Growing a Truffula Forest

A recent tweet from @KeepCanadaWild suggested that The Nature Conservancy of Canada buy this property. as part of the Alogonquin - Adirondacks Wildlife Corridor. This effort deserves support.




Inspired by @KeepCanadaWild's search, I checked out listings around my hometown of Vegreville. South of the international important and highly threatened Beaverhill Lake, I found these:

157.96 acre 1/4 section and a neighboring 156.56 acre 1/4 section
157 acres by Ryley
148 acres, 58 in pasture

If a land trust or conservancy existed, These properties could be purchased and managed in a way that would restore and rewet Beaverhill Lake.

To help with the effort join Rewild Alberta! or Save Beaverhill Lake Coalition on Facebook.

Camera snaps cougar on deer's heels



Scientists capture rare video of elusive African cat

Rare ladybird spiders released in Dorset



UK's rarest spider moves house in a plastic bottle

Interim results from an IUCN Red List assessment find that a
third of freshwater fish are threatened with extinction.

But people whose cultures depend an the fish are working to save them.



The excellent documentary Return of the Red Lake Walleye tells how a collapsed fishery was saved and now provides food, jobs, and extra income for the community.

In Washington, Kalispel Tribe restoring native trout in Pend Orielle tributary

I run across stories on the Pacific Lamprey first Via @highcountrynews.

NW tribes drive effort to save primitive fish



A Nez Perce elder spreads love for lamprey

Then I learned that Freshwaters Illustrated is producing a documentary on Pacific Lamprey. Some of the footage can be seen in the Oregon Field Guide piece Lamprey Decline

Watch the fur fly... Kung Fu prairie dog launches surprise attack on his playmate

My goal was to bring my blog back from the dead. It's a coincidence that the first two entries are on cemetaries. So I can't ignore this one.



From A San Francisco plant once thought extinct is still hanging on

Laurel Hill Cemetery, the final resting place of Gold Rush pioneers, was the last place the Franciscan manzanita grew in any abundance. In her 1939 classic "Flowering Shrubs of California," horticulturist Lester Rowntree rued the fact that the cemetery was "being regarded impatiently by the folk to whom any land is just so many building lots."

"If they can they will eradicate it as a cemetery and that will be the last of an old San Francisco record," she wrote, "and certainly the last of Arctostaphylos franciscana."

Rowntree was one of many botanists who dug up manzanita specimens and spirited them away. If the plant was doomed in the wild, these renegades figured, they could at least be kept alive in botanical gardens. One night Rowntree sneaked into the cemetery, ripped the plant out and drove it off to her home in Carmel. As she would tell a friend later, "I garnered it ghoulishly in a gunnysack."

More info on the rediscovery here:

Protected plant may delay Doyle Drive project

Manzanita bush's discovery excites scientists

Another story on how cemeteries can be used for conservation.

The Maple Leaf Prairie Project is restoring Tallgrass Prairie in Southwestern Ontario.

Beauty and the bees

Groups involved include Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority, Carolinian Canada, Municipality of Chatham-Kent, Rondeau Watershed Coalition, Stewardship Kent and others.

Church yard to become wildlife sanctuary.

All things great and small welcomed in churchyard safe haven

Devon grassland study to watch beavers

One scientist's hobby: recreating the ice age