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Preservation and Restoration
(Saturday, 19 July 2008) Written by greeniac40021
Before I moved to Illinois, I had never seen a real prairie. I heard about them from time to time, but I mostly had a weird, skewed idea about what a prairie was. In my head there was some region in middle America filled with grasses and rolling hills and nothing else. This scene also included cowboys, native Americans and teepees, covered wagons, Laura Ingalls Wilder along with her whole family, as well as large herds of galloping bison. Needless to say, I was pretty wrong about a lot of things.

I visited a prairie for the first time when someone from the environmental club invited me to go on a restoration workday at one of the nearby Cook County forest preserves. Standing in the middle of a prairie was amazing. The plants were beautiful and diverse, birds flew overhead and I could hear the wind rustle through the grasses.

But not all of the prairie was like this. A large part of it had been overrun by an invasive species, buckthorn, that crowded out the native grasses and flowers and took away habitat from native animals. Every weekend, volunteers diligently worked to restore the little prairie that Illinois has left, in some effort to preserve some of our nation's natural history and native wild lands. There are less than 1 percent of the United States' tall grass prairies left, and the ones that are left are in special preserves or parks. However, because of invasive plants, lack of natural fires, and increasing development, even these prairies are being threatened.

Restoration and preservation of our natural wildlands is important, and will never succeed without the help of volunteers and activists. Not only are we preserving our natural heritage for our children and grandchildren to see, but we are also preserving the habitats for thousands of plants and animals, many of which are already faced with extinction.

A famous scientist, James Lovelock, pioneered the Gaia Hypothesis. According to Lovelock, Earth is like an organism, with complex processes and everything in it operating to create the world as we know it. In the same way that a human body needs all of its parts to function, Lovelock proposed that Earth functions the way it does because of the interactions and relationships of all of its parts.

In an effort to protect and preserve our wild lands and all of Earth's ecosystems, volunteers have been working hard to undo some of the damage that has already been done. There are lots of ways for you to get involved. Try searching the internet for a local restoration group in your area.
If you live in Chicago and are interested in prairie restoration, try looking up the North Branch Restoration Group (www.northbranchrestoration.org)

Otherwise, try contacting local environmental groups and finding ways that you can help preserve America's natural wildlands.

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A Shark Problem
(Tuesday, 24 June 2008) Written by greeniac40021
Sharks get a bad rap. Painted as vicious killers who can't wait to take a bite out of an unsuspecting surfer, sharks have struck fear into the hearts of many a beach visitor.

But there is a lot more to the story than what we can see in the special edition of 'Jaws.' In fact, humans are surely responsible for the painful and tragic deaths of many more sharks than humans that have suffered a shark attack. A particularly brutal practice is known as “finning” or catching a shark for its fin (considered a delicacy in many parts of the world), and then throwing the fin-less shark back into the ocean where it dies a slow death, unable to swim without its fin. This is just one way that we are damaging shark species, and there are many more.

Shark populations around the world have suffered and slowly declined and it’s time that we paid attention. Healthy oceans are so important to so many people, and sharks are important to healthy oceans.

Next time you are renting a movie or want to expand your video collection, please take the time to see Sharkwater (See: http://www.sharkwater.com/index.php). It is a beautiful and tragic film that will educate you on the importance of sharks and how we are dangerously threatening these beautiful creatures.

Seriously. Watch this movie. It’s worth it.
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Free Range Chickens are not happy
(Thursday, 27 March 2008) Written by greeniac13
Bet you thought that "Free Range" Chickens had a happy idyllic life on a farm someplace where some happy caring farming family takes care of them, harvests some of the eggs, and eventually butchers some of the happy chickens for you to dine on. Well, that's a myth. Wake up. Don't pay extra for "free range" since they don't get more humane treatment than any other animal raised for butchering.

If we are what we eat, what does it make you if you eat an animal who lived a miserable unhappy crowded complaining life on meager food?
Just food for thought (no pun intended).

Just how free are "free range" animals? evidence shows they are equally tormented. So if you are going to buy a tormented dead bird to eat, at least buy the cheaper one. No farm should get more profit for asserting humane treatment of animals when they are really treated as poorly as the animals not considered "free range". Which is to say living conditions are just as crowded and miserable, but they might get slightly more sunlight, if they can make it out of their crowded coop.

Read more at these sites:

www.upc-online.org/freerange.html

www.cok.net/lit/freerange.php

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_range

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POST SCRIPT:
so I must state for the record that I employed a bit of hyperbole when I stated that free range chickens don't receive better treatment than any other farmed poultry. The fact is that they may get slightly better treatment, but not by much, so they still experience a miserable life. They still experience a painful life and extremely crowded living conditions. And many are still caged, but their cages might be 2 to 3 inches taller than regular poultry.

As stated in the wiki site I listed above, "The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that chickens raised for their meat have access to the outdoors in order to receive the free-range certification. Free-range chicken eggs, however, have no legal definition in the United States. Likewise, free-range egg producers have no common standard on what the term means. Many egg farmers sell their eggs as free range merely because their cages are 2 or 3 inches above average size, or there is a window in the shed."

Also, "Free Range" is poorly defined and i recently learned that most poultry sold as "free range" is really not free range, but "yarded" poultry. Read more at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarding

Also if you are so inclined to learn more, there is a move by one group of farmers to better define humane poultry farming. One proposed label which includes specific practices is "pastured poultry". Read about that here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastured_poultry


"Pastured poultry , as promoted by the APPPA, the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association[4], and author/farmer Joel Salatin, takes a different approach, attempting to achieve the benefits of free range while using penning or yarding. The key element of Pastured poultry is the use of portable housing and the optional use of portable electric fencing. By moving the house and yard frequently, perhaps daily, all the disadvantages of permanent yards are eliminated." [quote taken from the "yarded" entry on wikipedia]

by Gina Forsyth
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