climate change Archives - Page 3 of 3

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

1.5-minute read

800 Gigatons or 1.764 quadrillion pounds. That’s how much greenhouse gas (GHG) lies under the soil in the northernmost regions of our planet. No matter what metric we use, that’s quite a lot—about 174 years’ worth of annual global passenger car emissions. Keeping carbon in cold storage under the permafrost for the last 2.58 million years has worked out really well from a life-sustaining perspective. But accelerating climate change resulting from increasing CO₂ emissions is now thawing frozen soils and releasing even more carbon into the atmosphere, creating a positive feedback loop. More warming is causing more thawing, which is releasing more carbon, which is causing more warming. We hate it when that happens.

According to a recent study in Nature, climate scientists racing to develop strategies to keep global warming below 1.5-2.0°C are working on a hoofed herbivore hack to keep the perma in permafrost and prevent the additional release of GHGs from Arctic soil. Researchers from the Universities of Stockholm and Hamburg and the Russian Academy of Sciences studying the climate impacts of reindeer and bison trampling the tundra believe the movement of large populations of megafauna may have an important role to play in keeping the planet cool.

Like a fluffy down comforter, snow insulates the soil from cold Arctic air, allowing the permafrost to thaw. Herds of roaming, grazing animals compact snow, reducing its insulating effect, which helps to preserve permafrost temperatures and keep GHG’s in the ground. In two study sites in northern Sweden and Russia, introducing substantial numbers of big mammals, including reindeer, bison, horses, and yaks, resulted in a 1.9°C degree reduction on average in soil temperature during winter and spring. Researchers predict that increasing mammal populations could result in 80% of permafrost soils remaining at an average temperature below -4°C by 2100.

At current emission rates, global temperatures are projected to rise by 2-4°C by the end of the century, and the ground temperature will be above freezing in many regions. If increasing the number of hoofed herbivores traversing the frozen North can prevent the permafrost from thawing, help keep massive amounts of carbon in the ground, and prevent further warming, all we can say is walk on, ungulates.

You can learn more about the ongoing efforts to combat climate change by integrating more megafauna into Arctic ecosystems at Pleistocene Park.

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Lisa S. French June 21, 2020

Climate Scientists: Hug One if You’ve Got One

2-minute read

When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place — Paulo Coelho

Did you know that June 12 is Hug a Climate Scientist Day?

Since pandemic protocols are interfering with random acts of hugging, we’re going with virtual. But if you’ve got a climate scientist at home, you’ll probably be doubling down on the actual hugging given the latest news on global CO₂ emissions. According to a June 4 press release from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and NOAA, in May 2020, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 417 parts per million, the highest levels ever recorded. Despite the shutdown, accumulated emissions kept on working through the Earth’s system:

“People may be surprised to hear that the response to the coronavirus outbreak hasn’t done more to influence CO₂ levels,” said geochemist Ralph Keeling, who runs the Scripps Oceanography CO₂ program, “but the buildup of CO₂ is a bit like trash in a landfill. As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up. The crisis has slowed emissions, but not enough to show up perceptibly at Mauna Loa. What will matter much more is the trajectory we take coming out of this situation.”

About that trajectory:

You can learn more about our ongoing planetary predicament from the groundbreaking 2020 Pulitzer Prize-Winning explanatory series: 2°C: Beyond the Limit.

Because hope is an essential mental nutrient in these extraordinarily challenging times, you can replenish your supply by exploring Project Drawdown, a comprehensive plan to reverse global warming from the world’s leading scientists and policymakers.

Feeling inspired to help mend your corner of the world? You can join a community of experts and everyday people working to address some of our most pressing issues from climate change to COVID-19, by supporting the Union of Concerned Scientists.

If you’d like to pitch in and plant a cooling, carbon-storing tree for the planet, head on over to the Trillion Tree Campaign to connect with tree planting organizations around the world. Just click and plant. Or we’ll be happy to plant one for you when you buy any print or electronic book from the FWP series Frankie and Peaches: Tales of Total Kindness. It’s that easy!

And if you’re in need of a brain refresh, you can park your peepers on the work of ten environmental artists using their creativity to interpret the science and impacts of climate change at Artsy.

We’re grateful for all of the people holding it together on the front lines: protecting the planet, saving lives, and championing equality. As far as hugs go, because just about everybody could do with one right about now, we always keep a few spares in stock around here. Have one, or two—actually have a few! They’re electronic so 100% CDC and WHO approved ((())).

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Lisa S. French June 12, 2020

The Flower Whisperers

2-minute read

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it — Ralph Waldo Emerson

According to a remarkable and hopeful new ETH Zurich study, bumblebees experiencing pollen deprivation resulting from climate change have learned to garden as if their hives depend on it—and they do.

Global heating is creating a seasonal mismatch between flower resources and the emergence of bumblebees in spring. No flowers, no pollen, no bees. A scarcity of the pollen that bee larvae and worker bees need to survive can negatively impact reproductive success and prevent queen bees from establishing new colonies. Heatwaves and uncommonly warm temperatures have already reduced populations by 46% in North America and 17% in Europe.

The upside (we love upsides!) is that bumblebees may be developing coping strategies to adapt to our new environmental reality, and they’re actually helping flowering plants adapt along with them. The Swiss study found that brainy bumbles have adopted a hive-saving, pollen gathering workaround to coax blooms from plants weeks ahead of schedule. By cutting distinctively shaped holes in the leaves of tomato and black mustard plants, bumblebees substantially accelerated their flowering time by an average of 30 days, approximately 25 days earlier than mechanically perforated plants. When available pollen was limited, the rate of plant perforation was significantly higher and only minor when pollen was plentiful.

Researchers believe that by helping to correct the mismatch between bloom time and hive emergence, the perforating activity of these furry little problem solvers may increase the resilience of plant-pollinator interactions to the destructive impacts of global heating. Given that about eight percent of plants rely on bumblebees for pollination, including eggplants, tomatoes, blueberries, and potatoes, we’re grateful for their efforts to bee the change.

IN SOLIDARITY

Like the flower and the bumblebee, we humans are interconnected. At Favorite World Press, we believe that our shared humanity and our faith in the strength of diverse communities are more powerful than the forces that aim to divide us.

FWP and our tree-planting partner American Forests stand in solidarity with the Black community and support organizations doing essential work to achieve social justice and ensure sustainable transformation. Because the best time to help create a more equitable world, where everyone has an opportunity to flourish, is now.

You can learn more about the mission to create a fair and just future here:

Advancement Project and the Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Campaign Zero .

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Lisa S. French June 6, 2020

The Plight of the Bumblebee

3-minute read

Whether you look forward to the first spring flight of the bumblebee (Bombus) as a reassuring sign of nature’s capacity for renewal or are simply grateful for the fruits of the fuzzy pollinator’s labor, the recent study documenting its climate change-induced decline was a definite buzzkill. The new analysis of 66 bumblebee species across North America and Europe from researchers at the University of Ottawa and University College London reveals that over the last five decades, the growing number of unusually hot days is increasing local bumblebee extinction rates. Heatwaves and rising average temperatures have led to widespread loss of populations—an estimated 46% in North America and 17% in Europe.

Bumblebees evolved in cooler regions of the world over a period of about 100 million years, and scientists now believe that warmer winters and hotter summers resulting from global heating may exceed the iconic insect’s ability to adapt. At the current rate of emissions, it’s estimated that climate change may have greater negative impacts on the bee species than habitat loss, potentially resulting in mass extinction.

Like honey bees (Apis mellifera), wild bumblebees are important pollinators of crops and native plants, providing critical ecosystem and economic benefits for people and planet—absolutely free of charge. Both honey bees and bumblebees are accidental pollinators. In the process of drinking nectar and harvesting pollen for food, they pick up the finely-grained plant dust on their bodies or leg hair and transfer it from the anther to the stigma of the flower.

However, compared to its honey-producing cousin, the bumblebee is equipped with a few extra features that make it especially efficient at pollen gathering. Because bumblebees are bigger than honey bees, they can pick up and transfer more pollen per flower fly-by. Some species of bumblebees also have longer tongues than honey bees, not as long as this creature’s, but pretty impressive by bee standards. Longer-tongued bees are particularly skilled at lapping up nectar and pollen from hard-to-reach places in tubular flowers like honeysuckle and salvia. Bumblebees also have another expert tool in their pollen-gathering arsenal—buzz pollination, or sonication. By holding the flower with its legs or mouthparts and rapidly vibrating its flight muscles, the bumblebee can dislodge pollen from plants that can’t be pollinated through garden variety bee pollination methods. About eight percent of plants rely on this shake-and-take method of pollen gathering, including eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, blueberries, and cranberries. In addition to its bigger size, longer tongue, and sonication skills, the bumblebee has an extended pollination season and can visit twice as many flowers per day as the honey bee.

Although bumblebees have an exceptional aptitude for pollen gathering, like many animal and plant species, their ability to adjust to the unprecedented environmental stressors of climate change is limited. Uncommonly warm winter temperatures can trick queen bumblebees into emerging from the hive well before pollen is available for food, leaving them too weak to return to the hive to lay eggs—no eggs, no bees. Come spring, higher-than-normal temperatures alter the scent, nectar, and pollen production of flowers, making them less attractive to foraging bees. And increased C02 in the atmosphere also reduces the protein level of pollen, resulting in smaller bumblebees. Smaller bees travel shorter distances, carry less pollen, and pollinate fewer flowers. To put these climate change casualties in perspective, 75 percent of the world’s flowering plants rely on pollinators for reproduction, including more than two-thirds of the world’s crops.

Unfortunately, less than one percent of bumblebee hotspots are currently protected. In a rapidly warming world, conservation aimed at maintaining habitats for the 250 species of bumblebees and assisting the insects with colonization beyond their normal range is crucial to their survival. If you’d like to help ensure that bumblebees have a soft landing wherever they roam and continue to contribute to everyday essentials, here are some tips on what to plant on your city or country patch to keep these precious pollinators buzzing:

Bumbles prefer:

Perennials because they produce more nectar than annuals
Native perennials because they produce more nectar and pollen than sterile hybrids
Symmetric two-sided flowers
Pink and violet-colored flowers

And here’s a short list of the bumblebees’ perennial favorites that you can plant from rooftop to roadside:

Daisy family (Asteraceae)
Common daisies, cornflowers, chamomile,
yarrow, fleabane, asters, dahlias, coneflowers

Flowering pea family (Fabaceae)
Lupine, mimosa, wisteria, clover

Mint family (Lamiaceae)
Sage, mint, rosemary, lavender, thyme,
lemon balm, hyssop, chaste, patchouli

You can learn more about what makes the bee bumble and how you can become a citizen conservationist from the Xerces Society and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. For a deeper drill-down into the fascinating world of bees of all sorts, we highly recommend The Bee, A Natural History.

If you’ve got access to a front, back or side yard, or any other personal patch, you can find out how to grow climate-resilient, environmentally beneficial communities of plants that you, the bees, and other wildlife will love living within the excellent Bringing Nature Home and Planting in a Post-Wild World. And if you’re a city dweller in need of some perennial planting inspiration, visit the elevated gardens at the High Line in NYC (online or in-person) created by Dutch perennial plant master, Piet Oudolf. We may have a slight hometown bias, but as gardens go, it truly is the bee’s knees.

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Lisa S. French February 22, 2020

Adapting to Heartbreak

3-minute read

The rising numbers depicting the catastrophic loss and destruction caused by bushfires across Australia since September of 2019 are painfully difficult to comprehend: at least 28 people have perished, thousands have lost their homes, and an estimated one billion animals and at least 18 million acres (an area equivalent in size to the state of South Carolina) have been affected. Yet, even those heartbreaking figures fail to adequately reflect the long-term environmental impacts that may forever change the lives of many of the inhabitants of one of our most naturally beautiful and biologically rich island continents.

Australia is “megadiverse,” one of 18 countries representing 36 recognized global biodiversity hotspots and home to 600,000-700,000 species, including many which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. There are some you may have never heard of like the northern hairy-nosed wombat, spotted-tail quoll, and Julia Creek dunnart, as well as one you definitely recognize, the cuddly-looking creature most readily identified as a symbol of wildlife down under—the koala. A native resident of Australia for approximately 25 million years, the much-loved marsupial occupies the eucalyptus forests and woodlands of Queensland, Southern Australia, and two of the states hardest hit by the fires, Victoria, and New South Wales.

At the start of the 20th century, millions of koalas could be found across eastern Australia. As of 2018, the population was estimated to be somewhere between 47,000 at the low end and what is believed to be an overly optimistic 100,000. According to recent assessments, the number of koalas that have died or been injured in the 2019-2020 fires stands at approximately 30,000. The ongoing natural disaster that may have reduced the total koala population by more than one third in just a few short months has accelerated the decline of an animal species already facing urgent multiple threats to its survival.

Like many marsupials indigenous to Australia, koalas have evolved to survive the harsh environmental conditions of the arid and semi-arid landscapes of the driest inhabited continent on Earth. But rising average temperatures across Australia over the past five decades, resulting in more frequent and intense droughts and heatwaves, have severely compromised the koala’s ability to adapt. Exposure to prolonged high temperatures can lead to heat stress, dehydration and eventual death. A December heatwave in 2009 that wiped out an estimated one quarter of the koalas in the town of Gunnedah, New South Wales is just one example.

The tree-dwelling animals are primarily dependent upon various species of eucalyptus, or gum trees, for food, water and shelter. Adult Koalas eat a little over a pound of eucalyptus a day, also extracting moisture from the leaves. Because the leaves of drought-affected trees are less nutritious and produce less moisture, koalas need to eat more leaves to meet their daily dietary requirements, but habitat loss and fragmentation as a result of deforestation reduce the number of eucalyptus trees available to support populations. When forced to leave the safety of a tree-top refuge in search of food, water, or another suitable habitat as a result of climate-change-related impacts, the slow-moving marsupials also face the threat of feral dog attacks and car strikes.

In 2015, Australian researchers publishing in the National Academy of Sciences predicted that the effects of climate change will be magnified over the next few decades resulting in severe to catastrophic losses of wildlife. Just four years later, that prediction has become a reality. As the bushfires rage on, the fate of the koala and other rare and remarkable animal species hangs in the balance. By 2030, average temperatures in Australia are expected to increase by 1.5°C. The country will continue to be challenged by unprecedented physical manifestations of a warming world. Climate change mitigation, adaptation, and initiatives aimed at conserving biodiversity will continue to be critical to help ensure the wellbeing and livelihoods of the billions of people who depend upon the healthy functioning of ecosystems in Australia and around the world.

As the science of climate change evolves, we may take some comfort in its logic while making best efforts to develop adaptation strategies for ourselves and individual species, but when it comes to adapting to heartbreak, science has little to offer because there are many precious living beings on our home planet for which there are no substitutes once lost. Although we can’t reverse the irreversible or replace the irreplaceable, we continue to have hope, because hope may not point to a way back, but it can help guide the way forward. To quote author and historian Rebecca Solnit, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency… To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.”

You can help give hope to the suffering people and animals in Australia through these Charity Navigator rated organizations. And you can wear your heart on your sleeve for the land down under by purchasing a Fire Relief T-shirt for a limited time from our pals at For Love Of All Things (FLOAT). All proceeds go to support the recovery efforts of the Australia Koala Foundation.

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Lisa S. French January 14, 2020

Kelp Keepers

Widely admired for its conspicuous cuteness, the sea otter is proving to be far more than just another appealingly furry face. Research into this keystone species’ role in maintaining carbon-storing macroalgae, commonly known as kelp, indicates that the bewhiskered marine mammals may be important allies in the battle against climate change. One of 13 otter species, and the largest member of the weasel family, sea otters can be found floating about in coastal waters in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the Russian Federation. As their name suggests, sea otters spend the majority of their lives in the ocean, preferring to feed, sleep, and raise their pups in close proximity to kelp, which they use as cover from predators and to anchor themselves and their young when resting.

Equivalent to an underwater rainforest, densely layered kelps are an integral component of healthy marine ecosystems, providing food and shelter for myriad species including fish, shellfish, seabirds, harbor seals, and sea lions. In addition to functioning as critical habitat, recent analysis suggests that kelp forests also have immense potential for permanently storing large amounts of carbon dioxide—up to a whopping 634 million tons per year, an amount greater than the annual emissions of Australia.

One of the reasons that kelp is an especially effective sequester of carbon is because it grows quite rapidly, as much as two feet per day, attaching to undersea rocks with root-like structures called holdfasts. Unfortunately, kelp’s natural nemesis, the sea urchin, is particularly fond of feasting on holdfasts, causing the macroalgae to detach from rock surfaces, drift, and die. Left unchecked, the spiny invertebrates can form hungry herds large enough to decimate undersea forests. And that’s where the sea otter comes in—alongside crabs, mussels, and clams, sea urchins happen to be a favorite food of the voracious shellfishionados. By keeping sea urchin populations under control, otters help to ensure kelp’s survival. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have estimated that the presence of otters in a coastal habitat increased the sequestration capacity of kelp forests by 4.4 to 8.7 megatons—and they support this valuable ecosystem service every day, absolutely free of charge—give or take a sea urchin or two.

When sea otters were hunted for their fur to near extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries, coastal kelp forests and many of the creatures that relied upon them for survival all but vanished. Effectively eliminating the sea otter from its ecological niche had profoundly detrimental cascade effects on other species in its marine community. Although still currently classified as endangered, over the past century, as a result of dedicated conservation efforts, Pacific otter populations have rebounded from a low of several thousand to approximately 148,000 across Canada, Alaska, Washington, and California. And, as the kelp keepers have returned to their historic range, so have the undersea forests and their inhabitants.

As our knowledge of the interdependence of living things continues to evolve, and we learn more about how mutually beneficial relationships between species like sea otters and kelp can help to maintain biodiversity and contribute to ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, history serves to remind us that in nature, as in life, sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

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Lisa S. French October 16, 2019

Tree-Planting Tapirs

If the Brazilian tapir’s eye-catching ensemble of creature features brings to mind ancient beasts, that’s because the shy, primarily nocturnal South American megafauna is one of the oldest species of large mammal remaining on Earth. The origins of this floppy-nosed, bristly-maned, odd-toed ungulate date back approximately 35 million years. For the ungulate-uninitiated, tapirs are Perissodactyls, hooved herbivores who like their closest relatives horses and rhinoceros, possess an odd number of toes. The Brazilian, or lowland, tapir is one of four widely recognized species of tapir native to the forests, grasslands, and mountains of Central and South America and Southeast Asia.

Measuring five to eight feet long and weighing between 300 and 700 pounds, the Brazilian tapir maintains its impressive bulk by consuming up to an equally impressive 85 pounds worth of shoots, leaves, branches, and fruit a day. As it turns out, the tapir’s hearty appetite for seed-bearing plants plays an important role in restoring degraded rainforests. According to researchers at Ohio State University, 80 percent of trees in the Amazon are dependent upon animals for seed dispersal. One of the primary “gardeners of the rainforest” tapirs ingest and expel a large variety of seeds that have future tree potential. Results of a recent study carried out by scientists at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Mato Grosso, Brazil, found that 99 percent of 130,000 seeds passed through a tapir’s digestive systems intact. Seeds that survive the digestive process are more likely to germinate. And here’s where it gets more ‘oh, wow’ interesting: the Mato Grosso study suggests that tapirs may prefer to browse and graze in degraded plots of land rather than in unspoiled forest. When sunlight hits the earth as a result of tree canopy loss in burnt or degraded areas, it forces up and reveals tender green shoots from the forest floor that are attractive to tapirs. The tapirs observed in the study spent about twice as much time feeding in degraded plots resulting in more seed “deposits” in areas in need of reforestation.

In the Amazon, wildlife depend upon healthy forest systems, and as the Ohio State and Mato Grosso research indicates, healthy forest systems depend upon wildlife. The Brazilian tapir’s natural capacity to contribute to tree planting can be an important factor in helping to regenerate carbon-storing, rainforest habitat. That is why protecting an umbrella species like the tapir also serves to protect other animals in its ecosystem.

Despite their aptitude for seed dispersal, Brazilian tapirs alone can’t compensate for elevated rates of Amazon deforestation. In addition, as a result of rapid habitat loss due to wildfires and ongoing land-use change, as well as illegal hunting, populations of Brazilian tapirs are decreasing and currently listed as vulnerable by the IUCN. The good news is you can help keep the hooved horticulturalists of Central and South America in their gardening groove by supporting the tapir research of Nai Conservation and the conservation action plans of the Tapir Specialist Group.

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Lisa S. French October 2, 2019

Traveling Trees

Like all living things, trees have a comfort zone where they grow best and thrive-an evolutionarily determined combination of sunlight, soil nutrients, water and temperature that supports the structure, bark, and leaves of diverse species. But what happens when a tree no longer gets the moisture and nutrients it needs to put down roots and send up shoots in a hotter, drier world? While the mighty oak in your front yard can’t just up sticks and trot down the block to the yard with the fancy sprinkler system, trees do have the ability to migrate in response to environmental change, about ten miles per decade, through various modes of seed dispersal. In the United States, trees move in two directions, gravitating toward cooler temperatures in the North or increased rainfall in the West. However, when the rate of change in temperature or precipitation exceeds a species ability to adapt or migrate, climate-induced dieback can occur, negatively impacting the resilience and sustainability of forest ecosystems.

In anticipation of increased global warming, researchers at the Schoodic Institute at Maine’s Acadia National Park are conducting experiments in assisted tree migration—planting and monitoring non-native, heat and drought-resistant seedlings to determine which species will adapt best to projected climatic changes in Acadia in the coming decades. Deciding which trees to relocate and which to leave behind is a tricky business. Altering one component of a natural system can result in cascading changes that may impact the survival of interdependent, co-evolved plants, and wildlife. What future forests will look like, who decides and whether or not trees should be assisted to migrate is a matter of ongoing controversy and debate. Time will tell if those tree species that just can’t get there from here will be able to survive in a warming world with a little travel assistance from their friends in forest ecology. You can learn more about the science of trees on the move from our planting partners at American Forests here.

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Lisa S. French August 18, 2019

Brainy Bees

As the days grow longer and buds burst into blooms, we’re on the lookout for the return of everybody’s favorite essential pollinator, the honeybee! If you have ever wondered why honeybees are so skilled at helping to transform flowers into fruit and veg like apples, avocados, blueberries, and broccoli, it’s because they’re wicked smart. How smart, you ask? Well, even though a honeybee’s brain is about 20,000 times smaller than a human brain, that seed-sized morsel of gray matter packs a lot of computing power. A honeybee brain is capable of managing 10 trillion computations a second—that’s 625 times the speed of most advanced supercomputers. Research conducted by scientists at the University of Melbourne indicates that honeybees can do basic arithmetic, understand the concept of zero, and learn and teach other bees how to gain rewards. All of that buzz-worthy brilliance is put to good use efficiently managing a complex series of tasks that contribute to the cross-pollination of 30 percent of human food crops and 90 percent of wild plants. Honeybees also use their smarts to locate prime floral real estate by color and smell and share the inside scoop on best bets for plentiful pollen and nectar with their hive mates through a complicated “waggle” dance language.

What’s more, these winged brainiacs are the ultimate team players, efficiently performing well-defined hierarchical functions within their colonies. The apis mellifera monarch’s, or queen honeybee’s, one and only job is to create more bees. The queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day which develop into queens, drones, or worker bees. The bees that you see buzzing about outside the hive collecting pollen and nectar from flowers are sterile female worker bees. Worker bees are also responsible for keeping the inside of the hive tidy as well as feeding the queen, drones, and bee larvae. Male bees or drones have only two functions in the hive, eating and mating with the queen. While that may sound like the good life, once a drone mates with the queen, it falls to the ground and dies. Drones that don’t make the cut with the queen are ejected from the hive by worker bees come winter.

Queen bees are not born to the throne. They are created through a process where larvae designated for insect royalty by their placement in special queen cells in the hive are fed exclusively the aptly named royal jelly. A milky substance that is secreted from glands in the heads of worker bees, royal jelly is composed of proteins, sugars, fatty acids, and trace minerals which help queens develop their reproductive capacity. Tasked with the very important job of keeping the colony humming with new offspring, a queen honeybee can live anywhere from one to six years, significantly longer than the seasonal life span of female worker bees and male drones.

Despite having an amazing capacity to problem solve and work collaboratively, one thing that honeybees have not been able to figure out on their own is how to protect themselves from the multiple factors including global heating, pesticide use, habitat loss, and parasites which have led to an estimated annual loss of over 30% of the honeybee colonies that are critical to pollinating one out of every three bites of the food we eat. According to the 2018-19 survey results from the Bee Informed Partnership, over the past winter, U.S. beekeepers lost 40% of their hives, which is the worst recorded loss since 2006.

It’s clear that when it comes to keeping global populations well-fed and environmental systems healthy and functioning, these tiny, brainy insects are the bee all end all. Whether you live in a big city, a small town, or somewhere in between, check out the Xerces Society’s tips on what to plant to create a safe haven for honeybees on your patch. You can also sponsor a hive through The Honeybee Conservancy and find Favorite World Press recommendations for pollinator-friendly seed bombs and supplies here.

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Lisa S. French May 27, 2019

Sky Vacuums

Because trees convert carbon dioxide into food for growth, they are one of the planet’s most naturally efficient ways to store carbon. One tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year and sequester one ton of carbon by the time it reaches 40 years old. Trees actually get better at storing carbon with age. Old-growth forests, which have developed for at least 120 years without disturbance, contain over 300 billion tons of carbon. That’s 600 trillion pounds of CO2 not floating around sneakily warming the atmosphere! You can help us plant more handy, leafy sky vacuums by joining the FWP Frankie and Peaches Kindness Crew.

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Lisa S. French January 31, 2019