Help Trees Work for Us

Since trees are an important means of absorbing carbon emissions, The Arbor Foundation, headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, engages in large-scale tree conservation projects in 27 countries, supplies trees from its Tree Nursery (arborday.org.shipping), and provides informative bulletins about trees.

Arbor Foundation projects save threatened rain forests and offer education and tree planting assistance for farm communities. For example, you can read about the Latin American farmers who grow coffee in the shade and natural nutrients of rain forest soils at shop.arborday.org/coffee. At this site, you also can purchase Arbor Day Blend coffee for yourself or as a gift. This rain-forest-saving coffee avoids the problems mentioned in earlier blog posts: "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and "Coffee Prices Going Up, Allowances Going Down?"

Developing hybrid trees and bushes that resist disease and insect damage, thrive in various soils and climates, and provide an abundant yield also is the work of The Arbor Foundation. One such project involves meeting the global demand for hazelnuts that now outruns the supply of this nutritious food, one that can grow on marginal soils. Although a collection of 1,899 wild hazelnut plants, some from behind the former Iron Curtain, already has been screened for this project, more plants are welcome. To learn how to help, visit arborday.org/hazelnuts.

From the Arbor Foundation, you also can obtain a copy of the publication: How to Fight the Emerald Ash Borer. The bulletin tells how this Asian insect operates and what chemical treatments prevent beetle damage. Request a copy at arborday.org/bulletins.

Save Wildlife

Efforts to save wildlife are working. There is a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). A major circus closed rather than continue subjecting elephants and tigers to punishing animal act training methods. Some dolphins and whales have retired. Underpasses let wildlife run under railroads in African nature preserves, and plantation owners are pressured to set aside "no go zones" and wildlife corridors to protect wildlife.

     But finding a shipping container with at least 14,000 pounds of elephant ivory tusks hidden under frozen fish in Hong Kong this July shows much more needs to be done. Arrests, fines, and prison sentences need to be imposed on wildlife killers and greedy poachers, smugglers, and traffickers. Loopholes that allow countries to operate domestic ivory markets and permit imports of "worked" ivory, i.e. carved canes, chess sets, jewelry, and statues, to allow reworked and repaired ivory to slip through need to be eliminated.

     Students interested in protecting endangered species can begin now to look for career opportunities in a wide variety of organizations:

• Traffic (traffic.org), a joint program of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation Union
• World Wildlife Fund (worldwildlife.org)
• National Geographic (nationalgeographic.com)
• On the internet, look for organizations devoted to protecting: elephants, tigers, dolphins, whales, guerrillas, chimpanzees, orangutans.

       

When Survival is Reality, Not a Sideshow for Man and Beast

Buddhists call the saola (sow-LAH) the "polite animal." Biologists call it "critically endangered."

Saolas are the cattle-like, grazing mammals with long tapered horns that inspired William DeBuys to write about them in The Last Unicorn. The elusive saolas live in a remote, forested area on the Laos-Vietnam border, where a Hmong team captured one for the private collection of a tribal leader in 1996. Bill Robichaud braved malaria, dengue fever, typhus, and leeches to study the captured saola that lived only 18 days.

Robichaud's experience shows how the protection of wildlife can become an international career for curious young people who grow up hiking, camping, fishing, wondering about different cultures, and testing their survival skills in freezing weather and steamy heat. The following examples of where Robichaud has worked during his career provide a glimpse of job opportunities in the international wildlife field:

• International Crane Foundation
•  Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area of Laos
• Bronx Zoo Wildlife Conservation Society
• Global Wildlife Conservation
• Saola Working Group
• International Union for the Conservation of Nature

A day's work for those in international wildlife conservation often entails convincing villagers to protect forest resources by removing the traps used for illegal wildlife poaching. Since Laos knew the United Nations considered the country among the world's least developed, it was a source of pride to discover the forests of their Annamese mountain range housed rare saolas. Laotians also learned their forests and rivers produced commercial bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and fish not only exotic "bush meat" urban consumers consider a status symbol and monkey, rhino, box turtle, and other animal parts Vietnamese wildlife traders collect for traditional Chinese medicine.

Like areas being set aside for the preservation of elephants and tigers, the Saola Working Group hopes to capture all living saolas and breed them in a center in Vietnam. Under the leadership of Poland's Wroclaw Zoo, a consortium of zookeepers is studying methods to keep captured soalas alive in captivity. In 15 to 20 years, these saolas would be released into protected forests in Laos and Vietnam. No saolas ever will be headed to zoos.

You've Got To Move It, Move It. Trees, that is.

If you've seen the movie, Madagascar, you remember King Julien, the saucy lemur whose dances encouraged other animals to "Move, it, move it."

     Although Arbor Day began in the United States in 1972 as a way to celebrate trees for their ability to provide clean air, shade, lower energy costs, and control of storm water run-off, when rain forests began to be burned or bulldozed and animals, such as the lemur, were endangered because their habitats were disappearing, tree planting conservation needed to move it, move it, move it to other parts of the world.

     Islands like Madagascar, just like the Galapagos made famous by Darwin, have unique biodiversity environments. When Jean Norbert Rakotonirina, known as Dadalioka, guided Dr. Edward Louis, Jr. to his tropical village, the black and white ruffed lemur population was almost gone. By 2009, only eight lemurs lived in the Sangasanga Mountain of Madagascar.

     Thanks to the Madagascar Biodiversity Partnership, which includes the Arbor Day Foundation, 1,700, once unemployed young and old Madagascar residents have worked in nurseries and planted one million trees, especially fruit trees that are a lemur's main diet. Even the lemur population, that increased to 50 in the Sangasanga Mountain by 2015, helps the reforestation effort. When lemurs eat fruit, the seeds their tummies don't digest plant more fruit trees.

     By working on the tree planting project, single mothers in Madagascar have been able to send their children to school, support their aging relatives, start small poultry farms, repair their homes, and trade points for non-polluting stoves and sewing machines. People have learned the value of trees and of the conservation of forests, up to 80% of which were destroyed in Madagascar by 2012.

     What I especially like about the Arbor Day Foundation (arborday.org) is its modest financial request. A tax-deductible contribution of $10 plants 10 trees in an endangered rain forest that produces as much as 40% of the world's oxygen and ingredients for almost a quarter of our medicines. Also, a tree is planted in the recipient's name for each holiday card you purchase and send. Cards are shipped to you within five days. For details, go to arborday.org/giveatree. Other gift ideas, such as rain forest-saving coffee, can be found at arborday.org/holiday gifts.

     King Julien, the original party animal, says, "Thank you, and you've got to move it, move it."

     

Turn Off, Power Down, and Act Up

The conservation-minded World Wildlife Fund included the following list of planet-helping reminders in its current catalog (wwfcatalog.org).

• Take a 5-minute shower that uses 10 to 25 gallons of the world's precious clean water resources compared to about 70 gallons for a bath.
• Turn off faucets while brushing teeth, soaping up hands, and putting shampoo in hair. Running a water faucet not only uses up clean water but running it for 5 minutes uses as much energy as lighting a 60-watt bulb for 14 hours. 
• Turn off computers or use "sleep mode" to save energy when they're not in use. Unplug electronic devices when not in use over a long period of time (overnight), because many still use energy when switched off.
• Buy local at farmers' markets and grocery stores, and eat local at restaurants whenever possible. That reduces the need for the climate warming gas used to transport fruits and vegetables up to 1,500 miles.
• Reduce the gas used for your own trips by walking, biking, or taking a bus or train.
• Replace regular light bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescent lights. 
• Investigate using solar panels to save energy and cost in your home. Make sure to replace failing refrigerators and freezers that can account for 1/6 of a home's energy bill with appliances that are certified energy efficient.

Read more information about energy and environmental concerns at the earlier blog post, "A Healthy Environment."

1 Invention + 1 Invention = 1 New Invention

Combining two inventions to make a new one has solved a world of problems. Kids need outdoor exercise and water so a South African entrepreneur combined a merry-go-round and pump (See the earlier post, "Hope for the Future.").

     There are many reasons to invent a machine to solve the back-breaking problem of planting trees in the hot African sun. Drought-plagued countries, such as Ethiopia and Kenya, need to plant trees along river banks to prevent agricultural soil erosion. New trees also are needed to replace those harvested for firewood and charcoal and eaten by goats. And by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air, trees reduce the greenhouse gases associated with climate change.

     The Equinox Community Farm in Wisconsin, USA, has come up with a "water wheel transplanter" it uses to save time and the back breaking work of planting onion seedlings in straight rows. A tractor drags a sort of flatbed trailer that has three large wheels lined with hollow spikes that dig and water holes to ready them for two men who ride on the flatbed and plant pre-grown seedlings. by two men seated on the flatbed. Two 80-gallon tanks leak water out of the spiked wheels that make Could this system be modified to simplify the process of planting trees? After the trees are planted, another pass over the field might put the plastic cones that conserve water over each new tree.

     Obviously this is just one idea for creating an invention that can plant the trees Africa needs. There are a wide variety of organizations, government agencies, and companies already looking for solutions: the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100); World Resources Institute (WRI); government Ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Forest, and Climate Change; Farmers Managed Natural Regeneration; Kenya-based Komaza; the Unique Forestry and Land Use consulting firm; Moringa Partnership.

(Incidentally, by purchasing cards at arborday.org/giveatree, you can plant trees in America's National Forests in honor of family and friends.)
   

Recycled Fashion Firsts

Protagonists in  Gone With the Wind, Sound of Music, and Enchanted all knew how to conserve the world's resources by converting draperies into dresses. Ecouterre.com has identified seven of 2014's top designers who have done something similar to these heroines. Their creative ideas are:

• Pleather, leather-looking jewelry and clothes made from inner tubes
• Jewelry made from the fence that imprisoned Nelson Mandela in South Africa
• Jewelry made from Detroit's peeling graffiti
• Leather waste woven into laptop and tablet sleeves
• Denim woven into seats for camper chairs
• Pine needles from discarded Christmas trees made into French designer lingerie
• Rubbish from the United Kingdom made into sneakers. 

All items are on display and described at the ecouterre.com website.

     Just as leather and denim were cut into strips and woven into new products, cut old ties from thrift shops or dad's closet into strips and weave them into squares, sew two together, leave one side open to stuff, sew up that side, and make a pillow. Or make a cat toy by filling a smaller pillow with crunchy wax  paper or aluminum foil. Look around the house to see if you can find a moth damaged sweater you can unravel to make a ball of yarn that an adult can show you how to knit into a dog sweater or a skirt for a Barbie doll.

     See earlier blog posts, "Good Works Multiply Fast" and "I Made This Myself" for other recycling ideas that will conserve the world's resources.