the news just keeps getting worse. Pray for bats – I know I am….

E. Fudd

From the Xerces Society:

Spring ahead with Bumble Bee Garden Kits

Spring is just around the corner, and now is a great time to start planning your pollinator garden for the year ahead. For the first time ever, the Xerces Society is pleased to offer a Bumble Bee Garden Kit consisting of some of the best native wildflowers for attracting bumble bees in the United States.

The bumble bee garden kit includes ten different species (38 plants total) that are suitable for gardens in most of the country. The flowers will provide bloom from spring to fall, supporting bumble bees throughout their active season. While the plant species have been selected for bumble bee appeal, they are broadly attractive to an incredible diversity of pollinators.

The kits are produced in collaboration with JFNew Nursery, a national leader in natural areas restoration. Every effort is made to avoid the use of pesticides in the propagation of the kits (small amounts of soap may be needed in the greenhouse for aphid control, but long lasting systemic insecticides are not used!). The plants will ship as live plugs ready for planting during Pollinator Week 2011 (June 19-25)…..”

E.Fudd

In Chi Phat, Cambodia, Wildlife Alliance and the local community are working together to plant a million tree nursery in a region devastated by logging and slash-and-burn farming. – Full article here.

E. Fudd

I just found out about this bee-tracking/data collection project through my recent Wings issue from The Xerces Society (invertebrate advocacy group based in Portland, OR).  Here’s what it’s all about and how you can participate!

The Great Sunflower Project

– from their site:

Many studies have been done on our agricultural bee populations and in recent times the commercial beekeepers have experienced colony collapse. What scientists had not studied on a large scale was how the wild bees were doing and what effect that has on pollination of garden plants, crops and wild plants.

In 2008, we started this project as a way to gather information about our urban, suburban and rural bee populations. We wanted to enlist people all over the US and Canada to observe their bees and be citizen scientists. We asked them to plant sunflowers in their gardens so we could standardize study of bee activity and provide more resources for bees. Sunflowers are relatively easy to grow and are wildly attactive to bees. Since 2008, we have expanded the list of plants studied to include Bee balm, Cosmos, Rosemary, Tickseed, and Purple coneflower.

You can participate by getting annual Lemon Queen sunflower seeds from us, at your local store or through one of these seed sellers.

* It takes less than 15 minutes.
* It’s easy.
* No knowledge of bees required!

Enter your bee counts online or send us your paper form.
We would love to have you join us; let’s help our most important pollinators together! [And] we love having beekeepers participate.

Hope you can help!

Chloro Phil

It has come to my attention through excellent books such as Green, Inc. and recent articles such as ‘The Wrong Kind of Green‘ that many major environmental groups have a seriously out-of-whack pay scale for their senior management.

Before addressing the title to this post, I’d like to say a few words about this problem.

First, it is one thing (and not necessarily a good one by any means) that corporations pay their top management now often in the millions of dollars each year.  But why on earth would environmental groups – which do not answer to shareholders or investors and are not charged with ‘return on investment’ or even worse – ‘maximizing profit’ following suit?  It seems to me that for every senior mgmt person you pay an exorbitant salary to – that amount otherwise equals the pay of several scientists or staff people, or, notably affects your ability to support the activities of volunteers and grassroots activism – which while often not paid, still requires funding and possibly significant funding in most cases.  How is the pay and productivity/output of one person, or even a small team of them, equal in value to the rest?  Simple answer – it is not.  Even if you employed celebrities directly (instead of simply working with them as largely  in-kind donors) it is hard, if not impossible, to believe that the net overall effect of the celebrity’s activity is going to benefit the organization (and its ultimate purpose) in the long term vs essential staff, scientists and activists.

Second, it is simply inconsistent with the values and the mission(s) of an environmental organization (if not completely hypocritical) to say one thing to raise money from individual and other donors, and then act like (and receive the pay of) a corporate CEO in practice funded by that same money?

Third – yes, the cost of living is rising in most major metropolitan areas in this country and elsewhere.  And yes, the majority of the population (and donor pool) lives in those same cities, and an environmental organization has to survive financially to carry out its mission – as do its employees and staff.  But to pay someone beyond a reasonable salary in the several hundreds of thousands is simply beyond the needs of anyone even in the most expensive markets in this country, if they really believe in what they are doing and what it stands for.

Which brings us to the ultimate point of this post and the beginning of an effort.  Over the coming months, a detailed, comprehensive list of environmental groups big and small will be developed here, and show who is getting paid what amount and where they work.  It is patently clear that none of them need to be making more (or much more, anyway) than $100,000 per year.  And we’re going to show who is paying those crazy >$100K salaries, and contrast with who puts their activism and funding where it belongs instead – funding programs, science, land acquisition, wetland, lake, river/ocean protetction, and the like.

Stay tuned.

Chloro Phil