International League of Conservation Writers

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News

Urban Birder in German

David Lindo, ILCW member (UK) has a new book just out in German. He says it is a compilation of his English title Tales From the Concrete Jungles with additional chapters on German, Austrian and Swiss cities. For more details visit here.

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Mississippi River Floods Due to Man

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

Linda M. Hasselstrom (ILCW member, USA) has won the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Memoir for her title Gathering from the Grassland: A Plains Journal. The Story Circle Network, an international nonprofit organization of women writers, recently announced the winners of its 2017 Sarton Women's Book Awards™. The award program is named in honor of May Sarton, who is remembered for her contributions to women's literature as a memoirist, novelist, and poet.Linda M. Hasselstrom is a nature writer, poet, and longtime leader in land steward­ship, and examines several generations of family diaries searching for an understanding of her ancestors and for direction in planning for the future of the plains ranch which has been in the family for over a century. Moving through the days of a year, she is never afraid to show the reader the most difficult thing of all, the truth of her life. The portrait that emerges is of a woman who makes peace with life’s complexities and finds joy in honoring the plains and its people and animals. Ever the nature writer at heart, Hasselstrom crafts miniature essays on plains animals including antelope, owls, badgers, snakes, buffalo, and cattle. She also delves into rural community dynamics, death and aging, family, and the work of a writer. Click here for a short video about her ranch life, writing and teaching career.

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Rocky Mountain Wolf Project

The Rocky Mountain Wolf Project is committed to restoring the gray wolf to the great National Forests and other public wildlands in western Colorado. After the successful reintroduction of gray wolves into the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, there's just one missing link in the Rocky Mountains—one state whose public lands are still haunted by the missing howl: Colorado. Join our mission and help build our movement by spreading awareness and donating what YOU can to reestablish the wolf in western Colorado. Click here for more information.

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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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Oceans 8 Films win at Film Festivals

Jon Bowermaster, ILCW member (USA) and filmmaker announces that his film ‘City on the Water’, the year-long reporting about what is happening along the 520-miles of waterfront around New York City, has won the New York Wild Film Festival “Best Wild New York Film” and has been selected to screen at the D.C. Environmental Film Festival. His film ‘Restoring the Clearwater’ will show at the Sonoma, California International Film Festival. This documentary is about the restoration and the return of the classic ship ‘Clearwater’ to the Hudson River. Built under the visionary leadership of musician/activist and Hudson River resident Pete Seeger, the ‘Clearwater’ continues to fulfill the original mission he envisioned, to help educate and share the plight of our local Hudson River environment as it luffs its sails and roams America’s “First River.” For more information, and other screenings, click here.

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Somalia Group Works to Prevent and
Counter Violent Extremism

Members of COMEDIO and URIS. Daud Abdi Daud is second from right.

Daud Abdi Daud Dimbil, ILCW member (Somalia) and United Religion Initiative, Somalia coordinator, recently met with the leadership of the Child and Mother Educational Development Organization in Magadishu to present a book about Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism. The goal is to empower civil society organizations to address social problems through grass roots efforts.

The Child and Mother Educational Development Organization (COMEDO) is a nonprofit and non-political social organization that meets the humanitarian needs of the suffering Somali community, especially in the southwest region of the country. COMEDOS was established in 1994 by a group of concerned citizen in conjunction with community elders. CAMEDO is committed to provide programmes that address the community’s basic needs and those relevant to the current situation in Somalia.

The mission of the United Religion Initiative Somalia Cooperation Circle (URISCC), that Mr. Daud is connected with, is to prevent violent extremism and monitor and document violent acts. The URISCC wants to avert prolonged, religious-based violence extremism in Somalia. The group will be working on proactive solutions and recommendations with the community.

For more details and interviews please contact URI Somalia coordinator Rev. Mr. Daud Abdi Daud on +252616349997 or email.

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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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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.

Source: Thank you to No Water No Life who has followed California drought as a Spotlight.

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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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Nixing Trophy Hunting of Captive-Bred Lions

Humane Society International and Blood Lions® announce that U.S. pro-trophy hunting group Safari Club International (SCI) will no longer allow the promotion or auctioning of hunts involving African lions bred and shot in captivity. Recently effective on February 4, SCI will no longer accept advertising from any operator for any such hunts, or allow operators to sell hunts for lions bred in captivity at the SCI Annual Hunters’ Convention, or include any entries of captive bred lions into its record book.

Pippa Hankinson, producer of the film Blood Lions® says “lion cubs are ripped from their mothers as early as a few days old and hand reared to habituate them to people. Paying volunteers then raise these lions under the false belief that they are orphans, the same cubs are also exploited for tourist cub petting and, once older, for the ‘walking with lions’ activity. The adult lions are then sold off to trophy hunters for canned hunts or killed for the lion bone trade. This cycle of mistreatment must end.”

Other hunting organizations that have already spoken out against trophy hunting of captive-bred lions:

• Dallas Safari Club
• Boone and Crockett Club
• South African Hunters and Game Conservation Association
• Operators and Professional Hunter Associations of Africa
• Namibia Professional Hunters Association
• Rowland Ward Ltd.

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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 2017 Wilderness 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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World Federation of Intercultural Journalists

Daud Abdi Daud (ILCW member, Somalia) announces the formation of the World Federation of Intercultural Journalists (WOFIJ). Their mission is to encourage excellence in the strong, independent corps of journalists worldwide who promote intercultural coverage through advocacy building and social awareness. For more information, check out their website.
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If Global Warming Not Stopped, Earth will Transition to Desert says Study

Newsweek Magazine reports that a new study by the journal Nature Climate Change maintains that more than a quarter of the Earth will experience serious drought by 2050 if the guidelines of the Paris Climate Accord are not met. To read the article click here.

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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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Blood Lions® partners with Different.org

Blood Lions, the organization that is shedding light on the canned hunting and predator breeding industry in South Africa, is partnering with Different.org, a crowdfunding philanthropy platform. “Through these online channels we have been able to highlight and expose all the issues around the predator breeding and canned hunting industries in a manner that has been vital for decision-makers in the public and government arenas worldwide,” said Nicola Gerrard, Blood Lions® Digital Media Manager. “One challenge that we continue to face is on the awareness front around animal interactions. Volunteers and tourists continue to feel that their personal interactions at these cub petting and breeding facilities is somehow different and not, in fact, exploitative and commercial in nature. To have Different.org join the campaign is another major boost to ensure these messages are driven hard. The public, our networks and partners continue to play a key role in exposing the truth behind cub petting, predator breeding and canned hunting." For more information 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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Member Writing

Campaign to End Poisoning of Oceans

By Carolyne Tomno (ILCW member, Kenya)

A major campaign to end the dumping of waste in our oceans is underway. For too long the ocean has been treated as bottomless dumping ground for plastic, sewage and other waste.

Chile, Oman, Sri Lanka and South Africa have joined UN Environment’s Clean Seas campaign against marine litter and ocean pollution, announcing measures including plastic bag bans, new marine reserves and drives to increase recycling. The four countries announced their support during the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya.

The head of the UN Environment Erik Solheim has hailed the countries for supporting clean seas. He says the countries are showing the leadership needed in order to end this abuse, and protect the marine resources on which millions depend on for their livelihoods.

The Minister of Environment for Sri Lanka, Anura Dissanayake, says the country, is taking bold action to turn the tide on plastics. We have banned plastic bags and are now working to reduce the number of plastic bottles in the country. We want to be a green and blue beacon of hope in Asia and do everything we can to keep the seas clean.

South Africa will step up its beach cleanup program and prioritize action on tyres, electronic waste, lighting and paper and packaging. This includes extended producer responsibility for plastic packaging.

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Clean Seas Campaign

Nearly 40 countries from Kenya to Canada and Indonesia to Brazil have joined the #CleanSeas campaign, which aims to counter the torrents of plastic trash that are degrading our oceans and endangering the life they sustain. The countries account for more than half of the world’s coastline.

Legislation to press companies and citizens to change their wasteful habits is often part of broader government strategies to foster responsible production and consumption – a key step in the global shift toward sustainable development.

Humans have already dumped billions of tonnes of plastic, and we are adding it to the ocean at a rate of 8 million tonnes a year. As well as endangering fish, birds and other creatures who mistake it for food or become entangled in it, plastic waste has also entered the human food chain with health consequences that are not yet fully understood. It also harms tourist destinations and provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes carrying diseases including dengue and Zika.

The #CleanSeas campaign aims to “turn the tide on plastic” by inspiring action from Governments, businesses and individuals on ocean pollution.

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Midnight at the oasis

By Rebecca Lawton ILCW member (USA)

Once oases supported human evolution. Now, our addiction to fountains, pools and palms threatens our survival

Seen from the air, the single verdant parcel of land with its straight borders and sharp edges resembles a green postage stamp pasted on a great expanse of manila envelope. Inside the boundary, a screen of trees hides a palatial estate, acres of emerald turf, a paved circular driveway, and an extensive array of tumbling, marble fountains. Outside the rectangle, a hot, rock-strewn fan of tan alluvium extends unvegetated and unwatered for half a kilometre to another such parcel, then another, then another. Toward the city centre eight kilometres away, residences cluster closer together but emulate the lush feel of the outlying estates with their surfeit of palm trees, water features and improbably green turf. continue reading

Rebecca Lawton is a fluvial geologist and former river guide who writes about water in the West. Her latest book is Steelies and Other Endangered Species: Stories on Water (2014). She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

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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.

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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

 The Hudson: A River at Risk -- Upcoming Screenings
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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 April 21-May 2, 2018

Weaving Words and Women: A 12-day Peruvian Adventure
ILCW member Page Lambert will take adventurous women to the high Andes of Peru next April. There will be writing, markets, incredible food, horseback riding opportunities, Inca ruins, and more. For details, 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.

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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Do you have news?

Let us know if you have won an award, written a new book, or launched a creative endeavor to bring awareness to conservation. Chances are the ILCW membership is not aware of these things, so be sure and tell us. Send items to:patty@ilcwriters.org

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