ECOLANDSCAPES
Category: Gray Merriam’s Ecology Blog
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Recently the world became home to our 7 billionth human. How should we feel about that? Some consider this a blessing but many consider it a catastrophic marker. From 1900 to year 2000 the global population increased by 1.84 times to just over 3 billion. From 1960 to 2000, our population doubled; we added
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GLOBAL CHANGE — WATER
There is concern about flooding of coastal cities as climate warms but water shortages may be a greater concern – ecologically, economically and politically. I live in the Lakeland of eastern Ontario. We have over 450 named lakes in our county, over 1000 if we include the unnamed wetlands. We seldom think about water
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TREASURES AND TANKERS: GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST AND GATEWAY PIPELINE
There is nothing like the Great Bear Rainforest in the east but it should be treasured by all Canadians. The forest is a temperate rainforest – one of the largest temperate rainforests in the world. About 25,000 square miles, larger than Switzerland by half, of misty, rainy hemlock, western red cedar and yew. This
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OTTERS AND US
A few decades ago all the gillies in the UK carried a shotgun on their rounds of the streams and rivers because they hated the otters and shot every one they could. Otters ate fish and that was all the reason they needed. As with farmers, fish and game managers followed the dogma that there
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WAYS OF KNOWING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT: A CAUTIONARY TALE
The cane toad was introduced to Australia after WWII and more recently has invaded much of eastern Australia and has crossed half the continent to invade the Darwin area. In 2004 a community group spokesperson announced some good news to the media. A native frog was able to eat immature cane toads without suffering
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THIS LAND IS OUR LAND: THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND. WHICH?
When Woody Guthrie wrote his song “This Land is Your Land” his concern was that all the people should have some say in what happened on the land – a socialistic view. Now we see and hear “This Land is Our Land”. Is this the same philosophy? Maybe ‘Yes’, maybe ‘No’. Landowners following the slogan
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Creeping Impacts
Talk of our impacts on the environment often seems to suggest that the only important impacts are big, severe and obvious. Don’t believe it. Environmental impact statements sometimes have trouble dealing with them but many of our impacts these days creep up on things rather than blasting them out of their habitats. The contamination of
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A Parlour Game Where We Bet the Future of Others
The aim of this game is to learn some geography and some moral values. The game is simple. Every time you use something around your home place and away from home, too, you find out where that thing and the materials and the energy to make it came from, and how it got to you.
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Beauty in Nature is Valuable
If we manage to grow older in comfort, it becomes easier to set aside many of life’s demands that were pressing earlier in our lives. That may not only make it possible to think deeply about what makes beauty valuable but also it may be an obligation for us as elders. Clearly there is more
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A Healthy Environment
Many are seeking “a healthy environment”. Pleas for “rights to a healthy environment” are common and ‘politically correct’. What is “a healthy environment”? Many of the public who hear these pleas probably interpret “a healthy environment” to mean an environment that does not threaten or damage humans. Some institutions may also use that meaning. But