Author Archives: rbrewer

Trail Threat to Calhoun County’s Harvey Ott Preserve is Back

By rbrewer | Published: May 2, 2012

It appears that the more-or-less satisfactory resolution (as of about this time last year) to the proposed wide trail through the Ott Preserve has fallen through.  The issue is again before the Calhoun County Board of  Commissioners. Last year, the Board listened carefully to all sides and rejected the poorly conceived plan brought to it [...]

Posted in Conservation, Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Plants and Plant Communities | Leave a comment

Field Trip To Beech-Sugar Maple Forest 7 April 2012, In A High CO2 World

By rbrewer | Published: March 24, 2012

I’m leading a field trip to a beech-sugar maple forest this spring.  We’ll look at the spring flowers and as we stroll around also talk about what mesophytic forests are like, why they are where they are, what the interactions among the organisms are, and other such natural history and ecology topics. The specific site [...]

Posted in Conservation, Land Trusts (& other private land conservation), Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Plants and Plant Communities | Leave a comment

Notes On A High CO2 Spring, March 2012

By rbrewer | Published: March 14, 2012

With temperatures in the 50s and 60s the last few days–and predicted as mid-70s today–spring is advancing fast.  Wood frogs were calling in the larger pond Monday, March 12.  By yesterday, they were in full chorus in both ponds and by last night, a few spring peepers had joined in. Among the bird arrivals I’ve [...]

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Turkey Vultures: A Panama Addendum

By rbrewer | Published: March 13, 2012

Katy and I just returned from Panama.  I’ll write more about the trip later.  This note is a short Panama addendum to the Turkey Vulture post of a few weeks ago. In reading about Panama before we went down, I came across some of Frank M. Chapman’s observations on Turkey Vultures in his 1938 book Life [...]

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Founders Rule

By rbrewer | Published: January 3, 2012

A thread that began on the LANDTRUST-L listserv early in December 2011 had an outlier, a late post, a couple of days ago.  I read it over this afternoon as the first good-sized snow of the winter was falling–9 inches but slowing down. The thread had to do with term limits for land trust board [...]

Posted in Conservation, Land Trusts (& other private land conservation) | 1 Comment

L. A. Kenoyer on Saving Newton Woods

By rbrewer | Published: November 21, 2011

The essay that follows is a radio address by Leslie Alva Kenoyer, who served from 1922 to 1953 as Professor and Chairman of the Biology Department at Western Michigan University –at that time Western State Teachers College .  The piece is dated April 16, 1935.  It was written for Western’s Radio Hour, which was evidently a continuing feature [...]

Posted in Conservation, Land Trusts (& other private land conservation), Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Plants and Plant Communities, Quotations | 1 Comment

More about Ozone: Lisa was smiling till she saw Fred

By rbrewer | Published: November 5, 2011

In the preceding post, the question of why President Obama rebuffed the stronger ozone standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency was left unresolved.  Now we have the answer. The Kalamazoo Gazette for 2 November 2011 reprinted an article from the Washington Post by Ned Martel. The Gazette reprint was titled Upton Changing for good of GOP? [...]

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Ozone, Obama, and the Deregulation Doo Dah Parade

By rbrewer | Published: October 30, 2011

[This post appeared in briefer form as a Letter to the Editor of the Kalamazoo Gazette 12 September 2011.] President Obama made two serious mistakes early this fall. First, he told the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw new, stronger, standards for ozone levels in the lower atmosphere that were intended to replace the standards held over from [...]

Posted in Conservation, Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Plants and Plant Communities | 2 Comments

How the Turkey Vulture Found the Raccoon

By rbrewer | Published: October 9, 2011

Coming up the driveway in the car a little before noon today (8 October 2011), I was surprised to see a very  large bird flap out of the trees, followed by a Blue Jay.  I had just seen crows along the road, so it was evident that this bird was much larger than a crow [...]

Posted in Birds, Conservation, Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Southern Illinois Ecology | 2 Comments

Find the three birds orchid in Michigan beech-maple forest, please

By rbrewer | Published: August 29, 2011

Today is a good time to take a walk in the forest, but then any time is.  It’s a really good time for a walk in the beech-maple forest, because a very rare orchid blooms this time of year. The orchid is three birds orchid (Triphora trianthophora).  It’s known from Kalamazoo County and in fact [...]

Posted in Conservation, Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Plants and Plant Communities, Uncategorized | Leave a comment