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News

Prairies Book is a Gem

ILCW member (USA) Cathy Morrison has illustrated a beautiful book about the flora and fauna found on the prairie. Written by Marybeth Lorbiecki, The Prairie that Nature Built, is a book that will captivate both children and adults while learning about the prairie’s plants and animals. At the end there is more information and activities that children can do to continue to learn about this amazing ecosystem.

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4Ocean Has Removed Nearly 1 Million Pounds of Trash

The founders of 4Ocean love to surf. But on a trip to Bali, Indonesia they were amazed at the amount of trash that washed up on the shore each day and how fishermen had to push their boats through it to make their daily catch. From that sobering experience the two founded 4Ocean an organization that is cleaning up the ocean and recycling the trash collected. In two years they have collected nearly one million pounds of trash. Their efforts are funded by bracelets sold off their website. The bracelets are made of recycled materials, are attractive, and fund the removal of one pound of trash for each bracelet sold. They operate out of multiple countries and employ 150 people worldwide. For more information go to www.4ocean.com

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Cape Buffalo, Bison and Water

Check out the story on the No Water No Life blog, written by Bianca T. Esposito, that compares the Cape buffalo in the Mara and Nile River Basins with the bison in the Mississippi River Basin. Esposito focuses on the inter-relationships between the bovine species and water resources in their savannahs and plans habitats. Read the story on the NWNL Blog.

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Book Announcement

The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold ClimateThe Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate

By Nancy Campbell

Coming in November
Long captivated by the solid yet impermanent nature of ice, by its stark, rugged beauty, acclaimed poet and writer Nancy Campbell (ILCW member, UK) sets out from the world’s northernmost museum – at Upernavik in Greenland – to explore it in all its facets. From the Bodleian Library archives to the traces left by the great polar expeditions, from remote Arctic settlements to the ice houses of Calcutta, she examines the impact of ice on our lives at a time when it is itself under threat from climate change.

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Potential European Wilderness Sites

The European Wilderness Society blog reports that the director of the Low Tatras National Park and the Chairman of the European Wilderness Society signed a Memorandum of Understanding regarding stewardship of the Skalka Wilderness in the Low Tatras National Park. The proposed size of the Wilderness is approximately 2,500 hectares with plans to expand another 300 ha. To read more click here.

Another potential wilderness is the Triglav Wilderness in Slovenia. The area is located close to both the Austrian and Italian borders. See the European Wilderness Society blog for more information.

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Pan African Agricultural Journalists

The Pan African Agricultural Journalists (PAAJ) is funded by the World Federation of Intercultural Journalists and is an organization that supports journalists across Africa. PAAJ promotes education and awareness of agriculture through accurate reporting of local, regional, and international agricultural and development issues. It’s a nonprofit and nonpartisan body of professionals with 54 national journalists associations and grassroots media that represent over 2,500 media members throughout the continent. For more information contact: Mr. Farai Matebvu hemfarai@ifdr-wofij.orgre.

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Mumbai Bans Plastic Bags and Bottles

Mumbai, India, a city with more than 18 million residents has banned single-use plastics. Residents caught using plastic cups, bottles, or bags will face penalties of up to 25,000 rupees ($366) and three months in jail. To read more click here.

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Film for Thought

See available DVDs (and teasers) featuring conservation and the people who work to protect wild areas at Films By Fulcrum.

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Hendricks wins Foreword INDIES Award

Mark Hendricks, ILCW member (USA) is a Silver Foreword Indies winner for his 2017 book Natural Wonders of Assateague Island. Assateague Island, primarily known for its population of wild horses and pristine beaches, is a magical place. Yet few people have experienced all of its natural wonders. Noted wildlife photographer Mark Hendricks has spent years exploring the barrier island and shares his passion for the area's incredible biodiversity in this stunning collection of more than 190 color pictures. Through his lens and words, he captures truly rare moments with some elusive creatures, including a river otter, snowy owl, black stallion, and the threatened piping plover. From the windswept beaches to inland forests and through all seasons, this personal journey is relatable to all who have visited, or wish to visit, this enchanted island off the coasts of both Maryland and Virginia. For more information click here.

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LEWA Releases 2017 Impact Report

LEWA Wildlife Conservancy, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013, has released its 2017 Impact Report. They are neighbors to, and conservation partners with, the Borana Conservancy. Their joint landscape provides 93,000 acres of secure habitat for both endangered and abundant wildlife and is home to 14% of Kenya’s rhino population. In 2017 LEWA CEO Mike Watson said they invested more than $2.4 million in community education, water, healthcare, micro-enterprise, etc. with the result of 186 new women joining their micro-enterprise program, over 45,000 people were treated through their healthcare program and 463 children received education scholarships. To read the LEWA 2017 Impact Report online click here.

To download the report as a PDF, click here.

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What Makes Safer Freedom for Media Professionals Worldwide?

The World Federation of Intercultural Journalists (WOFIJ) President, Daud Abdi Daud, an ILCW member (Somalia) strives to popularize the meaning of “freedom” through the Geoknowledge principle. “Obviously, we need to learn what the word Freedom stands for first by obtaining its heritages otherwise we did nothing actions to issue through our daily attitude manuscripts. Freedom is what someone feels to obtain without limit by common sense manner as under obligatory way of life but that’s he/she needs to treat the others the way he/she want to be treated” says Daud.

Purposely, the WOFIJ aims to remind the human kinds at all the legality processes could cause interactions between one or more cultures because along with other aid and humanitarian emergency professionals, journalists are often “first responders” when an earthquake, prolonged conflict, civil war or a terrorist attack devastates a community. However, all professional journalists should aware of that UN-agencies staffs are like policy makers’ not humanitarian actors due to the UN policy system formation and WOFIJ Geoknowledge Principle for Media Freedom.

WOFIJ’s mandate is to train, communicate and promote sustainable human development with equity, participation and democracy. It is the only network in the world specialized to all journalism categories reportage in particularly intercultural and politics by keeping up journalists security issues. For more information contact them and visit their website.

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Hatred of Journalists Threatens Democracies

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released their 2018 World Press Freedom Index showing growing animosity toward journalists world-wide. Many times the hostility towards the media is openly encourage by political leaders and those with authoritarian regimes. To see an interesting map showing the degree of “hatred” toward journalists, click here.

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Science Magazine Profiles ILCW co-founder Boyd Norton

CREDIT BARBARA NORTON

The American Association for the Advancement of Science just published a story about ILCW member (USA) Boyd Norton and how he went from being a nuclear scientist to an ardent conservationist and photographer. Click here to read.

Boyd Norton and admirer

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Global Release of award-Winning Film
BLOOD LIONS on Ecostreamz

Blood Lions, the film that exposes the cruelty for profit of the canned hunting industry by the shooting of captive-bred lions in enclosures, will now be released worldwide on the new streaming platform www.ecostreamz.com. The film was produced not only to create global awareness around the captive lion breeding and canned hunting industry in South Africa - where thousands of lions are mass bred to be killed each year for large profits - but it is also a “call to action” to tourists and young international volunteers when visiting that country. Jim Branchflower, founder and CEO of Ecostreamz, said, “For some, lions are just a commodity, cruelly abused to make money from cub-petting, canned hunting and selling their bones for traditional Chinese medicine. We are proud to play a role in this important campaign to end their suffering. Any caring person who watches Blood Lions will want to back the campaign to ban the practice.”

To watch the film or the trailer.
For more information:
Ecostreamz and info@ecostreamz.com
Showmax for South Africa.
Blood Lions and info.

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Barons Honored at Authors Guild

Bob and Charlotte Baron with Joseph Bruchac at the May 16, 2018 Authors Guild Foundation Event in New York City.

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Residences for writers in Switzerland
Applications now open for 2019 session

Seven residential modules available to writers at the Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland.

The Jan Michalski Foundation in Montricher, Switzerland features an original group of seven residential modules that are available to writers, translators, and other creative individuals for residencies of varying lengths. Hanging from the openwork canopy surrounding the Foundation, these living spaces are called “treehouses” and offer ideal conditions to anyone looking to start, continue, or put the final touches on a writing or translating project.

Residences are open to all types of writing. Priority is given to writers and translators but the residences are open to other disciplines where writing is at the heart of the project. Residencies can be granted for individual projects or projects in pairs.

In 2019, a percentage of the residences will be dedicated to nature writing, a form of fiction or creative non-fiction that raises awareness of nature, prepares for a sustainable way of living, and helps to better understand socio-environmental interconnections and the impact of human actions on nature. 
Applications for the 2019 residencies are available online here until 31 August 2018. 

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A Maasai Steward of the Serengeti

Alison Jones of No Water No Life (and ILCW member, USA) met with Meyasi Mollal of the Serengeti Preservation Foundation (and ILCW member, Tanzania) recently in Nairobi to talk about the Mara River Basin. The Mara River flows from Kenya, across Tanzania and into Lake Victoria providing water to Kenya’s Maasai Mari and Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. Kenya currently has proposals to build several dams on the Mara River. Read the interview here.

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Top 37 US Parks to Visit

The Hiking Blog for Montem Outdoor Gear recommends37 must see US National Parks to explore before you die. Click here to learn more.

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Small but Critical

The Importance of Invertebrates is highlighted in a recent blog post at No Water No Life. Check it out here.

Recent Film Festival features ILCW Members

The International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana recently included films about or by ILCW members. Clay Bolt (ILCW member, USA) was featured in a new short “Clay Bolt” by director Chema Domenech where the conservation photographer talks about photographing bugs and other creatures smaller than your finger. Also, Neil Losen (LCW member, USA) had two films included in the festival that he directed or co-directed: “The Path Back” and “Laws of the Lizard”, winner of Best Broadcast Film that he co-directed with Nate Dappen. For more information click here.

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Environmental Defense Fund Going to Space

The Environmental Defense Fund is planning to launch a satellite known as MethaneSAT to measure methane leaks from oil and gas operations, many of which could be stopped with easy repairs. Methane accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. The satellite will produce a snapshot of 80 percent of the Earth every seven days and will detect methane in concentrations of as little as two parts per billion.

The data collected will pinpoint offenders and contributors to global warming so that the leaks can be stopped, as well as provide an accurate account of progress in stopping the methane emissions. The data will also help in prosecuting negligent offenders. The goal of this project is to cut methane pollution 45% by 2025. That would be equivalent to shutting down 1,300 coal power plants. The estimated launch of the satellite is slated for 2021. For more information click here.

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Urban Birder in German

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Scientists say the Mississippi is flooding more than it has in 500 years — and we caused it

In a recent study it was found that man’s best effort to make the Mississippi River more efficient for shipping by straightening it and adding levees to protect against floods may have had the unintended effect of causing higher flooding. Scientists says the river is flooding more now than it has in 500 years. Click here to read the article.

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Hasselstrom wins Sarton Award

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Rocky Mountain Wolf Project

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Mara River Basin in Eastern Africa

Alison Jones, ILCW member (USA) and founder of No Water No Life, has been in East Africa surveying the recent activity on the Mara River. She reports that Kenya is committed to protect 70 new "water towers" (headwater forests) of the Mara and other Kenya Rivers to stop soil erosion, illegal logging and drought from further degrading these transboundary lifelines of water. Kenya will increase its forest cover from its current 7.2% (below UN standards) to 15% by 2020 to insure clean and sufficient water flows in the Mara and other Kenya Rivers. Earlier plans were to expand forest cover to merely 10% by 2030. Kenya will give farmers incentives to increase forest cover by planting indigenous trees and high-value fruit trees, as well as retaining trees that deliver multiple ecosystem services.

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News From WILDvoices

Founder of WildVoices, Tomasz Wiercioch writes: This week, I want to introduce you to two young photographers, Neale Howarth and Alex Basaraba. They've taken over our Instagram to share wildlife and climate change stories. Neale is based out of Pumba Private Game Reserve, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, and has been developing his own style of wildlife photography over the last few years and contributes behind-the-scenes blog posts to WILDvoices. Alex is passionate about Climate Change, the environment, and empowering human livelihoods. Through his many travels, he has captured and told many captivating stories at the intersection of environmental conservation and human well-being. He recently launched @AClimateLens, an Instagram based platform featuring a collective of photographers documenting Climate Change to infuse hope in global adaptation and resiliency. He also has a great personal Instagram account. For more information about WILDvoices, contact them here.

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Anti-Poaching Success in Mali

Mali Elephants Safe for Past Year

The Mali Elephant Project (MEP), working with grassroots leaders and national government officials, reports that there was no recorded poaching of elephants during the past year. The habitat is the size of Switzerland, 8 million acres (3.24 million ha), containing elephants as well as numerous cultures and ethnic groups who have traditionally managed their lands separately.

Program director, Susan Canney, and field manager, Nomba Ganame, realized that protecting a herd that migrates across such a vast territory could only be accomplished with local support. That is why the Mali Elephant Project brought together eight ethnic groups for the first-time, and worked with them to organize an elder council that jointly manages the land for the benefit of people and elephants. The Mali Elephant Project harnesses the power of working together to achieve conservation outcomes that would be impossible for one group working in isolation to produce on their own.

In 2013, a violent insurgency swept through the elephant habitat and destabilized the entire region (making the elephants susceptible to bandits and poachers for the first time), the Mali Elephant Project was the only NGO project to remain operating in the region. In an escalating climate of fear and uncertainty, it became necessary to unite local leadership with national-level officials for greater coordination. The result of that process was an official decree issued by Mali’s President in early 2016 calling on all of Mali’s agencies to prioritize working together to save this internationally important herd.

The MEP also built the foundation for Mali’s first anti-poaching unit (APU), a bold and unique collaboration between Mali’s Ministry of Environment, the United Nations MINUSMA forces, Chengeta Wildlife, and local communities. The APU was first deployed in January 2016. The Mali Elephant Project is a project of the WILD Foundation. See more here..

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“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
~Mahatma Gandhi

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European Wilderness Society
Visits ILCW

Verena Grubler from the European Wilderness Society (Austria) is shown with Bob Baron and Patty Maher when she stopped by the Colorado (USA) office of the International League of Conservation Writers in mid-February.

Recently, Verena Gruber from the European Wilderness Society, headquartered in Tamsweg, Austria, visited the International League of Conservation Writers at our office in Golden, Colorado. Learning more about each other’s organizations we also discussed how our two organizations can work together on future projects. Gruber is making her way across the U.S. and meeting key people in environmental and conservation positions in the U.S. government, NGOs and private foundations. Her three-month trip will last until March.

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Another City Sues Fossil Fuel Companies
for Climate Change

Richmond, California became the ninth U.S. community to sue fossil fuel giants over climate change, joining cities like New York and San Francisco. A climate change adaptation study commissioned by the city found that the city’s current levees will not protect it against rising sea levels. It's water supply, sourced from runoff from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, is vulnerable to drought.

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China to Host WILD 11 in 2019

Vance Martin, President of the WILD Foundation, and leaders from the Global Times, People's Daily, and the China Institute of Strategy and Management participate in the January 20, 2018 announcement that China will host the 11th World Wilderness Congress in Beijing 2019.

The 11th World Wilderness Congress (WILD 11) will be held in Beijing in late 2019. As China comes to terms with the high ecological cost of

rapid industrialization, people around the world are also waking up to the fact that we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction. At this singular moment in Chinese and world history, China’s commitment to strengthen international leadership for the protection of wild nature through the WILD11 process promises groundbreaking opportunities for East-West and global coordination on conservation challenges.

The first World Wilderness Congress (WWC) was hosted by South Africa in 1977. Since then the WWC has inspired and facilitated the development and implementation of practical outcomes that protect wild nature while meeting the needs of human communities. A sampling of outcomes over 40 years include initiating the process leading to the creation of the World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility (GEF); founding the International League of Conservation Photographers; creating new and strengthening existing protected nature areas; and facilitating the creation of the first transboundary conservation area between Mexico and the United States (total area of some 1.5 million hectares, over 3.5 million acres); and many more. More details are available here>

As the Chinese and international Secretariats are created, details will be formulated on both the lead-up events and the exact dates, goals and programme of WILD11 itself. Preliminary information and the channel to become involved is available at www.wild11.org/>

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Nancy Campbell is Britain’s New Canal Laureate for 2018

Nancy Campbell. Photo by Paul Preece, 2018

The Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust announce the appointment of Britain’s new Canal Laureate Nancy Campbell. Campbell is an ILCW member (UK), Oxford-based poet, and kayaker. She has a keen interest in arctic, marine and water conservation, following on from her winter residency at the most northern museum in the world in Greenland in 2010, and subsequent museum residencies in both Greenland and Iceland over the last seven years. During 2018 she will “seek out and share stories” from the people and places she will encounter during her travels along the 2,000 miles of the nation’s historic canals and waterways looked after by the Canal & River Trust. Nancy begins her role as Canal Laureate this month, taking over from poet Luke Kennard (2016-17) and poet Jo Bell, who became the inaugural Canal Laureate (2013-15). Interested in helping make her poetry accessible to a mainstream audience, Nancy is keen to realise her poems through other mediums such as printmaking and film. Her initial events and collaborations will include: creating a short work about rain to be displayed by the waterways; writing a poem about an unassuming and endangered type of herring – the Twaite Shad; and a collaboration with Nottingham’s ‘Light Night’ event.

Established in 2013 by The Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust, the Canal Laureateship aims to encourage exciting new writing about the Britain’s historic canal network. Previous Laureateships have seen poems stencilled onto canalside walls, carved into newly made lock-beams, translated into short films, and forgotten classic poetry given new life in performances, publication and animations. Canal poetry has been celebrated at venues including the Hay Festival, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Birmingham Literature Festival, National Waterways Museum Ellesmere Port, London’s Southbank Centre and Crick Boat Show, Welshpool Poetry Festival, Market Bosworth Festival, Leeds Liverpool Biennial, and showcased in a dedicated canal edition of BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. The project is part of the Arts on the Waterways programme, a partnership between the Canal & River Trust, Arts Council England and Arts Council of Wales to help attract even more visitors to the waterways while surprising and delighting existing communities through innovative art projects.

To read poems by Nancy Campbell and the other New Canal Laureates, please click here.

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Gretel Ehrlich Receives 2017Wilderness Writing Award

The 2017 Wilderness Writing Award goes to American Gretel Ehrlich who has had some incredible life experiences, including being struck by lightening, that she wrote about in A Match to the Heart. She has written about her travels and experiences and is passionately supportive of the environment. The Wilderness Writing Award is bestowed every two years to a living writer for a Lifetime Achievement of work that is meaningful and about wild nature, the environment, or the land. The award is co-sponsored by The Wild Foundation, Fulcrum Publishing, and the International League of Conservation Writers.

Ehrlich was born on a horse ranch in California and was educated at Bennington College (Vermont) and the UCLA film school (California). She began writing fulltime in 1978. Annie Dillard who praised Ehrlich’s 1985 book, The Solace of Open, said: “Wyoming has found its Whitman.” Ehrlich has written several other books including Heart Mountain; Islands, the Universe, and Home; Yellowstone: Land of Fire and Ice; John Muir, Nature’s Visionary; In the Empire of Ice: Encounters in a Changing Landscape; and Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami. Ehrlich has also written essays, short stories, and poems. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, the Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, Life, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, and Audubon, among others.

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Happenings at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

The Lewa-Borana area in Kenya is working with the Il Ngwesi, a community conservancy that adjoins Lewa on the north, in partnering on rhino protection. Il Ngwesi’s 22,000 acres added into a rhino conservation partnership could hold at least 150 black rhinos. This safer habitat for all wildlife is a more secure landscape for people and sustainable tourism opportunities. Lewa is also working to provide more opportunities for Women through the Lewa Micro-Credit Programme. They are partnering with two groups: Women’s Microfinance Initiative(WMI) and KIVA. Support for Education—through their Giving Tuesday campaign Lewa will engage 50 students to attend their first year of secondary school in 2018. The Big Give donations will facilitate 10 school groups of 50 children each to visit Lewa for a conservation experience. And Guest Numbers are up—the tourism arm of Lewa contributes at least one third to their operations. Lewa Wildlife Conservancy has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since. 2013. For more information about Lewa and all they offer, click here.

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Restoring Native Forests to Former Coal Sites

In Appalachia (USA) previous efforts to restore former coal mine sites have left large areas of unproductive land. Now, a group of nonprofits and scientists are working to restore native trees to the region. Read more.

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Proposed Dams May Damage Serengeti Ecosystem

The River Mara is the only permanent source of water for herds of wildlife that migrate between Kenya and Tanzania. Currently Kenya is proposing several dams on the River Mara and its tributaries that would lead to reduced water flows possibly imperiling the lives of many of the animals of the Serengeti in Tanzania. For more information, click here.

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Mission LifeForce: Criminalizing Ecocide

Mission LifeForce is a growing international movement of Earth Protectors based on a legal document, the Earth Protectors Trust Fund document.  It is like a crowdfund, a petition and a legal Trust all rolled into one, and it's extremely powerful.  In fact, it's the missing piece - making climate and ecological justice possible where nothing else has. For more information, click here.

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Mexico Creates Largest N. Am. Ocean Reserve

The Guardian reports Mexico’s president Enrique Peña Nieto decreed a protection zone around the Revillagigedo Islands (242 miles / 390 km) southwest of the Baja California peninsula. The protection will ban fishing, mining and the construction of new hotels on the islands.
For more information and to view a short film of these spectacular islands, click here.

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Nature: one of the most under-appreciated tools
for reigning in carbon

A new study shows that better global land stewardship—conserving and restoring wild habitats and practicing more sustainable farming—could get us more than one-third of the way to the Paris climate mitigation targets. Nature may not be the most sexy tool in the shed, but it has tremendous power to move the climate change needle. In principle, the authors say, natural climate solutions could remove 23.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from the atmosphere each year. Read more.
Source: No Water No Life Weekly Drop Newsletter

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TOP

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Featured Video

4Ocean Removes Trash from the Ocean

Previous Featured Videos

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Did You See This?

WILD 11 in China, late 2019
The following graphic illustrates why China was chosen for the location of WILD 11 (the 11th World Wilderness Congress). For additional information click here.

Click the image to print this infographic.

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Mineral Extraction in the Great Sand Dunes

Conservation Photographer Boyd Norton submitted this photo of what the Great Sand Dunes National Park could look like if mineral extraction is greenlighted further on public lands. Former Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes, who is now the executive director of NYU School of Law’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center wrote:

“… despite his allusions to Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his team are consciously and aggressively casting aside a long list of environmental, health and safety protections for valued public lands, as well as rules that protect taxpayers from being fleeced by energy companies: They’re repealing oil and gas operator requirements for fracking; rolling back rules that restrict wasteful venting and flaring of unwanted gas; and axing reforms requiring coal, oil and gas companies to pay royalties at an appropriate level. He’s also quashed, midstream, a federal coal program review that already had identified serious improprieties.” Read the entire article here.

If you don’t want to see mineral extraction on our public lands, work to protect them by increasing the awareness of what could happen through your writing, photos, and social media.

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Member Writing

Protecting Ecuador’s Wildlife and Habitats

CREDIT Dominic Mitchell, birdingetc.com

Dominic Mitchell, ILCW Member (UK) is the managing editor for Birdwatch magazine and BirdGuides.com. In a recent article story for the World Land Trust he tells about his trip to the Ecuadorian Andres, the amazing birdlife, and the need to protect their habitats. The sites visited are managed by the World Land Trust’s Ecuadorian partner Fundacion Jocotoco. Not only did he and his party have the opportunity to see the rare Spectacled Bear and the endangered Andean Condor, they also saw new roads coming into these critical forest ecosystems that will surely have negative impacts unless these areas are protected. Read his article here.

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Once Around the Sun with the
Calanda Wolves

The European Wilderness Society writes in their blog about a new web documentary about the famous Swiss Wolf-pack brought to film by Peter Dettling. The Swiss filmmaker followed the wolves from 2013 to 2016 resulting in a 52-episode documentary (one episode per week) about the wolves who had been absent from the Swiss Alps for 150 years. See the European Wilderness Society blog post here for more information.

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Wild Heart

We are god’s funny family talking on a big open radio line

By Michael McBride

Soul Lions hide in the dry language grasses,

Speak your poetry aloud,

Set fire to the thickets,

Drive the lions toward us.

Wade into the streams of your emotions,

Your torn shirt in tatters, some blood on your sleeve,

Wrap this new dawn around yourself without hesitation.

Claim nothing, regret but little, be one with the world,

Abandon the word struggle from your vocabulary,

Become an ember that is coaxed to flame by the breeze.

Fill your dreams with longing,

For birds and flowers and children

(apologies to Coleman Barks and Jelaluddin Rumi)

 

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Book Reviews

New Books by ILCW Members

Gathering from the Grassland: A Plains Journal 2017

Linda M. Hasselstrom High Plains Press
Paperback and Hardback, 320 pages

This book is a rumination on the daily lives of an extraordinary writer-rancher, on the folk who raised her, and on the many ways physical and spiritual in which grass has sustained them and their cattle on this daunting South Dakota land. Hasselstrom s new journal, created day by day over an entire year, one blade at a time, unfolds like a new season s grasses. On the horizon, encircling everything she has seen, are echoes from the past. In offering a companion volume to her thirty-year-old Windbreak, Hasselstrom brings her prairie to life and puts her own self, and her forebears, under the microscope and makes sense of what once seemed chaotic.

Review
Linda Hasselstrom’s lyrical journal grows, organically, out of a passionate love for the land, the land s creatures, and the land s people, present and part of her personal past. This enduring, endearing litany of a year in the life of a writer, a poet, and a rancher takes us deep into the heart of what it means to belong to a place, to live a deeply-rooted life to grow old with the land and to remain young with it, too. A precious glimpse into a year richly, uniquely, profoundly lived.
--Susan Wittig Albert: author of Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, and other memoirs, historical fiction, and mysteries, including the China Bayles series

Linda M. Hasselstrom owns a small family ranch in western South Dakota. Her seventeen published books of poetry and nonfiction include Feels Like Far: A Rancher s Life on the Great Plains, autobiographical essays. With the Great Plains Native Plant Society, Hasselstrom dedicated the Claude A. Barr Memorial Great Plains Garden in 2001 to preserve native shortgrass prairie plants on 350 acres of her ranch, and the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies established a riparian protection area on her land along Battle Creek.

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The Adventures of Anuk: The First Leap

By Suzanne Mondoux
2018, Baico Publishing
Paperback and Kindle, 352 pages

The Adventures of Anuk is an ecological story of an Assisi Human on a quest to save the world. Despite her curious appearance as an Assisi Human, Anuk had a normal childhood and was happy living with her adopted parents in a faraway land where three suns pass in the sky overhead. She loved collecting yamagoos berries in the fields and helping her mother run the kitchen at their Inn. Then, on her sixteenth birthday, Anuk receives a summons by the messenger Aye who says it is time to return to faraway Roese Island. Though reluctant to leave her home and family, Anuk is assured by her parents that they always knew the time would come when she must leave and fulfill her destiny as an Assisi.

Two oddly unfamiliar looking non-human Beings, EagleOwl and Kinkajou arrive to escort Aye and Anuk, because the journey ahead will be arduous and fraught with danger. They will have to cross a great sea and pass through many partems, as the lands are called there. Some of these are barren regions of devastation and waste. Others are lush paradises that are not quite as they seem, for their spectacular beauty conceals lethal secrets. Anuk realizes that, even if she should survive these hazards, she has no idea what awaits her at the end of the journey.

When young Anuk embarks on this enthralling adventure, she discovers the world beyond her parents' inn is far more fantastic and dangerous than she could have imagined. For more information, click here.

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Tread Softly

By Diana Woodcock
2018, FutureCycle Press
Paperback and Kindle, 90 pages

After living on the Arabian Peninsula and the Tibetan Plateau, in the Everglades (as a poet-in-residence), in Macau, Thailand, and Chengdu, China—a city so polluted the sun seldom breaks through the smog to shine—Diana Woodcock now follows Christina Georgina Rossetti’s mandate, “Tread softly! All the earth is holy ground.” This, her third collection of poems, was inspired by it. Perhaps for a poet who grew up memorizing nature psalms of the Old Testament and singing “This is My Father’s World,” it was inevitable that her poetry eventually would take a turn toward ecological concerns, merging her spirituality with her love for all earthly beings. For more information, click here.

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The Light Shines from the West
A Western Perspective on the Growth of America

By Robert C. Baron
2018, Fulcrum Publishing
Hardcover, 288 pages

Traditionally the complex history of America’s westward development was told from learned scholars from the eastern US. That was where the major universities were located. Bob Baron, ILCW member/co-founder, breaks tradition by writing about the western expansion of the US through a western perspective. He and five chapter authors cover many aspects of this transition of a country. Page Lambert (ILCW member) writes beautifully about the Rural West. Elizabeth Darby (ILCW member) tells of the many women who were key in the West’s development and they are not ladies of the evening (like many sources portrayed women in the frontier West, if they mentioned them at all). And the medical perspective and innovations that came out of the Western US, and not the East, that are written about by Dr. Bruce Paton (ILCW member). This book is an exploration of the innovations and expansions that have shaped the West and the American landscape from 1800 to today. It provides an overdue and insightful overview of western American history. For more information, click here.

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Words the Turtle Taught Me

Susan Richardson (ILCW member UK) announces her fourth poetry collection, Words the Turtle Taught Me, published by Cinnamon Press. Described by writer Philip Hoare as ‘vital, glorious, salutary’, it grew out of Susan’s recent poetry residency with the Marine Conservation Society Fostering engagement with endangered ocean species, it blends poetry and prose, science and shamanism, contemporary ecological peril and ancient myth. For more information, click here>

“Susan Richardson’s work is a suspended state, caught between the us we presume to be and the species with which we share this watery, fragile planet. Cut and precise, archaic and innovative, transcendent and in-the-moment, she sees the life of the sea as a mirror of ourselves, and vice versa: always changing, always the same. This beautifully written and exquisitely illustrated compendium summons up the sea we always thought it to be, but which now hovers in the balance…Words The Turtle Taught Me comes as a vital, glorious and salutary lesson for us all.”
– Philip Hoare
author ofLeviathan & The Sea Inside

 

 

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Unprecedented Crime

Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival

In 2017, the heat waves, extreme wild fires, and flooding around the world confirmed beyond doubt that climate disruption is now a full-blown emergency. We have entered Churchill’s "period of consequences", yet governments have simply watched the disasters magnify, while rushing ahead with new pipelines and annual trillions in fossil fuel subsidies.

This new book by Dr. Peter D. Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth show that governments simply cannot say they did not know. The events we are seeing today have been consistently forecast ever since the First Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was signed by all governments back in 1990, and which has been described as the best evaluation project ever designed.

Unprecedented Crime first lays out the culpability of corporations, governmental, political and religious bodies, and especially the media through their failure to report or act on the climate emergency. No emergency response has even been contemplated by wealthy high-emitting national governments. Extreme weather reporting never even hints at the need to address climate change ― even though it is producing wars and migrations among the world's poorest, those who have contributed the least to global warming.

Yet, independently of governments, scores of proven zero-carbon game changers have been coming online all over the world. These exciting technologies, described in the book, are now able to power both household electricity and energy-dense heavy industry. We already have the technical solutions to the CO2 problem. With these solutions we can act in time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to near-zero within 20 years.

These willful crimes against life itself by negligent governments, the oblivious media and an insouciant civil society are crimes that everyday citizens can readily grasp ― and then take to the streets and to the courts to protest on behalf of their children and grand-children. This thoroughly researched and highly-documented book will show the how.

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Calls for Work and Retreats

Alluvian accepts creative nonfiction, science journalism and science narratives, cartoons and art, and/or narrative analysis of data related to sustainability, climate change, the environmental sciences, the human engagement with nature, or other topics about the environment. Authors must be an undergraduate or have graduated with an undergraduate degree within the last 18 months.

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The Fourth River has launched Tributaries, a weekly, online publication of "...the brief and the inspiring, that which sustains and takes us through unexpected courses..." Nature or placed based short prose (500 words ), one poem, or one piece of visual art can be submitted here.  Each week we will feature a new piece on the front page of web site.

Thank you to Adrienne Ross Scanlan (ILCW member, USA) for the “Calls for Works and Retreats” information. To subscribe to her newsletter, click here.

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Calendar

 Upcoming Screenings

The Hudson: A River at Risk --
Jon Bowermaster, ILCW member (USA) and filmmaker has set up a series of screenings about the Hudson River and the environmental dangers it encounters. To see if there is a screening near you (or to schedule one) click here.To see the film trailer click here.

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Book Signings for The Light Shines from the West

July 21, 2018
Barnes and Noble, 1-3 pm, 960 S. Colorado Blvd., Glendale, CO
July 28, 2018
Inkberry Books, 7 pm, 7960 Niwot Rd., Niwot, CO
August 13, 2018
History Colorado, 1-2, presentation and book signing. 1200 Broadway, Denver, CO

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July 8-15, 2018

Igniting the LionHeart – one week intensive training to spark the flame of Lion Heartedness in emerging youth leaders. The training is facilitated by the Linda Tucker Foundation of South Africa. For more information click here.

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October25-28 2018

Wildlife Film Festival, Rotterdam

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Late 2019

WILD 11, the 11th World Wilderness Congress to be held in Beijing, China.
For more information, click here.

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ILCW News

Limited Edition Prints

World renowned Conservation Photographer Boyd Norton has selected 16 of his favorite prints that are available to make your own. Check out these amazing images from the winner of the Ansel Adams award here.

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ILCW now on Facebook 
ILCW members, please check out the ILCW Facebook page and add content.

Tell us what you are working on, what changes you see in the area of conservation (good and bad) in your area, include news from you: have you recently won any awards or accolades? Have you recently published a new book or article or perhaps finished a piece of art, performance piece, photo that glorifies the natural world? This page is for you, please enjoy and generate interest in ILCW and what we do.

ILCW facebook

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 Looking for Creative People Who Appreciate Nature 

Do you have a friend or a colleague who is passionate about Nature and believes that we should protect what we have for future generations? ILCW welcomes all creative people (not just writers) who use their talent to bring awareness to the plight of our natural world. Have them apply to be an ILCW member at http://www.ilcwriters.org/application.html

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