This episode of The Green Flame podcast focuses on the proposed Batoka Gorge Dam on the Zambezi River on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, just downstream from the world-famous Victoria Falls.
Max Wilbert interviews Monga, who has lived by the Zambezi River and is active in environmental issues and factors that impact on underprivilidged people in Zambia, and Marie-Louise Killet, a member of the group “Save the Zambezi River” which is opposing the Batoka Gorge project. The third guest is Rebecca Wildbear, a river and soul guide, who helps people tune into the mysteries of life and live with earth communities, dreams and their own wild nature.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
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Like what you hear? Make it all possible by going to Deep Green Resistance and making a one time or monthly recurring contribution.
Connie Barlow is a leading advocate for the “assisted migration” of native trees poleward in this time of rapid climate change. Beginning in 2004 in a paper cowritten with Pleistocene ecologist Paul S. Martin titled, “Bring Torreya taxifolia North — Now,” Barlow’s advocacy subsequently expanded to include even common native trees of North America.
The following video introduces a learning and action series for helping trees adapt to climate change — species by species, decade by decade. This is not a replacement for stopping the burning of fossil fuels, logging, and other carbon emissions sources, but it is necessary addition.
In her series, Barlow invites citizen naturalists are invited to research a favorite native tree species and begin to work with others to keep up with the northward movement of forest zones by planting and monitoring small numbers of wild seeds of common species onto private forested lands well north of where those seeds were collected.
This “assisted migration” in a time of unprecedented climate shift will be increasingly necessary in the decades ahead. Foresters can create the maps to show us where species will need to move to. But we citizen naturalists will play a complementary role in ensuring that the full diversity of genotypes keeps pace with a warming and drying continent.
Importantly, human action will mimic what birds, rodents, and other native seed dispersers have been able to accomplish on their own in previous periods of Earth history, when warming occurred at a slower, more natural pace.
Note: Three tree paintings by Illinois artist Mary Southard are included, as are several still shots from the 20th-century classic animated short film, “The Man Who Planted Trees.”
The series host, Connie Barlow, is the founder of the citizen activist group Torreya Guardians. She is the author of “The Ghosts of Evolution.”
In this article published on September 16, 2020 by the Center for Biologocal Diversity, they draw attention to a premeditated act of violence against a rare species of wildflower. The act may be linked to a proposal for an open-pit lithium mine to supply the battery industry.
More Than 17,000 Rare Nevada Wildflowers Destroyed
Tiehm’s Buckwheat, Under Review for Federal Protection, Loses up to 40% of Population
As much as 40% of the flower’s global population, which exists on just 21 acres in western Nevada, may have been destroyed.
“This is an absolute tragedy,” said Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Tiehm’s buckwheat is one of the beautiful gems of Nevada’s biodiversity and some monster destroyed thousands of these irreplaceable flowering plants.”
A routine visit to the site by Center staff revealed substantial impacts to all six subpopulations of the flower, with some subpopulations nearly wiped out. Plants were dug up or mangled with shovels, with taproots cut and most of the dead buckwheats hauled off-site.
Tiehm’s buckwheat has been the subject of recent controversy.
An Australian mining company, Ioneer Corp., has proposed an open-pit lithium mine that would destroy the vast majority of Tiehm’s buckwheat’s habitat. This spring Ioneer Corp.’s biological consulting firm placed a “missing” poster for the buckwheat at the general store in the nearby town of Dyer, offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who locates a new population of the rare flower.
After a whistleblower revealed mismanagement of the species by the Bureau of Land Management, the Center submitted an emergency petition to protect the plant under the Endangered Species Act in 2019. In response the Fish and Wildlife Service said in July the plant’s protection “may be warranted” and initiated a year-long review.
After the initial discovery of the incident, a field survey conducted by Donnelly and Dr. Naomi Fraga, director of conservation at the California Botanic Garden, revealed approximately 40% mortality to the species across all subpopulations, due to removal or destruction.
“This appears to have been a premeditated, somewhat organized, large-scale operation aimed at wiping out one of the rarest plants on Earth, one that was already in the pipeline for protection,” said Donnelly.
“It’s despicable and heartless.”
In a letter sent on Tuesday to the Bureau, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Nevada Division of Forestry and Ioneer Corp., Fraga and Donnelly made a series of recommendations to the agencies including: fencing the site, 24-hour security, immediate stabilization and rehabilitation of affected plants, and immediate termination of any monetary rewards, including Ioneer’s, for finding Tiehm’s buckwheat.
Plants can recover from extreme trauma such as that inflicted upon Tiehm’s buckwheat if given protection and potential assistance through plant care, propagation and transplanting. The letter urges the agencies to immediately commence a protection and restoration program.
“I was absolutely devastated when I discovered this annihilation of these beautiful little wildflowers,” said Donnelly. “But we’re not going to let this stop our fight against extinction. We’ll fight for every single buckwheat.”
You can find the original article, contact details and further advice and information on how you can support here:
For this episode of The Green Flame, we speak with Sergio Alexander Kochergin, a filmmaker, organizer, former U.S. Marine, and native of Ukraine. He did two deployments to Iraq in 2003, 2004, and 2005, and testified before members of Congress in 2008 as part of the new Winter Soldier hearings organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Sergio lives in Michigan City, Indiana where he is the co-founder of Politics Art Roots Culture, or the PARC center, which is an event and community space.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Support the Show
Like what you hear? Make it all possible by going to Deep Green Resistance and making a one time or monthly recurring contribution.
All around the world, irrigation for agriculture is taking massive amounts of water from rivers, in many cases leaving them almost or entirely dry. This article comes from central Oregon, where 90% of human water use is for agriculture.
Low Flows Due to Irrigation Destroying Deschutes River
The recent article “Low Flows On Deschutes” highlights why irrigation is a significant threat to our river’s ecological integrity.
According to the report, flows on a portion of the Deschutes dropped to 60 CFS leaving many parts of the river channel dry. To put this into perspective, historically, before irrigators took our water from us, the river ran at 1000-1200 CFS year-round. As a spring-fed river, the Deschutes supported outstanding fisheries.
Huge trout caught out of the Deschutes near the turn of the century before irrigation destroyed the river.
This tragedy continues because the public is not standing up for its rights. We, the people, own the water in the river, not the irrigators. We allow the irrigators to take water from the river without any compensation to the public, and regardless of the damage done to aquatic ecosystems. This system was devised by irrigators to serve irrigators a century ago.
Isn’t it time for us to enter the modern age? Using water in the desert to grow hay for livestock is just a crazy waste of a valuable resource. Keeping water in the river would provide for greater recreational use. And maintaining viable flows would protect aquatic life like spotted frogs, trout, and salmon, not to mention all the other water-dependent species like eagles, mink, otter, and the rest.
Despite the claims to “water rights” the actual water in all state rivers belongs to Oregon citizens as affirmed by the Oregon Supreme Court.
“All water within the state from all sources of water supply belongs to the public,” including ground water. The Act allows for instream water rights for public uses, and public uses include but are not limited to recreation, “conservation, maintenance and enhancement of aquatic and fish life, wildlife, fish and wildlife habitat and any other ecological values,” pollution abatement, and navigation. In addition, “public uses are beneficial uses,” but “[t]he recognition of an in-stream water right . .. shall not diminish the public’s rights.”
The majority of water removed from the Deschutes is used to grow irrigated pasture and hay for livestock not crops consumed directly by humans. Photo by George Wuerthner
Technically speaking, degrading the river by irrigation should be illegal since the public values are supposed to be given priority in any water allotments.
Maybe it made sense to dewater our rivers to promote Ag a century ago when there were fewer economic opportunities. However, today Ag contributes only to 1.3% of Deschutes County income.
One can make a case that the 1% are degrading our river that belongs to all citizens for their private profit.
It is time to modernize our approach to water use. Growing cow food in the desert is a senseless waste of a valuable resource—water. We need to put the welfare of the river ecosystem and all citizens first.
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and former hunting guide with a degree in wildlife biology.
An ongoing blockade to protect old-growth forests in western Canada has now lasted more than a month, but blockaders hopes that a government report would help protect the Fairy Creek Valley have been dashed.
Forest Defenders Hold the Barricades as the BC Government Fails to Defer Road Building and Logging into the Fairy Creek Rainforest
September 14, 2020
Featured image: Road building in the old growth forests of the Renfrew Creek Watershed, part of the greater Fairy Creek Rainforest. (Photo Credit: Ken Dawson)
The forest defenders blocking road and logging access to Fairy Creek are devastated that it was not included in the government’s announcement of deferrals of forest areas of the province. The Old Growth Strategic Review recommended: “immediate response to ecosystems at very high risk,” through deferrals. That would emphatically include Fairy Creek, which lies within unceded Pacheedaht Territory. Instead the government included Clayoquot Sound that the review did not recommend deferring.
Roads accessing Fairy Creek were going forward and poised to enter the watershed when stopped. This constitutes imminent threat. Other old growth forests in southern Vancouver Island, either under immediate threat or where active logging is taking place are: the Caycuse where there is active logging and roading; Edinburgh Mountain and the Central Walbran, both with multiple new approved cut blocks and road proposals; and the Nahmint Valley, where BC Timber Sales was censured by an internal review for violating its own legal requirements.
All of these areas deserve, and must receive, permanent protection from logging.
Among other areas of concern on Vancouver Island are the West Kauwinch River, and the Zeballos Lake watersheds, both similarly intact watersheds at imminent risk from new logging and road building. Fairy Creek has spectacular yellow cedar stands, a highly endangered and underrepresented species in BC’s forest inventory. The review calls for further protection of these species, yet the headwaters of Fairy Creek, and several adjacent old growth forests remain slated to be logged. Surely, the last intact watershed in the immense San Juan River drainage deserves a permanently protected designation.
We demand that the government immediately defer Fairy Creek and the other contiguous old growth forests from further incursions and permanently protect them from logging.
Until that happens, the blockades of the accesses into Fairy Creek will remain in place as support grows for protection following the OGSR report that highlights gross mismanagement, misinformation and collusion between government and the forest industry, where the public interest and that of the standing forests seldom enters their calculations.
