or… A world without elephants?

I was in a “SoulCollage” workshop last week where a gal was mesmerized by a close-up photo of the happily-twised trunk of an elephant. She chose the image to represent her spiritual teacher from whom she had received many gifts. Will future generations know the embodied and spiritual gifts of our elephant companions?

In the mutually enhancing world of the Ecozoic all species have the right to habitat and to participate and contribute to the Earth community.

Celebrate World Elephant Day, August 12! Have an elephant party?

Short article at ENN: https://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/46308

Long article at the website of World Elephant Day: https://worldelephantday.org/about

A book by George Monbiot

Published by Allen Lane, May 2013

The book introduces a radical new type of ‘hands-off’ nature conservation called Rewilding, and takes the reader on George’s own journey to re-connect with the natural world.

Discussing his fiercely positive vision for a grand-scale restoration of Earth’s ecosystems, George will advocate for the need to let nature take control of its own regeneration, drawing on breakthroughs in ecological science, Gaia theory and a wealth of his own research, to supports his arguments. Recognising that we as humans are embedded within our ecosystems, he will also demonstrate how rewilding can offer humanity a new and positive form of environmentalism at a time when we desperately need one, proving that a hopeful future for our planet, and ourselves, is possible. George Monbiot is a journalist, environmentalist and author well known for his environmental and political activism. He has written a number of bestselling books of which ‘Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the ­Frontiers of Rewilding‘ is his latest. George is also the founder of The Land is Ours– a peaceful campaign for the public right of access to the countryside in the UK.

*****

Press Reviews

Philip Hoare in The Sunday Telegraph:
“The book justifies its subtitle with rhapsodic descriptions of forays into the natural world. Whether kayaking off the British coast or walking the Kenyan bush, Monbiot – who studied zoology at Oxford – focuses our minds on what we have lost, and what we stand to gain. … as a passionate polemic, it could not be more rigorously researched, more elegantly delivered, or more timely. We need such big thinking for our own sakes and those of our children. Bring on the wolves and whales, I say, and, in the words of Maurice Sendak, let the wild rumpus start.”

Betty just called to say that Lonesome George died on Sunday. We saw him in Galapagos Islands in 2005. Though he had lots of girl friends he never had any viable babies. His species is gone forever with his passing.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18574279

The sign, below, reads:

“Many of the endangered populations of Galapagos tortoises have been brought back from the edge of extinction through our breeding, rearing and repatriation program. But others, like the Pinta Island tortoise, face a precarious future. Lonesome George, the last tortoise found on Pinta Island, is a sad reminder of the results of thoughtless exploitation by humans.”

It continues:

“In the 1800s whalers carried off thousands of Pinta tortoises for their “sweet meate”. Tortoises were also hunted for their oil. Oil hunters slaughtered the animals where they found them, leaving scenes of grim devastation.   (A picture of the slaughter on a sign at Galapagos.)  In the 1950s, goats* were introduced to Pinta; changing the island’s environment forever. In their wake, they left little food and no shelter for the Pinta tortoise, and destroyed their nesting sites.” 

And continues, below the center photo (with blue sky) on the sign:

“Alone and surrounded by devastated vegetation, Lonesome George spends his last days on Pinta (Island) before being moved to the Tortoise Rearing Center in 1972.”

And continues, to the right of Lonesome George’s big photo:

“The Search for a Suitable Mate – The search for any females on Pinta and among other captive tortoises in the world continues in the hopes of finding a mate for George. George lives with two females (who are) from Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island; they are considered his closest genetic relations. However, George, for unknown reasons, will not breed.”

It finishes, lower right of the sign:

“Can we save the Pinta Island Tortise? Scientists use blood samples from giant Galapagos tortoises and others found worldwide to study genetic variation. In the future, this information will be used to choose a close genetic match for Lonesome George. Less than one in several thousand attempts at cloning succeed. Since cloning George would be extremely costly and likely fail, it will only be considered when all other potions have been exhausted.”

*Introduced goats still ravage  the various islands. A goat was caught by one of our guides on one of the islands we visited. I watched it be killed (she was pregnant with twins), skinned, and roughly cleaned on the island. Back on the boat fresh goat curry was served for dinner that night. Tasty! Was that mutually enhancing?

The transformation to the Ecozoic Era is a global phenomenon. It affects all humans, all species, all continents, all waters, all gases, all lands. How can the translation continue, past human language, to be experienced by the Earth community in toto? This is our Great Work.

The “translate” button is below the moon phases on the right side of the page.

I would be very glad to have feedback from you native readers of other languages as to how true the translation is into your language. Do the often-nuanced Ecozoic ideas permeate through the translation?

Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Earth, an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is a free, expert-reviewed collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other’s work. The articles are written in non-technical language and are useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public.

www.eoearth.org/

This NASA photo made me realize I’d never considered what an eclipse looks like from space. Here is a beautiful photo of Mother Earth’s experience of the eclipse. It might be hard to notice at first, but look for the shadow over the Libya-Chad area of the top part of Africa, west of the Nile  River.

The image above shows the total solar eclipse of March 29, 2006 as observed from the MSG satellite, in geostationary orbit 22,369 mi (36,000 km) above the equator.

Note that the eclipsed area, where the shadow of the full Moon reached the Earth’s surface, lies over the cloudless, east central Sahara Desert.

The region that experienced a total solar eclipse at the time this image was acquired (10:00 UTC) is located at the center of the deeply shadowed region (umbra). This region has a diameter of about 112 mi (180 km). The dark region (penumbra) just outside the deepest shadow experienced a partial solar eclipse.

Image provided by: Maximilian Reuter; Maximilian’s website
Summary Author: Maximilian Reuter; Susanne Pfeifer; Jim Foster

epod.usra.edu/blog/2011/08/total-solar-eclipse-from-the-perspective-of-space.html

From Earth Science Picture of the Day at epod.usra.edu/blog/2011/07/mycorrhizal-fungi.html for July 24, 2011.

(EPOD is a service of NASA’s Earth Science Division and the EOS Project Science Office (at Goddard Space Flight Center) and the Universities Space Research Association.)

Photographer: Phil Lachman
Summary Author: Phil Lachman

The photo above shows a lovely group of mushrooms nestled against the trunk of a eucalyptus tree. The association between the fungi and the tree however is no accident. This is a mutualistic relationship, where the two species assist each other, and in fact probably would be poorer without each other. Mutualism is any relationship between two species of organisms that benefits both species. Up to a quarter of the mushrooms you see while walking through the woods actually make their living through a mutualistic relationship with the trees in the forest. Remember of course that the mushroom is just the reproductive structure of a far more extensive organism consisting of a highly intertwined mass of fine white threads called a mycelium.

The word mycorrhiza is derived from the Classical Greek words for “mushroom” and “root.” In a mycorrhizal association, the fungal hyphae of an underground mycelium are in contact with plant roots but without the fungus parasitizing the plant. While it’s clear that the majority of plants form mycorrhizas, the exact percentage is uncertain, but it’s likely to lie somewhere between 80 and 90 percent. When the fungus’ mycelium envelopes the roots of the tree the effect is to greatly increase the soil area covered by the tree’s root system. This essentially extends the plant’s reach to water and nutrients, allowing it to utilize more of the soil’s resources. This mutualistic association provides the fungus with a relatively constant and direct access to carbohydrates, such as glucose and sucrose, supplied by the plant. In return the plant gains the benefits of the mycelium’s higher absorptive capacity for water and mineral nutrients (due to comparatively large surface area of mycelium-to-root ratio), thus improving the plant’s mineral absorption capabilities. Photo taken on May 7, 2011.

Wow! This website is fantastic! Chock full of resources, easy to navigate, clear as a bell. With a fantastic bibliography!

The collective work of Drs. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, this site is their work, vision, and passion in a nutshell.

emergingearthcommunity.org/

Tree: sagole baobab #0707-00505 (2,000 years old; limpopo province, south africa) Rachael Sussman https://rachelsussman.com/portfolios/OLTW/main.html

Bacteria: siberian actinobacteria #tv-26 (400,000 – 600,000 years old; neils bohr institute, copenhagen)

Rachael Sussman recently presented at The Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, Calif. Here is Stewart Brand's summary of her photographic presentation of Earth's oldest living beings.

Creative photographer Sussman showed beautiful slides of very elderly organisms. The captions were as crucial as the images—naming the species, the place, and the approximate age. You can see many of them here: https://rachelsussman.com/portfolios/OLTW/main.html

The series began with the only animal—an eighteen-foot brain coral in the waters of Tobago, thought to be 2,000 years old. An enormous baobob in South Africa might be 2,000 years old. Then there is the astounding welwitschia mirabilis of the Namibian desert, a conifer that feeds on mist, with the longest leaves in the plant kingdom.

Of course there was a redwood in our Sequoia National Park dated precisely to 2,150 years in age. On a remote Japan island, a two-day hike was needed to track down a gorgeous cedar somewhere between 2,000 and 7,000 years old. In Perthshire, Scotland, a churchyard was long ago build around huge yew tree that now is between 2,000 and 5,000 years old. In Chile the Patagonian cypress gets up to 2,200 years old, and a chestnut tree on the island of Sicily has been there for 3,000 years. On Crete there's an olive tree that might be the oldest in the world—3,000 years. It still bears olives. It may well have been preserved because its hollow trunk served for generations as a chicken coop.

Lichen in Greenland grows 1 centimeter every 100 years. So a large specimen could be dated to 3,000 years. In the Atacama Desert at
15,000 feet in Chile, a shrub called La Llareta grows only 1.5 centimeters a year and is so dense you can stand on its leaf structure. They get to 3,000 years old. The bristlecone pines much beloved at Long Now have been dated up to 5,000 years old.

Send in the clones. Cloned forests are basically one individual that sends up a multitude of stems from a single extensive, very long-lived root system. Sussman found a clonal forest of spruce in Sweden that is 9,550 years old; box huckleberry in Pennsylvania 13,000 years old; aspens in Utah 80,000 years old; and clonal sea grass off of Spain that is 100,000 years old.

So far the age champion is an actinobacteria that lives in Siberian permafrost—alive for 400 to 600,000 years—half a million years.

Sussman found all these creatures with the guidance of remarkable field biologists who have never met each other, because biological
longevity is not yet a science. Artist Sussman is startled to be its first practitioner. She has two more years to go on this project. Long Now would love to see a conference mustered at the end of her project to bring together all the scientists she's gotten to know, to see what aggregating their knowledge might conjure up. If sponsors are interested, Long Now would be glad to organize the event.

–Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand — sb@gbn.org
The Long Now Foundation – https://www.longnow.org
Seminars & downloads: https://www.longnow.org/seminars/

Scientists at Harvard have harnessed their fascination of the molecular world with 21st-century digital animation to visually tell the story of the inner life of a cell. The results rival anything in Hollywood. Now that's entertainment! Now playing in a living cell near you.

from the New York Times via M.P. November 15, 2010 (short advertisement precedes the video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VXCIU89pGs (5:45)

Other work by the same folks:

https://www.xvivo.net/the-inner-life-of-the-cell/