Tag Archive for: conservation

Bipartisanship for Biodiversity – Funding Our Future

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There is a global biodiversity crisis. We know this from the IPBES report published earlier this year and the updated IUCN Red List published this week. These reports lay it out in stark terms – millions of species edging towards extinction. For many in the U.S., this crisis can sometimes seem distant, happening in faraway rain forests and the deepest oceans. But it’s happening right here in the U.S., where 12,000 animal species are currently considered in need of conservation action. Iconic creatures like the whooping crane and the Florida panther are among those U.S.-based species listed as endangered.

So why don’t we easily connect to the “global biodiversity crisis”? In the U.S., ‘biodiversity’ is not a term we usually use to describe the natural world. It’s ironic that we shy away from it since it is a term first suggested by a trio of Americans. Tom Lovejoy, E.O. Wilson and Walter G. Rosen of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are all credited with promoting the idea of the diversity of life and coining the term ‘biodiversity’. In the U.S. we talk instead about ‘wildlife,’ ‘nature’ and ‘habitat,’ and we focus on individual species whether regulated game species, listed species or other species of concern. We do this because ‘conservation’ practice follows policy and it follows the funding.

In the U.S. there are a variety of funding sources for wildlife conservation. These sources are levies on sales of hunting and fishing equipment, and from appropriated federal and state funds to support recovery of listed species and management of others. Despite the variety of funding sources, there remains a distressing deficiency between what is available and what is needed to support and secure America’s wildlife, aka biodiversity.

Less than 1% of the federal budget is currently allocated to nature-based efforts across many agencies at both the federal and state levels. For wildlife efforts, the majority of spending happens at the state levels, supported by the levies and through the State Wildlife Grant Program, which provides federal grant funds to state fish and wildlife agencies for programs that benefit wildlife and their habitats, including non-game species. Recent studies by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and others have shown a significant gap in funding that, if allowed to continue, will severely impact the future of 12,000 species of greatest conservation concern. We cannot allow this to happen.

America’s nature is non-political so a bipartisan solution (a rarity in these times of deep division) is being promoted in the form of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act that was recently introduced to Congress. The Act seeks to dedicate $1.3 billion annually to state fish and wildlife agencies to implement their science-based wildlife action plans, and an additional $97.5 million for tribal fish and wildlife managers to conserve fish and wildlife on tribal lands and waters. If passed, this Act will represent a significant step towards addressing the global biodiversity crisis that will impact us all.

The Act will not just benefit nature. It will also benefit society including the private sector which seeks stability and predictability in which to do business and healthy environments for its employees to live, work and play. Healthy wildlife populations will reduce the number of newly-listed species and regulations on land use. Robust biodiversity will contribute to resilient natural communities that are needed to withstand uncommon weather patterns and other climate-driven events. Vibrant nature elevates communities and makes them truly great places to live. Everyone benefits from biodiversity so everyone should support it.

The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the National Wildlife Federation are two of the driving forces for this piece of legislation. They are eager to bring private sector entities together in support of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act to show that biodiversity is not just a political concern nor an environmental advocacy concern but a concern of everyone seeking a stable and healthy future.

For more information about the Act and how you can help, please contact Sean Saville at the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

From the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies:
We have developed a new sign-on letter for business partners to demonstrate their support for the legislation and to send a strong signal to Congress that this proactive, non-regulatory approach to preventative fish and wildlife conservation funding is urgently needed. To conservation partners in the private sector and trade associations representing corporate members please take a minute to fill out the short sign-on form and add your business to the list of supporters. http://bit.ly/RAWABusinessLetter

The Alarm is Sounding for Nature. Who Will Take the Lead in Materiality, Mainstreaming and Action?

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The  Global Assessment Summary Report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) splashed across newspaper and social media channels earlier this month. For some it was a shocking and depressing addition to the many IPCC climate reports that have been dominating the environmental news for years. For others it was an amplification of what we already knew from IUCN’s Red List, WWF’s Living Planet reports and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) acknowledgement that it would not meet its Aichi Targets in 2020.

For decades, polite warnings about the state of our natural world have been ignored or downplayed in the media and by policy makers. The IPBES Report does away with the politeness and instead communicates the situation starkly and clearly in headline-making statements like “one million species at risk of extinction,” and “between $235 billion and $577 billion in annual global crop output is at risk from pollinator decline.” The report definitively states how consumption and land use patterns have created a grave unraveling of the web of life that, if left to unspool over the next two decades, will result in a grayer, poorer and more uncertain future for nature and the human species that depend on it.

One of the reasons for the devastating loss of species is land use that causes habitat destruction. Over one-third of the terrestrial land surface now being used for cropping or animal husbandry is managed with industrial yet nature-destroying efficiency. Pollution has altered our oceans, affecting at least 267 species, including 86% of marine turtles, 44% of seabirds and 43% of marine mammals. Overexploitation of natural resources is a driver that has decimated populations of fish, shellfish and other marine species.

Invasive species, enabled by the global movement of goods and people, is another driver for species loss, leaving one-fifth of the earth’s surface at risk of plant or animal invasions that can destroy native systems and overwhelm endemic, rare or specially-adapted species. Climate change exacerbates the already weakened web, bleaching coral reefs impacted by pollution, shrinking or moving species’ ranges in habitats fragmented by development and causing species interactions to be desynchronized as the timing of spring emergences and migratory arrivals becomes increasingly altered in different directions.

All sectors—government, private and the public-at-large—are implicated in this crisis. Governments have instituted policies that make it easy to ignore impacts on nature, the private sector has taken full advantage of said policies, and the public at large embraces the throw-away life of single-use plastics, fast fashion and easy access to unseasonal foods. All sectors have to address their own institutions, policies and practices if we are to repair the damage to the web of life that supports us all.

Industry is especially indicted in most aspects of the IPBES report. While we recognize that industry has created the prosperity and health that much of the world’s population enjoys today, it has also caused the habitat destruction, pollution and unsustainable land use driving extinctions of once common plant and animal species.

Industry has a major role to play in reversing the trend.

While there are many potential policy proposals at the intersection of the public and private sectors where government regulations, subsidies, financing and fines can affect the systematic change we need, there are also a number of pragmatic solutions that require neither government carrots nor sticks, but enlightened leadership with the capacity to see beyond the bottom line and the strength to act.

Materiality

First, more companies need consider biodiversity as a risk or materiality. In a recent study, fewer than one-third of the top 100 companies in the global Fortune 500 published biodiversity commitments in their external reporting, with only five companies listing specific, measurable and time-bound targets.

Across sectors, the extractive industries have for many years adopted strong biodiversity commitments driven by lenders, stakeholders and shareholders because of the direct impact they have on the biosphere. For mining companies, the regulations that have governed their investments and operations for many decades have made biodiversity a material issue. It’s now time for all companies to consider biodiversity as a materiality.

Everything made today impacts biodiversity.

Whether a product is taken directly from the ground as metal or rock, grown in the earth as food or fiber, processed somewhere along the value chain as a plastic, a chemical or a piece of clothing, biodiversity is impacted. The energy used, the transportation routes taken by both land and sea, the surface parking lots at the big box stores, and the landfills that receive our spent products all impact nature in one way or another.

With a crisis of this magnitude, companies, regardless of their product, should examine the full range of their own operations and suppliers for impacts on nature. The Suppliers Partnership for the Environment, a U.S.-based initiative to help the auto industry “green” its supply chain, leads by example. It has working groups on the expected topics like battery disposal, materials efficiency and water management, but it has also convened a biodiversity working group that allows industry leaders like Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Honda and Ford to push biodiversity action to their suppliers, capturing biodiversity attributes along the chain of a product and thereby making biodiversity material.

Mainstreaming

Mainstreaming as a concept has many definitions, but it basically means that biodiversity is considered across an entire enterprise or life cycle. It could mean designing remediation remedies with a nature-first focus; planning maintenance of non-operational land with biodiversity (not budget) as a driver; or developing BMPs that promote ecological stewardship on rights-of-way, buffer lands, test tracks or landfills.

When biodiversity becomes material, it is easier to mainstream into operations. The CBD has sought biodiversity mainstreaming for many years, but not until its Conference of Parties (COP14) last year, was mainstreaming for the mining, energy, manufacturing, processing and infrastructure sectors discussed for the first time among the delegates. This is small progress. We need more.

Mainstreaming biodiversity would see corporate conservation opportunities considered in capital projects as part of the initial design phase rather than an afterthought. Given the diversity of corporate land holdings across the world, adopting a corporate-wide mainstreaming approach could make a significant difference to ecosystems of all sorts. We have to consider land as having multiple uses and manage it for both nature and business needs.

Action

Materiality and mainstreaming are approaches that will only get us so far. They create a mindset and a framework for action, which is the ultimate objective. The IPBES discusses biodiversity as “Nature’s Contribution to People,” defining the concept as the many cultural, social, spiritual and financial ways biodiversity is important to people around the planet. This contribution makes biodiversity a local issue with local ownership.

Constantly framing biodiversity within government policy or as an item on a corporate balance sheets creates a sense of it being someone else’s problem. Understanding the local value of nature is key to driving human-scale action. Connecting a corporate acceptance of biodiversity as a materiality with an operational mandate of mainstreaming to strong local action is a needed to halt biodiversity losses and restore nature.

This crisis presents a real opportunity for the private sector to take action. As Andrew Winston wrote in his piece about the IPBES report, “I’ve always believed in business and its abilities to tackle big issues. But we need bravery to challenge the status quo now. What an amazing opportunity for real leaders to step up.”

These real leaders must emerge soon—nature doesn’t have the time to wait.

What a Bat Monitor Can Teach Us About Inclusion

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I didn’t realize when I packed my Echo Meter Touch 2 in my luggage that bats would play such an important part in my summer vacation. With just a couple of weeks in Berlin and a few days in Ireland, I thought I’d be lucky if I got a chance to use the bat acoustic detector at all. However, it is so small that it takes up very little room in my suitcase, making it easy to bring it along on my travels.

I also didn’t realize that the joy I took in wielding the acoustic monitor would rile a bat expert from the Netherlands and involve me in a discussion about the role of amateur citizen scientists in conservation, a discussion that was mirrored mere weeks later in the August issue of Nature magazine. In the article, the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is faulted for seeking to embrace more ”amateur” opinions in their assessment work.

Here’s what happened.

In Berlin we were staying in an apartment near the Volkspark Am Weinberg. The park is a gem of an urban park with children’s play areas, a rose garden that doubles as a beer garden, and a fabulous Swiss restaurant in the middle with decks overlooking a grassy expanse that rolled down toward a small pond over which a grey heron stood sentry. Every evening this grassy area was filled with Berliners enjoying the cool of the evening in the middle of a summer heatwave. This was the scene of my so-called crime: my amateur deployment of the Echo Meter Touch 2.

Whenever I have successful “sightings” of bats using the acoustic monitor, I like to post the results on my Twitter feed. I do this to raise awareness about the species around us, whether we are in pristine wilderness or an urban setting. I do it because a bat ”sighting” makes me happy. I do it to encourage others to participate in nocturnal wildlife watching. One of our passions at Wildlife Habitat Council is connecting non-experts to nature and seeing how increased knowledge and ease with the natural world becomes a contagious enthusiasm for conservation. I tweet to create a buzz.

No sooner had I posted my observations of a Kuhl’s pipistrelle and a common pipistrelle than a bat expert criticized the accuracy of the Echo Meter Touch 2 and dismissed the “layman” for having access to such technology and compromising the data collected by experts. He then took the manufacturer of the Echo Meter Touch 2 to task for not moving fast enough in refining their technology. In terms of exchanges in the wild world of Twitter, it was very mild, but it was also unnecessary and indicative of a strain of conservation snobbery that sees only the need to protect the purity of the science without acknowledging the larger picture.

It’s the same argument being made right now on the global stage, where the IPBES is being criticized for adopting an approach called “Nature’s Contribution to People” in their latest assessment efforts, which will involve non-traditional, non-professional and non-western approaches to measuring and valuing biodiversity. In explaining the approach, a delegate to a recent IPBES meeting in Bonn told Nature magazine, “Not everyone who knows about biodiversity or is a custodian of biodiversity is a scientist. We need to learn to listen to people even if they don’t have a PhD.” But not everyone agrees. Vehement argument to the contrary is coming from the economists of natural capital valuation schemes. Their views and approaches have been ascendant for decades, even though the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the primary funding mechanism for UN environment programs, has stated, “Valuation is not leading to the development of policy reforms needed to mitigate the drivers of biodiversity loss and encourage sustainable development through the better management of biodiversity and natural capital, nor is it triggering changes in the use and scale of public and private finance flows on the scale necessary to address threats.” In short, the GEF has concluded that valuation schemes are not the silver bullet for our current crisis.

My critic on Twitter, eco-economists and traditionalists at global conferences all have something in common: a disdain for non-professionals “meddling” in their respective ivory towers. For them, the message has not yet sunk in about the necessity of welcoming the contribution of the layman and understanding that embracing the human dimension can add so much more than the distribution curves and range maps, and that strength comes from having people push policy with science in a supporting role.

Fortunately for me, my second vacation deployment of the Echo Meter Touch 2 in a garden in a small town in Ireland was proof positive of the power of engagement. Three young girls aged 8, 10 and 11 ran wild in a twilit garden screaming “pipistrelle” at the tops of their lungs, having seen the acoustics of a common, soprano and Nathusias’ pipistrelle on the screen of my phone. I know they will add that experience to their collection of summer memories for the future. These girls are unlikely to grow up to be bat experts, but they will grow up to be bat aware.

While we always support and advocate for the PhDs, the professors and the experts, we should never forget to empower and embrace the amateurs, the innovators and the tinkerers. As we move into our Conservation Conference in November, which draws upon both the knowledge of experts and the experiences of laymen, we know that all approaches are needed to protect, restore and recover all species.

Big News About Biodiversity Makes Grim Predictions – Why Aren’t We Paying More Attention?

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A recently published paper found that biodiversity received 8 times less media coverage than climate change in the mainstream media. This inequity in coverage reflects a trend that began around 2000 and has continued to increase every year since. Today, biodiversity is almost completely absent from the pages of our newspapers, websites or TV screens, apart from the occasional feel-good story about hawks breeding on city skyscrapers, ducklings being helped by traffic cops or the latest arrival at the local zoo.

There are many reasons put forward by the paper’s authors for the discrepancy in coverage, including the more telegenic nature of large-scale catastrophic events, the clear human impact of climate change, the global scale of the problem and the fact that the human role in climate change remains controversial, which in turn generates headlines.

Given these findings, it should come as no surprise that a recent report with significant news about the state of the world’s biodiversity has been largely underreported. In March, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published its first global assessment of the state of nature since 2005. Regional assessments looking at Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia paint a grim picture of a variety of threats to biodiversity in different parts of the world and make predictions about the implications.

In Europe and Central Asia, the report found that wetlands have declined by 50% since the 1970s. Marine and coastal ecosystems, which can contribute up to 35% of GDP for some African countries, are under severe threat from development, climate change and urbanization. In the Americas, close to 24% of the 14,000 species assessed are considered at risk of extinction. In Asia and the Pacific, agrobiodiversity is in decline due to intensification, and with that decline, indigenous and local knowledge of ecosystems and biodiversity is being lost.

Considering these new assessments, the 20 Aichi Targets adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as part of their strategic plan suddenly seem increasingly unattainable by the goal date of 2020. The targets call for, among other things, halving the rate of habitat loss and bringing it close to zero by 2020, as well as preventing the extinction of known threatened species and improving the conservation status of all declining species by the same deadline.  These assessments suggest that while some progress has been made towards the goals, the likelihood of them being achieved remains slim.

This important news was absent from the nightly news and the front pages of newspapers and news sites, but it was widely discussed in the international conservation community.

The Chair of IPBES, Robert Watson, called for immediate action at a level commensurate with the problem, which he declared to be as dangerous to humans as climate change. Jake Rice, a co-chair of the Americas assessment, called on everyone to make a “fundamental change in how we live as individuals, communities and corporations.”

Cristina Pașca Palmer, the Executive Secretary of the CBD and the UN’s top nature official, told The Guardian that our current rate of species loss is “mega-urgent.” She sees value in every attempt to reverse these dire trends and is pushing for all solutions to be considered and for efforts that include restoration and transformation to be counted toward securing nature, as well as the more traditional valuation, protection and restriction approaches. She understands that in both the developing and developed world, enough land cannot realistically be set aside to meet this goal. Instead she wants to broaden approaches to conservation beyond preservation and increase sustainable practices to reduce the impact on nature.

What Ms. Pașca Palmer is saying sounds like common sense, but it is quietly revolutionary. The international conservation community in which the CBD operates focuses almost exclusively on the hotspots for biodiversity—the wild and pristine places of the globe. In doing so, this focus creates a sense that nature is “over there” and not part of our everyday reality and experience of the planet.

When we read and hear these feel-good stories about ducks crossing the road, hawks breeding on city skyscrapers and the latest arrival at the local zoo, we are experiencing nature. When we engage in an effort to clean a park, we are restoring a habitat. When we plant milkweed for monarch butterflies, we are contributing to the conservation of a declining species. While we can support the preservation of wild and pristine places with our dollars and our votes, we can also better integrate nature into our lives with our own actions. We can help increase coverage of the issue by clicking on those stories online, by amplifying the messages across our social media, and by working to make #biodiversity a trending topic that receives the attention it truly deserves.

The Importance of Pollinators

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Pollinators play a special role in native ecosystems and in managed agricultural systems. Unfortunately, pollinators such as bees, bats, butterflies and ants have slowly suffered from loss of habitat and diseases. Factors such as increased land use have guided these habitats to a floral abundance deficit and exposure to parasite and pesticides have led to local extinctions of select pollinator species across the world

Thankfully, 10 years ago, the U.S Senate took the matter of declining pollinator populations into their own hands by creating National Pollinator Week.

The goal of Pollinator Week is to raise awareness about pollinators and promote conservation of pollinator habitats at a national level. Over time, this event has grown into a worldwide celebration of the beautiful and hardworking job that animals do daily through pollination.

Approximately 1,000 of the plants grown for food, beverages, fibers and medicines need to be pollinated by animals in order to produce the goods on which we rely. In fact, one out of every three bites of food, from vegetables to fruits to edible oils, are a direct result of pollination services. In the U.S. alone, bees and other insects produce $40 billion worth of products annually through the process of pollination.

In addition to their value to agriculture, these animals also play a vital role in maintaining our ecosystems. Other wild animals rely on pollinators for the production of food sources such as wild fruits, and they benefit from the conservation of pollinator habitat. Flying from flower to flower and transferring pollen along the way, pollinators have had substantial historic, economic, social and cultural impacts in our world.

The White House’s National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators (National Strategy) was also released in May 2015 to inform public-private partnerships their necessary role to implement the Pollinator Health Task Force. The Wildlife Habitat Council has been working with businesses for 30 years to facilitate high-quality pollinator conservation projects on corporate lands and to ensure companies have taken action to protect pollinators, increase public awareness around the issue, and create pollinator-friendly habitat.

Some of the strategies presented by the National Strategy are:

  • Restore honey bee colony health to sustainable levels by 2025
  • Increase eastern monarch butterfly populations to 225 million butterflies by year 2020
  • Restore or enhance seven million acres of land for pollinators over the next five years.

Whether it inspires your team to grow a small garden for pollinators outside your site’s entrance or to learn more about pollinators in order to pass along the information to other employees, Pollinator Week can serve your team well.

Resources

Read more WHC blogs.

Habitat Design that Invites Exploration

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One of the best ways to spread awareness of and interest in biodiversity conservation is to provide opportunities for people to enjoy wildlife and their habitats. While unstructured, even “messy” habitats have their place, a nice-looking habitat will create a much more inviting environment that employees and visitors will want to spend time in.

The main thing to keep in mind is to make the project look intentional and inviting to exploration. Here’s a few ideas to get you started:

Make it more colorful by using a diversity of native plant species with colorful flowers and attractive foliage.

Make it highly visible. If you are able to choose the location for your project, put it somewhere folks will easily see, such as placing your pollinator garden near a building entrance. This visual reminder will entice people to visit the habitat.

Use plantings and maintain vegetation to create attractive lines and shapes. Install or maintain vegetation in such a way as to create soft, rounded corners and curving lines, instead of hard, straight edges with corners.

Plant seeds or plugs in “drifts” composed of one or two species or maintained mowed borders around the edges of plantings to create a more attractive, intentional look to large planting projects like meadows or prairie restorations.

LS_ROW_Exelon West Chicago2008 Make it accessible to users of all abilities. It’s easy to feel like accessibility is a burden, so instead, look at it as an opportunity to allow more folks to enjoy and learn about biodiversity. Ensure that both able-bodied and differently-abled people can get to your habitat and can use it without difficulty once they get there. Look to ADA guidelines or talk to a local disability advocacy group for ideas on improving accessibility in realistic ways, like adding braille to signage for visually-impaired users or providing a level trail with railings for mobility-impaired users.

Add structures that encourage folks to pause and enjoy the scenery, such as benches, wildlife observation decks, or friendly signage with information about what they’re seeing nearby.

Add a trail or boardwalk to make it easy for folks to get to your habitat, or to enjoy a walk through the habitat once they get there.

If your team is feeling particularly creative, you might even consider adding artistic features that celebrate habitat while also enhancing it, like these artful rainwater design projects created by a team at Penn State University or a pollinator garden shaped like a butterfly.

Read more WHC blogs.

The Nature of Fire

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By now you’ve almost certainly heard about the massive wildfire that has devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta, nicknamed “the beast” by local firefighters. This wildfire has so far destroyed about 10% of the city of Fort McMurray, as well as hundreds of thousands of acres of native boreal forest in the surrounding area. As of this writing the fire is still not under control and additional evacuations have been ordered. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

Fires in nature act as a clearing mechanism for accumulated organic debris, and in some ecosystems fire is actually required to release seeds from pinecones or to stimulate seed germination. In North America, naturally-occurring fire regimes historically ranged from frequent, low-intensity fires that cleared the understory every few years, to infrequent, stand-replacing fires every few hundred years. However, the former is much more common, with many species in fire-adapted ecosystems able to withstand these low-intensity fires.

However, policies that result in the total suppression of wildfires in many areas has led to the accumulation of fuel on the forest floor – dried leaves and pine needles, branches, etc. If a fire burns through areas with this kind of accumulated fuel, the fire burns hotter, taller, and faster than the forest can withstand, leaving little unburned. You can see in this video from the Guardian the flames in the Fort McMurray wildfires were sometimes so tall and hot they engulfed entire mature trees.

Dry conditions like Alberta experienced this winter and spring increase the likelihood that fires will start from lightning strikes or other ignition sources. A dry fuel load and low humidity exacerbate the intensity of fires that do ignite.

One effective compromise between the need for fire to maintain fire-adapted ecosystems and the desire to protect homes, businesses, and wildlife from uncontrolled wildfires is to use controlled burns, in which land managers intentionally set, contain, and manage a controlled, low-intensity fire.

For more information about the Fort McMurray wildfire and the role of wildfires in ecosystems, I encourage you to read this article by Leyland Cecco, which uses the Fort McMurray wildfire to provide an in-depth analysis of the conditions that lead to the destructive power of these kinds of wildfires.

Read more WHC blogs.

Bats and Birds Will Eat Your Mosquitos

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Hate mosquitos? You’re not alone! Although they are an important part of the ecosystem, too many mosquitos can create quite a nuisance. They buzz in your ear and leave red, itchy welts when they bite, and some even transmit diseases like West Nile Virus and malaria.

You wouldn’t know it from their cute faces, but these little brown bats are voracious insect predators, and can eat thousands of mosquitos in a single night. Source: USFWS.

You wouldn’t know it from their cute faces, but these little brown bats are voracious insect predators, and can eat thousands of mosquitos in a single night. Source: USFWS.

Luckily, nature has provided us with many natural mosquito predators to help keep them under control.

Bats in temperate areas of the world tend to be insectivorous, with voracious appetites for mosquitos and other flying insect pests. A single bat can eat about 1,200 insects an hour, and about 6,000-8,000 insects a night. Female bats that are nursing young may even eat up to their weight in insects nightly.

Insectivorous birds like purple martins, swallows, eastern kingbirds, and yellow warblers are also known for eating flying insects, including mosquitos, though to a lesser extent.

So if you have a problem with mosquitos and other flying pest insects, try enhancing your site’s habitat to attract these natural insect predators. You could install artificial structures that provide nesting and roosting habitat, such as nest boxes for birds and bat houses or other artificial roosts for bats. You should also make sure the surrounding habitat provides the resources and complexity needed by the species you want to attract, including plenty of native vegetation that will provide additional food sources and cover habitat. Not only will you contribute to conservation of these species, you’ll also be helping yourself!

It’s important to remember that none of these species will provide a singular solution to controlling mosquitos in all locations. Rather, attracting natural predators is an important step in long-term planning for reducing mosquito numbers in your area.

Read more WHC blogs.

Unusual Places with Unexpected Partners: Welcoming All-Comers to Restore, Improve and Protect Nature

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I recently had the honor and pleasure of meeting Mary Robinson, the former and first woman president of Ireland, a global advocate for women and children and a leader in climate change justice. She was fresh from the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris and optimistic about the result. As we talked, she told me that the two forces that could make a huge difference in progress toward COP21 goals were women and business. She felt it essential to harness the passion and power of women who, in the developing world, will be hardest hit by a changing climate, and to harness the power of business to create passion and momentum toward the goal of keeping global temperature rise significantly beneath 2 degrees Celsius.

Her exhortation that business is an essential player in this issue echoes so many others who are beginning to understand that business has, for many reasons, a key role to play in protecting our planet.

Wildlife Habitat Council’s mission is to facilitate business playing this key role with respect to biodiversity and the conservation of nature. Our “big tent” approach welcomes all-comers who want to work with us to restore, improve or protect nature.

If a company wants to act to improve its lands for nature, we want to encourage and enable them to do so, whatever the scope of their aspirations. We do this by working with them to design strong and appropriate projects and recognize their efforts. When we evaluate projects, we evaluate their impacts on nature, employees and community.

Our unstated mission is to place upward pressure on industry to adopt better practices in their operations and on their lands. We do this not by advocacy, policy or litigation, but through “show and tell,” by working with the individuals on the ground who conceive of the projects, implement them, own them and transmit their successes up through the corporate chain. Once this is repeated across locations within a company, it can become embedded in the culture of the company and lead to fundamental changes in both culture and operations. Imagine if conservation programs on corporate lands become as common as recycling in corporate offices. That’s the goal.

In terms of conservation outcomes, there are some compelling reasons to work where others may fear to tread:

Every act of conservation matters. A tree planted in the ground at a corporate campus, a ready-mix facility, or a restored quarry can be as valuable as a tree planted in protected woodlands. Habitat destruction and fragmentation remain the leading causes of biodiversity loss across the world, and by doing acts of conservation along the entire urban-rural spectrum, in unusual places with unexpected partners, we help create a mosaic of nature that fills the spaces in between, provides connectivity and increases population resilience.

Opportunity knocks on corporate lands. Natural resources extraction carried out by business leads to restoration, which can in turn lead to opportunities for ecological enhancement. Site clean-up and remediation, mainly the responsibility of business, can result in quality conservation outcomes. Maintenance and operations on corporate campuses and manufacturing sites can be altered to benefit nature by changing landscape management regimes to increase native plants or altering the movement of goods and materials to break invasive species pathways. Every corporate property has the potential to contribute.

Not all communities are created equally. Not every community has a well-endowed park, a vibrant nature center or easy access to safe outdoor recreational activities. In under-served rural and urban settings, corporate lands can provide a lake to take a child fishing, a nature center to teach environmental basics, or a trail to encourage exercise and provide the physical and mental health benefits of being in the natural world. By recognizing high-quality access and education, we encourage other businesses to open their doors and become true members of the community.

Most everything we buy, eat, wear, drive, look at or listen to is made by a company in a facility somewhere with the potential to contribute to biodiversity in a large or small way. Our approach is to help this contribution happen, recognize it when it does, and hope that the recognition in turn contributes to the program’s longevity.

There are many roads along which we all try to better the world. In the environmental community, some groups advance the cause of a healthier environment through litigation, regulatory change and advocacy. Some promote the road of direct action while others advance the cause through education and public awareness. WHC’s road is, with apologies to Robert Frost, less traveled but engaging business in conservation can make all the difference.

Read more WHC blogs.

6 Tricks for Better Species Identification

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Learning how to identify plants and animals–especially when you’re first starting out with a conservation project—can be seem pretty daunting at first. Once you get the hang of it, though, I promise it gets much easier! Here’s a list of six tricks I use all the time when I’m trying to identify wildlife in the field.

  1. First, get yourself some handy identification tools.

There are so many species, how could one possibly learn what they all look like?  Answer – you don’t.  Instead, you learn how to use tools like field guides that will help you figure out which species you’re looking at.  Field guides are generally designed to be small enough to carry around while also providing an identification tips for a group of species like birds.  There are also numerous apps for your smartphone that can supplement or replace field guides, like Audubon’s bird guide app and LeafSnap.

  1. Take photos!

Take photos of the animals and plants you see, especially if you aren’t sure what species it is.  You can then examine the photo in detail and zoom in on your computer’s monitor, and take as much time as you need to compare it to books and online guides.  You can also submit photos to a variety of experts online who can help with difficult identifications, such as BugGuide.net or a local naturalist.

  1. Get expert help in the field.

In addition to getting help with identifying species you photographed, it can also be advantageous to have one or more experts with you in the field while you are monitoring your project.  They can give you hands-on training in implementing a monitoring technique for your project as well as with in-the-field identification.

  1. Learn how to “break it down” into manageable parts.

One of the best ways to keep from feeling overwhelmed by everything going on with the way a species looks or sounds is learning how to “break down” each plant or animal into a bunch of manageable “parts” that will help you identify it. So if you’re trying to figure out which bird you’re seeing, you can break down the visual observation into things like relative size, bill length, bill shape, tail shape, colors on various parts of the body, and distinctive markings.  Animal songs and calls can be similarly broken down into things like pitch, rhythm, melody and harmonics, complexity, tone, timbre, and mnemonic association.

  1. Use all of your senses to observe plants and animals.

The most common way to identify plants and animals is by sight, of course but your other senses can help you too.  Many animals sing, call, or make other noises, and with some practice it can be easy to distinguish many of the common bird songs, frog and mammal calls, and such.  Some species have a distinctive smell, such the lemony odor released by lemon beebalm when its leaves are crushed, or that very distinctively noxious odor when a skunk sprays to protect itself.  Touch and taste can also be useful for helping identify certain plants, such as rough tree bark or minty-tasting leaves (taste should be used with lots of caution, however, as many wild plants can be poisonous!)

  1. Consider your location.

Remember, species occur within specific ranges and habitat types.  The species you might find when you’re out on your company’s land will therefore depend a great deal on where you are in the world and what habitat you’re looking at.  You wouldn’t find a tropical marsh bird in a temperate desert, now would you?

I hope these tricks give you the confidence you need to go out there and try your hand at species ID!

Read more WHC blogs.

Tag Archive for: conservation

Conservation and Community Through Site-Specific Reclamation

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End uses that encourage native species prosperity and connect to local and regional needs
Sponsored by Chemours

It’s hard to find a human activity that does not rely on the extraction, transport, processing or disposal of natural resources. While these activities can lead to some degree of habitat fragmentation or pollution while a facility is active, the reclamation work that takes place after operations cease creates new opportunities for habitat creation and connectivity, as well as unique ways to engage the surrounding community.

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Native Grasslands Conservation

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From small roadsides to vast landscapes, grassland habitats benefit corporate biodiversity and sustainability goals
Sponsored by Ontario Power Generation

Grasslands are one of the most common habitat types in the world and one of the most threatened. An opportunity exists for corporations to manage privately owned grasslands in nature-friendly ways that will realize multiple values for many stakeholders, including benefits to climate change mitigation and adaptation, stormwater run-off, cost savings and aesthetics.

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Business and Biodiversity: A Critical Partnership for the Future

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In today’s competitive landscape, engaging in corporate conservation is emerging as an innovative approach to meet both business and environmental needs. Indeed, corporate spending on sustainability and circular economy initiatives is on the rise — and yielding increased sales and cost savings. Demonstrating leadership in corporate conservation is crucial to meeting sustainability goals and achieving stakeholder collaboration.

You’ll learn:

  • Links between conservation program investment and business benefits, including cost savings, risk reduction, increased employee engagement and productivity
  • How biodiversity-based programs offer the advantage of flexibility not only to adapt to different size companies, operations and lands, but also across types of landscapes
  • How to use the WHC model to create measurable, meaningful conservation and community engagement projects
  • Tools available to get started in building your business case for biodiversity-based programs

Presenter:

  • Thelma Redick, Senior Director, Conservation Content and Partnerships, Wildlife Habitat Council

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Business and Biodiversity: A Critical Partnership for the Future

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View the webinar
…

In today’s competitive landscape, engaging in corporate conservation is emerging as an innovative approach to meet both business and environmental needs. Indeed, corporate spending on sustainability and circular economy initiatives is on the rise — and yielding increased sales and cost savings. Demonstrating leadership in corporate conservation is crucial to meeting sustainability goals and achieving stakeholder collaboration.

You’ll learn:

  • Links between conservation program investment and business benefits, including cost savings, risk reduction, increased employee engagement and productivity
  • How biodiversity-based programs offer the advantage of flexibility not only to adapt to different size companies, operations and lands, but also across types of landscapes
  • How to use the WHC model to create measurable, meaningful conservation and community engagement projects
  • Tools available to get started in building your business case for biodiversity-based programs

Presenter:

  • Thelma Redick, Senior Director, Conservation Content and Partnerships, Wildlife Habitat Council

View the webinar

An Introduction to Land Conservation Agreements

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Land Conservation Agreements limit a property’s uses in order to protect its conservation values. This enhanced or permanent protection of corporate lands can help conserve the natural, scenic, or rural qualities of the land for today and for future generations, adding to the depth of your Conservation Certification® goals. Join Sylvia Bates of the Land Trust Alliance to explore the basics of conservation agreements. You’ll also hear case studies of successful corporate and land trust partnerships.

You’ll learn:

  • What is a land conservation agreement, also known as a land trust
  • How to choose an appropriate land trust partner for your project
  • Benefits of conservation easements and other types of conservation strategies to help meet your goals
  • Questions to ask to ensure success of your project and partnership
  • How a land conservation agreement fits into your Conservation Certification program
  • Successful outcomes from case studies that demonstrate how real-world companies met challenges and realized benefits by working with land trusts

Presenter:

  • Sylvia Bates, Director of Standards & Educational Services, Land Trust Alliance
  • Stephen T. Johnson, President, North American Land Trust
  • Kamara Sams, Environmental Community Relations, The Boeing Company

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Rights-of-Way Partnerships and Alliances: Addressing the Risk of the Pollinator Declines and ESA Listings

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…
Rights-of-way offer unique conservation opportunities by connecting landscapes and providing a generally stable habitat protected from future development. The Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group, composed of multiple industries and unique partnerships, is working to support pollinators and other wildlife, inspired by the population declines in insect pollinator species and the potential listing of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The group is currently working on a voluntary agreement to enhance and sustain monarch butterfly habitat, and in turn will receive regulatory assurances that no additional management activities will be required if the butterfly becomes listed.

During this webinar you’ll learn:
  • How ESA tools like Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAA) can be used to provide important conservation that may influence future ESA listing decisions
  • What is included in the National Monarch Butterfly CCAA for Energy and Transportation Lands
  • Ways partners can engage in the CCAA effort and benefits of participating now
Presenters: 
  • Iris Caldwell, Program Manager- Sustainable Landscapes, Energy Resources Center, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Dan Salas, Senior Ecologist, Cardno 
  • Laurel Hill, Fish and Wildlife Biologist, Ecological Services, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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5 Innovative Approaches to Habitat Regeneration

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Gain greater competency in habitat restoration in a way that is easy to understand through this innovative approach to habitat regeneration success. Specifically, learn how to prioritize your land-management projects, from gathering baseline data to flora and fauna invasive species control to long-term protection and maintenance of your conservation investment. Our expert presenter will share critical steps to habitat regeneration, and how you can incorporate the latest technology and best management practices to ensure you accomplish your conservation goals every step along the continuum.

Join Gene as he shares his years of experience from real-world projects and case studies as you learn:

  • An easy-to-understand theory and step-by-step process behind planning a restoration/conservation project and why some steps may need to be addressed before others can succeed
  • The latest technology and how it can help you monitor from baseline analysis to each benchmark, helping to minimize efforts and save resources
  • How to mark your success at each stage of the often long-term process of habitat restoration
  • Tactics on how to demonstrate your success to others, retain project interest and build upon it

Presenter:

  • Gene Huntington, Ecological Landscape Architect and Partner at Steward Green, Accredited Professional for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

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