Author: postMigrator

More and more of these kinds of eco-restoration (aka re-wilding) projects are critical to mitigating and surviving climate change. In particular, specific measures that would help to protect water supplies (surface, ground, precipitation run-off, etc.) are a crucial first step in any ecosystem in any bio-region…in the case of the riparian zones of the Desert Southwest, that means (among other things) removing the damn cattle and restoring the willows and cottonwoods! Go WildEarth Guardians!!

ASW

Chapter 4
Wyatt and the Cottonwood Tree

Wyatt, the immortal wolf, remembers the Old West.

Wyatt led his pack from the wild lands of the Gila to the
Colorado Plateau, concealed by the tunnels of cottonwood that
formed a thin, green line of life for the arid desert. The shade
of the giant cottonwoods provided relief from the heat of the
day. At night, when the leafy canopy veiled Wyatt’s compass of
stars, he would simply follow the corridor upstream.

These passages were filled with birdsong, and kingfishers
swooped down from the branches, diving underwater after their
prey–a skill Wyatt envied. On hot summer days, when he came
upon one of the many beaver dams, he cooled off in their ponds.
Foxes and squirrels found shelter inside the trees. Every

cottonwood was an oasis.
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Published on Saturday, December 13, 2008 by Inter Press Service

Climate Change: ‘Things Happen Much Faster in the Arctic’

by Stephen Leahy

QUEBEC CITY, Canada-In just a few summers from now, the Arctic Ocean will lose its protective cover of ice for the first time in a million years, according to some experts attending the International Arctic Change conference here.

‘Things are happening much faster in the Arctic. I think it will be summer ice-free by 2015,’ said David Barber, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba.

Such a ‘dramatic and serious loss of sea ice will affect everyone on the planet,’ Barber told IPS.

Barber spent much of last winter on a Canadian research icebreaker, the Amundsen, in the Arctic Ocean as leader of a 40-million-dollar ice research project. Scientists expected the Amundsen to be frozen in place for many months during the harsh Arctic winter, when there is no sunlight and temperatures plunge to -50 degrees C. Instead the ship stayed mobile as the normally impenetrable ice was thin and weak.

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