Protecting Our Air, Land & Sea
What's Happening Now & Why
“Biden proposes making underwater canyon off New York a marine sanctuary…
The Hudson Canyon — spanning nearly 7½ miles wide and more than two miles deep in some places — rivals the Grand Canyon in scale. The push to add it to the National Marine Sanctuary System reflects the Biden administration’s broader effort to safeguard critical habitat threatened by development and global warming by conserving 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters by 2030.”
There have been several positive undertakings for our environment that have been announced fairly recently, and I wanted to share these glimmers of hope with you for your reading enjoyment this weekend. These changes in government policies and a launch of a creative project are intended to better our world now and in the future, and not just for us, but the myriad living creatures with whom we share this planet.
President Biden’s considerable actions to protect the environment have already received criticism in some circles. I know that many of us are on edge these days—who wouldn’t be after a couple of years of pandemic isolation, followed by the slap in the face of inflation, the pain of rampant gun violence and unprecedented corruption in our own government. We are reeling. During such times, maybe we tend to feel that we deserve to have all of our needs and our wants satisfied—and right now. But now is exactly the time to think about our common good, and what we can do individually and collectively to help heal one another and our country.
— First up for today is a National Audubon Society multidisciplinary project called “For the Birds: The Birdsong Project”. A movement inspiring bird conservation through art.
New volumes of work will be released each month from May through September, 2022.
According to the National Audubon Society website:
Birds are sounding the alarm. They are telling us that their natural habitats are at risk due to climate change. Now is the time for us to listen. Here are some ways that you can enjoy and protect birds today.
Here is a short promo video for the project—enjoy!
And learn what you can do right now to protect our beautiful birds and their habitats .
— In late April of this year, the Biden administration reversed former President Trump’s policy to expand oil and gas drilling in our country’s largest area of public land, the Petroleum Reserve of Alaska. The Trump administration expanded the area allowing oil and gas extraction from about 52% of the Reserve to 82%. Now Biden’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the reserve, is shrinking the acreage allowed for drilling back to the Obama era, 52%.
CNBC’s reporting on this reversal noted:
Oil and gas production on the reserve has the potential to release over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon released in the entire country in 2019, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
— And finally for this weekend’s reads, here’s a new plan to protect a unique underwater habitat: the Hudson Canyon, “one of the largest underwater canyons in the world.”
On June 8, in conjunction with World Ocean’s Day, the Biden administration proposed to designate the Hudson Canyon as a new National Marine Sanctuary, which gives it at least some of the same protections as our national parks.
John Calvelli, the [Wildlife Conservation] society’s executive vice president for public affairs, said in an interview that the canyon has the potential to become a haven for ocean creatures threatened by climate change.
“The thinking is this area could really become a refuge for species that need colder water,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re protecting it for the future.”
I wish I could understand what exactly creates the narrow, short-sighted thinking that puts short-term profit and permanent destruction of our few remaining pristine lands ahead of our planet’s long-term health, which is our immediate and long-term health . Maybe you can help me understand this phenomenon in the comments section below.
My thinking is that if our country, or at least this administration, has returned to caring about climate change enough to take action, these are the type of decisions that must be made now to preserve our future.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. All comments are welcome!
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Thank you for all these updates! I can’t wait to see the songbird project!