On Thursday, September 10, I (J.K.) will help guide a walk for Friends of Big Creek at the Brooklyn “Oxbow” Area, where there are potential wetland restoration sites. Regis Barrett, Brooklyn Zoning Board of Appeals, will also help host the walk.

Parking behind new Brooklyn Fire Station, 8400 Memphis Avenue, Brooklyn. Go to www.friendsofbigcreek.org/ for map and info. I hope to see you there!

Thursday, August 27:9-Mile Cr. Stormwater Project
Thursday, September 3: Valley Forge HS Courtyard WL
Thursday, September 10: Brooklyn “Oxbow” Area
Monday, September 14: Tinkers Creek Headwaters
Tuesday, September 22: Brookside> Reservation
Monday, September 28: Puritas Wetlands Project
Monday, October 5: West Creek Res. Created Wetland

Brian Burgess is running for city council in Oberlin. So is Kate Pilacky. One of the important issues facing this community in this election is whether the city will cave in to AMP (formerly Amp-Ohio) pressure to sign a 50-year contract to buy electricity from their Meigs County Coal-fired plant (now in development; cf. the AMP website http://www.amp-ohio.org/ampgs.php). This power plant project had to have signed contracts for 75% of its projected power output before the state of Ohio would permit it. Oberlin, Yellow Springs, and Westerville were the last three communities within its grid space to refuse a deal that would lock them into place to use outmoded and globally warming technology for the next half century.  The environmental community in Cleveland put up a fight but lost to AMP's pressure in city council.

The City of Oberlin, without even soliciting them, now has options for green electric power supply that will more than meet its needs. This regional contract is part of the coal industry's attempt (along with such other campaigns as "clean" coal) to stabilize itself in an era where the mining and use of coal is becoming increasingly controversial. Kate and Brian support green energy strategies. Oberlin residents would be well advised to inform themselves on energy issues before going to the polls in November.

It's a stretch, I know. Let me give it a whack.

At last May's OEC board meeting we were presented with information by the Council's new Director of Agricultural Programs, Joe Logan, who is a former board member of the National Farmers' Union and very impressively informed. One of his statements that struck me as particularly cogent concerned the present stranglehold that giant food processors (Nestle, Ralston Purina, ITT's Continental Baking, Tyson. Perdue, ConAgra, General Foods et. al.) have over farmers and food production. Many livestock farmers, for example, don't even own the animals they raise but are simply glorified sharecroppers who must feed and house and handle the poultry, swine and cattle as per instructions in their contract. The result, of course, is cheap, tortured food copiously larded with antibiotics and other chemicals, as well as the destruction and pollution of habitat, including streams and wetlands, by irresponsibly run factory farms and Combined Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs (cf. http://www.great-lakes.net/lists/enviro-mich/2007-09/msg00207.html).

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Late July Ray and Alice Stewart hosted a planning session for this fall's picnic at their house in Amherst. Kathleen Bradley, Dave DiTullio and Kate Pilacky, Patricia and I, Mike Wagner, Lynna and Jim Metresin, and Daryl Davis attended.

Everybody contributed great ideas and resource to the effort. We picked a date and sent a last-minute public notice to Eco-Watch magazine (thanks, Stephanie!). We decided on a pot luck affair (we'll supply Boca burgers and dogs), and began contacting possible musical entertainment. Jim stressed that the event was not billed strongly enough as a fund-raiser, and suggested a 50/50 raffle. The goal is to get a minimum of 100 people to attend the event, and more strenuous publicity will be attempted. John Pais has generously agreed to MC the music and entertainment.

After the meeting Ray and Alice hosted a wonderful party with great food - grilled sausages and vegetables, a really delicious tomato salad, and other goodies (I brought a wild blackberry pie, and plan to bake a couple more for the picnic).

I really feel good about this get-together. People had a chance to contribute valuable ideas and resources, Ray planned and chaired the session expertly, and he and Alice were thoughtful and gracious hosts. Thanks, Ray and Alice!

This is difficult.

This June, Mary Weyburne died very suddenly. She leaves behind two wonderful children, an amazingly warm and noble husband, many brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews,   countless friends - and a bereft world.

The photo perhaps says better than any words how Mary felt about life and about people. This smile shone wholeheartedly and unreservedly on those around her. Her heart pumped pure wonder and delight into a being that was simply a miracle. My times with her form the most solid foundations of my conception of justness and fineness and kindness, and I am far from alone. She enacted strong and deep support for me (she and her great friend Mary Lowrey, with whom she traveled much of Africa and Asia, used to embarrass me years and years ago by insisting that they were my personal fan club), for Friends of Wetlands, and for a thousand other people and efforts. She gave wholeness and worth to every thing in her reach.

That the earth could produce a Mary Weyburne is a testament to its worth and goodness. It is not so easy living on it without her. Our hearts recoil against sealing her up as a memory; somehow she must - she must! - remain here and alive.

When Doug Tallamy finished his talk for the Native Plant Society at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, I became an instant convert.  However, due to budget constraints, I did not pick up his book, Bringing Nature Home, until a few weeks ago.  Even though I have spent countless hours pulling invasive plants, I did not realize how really important it is to protect and plant native species.  To simplify think: no native plants= no insects= and no song bird food.

Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, by Douglas W. Tallamy, Ph.D., is now available in paperback in it's new "updated and expanded" edition (Timber Press 2009).  Dr. Tallamy, an entomologist who teaches at the University of Delaware in Newark, has made the subject of insects and their plant hosts accessible to those of us who did not major in entomology or ecology.  With examples of plants we see everyday and the insects, particularly moths and butterflies, associated with them, Tallamy describes what has been happening to the American landscape. He explains that nonnative plants, including most of the ornamentals we plants in our yards and gardens, do not have insect pests, but they also contribute nothing to the ecological systems around them.  They are food for very little but the few pests who may have come with them from Europe or Asia.  We wonder why the number and diversity of songbirds at our feeders has gone down over the years, but most of us never make the connection that we are planting or preserving nothing for them to feed their babies.  If you are missing the butterflies you used to see- is there anything for their caterpillars to eat nearby?

After explaining the important food webs among birds, insects and insect parasites, Dr. Tallamy goes on to suggest how we can plant our front and backyards with native forbs and wood plants that will not only attract food for birds, but will also be attractive additions to our neighborhoods, not "trashy" natural brush areas, in order to assuage the sensibilities of your neighbors and local beautification codes.  Nearly half the book is devoted to how to plant a native garden and descriptions of what the most common native trees will attract.  He also has devoted sections, with photographs, of common insects and their habits.  Charts and lists of suggested plants for various habitats and areas of the country are also included, though the book does have a bias towards the East and Midwest.  At only $17.95, I highly recommend this book for the library of every gardener and bird lover.

-from Cheryl Harner and the Greater Mohican Audubon Society.
The GMAS calendar of events, newsletters, et. al. can be seen at www.gmasohio.org/. GMAS is a very happening group, and membership is only $10!

On Route 603 just south of Ashland, 2 miles to the east of Route 42, lies Gilliom-Cherp Nature Park ,the newest of the 11 parks opened by the A.C.P.D. (Ashland County Park District)  in the last seven years.  The river bottom acreage is a-blaze with cardinal flowers in bloom, and well worth the trip to see them.  Take your camera and binoculars along and make an afternoon of it, the habitat is amazing.  Congratulations to the park district once again!

Photos of cardinal flower and the park can be seen at Weedpicker's Journal.

Register now for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's sixth-annual Conservation Symposium, Ecology Underfoot: The Secret Life of Soil. This year's event is on Friday, September 11 and will feature morning and afternoon keynote addresses. Jeff Lowenfels, author of Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, will reveal who's down there, who's eating whom and how plants manipulate other organisms' actions for their own benefit. Dr. Cindy Hale, author of Earthworms of the Great Lakes and Research Associate at the University of Minnesota, will present her research on exotic earthworm invasions and how these nonnative invaders may be affecting other creatures that rely on the forest floor, such as ants, spiders, amphibians, mammals and ground nesting birds.

In addition to talks, join us on Thursday afternoon, September 10 and Saturday morning, September 12 for field trips to various locations in our region. Also on September 10, we will offer a daylong workshop on earthworm identification, as well as a half-day workshop on composting. (additional fee for workshops)

Cost $15 person.
To read more about the symposium and register online, visit:
http://www.cmnh.org/site/Conservation/ConservationSymposium.aspx

Here are some of the surveys I have conducted or participated in since the last issue of the newsletter. NEON = Northeast Ohio Naturalists walks (with Jim Bissell); FLC = Firelands Land Conservancy (chapter of WRLC):

• Babcock plant/bird surveys (FLC), 6/8
• Hostile Valley (FLC), 6/8
• Buttler Property, 6/13
• McConnell Property, 6/14
• Porter Property 6/14
• Camden Bog (FLC), 6/22
• Leimbach Property (Vermilion River) (FLC/NEON), 6/26
• Crall Woods, 6/28
• Kellys Island (FLC), 7/9
• Katko Property, Huron Co., 3/31, 4/25, 4/27, 5/16, 5/31, 6/5, 7/6, 7/15, 8/18
• Fern Lake/Burton Wetlands (NEON), 7/16
• Katko Property, Hocking Co., 5/21, 7/20
• Firelands Boy Scout Camp (FLC), 8/13
• Huron Co. Swamp (FLC/NEON), 4/16, 4/18, 5/8, 8/14
• Truscott Property (FLC), 4/10, 6/2
• Sparks Property (NEON), 4/16
• Katko Property, Holmes Co., 5/15
• Green Property (NEON), 5/16
• Possum Property, 5/30
• Brownhelp Twp. land (FLC), 6/2

     
I also completed a second round of Ohio Rapid Assessment Method (ORAM) training in Columbus on May 20/21

In the last year or so I have purchased (at my own expense):

• Crow and Hellquist, Aquatic & WL Plants of NE N. America - $80.
• Vol. 23 of Flora of North America: Cyperaceae - $95. 
• Zug: Herpetology - $90.            Pough, Herpetology - $90. 
• Engel and Grimaldi, Evolution of the Insects - $90. 
• Glotzhober and McShaffrey (ed.), The Dragonflies and Damselflies of Ohio - $80. 
• Rosche, Semroc, and Gilbert, Dragonflies and Damselflies of NE Ohio - $35 (highly recommended! go to www.cmnh.org/catalog.aspx). 
• Braun, Monocotyledonae of Ohio - $60.
• Voss, Michigan Flora (3 vols.) - $65.
• Weishaupt, Vascular Plants of Ohio - $20. 
• Mohlenbrock, Sedges of Indiana - $65. 
• Vannorsdall, Ferns of Ohio - $35.
• Walker, Amphibians of Ohio, part 1: Frogs and Toads - $45.

           
I have duplicate copies of some of these books for my car library to use in the field. I've spent over $1000 on these resources, to be used in the service of FOWL and habitat protection.

The concept of "clean" coal has been advanced by the industry and has been tepidly embraced by parts of the environmental community as a bridge technology - something to tide us over while alternative "green" energies are developed.

"Clean Coal" is actually an industry-created umbrella term that includes washing impurities from coal using chemicals (themselves environmentally problematic), coal gasification, scrubbing stack gases to remove sulphur dioxide, removing water from "brown coals" to improve their thermal value, and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

The coal industry has launched a massive advertising campaign for "clean coal" that has been savaged by many in the environmental community, and has invested over $50 billion to date in developing these technologies. Far from being developed enough for commercial application, the coal industry is telling us all to take a gamble on this by no means assured solution. The Norwegian energy group Statoil has been operating - with government subsidies - a CCS plant in the North Sea for 11 years, and is involved with 3 more in Norway and Algeria; a fourth is planned for Canada.

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by Craig Holdrege  (this amazing article, found at
http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic4/skunkcabbage.htm
is reprinted here with Mr. Holdrege's kind permission)

People often find it strange that I’ve spent parts of six years studying skunk cabbage and that I’m an unabashed admirer of this plant. After all, skunk cabbage stinks and has no beautiful blossoms. But I’m not alone. A friend of mine was driving along the northern California coast and, being attuned to skunk cabbage through my influence, she noticed a well-fashioned wooden sign on the roadside she may have overlooked otherwise: “Skunk Cabbage Discovery Trail.”

The unknown comrade who made that trail has probably shared my experience that there’s much more to skunk cabbage than meets the casual eye. In this essay I can’t take you on such a trail—you’d have to come to our wetland boardwalk for that—but I can share with you some of the discoveries I’ve made on my journeys to skunk cabbage over the past years

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Governor Ted Strickland
77 S. High St.
Columbus OH 43215-6117
ph: 614/466-3555

US Representative
House Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20515
ph 202/224-3121
web: www.house.gov

United States Senators for Ohio:
US Senator George Voinovich    or
317 Hart Senate Bldg.               37 W. Broad St., Rm 300
Washington, D.C. 20510            Columbus OH 43215
ph: 202/224-3533                       ph: 614/469-6697

US Senator Sherrod Brown
455 Russell Senate Bldg.           
Washington, D.C. 20510           
ph: 202/ 224-2315                     

State Representative _______
State House
Columbus OH 43266-0603

Remember: your US Representative, or Congressperson, is elected from your federaldistrict and goes to Washington, DC to attend to federal legislation. Ohio has 19 federal representatives. You have two U.S. Senators: Voinovich and Brown

YourState representative and State Senator are elected in state districts and serve in Columbus. Ohio has 99 state representatives and 19 state senators.

If you don't know who your officials are you can google"find elected officials" and get sources to find out who they are. Here are a few:

http://www3.capwiz.com/y/dbq/officials/
http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm
http://www.ppaction.org/ppil/leg-lookup/search.tcl
http://www.firstgov.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml (includes contact links so you can call/email/send letters to them)