Discover Top Posts Tagged with #resiliency

#mental health #current events #burnout #activism fatigue #compassion fatigue #activism #compassion #it matters #give yourself credit #hopepunk #keep hope alive #keep going #resiliency #rest but don't quit #self compassion #you matter #you are worthy #you are enough

The project will also aim to study the impacts of global warming on pollinators.

From the article:

The project aims to plant 50,000 native violets over the next two years, with support from a grant awarded this year by the National Environmental Education Foundation to Freshkills Park Alliance. “Planting these violets is incredibly important to the ecosystem within Freshkills and also the region,” Mark Murphy, President of the Freshkills Park Alliance, said. “Our 2,200 acres of native grassland is not just a place of beauty, but a place of highly efficient carbon capture, of resilience, regrowth and environmental sustainability.” The violet project process began by removing invasive mugwort and Chinese bushclover from the grassland. The Greenbelt Native Plant Center team then tilled the soil and laid landscape fabric to prevent new invasive growth. [...] Over the next two years, the Freshkills Alliance science team will study the impacts of large-scale native violet planting. They will also reintroduce native pollinators to assess the success of the planting project and the challenges posed by global warming and the reduction of air safety regulations, Murphy shared.

Freshkills Park is built on the sight of an infamous decommissioned landfill that was causing harm to surrounding communities. The conversion from landfill to park takes time and the first parts of the new park opened in 2023. By the time it is fully complete, Freshkills Park will be almost three times the size of Central Park.

#landfill #environment #ecology #clean up #landfill clean up #adaptation #resiliency #nature #wildlife #good news #hope #urban wildlife #urban parks #habitat #habitat restoration #pollinators

For Schaus’ swallowtail butterflies, hurricanes mean clear skies and bright futures.

04.10.2025-Story by Marina Wang

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew, one of the most devastating tropical cyclones in U.S. history, ravaged Elliott Key, Florida. “Most of the island was covered in seawater, and about a quarter of the trees were either toppled or completely broken,” says Sarah Steele Cabrera, a biologist at the University of Florida. “There was not a leaf to be seen.”

At the time, conservationists fretted that the enormous hurricane was going to wipe out the last of the island’s Schaus’ swallowtails (Papilio aristodemus), a species of endangered black-and-yellow butterfly native to southern Florida and now found only on Elliott Key and nearby Key Largo. And the butterfly’s numbers on the island did take an initial hit from the storm. But only four years later, much to scientists’ surprise, the population jumped dramatically. Now, a 36-year-long dataset shows that Schaus’ swallowtails saw similar post-hurricane population bumps after two subsequent hurricanes: Wilma in 2005 and Irma in 2017.

In 1976, the Schaus’ swallowtail butterfly became one of the first insects to be listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, Cabrera says. This critically endangered butterfly prefers higher-elevation hammock forests with a mix of standing trees and grassland—a habitat that also happens to be prime real estate in the Florida Keys. The butterfly’s numbers on Elliott Key hit an all-time low in 2007, just two years after Hurricane Wilma, with an estimated 56 individuals remaining. But the most recent estimate from 2021 shows the island’s population sitting at a slightly more comfortable 4,400 or so.

While it seems counterintuitive, the dataset suggests that hurricanes are partly responsible for the butterfly’s current spike in population. To make sense of the recurring post-hurricane peaks, Cabrera and colleagues analyzed how butterfly numbers varied with precipitation, wind speed, temperature, and other meteorological variables.

When a hurricane first makes landfall, Cabrera says, the storm’s high winds kill many adult butterflies, while its surges of salty ocean water drown many caterpillars. In the immediate storm’s aftermath, both butterflies and caterpillars have fewer flowers or leaves to feed on. But as the damage fades and the years march on, toppled trees and downed branches create gaps in the canopy that let light penetrate to the forest floor. With more space and light, understory plants flourish, bringing fresh greenery for caterpillars and blooming flowers for butterflies.

“Hurricanes are natural disturbance events that shape population dynamics in ways that we are only just beginning to understand,” Cabrera says.

Jess Zimmerman, an ecologist at the University of Puerto Rico who was not involved in the study, says the nearly four decades of observations that went into this research offer the perspective of a wide-angle lens, yielding much more insight into the butterfly’s long-term crests and troughs than a narrower dataset could provide. As a result, he says, scientists are now more confident that the Schaus’ swallowtail population has remained fairly stable over the long term, despite high year-to-year volatility.

In general, Zimmerman says, animals that evolved in areas prone to disturbance are adapted to handle those variables. Schaus’ swallowtails, like many of the insects that Zimmerman studies, have many offspring and their populations can balloon under the right conditions. “They have ways of making it through these disturbances without getting lost,” he says.