Extinction

The Arnold Arboretum e-mailed out this link -- https://arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/collections-extinction-abundance/ -- and that has got me thinking about endangered species, conservation, and all that.  In turn an old college friend sent me two interesting articles that discussed global issues, biodiversity, resilience, and sustainability.  That led to this reply to him:  

The planetary commons article was a good read and it meshed well with my current reading, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/science/articles/10.3389/fsci.2024.1349350/full. Another illustration of the difference between a global commons and a planetary commons turned up recently in https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environment/2024/the-impact-of-the-us-mexico-border-wall-on-biodiversity, where the disruption by The Former Guy's border wall is apparent at the local and regional level, including human social. 

 

NM has a state-level effort for protecting rare plants and they link to a UNM website, https://nhnm.unm.edu/botany/nm_rare_plant_conservation_strategy, with its map of conservation targets.  By the way, that map pretty much shows you where to go for interesting outdoor hikes. 

 

Meanwhile, the border wall seems to have stopped everything but human beings--https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environment/2024/the-impact-of-the-us-mexico-border-wall-on-biodiversity.  

Just for fun, here's a photo of Black-eyed Susans at Bike-in-Coffee taken during yesterday's ride.  We peddled from the Nature Center down and back, using unpaved paths as much as possible.