Learning to find and eat wild plants is a lesson not just in survival but also in ecology, says educator David Kowaleski. In fact, wild foraging creates links to the land and serves as a healthy antidote to “prima donna environmentalism” that keeps us distant and alienated from nature, Kowalewski writes in the Canadian education journal Our Schools/Our Selves.

Kowalewski, who teaches at Alfred University in New York, imparts this lesson to his students from the start, where learning to simply walk in the woods takes on new import:

The first foraging expedition by a class can offer valuable lessons in conservation and biodiversity. Students know, of course, that treading on vegetation causes damage, but how many, including self-styled environmentalists, pay attention to how much and which plants? As herbalists say, “Plants grow by the inch, but die by the foot.” So walking needs to be done with mindfulness.

I teach students first to tread on sidewalks, roads, and bare trails for as long as possible before getting off the beaten path and onto vegetation. Then they learn to walk first on any dead vegetation for as long as possible; then, only on the most abundant live species (say, grasses); and finally, on the least abundant (say, agrimony). To prepare for the walk, they may do a preliminary survey of the area’s botanical diversity, ranking species from most to least abundant. Then they can practice walking on the most abundant, then the next most, and so on. …

Students can also experiment with various kinds of footwear. They are especially surprised at the difference in damage done by soft moccasins and hard boots, thereby gaining respect for hunter-gatherer practices, or what might be called “ethno-ecology.”

I plan the first foraging expedition through a well-trashed area, having each student pick up some garbage on the way. The lessons quickly become clear. First, irresponsible humans are dumping on our food supply. Second, if we are going to take something from the earth, we should give something back—the Aboriginal principle of reciprocity (or “circular reasoning.”

Kowalewski encourages his students not to overcollect, to favor collection of aggressive and even invasive species (“If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em.”), and to avoid collecting in polluted or protected areas. He keeps returning to traditional hunter-gatherer knowledge, which he suggests his newbie foragers are literally hungry for: “Students can learn … the most about nature by actively using it for basic needs in a respectful way. In doing so, students quickly develop ‘an attitude of gratitude’ and identify with nature and the land in the deepest way possible—they physically assimilate it.”

Source: Our Schools/Our Selves

Image by KuniakilGARASHI, licensed under Creative Commons.

Destructive bark beetles have been munching their way through vast tracts of pine forest in Western Canada and the United States. Researchers may have found a line of defense against the bugs: sonic warfare. Scientists at Northern Arizona University have found that loud sounds can repel bark beetles, reports The Adventure Life blog.

It took some experimentation to home in on the most annoying soundtrack. The scientists at first blasted the beetles, which were living in pine cross-sections dubbed "ant farms," with heavy metal and Rush Limbaugh commentary played backward. A plausible hypothesis, to be sure:

But “after a few minutes they ignored it,” said Richard Hofstetter of NAU’s School of Forestry. “They seem to habituate to the sound.”

So then Hofstetter and his team recorded the noises the beetles themselves make, tweaked them, and piped them back into the ant farms. The results were nearly instantaneous.

“We could use a particular aggression call that would make the beetles move away from the sound as if they were avoiding another beetle. Or we could make our beetle sounds louder and stronger than that of a male beetle calling to a female, which would make the female beetle reject the male and go toward our speaker. We found we could disrupt mating, tunneling, and reproduction. We could even make the beetles turn on each other, which normally they would not do.”

The scientists have developed an “anti-beetle boom box” that will cost about $100 a tree—too expensive and labor-intensive to use on every tree in the forest, no doubt, but for possible use on high-value trees or, The Adventure Life speculates, a wall-like defense line against the invasion. Call it a wall of sound.

The scientists expect the devices to be ready for market by 2011.

Source: The Adventure Life

Image by vsmoothe, licensed under Creative Commons.

Who do people trust to give them accurate information about climate change? Often, it’s their TV weathercaster. In fact, a 2008 survey showed that Americans generally place more faith in the local on-air talent than they do in Al Gore, other politicians, religious leaders, corporations, or the media as a whole, reports Columbia Journalism Review.

“Scientists commanded greater credibility” on climate change issues, the magazine notes, “but only 18 percent of Americans actually know one personally; 99 percent, by contrast, own a television.”

The problem with this state of affairs is twofold: For one thing, most weathercasters aren’t really scientists, and few are experts on climate change. For another, many of them—far more than you might suspect—are skeptics on the issue. CJR reports that in a 2008 survey of 121 meteorologists, a stunning 29 percent of them agreed that global warming was “a scam.” Only 24 percent believed that humans were responsible for most of the climate change over the past 50 years. Half of them were sure this wasn’t true, while another quarter were “neutral” on the issue. As the magazine notes:

This was the most important scientific question of the twenty-first century thus far, and a matter on which more than eight out of ten climate researchers were thoroughly convinced. And three quarters of the TV meteorologists … surveyed believe the climatologists were wrong.

Wow. The article has a tough time putting a finger on why weathercasters are such a doubting lot, but notes that several institutions have launched projects to teach them about basic climatology, a project supported by the field’s professional group, the American Meteorological Society. CJR sums up the spirit of the project: “If viewers are going to assume weathercasters are experts anyway, we might as well try to make them experts.”

Source: Columbia Journalism Review

Image by cytosine, licensed under Creative Commons.