#jim robbins

[indizombie]

Suzanne Simard, an ecologist at the University of British Columbia, has found that there are family relationships between trees and that, through their roots and fungus, they communicate with each other and shuffle resources around. Author and researcher Diana Beresford Kroeger has argued that the abundant aerosols that trees emit, such as terpenes and limonenes, are natural antibiotics, antivirals and chemo-preventatives that help keep the natural world – including humans – healthy.

Jim Robbins, ‘The genetic power of ancient trees’, BBC

[sanalebihan]

What an irony it is that these living beings whose shade we sit in, whose fruit we eat, whose limbs we climb, whose roots we water, to whom most of us rarely give a second thought, are so poorly understood. We need to come, as soon as possible, to a profound understanding and appreciation for trees and forests and the vital role they play, for they are among our best allies in the uncertain future that is unfolding.

Jim Robbins, The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet

[toknowtheland]

How Forest Loss Is Leading To a Rise in Human Disease

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that the felling of tropical forests creates optimal conditions for the spread of mosquito-borne scourges, including malaria and dengue. Primates and other animals are also spreading disease from cleared forests to people.

Read it now, or I will on next week’s show. #remotebroadcastfromhome

[universitybookstore]

Now in paperback from Spiegel & Grau, The Wonder of Birds: What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future, by Jim Robbins.

[dk-thrive]

In the end we will only conserve what we love, we will love what we understand, and we will understand what we are taught

No wild animal lives so freely and in such variety and numbers among humans as do birds. For that reason alone, our relationship to them is unlike our connection to any other wild creature. But there are other reasons, too. The intellect of birds is arguably the closest in the animal world to our own. Birds charm us with their ethereal songs, which are profoundly different from the sound of any other animal; in fact, some of the natural world’s most beautiful sounds emerge from the tiniest of birds. They are found virtually everywhere, from the Arctic and Antarctic to the tropics and deserts to the concrete labyrinths at the heart of the world’s cities and the green patches of grass in front of our homes, and they are nature’s exclamation point, adding an unequaled burst of vibrancy to our lives. Birds came to the earth, an Australian legend has it, when a rainbow shattered and its shards of color turned into birds as they fell: the glowing, jewel-like reds, greens, and blues of the hummingbirds; the bold red, white, and black of the woodpeckers; the deep blue of bluebirds and indigo buntings; the slash of red on the shoulders of red-winged blackbirds and the full suit of red worn by cardinals...

One of the most important things birds do is remind us of our deep and abiding emotional connection to nature...What is going on in our hearts and brains when we observe these creatures? What moves people to spend hundreds of dollars a year feeding birds in their backyard, or thousands to travel the world to watch them? Throughout history, birds have been strongly allied with mystical properties. Might birds, then, also have things to tell us that science has yet to consider?...

“In the end we will only conserve what we love, we will love what we understand, and we will understand what we are taught,” wrote Baba Dioum, a Senegalese forester. This book is my humble attempt to write about how a wide range of people interpret birds and to offer a few interpretations of my own, to teach something about this marvelous planet we call home and the fellow travelers with whom we share it, creatures who are able to fly halfway across the globe nonstop, dive ten times deeper into the ocean than a human, or fly backward and upside down and do many other things we cannot begin to comprehend.

I am in awe of birds.

~ Jim Robbins, The Wonder of Birds: What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future,  Spiegel & Grau (May 30, 2017)

[onenakedfarmer]

Reading

Jim Robbins THE MAN WHO PLANTS TREES A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet

[biglisbonnews]

From lab to market, bio-based products are gaining momentum Propelled by government investment and shareholder demand, manufacturers are pushing to get bio-based products into the marketplace. Made from plants, fungi, and microbes, these new materials aim to replace those that contain toxins and are difficult to recycle or reuse. https://grist.org/solutions/from-lab-to-market-bio-based-products-are-gaining-momentum/

[indizombie]

In the summer of 2021 fires swept through the famous sequoias in California, killing a fifth of them. One of them was the Waterfall Tree – burned to a crisp. Long thought of as indestructible, these trees have been dying in increasing numbers in recent years. "What we are seeing now is that wildfire is capable of incinerating large giant sequoias in large numbers," said Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and science for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. "The primary driver is the 100-year history of fire suppression, but it's being made worse by climate change-driven hotter drought." The disappearance of giant sequoia genetics is also a concern. "We don't know what we may have lost," said Brigham. "But we are talking about a species that has already gone through a genetic bottleneck and is only found in 78 groves. Now we have these wildfires that have burned up 19% of the adult large-tree population. In one grove, 80% of the grove is gone."

Jim Robbins, ‘The genetic power of ancient trees’, BBC