Wildflower Stew

When I was a kid, there were certain things growing wild that we knew it was okay to eat. Wild mint and watercress down by the creek, baby dandelion leaves, and a flowering shrub with bright red flowers you could pick and suck the sweet nectar from the end of the trumpet-shaped blooms. We knew never to eat china berries or hack berries. I don’t remember how we knew. Someone must have told us. There were huge oleander bushes lining my grandmother’s driveway. They are extremely toxic. We never went near them. We just knew.

At the right time of the year, there would be wild onion, wild carrot and something that looks (and tastes) like asparagus. All these things were available to an observant child growing up in the country, close to the natural world. There are worlds more of edible foods, herbs and wild crafting supplies for the taking out there - for an amazingly complete rundown on surviving on wild plants see: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/plants-1.php

These days it is becoming popular in some neighborhoods to turn up the front yard and plant a garden. Excellent idea! The kids get to see where some of their food comes from, for one thing. But what about the back yard - or whatever area you have around you where you live? Can you find a spot to turn from landscaped (water-intensive, chemical dependent) back to the wild?

As more and more land gets put into play for humans - agriculture, subdivisions, golf courses, etc. - less and less is available for the critters. People start seeing wildlife in their backyards, coyotes in Central Park. Where else can they go? And then there’s the crazy weather and floods and fires. I read about the wildlife in the fires near Big Sur running toward the ocean to escape the flames. What will they do when they get there?

I know that in the places I’ve been the last few years, even urban areas, the birds and animals are coming closer. I don’t know if they are losing their fear or just doing what they have to do to survive. But I know that it feels right to try to make some room for them too, in whatever way we can, as we all try to cope with our suffering planet. The payback may be waking up to watch deer graze out your bedroom window just before dawn or attracting the most beautiful butterflies, the migrating birds, the best chorus of frogs after a rain.

I was lucky enough to spot a hummingbird nest (no easy task - they are very small) and show it to my grandson when he was two and we watched as the parents fed the extremely small babies and saw them take off in their tiny perfection when they were fledged. How can you compare that with a manicured lawn that has to be mowed with a gasoline powered lawn mower which sounds like some kind of demon from hell?

Cities have all kinds of ordinances about these things as do neighborhood associations. In Austin your grass can’t be more than 12 inches high. Period. That requires lots of mowing. Maybe we should pass an ordinance outlawing lawns!

Then the hummingbirds and butterflies and possums and deer and red tailed hawks could share our space with us and we’d all be a lot better off.

The National Wildlife Federation will certify your very own backyard wildlife refuge if you register with them. They have been offering the certifications since 1973. By the spring of 2008, there were almost 100,000 National Wildlife Federation certified habitats in backyards, schoolyards, just down the road, coming to your neighborhood soon.

I live in an apartment house that’s shaped like a “U” around a central courtyard that we all share. Some of us have flowers. Hibiscus, jasmine, roses, coleus, elephant ears, petunias, spider plants, geraniums, aloe vera, and tall red canna lilies. But this year some of us have taken on growing a little food.

Among with the tomatoes and squash and peppers and beans one of my neighbors has plunked one little strawberry plant in a large pot filled up mostly with marigolds. Everyday I’ve been watching the tiny white star-shaped flowers turn into little green nubbins and then blush red as they gradually ripen. Everyday I taste the sweet memory of strawberry as I watch them grow.

I think of the morning when I was a very young child visiting my aunt and uncle and I slipped out at dawn, alone, and feasted on my uncle’s strawberry patch, plucking every red one in sight! I think of the story of the zen monk about to either be eaten by a lion or fall off a cliff whose last act was to reach out and pick one sweet strawberry - and savor it!

I think of the strawberry pie I invented when I was the baker for a restaurant. Everybody loved it. I wouldn’t tell them the secret recipe. It was strawberries, cooked up with a pinch of cornstarch to make it hold together, poured in a baked pie shell and chilled, served with a dot of whipped cream. Nothing else. But they were really good strawberries. They wouldn’t have believed me.

This one little plant wakes up all my strawberry stories like nothing in a basket from the store can do. Then one day the two strawberries that I’ve been watching are gone. Were they sweet? Were they savored? How precious were those two berries?

We used to joke about our ten dollar tomatoes when I was growing food for my family. When you count the hours, the hard work, the garden tools, compost, mulch, seeds, water, prayer and deer fencing, it feels that way sometimes.

But there was much more to it than that. What I gained, besides the food, was exercise, wisdom, experience, pleasure, vitamin D and fresh air. I was also teaching my children (and their friends), sharing with my neighbors and inspiring anybody else who was thinking about trying it. I was improving the soil in that spot, too.

What I was not doing was putting more CO2 into the air because of trips to the store, gas for the trucks that brought it in, environmental degradation from commercial farming methods, and making more profits for big agribiz, wholesale food corporations and (gasp!) Monsanto.

So, I would say, in light of all that, that each homegrown strawberry is an engine of social change, a contribution to global healing and, of course, a celebration of the sweetness of life.

To plan for some sweetness in your life Seeds of Change is a good place to start. You can sign up for their newsletter, The Cutting Edge, and get a free catalog. Another good place to get (and give) the best seeds is the Seed Savers Exchange - a non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.

If you don’t find what you’re looking for there, you can go to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service and look under the Organic Seeds Suppliers Search, a very complete database of certified organic suppliers of seed. Good gardening - and seed saving - is a year round activity. Any time is a good time to start.

On March 5, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would not finalize a proposal to revise protected habitat for marbled murrelets in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. The proposal would have slashed protected critical habitat by almost 95 percent. But the FWS reversed its previous plans and agreed with conservation groups that it would not be appropriate to revise critical habitat for this elusive little seabird.

Today’s decision means that approximately 3.9 million acres of federal old-growth forest remain protected as murrelet habitat.
“This reversal, coupled with a recent court decision throwing out a timber industry attempt to take the murrelet off the endangered species list, should end the timber industry’s profit-driven and illegal attack on the coastal forests that murrelets need to survive,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice.

Marbled murrelets are seabirds that use old-growth forests for nesting and rearing their young. In 1992, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the marbled murrelet population in Washington, Oregon, and California as a threatened species due to logging of its old growth habitat. Despite undisputed scientific evidence that murrelets are disappearing from the Pacific coast, the timber industry has set its sights on the small seabird in order to increase logging of trees over 100 years old. For more information on this issue in Wildflower Stew click here and here .

On February 26, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault officially opened. Seeds from all over the world will be placed in three caverns carved 130 meters into the permafrost outside the town of Longyearbyen on the island of Svalbard just 500 miles from the North Pole. Norway has provided the funding for the project and developed it in collaboration with the Global Crop Diversity Trust

Ola Westengen, operation manager, said the seeds include several thousand potato seeds from Peru, 30,000 samples of different beans from Columbia, 47,000 seed samples of wheat and 10,000 types of maize from Mexico, 30,000 seeds of mostly barley and wheat from the Middle East and 70,000 varieties of rice from the seed bank in the Philippines. The seed vault can hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all the known varieties of the world’s main food crops.

Twenty-three hundred people live on this Norwegian archipelago which was selected not only for it’s remote location far away from conflicts but also because of its climate. Even if the freezer system in the vault fails the permafrost will keep the seeds frozen and the fortified walls, recently tested by the biggest earthquake in Norway’s history, have been built to withstand nuclear missile attacks. The vault is also built 130 meters above current sea level, high enough that it would not flood if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt entirely due to global warming, and is protected by high walls of fortified concrete, an armoured door, a sensor alarm and the native polar bears that roam the region.

The thought that polar bears are the security guards for a doomsday vault containing the seeds of what might be the future of the human race, given a worst case scenario, and the fact that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct because of the actions of the human race, gives one pause. Or it did me anyway.

So, maybe we should go here and find out how we can help the bears stick around.

See previous stories on the Global Seed Vault in Wildflower Stew at: http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com/2007/06/04/saving-the-seeds/ and http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com/2007/03/20/we-need-this//

See more photos of the Seed Vault here.

Used with permission.
Copyright Michael G. Shepard

The timber industry, the Bush administration and a disgraced former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official have failed to remove the threatened Marbled Murrelet from the endangered species list. While the Government Accountability Office and the Department of the Interior’s Inspector General continue investigating wrong-doing on the part of the government, Judge John Bates of the D.C. district court on February 5, rejected the industry suit, partly because of the actions of Julie McDonald, the former Interior Department official who is accused of bullying agency scientists and influencing them to change their report.

The marbled murrelet is a small seabird that nests in old-growth forests along the Pacific Coast of North America. In 1992, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed murrelet populations in Washington, Oregon, and California as threatened due to logging of their habitat. Despite undisputed scientific evidence that murrelets are disappearing from the Pacific Coast, the timber industry continues to set its sights on the small seabird in order to permit the logging of trees over 100 years old. See previous article in Wildflower Stew at: http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com/2008/01/01/miracle-of-the-marbled-murrelet/

Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups who intervened through the Earthjustice law firm predicted the Bush administration would next seek to remove as much of the bird’s “critical habitat” designation as they can. The fight goes on.

The Buffalo Field Campaign is a non-profit grassroots coalition of Native American and non-Native environmentalists formed under the leadership of Michael Mease and Lakota activist Rosalie Little Thunder to stop the slaughter of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo herd, protect the natural habitat of wild free-roaming buffalo and native wildlife, and to work with people of all Nations to honor the sacredness of the wild buffalo.

Buffalo in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are not protected on their year-round habitat. Yellowstone Park does not provide sufficient winter range for the resident herds of wildlife. Due to the deep snow, animals are forced to leave the park in order to find adequate forage for winter survival. When the buffalo follow their instincts and migrate to lower elevations, they enter a conflict zone where the politics of Montana directly clash with their survival needs.

During the winter of 1996-97, the Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) slaughtered almost 1,100 Yellowstone buffalo when they crossed the arbitrary park boundary into the state. Ever since that winter the BFC volunteers have stood with the buffalo who are outside the park, every day from sunrise to sunset. Their daily patrols, their witness and their grassroots advocacy have made it clear to the DOL that they will be held accountable for their actions.

Over 3000 people from all over the country and around the world have volunteered to help stop the buffalo slaughter. Volunteers patrol for buffalo by skis, snowshoes, or cars. Everyone communicates by a network of hand-held radios, and also carries a video camera.

You can watch the video below and then you can go to http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/index.html to find out more about how you can help stop the slaughter of the Yellowstone Buffalo.

I’ve been working on a post about my heroes. Haven’t finished it yet but Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherds is one of them. I got this press release today and couldn’t wait to share it with you. You can contact them at http://seashepherd.org

Sea Shepherd News
News Releases

01/31/2008

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Needs Your Help to Return to the Southern Oceans to Defend the Whales from Illegal Japanese Whalers
THE WHALES NEED US TO RETURN TO THE SOUTHERN OCEAN WHALE SANCTUARY WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT TO DEFEND THE WHALES

Crew Needed:

For long Hours, cold weather, dangerous mission, spartan vegetarian meals, rough seas, icebergs, whalers, high seas pursuits, and the satisfaction of saving the lives of hundreds of whales.

We need volunteers with the following skills:

Shore Engineers to help repair one of the main engines in Port
Diesel Engineers
Navigators
A Medical Officer
Cooks
A Computer Expert
Photographer
Some Passionate unskilled volunteers

We also need to secure the following:

200 tons of fuel.

All the vegetarian food we can get - canned, dried, frozen.

The ship will arrive in Melbourne on February 2nd and will return as soon as we secure the fuel and complete repairs.

The Japanese whalers have two months of killing time left. We’ve stopped them for three weeks and we can stop them again and every day that we stop them from killing whales is a victory.

email: captainwatson@seashepherd.org
phone: +1 (360) 370-5650
fax: +1 (360) 370-5651
website: www.seashepherd.org

Used with permission. Copyright Michael G. Shepard

Three years ago I read the following story written by West Coast environmental activist and musician Joey Racano. (You can hear his music here and read his blog here.)

I was just starting my online magazine Wildflower Stew and the story of this mysterious little auk touched my heart and I was determined to work hard to get their story and others like it out there to more people. I had a wonderful year publishing my magazine until disaster struck and it was hacked beyond my ability to fix it.

After a pause and a move, I started up again with this blog and recently I found the marbled murrelet is back in the news. So I am sending you Joey’s original story so you’ll know who this amazing little bird is and then you can read what we can all do so that the marbled murrelet is not lost to us.
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The Miracle of the Marbled Murrelet

-Joey Racano
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On December 27, 2007, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department charging that decisions about threatened and endangered species including the marbled murrelet were changed because of political pressure. The deputy assistant secretary, Julie Macdonald, resigned in May over allegations that scientists’ evidence had been ignored and their reports rewritten.

Earlier this fall, Earthjustice, a public-interest law firm representing several conservation groups, had written to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorn, asking that he reinstate the marbled murrelet. A lawyer for the group wrote that e-mails and meeting notes obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that MacDonald “improperly interfered with the science underlying the marbled murrelet status review.”

The US Fish & Wildlife Service had previously identified 3,590,642 acres in three states as critical habitat, but after the politically motivated rewrite is suddenly proposing to exclude 3,368,950 acres - leaving only 221,692 acres of protected habitat. Here is a copy of the revised proposal from November, 2006.

How did this happen? Craig Manson, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, was not happy with the results of a review that affirmed that the marbled murrelet in the Pacific Northwest deserved to be listed as threatened. The American Forest Resource Council, representing the timber industry, had sued the Fish and Wildlife Service to review the status of the marbled murrelets because 90 precent of the remaining old growth trees suitable for nesting (making them critical to the little bird’s survival, obviously) are found on public land - which the timber industry wanted to get their hands, er rather their chainsaws, on.

Everybody, and every bird, needs a home. The Endangered Species Act requires that federal agencies define and protect critical habitat “essential to the conservation of the species.” When the review affirmed that indeed the marbled murrelet was threatened, well, Craig Manson just rewrote it. In fact, Manson has been quoted as questioning the value of even trying to save species that are threatened - “because they can’t adjust to change.” Meaning, I suppose, that if the marbled murrelet can’t adapt to having their nesting sites clear-cut, then they’re expendable. This is the person who is head of the agency responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act!

The marbled murrelet faces the combined threats of logging, gill-net mortality, and oil spills. Big corporations behind them all. Maybe if we take the time, if we have the heart, to save this tiny, fragile, mysterious, innocent little feathered creature, we will have the heart for all the other work we’re going to have do to heal this wounded planet. I have a print of a beautiful watercolor of the marbled murrelet by artist Ram Papish - which you can get from Good Nature Publishing - over my computer to inspire me. If those little guys can keep on keepin’ on, so can I.

Here are some things you can do to help keep this little bird alive in our world:

Support those on the front lines.
North Coast Earth First! has used non-violent civil disobedience and direct action to save some of the last remaining old growth redwood and douglas fir forests left on Earth. Located in Humboldt County, California, they have a 20-year legacy of non-violence, including no property destruction, and they have brought tens of thousands of people together to save these ancient forests with a combination of tree-sits, roadblocks, rallies, lockdowns, media, ground support, legal support, lawsuits, and strong spirits. They also seek to end the destructive practices of clearcutting, herbicide spraying, and logging on steep and unstable slopes, and to expose the big timber corporations, as well as the corruption and complicity of the so-called regulatory agencies and law enforcement. Visit the main website for Earth First! for more opportunities to take action.

Join Earth Justice - their motto is “because the earth needs a good lawyer.” Oh boy, do we.

The Center for Biological Diversity protects endangered species and wild places through science, policy, education and environmental law. You can join their action network and become a biodiversity activist.

Of course, the venerable elder of the caring-about-birds family is the Audubon Society. You will find a wealth of information about the marbled murrelet and you can join local habitat protection groups, the Christmas bird count going on now or the actions associated with the Important Bird Areas.

And don’t forget - “Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me.”
- Hoyt Axton

I just found this great little 20-minute video on free speech tv. It was written by Annie Leonard and produced by Free Range Studios - the makers of “The Meatrix”. The Story of Stuff is a very funny, very clever and yet absolutely clear description of how our stuff goes from the extraction of the resources to make it, through production, sale, use and disposal - the hidden costs, the real deal. Then it tells us how we can fix what’s wrong with this picture. I’d show it to every kid I know - and every adult too! See the trailer below and then go to http://storyofstuff.com for the whole video and the resources for another way.

This must be deja vu all over again. That’s what I thought when I started hearing all the talk lately about nuclear power plants being “clean” energy and read that there was a clause in the energy bill before Congress that would guarantee loans enabling investors to build new nuclear power plants.

It’s been almost 30 years now since MUSE - Musicians United for Safe Energy - was founded by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt and John Hall. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident had just happened and the movement that was launched with a series of No Nukes concerts stopped construction of nuclear power plants dead in its tracks. But now it seems like someone is trying to raise the dead.

“One of America’s most critical financial and ecological decisions is now before Congress. The atomic energy industry wants at least $50 billion in loan guarantees for a “new generation” of reactors that have already begun to fail, and that Wall Street won’t finance. If these subsidies pass, scores of new radioactive terror targets, thousands of tons of radioactive waste and untold billions in bad debt could haunt us and our children for a long time to come.

On the brink of winning a green-powered planet, we intend to do all we can to avoid another radioactive dead-end. We hope you will join us.” from “Stealth Nuke Effort Should Be Stopped”

The group’s new music video on their website Nukefree.org inspired me to keep on fighting back, one more time: