Bill to Force Keystone Approval a Giveaway to Oil Companies

May 22- The U.S. House is set to vote this week on a bill by Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) to shut down the review process and public comment, override protections for clean air and water, and force approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Despite more than 1 million comments from Americans asking the State Department to say no to Keystone XL, the bill is expected to pass by a wide margin.

“It’s the wrong approach to put a foreign energy company ahead of more than 1 million Americans who have expressed concern for our nation’s wildlife, energy security and public health,” said Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. “This bill is nothing more than an effort to run roughshod over protections for landowners, wildlife and drinking water supplies so that TransCanada can get oil to Gulf coast refineries for export to China and other countries.”

Read more about the Keystone XL pipeline here.

National Sportsman’s Group Urges Gulf Restoration Council to Prioritize Ecosystem Projects

May 22- Today, more than 350 hunting and fishing businesses and organizations sent a letter to the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, asking that the Council prioritize restoration of the Gulf ecosystem in order to also achieve economic restoration in the region.

The Restoration Council is a multi-state, multi-agency group that has been tasked with developing a comprehensive ecosystem restoration plan for the Gulf. The Council is currently developing the plan, with a draft due for public comment this spring.

Vanishing Paradise drafted the letter, which illustrated that hunting and fishing are major economic drivers in the Gulf and are supported by habitat restoration and wildlife conservation. In 2011, in the five Gulf states alone, nearly 8.5 million hunters and anglers spent $15.7 billion on their outdoor pursuits. This spending supports more than 255,000 jobs and generates $3.3 billion in federal, state and local taxes.

Read the letter here.

National Wildlife Federation names Maureen P. Smith Head of Marketing and Communications

May 21- The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has hired longtime entertainment industry executive and former conservation organization president, Maureen P. Smith, as its new Vice President of Marketing and Communications. In this role, Smith will be part of NWF’s executive leadership team and play a key role in a wide variety of areas throughout the organization and its programs, including: the global marketing and branding of NWF and its cherished mascot, Ranger Rick; internal and external communications; children’s publishing; digital products and online integration; consumer insight; and video and multi-media productions.

As the former top executive at Animal Planet, Fox Kids Network and Fox Family Channel, as well as at the non-profit Jane Goodall Institute, Smith brings to NWF years of experience in all aspects of communication and engagement; fundraising; developing and managing new revenue streams; and bringing the wonders and needs of the natural world to life – across a variety of media platforms and other consumer touchpoints.

“Bringing Maureen aboard is not only strategic, it is truly symbolic of NWF’s commitment to remaining the leading wildlife conservation-focused organization in America and to maximizing the impact of our voice and the voice of our members and affiliates – especially during these critical times for our environment,” said Jaime Matyas, NWF’s Chief Operating Officer.

National Wildlife Federation and National Aquarium Announce Plan to Certify Baltimore as the Largest Community Wildlife Habitat Along the Chesapeake Bay

May 20- For years, Baltimore has been known as “Birdland” and now, thanks to the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the National Aquarium, it’s official. Today, First Lady of Maryland Katie O’Malley joined leaders from NWF, National Aquarium and city officials to launch a program aimed at greening city streets, backyards, schools and places of worship.

“We believe that your backyard can be a place for exploring and unleashing children’s curiosity,” said Hilary Harp Falk, Regional Executive Director for National Wildlife Federation. “Baltimore has always been a city for the birds, and we intend to work with partners in the City to create beautiful places which will offer opportunities to learn about and connect with the outdoors.”

By greening the city for birds, butterflies and other wildlife, residents of Baltimore will also help to improve both air and water quality for humans. The more native plantings that are used to attract wildlife, the greater potential the city has of reaching its Healthy Harbor goals and helping to clean the Chesapeake Bay.

And now here are highlights from NWF in the news:

• NASDAQ:  National Wildlife Federation Rings The NASDAQ Stock Market Closing Bell
• Times-Picayune: Coastal restoration is the focus of “Coastal Conversations” series in French Quarter
• CBS Denver: Udall seeks feedback on proposed monument
• Billings Gazette: Guest opinion: Good FWP planning can help resolve bison battles
• Deseret News: Lessons from the garden: Growing great kids, relationships

For more visit www.nwf.org/news

Or you could call this blog, How to Garden for Wildlife in Zero Easy Steps.
 

A Hands-off Policy

In a poem that captivated my imagination when I was about 11 years old, Walt Whitman wrote, “I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained.” At that time I wanted to live with the animals too, preferably with a pack of wolves (I had yet to recover from reading Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories, about a boy raised by wolves in India, a few years before). Now, thanks in large part to the wildish nature of my backyard, an NWF Certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat®, I find that I more or less do live with the animals, or rather, they have turned to live with me.

When my wife and I first moved into our suburban house in northern Virginia, I decided to leave our backyard alone. Heavily wooded, it lay in deep shade and backed to a larger woodland. I neither water nor fertilize my yards anyway, and this backyard was too shadowed for grass. In fact, it was covered by a massive moss bed that would turn emerald green in spring, before the trees grew their leaves. I wanted to leave it alone so I could see what nature had in store for it. I didn’t want to mow it, feed it, water it, plant it or anything else. I wanted to see what seeds the wind would plant, and which plants the sun and the clouds would let grow.

The result was the animals.
 

I Didn’t Build It, But They Came Anyway

Soon after I put up a bird feeder, American crows started coming in groups, giving me a sense of connecting with wildlife. Usually

Red foxes play in my backyard–the photo was shot through a window screen, hence the softness.

But it was a family of pileated woodpeckers that made me feel that my approach to gardening was working out. One day a pair of these woodpeckers—big as crows, heads topped with large red crests, shy and with a marked preference for woodlands—showed up at my feeder with two fledged offspring. They clamored over the feeder, the adults hammering into the suet blocks, and the young ones sliding awkwardly on the wooden roof of the feeder, still mastering the art of fighting gravity. Their presence gave my backyard an important seal of approval. If pileated woodpeckers were coming in, something was okay back there. But my gardening partner was deeply experienced: Nature has been gardening for wildlife since forever.

Squirrels and Deer

The tree squirrels are the main attraction, or at least the most ubiquitous, as might be expected—eastern grays. They are constantly in sight, but a few individuals stand out. One of these was a kamikaze that broke though my bird-feeder defense mechanism, a wobbly plastic sleeve mounted on the pole holding the feeder, depriving squirrels of any hope of climbing up to the food. It worked for about five or six years before one especially reckless squirrel took an aerial approach. He climbed to the roof of the house and flung himself out at least a dozen feet, as well as about 10 feet down, to the feeder. But the approach wasn’t foolproof. Once he miscalculated and rocketed straight past the feeder, overshooting by about 8 feet or so and crashing to the ground. Ah well, perhaps flying squirrels got their start that way. I moved the feeder a few feet farther from the house, putting an end to his escapades.

White-tailed deer in my backyard. Pardon the softness–this photo was shot through a window screen.

Squirrels get devoured once in awhile. One morning a red-shouldered hawk captured a gray squirrel and landed on the rail fence surrounding the yard to tear at the rodent for a few minutes before flying off. There’s nothing like a little predatory action to make a wildlife habitat seem truly certified. On another occasion, a red fox that denned in the woods gave frantic chase to a dodging squirrel beneath a rhododendron shrub and emerged with the squirrel limp in its vulpine jaws. Once a fox carrying a dead squirrel jumped up on the top rail of the fence and sat down. A second red fox joined it, looking on expectantly, but the first one kept the squirrel for itself.

Falling Trees

Two years ago, a developer—may Aldo Leopold curse him—cut down about two-thirds of the woods that lay beyond my backyard to build what he optimistically called luxury homes. The woods directly behind my yard were spared, but the spot where the red fox had its den beneath a fallen tree was not. I feared I’d seen the last of the fox.

But one spring day, not long after the cutting of the woods, the red fox emerged from under my deck. Far from disappearing, it had moved in with me. And it was in the company of three pups, which played on the patio.

Meanwhile, the fattest woodchuck I’ve ever seen had been roaming my backyard the previous summer and had spent the winter under my deck, burrowed in beneath the safe harbor of the deck’s wooden floor. I wonder what the woodchuck and the foxes made of one another that spring. Apparently not a meal, as the woodchuck continued to trundle around the yard in its magnificent obesity the following autumn.

As if to underscore that the animals had turned and lived with the humans, one morning I glanced out a window to see a white-tailed deer, a large house cat—a white and tan feline that must way 15 pounds or more—and a red fox standing by the rail fence as if at three points of a triangle not 10 feet apart. They looked at one other for several minutes. What went through their minds? To their consciousnesses must be added a fourth, that of the clothed ape at the window. Together we had captured a moment of acknowledgement, one to another, there in my Certified Wildlife Habitat®, where all the gardening is done by wind, rain, and sun.

Sign Up for Certified Wildlife Habitat®

The endangered whooping crane, one of the many beneficiaries of the Endangered Species Act. Photo by David Sager, an entrant in the National Wildlife Photo Contest.

1973 was also the year that the National Wildlife Federation launched its Certified Wildlife Habitat (CWH) program, in which homeowners, business owners, parks agencies and others voluntarily commit to providing the habitat elements needed by native wildlife in their communities. Today, over 160,000 properties are enrolled in the program.  Perhaps most importantly, many local officials today are using CWH as a vehicle to organize community-based wildlife conservation efforts.  Soon we will have secured participation from 175 certified communities, representing 10 million residents, committing to restoring and maintaining wildlife habitat in their communities.

For Endangered Species, Habitat is the Key

Cuyahoga River fire, 1952 – Jefferson St. and W. 3rd. Photo by James Thomas, courtesy of Special Collections, Cleveland State University Library.

The importance of urban wildlife restoration was not a subject of national debate in 1973.  The American people were focused on declining environmental quality, but when it came to the cities, the big topic was the sorry state of the air and water and the inadequate regulation of industrial pollution. When the Cuyahoga River again caught fire just outside of Cleveland in 1969, the national outrage boiled over and spurred an avalanche of pollution control initiatives, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Michigan Rep. John Dingell, a key leader in passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, was sworn into Congress in 1955.

Fortunately, the authors of the ESA were sufficiently visionary to offer protections to any plant or animal species threatened with extinction, regardless of where it might reside (although in the U.S., plants and invertebrate animal species would get significantly less protection than vertebrate animal species, and species outside of the U.S. would get far less attention).  Beginning in 1973, for the first time ever, developers and local governments in the U.S. cities and suburbs were required to think seriously about the implications of their proposed actions on endangered wildlife.

Innovative Protections for Threatened Plants and Animals

The endangered Mission Blue Butterfly was the focus of conservation planning by San Mateo County, California, thanks to the Endangered Species Act. Photo by Kirke Wrench, entrant in the National Wildlife Photo Contest.

Implementation of Section 10 has not been without controversy. I represented NWF and other conservation groups in the late 1990s and early 2000s challenging some implementation decisions in the courtroom and as an advocate before the Clinton Administration to help ensure that an appropriate balance is struck between the needs of developers and those of wildlife.

Where do Urban and Suburban Habitats Come In?

The golden cheeked warbler, protected by the Endangered Species Act, was the focus of large-scale conservation efforts in Austin, Texas. Photo by Gail Buquoi, an entrant in the National Wildlife Photo Contest.

Meanwhile, many urban and suburban leaders in places without ESA listings are also pioneering new approaches to wildlife restoration, while helping reconnect people to the nature in their communities. The core idea of the Community Wildlife Habitat certification – that city leaders will harness community pride and volunteer spirit with just a simple recognition and thank you from a national conservation organization – is spurring exciting wildlife restoration efforts in big cities such as Baltimore and small suburbs such as Davie, Florida, an ethically diverse town just outside of Fort Lauderdale with 96,000 residents.

Studies on how best to conserve biodiversity in urban yards and parks are in their relative infancy.  One recent study of the Certified Wildlife Habitat program found that participants were providing significantly greater habitat for native wildlife than non-participants. However, to date, no one has studied how best to organize efforts at a landscape scale to ensure that measurable benefits to targeted species are achieved. NWF has begun reaching out to partners such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the U.S. Geological Survey to address this challenge for the Community Wildlife Habitat program.

In the meantime, groups such as Monarch Watch, initially focused on using citizens to gather scientific data on the Monarch Butterfly, are shifting to a more active approach, challenging their members and supporters to carry out the restoration actions needed to address threats to long-term survival. Thanks to the internet, the typical urban dweller now has a wealth of information on how to make a difference, both on the science and on the groups who are working on the ground to make a difference.

Residents restoring native plants in Davie, Florida. Davie was recently certified by National Wildlife Federation as a Community Wildlife Habitat.

Although it may be tempting to conclude that there is little that can be done given the vastness of the threats facing wildlife, the past 40 years of experience with the ESA and CWH suggests otherwise. These programs show that with a strong Endangered Species Act and other conservation laws, complemented by strong voluntary restoration programs, substantial progress on wildlife conservation can be made in the very communities where we live.

Editor’s note: This essay was also published at the Nature of Cities blog.

A bumblebee visits a coneflower in a Dayton, Ohio, backyard. Photo by Josh Mayes.

The following week, some U.S. activists made headlines by demanding the government ban a class of insecticides, neonicotinoids, after learning the European Union placed a moratorium their use due to concerns the chemicals are harming honeybees. (Imported to North America during the 1600s, honeybees are native to Europe.) Such concerns are understandable. Beyond their honey-making prowess, domestic honeybees are worth tens of billions of dollars to U.S farmers and beekeepers, who truck colonies back and forth across the country to pollinate commercial crops such as almonds, soybeans and watermelon.

A wild bee pollinates a pumpkin flower in an Ephraim, Utah, garden. Photo by Paul Gardner.

Why We Need Natives

Yet with all the attention being paid to honeybees, I wonder if we’re overlooking an even more important story: the critical role wild, native bees play pollinating plants both in natural and agricultural systems. And unlike domestic honeybees, these natives do it for free.

Mace Vaughan, pollinator program director at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, made precisely this point when I interviewed him recently for an upcoming story in  National Wildlife magazine. Bees are by far the most important pollinators in natural ecosystems, Vaughan told me. The insects also are essential to producing more than a third of all foods and beverages humans consume. “In the United States alone, native bees contribute at least $3 billion a year to the farm economy,” Vaughan said. “We grossly overlook the critical role these animals play.”

A bumblebee feeds on buttonbush at NWF’s office in Reston, Virginia. Photo by Laura Tangley.

Wild Pollinator Champs

I learned about that role a few years ago working on another article, “The Buzz on Native Pollinators,” that described research conducted by ecologist Rachel Winfree of Rutgers University. Winfree had just published in Ecology Letters results of a study finding that on 21 out of 23 farms in the Delaware Valley of New Jersey, wild bees fully pollinated commercially grown watermelons with no help from honeybees. “If we lost all honeybees in this region to colony-collapse disorder tomorrow,” she said, “between 88 and 90 percent of the watermelon crop would be fine.”

This February, Winfree and dozens of colleagues published results of much larger study in Science that looked at a diversity of fruit, seed, nut and other crops growing in 600 fields on all continents except Antarctica (where no food is grown). They found that visits by wild bees increased production at all study sites, compared with just 14 percent for managed honeybees. The upshot: Wild bees were more effective crop pollinators than were domestic honeybees.

If honeybees continue to decline—and many experts suspect they will—wild bees will become even more important in the future. Worrisome as colony-collapse disorder is, it may have had “a silver lining,” Scott Hoffman Black, the Xerces Society’s executive director, told me. “Now many more people know that their food is pollinated, and that we need native bees and other wild animals to do that.”

Help wild bees by growing native plants they need to thrive, then turn your yard into a Certified Wildlife Habitat® site. This month only, Garden For Wildlife Month, NWF will plant a native tree for every property certified.

Growing up in Baltimore city

That is why I was thrilled to be part of today’s announcement to make Baltimore a Community Wildlife Habitat® — the largest along the Chesapeake Bay. We don’t usually think of wildlife in cities but cities and surrounding areas are home to two-thirds of all North American wildlife species. National Wildlife Federation’s investment in Baltimore is not only about wildlife, though, it is about creating gardens that will make neighborhoods more beautiful, improve water quality of local streams and provide opportunities to get kids outside.

Like many people, my summer days were long and usually resulted in grass stains and being called in for dinner. Unfortunately, childhood has moved indoors during the last two decades. This is not only a lost connection to the outdoors but something that has contributed to the childhood obesity rate as well as declining creativity and concentration.

To address this issue we will focus on sustainable foods and healthy living at six Baltimore City public schools.  We plan to install edible food gardens on schoolyards and create opportunities for families to spend more time outdoors.

Baltimore has always been a city of for the birds, now we can make it official.  I can’t wait to add it to my list of special things about my hometown.

To help celebrate this special birthday, I decided to take a series of photos of 40 garden objects. This photo series was inspired by the blog Things Organized Neatly. My arrangements are not arranged as neatly as many photos on that blog, but you get the idea.

Here’s photo #3 – 40 green leaves from plants in my neighborhood:

40 Green Leaves from my neighborhood

Can You Identify the Plants?

Here’s my best guesses, although I am not a naturalist:

4. Virginia Creeper

6. Viola

8. Cabbage

9. Liriope

11. Hosta

13. Holly

14. Hosta

17. Holly

18. Wild Strawberry

20. Clover

21. Dandelion

22. Yew

25.  Maple

26. Iris

27. Maple

29. Clover

33.  Fern

You can see past 40 garden object photos:

• 40 Garden Tools
• 40 nuts nibbled by squirrels
• 40 flowers from my neighborhood

Share Your 40 Garden Objects Photos!

During Garden for Wildlife month, I’m going to keep taking photos of 40 garden objects. Would you like to join me? What will you photograph? Share your photos at our Garden for Wildlife Facebook page for everyone to see.

And if you haven’t already certified your yard as wildlife-friendly, certify your yard with National Wildlife Federation this month!

Peter Coyote’s wildlife-friendly yard welcomes foxes and other animals. (Photo by Peter Coyote)

His wild menagerie (complemented with two personable cats, Jackson and Pearl) attests to his lifelong affinity for nature. “I’ve always been fascinated by animals and have felt a kinship. By the time I was eight years old I realized that everything in the world was alive and connected, and had its own business—and you didn’t interrupt it without consequences.”

A resident of Marin County in Northern California since the 1970’s, Coyote has witnessed some of the negative consequences of our actions on the natural world and considers his efforts for wildlife as simply being a good neighbor. “Habitat for wildlife is continually shrinking—I can at least provide a way station.”

Peter Coyote in the gardens at his northern California home (Photo by Beth Pratt).

Indeed, the natural world and his official dwelling seem indistinguishable, an extension of each other. From the road a series of winding staircases suspended among the redwood trees overlook ferns and other lush foliage in the creek bed below. Inside the home, you feel as if you were in the comforting embrace of a giant tree trunk. Peter describes the intent of the design: “my house and my garden are built as part of nature, not over it.”

The animals have definitely noticed the welcome mat he has extended. The garden is simply the native landscape enhanced and retains the memory of days when Roosevelt elk and grizzly bears freely roamed the area. Native wildlife—albeit smaller than the historical mega-fauna—still flock to his mini-backyard nature reserve. Peter also supplements the native plants with bird feeders. The well stocked stash of sunflower seeds entice the titmice and juncos to visit, while goldfinches feed on his offerings of gourmet thistle. While we ate lunch on his deck, a Nutall’s woodpecker eyed the suet.

A Nutall’s woodpecker eyes the feeder (Photo by Beth Pratt)

A raccoon and skunk parade (Photo by Peter Coyote).

______________________________

As part of the research for her upcoming book, When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors: Wildlife in Today’s California, NWF’s California Director, Beth Pratt, is visiting the wildlife-friendly backyards, schoolyards, businesses and communities of dedicated Californians across the state to celebrate how they are personally making a difference for wildlife.

A male northern cardinal feeds its mate a beetle larva in a Brandon, Mississippi, backyard. Insects, which rely on native plants, are critical food for birds, particularly during the breeding season. Photo by Paul Brown.

I didn’t appreciate just how important native plants are, however, until I began to work a story, “Urban Renewal,” published in the current issue of National Wildlife magazine. Reporting for the article, which describes various ways residents of cities and suburbs can help birds, I interviewed wildlife-gardening guru Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, and read his book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants.

Tallamy’s key message was that native plants are essential to producing the insects birds need, particularly during the breeding season. “Birds do not reproduce on berries and seeds,” he told me. “Ninety-six percent of terrestrial birds rear their young on insects.”

Carolina chickadees can feed their offspring up to 590 caterpillars a day. Photo by Patricia McCairen.

And they need a lot of caterpillars. Recently, Tallamy spent 16 days observing a Carolina chickadee nest in his Delaware backyard. He discovered that the birds fed their offspring between 300 and 590 caterpillars a day. The chickadees needed 4,800 caterpillars to rear a single clutch of chicks.

“We’re used to thinking of the plants in our yards as decorations,” Tallamy says. It’s wonderful when plants are attractive, he adds, but if they’re exotics such as gingko, crape myrtle or European privet—all unpalatable to insects—they do not pass along the sun’s energy to birds and other wildlife. “You might as well install a statue,” Tallamy says.

Learn more about choosing and cultivating native plants, then turn your yard into a Certified Wildlife Habitat® site. This month only, Garden For Wildlife Month, NWF will plant a native tree in your honor when you certify your property.

To help celebrate this special birthday, I decided to take a series of photos of 40 garden objects. This photo series was inspired by the blog Things Organized Neatly. My arrangements are not arranged as neatly as many photos on that blog, but you get the idea.

Here’s photo #2 – 40 nuts nibbled by squirrels:

Nuts Nibbled by Squirrels

Check out the 40 garden object photos from other weeks:

• Week 1 – my Garden Tools
• Week 3 – Green Leaves
• Week 4 – Flowers from my Neighborhood

Share Your 40 Garden Objects Photos!

During Garden for Wildlife month, I’m going to keep taking photos of 40 garden objects. Would you like to join me? What will you photograph? Share your photos at our Garden for Wildlife Facebook page for everyone to see.

And if you haven’t already certified your yard as wildlife-friendly, certify your yard with National Wildlife Federation this month!

Return to our page on May 15th to donate to National Wildlife Federation through GiveBIG!

Here are three reasons why we hope you will choose to support us through GiveBIG on May 15^th:

Photo: USFWS

* Exciting Great American Backyard Campout events this summer, including events serving people with limited resources and veterans.

* Our work with the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission to increase public awareness and support of our state park system, which is being impacted by severe budget shortfalls that are leaving wildlife in jeopardy and impairing our ability to enjoy the outdoors.

* Outreach to new communities and training programs for volunteers through our Certified Wildlife Habitat® program, which helps maintain and build biodiversity in the Pacific Northwest.

2. The more you give, the more National Wildlife Federation receives! All donations made through The Seattle Foundation’s website on May 15^th will receive a percentage of the matching funds (or “stretch”) pool from GiveBIG sponsors.

3. You could be randomly selected for a “Golden Ticket” that gives NWF an extra $1,000 from The Seattle Foundation and other sponsors. You’ll also be eligible to win airline tickets, gift cards, and more!

Stay tuned for details and like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for GiveBIG reminders and updates!