Feral pockets, redwood trees, / NatureScores, emergency pees
Plus: Century-old milk powder and nature-slime
Hello again from New York City, where samples from several geese, a peregrine falcon, a red-tailed hawk, and a chicken—all taken between August 2022 and April 2023—have tested positive for bird flu; where a mom was fined for letting her child take an emergency pee in a park because the public bathroom was closed; and where a popular community composting drop-off program will shut down by May 20, because even a generous one-time donation by an anonymous rich person can’t offset Eric Adam’s draconian budget cuts. I ask you, would a real vegan do this to the city? I think not.
Earlier this month I attended an environmental journalism conference in Philadelphia. As part of the conference, I went on a day trip to the Delaware Water Gap, where I was reminded that New York City gets a lot of its drinking water from the Delaware River Watershed. I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty that our water, which is siphoned off pretty close to the source, tastes so much better than the tap water I had in Philadelphia, which also comes from the Delaware (and Schuylkill).
Then I had just a day back in the city before setting off on a 16-hour odyssey to see the eclipse. Paid subscribers received an essay about that whirlwind trip earlier this week. If that’s the kind of thing you’d be interested in, you can subscribe and read here.
Reading list
Visualizing the crisis through the trees: Bellingcat researchers have been documenting mass tree removal in Gaza via satellite imagery. Fuel shortages have forced Palestinians to harvest trees to burn for warmth, or to cook with, and the Israel Defense Forces are systematically razing orchards and farmland for military purposes. As of mid-March, at least 6,000 acres of land had been cleared of trees and other plant-life by the Israeli military. [Pooja Chaudhuri and Jake Godin for Bellingcat]
Where the redwoods grow (it’s not where you think): I had to read this at least twice to believe it, and still feel like it must be wrong, but apparently there are more redwood trees in the United Kingdom, where they were imported and planted in great numbers by the Victorians, than in California. Truly, one must never underestimate the British enthusiasm for gardening (or for extracting things from other countries). [James Tapper for The Guardian]
“Find Me in the Feral Pockets”: This is a nice write-up about Brad Vogel, a bard of the Gowanus Canal, and former captain of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, who recently published a book of poetry about the neighborhood Superfund site called “Find Me in the Feral Pockets: Poems from the Gowanus Interregnum.” [Eric Lach for The New Yorker]
What’s your NatureScore? I am all for quantifying and measuring access to nature and using it to get the people more green space, but I am not sure this particular method is very useful. If you zoom in on Manhattan, for example, Central Park is apparently a great neighborhood to live in (lol) but many of the adjacent neighborhoods are considered nature “deficient,” even though Central Park is right there!! Accessible on foot! Most of the neighbors around Prospect Park are similarly “deficient.” So yeah, I don’t think this tool is helpful at all. Sound off in the comments if you disagree, or notice anything interesting about your hometown/neighborhood.
Got milk powder? Scientists recovered some of the dried milk powder from Ernest Shackleton’s failed expedition to the South Pole in 1908 and compared it to modern milk powder, for science. No word on whether anyone was brave enough to taste the century-old sample, but nobody explicitly says they didn’t taste it, either. [Phys.org; Skelte G. Anema et al. in Journal of Dairy Science]
I’ve got a backlog of links and couldn’t get to them all today (next week maybe!), but in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a scoopability/nature/slime ‘Tok.