Achieving 30x30: Percentages Matter, We’re All in This Together, and What You Do to Help Counts Big-time

Green space in the Chicago region (credit:  Chicago Wilderness Alliance ) Did you know that back in December, one of the most important planetary environmental agreements in history got approved in Montreal? This would be the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), approved by the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which clearly states the goal of protecting, conserving, and restoring 30% of Earth’s lands and waters by 2030. Not only was another opening created for the concept that non-human species have the right to exist and live their lives according to their kind in appropriate habitats, but indigenous peoples were included and given their due as primary keepers of land. If countries actually follow through on commitments (one of the biggest ifs) there might be a chance that biodiversity could start recovering, and we might have a chance of getting to half-earth by 2050. By providing enough habitat for 80% of species on earth, t

The View from the Porch

So I go out on my back porch while eating a sandwich--it's a sunny 50 degrees at noon, how could you not--to check for flickers. They come every spring and I want to write about them and the ants. No flickers. Just robins, grackles, starlings, house finches, the usual citified birds. But then I cast about a little more and notice the woodpecker in the pagoda dogwood, the nuthatch creeping down the maple trunk, the mourning dove down among the fallen leaves and-- O glory!--up in the air is a red-tailed hawk circling high, white wing feathers flashing, tail spread out, fine as anything.

Comments