DEN Enews

_{It’s hard to care for nature. It requires patience and perseverance. Spring on the coast is slow this year and a consistent 10 degrees overnight is a long wait. Last night at this editor’s house, it went down to two degrees. The garden clean-up calls but the pollinators are yet to all wake up. Early clean up destroys too many.}

_{Did you know that 70% of our bees are native and do not live in hives. That is the home of the honeybee, a domesticated species. Our native bees live in leaf litter, underground and in hollow stems. When we aggressively clean our yards early, we destroy their habitat. Avoiding pesticides and herbicides is critical too.}

_{Caring for our oceans and lakes takes patience and perseverance too. Understanding why developments should be relocated requires the hard work of study and education as to species-at-risk and risks to our waterways. This hard work is being done by a coalition of groups and it is our responsibility to listen to what they have to teach us.}

_{Why should you care about Sandy Lake? What species are at risk so someone can live on the waterfront or around sensitive waterways? Join our Zoom on May 29th and be educated.}

_{Save the Date for a hike around Sandy Lake On October 4th. More details to follow}

_{Some of our DEN colleagues joined others in a gathering on May 9th .} 

Thanks for caring about democracy and protecting Nova Scotia’s natural heritage for future generations!

_{Caring for nature requires great love but also great vigilance. Our Advocacy editors search for petitions that are pertinent to us locally but also to the greater world. We are all citizens of this earth and what impacts one region may have far-reaching implications to another.}

_{Barred owls are gentle, intelligent birds who form tight family bonds and play an important role in forest ecosystems. In Canada and the West Coast of the United States, hundreds of thousands of these birds are being slaughtered. The culling is underway and will lead to the death of nearly half a million barred owls. They are being blamed for the decline of the northern spotted owl, with the government saying that one type of owl must be killed to save the other. However, this is not based in truth or the reality of how nature works. The barred owls and spotted owls can coexist; they are even known to form families and have babies together that are called sparred owls. The plan is to kill these hybrid owls too. What no one is talking about is that the real reason spotted owls are in trouble is from habitat destruction, logging, deforestation, and human expansion. To add to the injustice, we are abusing the trust barred owls by making their call in order to lure them out to be killed. Please sign this petition to say this plan of decimation needs the boot and to show that people give a hoot about the lives of barred owls.}

_{EDITOR NOTE: Coincidentally Save Our Old Forests had a nighttime adventure at Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area on Friday, May 9 learning the different calls for the Saw-whet, Long-eared, Great Horned and Barred owls. Check out this great video of a barred owl taken that night: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/J_L6Qg2ecUA}

_{Birds across our continent are dying off. Population numbers are dropping for approximately 75% of bird species in North America, and this is moving us closer to a massive extinction event. Chickadees, red-winged blackbirds, great egrets, little blue herons, peregrine falcons, and more are dying in the middle of their prime habitats. More than 3 million birds have already been lost between 1970 and 2017, and this trend keeps accelerating. Climate change is changing and disrupting their food sources and breeding grounds, human development projects are tearing down their ecosystems, and pesticide use is poisoning them. The current U.S. president is after tearing apart wildlife protections and redefining what counts as ‘harm’ to endangered species, all so that corporations can get away with more oil-drilling and logging in old-growth forests. Birds are connected to everything and an indicator of the health of ecosystems.}

_{The City of Winnipeg is fighting a war against nature by moving ahead with a plan to eliminate ground squirrels from several athletic fields.  Their plan is to use a lethal sulfur gas pesticide method, known as the “Giant Destroyer.” They will kill countless ground squirrels in their holes with this, including moms and babies. The crime these creatures are being sentenced to death for is one that helps our ecosystems. They help aerate the soil with their burrowing habits, which promotes plant growth. They also serve as a food source to many predators, and their burrows offer a refuge for many animals. Squirrels belong as part of nature, and we can do better than thinking they should be obliterated because their holes are an inconvenience to human sporting activities. Please urge Winnipeg to reconsider this devastating approach by signing these petitions.} 

_{New Zealand is facing a fork in the road between private property rights and corporate greed, and the protection of nature and treaty rights. A former Big Tobacco lobbyist named Chris Bishop is a Minister in New Zealand’s cabinet. He is planning to rewrite the core environmental protection law in order to gut protections for nature, erase the Treaty of Waitangi, and turn land ownership into a license to pollute. If this occurs, private property rights will override nature protections, Māori people will be shut out of environmental decision making, and public voices will be silenced so corporations can exploit nature for cash. This move will allow corporations the power to sue future governments for introducing new environmental protection and to demand millions from taxpayers for their so-called “lost profits”. Canadians can sign this petition and help push for a future where nature and people come before corporate profit.}

_{Caring for nature can involve hard work but it is also so much fun. Grandma always approaches her nature work with joy and loves to share it with you, even the not-so- good news like trash in the oceans. But Grandma always finds a way to make the bad news better with new resources and methods.}

_{Trash in the Water}

_{Every spring, Grandma likes to tell you the story of how trash gets into the oceans.}

_{At one point, the trash was blamed on fishermen or larger boats dumping garbage overboard. Programs came out to pack your trash home, and the shipping folks agreed and did exactly that.}

_{The next stats came out that 80% of the trash comes from rivers. Someone throws a coffee cup out the window, and it lands in a brook. The brook carries it to a river that takes it to the sea. City wharfs were blamed for waste, even if not intentional, breezes and wind can carry trash to the water.}

_{No matter the reason, the trash comes from the land. The easiest way to prevent things like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or the four major Atlantic ones) is to stop the trash from getting to the ocean, or at worst, outside of bays.}

_{There have been so many inventions. In Australia, drain socks or debris nets keep trash and green matter from reaching the oceans. https://incord.com/drain-pipe-debris-nets/}

_{The Ocean Cleanup group have various waste-trapping machines to clean rivers before they get to the ocean. They make barriers, barricades and guards to trap trash. They even have a machine with conveyor belts to collect trash as it passes by. https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/}

_{My new favourite trash collector is called the Trach Skimmer. You might think it’s just another version of the Ocean Cleanup’s “Interceptor,” but the Trash Skimmer is smaller and more flexible. That makes it perfect for lakes, harbours, and other tight spots.}

_{A trash skimmer is a small boat with a conveyor belt that collects floating trash and feeds it into a large bin. It cleans up things like plastic, weeds, paper—even small oil spills—from lakes, rivers, and harbours. https://aquarius-systems.com/equipment/aquatic-trash-skimmer/}

 _{In the spring, a lot of what’s floating might be tree branches, weeds, or grass clippings. The Trash Skimmer goes out, finds the mess, and picks it up, helping keep our local water clean and beautiful.}

_{Of course, the best solution is to not have the trash there in the first place. We need to bring back strong anti-littering campaigns. Even if that would work, nature drops green waste into rivers. The skimmer is perfect for all those small jobs.}

_{Gardening – Helping the Pollinators}

_{We all have a lot to do in our gardens—no one needs more on their list. But Grandma has a quick tip that only takes five minutes.}

_{Pick up a bag or packet of wildflower seeds and keep it with your gardening tools.
Each time you clean out a flower bed or rake a forgotten corner, toss in a handful. Just loosen the soil, sprinkle the seeds, and walk away. No fuss.}

_{Besides adding colour to your yard, you're creating a little rest stop for bees and butterflies—a small but powerful part of the pollinator pathway.}

_{Paper Hugs}

_{Here is a rainy-day craft (or a children’s corner craft during the sermon) that is needed in the world. Let’s make hugs!}

_{You need to print the template straight from the Parents’ Delights website at https://parents.highlights.com/mail-hug-diy-craft}

_{Cut it out, glue it together, and you’ve made a hug! Their idea is to pop it in an envelope and mail it to someone special.}

_{One step further might be}

_{Make enough for everyone in a local nursing home—ask for first names so you can "address" each one.
Send one to every teacher at your local school.
Surprise each member of your Parish Council with a hug on meeting night.}

_{Drop off a bunch at your local fire or police station.
Or share some with your town council or city workers.}

_{Grandma is quite sure hugs, especially paper hugs, would be welcome almost anywhere.}

_{Something to eat}

_{Grandma has been pulling sweets from the freezer while in the middle of spring work. Finally, a rainy day let her bake. These scones are so easy. It is best to cut up a few stalks of rhubarb, but I need to use up some preserved rhubarb sauce that worked well. Scones are not fancy or need anything more than a cookie sheet. See how Grandma does this.}

_{Rhubarb Scones}

_{In a bowl, measure out}

_{2 ½ cups flour}

_{½ cup sugar (or add maple syrup or honey to he wet items}

_{1 tblsp. baking powder}

_{I add half a tsp. of cinnamon or nutmeg}

_{Dash of salt}

_{½ cup cold butter or margarine.}

_{1 ½ cups or about three stalks of rhubarb, cut into small pieces.}

_{Measure out}

_{½ cup cream}

_{½ cup milk}

_{1 tsp vanilla}

_{Mix the two. It should be damp and sticky, rolled in a bit of extra flour to be smooth. Divide the mixture in half. Take each half and shape it into a circle. Then cut the circle in half, then quarters and eighths to make rounded end triangles. Pop these on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes till bottoms are browning.}

_{My new neighbours dropped over that day. Served with a cup of tea, the scones made many smiles.}

_{Lord, help us to maintain a reverent attitude towards nature, threatened from all sides today, in such a way that we may restore it completely to the condition of brother/sister and to its role of usefulness to all humankind for the glory of God the Creator.} 

 http://www.praying-nature.com/site_pages.php?section=Eco-Prayers