Environmental Almanac

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m sometimes very, very slow to act on my good intentions--especially when my good intentions involve home improvement.  To wit. In the past, I’ve written about projects by local people to reduce or eliminate the need for fossil fuel at home through combinations of efficiency, conservation and solar power...

As someone who values the U of I’s Allerton Park and Retreat Center—especially for the natural areas—I’m happy to report this week on an ongoing effort that has really paid off there, the deer management program begun in 2004. “Deer management” here refers primarily to reducing the number of deer inhabiting the natural areas through carefully regulated hunting...

Prior to the release of his book Restoration Agriculture in early 2013, Wisconsin farmer Mark Shepard’s agent reassured him: “You’ll tour and do some signings for five or six months, but after that sales will taper off and demands on your time will be negligible.” That’s not how things have turned out. Instead, sales of the book have increased from one quarter to the next...

With all of the Thanksgiving press devoted to domesticated turkeys—how many we’re going to eat next week, how best to cook them, etcetera—you probably weren’t aware of this fact, but we’re living in the age of the wild turkey. That’s according to Patrick Hubert, who was formerly a wildlife ecologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, and who I spoke with on this topic some years back...

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my work at the U of I is teaching a one-credit-hour field course that runs during the first half of the fall semester. The course provides students who are new to the Earth, Society, and Environmental Sustainability major an introduction to the types of work done by faculty in the Departments of Geology, Atmospheric Sciences and Geography and Geographic Information Science. It culminates in a trip to far southern Illinois, which is where I was last weekend...

Although the bright sunshine and warm days of this week make it tempting to think otherwise, the month of October promises dramatic changes for the natural world in central Illinois. In urban areas, the acorns and walnuts that have already fallen add new challenges walking and cycling. Grey squirrels are in a constant frenzy, trying to figure out how to store the surplus of food available to them now...

If you’ve been keeping up with recent news from the U of I, you already know that one of the most interesting developments on campus is the solar array now being installed on the South Farms. On the chance you’ve been distracted by other news, here’s the short version. The project is being implemented by a company called Phoenix Solar and made possible, in part, by a significant financial contribution from the Student Sustainability Committee...

Now and again it strikes me that the things I enjoy doing are not the things most other people enjoy doing. Take grubbing for mussels. This activity involves sinking your hands into a streambed and working your fingers through the sand and gravel to feel for the shells of mussels--smooth, hard, vertically-oriented disks, which might be as small and compressed as the face of a man’s wristwatch, or larger and thicker than an adult’s hand...