nature benefits Archives - Favorite World Press

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

2-minute read

There are countless ways our home planet shows us tender loving care. In addition to providing everyday essentials like food, water, and oxygen, exposure to Earth’s natural finery—trees, forests, parks, green spaces, wilderness areas, and wildlife has been scientifically proven to help enhance physical and psychological well-being. Depending on how much time you spend taking in the splendor of the great out there, you may reap health benefits that promote longevity, prevent disease, lower stress, and improve overall mood. That’s a whole lot of love.

Exposure to nature requires access. Now, thanks to two innovative tracking tools created by scientists at NatureQuant™, a new research and technology institution, you’ll be able to monitor the quantity and the quality of the planetary TLC you’re getting from your outdoor environment to help optimize well-being. That’s good news for adults in high-income countries like the United States, who spend 80 to 90% of their lives inactive and indoors.

Wondering how the nature in your neighborhood ranks health-wise? The NatureScore™ tool estimates the amount and quality of nature and environmental conditions across the United States and Canada. The NatureDose™ smartphone app uses GPS coordinates and NatureScore™ datasets to determine your location and how much time you spend in nearby nature to help you progress toward physical and psychological health goals. The NatureQuant™ tools can also be used to guide the allocation and creation of quality green spaces to improve nature equity in deprived neighborhoods.

You can download the NatureDose™ app here to start tracking your daily exposure to Earthly delights. Then, all you have to do to feel the love is step outside.

ICYMI Nature News

An Increased Dose of Nature
If you are lucky enough to live near the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument or the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in California, you will soon have access to an increased dose of nature. Both monuments will be expanded this month to give visitors more roaming room.

Cliff-Diving Emperor Penguin Chicks
Award-winning cinematographer Bertie Gregory has captured amazing, unprecedented footage of emperor penguin chicks launching themselves into the sea by diving from a 50-foot Antarctic cliff. You can watch the never-before-filmed behavior from National Geographic here.

A Trillion Cicadas, Anyone?
Starting in late April, two broods of periodical cicadas will emerge from the ground in an event that only occurs every 221 years. Entomologists are expecting about 1 trillion of the winged creatures across 16 states. If you enjoy the smell of rotting nuts, you will be in bug heaven.

In the Natural World, Nice Guys Finish First
According to a new book by evolutionary biologist Jonathan Silvertown, Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life, in the natural world, cooperation is more common than competition. So, nice guys do finish first… Or, at least, nice humpback whales.

They’re Just Dancing in the Dark
Have you ever wondered what deep sea creatures get up to down there? Apparently, these worms dance like nobody’s watching. Except for you.

Bold, Brilliant, Beautiful, Breathtaking Nature
The 2024 World Nature Photography Awards have been announced, and the winners are all the “B” words. Have a look!

Citizen Scientists are Helping Seahorses
Eagle-eyed citizen scientists around the globe are helping researchers develop conservation strategies to protect seahorses by providing new information on sightings of the charismatic creatures in the wild. Do you have something to contribute to seahorse science? Go to Project Seahorse to add your very valuable two cents.

Animals Reenact the Solar Eclipse
And finally, you’ve probably seen the stunning images and videos of this week’s solar eclipse, but what about footage of the puppy eclipse? No? How about the kitten eclipse? Video of these rare cosmic phenomena is an oldie, but a goody—no special solar specs needed. Watch!

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Lisa S. French April 13, 2024

Otters are Here to Help

2-minute read

Just when we thought sea otters couldn’t possibly be more lovable, researchers at Sonoma State University have discovered that the bewhiskered marine mammals, aka kelp keepers, are also helping to save Monterey Bay’s coastal salt marsh, the Elkhorn Slough—one tasty crab dinner at a time.

The Elkhorn Slough, a seven-mile stretch between Santa Cruz and Monterey, is home to an amazing variety of wildlife, including 340 bird species, 550 invertebrates, and 60 mammals. Salt marshes like the Slough are among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. And why is saving salt marshes important? Well, they are invaluable ecosystems that help protect shorelines, store carbon, and promote healthy fisheries, in addition to supporting thousands of species of plant and animal life.

According to the Sonoma State researchers, striped shore crabs, left unchecked by natural predators, have been disrupting the soil and eating the roots of marsh plants that hold the shoreline of the Slough together, contributing to almost a foot of erosion every year.

Enter the hungry, hungry sea otters, enthusiastic consumers of the burrowing crustaceans. In areas of the salt marsh where the once plentiful native otters were reintroduced, erosion was reduced by 2/3, helping to maintain this critical habitat for all wildlife.

By protecting the sea otters that keep runaway grazers like striped crabs from disrupting coastlines, we can reduce erosion, protect marine habitat that supports native wildlife and help cool the planet—that’s a conservation triple win—otterly amazing!

ICYMI Nature News

It’s Beautiful Out There
If you need to rest your eyes on something restorative amid bleak mid-winter, the Nature Photo Contest winners have been announced, and you can see their work right here.

When Whales Walked the Earth
Did you know that seal-like whales used to walk the shores of North America? Find out how they moved from land to sea from the Smithsonian Magazine.

Flaco’s Year of Freedom
It’s been a year since Flaco the owl escaped from the confines of the Central Park Zoo and took up residence on NYC’s Upper West Side. How is the feathery fellow, and what’s he been doing? NPR has thoughts on his free-bird-a-versary here.

The World’s Oldest Forest Two Hours From NYC
Would you like to visit a forest that existed when dinosaurs roamed the Earth? You don’t have to travel to the heart of the Amazon because the world’s oldest forest was recently discovered just two hours north of NYC.

Silk Spinning Crustaceans
If you thought that spiders were the only creatures capable of spinning silk, scientists at the University of California would like you to meet these crafty crustaceans.

Big Bear Valley Eagle Nest Cam
Looking for some animal cam comfort? Magnificent bald eagles Jackie and Shadow are back on the roost, protecting their eggs from the elements. You can keep tabs on the dedicated parents and future hatchling happenings here.

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Lisa S. French February 10, 2024

And That’s Why We Hug Trees

2-minute read

Trees love to toss
and sway; they
make such happy
noises.

Emily Carr

Happy high summer!

As you prepare to hit the highways and flyways be sure to include a little quality tree time in your travels. Here’s a repost explaining why making friends with a forest is good for your head and good for your heart.

Before you go, a gentle reminder that it’s Plastic-Free July, your month-long challenge to double, triple, and quadruple your efforts to reduce your use of the indestructible stuff and keep things pristine when you’re out and about. You can learn how to help combat plastic pollution right here.

We’ll be back next week with more featured creatures and nature news. In the meantime, how about some happy noises?

FWP High-Summer playlist.

As the world turns, if you find yourself in need of a mood boost this summer, we’ve got just the thing—make friends with a local forest. According to public health researchers at the University of Parma, inhaling a forest atmosphere swirling with naturally occurring, mood-elevating aerosols can influence the release of dopamine and GABA, the feel-good neurotransmitters that improve cognitive function, increase feelings of well-being and relaxation, and improve quality of sleep.

Any type of forest in particular? Cone-producing pine, fir, and cypress trees release the highest concentration of beneficial aerosols limonene and pinene, so forests where conifers are king are your best bet to brighten your spirits. Hitting the trail two hours after dawn through to early afternoon is the optimum time for a one-hour forest wander when well-being-enhancing phytochemicals are at peak release.

In addition to tree aerosol inhalation being good for your headspace, regular visits to a forest can improve your overall health. On average, we spend about 90% of our daily lives indoors, under artificial light, which keeps our minds and bodies in a constant state of low-level stress. Exposure to the green scenery, fresh air, clean water, and soothing sounds and scents of nature reduces excess cortisol and adrenaline, stress hormones that can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease.

The International Society of Nature and Forest Medicine recommends forest therapy as an effective, evidence-based, low-cost public health treatment for stress-related symptoms—not to mention doomscrolling-induced brain wobble. So, if you’re looking for a free and easy way to crush the cortisol, head out to a forest near you—the conifers are calling.

Lovely, trusty trees—releasing healing aerosols and absorbing greenhouse gas—providing nature-based solutions to everyday stress and climate change. So worth hugging.

FWP Monthly Carbon Capture Report
You keep reading and we keep planting. For every print or e-book book sold, we plant one native tree with the help of our fantastic planting partners at Tree-Nation. From April 2022 through June 2023, the trees that we’ve planted across 13 projects in 12 countries bring our carbon capture to 3787 tons of CO2. That’s the equivalent of 4,241,864 pounds of coal burned, 163,917 trash bags of waste recycled instead of landfilled, and 426,112 gallons of gasoline consumed.

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Lisa S. French July 13, 2023

Bees Buzz the Garden Electric

2-minute read

In celebration of World Bee Day, we’re going to look at one of the unexpected ways the planet’s hardest working pollinators go about the business of helping to keep us stocked in essential fruit, flowers, and veg.

Capable of visiting up to 1,000 flowers a day in their quest for pollen, these brainy insects use a variety of sensory capabilities to detect color, pattern, texture, and fragrance to scope out prime floral real estate efficiently.

According to scientists at the University of Bristol, bees have one tool in their pollen-detecting arsenal that may come as a bit of a shock—an electrostatic field. We humans can’t see it or feel it, but honeybees and bumblebees can perceive a weak electric field around flowers, helping them to determine which plants are the best bets for providing floral rewards.

As a bee travels through the air, it accumulates a positive electric charge. When the positively charged pollinator zeroes in on a negatively charged flower, an electric field is created that helps to dislodge and transfer pollen from flower to bee and from bee to flower.

How bees interpret and use information gathered from the floral e-field is species-dependent. Researchers believe that bumblebees perceive the strength of the force of the e-field through sensory hairs on their bodies that communicate by way of their central nervous systems which flowers will provide the best pollen pay-off. Honeybees detect e-field locations through their antennae and carry pollen source information back to the hive, disseminating news of first-rate foraging locations via an intricate waggle dance.

Given that 75 percent of food crops rely on pollinators, we are glad to learn that everybody’s favorite buzzers are equipped with all the necessary capabilities to ensure they can get the job done. Another amazing way that nature’s adaptations provide big benefits.

If you would like to learn how you can help keep these industrious e-field detectives in top form, check in with the Bee Conservancy.

ICYMI Nature News

Pollinating Tree Frogs
Uh oh, look out bumblebees! Scientists believe they may have discovered a new species of pollinator to add to the list of planetary helpers—a tiny, pollen and nectar-feasting Brazilian tree frog.

Touch-Tasting Octopuses
According to scientists at the University of Texas, octopuses use sensory mechanisms in their tentacles to taste potential food sources. So, no long sleeves for these multi-limbed marvels, then?

Extinct Animals Re-Imagined
To help draw attention to the extinction crisis, author Lucas Zellers and the Center for Biological Diversity have created a role-playing game manual inspired by 70 extinct animal species. The book is due later this year, but you can get a preview here.

Video Chatting Parrots
The University of Glasgow researchers have discovered that isolated pet parrots taught to video chat with distant bird pals gained similar social benefits to living in a flock. Polly want a video call?

More Fascinating Bird Behavior
If you think video-chatting parrots are awe-inspiring, check out what these clever winged creatures get up to in the wild as captured by the 2022 Audubon Photo Award winners.

FWP Carbon Capture Report
Happy one-year Tree-Nation tree-versary FWP readers! From April 2022 through April 2023, we are glad to report that the trees we’ve planted across 12 projects bring our carbon capture total to 3459 tons. That’s the equivalent of 8,000 barrels of oil consumed, 389,204 gallons of gasoline consumed, or 3,874,454 pounds of coal burned.

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Lisa S. French May 19, 2023

And That’s Why We Hug Trees

2-minute read

The International Society of Nature and Forest Medicine recommends forest therapy as an effective, evidence-based, low-cost public health treatment for stress-related symptoms—not to mention doomscrolling induced brain wobble. So, if you’re looking for a free and easy way to crush the cortisol, head out to a forest near you—the conifers are calling.

Lovely, trusty trees—releasing healing aerosols and absorbing greenhouse gas—providing nature-based solutions to everyday stress and climate change. So worth hugging.

ICYMI Nature News

No Bowling for Pandas
Scientists have concluded that pandas developed a long, large thumb-like digit for gripping bamboo six million years ago. Modern-day pandas forfeited the big thumb for a shorter, flatter, hooked digit that enables them to grip tasty greens while also better distributing their weight when roaming. No bowling—or texting—for today’s pandas, but they’re still masters at manipulating bamboo.

Every Frog’s Dream Pad
A newly identified water lily species discovered by researchers in Bolivia has broken the world’s record for leaf size—10.5 feet across. Holy leaping lily pads, that’s one mighty leaf!

Chomping Down on Climate Change
Bison reintroduced to the Oklahoma prairie are taking a bite out of climate change and helping to protect native plants and wildlife through selective grazing. This is how they do it. Chomp on, big fellas.

Wake Riding Whales
For the first time, humpback whales have been recorded wake-riding behind a ship. Scientists believe that the migrating marine mammals hitched a ride to conserve energy. Because, why swim when you can ride—clever cetaceans.

Audubon Bird Beauty Twofer
The Birdsong Project Volume II is now live, featuring works from Elvis Costello, Yo-Yo-Ma, and The Flaming Lips, among beautiful others. Listen here. And Audubon has announced the tremendously talented winners of the 2022 Audubon Summer Photography award, which happens to include a snap of our friendly local snowy owl perching in Central Park. See here.

FWP Monthly Carbon Capture Report
We’re happy to report that the trees we planted in June across five projects through Tree-Nation bring our 2nd quarter carbon capture total to slightly over one kiloton (1,007 tons). That’s equivalent to 11,330 gallons of gasoline utilized, 1,114,006 pounds of coal burnt, or 2,331 barrels of oil consumed.

That’s all for now. It’s going to be too darn hot out there next week, stay safe, good people.

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Lisa S. French July 17, 2022

For Love of the Living World

1.5-minute read

It’s International Biodiversity Day!

So, what are we celebrating? Every living thing on our amazing planet.

From the tiny to the tremendous, biodiversity—that’s short for biological diversity—includes bacteria, plants, animals, and we humans, of course. It’s giraffes and gorillas, whales and wombats, bees and butterflies, flowers and fungi, and you and me—oh, and the FWP Maine Coon cat Stella.

Every living organism represents a thread in the fabric of life on Earth. The greater the variety of threads in the fabric, the stronger, the more resilient and more beautiful the weave. Scientists estimate that there are approximately 8.7 million different species of plants and animals on the planet, and they’re still counting.

Maintaining biological diversity is incredibly important to sustaining all living things and supporting our physical, mental, spiritual health and well-being. How important is it? Let’s count the ways we depend on biodiversity:

Oxygen. Yeah. That’s a big one.
Clean water. Also a must-have item.
Carbon storage. Bad things start to happen when our home gets too hot.
Photosynthesis, nutrient cycling, pollination. That’s how our gardens grow.
Food, medicine, building materials for shelter. Can’t live life without all of those.
Resilience against flooding, major storms, and zoonotic disease. Now more than ever.
Reduced heart disease, asthma, and diabetes. Healthier is happier.
Reduced stress, anxiety, depression, and aggression. Very essential service.

Love You World. Love You Right Back, People.
When we take care of the living world, it takes care of us—and that’s a big thing to celebrate today and every day. You can learn more about how to help maintain the fabric of life on Earth from the Center for Biological Diversity.

ICYMI Nature Items:

Yummy, Yummy Plastic
Scientists are working on re-engineering a plastic-eating bacterium to break down plastic twice as fast. Given the estimated 6.3 billion tons of plastic polluting the world, we hope that bacterium is hungry.

Songbirds of Western Africa
Shika Shika is back with Volume III of the Endangered Birdsong Project. 100% of proceeds from the album will be donated to conservation projects across Western Africa. Have a listen to some sample tweets and trills here.

Big Birds of Manhattan
If you’re local to NYC, the Audubon Murals 5K Run & Walk is on June 5. Whether you’re a stroller or a sprinter, you can register here to take a tour of the big birds of Manhattan and help support the Audubon Society’s critical work protecting our feathered friends from the impacts of climate change.

Run Around the World
Wherever you find yourself in the first week of June, you can help raise funds to protect biodiversity by participating in the World Wildlife Fund’s live virtual 5K for Nature on June 4th. Or you can choose the WWF 5K anywhere, anytime option and run around your backyard at 3 a.m. in your jammies, if that’s how you roll. Choose your pathway for nature-preservation here.

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Lisa S. French May 22, 2022

It’s Earth Day—We’re All In With Tree-Nation

1.5-minute read

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

Rabindranath Tagore

FWP Earth Day Dozen Playlist

If you’re a friend of Favorite World Press, you know we’re tree people. If you’re a first-time visitor—well, hello there, happy to have you—by the way, we’re tree people.

We love trees for their planet-cooling, well-being-enhancing, wildlife-supporting, music-making majesty. And we plant trees and work to protect forests because they provide one of the most effective nature-based solutions to global environmental threats.

Did you know:

31% of the world’s land surface is covered by forests,
33% of the C02 released from burning fossil fuels is absorbed by forests,
75% of the world’s accessible freshwater is provided by forests,
80% of all land-dwelling species rely on forests for their survival,
1.6 billion people rely on forests for food, water, fuel, and jobs,
17% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation.

Hope for the Planet
Because the world’s forests are major planetary players, they need protection to keep them healthy and intact. But every minute of every day, we’re losing the equivalent of 36 football fields in forest cover. To make up for current levels of annual deforestation, we need to plant an additional 10 billion trees a year.

Planting the right trees in the right place is critical to their survival and reaping their full environmental, social, and economic benefits. That’s why we’re proud to announce that in honor of Earth Day, we’re going global and partnering with the proprietary tree-planting platform Tree-Nation.

As we have for the past three-plus years, FWP will be planting one tree for every print and e-book sold from the Frankie and Peaches: Tales of Total Kindness Series. Through our new partnership with Tree-Nation, we’ll be choosing from 300 different tree species in 39 active reforestation projects in 25 countries on six different continents.

To kick-start our campaign, we’re pitching in on projects in the United States, Brazil, Tanzania, Thailand, India, and Madagascar. Each tree that we plant will be assigned a unique URL so we can track its leafy, green contribution to carbon storage, local communities, and biodiversity—it’s the internet of trees.

See how we grow with Tree-Nation here.

Thank you for helping us help them create a life-sustaining planet.

Wishing you a happy, healthy, hopeful Earth Day!

xo Favorite World Press

…

Lisa S. French April 22, 2022

Cherry blossoms blowing in the spring wind

The Earth Laughs In Flowers

2-minute read

That wonderfully evocative quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson serves as a joyful reminder to get out there and cultivate some blooming laughs this spring. In celebration of Earth Month, we’re re-posting our April 2021 blog; it’s chock-full of resources to help you plan and grow a mood-lifting Smile Machine. So dig in and share a bit of green good cheer with people, wildlife, and the planet!

After you’ve planted your patch, if you’re feeling extra motivated, you can earn climate-friendly rewards for giving Mama Earth a boost this month. Check it out!

In the race to protect and restore the rapidly dwindling natural world, we humans occupy the space between hope and healing, and we have the power to make that space both beautiful and life-sustaining. If you are an aspiring citizen conservationist motivated to show our home planet a little love in honor of Earth Month, you may be surprised (and excited!) to learn that one of the most impactful contributions that you can make to support nature is to turn your backyard into a haven for wildlife. By tending to your outdoor patch in a way that increases native species, contributing to both biodiversity and your local green infrastructure, you can help to shape healthy, stable ecosystems that support all living beings.

The good news is you don’t need to be an expert in horticulture or wildlife biology to nurture nature and become a champion for green connectivity—the linking of natural areas so that animals can safely move from one place to another. Wherever you are, city or suburb, and whatever the size of your outdoor space, you can create habitat stepping stones for birds, pollinators, and other wild ones. It all comes down to what you grow because what you grow determines which species can live on your patch. By learning which native plants are the best choices to support wildlife, you can help prevent the loss of precious flora and fauna and the resulting disruption of ecosystems. Over the last 50 years, biological diversity has diminished by 68% globally, and 1,000,000 species are currently at risk of extinction. Now, more than ever, it’s all green thumbs on deck.

To guide the transformation of your backyard, patio, or terrace garden into a wildlife-supporting habitat, we’ve pulled together some useful resources to get you growing in April:

Nature’s Best Hope/Douglas W. Tallamy: A New York Times Bestseller, Nature’s Best Hope offers engaging, expert insight into the need for and benefits of backyard conservation, the specialized relationship between plants and animals, as well as an easy-to-follow blueprint for choosing plants that increase biodiversity. It also features helpful FAQs such as why Monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed and why you should care that birds are disappearing—for the bird-indifferent.

The Wildlife Gardener/Kate Bradbury: This photo-filled gardening guide details step-by-step projects to help you bring nature home.

National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder: Just enter your North American zip code into this handy tool to find out which plants host the highest number of butterflies, moths, and birds in the place where you live.

National Wildlife Federation Certified Wildlife Habitat Program: If you’ve decided to go all-in, you can have your garden officially certified as a habitat for wildlife. Fill out this application to let NWF know about your sustainable practices and how you provide food, water, cover, and places to raise young.

Audubon Native Plant Finder: The National Audubon Society offers another excellent location-specific planting tool. Enter your zip code into the Native Plant Finder to receive an emailed list of the best plants for your local birds, get tips on how to create a bird-friendly habitat, and track your contribution to Audubon’s goal of planting 1 million native plants for feathered friends.

Monarch Watch: A non-profit conservation, education and research organization dedicated to the preservation of the Monarch butterfly, Monarch Watch offers free milkweed plants to create a Monarch waystation, as well as tips on how to grow milkweed and monitor caterpillar growth.

Prairie Moon Nursery: This is one of our favorite native plant nurseries and the largest in the United States. With over 700 plants in stock, if you need it, they probably have it, including keystone plants like asters, milkweed, goldenrod, and sunflowers to get you started. And they are staffed by lovely, knowledgeable people to boot!

We hope that you’re feeling at least a bit inspired to dig in and explore ways that you can participate in the backyard biodiversity movement. By pitching in to nurture rather than diminish nature, we can help keep the planet that we depend on for survival functioning in top form, and that’s a wonderful and necessary thing. Grow native and they will come!

Happy gardening! Wishing every bunny a peaceful holiday!

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Lisa S. French April 15, 2022

How Green Are Your Genes?

1.5-minute read

Where on Earth do you feel most at home? Are you a card-carrying urbanite, or do you have more of an affinity for big skies, fragrant forests, and babbling brooks? If you feel the most essential you-ness of you in nature, according to a new study, you may have been born that way.

Researchers investigating whether the desire to seek connections with the natural world is partly heritable have found the first evidence of a genetic influence on an individual’s preference for the great out there. A survey of 1153 pairs of identical and fraternal twins between the ages of 19 and 89 revealed that the identical twins shared the same inclination to pursue experiences in nature despite differences in their individual environments. Study participants who were genetically predisposed to get their nature fix were more motivated to make extra efforts to access a park, garden, or nature area.

Love of Nature: Pass It On
Whether through nature or nurture, passing on love for the living world is good for human health. The physical and psychological benefits of spending time in nature are indisputable, including reduced blood pressure and heart rate, and lower levels of anxiety and depression. Because 55% of the world’s population lives in cities with limited exposure to green space, understanding what inspires people to engage with nature is an important factor in creating healthy, urban environments that promote well-being.

Now, thanks to our planting partners at American Forests, it will be easier for city dwellers across the United States to get their fair share of nature benefits through the Tree Equity project, which aims to increase and accelerate the greening of urban areas. With a little help from our friends, Favorite World Press is creating more opportunities for everyone to make nature a part of their daily lives.

If you’d like to learn more about the innate human inclination to connect with the natural world and what it really means to be green, we highly recommend Biophilia by the father of biodiversity, Edward O. Wilson.

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Lisa S. French March 9, 2022

Banking on Seed Hunters

1.5-minute read

A breath of fresh air, a drink of clean water, a cool patch of shade, a safe home for hatchlings—the planetary perks provided by forests and trees are undeniable. Across the United States, there is a potential to reforest 133 million acres. Planting just half of that acreage by 2040 would require an astronomical 34 billion tree seedlings. Getting from seedling to sapling to reaping full forest benefits requires an essential first ingredient—seeds; and right now, there is a nationwide shortage. As a result of record-breaking fire seasons and climate change-induced drought across the Western states, including Texas, California, Oregon, and Washington, seed banks are almost empty.

To help meet national reforestation goals, our planting partners, American Forests, are launching the Seed Collection Corps to replenish seed banks and ramp up seedling production. By training people how to collect, process, and store native tree seeds, American Forests is making a critical investment in the planet so that forests that nurture the health and well-being of people and wildlife have a fighting chance at survival.

Big bucks for regreening
There’s even more tree-mendous news for 2022. Thanks to the REPLANT Act becoming law, America’s forests will get their fair share of funding: $425 million for post-fire recovery, $200 million for a national seed and seedling strategy, $100 million for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, $1.5 billion for state and private forestry, and $200 million for tribal restoration priorities.

At Favorite World Press, we’re beyond pleased to support national reforestation projects by planting one tree for every print or e-book sold from Frankie and Peaches: Tales of Total Kindness. Thanks so much for reading with us. Thanks so much for planting with us.

And a few quick ease-into-Monday items
According to a new study out of the University of Michigan, there are close to 73,000 tree species on Earth, including about 9,200 yet to be discovered. Who knew? Now you do!

If you need even more green goodness in your life, you can now green your Wordle. Fill in the environment and climate change-related blanks here.

Would you like to soothe yourself with some creature-cam toing and froing? Courtesy of Audubon, you can get a bird’s eye view of a puffin burrow complete with a freshly hatched puffling. They’re a chatty bunch of seabirds!

And one more thing, good people, Plastic-free February kicks off this week. If you’d like to try to cut down your use of the indestructible stuff for one month, you can get tips and support from Clear Community right here. Challenge accepted? Challenge accepted!

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Lisa S. French January 31, 2022