The environment and its' effects on each of us is becoming an increasingly important aspect of how we live our everyday life. Not just where we choose to live but how our surroundings affect each of us physically and psychologically. Environmental affects from air pollution, water pollution, noise and even light pollution can disturb sleep patterns, affecting your general health and well being, further affecting how you function on a day to day basis.

Concerns surrounding conservation, recycling and how to limit consumption of resources are becoming increasingly prevalent as more and more individuals ask themselves; "In what condition will I leave the earth for my children...and their children?" Being aware of how minor adjustments made in your daily habits impact the earths limited natural resources is the first step towards living a sustainable, healther life.

There are simple ways to modify habits, being mindful of your personal conservation efforts. By simply ride-sharing or using public transportation just twice a week, or by watering your lawn early in the morning before the sun heats the surface of your lawn, causing water evaporation. In addition, cooking with fresh, raw foods that do not require energy for processing will make a big, positive impact on the health of our planet and available resources for future generations.

Additionally, more homebuilders are recognizing the importance of "Green Construction". Green built homes are being developed throughout our state and nation. Green construction includes building with recycled raw materials, high density insulation, high efficiency appliances, hot water and radiant heat, passive and active solar heating and other energy conserving materials and methods. Don't forget to xeriscape your yard with indigenous trees, foliage and grasses to further beautify your home while increasing the planets natural resources. Don't be surprised if you see new species of birds visiting the outdoor sanctuary you create!

To promote the awareness of conservation issues and prudent living to help us protect our planet, at the closing of your sale or purchase transaction with me, I will make a tax-deductible donation in your name to the environmental organization of your choice. By having a greater understanding of how we impact the earth and, in turn, how those environmental impacts affect us, it simply makes sense that when we care for the environment, the environment will take care of us. For additional information on issues that affect us all, I have added several informative links for your review.

Center for Resource Conservation
Ecocycle Colorado
PVC: The Poison Plastic
Environment Colorado
Western Resource Advocates
Global Warming
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education
American Water Works Association
Clean Water Action Colorado
Built Green Colorado
Greenerbuilding
E-Star
Air Care Colorado
The Keystone Center
Arbor Day Foundation
Xeriscape Colorado, Inc.
National Wildlife Federation
Sierra Club

Helpful and Healthful Reading

Walden Warming
Author: T. Edward Nickens -- Originally published in National Wildlife Magazine

Following in Thoreau’s footsteps, Massachusetts researchers are creating the most complete picture yet of global warming’s impact on the biology of a U.S. region. >> read more

MAY 10, 1853, was a warm day outside Concord, Massachusetts—an early spring day when a New Englander outdoors would “begin to think of thin coats,” noted Henry David Thoreau. Walking from Concord towards Saw Mill Brook, Thoreau jotted down what he saw. “The deciduous woods were in their hoary youth,” he wrote, “every expanding bud swaddled with downy webs.” Nodding trillium had flower buds, and hornbeam was about to bloom. Pear trees had blossomed, and the butternut buds were the most pronounced of all the woods’ hickories. He heard the spring’s first veery. “It is remarkable,” wrote Thoreau, “that I saw this morning for the first time the bobolink, gold robin [most likely a northern oriole], and kingbird.”

Remarkable, too, that he kept such meticulous records. In fact, on almost every spring morning between 1851 and 1858, long after his private tenure at Walden Pond, Thoreau explored the ponds and shady woods around Concord, observing nature. For day after day, year after year, he searched for the first blooms of more than 300 plant species and watched for the first arrivals of migrating birds.

Today, nearly 160 years later, Thoreau’s detailed observations form the basis of a long-term study of how climate change is altering the timing of seasonal biological events—or phenology—and how such shifts may in turn impact the wildlife and wild places of an entire region. Researchers from Boston University have assembled a vast array of biological data—arboretum specimens, old photographs and the observations of local citizens, in addition to Thoreau’s journals—to produce a baseline of springtime events for the Concord area. Comparing these data to the results of their own exhaustive, five-year effort to walk, literally, in Thoreau’s footsteps, the scientists can now tell a story that New England’s favorite naturalist-philosopher might never have imagined: As Massachusetts warms, flowers are blooming, trees are leafing out, and birds are arriving as many as three weeks earlier than they did in the mid-nineteenth century. “If Thoreau were alive today, he would be very concerned about this,” says Richard Primack, a biology professor at Boston University and lead researcher on the project.

NOTING NATURE Thoreau, famous for his prodigious note-keeping, recorded his seasonal observations in tables sketched on large sheets of surveyor’s paper. “I take infinite pains to know all of the phenomena of the spring,” he explained in one journal entry. Thoreau intended to publish a book about the unfolding of spring in the woods around Concord, but his death in 1862 derailed the project, and his notes were scattered among library collections across the country.

Four years ago, however, Primack learned that an independent New Hampshire scholar named Brad Dean had spent 10 years tracking down these original sheets, making copies and reassembling the data. By then, Primack, author of A Primer on Conservation Biology, was looking for studies demonstrating physical evidence of global warming. He and graduate student Abraham Miller-Rushing couldn’t believe their good fortune. Still, it took Primack’s team nearly nine months to decipher Thoreau’s famously poor handwriting and archaic species names and plug the information into a usable spreadsheet.

At the same time, the scientists’ sleuthing uncovered a trove of other regional records to augment Thoreau’s notes. At Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, one of the oldest public botanical gardens in the United States, they were able to compare the flowering times of 229 plants in 2003 with records of flowering times of the same individual plants going back as far as 1885. In Concord, they found a collection of images from a photographer, Herbert Wendell Gleason, who between 1900 and 1921 took and dated photographs of many of the plants and places mentioned in Thoreau’s journals. From these, the scientists gleaned flowering data on 17 species of wild plants, including pink lady’s slipper, which flowered six weeks earlier in 2005 than in 1917.

Some of the richest sources of data turned out to be citizen-scientists in the mold of Thoreau himself. From 1888 to 1902, a Concord shopkeeper named Alfred Hosmer, inspired by Thoreau’s writings, recorded the first flowering dates of more than 700 plant species in the area. A passionate nature aficionado named Pennie Logemann provided flowering records between 1963 and 1993. And for more than half a century, Middleborough, Massachusetts, resident Kathleen Anderson has kept meticulous track of the timing of bird arrivals, plant flowerings and spring choruses of frogs and toads on her 100-acre farm. “I keep a stack of those desk calendars with one full page for each day of the week,” she explains, “and I was pretty intense about it. I noted weather conditions, temperature, rainfall, and whatever I happened to notice. Were the Canada mayflowers blooming? Were the juncos around? It was for my own enjoyment. It never occurred to me that these records would be of any use or interest to anyone whatsoever”—until she was contacted by Primack and Miller-Rushing, who crunched her observations into their expanding database.

The researchers, meanwhile, were making their own detailed observations. For the past five years, Primack and Miller-Rushing have traveled to Concord three times a week in spring and summer, walking the woods to ask the same questions that Thoreau asked: When do the flowers bloom? When do the birds return? So far, they have amassed another 100,000 data entries about the phenology of springtime plants and birds.

WHAT THE FLOWERS SAY Pooling their data, the researchers have discovered that many plants in the Concord region are flowering more than a week earlier today than when Thoreau made his observations. Highbush blueberry—one of Thoreau’s favorite wild edibles—is blooming some two weeks earlier than it did 150 years ago. Yellow wood sorrel can be found in bloom about a month earlier. During this same period, Primack says, long-term weather data show that the average temperature of a Concord spring has increased by approximately 4.5 degrees F.

Much of the temperature rise in the intensely developed Northeast is due to what’s known as the urban heat island effect—parking lots, streets and buildings absorb heat while vegetation loss lessens the release of cooling water from trees and other plants. But at least some of it can be attributed to global warming, says Primack. And on Anderson’s farm, many of the wild creatures that appear regularly each spring seem to be responding. Wood ducks are arriving about a month earlier than they did 30 years ago, for example, while ruby-throated hummingbirds show up more than 18 days sooner.

Scientists say such changes have the potential to wreak ecological havoc if interdependent species do not shift in concert. Many birds, for example, have evolved to time their spring migrations to take advantage of a flush of food sources. In New England, warbler species such as the black-throated blue warbler and American redstart feed heavily on leaf-eating caterpillars, which peak in abundance after leaf out and before leaves mature and grow tough.

In northern Europe, biologists already have found troubling evidence that one migratory bird, the pied flycatcher, has suffered from getting out of sync with its springtime food source. In the past, flycatchers arrived from their West African wintering grounds just as winter moth caterpillars were hatching. But warmer springs have pushed the caterpillar’s emergence date two weeks earlier—unbeknownst to flycatchers that are still 2,800 miles away. In regions where the timing of caterpillar abundance has shifted the most, researchers have documented a 90 percent decline in flycatcher numbers. In the United States, a similar “potential for mistimed relationships is very real,” says Primack, “but it is understudied.”

A COLD HARD LOOK To increase much needed data on global warming’s impact on U.S. species, some scientists propose identifying and training a network of modern-day Thoreaus. According to Primack, Miller-Rushing and other researchers, there is the potential for a rich interaction between scientists and members of the general public interested in gathering observations on natural phenomena such as plant flowering and the arrival of migratory birds. Countries such as England, Belgium and Canada have long embraced monitoring programs that rely, in part, on observations of nonscientists. Recently, a consortium of U.S. government agencies and academic institutions, with funding from the National Science Foundation, launched just such an effort, the National Phenological Network, to help researchers collect and disseminate information about seasonal changes.

“We desperately need a wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast network of phenological observation points—literally thousands of points on par with what is being done with meteorological observations,” explains Julio Betancourt, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, and one of the network’s founders. Volunteer observers are an important part of the process. The group’s Project BudBurst, begun as a pilot program in spring 2007, will launch nationally in January 2008. Volunteers from across the country are asked to choose from a long list of plants to watch for signs of a particular phenophase, such as budburst, first leaf or first flower, and to report observations online.

“So much of the discussion about global climate change has centered on numbers—fractions and degrees of fractions,” says biologist Mark D. Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who is helping to coordinate the network’s startup. “But when you talk about how lilacs are blooming six days earlier than they were 30 years ago, people start relating to the issue. And tell them that they can involve themselves in the process of documenting these changes, and that makes it very real.

”That’s something Kathleen Anderson understands well. “This kind of work should inspire more people to be more observant,” she says. At the age of 84, she still keeps notebooks handy at home, in the car and in the kitchen. “And it really doesn’t matter where you live. If you look closely, you’ll find enough things to interest you in the little bit of land that is around you.”

After all, as Thoreau told his friend and sometime walking companion, Ellery Channing, in 1859, “There is nothing but the seasons.” By which he might have meant that the seasons will tell all, to those who wish to hear.

Writer T. Edward Nickens is based in North Carolina. To find out how to participate in the National Phenological Network, go to www.usanpn.org.

NWF Takes Action: Fighting Global Warming

Combating global warming is a top priority for NWF, which is, among other activities, supporting national legislation to reduce greenhouse gases, publishing reports on warming’s impact on wildlife and collaborating with its state affiliates on a variety of grassroots efforts. For more information, including how you can get involved, visit www.nwf.org/globalwarming.
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'Green Roofs' Could Cool Warming Cities
Covering city buildings in vegetation – creating “green roofs” and walls – could substantially save energy by reducing the need for air conditioning on hot days, say researchers.
Author: Catherine Brahic -- Originally published on NewScientist.com news service NewScientistEnvironment

Green roofs and walls can cool local temperatures by between 3.6°C and 11.3°C, depending on the city, suggests their new study.
>>read more

Eleftheria Alexandri and Phil Jones at the Welsh School of Architecture, at the University of Cardiff in the UK, mimicked the microclimate around and inside buildings using computer modelling. They compared local temperatures when buildings were made of bare concrete with when the concrete was covered in vegetation.

Such green surfaces are already in use – roofs that are strong enough to take the additional load can be covered with mosses, turf and even trees. In Switzerland, roofs covered in alpine plants that require little soil are becoming increasingly common. Walls can also be greened, often by climbing plants planted at ground level.

Temperature drop

The researchers compared the effects of green surfaces in nine cities around the world, including subarctic Montreal in Canada, temperate London in the UK, humid Mumbai (India), and tropical Brasília (Brazil). In all cases, they studied the month during which that city sees its hottest temperatures.

They found that green walls and roofs would cool the local climate around a building in all of the cities – and the hotter the climate, the greater the cooling effect. If, for example, a group of buildings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is entirely clad in vegetation, the gap between the buildings will become 9.1°C cooler during the day, according to the researchers' model. The gap's peak temperature of the day is brought down by 11.3°C. And in London and Montreal, the peak temperature drops by just over 4°C.

Greening the walls only, and not the roofs, results in smaller effects. Maximum temperatures in London and Montreal, for example, drop by between 2.5°C and just over 3°C between the buildings. Green surfaces cool local temperatures in two ways. Firstly, the green surfaces absorb less heat from the sun. Hot surfaces warm the air around them, so by cooling the surface, the vegetation also affects air temperatures. Secondly, the plants also cool the air by evaporating water in a process known as evapotranspiration.

Lowering demand

Being dense regions of concrete and paved surfaces, cities and towns lose the cooling effects of vegetation. This generates what is known as the "urban heat island" effect. Alexandri and Jones say their results suggest the urban heat island effect could be countered by introducing green roofs and walls in cities.

They point out that, other than making cities more comfortable and safer to live in, green roofs could also significantly reduce the demand for electricity – most of which is generated by burning fossil fuels and therefore contributing to man-made global warming.

In recent years, Europe and North America have been hit by severe heatwaves, the effects of which are often most extreme in cities. In 2003, a heatwave in Europe is thought to have killed 35,000 people and hundreds died this summer in Eastern Europe. Research has shown that the frequency of extremely hot days has nearly tripled in Europe since 1880.

Eliminating air-con

"In addition to the fact that they add a further insulation layer to the building, the green surfaces can decrease air conditioning demands inside the building," says Jones.

In Brasília and Hong Kong, he and Alexandri found that the need to air-condition a building during the hottest month of the year is eliminated if it is given a green roof and green walls. Buildings in these cities would normally need air conditioning in the afternoon and early evening.

In hotter cities, such as Riyadh, the number of hours when air conditioning is needed would be cut from 12 hours to just 5. Some air conditioners still use chemicals that deplete the ozone layer and demand for air-conditioners is expected to rise as a result of global warming, so green buildings could help counter this demand.

Journal reference: Building and Environment (DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2006.10.055).

Climate Change – Want to know more about global warming: the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report.

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Factor in Food - Acting from Your Gut
When most people think about curbing global warming emissions, cars and power plants usually come to mind. But did you know that the production and transportation of the food consumed by the typical American generates nearly as much carbon dioxide as the average car? That’s because the standard kilogram of food consumed today in the United States travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate. Peter Hoffman, national chair of the Chefs Collaborative, a nationwide network of food producers with a mission to advance a more sustainable food supply, and the owner and chef of New York City’s Savoy restaurant, says, “If you want to reduce your environmental impact, in particular your carbon dioxide emissions, then the less fossil fuels that are used to get food to you, the better. You can start simply by going to a farmer’s market, buying something locally produced and incorporating it into your regular shopping.”

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Driving Down the Heat
You can’t always leave your car at the curb, but you can reduce your contribution to global warming by taking steps to improve your fuel economy
Author: Heidi Ridgley - Originally Published in National Wildlife Magazine

IN THE LAND where Arnold Schwarzenegger reigns supreme in his Hummer, a new law requiring vehicles in California to gradually emit less pollutants by improving gas mileage has car manufacturers—well—starting to fume. If it stands up in court, the rule might go a long way in fighting global warming, given the Golden State’s environmental pull on the rest of the country.
>> read more

The law requires reducing tailpipe emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2)—one of the major contributors to global warming—by 30 percent in about ten years. To do this, new cars need to burn less fuel. But while the nation waits for manufacturers to improve mileage standards—which would also increase our national security by lessening our reliance on foreign oil, and reduce pressure to drill in places like Alaska—there are a number of things concerned drivers can do right now to fight climate change, says Jim Kliesch, research associate with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

“One of the biggest is to look for the most fuel efficient car available next time you’re standing on the showroom floor,” says Kliesch. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to buy a hybrid. “Even modest improvements in fuel economy can make a difference,” he says, “especially when you look outside and see how many light trucks there are on the road.”

For example, buying a shiny, red pickup truck that gets 16 mpg over one that gets 14 mpg can save 134 gallons a year. And because each gallon of gasoline burned pumps out 19 pounds of CO2, it also keeps more than 2,000 pounds of the global warming gas out of the atmosphere.

Of course, the best option—besides your own pedal power—is sliding behind the wheel of a hybrid car, which can get up to 60 mpg. But despite the hybrid’s growing appeal, SUVs are still the vehicles that a majority of Americans hold dear. According to ACEEE statistics, every two seconds a new vehicle is purchased in this country—and every other one of them is an SUV or pickup truck. The popularity of these vehicles has resulted in a 20 percent increase in CO2 pollution since the early 1990s.

But just because it’s an SUV—which can spew up to 43 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the average car—doesn’t mean it should have a license to guzzle, says David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Today, unbelievably, the average SUV gets worse gas mileage than Ford’s Model T,” he says. “We should be able to do better than that, and the reality is we can.”

In fact, technology exists today that can increase the nation’s average fuel economy from 24 mpg—a 20-year low—to 40 mpg in the next ten years without changing the look, size or performance of the nation’s fleet, says Friedman. And raising overall fuel economy by 10 percent could cost as little as $465 a vehicle, according to a 2001 National Academy of Sciences panel. “That we are still producing vehicles as inefficient as they were 20 years ago is pathetic,” says Kliesch. “Compounding this problem, we are driving more miles than ever before.”

Vehicles in the United States release more CO2 pollution than the entire country of India emits from all its sources—electricity, heating, factories and vehicles—combined. Americans also burn a quarter of the world’s oil, according to Environmental Defense statistics, and 40 percent of that is in passenger vehicles—8.7 million barrels a day.

So what’s an environmentally aware driver—who’s not in the market for a new car—to do? For starters, drive the speed limit. “Driving 75 mph instead of 65 mph decreases fuel economy by 10 percent,” says Kliesch.

Other tips offered by ACEEE include:

*Drive gently. Flooring it and breaking abruptly can reduce gas mileage by as much as 33 percent—and increase emissions. One second of high-powered driving can produce nearly the same level of CO2 as a half hour of normal driving.

*Get junk out of your trunk. Carrying around extra weight reduces fuel economy.

*Go into overdrive on the highway, or if you’re driving a manual, upshift as often as you can. Running the engine at a higher rpm burns more fuel.

*In hot weather, don’t blast the air-conditioning right away. Drive with the windows open for 30 seconds to cool off the car before turning on the air.

*Monitor your fuel economy every couple of weeks to see if something could be amiss. “For example,” says Kliesch, “you could have a faulty oxygen sensor and you would’ve never known.”

*Replace air filters regularly. It can improve gas mileage by as much as 10 percent.

*Buy “low rolling resistant” tires. Designed to move the car forward more efficiently, they can improve gas mileage by as much as two miles per gallon.

*Keep your tires inflated. Tires lose a pound of pressure each month, and every three pounds below the recommended pressure causes fuel economy to drop by 1 percent.

*Park in the shade in summer to minimize evaporation of fuel.

*Turn the key and go. Unlike older cars and trucks, modern vehicles don’t need to warm up.

“Such small percentages may not sound like much,” says Kliesch, “but it adds up, especially if you’re going on a long trip.” And that’s fuel for thought—whether you’re Kerouacing it across the country this summer or just continuing down the road on your same old daily commute.

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Green Consumer - Pick Your Cotton
Author: Doreen Cubie - Originally Published in National Wildlife Magazine

Cotton production pumps thousands of tons of pesticides into the environment each year, but there are ways to help reduce the problem without swearing off T-shirts >> read more

LIKE MANY of her neighbors in coastal North Carolina, Amy Midyette comes down with “cotton flu” in the autumn. Her symptoms—asthma attacks, headaches, tremors and fatigue—last from two days to a week. And they reoccur every time farmers send up crop dusters to spray the fields near her home.

The chemicals that bother Midyette and other residents of cotton-growing areas from the Carolinas to California are defoliants, used to kill the leaves on cotton plants before the mechanical pickers go in to harvest. It isn’t uncommon for the mist of these powerful neurotoxins to drift into neighborhoods. “They even spray the fields right across the street from the elementary school,” says Midyette.

Most people think of cotton as a “natural” product. The reality: Cotton is one of the most chemically intensive crops in the world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 84 million pounds of pesticides were applied to the nation’s 14.4 million acres of cotton in the year 2000, and more than two billion pounds of fertilizers were spread on those same fields. Seven of the 15 pesticides commonly used on cotton in the United States are listed as “possible,” “likely,” “probable” or “known” human carcinogens by the Environmental Protection Agency. And cotton defoliants are “the most toxic farm chemicals currently on the market,” says Fawn Pattison, executive director of the Agricultural Resources Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the use of harmful pesticides.

For consumers who are willing to pay a little more for their T-shirts and jeans, however, there is a better way. Organic cotton, grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or defoliants, is becoming more widely available. “Organic cotton is just as good as conventional cotton,” says Lynda Grose, a fashion designer who cofounded Espirit’s Ecollection division and currently works as a marketing consultant for the Sustainable Cotton Project’s Cleaner Cotton Campaign. “The only difference is the chemicals.”

Right now, organic cotton represents less than 0.1 percent of all the cotton produced worldwide. But the market is slowly growing. Turkey is the biggest producer; in the United States, the state of Texas leads the way. Part of Grose’s strategy is to convince companies to blend a small amount of organic cotton into many of their products. “There’s hardly any increase in the cost,” she says. A number of companies, including Patagonia, Nike and Timberland, are now selling clothes made with organic fibers. The National Wildlife Federation is also launching a line of 100 percent organic cotton apparel.

Buying organic cotton has a number of benefits, including helping to keep pesticides out of our food supply. Few people realize it, but only 35 percent of the cotton harvest is turned into cloth. The seed, which is crushed and separated into oil, meal and hulls, comprises nearly 60 percent. Cottonseed oil shows up in cookies, potato chips, marinades, salad dressings and many other processed foods. Cotton meal is given to both dairy and beef cattle as a high-protein feed supplement. The remaining 5 percent of the crop is “gin trash,” the leaves, stems and other residue left over when processing is finished. Sometimes fed to livestock, it can harbor high levels of pesticide residues.

Organically grown cotton is also better for the environment. Even properly applied pesticides can be dangerous to wildlife. Biologists estimate millions of birds die every year in the United States from the effects of agricultural chemicals sprayed on cotton and other crops. When runoff from a field contains high levels of pesticides, it can kill fish in nearby rivers and streams. In one well-documented 1995 case in Alabama, at least 240,000 fish were killed by runoff—even though local officials determined afterward that the pesticides had been applied legally.

Organic growers try to work in harmony with the natural world. “We try to be good stewards of the resources,” says Terry Pepper, who, along with his wife LeRhea, grows 750 acres of organic cotton on the high plains of Texas. Because of the area’s cold winters, insect pests are not much of a problem for them. They don’t use synthetic fertilizers, Pepper says, but instead grow corn as a cover crop. “It makes a good fertilizer,” he explains, and gives beneficial insects—those that prey on cotton pests—a place to hide. To prepare their crop for harvest, the Peppers don’t spray with defoliants. They simply wait for a frost to kill the plants.

If more farmers stopped using defoliants, it would be good for Midyette and others like her who are sensitive to those chemicals. “I have fields all around my house,” says Midyette. Yet she is reluctant to move because it would mean leaving her job and uprooting her 14-year-old daughter. “Sometimes I’m so sick, I have no choice but to go to bed. It just affects my whole life.”

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National Treasure
Author: Paule Tolme - Originally Published in National Wildlife Magazine

While efforts to bank native plant seeds are expanding, habitat loss and global warming are threatening thousands of flowering species >> read more

An employee at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation punches a security code into a keypad and slides open the heavy steel door to "the vault," a four-story freezer where the federal government banks seeds from the nation’s most prized plants. The vault’s thick concrete walls are engineered to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and explosions. Protected like national treasure, roughly a billion seeds from 5,000 species are stored in giant filing cabinets that rise overhead. Formerly named the National Seed Storage Laboratory, the facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, could be called the Fort Knox for seeds.

An inventory of the vault’s contents, however, reveals a gap in the nation’s seed collection. Some of the most precious plants of all—threatened and endangered wildflowers—are missing. They haven’t been stolen; rather, less attention has been given to securing samples of native plants—even vulnerable species—than to crop plants. Fewer than 300 imperiled native U.S. plants were being held in the nation’s premier seed bank when I visited last November. Operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the vast majority of the lab’s seeds are "food, feed and fiber," agricultural crops comprising everything from apple and tomato varieties to wheat and corn samples to cotton and timber farm trees. "Storing rare and endangered species," explains Loren Wiesner, director of storage, "is not our primary mission."

To make up for this shortcoming, a major effort is underway to beef up the nation’s collection of endangered native plants and wildflowers stored at Fort Collins. The Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, has been working for roughly 20 years to collect seeds from 889 federally endangered or threatened U.S. plant species, and plans to gather from as many as 2,000 U.S. species of conservation concern. So far, collectors from the center’s 33 partner botanical gardens nationwide have harvested seeds from 629 species on private and public lands.

Banking native wildflower seeds is important for several reasons, says Tom Grant, manager of research programs at the Denver Botanic Garden. "In case of extinction, the genetic makeup of a species is preserved. Secondly, the seeds can be used for restoration projects."

This summer, the CPC’s experts will gather seeds from 118 species of concern in more than 227 sites in the National Park System. "We collect very slowly," says CPC Director Kathryn Kennedy, "so that we don’t harm a population." Collecting is a meticulous process. The CPC sends in as few people as possible to harvest seed capsules by hand to ensure plants are not trampled. They move across a wide area in an effort to include a high degree of genetic variation and place the seeds in moisture-proof paper bags. Upon returning to their labs, CPC experts examine and count the healthy seeds, then refrigerate or freeze them.

When a good representative sample of the material available in the wild has been collected (a process that can take several years for fragile populations), the samples are shipped to Fort Collins and locked in the vault for safekeeping.

Simultaneously, international biologists are creating the world’s largest seed bank for native plants and wildflowers. When complete in 2010, the Millennium Seed Bank of England’s Royal Botanic Garden will contain 24,000 species representing 10 percent of the world’s dryland flora, species from arid and semi-arid regions at risk from desertification. After 2010, new species will be added as needed to supplement the collection, and any newly discovered species will be incorporated.

In the United States, organizations such as the federal Bureau of Land Management and nonprofit conservation groups are collecting seeds from 4,000 species on public and private lands for inclusion in the Millennium Seed Bank Project. Texas’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center plans to collect seeds from 950 Texas species for storage in England. The Wildflower Center has already shipped 176 samples of plants such as the Texas bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis), the state flower and a common roadside attraction, and the pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa). Unlike the CPC’s collection in Fort Collins, which will store endangered species, the Millennium Seed Bank Project aims to gather species before their numbers dwindle.

For wildflowers, which face a host of threats in this country—from habitat loss and fragmentation due to urban sprawl and development, to resource extraction, pollution and climate change—the effort to bank seeds before species near extinction is long overdue. "So much conservation is, ‘Oh my god it’s endangered, let’s collect it,’" says Flo Oxley, conservation director for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. "This," she says of the Millennium Seed Bank Project, "is proactive."

Moreover, collecting seeds and using them for restoration is crucial to protecting biodiversity, which benefits mankind. "Plants have many gifts for man: Food, oils, fragrances, cures, you name it," Kennedy says. Without surviving wild stocks, many of today’s agricultural crops would be imperiled. "Wild progenitors are absolutely essential," Kennedy says, "for our economy, for agriculture and for human prosperity."

Before European settlers arrived, unique wildflower species covered the American landscape, from sea level to the highest mountain meadows. But with the onset of agriculture, grazing and the construction of communities, habitat shrank and populations became fragmented and isolated. Today, nearly one-fourth of the 20,000 known native flowering plant species in the United States are considered threatened or of conservation concern. "It’s not hopeless," Oxley says. "People realize that plants are the foundation of all life on Earth. But we are going to have to decide which species we are going to expend our energies and resources on." Unfortunately, saving plant species is not a major national priority. "In the future, some species may exist mostly in gardens," Oxley adds, "like Siberian tigers in zoos."

Global warming looms as one of the greatest threats, say flower experts. As temperatures rise, droughts lengthen, and rainfall patterns change, wildflowers will become stressed, flower earlier and less frequently and drop fewer seeds, leading to reproductive declines. Such predictions have already held true for the Texas poppy-mallow (Callirhoe scabriuscula). This Lone Star State endemic’s habitat is restricted to alluvial sand deposits in just three counties along the upper Colorado River that have been plundered by sand mining and bisected by a four-lane highway. In addition, a multiyear drought across the Southwest has scorched these wine-colored flowers, which burst open after sunrise and close at sunset for one week each year. Because of low moisture content in the soil, the poppy-mallow failed to set seed last summer, Oxley says. "Sadly, it may already be too late for this lovely flower."

Far from the Texas Hill Country, warming will also wipe out wildflowers in mountain meadows, from the Alps to the Rockies, says University of California–Berkeley professor John Harte. To study how global warming will affect mountain flowers, Harte has used overhead heaters strung from cables to slow-cook ten 10-by-30-foot plots in a meadow in the hills outside Crested Butte, Colorado, at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL). Researchers funded by university and government grants come from around the world to conduct studies at the RMBL. Harte’s 15 years of cooking the meadow shows that as temperatures rise and moisture from the mountain snowpack diminishes, fewer seeds will germinate.

Wildflowers such as the twolobe larkspur (Delphinium nuttallianum), which are adapted for short growing seasons, will be squeezed out as sagebrush, which thrives in arid conditions, creeps upward from lower elevations and establishes itself in these newly hospitable sun-baked meadows. The effects of this change will ripple through the ecosystem, as pollinators such as hummingbirds and bees that feed on wildflower nectar disappear, further diminishing flower reproduction. Harte expects to see widespread changes in about 50 years. What will these meadows resemble in a century? "Imagine the opening scenes in the movie The Sound of Music," he says, referring to Julie Andrews frolicking in Austria’s wildflower meadows. "But now imagine that scene was filmed in the sagebrush outside of Reno, Nevada."

Unlike species that grow across broad geographic regions, rare wildflowers that grow on small, isolated plots are in even greater peril because of their limited numbers. One misplaced road, shopping mall or oil and gas well can stamp out a species. That’s why environmentalists are trying to prevent the expansion of oil and gas drilling and mining on public lands such as western Colorado’s Roan Plateau. The parachute penstemon (Penstemon debilis) is among the rarest wildflowers in the United States, according to the Center for Native Ecosystems, a Denver organization lobbying to protect threatened species in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. The flower exists nowhere else but on the plateau, in five small patches. But two of the flower’s patches are located on land leased to an oil company. Part of the snapdragon family, the flower grows on oil shale and can withstand hot, arid weather, but it "won’t survive a drilling pad being placed on top of it," says the center’s staff biologist, Erin Robertson.

Another rare wildflower, the DeBeque milkvetch (Astragalus debequaeus) produces white flowers and seedpods and is known to grow in eight patches, all in western Colorado. "Every site where it grows has been leased and gas drilling is already taking place," says Robertson. "It’s in a perilous situation." Dust from new roads and drilling covers the plants and reduces photosynthesis, and destruction of habitat impacts the bees that pollinate the plants. These flowers symbolize what could happen to plant species across the nation’s public lands if industrial activity increases, says Robertson. Faced with such threats, seed banking efforts are becoming increasingly crucial, and the cooperation of landowners is important, especially in states such as Texas, where the majority of land is in private hands. Jean Nance, who owns 7.5 acres along two creeks in Travis County, is helping the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center collect seeds from her property for the Millennium Seed Bank Project. She has gathered seeds from 25 species, including the scarlet clematis (Clematis texensis), with flowers that resemble tiny pink rosebuds, and fringed puccoon (Lithospermum incisum), its lemon yellow petals tipped with lacey fringe. Her land also holds the native orchid violet-maroon-colored coral root (Corallorrhiza wisteriana), blue mistflower (Conoclinium colestinum) and the Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani), a vibrant yellow member of the aster family. "This land restores my soul every time I walk outside," she says. "I’m proud and comforted by the thought that people are storing my seed."

At Fort Collins, seeds are quickly stashed in the vault upon delivery. "The trick," says Christina Walters, who oversees the lab’s seed preservation research, "is to get 100 percent survival and have them last a very long time. We estimate that seeds of high quality can survive at least a century in the freezer. Some of our oldest collections have survived 80 years."

Regardless, seed banks are no substitute for habitat preservation, says Walters, who has devoted her career to improving the science of seed storage. "We’re not saving species here. We’re simply putting them on ice. Seed banking can buy some time by preserving genetic diversity, but the real saving," she says, pointing out the window, "must take place out there."

Paul Tolmé wrote about global warming solutions in the April/May issue. Eight Wildflower Destinations

The word "wildflower" has no strict definition, but most people think of colorful, native meadow blooms. Other folks include flowering trees, while some define wildflowers as any blooms that are "beautiful." Semantics aside, here are eight wildflower destinations that dazzle:

1. Tucked amid towering peaks, the wildflower-dappled meadows of Crested Butte, Colorado, are often compared to the Alps for their lush, rugged beauty. Nature lovers come from around the country to attend the historic mining town’s wildflower festival, July 11–17. Hike the vast trail network and see mariposa lilies, Indian paintbrushes, asters, wild irises and the state flower, Rocky Mountain columbines. For more, see www.crestedbuttewildflowerfestival.com. Or head to another ski resort town, Alta, Utah, and attend the Wasatch Wildflower Festival, www.wasatchwildflowerfestival.org, generally held the last weekend in July or the first in August.

2. Florida is Spanish for "flower state." The Florida Everglades have over 100 species of orchids, including the rare ghost orchid of the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. Also look for native scarlet hibiscus, blooming bromeliads growing on trees, coreopsis, the state wildflower, and pine lily, which blooms roadside. See the Florida Native Plant Society, www.fnps.org.

3. Amateur photographers flock to the valley meadows of Grand Teton National Park outside Jackson, Wyoming, every spring during the peak bloom. Look for the scarlet gilia, with a flaming red nectar tube that attracts hummingbirds. Hike upslope from Cascade or Paintbrush Canyons and watch spring delicates such as yellowbells and shooting stars (both aptly named) burst forth at snow’s edge. Also search for Lewis’s monkey flower, a pinkish red bloom that looks like a monkey’s face (with a little imagination). Visit www.nps.gov/grte.

4. The Texas Hill Country radiates an azure hue when bluebonnets burst open every spring along roadsides from Llano to Oxford and around Buchanan and LBJ Lakes. Attend the Bluebonnet Festival in Chappell Hill, April 9–10, www.brenhamtexas.com. For peak viewing, check the Wild About Texas Wildflowers website, www.lnstar.com/wildflowers, for up-to-date reports. View Texas flora and learn about native species at Austin’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, www.wildflower.org.

5. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington and nearby Franconia Notch are home to the world’s only populations of Robbins’ cinquefoil, a delicate alpine perennial in the rose family that ambitious hikers can see for one or two weeks in June along trails that leave Pinkham Notch Visitor Center. For information on New England wildflowers, see www.newfs.org.

6. In the Southeast, Great Smoky Mountains National Park offers bursts of orange from the Turk’s-cap lily, its petals curled back like an ornate crown. Pick up the guide Wildflowers of the Smokies, by Peter White. Drive the Blue Ridge Parkway and look for fleabane and black-eyed Susans. Check the bloom schedule for best viewing, www.blueridgeparkway.org/bloom.htm. In Kentucky, attend the Wildflower Pilgrimage, April 22–23, in Carter Caves State Resort Park, www.kystateparks.ky.gov.

7. The Columbia River Gorge is the Northwest’s wildflower Mecca. Tucked between the forested Cascade Mountains and Oregon’s eastern bunchgrass prairies, Tom McCall Preserve features an array of native plants including the endemic Thompson’s broadleaf lupine. Visit the Glide Wildflower Show, April 23–24, www.wmni.net/magyan/GWS.htm. For information on Columbia River Gorge flowers, see www.fs.fed.us/r6/columbia/wildflowers.htm or www.npsoregon.org.

8. Rolling hills of poppies await visitors to California’s Antelope Poppy Reserve in spring. The 1,745-acre reserve nestled in the Antelope Buttes 15 miles west of Lancaster was established to protect wildflowers, particularly the California poppy, the state flower. Seven miles of trails wind through fields of wildflowers. Best viewing is in mid-April. For more, visit www.calparksmojave.com.

NWF PROGRAMS
Protecting Imperiled Species Working with its state affiliates and other conservationists throughout the country, NWF is involved in a wide range of efforts to protect endangered and threatened wildlife and native plants, such as the smooth coneflower. For more information, see www.nwf.org/ourprograms. To find out how you can get involved, see www.nwf.org/action.

Helping Homeowners Create Habitats
NWF’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat™ program provides all of the information you need to create a thriving, certified haven for wildlife around your home using native plants and other resources. To learn more, use NWF’s online interactive planner to:

Get regionally specific gardening tips and ideas.
*Find the answers to dozens of backyard wildlife and natural gardening questions.
*Look through detailed native plant databases.
*Search the photo gallery to see other homeowners’ certified habitats.

How to Apply To begin the process of having your yard certified, fill out and return the application bound into the center of this magazine, or see www.nwf.org/backyardwildlifehabitat. To request a free Backyard Wildlife Habitat information kit, while supplies last, call 1-800-822-9919.
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