- US approves largest dam removal in history to save endangered salmon, The Guardian (Nov 17, 2022) — Four dams on California-Oregon border to be decommissioned on Klamath River, which fish use to reach spawning grounds
This page is the beginnings of a portal for United States community action in response to Ecological emergency. The majority of our information about this is collated via our place pages...Near you. See Ecological restoration for a topic overview.
Community action projects[edit | edit source]
Ecosystem restoration[edit | edit source]
- “If we design well, we design for shared aliveness”. Speaking from China, John Thackara lays out an economy defined by care, The Daily Alternative (Jul 28, 2023)
- Standing up and saying NO to erasing our environmental heritage. Stopping land encroachment., medium.com (May 09, 2023)
- Indigenous Peoples defend a precious natural resource- empowering them protects us all, ashden.org (Feb 14, 2023)
Ecosystem restoration is the process of halting and overturning degradation, resulting in cleaner air and water, extreme weather mitigation, better human health, and recovered biodiversity, including improved pollination of plants. Restoration encompasses a wide continuum of practices, from reforestation to re-wetting peatlands and coral rehabilitation.[1]
Citizen Science[edit | edit source]

Citizen science refers to the involvement, participation and engagement of citizens in local or online (global) scientific work relevant to the citizens' interests, usually as a hobby, often as a passion.
Citizen science can include such activities as:
- Reviewing photographs or data online and spotting patterns, anomalies, things of interest etc.
- Taking field samples in local areas such as water from creeks/rivers, monitoring air quality
- Taking not of and listing species spotted, to help scientists assess decline or increase in species in certain areas; for example, see Big Garden Birdwatch as one example of such an activity
- Going through old scientific records and finding relevant data from the past and/or digitizing data for future use
- Taking measurements, keeping specific records, noting changes, etc. related to the local environment
- Sharing scientific information with other citizens in layperson's terms to spread understanding and engagement
Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative[edit | edit source]
Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative or Y2Y is a transboundary Canada–United States not-for-profit organization that aims to connect and protect the 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometres) Yellowstone-to-Yukon region. Its mission proposes to maintain and restore habitat integrity and connectivity along the spine of North America's Rocky Mountains stretching from the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem to Canada's Yukon Territory. It is the only organization dedicated to securing the long-term ecological health of the region.
Since 1993, more than 450 partner groups have joined forces to support the shared mission and vision. Y2Y's work is a collaborative effort of conservation groups, government agencies, Indigenous governments, landowners, wildlife scientists, planners, businesses, economists, and other individuals and groups interested in protecting native wildlife, ecological processes, and wilderness in the Rocky Mountains of North America. Existing national, state, and provincial parks and wilderness areas anchor the system, while the creation of new protected and special management areas provide the additional cores and corridors needed to complete it. This network is built upon the principles of conservation biology, various focal species assessments, the knowledge of local and traditional residents, and the requirements for sustainable economies.
American Prairie[edit | edit source]
American Prairie is a prairie-based nature reserve in Central Montana, United States, on a mixed grass prairie ecosystem with migration corridors and native wildlife. This wildlife conservation area is being developed as a private project of the American Prairie Foundation (APF). This independent non-profit organization aims to include over 3 million acres (12,000 km2) through a combination of both private and public lands.
American Prairie provides public access to its land for all types of outdoor recreation including hiking, mountain biking, hunting, and fishing. The predominant economic activity in the region is the raising of cattle on homestead parcels along with adjacent rangeland leased from the federal government. Ranchers in the region are invited to adhere to wildlife-friendly standards on their ranches and required when grazing their cattle on American Prairie's parcels. Within large but securely fenced areas, American Prairie is developing a bison herd with attention to heritage genetics and minimal cattle introgression. Wildlife-friendly fencing allows the natural movement of wildlife such as pronghorn. Animals like prairie dogs are welcome amidst the native vegetation.
Dam removal in the Pacific Northwest[edit | edit source]
Dam removal has led to the restoration of many river systems in the Pacific Northwest. This has been done in an effort to restore salmon populations specifically but with other species in mind. "These dam removals provide perhaps the best example of large-scale environmental remediation in the twenty-first century." W
News and comment[edit | edit source]
2021
How Returning Lands to Native Tribes Is Helping Protect Nature, Jun 3[2]
Biodiversity[edit | edit source]
Citizen science
- AMC's Mountain Watch, Citizen science and phenology monitoring in the Appalachian mountains
- Project Budburst, Citizen Science for Plant Phenology in the USA
- USA National Phenology Network, Citizen science and research network observations on phenology in the USA
Other Initiatives
- Wildlife For All, national campaign to reform wildlife management in the U.S. to be more ecologically-driven, democratic, and compassionate. added 12:57, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
- Butterfly Conservation Initiative
- Center for Biological Diversity
Rewilding[edit | edit source]
The Rewilding Institute is an organization concerned with the integration of traditional wildlife and wildlands conservation to advance landscape-scale conservation. It was founded by environmental activist Dave Foreman.
The Rewilding Institute's mission is to work toward the survival and flourishing of large carnivores in North America by promoting the establishment of suitable habitats in the wilderness, which are permanently interconnected as to allow their natural movement. They believe that humans and large carnivores can and should co-exist in North America. They wish to undo the damage done by over-hunting, over-logging, and exploitation of natural resources. Through continent-scale conservation efforts, they hope to prevent further extinctions of large predators, and to restore them to their function of maintaining the ecological balance of animal life in the wild. They have proposed reestablishing wild populations of wolves in interconnected, protected habitats, so that they can resume their ecological role. As part of their program, they have worked to get wildlife crossings included in interstate highway projects.
- Rewilding Earth, home of the Rewilding Institute
Environment quality[edit | edit source]
Open Government Homepage, United States Environmental Protection Agency (government)
Drought National Drought Mitigation Center - U.S. Drought Portal
- Wikipedia:Drought in the United States, 2010–13 Southern United States drought, 2012–14 North American drought
News and comment
2017
Seattle Stopped Sucking—So Can You, Oct 26[3]
Study: Pollution Kills More People Than War, Smoking, Hunger, and Other Causes of Death, Oct 20[4]
Open spaces[edit | edit source]
Great Old Broads for Wilderness - Land Trust Alliance - ParkGrades.com, find a great park near you
Community Greens
- Communities nationwide are taking down their backyard fences; backyard commons already exist in numerous cities including Boston, Sacramento, Baltimore, New York, and San Francisco.
- Community Greens are multi-functional spaces for gardening, recreation, and leisure which provide social, economic, and environmental benefits to urban residents. Communities that create backyard commons have increased interaction with neighbors throughout the planning and implementation process, which results in a stronger overall sense of community. Other social benefits include decreased crime from having more eyes on the street and having safe places for children to play and adults to relax. Community Greens, like other types of urban green spaces, significantly improve the ecological functioning of urban habitats. Vegetation and permeable pavement slows stormwater runoff and allows for groundwater recharge. This in turn reduces pollutant loads being carried to nearby waterbodies during storm events. Urban environments are often significantly warmer than outlying suburbs, mostly due to the prevalence of low-albedo concrete surfaces. City trees mitigate this heat island effect and cool the urban microclimate through shading and evapotranspiration. When neighbors take down their fences, backyards are transformed from fragmented habitats to connected corridors for urban wildlife. City dwellers recognize value in green space, often simply from an aesthetic standpoint, and this is reflected through increased property values. W
Trees, woodland and forest[edit | edit source]
ACTrees, Alliance for community trees - Tree City USA
Wikipedia:
- List of U.S. National Forests: The United States has 155 protected areas known as National Forests covering 188,293,938 acres (762,000 km2/294,208 sq. mi). The National Forests are managed by the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- Tree City USA is a tree planting and tree care program sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation for cities and towns in the United States. List of Tree Cities USA
Coastal community activism[edit | edit source]
Sea level rise[edit | edit source]
Societies can adapt to sea level rise in three different ways: implement managed retreat, accommodate coastal change, or protect against sea level rise through hard-construction practices like seawalls or soft approaches such as dune rehabilitation and beach nourishment. Sometimes these adaptation strategies go hand in hand, but at other times choices have to be made among different strategies. For some human environments, such as so called sinking cities, adaptation to sea level rise may be compounded by other environmental issues such as subsidence. Natural ecosystems typically adapt to rising sea levels by moving inland; however, they might not always be able to do so, due to natural or artificial barriers. W
Maps
Land projected to be below annual flood level in 2030 and beyond, coastal.climatecentral.org
Sea Level Rise, information from climatecentral.org
Blue Frontier Campaign[edit | edit source]
The Blue Frontier Campaign is a United States marine conservation activist organization founded by David Helvarg in 2003.
The Campaign has established a nationwide network of grassroots (the marine conservation community or Blue Movement calls this 'seaweed') lobbyists. It is campaigning for an American Oceans Act to protect what the members call "our public seas" and is working to improve ocean policies in the 23 coastal states of the United States. Blue Frontier supports maritime community activists by distributing model policies and practices. Its other objectives include the creation of books, a TV documentary series, and other educational materials on ocean exploration and stewardship. The first such creation was the 2005 - 2006 Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide. The Blue Vision Conference in Washington DC in July 2004 and Blue Vision Mid-Atlantic Conference at the National Aquarium in Baltimore in April 2005 were the start of a series of seminars to introduce seaweed activists to oceanographers, port officials, and other marine stakeholders. Annual awards called "The Breakers" are presented in ten categories: Art & Entertainment, Conservation Science, Marine Education, Best Business Practices, and Hero of the Seas.
Future plans for the Campaign include endowing a fellowship for investigative reporting on waste, fraud and abuse on America's Seas, working to include marine education in middle school and high school curricula, and developing a media campaign that highlights lessons from the past American frontier, and "applies these to our new blue one".
The directors of the Campaign represent other activist organizations including Clean Ocean Action, The Democracy Collaborative, EarthEcho International, Khaled Bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, National Alliance for Hispanic Health, Reef Relief, and Save Our Shores. It also has a panel of over twenty advisors.
- Blue Frontier Campaign, link checked 16:08, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Seaweed Rebellion[edit | edit source]
The Seaweed Rebellion is an informal marine environmentalist activist movement in the United States. Deriving its name from an analogy with grassroots democracy, the movement comprises disparate organizations with the common aim of protecting the oceans, seas and coasts of the United States.
The Blue Frontier Campaign is an umbrella organization aiming to coordinate these groups into a common voice to achieve effective lobbying of federal and state policy makers.
The name was first applied to a 1947 court case between the United States and California over who owned the sea bed, and the associated oil deposits, off the state coast but is now heard rarely in that context.
Other initiatives[edit | edit source]
- Healthy Gulf, "focuses on a just transition that moves us away from extractive systems of energy production, consumption, and political oppression, and towards resilient, regenerative and equitable economies." added 16:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
- Clean Beaches Coalition
Urban and rural connections[edit | edit source]
section needed
Ecological emergency[edit | edit source]
There is consensus in the scientific community that the current environmental degradation and destruction of many of Earth's biota are taking place on a "catastrophically short timescale". Scientists estimate that the current species extinction rate, or the rate of the Holocene extinction, is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the normal, background rate. Habitat loss is the leading cause of both species extinctions and ecosystem service decline. Two methods have been identified to slow the rate of species extinction and ecosystem service decline, they are the conservation of currently viable habitat and the restoration of degraded habitat. The commercial applications of ecological restoration have increased exponentially in recent years. In 2019, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2021–2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. W
UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration[edit | edit source]
- Green Deal: pioneering proposals to restore Europe's nature by 2050 and halve pesticide use by 2030, ec.europa.eu (Jun 22, 2022)
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 is a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature. It aims to halt the degradation of ecosystems and restore them to achieve global goals. The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the UN Decade and it is led by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The UN Decade is building a strong, broad-based global movement to ramp up restoration and put the world on track for a sustainable future. That will include building political momentum for restoration as well as thousands of initiatives on the ground.[5]
The decade was conceived as a means of highlighting the need for greatly increased global cooperation to restore degraded and destroyed ecosystems, contributing to efforts to combat climate change and safeguard biodiversity, food security, and water supply. W
See also[edit | edit source]
External links[edit | edit source]
- Cascadia (bioregion) W
- ↑ Press release, unep.org
- ↑ @YaleE360
- ↑ @Sierra_Magazine
- ↑ @JonathanTurley
- ↑ Press release, unep.org