Reduced meat and dairy consumption improves health, environmental and most nutritional outcomes without increasing diet costs among Scottish adults
nature.comu/UtopiaResearchBot — 17 hours ago
u/UtopiaResearchBot
r/Environmentalism r/berkeley r/ROI r/EcoUplift r/Virginia r/NoLawns r/InvictaSolaris r/RewildingUK r/ScientificNutrition r/AlaskaFishing r/bayarea r/landconservation r/solarpunk r/alaska r/peakoil r/DeTrashed r/UpliftingConservation r/OptimistsUnite r/rewilding r/GuerrillaGardening
‘Hold your nerve and trust nature’: birds, bats and butterflies rebound at Somerset rewilding farm
>Three years of rewilding on a former dairy farm in east Somerset have led to the number of recorded bird species soaring from 67 to 94, butterfly species rising from 11 to 24 and small mammals growing in number.
>Heal Somerset, the first site acquired by the charity Heal Rewilding, has produced a state of nature report mirroring a national survey by environmental charities that has tracked the decline in nature.
>Surveys at the 190-hectare (460 acres) farm are revealing the rate at which wildlife returns after conventional agriculture stops. A humane trapping survey found the site was home to five small mammal species compared with three at a nearby organic dairy farm.
>Heal Somerset near Frome is now home to at least 15 bat species and 60 species of breeding bird, including the endangered bullfinch and numerous tree pipits, another bird under threat.
>“I had no idea when we arrived in January 2023 what to expect,” said Jan Stannard, chief executive and co-founder of Heal Rewilding, which acquired the site through donations and philanthropic lending. “To some extent you hold your nerve and trust nature. If you give wildlife an undisturbed safe place, a sanctuary, you have this sense that something good is going to come out of it. It’s an absolute joy to see wildlife resurging.”
>The rewilding process is unlike traditional conservation because it uses natural processes to manage land and does not seek specific outcomes in terms of boosting a particular rare species. Instead, nature sets the agenda.
>At Heal Somerset, streams have been returned to a more natural flow – assisted by the arrival of free-roaming beavers, which are spreading across east Somerset’s rivers. Dead wood has been left in place and natural growth encouraged through scrub and tree regeneration. Two tamworth pigs have been introduced and further large herbivores such as cattle and ponies will be reintroduced in small numbers. They will live free among a mix of glades, meadows, scrub and trees rather than dense woodland.
>The project is supported by more than 250 volunteers who participate in surveying, removing barbed wire fencing and other rewilding work. The charity has partnerships with 15 underserved groups who help manage the site, including people living with dementia, people with additional needs and people experiencing financial difficulties. Youth groups and schools are also involved.
>Stannard said: “An increasing number of people are coming either as visitors or camping and if they are older they are being transported back to a childhood experience of abundance that they will not get in the farmed countryside. They are hearing grasshoppers and crickets in the day and birds such as linnet or greenfinch, which are much less common now.”
>Dan Hill, a 25-year-old rewilding ranger who joined Heal Somerset three years ago, said: “I remember seeing the monoculture of rye grass swaying in the wind and thinking, crikey, it’s desolate. Three years has flown by and so much has changed. It’s incredibly exciting. I’m learning so much.
>“Seeing what nature wants to do – it’s very hopeful. And it’s not just about nature – when you get people coming to the site and they say: ‘I just want to keep coming back, I’ve never seen a site like this before,’ it really puts a smile on your face.”
>Heal Rewilding said its report was inspired partly by the absence of substantive content on rewilding within the UK-wide State of Nature report for 2023.
>“We were struck by how little attention was given to rewilding, despite the extraordinary growth of the movement,” said Stannard. “There are now hundreds of rewilding projects across Britain and many report seeing remarkable ecological changes. But stories alone are not enough. If rewilding is to be fully recognised within national nature recovery strategies, we need robust, long-term data that demonstrates impact.”
u/UtopiaResearchBot — 1 month ago
Guerilla Gardening Turned Legit
Eight years ago I started planting, by headlamp, in our municipality. The public spaces NEEDED trees! ANd I figured the easiest way to get them was to do it myself. Under cover of darkness. For five years I kept planting, making it look like it was supposed to be there...
Then the municipality sort of found out what I was doing... and were ok with it.
This spring I officially asked municipal councillors to create some "no-mow" spaces on public land, partly to protect the trees I planted and partly to create some pollinator friendly spaces. They said YES, officially, to stop mowing pockets of grass.
I'm still quietly adding Indigenous plants to help the mini meadows.
Happy.
u/Intrepid_Visual_4199 — 30 days ago
500 acres Tenderfoot Forest Reserve expanded in Wisconsin's Northwoods
nature.orgu/UtopiaResearchBot — 1 month ago
Yesterday, 55 Urban Compassion Project volunteers cleared 16,000 pounds of illegal dumping from two Berkeley sites that the city cannot access. Now we’re pushing to transform 1331 Second Street into an urban garden and community space! Stay tuned.
Yesterday, 55 volunteers cleared 16,000 pounds of illegal dumping from two Berkeley sites that the city itself cannot access (one was a private lot and the other was by an encampment where were built a relationship with our homeless neighbors. This says a lot about how complicated and neglected some of these spaces have become over the years and why community action matters so much in actually getting things done on the ground. One of the biggest differences we’ve noticed working in Berkeley is how much easier it has been to collaborate directly with the city, communicate about barriers, and actually have conversations around long term solutions instead of constantly hitting walls every step of the way.
We’re especially excited about 1331 Second Street because we don’t want this to just become another cycle where an area gets cleaned and then forgotten again a few months later. The goal now is to push toward building an urban garden and community space there because beautification and accessibility are some of the strongest forms of dumping deterrence we’ve seen. When neglected land is transformed into something people actively use and care about, the entire energy of a space changes and it becomes much harder for illegal dumping to take root again.
Huge thank you to everyone who showed up yesterday and helped move thousands and thousands of pounds of debris by hand. This work is exhausting, dirty, and expensive, but seeing communities come together to completely transform spaces in a single day continues to remind us why this movement keeps growing.
track our efforts here: https://www.instagram.com/urbancompassionproject
or here: https://www.tiktok.com/@urbancompassion510
sign up to clean up: https://urbancompassionproject.org/events/
u/UtopiaResearchBot — 2 months ago
Wildlife corridor over the soon to be longest canal in the world. Pinglu canal, China
u/FullDad2000 — 2 months ago
Virginia joins Maine and Utah in allowing their citizens to cash in on cheap solar power with plug-in-solar systems.
u/OpenSustainability — 2 months ago
From Urban Hell to Solarpunk Heaven
u/21Kuranashi — 2 months ago