May 2008

August 2008

Fall FOWL Picnic	October is the month and Saturday the 4th is the date. The newletter was vague as planning was still underway. See the Events page for details. We want to make this picnic approach a plastic free state. We hope people can bring their own place settings for service and take them back home with them. We have a limited number of flatware and plates for those who can't do this. Hope to see you there!
Come Ye to the Fair!	The Lorain County Fair will be held August 18-24. As usual, the FOWL booth will be near gate 4. Booth staffers are very welcome! You can call or email to set up a day and time and make arrangements for your ticket into the fair. Helping at the FOWL booth is fun and interesting. One gets to hear from Lots of people - their points of view and concerns. We try to always have an experienced person at the booth (myself, Ray, Patricia, Kate and Dave, et. al.) and the time passes pretty quickly - especially when there is company there at the booth. Most people help for 4 or 5 hours, and then enjoy the fair a bit. One thing will be sadly missing at the fair this year: our longtime next-door neighbor at the removable tattoo booth, Willie Walker, has moved to Texas. The economy here left his drywall business high and dry, so he and his family moved to, hopefully, greener (?) pastures. Willie often had a grill going and we enjoyed grub that was an alternative to the fair fare, plus there was socializing at the end of the long days. I'm going to miss Willie!
Fear and Loathing in the Lazyboy - or: How the Oilmen have become our leaders	American "mass" (read: corporate) culture has come to storm its prey with a synthetic and self-amplifying fire and brimstone of their personal worthlessness and dependency. From American Idol to the "reality" shows to Jerry Springer to the situation comedies, we are held face down in a toilet bowl of our stupidity, cupidity, sloth and self-indulgent ignorance. more...
Link to: *EarthWatch* *Ohio*	EarthWatch Ohio(EWO) is a 501(c)(3) organization whose missions is to educate Ohioans on environmental issue and encourage them to take an active role in protecting the environment and promoting sustainability. It fulfills its mission by publishing a free newspaper that is distributed at more than 2,000 locations throughout Northeast Ohio with additional distribution throughout the state. The newspaper is published bi-monthly, printing 50,000 copies per issue. more...
CSWD Picnic and Meeting	The Cuyahoga Soil and Water conservation District's 59th annual Meeting and Conservation Day Picnic will be held on saturday, September 13, 2008. The event will be from 10am - 2pm at the Cleveland Metroparks euclid Creek reservation - Upper Highland Ppicnic Area. Contact: aroskilly@cuyahogaswcd.org.
CMNH Conservation Symposium	This year's symposium is titled Keeping Current: Stream Ecology, Conservation & Restoration, and will take place Thursday - Saturday, September 4 to 6, 2008. It will feature morning and afternoon keynote addresses. University of Michigan professor Dr. David Allan, author of "Streams: Their Ecology and Life," will present an overview of river ecosystems and how human activity threatens them. Naturalist Giff Beaton, author of "Dragonflies and Damselflies of Georgia and the Southeast," will discuss how overall stream health affects local dragonfly populations. Symposium presentations will be held at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on Friday, September 5 from 9 to 4 pm. On Thursday afternoon and Saturday morning field trips to various locations along the region’s many watersheds will be conducted. Also on September 4, we will offer daylong workshops on the Headwater Habitat Evaluation Index and a Dragonfly Larval Identification Class. In the evening there will be a cruise on the Cuyahoga River (workshops and cruise require additional fees). For details about the symposium and to register online, visit: http://www.cmnh.org/site/conservation/conservationsymposium.aspx
My Mailing Heroes a poem	Helen Kopp Just would not stop And Weigl (Bob) Is sure no slob Affixing labels He loaded tables High with piles To travel miles Ellen and Marge Led the charge Without no scolding On heaps so large That needed folding And Ralph with scruples Punched in the staples And Ray telesniffed garlic odor And showed up in short order (twice) So in a presto I fed them pesto - Doug R. L. Katko
Wetlands Destruction Hastens Climate Change	Moves around the world to drain marshes and other wetlands to make space for farming could be hastening climate change, scientists gathering in Brazil Monday will be hearing. Around 700 researchers from around the world are to descend on the central western town of Cuiaba for a four-day conference to discuss ways to preserve wetlands, the UN University, a grouping of scholars, said in a statement. more... see also... Science News
Stifling Energy Independence	This big push to rid ourselves of "energy dependence" only applies to those "predatory" countries that have "our" oil under their soil. It does not, however, extend to the predatory companies who purvey our energy supplies. When a coal company repeatedly dumps hundreds of thousands of gallons of coal slurry into Ohio's healthiest Hellbender stream, do we respond by requiring them to pay for monitoring equipment that would give the public real-time data on such events? No. Do we adequately fund research into alternative forms of energy such as wind, solar, and geothermal? No. Do we encourage development of solar and wind energy systems by requiring the power companies to buy all solar and wind-generated energy that is supplied to the grid by private individuals ("net metering")? No. Do we encourage the installation of such energy systems by homeowners by providing them with tax breaks? No.
Petroleum, Prairie Potholes and CRP	The Conservation Reserve Program is a 20-year-old success story that has not only helped farmers with marginally productive land, but also placed about 35 million acres of farmland back into habitat. more...
Memory	Gaia nestles fitfully in her orbit around her father star. Things are not so clean, so salubrious as they might be. Her molten heart warms and stirs to a majestic chaconne her granite and basalt bones from below beautifully, and her sandstone and shale meat do their marine-conducted periodic ebb and flow, but within the tissues at the surface all is not well. Many spots of her soil flesh and living skin have sickened, weakened, and the sores have begun to congeal and spread at an alarming rate. These tissues have been assaulted before: pounded by galactic visitors, perfumed by new gases, iced over and heated, but recovery has always been direct and promising, folding one age into another. But this attack proceeds with a madness, a lunacy, a greedy and purposeful ratiocination that is tending towards irreversible radioactive baked holocaust... See other pictures by the same artist more...
FOWL Participates in Surveys, Events	In the last couple of months I have attended a number of plant surveys on behalf of the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. Sometimes in the company of Cleveland Museum of Natural History naturalists, sometimes with botanists like Oberlin's Dan Styer and Erie County MetroParks naturalist Brad Phillips, with Ray Stewart and Dorothy Carney and Kate Pilacky and with others, I have helped identify hundreds of plant species in a number of locations, including the Erie County Boy Scout and Girl Scout camps, Camp Singing River and Hostile Valley Campground in Huron County, and a prospective acquisition in Erie County to the Metro Parks there. In rain and sun, sweat and mosquitoes and through beautiful summer days I have trod many hundreds of acres. more...
Input Sought for 2009 Vernal Pool Workshops	Dave Celebrezze at the Ohio Environmental Council is on the ball. He is already forming a steering committee for three vernal pool monitoring workshops to be held early in 2009 - one in northeast Ohio, one in the northwest, and one in central Ohio. more...
Weeders in the Wild	Few activities can be of bigger service to our embattled habitats than joining in efforts to rid natural areas of invasive exotic plants. you can join Weeders in the wild, a very friendly and welcoming group headed by Terri martincic. You can contact her at 440 759-8220 or at naturenut@wowway.com. Also see wcasohio.org.
ODNR's Middle Bass Island Marina Project Kills Native Mussels	Of all the entities to apply for a permit to destroy high quality wetlands, this one takes the cake. Back in 2006 the Ohio Department of Natural Resources decided that it wanted to expand a marina complex that includes Lonz Marina, Roesch's Marina, the Middle Bass Island Yacht Club from 180 slips to 240 plus adding another 100 slips at the state park marina. So it applied for permits from the Ohio EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. more... Toledo Blade Article ODNR News Release
Bacteria could stop frog killer	The disease that is devastating amphibian populations around the world could be tackled using "friendly" bacteria, research suggests. Scientists have found that certain types of bacteria which live naturally on amphibians produce chemicals that attack the disease-causing fungus. Recent results indicate the bacteria help frogs survive fungal infection. The chytrid fungus is a major reason for the global decline which sees one third of amphibians facing extinction. But the latest findings, reported at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Boston, may give conservationists a new way to tackle the scourge. more...
Duckweed: The Wonder Plant?	Three plant biologists at Rutgers' Waksman Institute of Microbiology are obsessed with duckweed, a tiny aquatic plant with an unassuming name. Now they have convinced the federal government to focus its attention on duckweed's tremendous potential for cleaning up pollution, combating global warming and feeding the world. more... See also Aquatic Plant Management from S. Carolina DNR
New Odonata Book HIGHLY Recommended!	The second edition of Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northeast Ohio has just been printed - and it is a beauty! With 300 pages, distribution maps, incredible photography, and a wealth of other information, this book is a steal at $25. I bought 3 of them! Inquiries for purchase can me made to Renee Boronka at the museum at (216) 231-4600 ext. 3505, or email her at rboronka@cmnh.org. This book is a must for odonate enthusiasts both present and potential. Armed with and prepared by resources like this book, enough competent familiarity with our Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) can easily be achieved by amateurs like you and me to add to our scientific knowledge. For instance, Judy Semroc happily grumbled to me that the three species previously unknown in Huron County that she, Larry, and others had identified during our Hostile Valley foray had, no sooner than they had left the presses, outdated those distribution maps in the book. Details at http://ddneo.info/ Lets's go get 'em!
Cell Molecular Biolgy Video	From microtubules and dyneins to golgi apparatus to plasma membrane transport to protein synthesis, this 3-minute visitation of the dynamic molecular machinery of The Cell is fantastic! Go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiWKHsgJ8uw&feature=related
Vernal Pool Video in the Works	I was camping at my place in Hocking at the end of June and David Celebrezze from the Ohio Environmental Council came down for an afternoon with some video recording equipment. We hiked down to an exquisite spring-fed vernal pool at the bottom of a hill and set up to record a segment on human impacts to vernal pools for a video he is making (it will be on the web when completed; you can view it via a link at theoec.org). more...
Throttled by Bottled Water	In 2006: $15,000,000,000 was spent on bottled water, and this figure has been growing by 10% a year. 17,000,000 barrels of oil was used to make the bottles. 2,500,000 tons of CO2 was produced during manufacture Transportation of the stuff used 50,000,000 barrels of oil. more...
Great Lakes Water Resources Compact Signed	Ray and I attended the ceremonial signing of the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact by Governor Strickland in front of the Lighthouse at Marblehead on July 7. A number of dignitaries spoke at the occasion, including former ODNR Director Sam Speck whose jibe about the ironic presence of State Senator Tim Grendell.... more...
Cory, Row the Boatman Ashore, Hallelujah!	A visit to a pond or vernal pool will present a spectacle of life - including insect industry. Among the many insect orders that make a living in these waters is the order Hemiptera (hemi = partly, ptera = wing), vernacularly known as the true bugs. more...

August 2008