Preview The MA Ballot
A Voter Guide for the September 4, 2018 Primary Election
The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts is pleased to provide a voter guide for the September 4th, 2018 Primary Election.This information is nonpartisan. The League never endorses, supports or opposes any candidate or political party. Click here to view the ballot & voter guide.To find your polling place, click here. FROM LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF MASSACHUSETTS <more>
Viceroys – Master Mimics
Protecting Endangered Species
Recently, the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) has come under unprecedented threat. More than two dozen pieces of legislation and policy proposals designed to weaken the law have surfaced. Mass Audubon has been advocating in support of upholding the ESA, which has been in place for 45 years. FROM MASS AUDUBON <more>
A piece of Alaskan paradise is at risk.
Here’s why we must save it.
The Tongass national forest is America’s premier temperate rainforest, but Sonny Perdue wants it open for business. Over the years, I’ve walked many visitors into the Tongass national forest in Alaska, and watched the city tinsel drop from their eyes. They often sit quietly and look around, and for the first time in a long time breathe from the bottom of their lungs. FROM THE GUARDIAN <more>
Northern Woodlands Conference October 12-14 featuring Ben Cosgrove, Bryan Pfeiffer, Erica Heilman, Jerry Jenkins
Enjoy a fun, informal weekend with the Northern Woodlands crew at the Hulbert Outdoor Center on Lake Morey, while engaging with writers, scientists, artists, and educators. Writing workshops, natural history presentations, woods walks, and more! FROM NORTHERN WOODLANDS <more>
Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289 Million in
Roundup Cancer Trial
A California jury on Friday found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a school groundskeeper who said the company’s weedkillers, including Roundup, caused his cancer. The company was ordered pay $289 million in damages. FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES <more>
JOBS BOARD
Preview The MA Ballot
A Voter Guide for the September 4, 2018 Primary Election
FROM LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF MASSACHUSETTS
The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts is pleased to provide a voter guide for the September 4th, 2018 Primary Election.
This information is nonpartisan. The League never endorses, supports or opposes any candidate or political party.
Click here to view the ballot & voter guide.
To find your polling place, click here
Viceroys – Master Mimics
A plump caterpillar is irresistible to many insect-eating birds, and some of them (notably Viceroys and Giant Swallowtails) have outfoxed their predators by assuming the appearance of bird droppings, which one assumes is a far less appealing meal. They do this using color, pattern, choice of resting place and even position – contorting their bodies to match the shape of bird droppings. The Viceroy (Limenitis archippus) uses this technique during its later larval and pupal stages.
The adult Viceroy butterfly also uses mimicry to enhance its survival, but it mimics another butterfly — the Monarch — not bird droppings. Both the Viceroy and the Monarch are unpalatable and contribute to each other’s protection from birds with this strategy, a relationship known as Mullerian mimicry.
In New England there can be up to three broods of Viceroys, with the larvae of some of the second brood and all of the third brood overwintering and pupating in the spring.
Protecting Endangered Species
Recently, the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) has come under unprecedented threat. More than two dozen pieces of legislation and policy proposals designed to weaken the law have surfaced. Mass Audubon has been advocating in support of upholding the ESA, which has been in place for 45 years.
Here are just three species that rely on the Endangered Species Act for protection and what Mass Audubon is doing to ensure that they remain in Massachusetts for generations to come.
Kemps Ridley
Federal Status: Endangered
Most sea turtles are ectothermic, meaning that their body temperature is regulated by the temperature of the water around them. As winter approaches, the water temperature of Cape Cod Bay slowly drops, and sea turtles should make their way south to warmer tropical waters.
However, each year some juvenile turtles do not make the journey in time and become disoriented. By mid-November, the turtles are often too cold to eat, drink, or swim, and become “cold-stunned.” The turtles are often then pushed up onto the beach by strong winds, and left behind by the receding tide.
The smallest and most endangered sea turtle in the world, the Kemps Ridley is also the most common turtle to strand on bayside beaches each winter. Several hundred have stranded each winter on Cape Cod in recent years.
Since 1979, Wellfleet Bay staff and hundreds of volunteers have patrolled the beaches of Cape Cod, on the lookout for these cold-stunned turtles. Their efforts have resulted in the recovery of thousands of cold-stunned Kemps Ridleys over the past decade.
Rusty Patched Bumble Bee
Federal Status: Threatened
As recently as 30 years ago, this bumblebee was commonly found in a variety of habitats including prairies, woodlands, marshes, and residential parks and gardens. Their drastic decline started in the mid-1990s, and today they are very rare. This important pollinator is the first bee species to ever be added to the federal endangered species list.
Mass Audubon is protecting and maintaining old field habitats and installing pollinator gardens to support these bees and many other pollinators that live in the Commonwealth. We’ve also supported proposed state legislation that would help improve pollinator health, along with pollinator-friendly land protection programs.
Piping Plovers
Federal Status: Threatened
The dynamic coastal habitats of Massachusetts are the perfect fit for determined sparrow-sized, sand-colored Piping Plovers. Likely widespread on our coasts historically, Piping Plovers suffered an extreme decline in the early 20th century.
Thanks to the protection of the state and federal agencies, supportive beach communities, and initiatives like Mass Audubon’s Coastal Waterbird Program (CWP), the population has increased five-fold in Massachusetts since the mid-1980s.
CWP is dedicated to protecting coastal habitat for Piping Plovers and other shoreline-dependent birds. By erecting fencing to protect nesting areas, CWP ensures that Piping Plovers have the space to protect and raise their young. CWP also collects detailed data on nesting success and challenges in order to adapt beach management plans across the state.
By providing shorebird education and training opportunities to partners and students of conservation, CWP hopes to ensure the success of Piping Plovers and the enjoyment of our coastal habitats for generations to come.
How You Can Help
Contact your federal legislators and let them know you support the Endangered Species Act. Urge them to oppose any legislative attempts to weaken it that come before them for a vote.
Urge the federal government to continue protecting “threatened” species in the same way they protect endangered species. Waiting until a species becomes endangered increases the risk of extinction, as well as the level of effort and cost required to achieve species recovery. Submit comments >
Urge decision-makers to continue basing rare species protections on scientific data, not on potential economic impacts. Changing how these decisions are made could give corporations more leeway to develop protected habitats, and may make it easier for roads, pipelines, etc., including projects on public lands, to gain approvals despite impacts to endangered or threatened species. Submit comments >
The Tongass national forest is America’s premier temperate rainforest, but Sonny Perdue wants it open for business.
Over the years, I’ve walked many visitors into the Tongass national forest in Alaska, and watched the city tinsel drop from their eyes. They often sit quietly and look around, and for the first time in a long time breathe from the bottom of their lungs.
I live here, I tell them.
I live here, in this land made of water, where green is not just a color, it’s a texture. Where salmon run and bears roam, and whales swim into my dreams. Where my neighbors and I build our homes from wood selectively cut and locally milled. Where we pick berries and hunt deer, and remember the slaughter, back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, when US taxpayers heavily subsidized large-scale clearcut logging.
The trees often became pulp, which in turn became rayon and cellophane to make disposable diapers and other throwaway consumer products. Whole logs were even shipped to China and Japan.
For all this, our senator William Proxmire – bless his courageous heart – gave the US Forest Service (USFS) the “Golden Fleece Award” to draw attention to such waste.
This massacre might now return, as the secretary of agriculture, Sonny Perdue, wants to put Alaska’s Tongass national forest back to work as a “healthy” forest.
“Healthy forests produce health in many ways,” Perdue said, “for humans, for wildlife, for fishing, for water quality and for beauty. Actually, we see this in many places. This is Senator Murkowski’s desire as well.” That would be the same Lisa Murkowski, who pushed for oil drilling in the Arctic national wildlife refuge.
Don’t be fooled. In short, Perdue and Murkowski want to exempt Alaska from the 2001 USFS “roadless rule” that prohibits road building on 44.8m acres in 37 states. They want to expand clearcut logging (and road building) in America’s premier temperate rainforest, one of the rarest biomes in the world.
This would create jobs, yes. A few. But in today’s world not every job is a smart job. Not every job makes the world a better place.
Back in 1999, more than 1.6 million people commented on the USFS roadless rule, with 95% supporting strong roadless protection to keep forests pristine, waters clean.
If Perdue understood ecology, climate science and environmental economics, he’d see the Tongass as already healthy, and working for us. Primal old-growth trees – the trees Perdue wants to cut down – breathe in vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2, a greenhouse gas), sequester it, and exhale life-giving oxygen. In today’s warming world, it’s the best deal going.
Together with phytoplankton in the oceans, primal forests are the lungs of the earth, a valuable safety valve against runaway climate change, with all its droughts, fires and floods, including the biggest flood of all: our rising, acidifying seas (where atmospheric CO2 is absorbed in the oceans to become carbonic acid).
But many Republicans regard this environmental talk as liberal nonsense. Let’s put these forests back to work, they say. Is this who we are? For a forest to be healthy, we must cut it down? We must lay bare entire valleys and mountainsides?
Around the world, nature does an estimated $340bn of work for humans, for free, each day. Trees respiring, salmon returning, bees pollinating. Real-world economists call these “ecosystem services” (or “natural capital”), and take them seriously. It’s not a matter of the environment versus the economy. The environment is the economy. Nature underwrites the underwriters.
“What is the use of a house,” Thoreau reminds us, “if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
The Tongass national forest is already working for us. Let it be.
Kim Heacox is the author of many books, most recently Jimmy Bluefeather, the only novel to win the National Outdoor Book Award.
Northern Woodlands Conference October 12-14 featuring Ben Cosgrove, Bryan Pfeiffer, Erica Heilman, Jerry Jenkins
Enjoy a fun, informal weekend with the Northern Woodlands crew at the Hulbert Outdoor Center on Lake Morey, while engaging with writers, scientists, artists, and educators. Writing workshops, natural history presentations, woods walks, and more!
Sponsored by The Bailey Charitable Foundation, this event celebrates the natural history of our region and the interactions of people and place. Check out these photosfrom previous years to get a feel for the event.
Professional development hours will be awarded upon request. Enrollment limited.Questions? Contact conference coordinator Emily Rowe at emily(at)northernwoodlands.org.
Visit the Participant Information page for everything you need to know as you plan for this fun weekend.
Register Today!
Early Bird Special: use special offer code EarlyBird to save 10% off! Special ends August 31. Must use code at check-out receive discount!
Program Features
View the Weekend Schedule At-a-Glance
View the Complete Weekend Schedule with Descriptions
View the Speaker Biographies
Keynote Speaker:
Bryan Pfeiffer, writer, photographer, field naturalist, faculty in public communications at University of Vermont, consulting entomologist, tour guide, co-author Birdwatching in Vermont, co-founder Vermont Butterfly Survey and Vermont Damselfly and Dragonfly Atlas.
Plenary Speakers:
- Ben Cosgrove, musician (albums include Salt and Field Studies), essayist, former fellow or artist-in-residence at Acadia National Park, Harvard University, Isle Royale National Park, Middlebury College, White Mountain National Forest, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.
- Erica Heilman, creator & host of Rumble Strip podcast, featured on NPR’s Day to Day, Hearing Voices, SOUNDPRINT, KCRW’s UnFictionaland major public radio affiliates, former documentary television producer for WNET, HBO and ABC News.
- Jerry Jenkins, botanist & ecologist, Director, Northern Forest Atlas, author of Woody Plants of the Northern Forest,The Adirondack Atlas, Acid Rain in the Adirondacks, Protecting Biodiversity on Conservation Easements, and Climate Change in the Adirondacks.
Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289 Million in
Roundup Cancer Trial
A California jury on Friday found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a school groundskeeper who said the company’s weedkillers, including Roundup, caused his cancer. The company was ordered pay $289 million in damages.
The case of the groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, 46, was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging that Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers cause cancer. Monsanto, a unit of the German conglomerate Bayer following a $62.5 billion acquisition, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States.
Mr. Johnson’s lawyers said he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using Roundup and Ranger Pro, another Monsanto glyphosate herbicide, as part of his job as a pest control manager for a California county school system.
The jury in Superior Court of California in San Francisco deliberated for three days before finding that Monsanto had failed to warn Mr. Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weedkillers.
It awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.
Monsanto said in a statement that it would appeal the verdict. More than 800 scientific studies and reviews “support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer,” the company said.
The lawsuit, filed in 2016, was put on the fast track for trial because of the severity of Mr. Johnson’s cancer. His doctors said he was unlikely to live past 2020.
Brent Wisner, a lawyer for Mr. Johnson, said in a statement that jurors had seen for the first time internal company documents “proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer.” He called on Monsanto to “put consumer safety first over profits.”
in September 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found that the chemical was not likely carcinogenic to humans. But the World Health Organization’s cancer arm in 2015 classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”