The Nature of Things

We're getting the details of the budget measure that was agreed to last weekend and it is not a pretty sight. Forget, for a second, all the goodies for the rich and the pointy-stick-in-the eye for everyone else that are contained in that foggy piece of legislation. For now, let's just concentrate for a moment on some of the things that it does to the environment around us and to the sciences related to that environment. To quote the Times story about the agreement, "There are myriad restrictions and budget cuts for environmental initiatives in the proposed budget." Here are just a few: - $49 million would be cut from programs related to climate change. - $438 million would be cut from programs supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy. - $638 million would be cut from environmental cleanup efforts by the Defense Department. - $997 million would be cut from funds through which the Environmental Protection Agency provides money for local ...

The political news frustrates and angers me. We seem to be a people determined to undo everything that the geniuses who founded this country set out to bequeath to us. But it takes news of what we are doing to the environment to really put me in a blue funk for days at a time. Like this article that I read on Huffington Post this week about nine types of habitats that are seriously endangered. 1. Mangroves: The mangrove is not a plant, it is a habitat that can contain a great diversity of individual species of plants - like holly, plumbago, hibiscus, legumes, acanthus, and myrtle. These complex habitats do the important work of capturing carbon and provide shelter for many species of animals. Unfortunately, they exist on valuable real estate along coasts and we know what happens when the needs of the planet collide with man's greed. Greed wins. From 1980 to 2000, 35% of mangrove habitats disappeared under the developers' earthmovers. 2. Coral reefs: These are beauti...

( Cross-posted from Backyard Birder .) Our regular weekly roundup of news of birds and the environment is this week completely dominated by one story: The explosion of the BP oil rig in the Gulf and the subsequent gigantic and potentially disastrous oil spill. As thousands of barrels of oil continue to gush from the area of the rig every single day that the leak goes unstopped, the possibility of a true environmental catastrophe along the Gulf Coast grows hourly. Even now the first of the oil has reached the coastal areas and the first oil-soaked bird, a young Northern Gannet, has been found and is being cleaned by volunteers. There are several national parks and wildlife refuges that are in the path of the spill which could threaten the coastlines of four states - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Among them is the Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi, where mated pairs of cranes have just hatched their babies in April. These hatchlings would be part...