Stopping Slash and Burn Farming in Saja Village

20 September 2012. A large crowd of people were gathered in Saja Village when we arrived at about 9 AM on another sunny morning. Our silver 4X4 Ford “Everest” looked as out of place among the thatched huts as a
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Cape May Hawks and Monarchs

Friday October 12th, 2012. We drove north from Washington toward New York in heavy Friday traffic on Interstate 95, across upper Delaware Bay at Wilmington, and then down through the New Jersey Pinelands on a sunny, breezy mid-October day. Oaks,
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Potoni Sacred Forest

Friday 21 September 2012.  We sat in the shade of an old spreading mango tree in Namutoria Village and talked with community for an hour or so.  About thirty community members, and five forest guards in green army-style uniforms sat
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Xipamanine and Xiquelen: Biodiversity, Traditional Medicines, and Charcoal in Maputo Markets

24 September 2012.  After our unsuccessful attempt to find the medicinal plants market in Phuza, near Ponta do Ouro (see The Map Is Not the Territory blog), the forest expert on our assessment team, Mario Falcão, promised to take me
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The Map Is Not the Territory

14 September 2012.  We drove onto the small twelve-car ferry just before 6:00 AM on a Friday morning, heading across Maputo Bay for Catembe past the brightly lighted docks under grey dawn skies.  It was already starting to sprinkle a
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Monkey Business in Oregon

August 10th, 2012. Learning about John Muir’s obsession – it probably deserves to be called that – with the ancient tree family Araucariaceae, and especially Araucaria araucana, the “Monkey Puzzle Tree,” I became very interested in Muir’s story and in
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Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains and Kilombero Wetlands

June 2012. The Udzungwa Mountains rise steeply above the valley of the Kilombero River, their eastern face almost an escarpment. These are one of the mountain blocks of the ancient Eastern Arc Mountains, which stretch from the Taita Hills in
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An Interconnection of Ecologists: The Ecological Society of America’s 2012 Annual Meeting

12th of August, 2012. Old English is full of “terms of venery,” words for groups of animals: a pod of whales, a pack of wolves, a herd of deer, a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a pride of
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Visiting Revolutionary Ecological Relatives in Philadelphia

July 12th, 2012. If they are blood relatives, the connection is distant, and untraceable.  But they are some of my intellectual and philosophical ancestors, and this past weekend I made a pilgrimage of sorts, to Philadelphia, to visit the old
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The Great Ruaha Versus Rice

The Rufiji River is Tanzania’s largest in terms of flow. Its catchment in the southern highlands stretches from Mbeya in the southwest, to its mouth at the Rufiji Delta, inshore from Mafia Island on the Indian Ocean. The Ruaha River,
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