Archive for July 9th, 2009
Support For the Pine Beetle
Very interesting article in the NYT about the support for the western pine beetle:
Some environmentalists and scientists support the beetles. While they acknowledge the severity of the problems the beetles are causing, they argue that the insects, which kill only mature trees larger than five inches in diameter, are a natural phenomenon, like forest fires, and play a vital ecological role.
“It’s not the end of the forests, and they are not destroyed,” said Diana L. Six, a professor of forest entomology and pathology at the University of Montana here, who has studied the beetle for 16 years, as she walked in a beetle-infected forest near here recently .
“Lodge pole pine evolved to go out with a stand-replacing event, such as fire or beetles, then regenerate really quickly,” she said. “When they hit 80 or 90 years of age all of a sudden the beetles become a player — the trees are big enough for the beetles to attack. They reset the clock on the stand.”
Dr. Gregg DeNitto, a forest health specialist with the Forest Service here, said the beetles were not “an exotic like the emerald ash bore.”
“This is a native insect in a native host, and these are normal biological processes that have happened for millennia,” Dr. DeNitto said.
Posted: July 9th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
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Waterlife
I spent the majority of my younger years in the suburbs of Chicago, occasionally making my way into the city for a day of underage beers on the train and swimming on the beaches of Lake Michigan. When I wasn’t using the lake’s Windy City side, I was at a friend’s house on the Michigan shore, spending the day high above the water lost in the dunes and running down the sand cliffs into the lake when it was time to go home. Lake Michigan is massive, more like an ocean to the eyes, with beaches better than some places on the Atlantic and Pacific. Clearly I didn’t need that lake to survive and perhaps I was doing it more bad than good with occasional boat time, but like so many lakes, rivers, and oceans, many people do rely on it for survival and, surprise surprise, the Great Lakes are polluted as can be.
Waterlife, a new documentary made by the National Film Board Of Canada, “tells the epic story of the Great Lakes by following the cascade of its water from Northern Lake Superior to the Atlantic Ocean, through the lives of the 35 million people who rely on the lakes for survival.” The spectacular website (keep the music off) for the film includes sections of video and dialogue that explain what the water actually means to these people. The “healing” section (of particular interest around these parts) focuses on the Mother Earth Water Walk, a group of Anishinabe men and women from Thunder Bay, Ontario that walk the perimeters of the Great Lakes raising awareness about water issues like conservation, pollution, and privatization. They walked around Lake Superior in Spring 2003, around Lake Michigan in 2004, Lake Huron in 2005, Lake Ontario in 2006, Lake Erie in 2007, Lake Michigan in 2008, and just recently, the St. Lawrence River in 2009.
Unfortunately the movie is only playing in Canada as of now, but hopefully it’ll come on down to the states soon enough.
MP3: Sony Boy Williamson + Yank Rachell – Lake Michigan Blues
Posted: July 9th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3
