Cayuga Nature Center seeks Ideas

From the Ithaca Journal

The Cayuga Nature Center is accepting proposals from groups or individuals who would like to use its 40-acre farm facility.

The use of the farm must be consistent with CNC's overall mission to increase awareness, appreciation and responsibility for the natural world.

Examples of possible uses include a horse and riding stable, sustainable or green energy facility, organic farm, field station or outdoor education facility.
The CNC farm is located at the intersection of Garrett and Houghton roads. Maps and photographs are available at www.cayuganaturecenter.org/farm.

Use agreements may be single- or multiple-year. Letters of interest must be submitted by Friday, Feb. 3, and full proposals must be submitted by Friday, March 3. For details, call Doug Weeks at 273-6260 or e-mail him at director@cayuganaturecenter.org.

Permalink 9:38 AM

Swedish Scientists Get Clues on the Evolution of the Ear

Scientists in Sweden have come up with a new theory for how evolution produced the ear. The answer, they report in the journal Nature, is that before the middle ear was used for hearing, in its ancient form, it might have been used for breathing.

The researchers, Martin D. Brazeau and Per E. Ahlberg from Uppsala University, base their claim on a study of a fossil of Panderichthys, a 370-million-year-old fish that is an immediate ancestor of the most primitive tetrapods [creatures with four limbs, such as most reptiles and mammals].

The fossil has an enlarged spiracle, a passageway between the jaw and the top of the head, as well as other changes that represent a middle ground between the relatively simple structures of more ancient fish and the complex morphology of tetrapods.

"It's got this combination of fish- and tetrapod-like features," said Mr. Brazeau, who undertook the research as part of his work on a doctorate in evolutionary biology.

Scientists have known since the 19th century that in tetrapods, including humans, the middle ear develops from an embryonic structure called the first gill arch. In fish, the first gill arch forms the support for the jaws including the spiracle.

In fish that are ancestral to Panderichthys, the spiracle is small. In Panderichthys, Mr. Brazeau said, "the first thing that happens is that the spiracle becomes very large." Further alterations follow, he said, including changes to a bone that is the forerunner of the stapes, or stirrup bone, that is part of the middle ear structure.

So the Panderichthys fossil, which was found in Latvia, is a useful snapshot of a moment in evolution. But why do the researchers suspect that the spiracle was part of the fish's breathing system?

Part of the answer can be found in modern bottom-dwelling marine creatures like rays. When they are on the sea floor, rays use spiracles on the top of the head for breathing instead of their mouths, to avoid sucking up sand. Panderichthys, Mr. Brazeau said, may have been a bottom dweller and have had the same need for an alternate respiration route. "It may very well have had its face in the mud," he said.

From the New York Times

Permalink 9:23 AM

Troubled Times in Kenya

There is trouble beneath the surface of this majestic lake in Kenya's Rift Valley.

For one thing, huge carp, introduced years back, are stirring up the bottom where tilapia, which had been the dominant fish, reproduce. Also, unlicensed fishermen are dragging finely sewn nets through the murky water, trapping species before they come of age. Then there is the pesticide problem, the sewage and the steady decline in the water level, additional signs of an ailing ecosystem.

But it is on the shoreline that Lake Naivasha's real problems lie, and this month it all led to homicide not far from the water's edge.

Joan Root, a noted conservationist, lived for decades on a prime piece of Naivasha's lakefront before gunmen stole her life...

Joan Root

Read the rest in the New York Times:

Permalink 9:11 AM

Hamster and Snake are Buddies?

According to the USA Today:

Zookeepers at the Mutsugoro Okoku zoo near Tokyo presented the hamster Gohan ("meal") to the snake Aochan as a tasty treat in October after the snake refused frozen mice...But instead of indulging, Aochan made friends with the rodent, keeper Kazuya Yamamoto told the Associated Press.

However, Gary Bogue of the ContraCosta Times warns, though:

...you should be aware that captive snakes sometimes will ignore mice, rats (or hamsters) that have been dropped into their cages as food -- for days, weeks and on rare occasions even months. Why? Who knows, call it a snake thing. Reptiles have slow metabolisms, and it can take a while for them to work up an appetite.

Permalink 8:54 AM

21 Baby Pandas

From the Chicago Tribune

BEIJING, CHINA -- A record 21 surviving baby pandas were born in China's zoos and breeding centers in 2005, state media reported Monday.

Sixteen were born at Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan, the rare animal's biggest natural habitat, the China Daily newspaper said. The others were born in research centers in the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu, in the northwestern Chinese province of Shaanxi and at the Beijing Zoo.

China has 183 pandas in captivity, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It said 24 others live in nine zoos in five other countries.

(Photo from AFP via InkyCircus)

Permalink 7:19 AM

Tsunami Love Story

From inkycircus, a woman-run science blog:

It's a year since the tsunami, and there've been lots of stories in the media about regeneration and hope in the areas devastated by the wave. But this one story caught my eye. A 2 year old baby hippo known as Owen was living with his family near the Sabaki River on the East African coast when the wave swept him out and stranded him on a reef. He was rescued by local fishermen and taken to the Haller Park sanctuary, where, all alone and clearly lonely, he formed a strong attachment to another resident and started following him around and trying to sleep next to him. This other resident is Mzee - a male tortoise who is over 130 years old.

Mzee was apparently initially unimpressed and tried to ignore Owen's attentions. But he has since been won over and the two are inseparable friends a year on. Staff at the Haller sanctuary think that Owen may have been attracted by Mzee's round shape and gray color because they are somewhat similar to that of an adult hippopotamus. They plan to introduce Owen to another hippo called Cleo at the sanctuary to give him some companionship of his own kind, but intend to keep the tortoise on hand during the introductions to smooth the process. (More info from MSNBC here, photo - which is just too much - from Associated Press)

Permalink 2:48 PM

Sobering Information About Energy Consumption

Jeff Dukes, professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, works in the areas of the impact of human activity on the environment. In Burning Buried Sunshine, a research article on the rate at which humans are consuming energy, he concludes:

The fossil fuels burned in 1997...is >400 times the net primary productivity (NPP) of the planet's current biota.

In other words, the fossil fuel we burn each year took 400 years to produce through biological processes. This fact argues that even if we ended our dependence on fossil fuels and exclusively turned to renewable fuel sources (burning wood, ethanol, biodiesel), the world's plants are nowhere close to being able to meet our demands.


Jeff Dukes

Visit his homepage.

Permalink 7:29 AM

Environmental Case Against Biodiesel

From George Monbiot in the Guardian

Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 1018 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota". In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals...

In promoting biodiesel - as the EU, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's federal land development authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant. His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam. Two foreign consortiums - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in Singapore. All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories." Why? Because it is cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impact of palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia". In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest have been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5 million in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk.

Permalink 7:20 AM

Willie Nelson's Biodiesel

Via Biodiesel Blog
, Wired Magazine profiles Willie Nelson:

"Nelson told The Associated Press in an interview last week that he began learning about the product a few years ago after his wife purchased a biodiesel-burning car in Hawaii, where the star has a home."

"'I got on the computer and punched in biodiesel and found out this could be the future,' said Nelson, who now uses the fuel for his cars and tour buses."

"Peter Bell, a Texas biodiesel supplier, struck up a friendship with Nelson after filling up one of the tour buses, and the business partnership came together just before Christmas..."

"'What Willie brings to this is the ability to communicate directly with a truck driver. That kind of community is hard for people to get to,' Bell said. 'When he starts talking, these folks really listen to him.... It's like having Tiger Woods talk about golf clubs.'"

Permalink 7:09 AM

The Price of Gold

In the New York Times

ELKO, Nev. - Just outside the chasm of North America's biggest open-pit gold mine there is an immense oasis in the middle of the Nevada desert. It is an idyllic and isolated spot where migratory birds often alight for a stopover. But hardly anything is natural about it.

This is water pumped from the ground by Barrick Gold of Toronto to keep its vast Goldstrike mine from flooding, as the gold company, the world's third largest, carves a canyon 1,600 feet below the level of northern Nevada's aquifer...

Barrick says the effects of its pumping will last at most a few decades. But government scientists estimate it could take 200 years or more to replenish the groundwater that it and neighboring mine companies have removed, with little public attention or debate, as they meet soaring consumer demand for jewelry and gold's price tops $500 an ounce.

Ashley Gilbertson for the New York Times

A pond in the Nevada desert holds water contaminated by mining operations. Major mine companies have pumped out billions of gallons from an aquifer.

Permalink 6:36 AM

The Flying Mobulas of the Sea of Cortez

Here is a spectacular picture of a flying mobula. That's a creature that's a kind of manta rey. Read about them in Michael Albert's website.



Via Saheli's Blog.

Permalink 2:54 PM

Danby Residents Preserve Wetlands

Danby residents are working to preserve wetlands that are the homes to beavers, herons, and many other birds.

DANBY - Searching for help in preserving and restoring a total of 115 acres of wetlands located right in the backyards of four Danby landowners wasn't hard to find.

Upon realizing the desire and need to keep his portion of the wetlands intact, Danby resident Alan Wagner contacted U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. From there, a partnership among the Upper Susquehanna Coalition (USC), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Partners program and the landowners was formed to restore between 15 and 25 acres of the wetland complex.

Read the article in the Ithaca Journal.

Permalink 7:59 AM

First Live Giant Squid Photographed

From National Geographic

Like something straight out of a Jules Verne novel, an enormous tentacled creature looms out of the inky blackness of the deep Pacific waters.

But this isn't science fiction. A set of extraordinary images captured by Japanese scientists marks the first-ever record of a live giant squid (Architeuthis) in the wild.

More pictures

Permalink 8:51 AM

Polar Bears Endangered by Big Melt

From Nature.

Reports this week claimed that polar bears were being forced by climate change into cannibalism and attempting suicidal swims. Experts say it is too early to be sure, but that these are the kind of impacts expected as melting sea ice leaves the bears with longer distances to travel.

Permalink 10:57 AM

Images of the Wild

See the website of photographer Florian Schulz.

Permalink 10:36 AM

Greenpeace calls for better handling of waste from electronics manufacturing

From AP via YahooNews

SAN FRANCISCO - Toxic waste from computers, TVs and other electronic devices discarded in the United States and dismantled in China and India is an even more severe problem than previously feared, according to environmental groups that seek better recycling programs.

Researchers from Greenpeace International said in a report Wednesday that they detected high levels of toxic metals in more than 70 samples collected in March from industrial waste, river sediment, soil and ground water around the southern Chinese city of Guiyu and the suburbs of New Delhi. Dust from electronics-dismantling workshops contained the highest levels of contaminants.

Permalink 8:11 PM

US Senators find evidence of global warming in far north

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Fresh from visits to Canada's Yukon Territory and Alaska's northernmost city, four U.S. senators said on Wednesday that signs of rising temperatures on Earth are obvious and they called on Congress to act.

"If you can go to the Native people and walk away with any doubt about what's going on, I just think you're not listening," said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina.

Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona and Democrat
Hillary Clinton of New York told reporters in Anchorage that Inupiat Eskimo residents in Barrow, Alaska, have found their ancestral land and traditional lifestyle disrupted by disappearing sea ice, thawing permafrost, increased coastal erosion and changes to wildlife habitat.

Heat-stimulated beetle infestation has also killed vast amounts of the spruce forest in the Yukon Territory, they said.

Read the rest from Reuters.

Permalink 8:06 PM

Wildlife Park in Midwest for Endangered Species

PARIS (AFP) - The best way to save the planet's large wild mammals facing extinction this century, including lions, cheetahs, elephants and camels, is the creation of a huge nature preserve in the US midwest, a group of leading biologists reportedly argue.

Using the end of the Pleistocene period some 13,000 years ago -- when the prehistoric cousins of these and other "megafauna" roamed North America by the millions -- as a benchmark, the scientists call for the "re-wilding" of great swathes of sparsely populated land, Nature magazine reported.

"It would take many, many hundreds of square miles (kilometers)," said Harry Greene, one of the authors and a professor at Cornell University in New York. "We are talking about an American Serengeti," he added, referring to the 15,000 square kilometer (5,800 square mile) wildlife preserve in northern Tanzania.

Read the rest in AFP

Permalink 8:01 PM

Ithaca Area in Second-Worst Drought in 126 Years

From the Ithaca Journal.


BILL WARREN/Journal Staff

Kevin Donovan walks up to the pool below Taughannock Falls Friday. The waterfall is barely flowing and the creek bed is nearly dry. The Northeast Regional Climate Center has declared a drought. 

Permalink 3:28 PM

Experimental Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 Mpg

By TIM MOLLOY, Associated Press Writer

CORTE MADERA, Calif. - Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away. Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage.

It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret — a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel.

Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car.

Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small amounts of electricity generated during braking and coasting. The extra batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet at his home in this San Francisco suburb — all for about a quarter...

Monrovia-based Energy CS has converted two Priuses to get up to 230 mpg by using powerful lithium ion batteries. It is forming a new company, EDrive Systems, that will convert hybrids to plug-ins for about $12,000 starting next year, company vice president Greg Hanssen said.

Read the rest in YahooNews.

Permalink 3:18 PM

Peat Bogs in Siberia Melt for first time in 11,000 years

August 11, 2005.
By Fred Pearce, NewScientist.com news service

THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford.

Kirpotin describes an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years".

Read the rest in the New Scientist

Permalink 3:14 PM

Arctic Ice Cover Headed for All-time Record Low

June marks the beginning of the melt season for Arctic sea ice, which reaches its minimum extent at the end of the season in September. In the past few Septembers, Arctic sea ice concentration (the amount of ice in a given area) has been markedly reduced. September 2002 set a new record low at 15 percent below average. It was followed closely by September 2003 and September 2004. So far, 2005 is shaping up to be another record-low sea ice year in the Arctic...

Different explanations have been proposed for Arctic sea ice decline, including the strong positive mode of the Arctic Oscillation (AO). This oscillation is an alternating pattern of atmospheric pressure at polar latitudes and mid-latitudes. In the early 1990s, the AO was in positive mode. In that mode, the AO produces a strong polar vortex, and resulting winds tended to flush older, thicker ice out of the Arctic. Since the late 1990s, however, the AO has been much more neutral, yet Arctic sea ice decline continues. Another explanation for declining sea ice is climate change. Global temperatures have risen, and climate models generally agree that one of the strongest signals of greenhouse warming is a loss of Arctic sea ice.

Read the rest fromNasa's Earth Observatory website

Permalink 1:39 PM

Ithaca Resident Moves because of TCE Contamination

Ithaca resident Janet Snoyer is moving from her South Hill home after the failure of efforts by Emerson Power Transmission to rid her home of the toxic chemical tricholorethene (TCE).

For more information about TCE, see here, here, and this recent Ithaca Journal article.

Permalink 2:11 PM

Redbud Woods Update

Interim Cornell President Rawlings announced that Cornell would go ahead with plans to bulldoze Redbud Woods and build a new parking lot, in spite of continuing protests by Cornell students and faculty, and in spite of a request from Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton to reconsider.


Cornell Professor Jane Marie Law rallies Redbud protestors

Permalink 1:58 PM

Global Warming Makes Oceans Less Salty

Since 1960, the oceans have been getting less salty, due to the influx of fresh water from melting glaciers and from increased rainfall. Both of these factors are attributed to global warming.

Because water with lower salinity is less dense, adding fresh water may affect ocean flows like the "conveyor belt" – a system of Atlantic currents that exchanges cold water in the Arctic region for warm water from the tropics.

The top part of this conveyor is made of warm ocean currents, like the Gulf Stream, flowing northward along the surface. At high latitudes, this water cools and sinks – releasing its heat to the atmosphere and making for moderate winter climates in places like England.

Deep, cold currents return some of the water to the south.

Slight changes in the currents -- both seasonal and longer-term variations -- affect everything from hurricane formation to droughts and heat waves.

See the full article on YahooNews.

Permalink 2:40 PM

Bush administration altered report on grazing

(Editorial comment: I hate being so predictable that every article about the Bush administration and the environment is negative. Maybe I will look around for good news about the administration, but it's a little hard to find.)

Via Orcinus

The LA Times reports that

The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.... The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are "beneficial to animals."

Read the whole article in The LA Times.

Permalink 1:54 PM

Full Plate Farm Collective: Connecting Local Farmers and Consumers

The Full Plate Farm Collective is a collective of three farms working to provide a quality CSA experience to shareholders and to strengthen a community of growers and eaters. The three farm are Stick and Stone Farm (10th year in operation!), Ann and Jeff's Farm, and Remembrance Farm. The CSA aspect of operation is managed by Melissa Brill. This collective feeds 100 families in the Trumansburg, Ithaca, and Danby Communities.

Check out the Full Plate Farm Collective website, LocalHarvest.

An article about the collective is in The Ithaca Journal.


MATTHEW HINTON / Ithaca Journal Staff

Brandon Cruz removes weeds from a field of herbs while Nathaniel Thompson cultivates an onion field on a tractor, background, last Tuesday at Remembrance Farm in Danby. Cruz is an apprentice at the farm, owned and farmed by Thompson. The farm is part of the Full Plate Farm Collective. Cruz recently graduated from SUNY Plattsburgh and hopes to become a mushroom farmer.

Permalink 9:23 PM

Introducing Citizens Campaign for the Environment

Mission Statement

CCE works to build widespread citizen understanding and advocacy for policies and actions designed to manage and protect interdependent land and water resources, wildlife and public health. CCE carries out this mission through public education, research, lobbying, organizing and public outreach.

Check out the website of The Citizens Campaign for the Environment.

Permalink 9:10 PM

Red Tide Endangers New England Shellfish

New England waters are being plagued by what may be the worst outbreak of red tide in the region, a Massachusetts official said Friday.

"Everything is just really on hold until this algae bloom clears up," said Barbara Austin, who farms oysters and littleneck clams in Wellfleet, Mass.
The New York Times

The toxic algae bloom has led state officials to close shellfish beds between Maine and Cape Cod so that people do not eat infected clams, mussels, oysters and scallops.

Read the full article by Jodi Hilton for The New York Times.

Permalink 9:03 PM

To Save Its Canal, Panama Fights for Its Forests

The Panama Canal depends on the water from Gatún Lake, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, created during construction of the canal. This water in turn depends on the health of the surrounding watershed forest. But in the last few decades, half of it has been lost to logging and slash-and-burn agriculture.

The Panama Canal Authority and an array of scientists are working together to study Gatún Lake's hydrology, to restore its watershed and to teach the people who live there the importance of preserving it.

Read the rest of the story, by Cornelia Dean in The New York Times.

Permalink 8:56 PM

Gov. Schwarzeneggar's Plan on Greenhouse Gases

From The New York Times, Carolyn Marshall writes:

Speaking to hundreds of international leaders gathered here for the United Nations World Environment Day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a plan to reduce California's contribution to gases that many scientists believe cause global warming.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, outlined his ambitious goals on Wednesday in a three-tiered Environmental Action Plan intended to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions in less than five years to less than the levels in 2000.

The plan calls for the further reduction of emissions by 2020 to less than the levels produced in 1990, and for the reduction, by 2050, of emissions to 80 percent less than the levels in 1990.

Read the rest of the story.

Permalink 8:53 PM

Editor of Climate Reports Resigns

Philip A. Cooney, the chief of staff to President Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, resigned yesterday, White House officials said.

Mr. Cooney’s resignation came two days after documents revealed that he had repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that cast doubt on the link between building greenhouse-gas emissions and rising temperatures.

Read the rest of the article, by ANDREW C. REVKIN in The New York Times.

Permalink 8:48 PM

Corporate Influence over National Environmental, Health Policy

In four different instances last week, the Bush administration allowed corporate influence to affect national environmental, scientific, health and land use policy:

The Carpetbagger Report

• The Bush White House let a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute re-write a government report on global warming, editing out scientific conclusions he didn't like.
• Bush's Interior Department offered to overpay a wealthy Republican donor for oil and gas rights on Everglades land that the government apparently already owns, overruling the advice of career officials.
• Documents from the U.S. State Department published this week show that the president backed away from the Kyoto global warming treaty after being pressured by ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries.
• Bush officials at the Justice Department inexplicably decided to reduce its settle request with the tobacco industry from $130 billion to $10 billion, and urged government witnesses to soften their recommendations about sanctions.

Permalink 8:30 PM

Snot Sustains Undersea Life

From Majikthise

Marine biologists have figured out one of the secrets of life in the deep sea beds of Monterey Bay. Until now, it was unclear how anything could live down there. No sunlight, no photosynthesis, no photosynthesis no plants, no plants, no food for animals.

It turns out we can thank tadpole-like creatures called "giant larvaceans" for secreting huge balls of mucus. The lavaceans live inside these mucus balls until they get too clogged up and gross. At this point, the larvaceans discard their old homes and make new ones. The old dirty mucus balls sink like bombs of carbon and provide food for deep sea animals.

Undersea Mucus Ball

Read the rest of the story in Yahoo News.

Permalink 8:21 PM

Breakfast at Redbud Woods

From Jane Marie Law:

Come to Redbud Woods tomorrow morning (Friday, June 9) at 7 a.m. The tides are turning to preserve this green space for future generations. We need community support.

Bring your breakfast, your kids, your signs and your good will.

Permalink 3:19 PM

Dedication of Redbud Woods this Sunday

From Jae Sullivan:

Hi Friends of Dorothy,

The Redbud Group will have an informal dedication of a
portion of Redbud Woods, some portion of the woods
that remain standing, or a tree, to Dorothy
Reddington, this coming Sunday, June 12, 2005, at 6PM.
(Meet in the backyard of 660 Stewart Ave. and park
on University or in the 660 Stewart Ave. lot.)

I want to reach all friends of Dodo who would like me
to read your rememberances of Dodo in this dedication.

Please feel free to send this message to people you
know from Dodo's life...in/at Denmark, France,
Germany, Keystone, Syracuse, PA, Scranton, Johnson
Museum, Plantations, BTI, from her travels, etc.

Please email me at blueheron555@yahoo.com. I need
your rememberances by email, Sunday 10 AM.

This is imminent...the woods may not be there much
longer.

THANK YOU.

Jae Sullivan
blueheron555@yahoo.com
607-272-6723

Permalink 5:12 AM

Fight to Save Redbud Woods Continues

via the Ithaca Journal

Chainsaw crews felled the first handful of trees Monday morning at the Cornell University site known as Redbud Woods, but work on a proposed parking lot there was soon stalled by protesters.

Between 8 and 9 a.m., a man who identified himself only as "Psyrx"(pronounced "sigh-rex") climbed about 25 feet into the branches of one of the trees near University Avenue and remained there through the afternoon, despite a violent thunderstorm.

Other protesters took shifts camping on a platform installed in another tree behind a housing cooperative at 660 Stewart Avenue and locked themselves to reinforced concrete blocks buried in the ground nearby. Dozens of supporters milled around the woods or watched from a distance.

Permalink 10:43 AM

Ithaca Company Makes Fuel from Vegetable Oil

Meghan Murphy of LiquidSOLAR, an Ithaca-based conversion company, has learned the ins and outs of biodiesel and vegetable-oil powered engines, leading her to eschew conventional gasoline.

"I was originally concerned about the petroleum situation as a political issue. Once I learned the environmental aspects of it, I was totally taken," said Murphy, who also researches and edits for the publication "Biodiesel America."

Biodiesel is the chemically advanced cousin of vegetable oil, both of which are non-fossil-fuel-based alternatives to gasoline. The oft-cited environmental advantages of the two include fewer greenhouse gas emissions and reduced reliance on petroleum-based fuels, which is considered a nonrenewable resource.

Lye, methanol and vegetable oil are the three necessary components in homemade biodiesel. The procedure, in simplified terms, requires combining lye and methanol to create sodium methoxide, a dangerous product that can burn skin while killing nerves so you don't feel yourself getting burned. Methanol is also highly flammable "so you don't want to set off any fireworks while you're doing it," joked Murphy.

"It's really not that daunting once you get a handle on it," Murphy added. "It's not as scary as it sounds."

Read the full article in The Ithaca Journal

Permalink 7:21 AM

Open Letter to Friends of Dorothy Reddington

"Cornell is a great institution that would be even greater if it realized that it does not need another parking lot." –Dorothy Reddington

Dear Friends of Dorothy,

As you know, Dodo was a person of great accomplishments, unbounded enthusiasm, and total devotion to the people and places she loved. One of these places was Redbud Woods.

Today, the future of this beloved native woodland is extremely precarious; the bulldozers may start rolling within the next few weeks....Click permalink for the full letter...



As many of you know, Cornell University plans to raze Redbud Woods to construct a student parking lot. This lot will provide 176 parking spaces, covering an area about the size of two football fields.

The woods are in the historic backyard of famed Ithaca conservationist Robert Treman, who donated the land that is now Treman Park. Redbud Woods is home to diverse species of plants and animals, including locally rare yellow oak and hackberry trees, which provide winter hibernation habitat for butterflies that feed exclusively on hackberries. The area also provides a buffer between the University Hill neighborhood and the Cornell campus, and has been designated a Historic District by the City of Ithaca.

Last spring, the City of Ithaca Planning Board denied Cornell permission to build the lot, and offered six months to reach a mutual agreement with the city. Instead, Cornell opted to sue the Planning Board. The State Supreme Court judge ruled in Cornell's favor, undermining the board's ability to make local planning decisions and highlighting the problems with Cornell's lack of sustainable transportation policies. Proposed alternatives to razing Redbud Woods include providing underground parking, expanding or making better use of pre-existing lots, and implementing frequent, accessible public transportation and shuttles to satellite parking lots.

Nearly 40 Cornell faculty and scientists, including Dr. Thomas Eisner and Carl Leopold, stated in a letter to Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman: “…we feel that it would be ill-conceived to remedy this [parking] problem by destroying a strategically-placed patch of greenery, whose combined environmental, aesthetic, and historical value well exceeds any benefit that could accrue from its transformation.” More recently, 90 faculty requested a six-month moratorium on constructing the parking lot so that the community dialog could be continued, and a more elegant and sustainable solution to the parking dilemma found. Several days ago, that request was denied.

A number of Cornell students, including Dodo’s friend Danny Pearlstein, are members of the Redbud Woods Working Group, affectionately known as the “Redbuddies.” They have been putting themselves on the line to preserve the woods, and now face delayed graduation, fines, and court dates for their actions. But this hasn’t stopped them. They would like to dedicate Redbud Woods to Dodo. (Hey, Reddington Redbuds has a nice ring to it!) They are trying to outreach to the community, alumni, and to the media, and they can use all the help they can get.

What You Can Do

• Please contact every Cornell alumni you know, particularly those in other states, and ask them to send e-mails and letters to Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman (president@cornell.edu) at 300 Day Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.


• Please e-mail or send a letter (250 words or less) to the editor of the Ithaca Journal (ith-letters@ithaca.gannett.com) at 123 W. State St., Ithaca, NY 14850. Your address and phone numbers must be included for verification.


• Join the Redbuddies at their upcoming activities: a “counter-convocation” between Cornell’s Uris and Statler Halls at 11am on Saturday, May 28th; a work, play, and planning session in Redbud Woods at 3PM on Monday, May 30th; and at the Ithaca Festival parade, marching together with the Catholic Worker group at 7pm on Thursday, June 2nd. Contact Danny Pearlstein (dp89@cornell.edu) for more information.


• To find out more about the history of this issue, visit the website: http://www.rso.cornell.edu/snrc/redbud


• Visit Redbud Woods soon, while it is still in bloom, and think of Dodo as you stand quietly amid a sea of purple blossoms and bird song. Redbud Woods is located at University Avenue, west of Stewart Ave.

If Dodo were still with us, she would insist that President Lehman’s “institutional commitment to sustainability” be more that just lip service. She would want Cornell to preserve its ecological treasures, rather than to precipitate their destruction. And she’d be passionately debating all of the above over a glass of good wine. Let’s do it for her!

Permalink 11:01 AM

New Rule on Endangered Species Act: New science cannot be applied to old case

WASHINGTON, May 23 - The southwestern regional director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has instructed members of his staff to limit their use of the latest scientific studies on the genetics of endangered plants and animals when deciding how best to preserve and recover them.

Dale Hall, the director of the southwestern region, in a memorandum dated Jan. 27, said that all decisions about how to return a species to robust viability must use only the genetic science in place at the time it was put on the endangered species list - in some cases the 1970's or earlier - even if there have been scientific advances in understanding the genetic makeup of a species and its subgroups in the ensuing years.

Read the rest of the article, by Felicity Barringer, in The New York Times.

Permalink 7:32 AM