Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

European Beaver  Image by Ralf Schick from Pixabay

NPR: California enlists beavers in battle against climate change

Forest areas with beaver dams are less prone to severe fire damage because of more consistent soil moisture and less extreme air aridity and temperature conditions. Read about it or listen to Randy Simon’s 2-minute beaver podcast on National Public Radio’s Earth Wise web page.

Low-water challenges on the Mississippi River are evident at Memphis.  Dulce Torres Guzman/Tennessee Lookout

Despite the pump from Appalachian rainforests, the drought-stricken Mississippi River is the lowest it has ever been

This story was originally published by the Tennessee Lookout.

MEMPHIS — John Dodson’s corn, cotton and soybean fields are fewer than 10 miles from the Mississippi River, the key transportation artery for West Tennessee grain farmers. But they might as well be a thousand miles.

Historically low water levels on the river are coming at the worst possible time for him. It’s peak harvest season, but he can’t get his crop to market. 

West Tennessee farmers have long relied on proximity to the Mississippi, delivering their crops directly from the field to the river. The ease of access has meant many farmers lack large grain storage silos that farmers in the Midwest and elsewhere rely on.  

While drought strangles transportation on the Mississippi, many of these farmers are now being forced to leave crops in the field and pray for rain to fall anywhere and everywhere else but above their harvest-ready crops.

The average American family of four annually spends more than $2,000 on food they never eat!

Nearly one in nine people suffer from hunger worldwide.

Agriculture contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and soil degradation.

Climate change increases crop losses.

One third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted.

It’s not just the food that’s wasted.

Consider the energy wasted to grow, process and transport it.

That all contributes to climate change, food shortages and to the rising costs of food, energy and health care.

Food waste stresses our environment, humanity and the economy.

— EarthSolidarity™

A biologist with Conservation Fisheries surveys a stretch of Little River near Walland, Tennessee to determine fish viability and identify rare species for transplantation. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press

Human activities have imperiled our waterways — along with a third of freshwater fish and other aquatic species

This story was originally published by The Revelator.

If we needed more motivation to save our ailing rivers, it could come with the findings of a recent study that determined the biodiversity crisis is most acute in freshwater ecosystems, which thread the Southern landscape like crucial veins and arteries.

Rivers, lakes and inland wetlands cover 1 percent of the Earth but provide homes for 10 percent of all its species, including one-third of all vertebrates. And many of those species are imperiled — some 27 percent of the nearly 30,000 freshwater species so far assessed by the IUCN Red List. This includes nearly one-third of all freshwater fish.

How did things get so bad? For some species it’s a single action — like building a dam. But for most, it’s a confluence of factors — an accumulation of harm — that builds for years or decades.