| <div class="ck-content"><h3>2024 Recap: Big win along Bolin Creek Trail</h3><p>Town of Chapel Hill has an amazing program called Adopt a Greenway [<a href="https://www.townofchapelhill.org/government/departments-services/parks-and-recreation/parks/adopt-a-park-greenway">https://www.townofchapelhill.org/government/departments-services/parks-and-recreation/parks/adopt-a-park-greenway</a>]. I think it is amazing because I discovered back in 2021 that this program wasn't just for companies to show off their community vibes. Individuals like myself could adopt a greenway and remove invasives on it! My first adoption was Morgan Creek Greenway, and through my work there (on my own and with volunteers from UNC and the community), I had earned the trust and support of Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation.</p><p>One consequence is that whenever I saw a natural space in Chapel Hill overgrown with invasives, I would look up the owners in the Orange County GIS maps [<a href="https://gis.orangecountync.gov/orangeNCGIS/default.htm">https://gis.orangecountync.gov/orangeNCGIS/default.htm</a>]. If it was a town property, I would then propose to adopt it. With approval, I'd get to work, and pull in volunteers to do the same.</p><p>I think my most successful adoption to date was the Bolin Creek Trail between Franklin Street and Elizabeth Street. This area was visible from Franklin Street as a hillside covered by wisteria. From the trail itself, you could see that Chinese privet as well as wisteria was wreaking havoc, taking down big trees and completely filling the understory. The picture below gives you a sense of what a person walking the trail saw: a wall of privet, and no visibility into the woods and over to the creek.</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1p9ThpAGRrKkKwtPubMK5VGpVwNEVMvTI&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>Here's this same section with (most of) the privet removed:</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1uu7rGxy8Lp8TT56ufbQt2KlFShAqUJp1&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><p>I was visited and worked in this section of the trail 37 times in 2023, usually with no more than a handful of volunteers (and often by myself). Then in 2024, things really took off. A new NC Wildlife Federation chapter was formed that included Chapel Hill (the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tricountyconservationists">Tri-County Conservationists</a>). They organized their membership - and several Church congregations along the way - to turn out for several large events (20+ volunteers). <i>Twenty-six events later</i> we had achieved the following:</p><ul><li>Removed almost all large privet in a five acre area (Town of Chapel Hill decided to leave a number of large glossy privets in place to provide shade over the tail, but for sure no more Chinese privet berries!).</li><li>Killed all wisteria vines growing up trees in the area between the creek and the trail (we were unable to take down all the wisteria as some was inaccessible due to private ownership or dangerous conditions).</li><li>Also killed endless numbers of some of the biggest spindle and bittersweet I've ever encountered. Many big native trees saved!</li><li>Planted hundreds of native trees and shrubs, and over 1000 river oats.</li><li>Put up signage (funded by NCWF - what a wonderful organization!) explaining the transformation.</li></ul><p>I've been working in Brumley for four years and we still have a long way to go. It was incredibly satisfying to be able to completely clear these five acres and set it on a path of native species restoration. We will be returning to check on the natives and pull up the next generation of (much smaller) invasives.</p><p>To give you a sense of how much was cleared, here's a panoramic shot along centered at a curve in the trail. Again, before we started you could not see more than a few feet past the trail. Big change, all volunteer-powered, over about 18 months.</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1i1iEAi6f1o6yngKBw_KcUAKBp-j8_Ysj&sz=w800" alt="REPLACE"></div><h3>Humans: the insulting, ungrateful species</h3><p>I am so tired of how humans get all excited about all the great stuff they learn from organic life. I mean, it'd be one thing if we made all these discoveries, and then expressed gratitude to the species with this wonderment y respecting them and safeguarding them.</p><p>We all know, however, that that's not how it goes. We make discoveries (and even making the discovery involves lots of harm to other species) and then exploit them ruthlessly. Worst case, we experiment on and harvest from those creatures directly. Or, another worst case, we destroy their habitat after benefiting from them (by, for example, manipulating their DNA or mimicking their designs).</p><p>Latest example: check out those amazing little “nanoscale soccer-ball-like structures called <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nanotech-scientists-build-on-an-insects-odd-soccer-ball-like-excretions-to/">brochosomes</a>” (nanoscale!).</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://static.scientificamerican.com/dam/m/4ac380abb98c8474/original/brochosomes.jpg?m=1735838292.091&w=600&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE"></div><blockquote><p><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(51,51,51);">Wong says the synthetic brochosomes are potentially suitable for a range of applications, including antireflection and camouflage materials, anticounterfeiting, data encryption and an “optical security,” tactic in which hidden information becomes visible only when it is illuminated with, say, infrared or ultraviolet light.</span></p></blockquote><p>Oh and also just to make it worse, lots of time when we replicate these organic structures with manufactured objects, they are full of toxics, plastics, PFAS, etc. </p><h3>Truffle-sniffing dogs help uncover hidden underground ecosystems</h3><p>I really enjoyed <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/good-boy-truffle-sniffing-dogs-are-helping-uncover-hidden-underground-ecosystems">this story</a>. In this case, without a doubt we (the humans involved) appreciate and care for the non-human helping them (yeah, ok, it's a dog, and we love dogs, but anytime a non-human is not exploited, let's celebrate!).</p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(38,38,38);">Because of their intimate ecological relationships with plants, truffles play critical roles in ecosystems. Yet their biology and diversity are poorly understood because of the inherent difficulty in studying species that live their whole lives up to a meter and a half underground. Mycologists suspect many may be vulnerable to extinction, the victims of habitat loss, human activities, and climate change. To gather data, researchers such as Dawson are turning to dogs.</span></p></blockquote><h3>These people are running the world? Ruining it, more like.</h3><p>May I present you with Mark Zuckerberg, the man-child who profits from hosting some of the largest sex trafficking and child pornography networks in the known universe</p><blockquote><p style="margin-left:0px;"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(18,18,18);">Meta would also “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender” that were “out of touch with mainstream discourse”, the 40-year-old billionaire said, while wearing a Greubel Forsey “Hand Made 1” on his left wrist, </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-07/zuckerberg-wears-900k-watch-to-announce-end-of-meta-fact-checks?utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky&utm_content=business&sref=fqqmZ8gi">Bloomberg reported</a><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(18,18,18);">. The watch retails for $895,500 before taxes, according to the outlet.</span></p><p style="margin-left:0px;">Zuckerberg, whose sartorial choices in the early days of Facebook <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/jan/26/mark-zuckerberg-back-to-work-grey-wardrobe-stylewatch">consisted of gray T-shirts and navy zip-up hoodies</a>, has been seen sporting several rare high-end watches in recent months.</p><p style="margin-left:0px;">A <a href="https://people.com/mark-zuckerberg-raves-over-billionaire-anant-ambani-million-dollar-watch-pre-wedding-party-details-8603821">viral video</a> taken during the wedding of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant last year showed Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, admiring a $1m Richard Mille RM 30-01 worn by Ambani, the youngest son of Asia’s richest man.</p><p style="margin-left:0px;">“This watch is fantastic,” Chan exclaimed in the video. “That’s so cool,” Zuckerberg agreed, saying: “I never really wanted to get a watch, but after seeing that, I was like: ‘Watches are cool.’”</p></blockquote><p>Blows my mind that these pathetic, self-indulgent excuses for “leaders” are running amok at the highest levels of power and wealth in our devastated world.</p></div><div class="ck-content"><h3>Receive all my reports on tree rescues</h3><p>If you'd like to get some good news about restoring native habitats delivered straight to your brain upwards of a few times a week, sign in to <a href="https://rewildearth.net">Rewild Earth</a>, click on your name in top right, then My profile. Under Communication Preferences, switch “Send reports of all events” to ON. </p><div class="raw-html-embed"><img src="https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1BeynVqu8taOGrsvi56u0mmDKuNJko22h&sz=w600-h400" alt="REPLACE" width="358" height="138"></div><h3>Resources you might find useful</h3><ul><li><a href="https://shop.naisma.org/collections/buckthorn-blaster">Buckthorn Blasters</a>: safe, easy herbicide delivery system from the North American Invasive Species Management Association. Don't start cutting without them!</li><li><a href="https://nc-ipc.weebly.com/nc-invasive-plants.html">NC Invasive Plants list</a>: recently updated by NC-IPC, the NC Invasives Plants Council.</li><li><a href="https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/AG259">Overview of different herbicides</a>: glyposphate, triclopyr and others - which should you use?</li><li>Volunteer for <a href="https://triangleland.org">Triangle Land Conservancy</a>: the biggest land conservancy group in our area. </li><li>Volunteer for <a href="https://ellerbecreek.org">Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association</a> (Durham): a wonderful group working hard to maintain contiguous natural areas along Ellerbe Creek.</li></ul></div> |