Originally published as a digital essay for a university course April 22, 2020. U. S. Agency for International Development Emerging Threats Program launched the infectious disease surveillance program PREDICT in 2009. It included teams from more than 60 countries that would survey the world for unknown viruses in animals and assess their risk of causing … Continue reading Stop Spillover
Originally published as a digital essay for a university course April 22, 2020. Human society traded one brand of disease outbreaks for another. In the past, we lacked hygiene, medical infrastructure, and knowledge of what causes disease. Today, we’re better in all three categories, especially in developed countries, but we’re disturbing ecology more and more, … Continue reading Spillover in the Modern World
Few entities in the universe have perpetual growth. Ecology and economics are not immune to destruction and depression. The beauty of sustainable tourism and development is that humans make the choice to not plunge into a dystopian future and instead take logical and ethical steps to balance highs and lows in the future. In 2015 … Continue reading Introduction to the International Year of Sustainable Tourism and Development
The American chestnut tree, Castanea dentata, was one of the first biological icons to be virtually vacated from an integral position in both the environment and American society. We knew little about accidental imports of exotic species, and the introduction of the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica spurred the discussion and action. I was fascinated with the topic when … Continue reading Book Reflection: American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree by Susan Freinkel
Keystone species: like a stone bridging the two sides of an arch, once removed the structure crumbles. One of ecologists favorite example in the last twenty years has been the grey wolf. Humans have a long history of destroying ecosystems and obliterating biodiversity. More than likely we've seen the loss of more keystone species than … Continue reading Keystone Species in a Yellowstone Shell
Poisoning ivory horns tagged with pink dye to deter poachers. When I read this old news on Facebook, at first I thought, "How does this affect survival among other wild animals?" Then I remembered that this is limited to animals living in fence reserves and human kill far more than the lions do. Then there … Continue reading Pink Rhinos and Elephants?
Patrons of my local library vie for this book. I waited several weeks before I got a chance, even though The Sixth Extinction was published over a year before this time. Then I couldn't renew it, because of course someone else was in line to read it. Several weeks later down the waiting list I … Continue reading Book Reflection: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Likely the biggest decision I made this year, as superficial as it may sound, is join Goodreads—yes, a social media site. How did I let myself fall into the bottomless pit of neurotic status updates? Because books are cool. Duh. A function of Goodreads I take advantage of is the group. I joined a group … Continue reading Book Reflection: Voyage of the Turtle by Carl Safina (Part I: Human Dimensions)
From Part I: Growing, processing, and marketing the food items all in a single region mitigate many of those secondary issues, organic or not. It’s also worth mentioning that labels require hefty fees for each individual product to the government for licensing—fees that your small-scale organic farmer cannot pay for. Part II Do you want to … Continue reading Book Reflection: Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin (Part II)
Part I Caution: "Folks, This Ain't Normal" is a thought-provoker. If you are not intellectually qualified to discern fact from ideology and integrate that information into your brain without barfing it out because it challenges conceptions made from incomplete knowledge or pre-existing ideological leanings, you will likely flounder in this book. This is a playful … Continue reading Book Reflection: Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin (Part I)
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