Art of Harvesting

Problem: Help bird conservation in North America by participating for one day in the annual Christmas Bird Count.   Prior to the turn of the century, people engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas "Side Hunt": They would choose sides and go afield with their guns; whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered (and furred) quarry won.   Conservation was in its beginning stages around the turn of the 20th century, and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declini...

Action: The Christmas Bird Count season is December 14 through January 5 each year. Your local count will occur on one day between those inclusive dates. If you have more than one local count, they will probably be conducted on different dates within the CBC season. You can pick the most convenient date, or participate in more than one count.   There is a specific methodology to the CBC, but everyone can pa...

Problem: a multi-level problem exists on the Great Plains of North America  - decline of ecosystem quality, decline in quality of beef livestock, the comparative loss of kinds and numbers of species over the long haul.  Also, the consumption of beef is now linked to Alzheimer's disease.

Action: This resource presents an alternative, visionary use of the Great Plains  - the return of the bison herds, the return of wolf populations to "shepherd" and strengthen the bison, and the restoration of prairie floral systems.  The overall picture uses this initial ecological renaissance as a starting point for full ecological restoration of the North American continent.

Problem: Due to excessive manipulation of the honeybees, humanity has decimated their populations.  The disappearance of the bees has far-reaching effects, for both the natural world and humanity.

Action: To return the bee populations, humanity must begin by studying overviews of the problem, versus narrow, reductionist solutions that are incapable of even perceiving the problem.  The Earth Vision project presents one such overview in its article  - Why the Bees are Dying - at http://www.evbooks.net/earth_vision_021.htm Visit the article and explore the many ways we have been interfering with the honeybee hiving process, and exprapolta...

Problem: The quality and quantity of our Nation’s conservation corridors have declined for the last several decades. Natural corridors are frequently squeezed by adjacent land uses or severed by roads, utilities, dams, or other types of human development. Narrow and segmented corridors are less effective as travel lanes for wildlife dispersal and other ecological functions. Hundreds of miles of fence rows, windbreaks, and other planted corridors are removed annually to accommodate changing agricultura...

Action: How corridors are arranged and connected within the larger landscape context determine their wildlife value. This principle provides land managers with a tool to manage wildlife species diversity effectively. The cumulative effect of corridor arrangement influences wildlife population dynamics. Designing corridor systems is a task of creating strategic configurations across ownerships and land uses. The objective is to restore targeted ecological functions at watershed scales.   The material ...