We received the following from Linda Kennedy, the director of the ranch:

“I wish to thank you again for your continued and generous support of the mission of the Research Ranch. The financial assistance you have provided has greatly enhanced our effort to reclaim a floodplain dominated by non-native grass by transplanting native Sacaton. The Bermudagrass that is growing on this floodplain is shallow rooted, so the floodplain is subject to undercutting by flood events. The deeper rooted Sacaton (15-20’) will provide much more stability to the floodplain and reduce erosion significantly. In addition, the Sacaton is much better habitat for native animals including Montezuma Quail, javelina, and Arizona Cotton Rat (considered a species of special concern by Arizona Game and Fish Department).”

Learn more from this detailed annual report from Appleton-Whittell.

From tigers to turtles, many thousands of species are threatened with extinction. Over 100,000 species per year are going extinct.

Promoting biodiversity through the preservation and restoration of natural habitats is at the heart of what we do at the RIESTER Foundation.

In a recent article David DeFranza outlines six problems caused by a loss of biodiversity. They are:

1. Economic Cost of Lost Biodiversity

2. Reduced Food Security

3. Increased Contact With Disease

4. More Unpredictable Weather

5. Loss of Livelihoods

6. Losing Sight of “Nature”

For more read DeFranza’s full piece.

There were six or seven monkeys in the troop and they were working their way across the Reserve jumping from tree top to tree top, from limb to limb. The alpha male of the group kept an eye on Mike and me while we kept an eye on the troop.  The monkeys were as big as a large domestic cat and barked like a small dog. It was one of the most amazing animal sightings on the Reserve. We talked to Jose Sanchez, the Reserve caretaker, and he said that the monkeys had been in and around the Reserve for about one month. Jose has lived near the Reserve for decades and this was the first time he had ever seen white-faced monkeys in the area.

The white-headed capuchin is important to rainforest ecology for its role in dispersing seeds and pollen. We are assuming they are attracted to the RIESTER Reserve because of the reforestation efforts of the Foundation.

The white-headed capuchin is intelligent. It is mostly black, but with a pink face and white on much of the front part of the body. As a new world monkey it has a prehensile tail that is often carried coiled up and used to help support the monkey when it is feeding beneath a branch.

In the wild, the white-faced capuchin is versatile, living in many different types of forest, and eating many different types of food, including fruit and other plant material. It lives in troops that can exceed 20 animals and include both males and females.

Of all the animals seen on the Reserve, including Howler Monkeys, armadillos, coatis, blue morphos butterflies, parrots and mott motts, the sighting of the white-faced troop is one of the most memorable.

Gary Kaasa
President, RIESTER Foundation

Corozilito Beach is within walking distance of the RIESTER Reserve and is an undeveloped and relatively isolated beach in northwest Costa Rica.

As it turns out, through the Foundation’s efforts, it has been discovered that Corozilito Beach is one of the most significant sea turtle beaches in Central America.  Thousands of turtles lay their eggs on the beach – mostly olive ridley turtles but others too, including the huge and endangered leatherback.

Poachers of turtle eggs are a big problem in Costa Rica. This is a food source with what many believe have Viagra-like properties.  People are known to poach the freshly laid eggs and sell them.

Because of the success of the previous year’s efforts the RIESTER Foundation will continue funding PRETOMA for 2011.  We are the only funders for the Corozilito project.  Currently volunteers from around the world are monitoring the number of turtles that lay eggs nightly, monitoring the nests, measuring and tagging adult turtles for tracking and discouraging poachers on the beach.

A Western Bluebird at Starr Ranch.

Starr Ranch was acquired by Audubon in 1973 in order to preserve 4,000 acres of open space in the middle of suburban Orange County, California. The Ranch borders the Santa Ana Mountains and the Cleveland National Forest creating an important wildlife corridor of uninterrupted wildlands.

Starr Ranch offers innovative approaches to land management and environmental education that will positively influence the way that Orange County citizens appreciate, conserve, and manage wildlands. It is the overall objective to instill a love of nature through education programs that involve people of all ages in wildlife research, and to provide a model of rigorous, sustainable land management through applied research.

Starr Ranch’s restoration program focuses on three primary and rare habitat types: coastal sage scrub, needlegrass grassland, and streamside zones (known as riparian habitat).

Last year the RIESTER Foundation funded an ongoing riparian habitat restoration project along a 4.7-mile long corridor of stream-side habitat known as Bell Creek. This year the RIESTER Foundation is providing a grant of to continue phase two restoration work along Bell Creek – specifically, the propagation and planting of native trees and shrubs in areas that were cleared of weeds and invasive plants.

The 2011 phase of the restoration project is the establishment of native plants in the work area. Sometimes, when weeds are removed from an area, native plants will move in and replace them without assistance. In other cases, it is necessary to help native plant colonization by planting seeds and cuttings, which are collected from existing stands on Starr Ranch. Last year the Starr Ranch staff completed a successful new experiment to test methods for the planting of native plant species like sycamore, blackberry and grape.

The RIESTER Foundation’s mission is reflected in Starr Ranch’s efforts by preserving critical habitats and maintaining the earth’s biological diversity. The Audubon Starr Ranch Sanctuary is an excellent example of a program that is placed-based, preserves a unique landscape, supports scientific research, and enhances critical wildlife habitat in order to maintain California’s natural character.

“All the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productivity nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for a little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in nearly every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn’t have a design problem. People do.”

Please read this book by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. It’s available via Amazon or from your local bookstore. The ideas behind the Cradle to Cradle concept are 100% consistent with the goals of the RIESTER Foundation.

The Research Ranch is an 8,000 acre sanctuary for native plants and animals, and an ecological research facility which came under Audubon management in 1980.

Sacaton (Sporobolus wrightii)is a tall grass (6-8ft in height) that is only found in southwestern North America, primarily on floodplains along rivers and streams. Once abundant, only 5% of sacaton grasslands still exist, a victim of agriculture and changes to flood regimes. Sacaton grasslands play an important role in erosion control and provide habitat for many species, including the rare Botteri’s sparrow and the striking Montezuma Quail.

The RIESTER Foundation’s 2011 funding will support the Sacaton project goals which include growing, transplanting, and irrigating 200 additional Sacaton plants in a floodplain dominated by the non-native, invasive Coastal Bermuda grass.

The Coastal Bermuda that currently dominates this floodplain is poor quality habitat for native species. By embedding sacaton plants into the Bermuda, the structure of the habitat will change and the sacaton will gradually shade out the Bermuda while protecting the floodplain from erosion.

The Research Ranch’s efforts to study, preserve and enhance this rare and valuable ecosystem is consistent with The RIESTER Foundation’s mission and interests to protect and preserve the environment, and to support scientific and educational efforts.

Please donate $10, $25, $50 or more to support the work of the RIESTER Foundation.

West of the 100th meridian. Texas, 1935.

The mixture of politics and science is often not pretty. But it also isn’t new.

In the latter part of the 19th century a theory, which some scientists even embraced, was put forward that when people settle and begin to farm land, it will bring more rain. The notion is false and seems preposterous to us today.

Yet no other than a top aide to President Lincoln and the first territorial governor of Colorado was one of the proponents of this theory. His name was William Gilpin and he exhorted people to move west and settle the lands beyond the 100th meridian. This is the line that dissects the United States from the middle of the Dakotas straight south through the middle of Texas to the Mexican border. It is an important geographic boundary. To the east of that line there is generally plenty of rainfall to support farming. To the west, it is increasingly arid, and there generally is not enough water to support farming.

While common-sense would have dictated that growing corn and wheat in an arid landscape may not be a good idea, land-hungry Americans wanted to believe the likes of Gilpin who coached them to move in to this region and begin farming. There is little doubt that Gilpin believed his theory that rain would follow the plow, but of course it didn’t.

We ignore science at our own peril. Many individuals and families were destroyed in their failed attempts to farm the western plains. Many thousands died in their efforts to do so. A series of dust bowls up to the 1930s forced people off of land that they shouldn’t have farmed to begin with.

Ironically in the 1950s, a generation after the last dust bowl, mechanical pumps combined with the discovery and exploitation of the Ogallala Aquifer would bring farming back to these areas and make it work—at least until the aquifer is depleted.

The facts that oil supplies are finite, that global warming is happening, that pollution kills us, are facts that we ignore at our own peril.

Denial of these facts is the modern day equivalent to the notion that rain follows the plow.

This post originally appeared at STAND FOR LESS.

Demonstration site for growing vegetables and cacao nursery.

The RIESTER Foundation is pleased to announce continued funding for reforestation efforts in Chocola, Guatamala for 2011.

Semillas Para El Futuro (Seeds for the Future) is focused on three projects in the town of Chocola, Guatemala:

(1) Rainforest reforestation as a part of an agricultural reform and habitat restoration program
(2) Food security by teaching women to grow and sell vegetables
(3) A literacy, reading and library program.

The efforts of Semillas Para El Futuro include protecting and preserving the environment through helping farmers replace mono-culture coffee agriculture with a diverse intercrop of native trees to help grow cacao, the tree that is the source for chocolate. The project focuses on teaching farmers the economic and ecological value of canopy diversity friendly to local and migratory birds and other species.

Semillas Para El Futuro is entirely supported by private donations and by the labor of volunteers from Guatemala and the United States.

The first goal of Semillas is to help the community of Chocola achieve a sustainable future instead of a subsistence existence.

The RIESTER Foundation grant will help continue the program by supporting the local group of farmers known as the Pioneers of Cacao. The program provides training in the planting and husbandry of native trees that are friendly to migratory birds.

For the past three years the Pioneers have been converting their mono-culture coffee plantations to native trees such as cacao, palo blanco, palo voladore and a variety of flowering fruit trees and bushes.

More than 5,000 trees have been planted and dispersed across the area with the help of previous RIESTER Foundation grants and another 2,000 to 4,000 will be planted during 2011.

All monies for this project go to buying and planting the trees and instructing farmers on proper grafting, pruning and other husbandry techniques.

Please donate $10, $25, $50 or more to support the work of the RIESTER Foundation.

Natural disasters have been humbling humans for millennia. Today there are more of us potentially in the path of any given disaster. Also, we are connected today in ways that weren’t possible a century ago. Watching afar through videos and written reports transmitted almost instantly provides a sense of events. It’s nothing like being there, but it still connects us. In our highly globalized world, we’re also connected through the less tangible but equally important economic links that keep our economies going.

There are lessons to be learned.

The Thinker by Rodin.

Humans living in advanced economies are utterly dependent on energy for electricity, transportation, heating, cooling.

Our economies are also dependent on an ever-increasing use of energy.

Can we continue as we are?

Are there limits to what the planet can support?

With all of our intelligence, are we prepared to set up our lives in sustainable ways?

Japan, as much as any nation on earth, has proven that humans are adaptable. The rise of Japan after its crushing defeat in World War II is an inspiration to what’s possible. Much in Japanese society changed and changed radically after the war. Other characteristics of that unique nation were leveraged for the success that came in the decades after 1945.

There is much we can do to alter our ways to make this world a healthier and more sustainable place. Is it time to shut down nuclear reactors? What are the threats to nuclear plants both from nature and from humans (through incompetent management or terrorism)? If we shut them down, what power sources will replace them? How much longer will oil supplies sustain us? At what cost? Can we extract natural gas without poisoning our water? Will we create a natural gas industry that will even try or care? Will we move forward with developing solar as an energy source? How many years off are we from making solar viable? As solar becomes more and more viable, what investments will be required and how long will it take to use that energy source on a massive scale? What about other renewable energy sources, can they make a dent in our massive demand?

Pushing forward aggressively, with purpose and resolve, is something that we owe to ourselves, but even more, to those who will come after us.

What will the tipping point be for such a transformation to occur? Will we reach it while we still have some control over our destinies?

Let’s look to the Japan of 1945 to circa 1985 and apply the many lessons from the dramatic rebirth of that nation to these energy-related problems.

There is something about tragedies that tends to bring the best out in people. Such tragedies also make us pause and ponder life on earth.

The many facets of the situation in Japan highlight challenges that we face around the world. How we power our world is one of the overarching challenges of our times. The humanitarian tragedy resulting from the quake and tsunami in one of the world’s most advanced nation’s is sobering. But the situation with the damaged nuclear plants in Japan is another wake-up call that it’s time for a new energy era. Anything is possible. As stupid as we can be as a species, we can also be utterly imaginative, resourceful even brilliant.

It’s past time to put the best traits of our species to work to develop new ways to power our world.