Canada's Environmental Voice
Stepping into old growth has always felt like coming up for air. The vast majority of Maritime forests are young, defined by stifling, low-hanging branches and congested regrowth. White spruce and Red maple grapple and intertwine in pursuit of the sunlight, the air often hot, dry and buggy, their woods […]
Lichens are under no obligation to make sense to us. They number perhaps a million species globally, and while they occur absolutely everywhere – trees, rocks, dirt, dunes, ditches, swamps, ship hulls, manhole covers, brick walls and barn doors – they remain one of the most mysterious and perplexing branches […]
All I ever wanted was a place to plant trees. Since adolescence, the romanticism of shoving seedlings into the ground, then enjoying their shade 30 years later, always appealed to me. The first time I ever indulged this impulse was in the early 2000s, my brother and I paddling the […]
When I think of Earth Day, the first thing I think of is spring. My mind fills with images of bumblebees and butterflies gliding around spring flowers and of groups of people gathering in their local park to plant trees or collect litter. I think of soil and worms and […]
When thinking about the future, unfortunately, it is impossible to think of one that does not involve climate change. As a result, climate change mitigation and adaptation measures need to be quickly implemented into society to create climate-resilient communities. This is where the newly formed ‘The Nature Force’ is hoping […]
It was a mild day in the fall of 2017 when I, true to form, attended a conference on Maritime biodiversity in Caledonia, Nova Scotia. In various working groups we sat and listened as experts listed and described the various species of animal native to our region, notetaking optional. A […]
Do you remember the American chestnut? If I plopped you in front of one without a field guide or search engine, would you recognize it? If I dumped a bag of native nuts on the table in front of you, could you identify the one which previously fed eastern North […]
Earth Day 1970 was a social movement built on the success of the previous decade. Voting rights were strengthened, civil rights were outlined, and women were demanding equal treatment. Fast forward 51 years and what started off as a grassroots movement has now exploded into an international day of attention […]
Recently, we came across Wallin Snowdon’s CBC article entitled “Fighting forest fires with fire: Pyrotechnics and flaming Ping-Pong balls” (June 22, 2020). What piqued our interest was that it discusses interesting techniques of fighting wildfires from a unique and counterintuitive prospective – fighting fire, with fire! This news article is […]
A tree is probably the most iconic image of environmentalism. Or better yet, a person planting a tree. We are called tree-huggers by some people, after all. It has long been known that trees are key organisms in our ecosystems – they sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) and release oxygen, they […]
