local ecologist

Donning a Green Collar, Boston Globe

Amid the uncertainty, there’s a growing movement among community organizations, environmental groups, unions, and workforce development agencies to pinpoint what jobs will become available and how to get people into them. The goal is to create “green-collar” jobs that would provide those often shut out of new job opportunities - such as people of color, the poor, at-risk youth, the underemployed, the unemployed, and the formerly incarcerated - the training necessary to compete for positions in the burgeoning field.

Wings & a Prayer, Boston Globe North

Scientists aren’t sure where the Plum Island contamination is coming from, but they do know that other species around the country with high mercury levels, such as loons, produce fewer offspring. Roughly 95 percent of the world’s saltmarsh sparrows breed in the Northeast, where mercury contamination is among the highest in the nation. Because the sparrows spend their lives in the marsh, essentially unable to escape the pollution, scientists believe the elevated amounts of mercury found in these tiny birds may be a harbinger for many other species that also depend on the wetlands.

With Gas Over $4, Cities Explore Whether It’s Smart to Be Dense, Wall Street Journal

For decades, backers of “smart-growth” planning principles have preached the benefit of clustering the places where people live more closely with the businesses where they work and shop. Less travel would mean less fuel consumption and less air pollution. Several communities built from scratch upon those principles, such as Celebration in Florida, sprouted across the country. But they were often isolated experiments, connected to their surroundings mainly by car. So, as gasoline remained cheap, the rest of the country continued its inexorable march toward bigger houses and longer commutes.

Now, smart-growth fans see a chance to reverse that.

“Expensive oil is going to transform the American culture as radically as cheap oil did,” predicts David Mogavero, a Sacramento-based architect and smart-growth proponent.

Worries Mount as Farmers Push for Big Harvest

Last winter, as the full scope of the global food crisis became clear, commodity prices doubled or tripled, provoking grumbling in America, riots in two dozen countries and the specter of greatly increased malnutrition.

State-grown Tomatoes OK, but Warning Widens

…leery shoppers seem to be redirecting some of their tomato shopping away from supermarkets and toward farmers’ markets, where most produce is grown locally in small batches.

Growers nationwide urged health officials to speed up their investigation into the origins of the salmonella, before massive quantities of tomatoes that are awaiting sale end up rotting.

Is Bamboo Flooring Actually Good for the Environment?

Don’t automatically assume that bamboo is the environmental winner, especially if there’s a locally sourced, FSC-certified hardwood option. If you are tempted by bamboo, don’t settle for the salesman’s patter about his product’s wonders—get in touch with the manufacturer and inquire about how the source material is raised and harvested. Some of the greenest bamboo doesn’t come from monoculture plantations but, rather, from operations such as Madagascar Bamboo, which harvests naturally occurring plants from the edges of farms.

Banking on Gardening

“I’m hoping to take $20 a week off my grocery bill,” she said. This is in the low range, according to Mr. Ball, who says a $100 investment will produce $1,000 to $1,700 worth of vegetables.

Loyal to Its Roots

The sea rocket, researchers report, can distinguish between plants that are related to it and those that are not. And not only does this plant recognize its kin, but it also gives them preferential treatment.

If the sea rocket detects unrelated plants growing in the ground with it, the plant aggressively sprouts nutrient-grabbing roots. But if it detects family, it politely restrains itself.

Guerrilla Gardening (need Times account to access the article)

Yet aside from a few tomatoes and some Swiss chard, which he says “tasted dirty,” Reynolds has never grown any food. Nor is he too tied to gardening as an ecological act, a way of restoring nature’s order; he gladly plants invasive species if they’re aesthetically appropriate to the setting. Instead, he seems to focus on guerrilla gardening as a socially subversive phenomenon, breaking us out of the unconstructive role we’ve cast ourselves in as citizens.