocide law ‘marks the end of impunity for environmental criminals’ (x)

Solar hits a renewable energy milestone not seen since WWII [United States] (x)

These are the climate grannies. They’ll do whatever it takes to protect their grandchildren. [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

Century of Tree Planting Stalls the Warming Effects in the Eastern United States, Says Study (x)

Chart: Wind and solar are closing in on fossil fuels in the EU (x)

UK use of gas and coal for electricity at lowest since 1957, figures show (x)

Countries That Generate 100% Renewable Energy Electricity (x)

Indigenous advocacy leads to largest dam removal project in US history [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

India’s clean energy transition is rapidly underway, benefiting the entire world (x)

China is set to shatter its wind and solar target five years early, new report finds (x)

‘Game changing’: spate of US lawsuits calls big oil to account for climate crisis (x)

Largest-ever data set collection shows how coral reefs can survive climate change (x)

The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What Does It DO? [United States] (x)

Good Climate News: Headline Roundup April 1st through April 15th, 2023 (x)

How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon (x) [Brazil]

Loss of Climate-Crucial Mangrove Forests Has Slowed to Near-Negligable Amount Worldwide, Report Hails (x)

Agroecology schools help communities restore degraded land in Guatemala (x)

Climate adaptation:

Solar-powered generators pull clean drinking water 'from thin air,' aiding communities in need: 'It transforms lives' (x)

‘Sponge’ Cities Combat Urban Flooding by Letting Nature Do the Work [China] (x)

Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala (x)

A green roof or rooftop solar? You can combine them in a biosolar roof — boosting both biodiversity and power output (x)

Global death tolls from natural disasters have actually plummeted over the last century (x)

Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be (x)

This city turns sewage into drinking water in 24 hours. The concept is catching on [Namibia] (x)

Plants teach their offspring how to adapt to climate change, scientists find (x)

Resurrecting Climate-Resilient Rice in India (x)

[wachinyeya]

Stork That Went Extinct in the UK 600 Years Ago is Spotted in the English Skies: ‘It was a great sign’ https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/stork-that-went-extinct-in-the-uk-600-years-ago-is-spotted-in-the-english-skies-it-was-a-great-sign/

A beautiful white stork was spotted recently flying over the English county of Cheshire, and not only would no one alive today be able to remember the last time that happened, but none of their grandparents would either; neither would any of their grandparents, and probably none of theirs.

White storks have been extinct in England for 600 years—since the time Martin Luther nailed his document of reforms on the Church wall—but they’ve been back and breeding for several years thanks to efforts to reintroduce them from other populations.

The Warsaw Zoo donated birds to the White Stork Project of southern England. They had been rescued following accidents on roads or with powerlines.

Some of the birds are kept at the Cotswold Wildlife Park, and every year managers at the project take their offspring to the rewilded Knepp Estate and Wadhurst Park in Sussex to grow up in a natural environment where they can build up the memory and skills to survive and thrive in the English countryside again.

Residents of Cheshire were thrilled to see this large white bird with black plumage flying over their county again, reports Matt Hancock-Bruce, chief reporter with the Warrington Guardian.

—

Though extinct in England for all these years, the white stork is considered a species of least concern, and can be found as far afield as Kenya, Palestine, Turkey, and Kazakhstan.

A nest camera run by the White Stork Project of a stork family of four is live 24/7 on the Knepp Estate, where you can watch the juveniles fight over the food brought by their parents.

[reporteambiental]

El rewilding, práctica que restaura ecosistemas dañados, se muestra como una solución efectiva contra el cambio climático. Estudios recientes indican que la reintroducción de bisontes en su entorno natural puede aumentar la captura de carbono significativamente, beneficiando también a las economías locales.

[thoughtlessarse]

A herd of 170 bison reintroduced to Romania’s Țarcu mountains could help store CO2 emissions equivalent to removing almost 2m cars from the road for a year, research has found, demonstrating how the animals help mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis. European bison disappeared from Romania more than 200 years ago, but Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania reintroduced the species to the southern Carpathian mountains in 2014. Since then, more than 100 bison have been given new homes in the Țarcu mountains, growing to more than 170 animals today, one of the largest free-roaming populations in Europe. The landscape holds the potential for 350-450 bison. The latest research, which has not been peer-reviewed, used a new model developed by scientists at the Yale School of the Environment and funded by the Global Rewilding Alliance. It calculates the additional amount of atmospheric CO2 that wildlife species help to capture and store in soils through their interactions within ecosystems. The European bison herd grazing in an area of nearly 50 sq km of grasslands within the wider Țarcu mountains, was found to potentially capture an additional 2m tonnes of carbon a year. That is nearly 9.8 times more than without the bison – although the report authors noted the 9.8 figure could be up to 55% higher or lower, given the uncertainty around the median estimate. This corresponds to the yearly CO2 emissions of 1.88m average US petrol cars. Prof Oswald Schmitz of the Yale School of the Environment in Connecticut in the US, who was the lead author of the report, said: “Bison influence grassland and forest ecosystems by grazing grasslands evenly, recycling nutrients to fertilise the soil and all of its life, dispersing seeds to enrich the ecosystem, and compacting the soil to prevent stored carbon from being released. [...] A keystone species, bison play an important role in ecosystems – their grazing and browsing helps maintain a biodiverse landscape of forests, scrub, grasslands and microhabitats. In the Țarcu mountains, their return has also inspired nature-based tourism and businesses around rewilding. Schmitz noted that the Carpathian grasslands have specific soil and climate conditions, so the effect of the European bison could not necessarily be extrapolated internationally - American prairies, for example, have much lower productivity.

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[whowatchesthewolfwatchers]

Barbary lion. Gimme all you know

All huh? This precipitated a deep dive past what I know to "what could I offer about these cats that can't be googled/I can see easily from from behind paywalls". Hope you like my brain dump. Most of what I know about them has to do with present-day conservation.

First, I know Barbary lions represent a classic case of bias in reporting animal observation. Many records say the last was shot in the 1920's by a French colonial hunter, but locals knew of lions alive decades past that date. After these first-and-secondhand accounts were published, a subsequent study estimated that they had gone extinct decades later, as late as 1965. The Moroccans and Algerians recounting this would have experienced a classic case of "shifting baselines" in which each generation internalized a new normal for their changing ecosystem and the species therein. There's hope we can turn much of this biodiversity and cultural loss back (more on that).

I also know that while the wild population dwindled, many lived in captivity on both continents. Knowing that zoos were anything but forces for conservation and scientifically-formulated care pre-1920, that would have an impact on not only the genetic diversity of the zoo populations but also their skulls. I wanted to see if I could interpret the "specific cranial features" of Barbary lions only to note that most of the studies only included 3-4 Barbarys of each sex. This field is called cranial morphmetrics and I suspect the long history of captivity may be the reason I didn't see many Barbary lions in the analyses.

If you mention "zoo skulls" in my carnivore-skull-focused lab we all picture some malformed, often proportionally short-snouted and wide-cheeked cranium. It's not just the pathologies caused by malnutrition but also the soft and mushy texture. Skulls need physical resistance to develop muscles and shape the bones as they grow- zoo (or late Middle Age) diets didn't include nearly enough hide, bone and other tough bits to shape the skull into the proportions a wild animal would attain. This particularly affects the jaw muscle and tooth-bearing parts of the skull. I tried to unscientifically illustrate below on some zoo animals I had photos of by outlining a wild animal's skull in blue and overlaying it. When I scale the skulls to similar length, the zoo animal looks too wide. When I scale them so the width of the braincase is the same, the snout looks stubby. Top is a brown bear, the bottom "Donut" was a leopard. Both died in the 1930's in the Toronto area.

So back to the Barbary lions. Obviously captive animals have some issues that affected them during their lives, but they would also have suffered inbreeding over generations. Very broad strokes rules for maintaining genetic health are to stabilize a critical population at 50 individuals and then grow it to a stable size of 500 as fast as possible, ideally with at least one new migrant to the population each generation. Olden zoos.... didn't even come close to achieving this. This is relevant because we have lions today descended from the King of Morocco's collection kept in the 19th-20th century. They're managed rigorously now, but these lions are not 100% Barbary and it isn't easy to gauge what happened as far as past inbreeding. There isn't an African lion today that is more than a trace Barbary, but this Moroccan lineage is the closest. Its a start for reintroducing lions to north Africa- if not true Barbary lions, then lions that can help restore their ecosystems and become a new subspecies in time.

In conclusion, Barbary lions were a different subspecies of lion entirely, adapted to the habitats in the north of Africa. We hope to use the royal lion lineage as the source for lions to rewild Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. That will take years of working with AND LISTENING TO the local human population, building up a robust prey base and determining which animals are best suited to move. Who knows, maybe we will even be able to pull enough ancient DNA from archaeological samples to use gene editing and reintroduce the unique gene to lions. Sci-fi stuff. Rewilding is already terraforming, putting terra back to how it was so dream big.

Some sources:

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/wildlife-biodiversity/-barbary-lion-reintroduction-in-north-africa-is-possible-but-needs-long-term-plans--72961

[theresah331]

The Ice Orphan

The Rewilding Reports, Book 3 By: Kathleen O'Neal Gear Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Sisi Aisha Johnson Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins Audiobook

Shaun Tylor-Corbett, and Sisi Aisha Johnson do a great job trading off the reading, This allows the reader to see the divisions between the book, and the chapters changes. I love how dynamic their reading was.

It's interesting that this series started in ice and ends in ice. The broad scope of humanity may in itself have the same spiral. Since homo ancestors are with in our genetic makeup, its possible. The final reveal in the story brings the spiral around full circle without showing all its secrets. Jawbone, has his trials from the first book, and finds a peace he has never known since the loss of his family. Quiller and Rabbitear learn to understand family, and the obligations of their choices. The Jemen are at their last moment and Quancee is fading. Finally, Lynx learns many of the secrets of Quancee, after Arakie's passing, but finds that no matter how much he studies, or learns he will not understand all about the origins of Quantum Consciousness, and its dangers. The book is a reminder to the reader that with all our learning nature, life, and the universe is a balance, and we can not know all that achieves that balance no matter how much we study. The imagery in the book is haunting, and I found it inspiring. A great series.