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YEARS’ RESOLUTIONS AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

by Marianne Krasny

On New Year’s Day, I tackled my first ever deep cleaning of kitchen cupboards. I cringed at having to throw out oatmeal squirming with meal moths, and once again avoided doing anything with decades-old canned goods. To lessen the pain of cleaning and tossing things out, I pondered New Year’s resolutions and binged on a podcast called Chameleon: Wild Boys. The high drama account of an emaciated 6’1 “wild boy,” who ate only fruit and weighed just 85 lbs when he was involuntarily hauled into the hospital, played out as I scrubbed ancient insect wings stuck to kitchen shelves.

The wild boy “fruitarian” starved his body of what he needed to sustain himself. So too are our eating and food waste habits starving our planet of what it needs to sustain life, including our own lives. Food production accounts for around a quarter of total greenhouse gas emissions. And that’s not to mention using 70 percent of freshwater and nearly 40 percent of our planet’s land. Some foods are worse than others. In the U.S., beef production emits 43 times the greenhouse gas emissions of producing beans.

But a New Year’s resolution to eat beans not beef is doomed to fail for most Americans— treating steak as an occasional special treat and pledging to try out new bean recipes might have a higher chance of success. Another food-related resolution—to throw out less food—is a win-win. It attacks the problems of pollution and pocketbooks (food waste accounts for about 6% of our climate emissions and over $280 billion a year lost in the U.S. alone). If the impact of our eating and food waste habits on the climate doesn’t seem relevant to your daily life, consider that that changed climate is imperiling our ability to grow our favorite foods as detailed in Our Changing Menu—including coffee and chocolate.

Taking a break from scrubbing, tossing out food, and podcast binging, I scrolled through the

If the impact of our eating and food waste habits on the climate doesn’t seem relevant to your daily life, consider that that changed climate is imperiling our ability to grow our favorite foods

Challenge your friends’ actions, not their character.

news on my phone. Taking a break from the climate news, I clicked on the New Year’s resolutions articles. Advice columnists offered up myriad tips for sticking with resolutions—one article even suggested we apply those SMART objectives we get nailed with during dreaded project planning at work. New Year’s resolutions should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. All well and good, but I for one don’t want to insert SMART objectives into my personal daily life.

Only a few articles mention two factors that really do motivate people—New Year’s resolutions should be fun and should be social. The University of Pennsylvania sociologist Damon Centola talks about how behaviors are more likely to spread and stick in small groups of close family and friends—especially when the behaviors are enjoyable (emotionally contagious) and repeated over time. Eating a meal with family and friends—whether it consists of super climate-friendly proteins like beans or nuts, or the more climate-friendly meat chicken—can be enjoyable. And if we pursue climate-friendly eating with family and friends, they will undoubtedly try out similar meals themselves, thus extending our influence. What’s more, if I see that I have influenced others to take up climate-friendly eating, I’ll feel more motivated to continue such eating myself. This applies to other behaviors too—think Ice Bucket Challenge, Giving Tuesday, and similar social media fundraising campaigns. If donating to an environmental organization like Earthjustice is somehow made fun and social, I’ll be more likely to continue donating.

The emaciated wild boy fruitarian on my podcast was not having fun and was not trying to convince anyone to become a fruitarian. (He actually had orthorexia, an eating disorder associated with an obsession with proper or “healthful” eating.) But if he had been trying to convince others to change their diet—hopefully to something balanced for him and the climate—he would have risked becoming an annoyance or even turning off his friends. So-called “moral rebels,” or people whose behaviors are based on ethical considerations, can bring friends along to their point of view if they consider these communication tips: Challenge your friends’ actions, not their character. Share your own failures in trying to follow your resolutions and come across as just a normal person striving to do better. And praise any efforts, no matter how small, your friends take in reaching a goal.

Until I wrote this last paragraph, I hadn’t intended to make any New Year’s resolutions this year. I am already highly motivated to do what I can to address the climate crisis—through healthy eating, trying not to waste food, composting, volunteering for Climate Action Now, Climate Reality, and Elders Climate Action, and letting my students experience how climate actions can be fun and social. Then again, I probably could have more fun and be more social with my own actions, which I often keep to myself. So I think I will reconsider and follow my own advice. I resolve to figure out how to make my climate actions more fun for friends and family over the next year.

THE EXCERPT

March 22, 2020 on the horns of a dilemma

Itwas this time last week that we realized we were on the horns of a dilemma. Our troubles related to our bird feeders, which we watch from our dining room table. As we ate our Sunday lunch, a flock of house sparrows consumed the remainder of the food in the birdseed dispenser and the last of the suet in the suet holder. House sparrows lack prudence in their eating habits, very different from our regular customers, the chickadees, the tufted titmice, the downy woodpeckers, and the juncos, and our occasional visitors, the Carolina wrens, the house finches, and the red-bellied woodpeckers. Our dilemma was whether to restock our bird feeders.

As with all problems, extra information—even apparently irrelevant information—can help decision-making. The first issue is our regular customers. Was my list complete? What about the cardinals, who have been singing and displaying for days? Alas, they are not regular customers because our bird feeders are enclosed in wire cages that cardinals are too big to enter, and their stumpy beaks are far too short to reach the food from outside the cage. The wire cages are needed to keep the gray squirrels at bay. The feeders are suspended, side by side, from nails on a low branch of our red maple tree, just next to the deck and, as I’ve already mentioned, with an excellent view from the dining room. The squirrels play on

the tree. They groom themselves on the branch holding the feeders, and then lean down, a greedy glint in the eye. One squirrel sways precariously in a tight hug around the feeder, presumably hoping to knock it to the ground. Another squirrel bares its teeth and chews at the metal lid. So far, every display of gymnastics and brute force has been to no avail, not just this year but every year.

Why do we have the house sparrow dilemma? Why haven’t we been visited by house sparrows throughout the winter? The reason is simple. Our local flock of house sparrows lives in a big forsythia hedge at the bottom of the road, and these birds don’t venture far in cold weather. We don’t know why the sparrows are fair-weather visitors. Perhaps they are fed by the owners of the forsythia hedge until it gets warm; perhaps they don’t like to fly far in the cold. Whatever the reason, the sparrows came with a welcome improvement to the weather, several days of glorious sunshine and blue skies. As we tour the estate, we see spring coming early.

Now this requires some explanation. What is our estate? The backyard is roughly seventy-five feet long and forty-five feet wide, comprising a rectangle of lawn facing roughly south, with a tarmac driveway down the east edge to a garage in the southeast corner. We are bounded by close neighbors to the east, south, and west, separated by a fence (aka squirrel runway) and, along part of the west side, a privet hedge. We have flower borders all around the edge. Our mature trees are the red maple close to the house by the deck, an overhanging box elder in our east neighbor’s yard, a black walnut at the southern end, and a group of Norway spruce and Scotch pine in the southeast corner. We have planted some extra trees, including birch, eastern hop hornbeam, serviceberry, eastern hemlock, and eastern redbud, over the last decade and all are saplings. Encouragingly, all the young trees appear to have survived the winter with this season’s buds starting to swell.

Snowdrops, crocuses, and winter aconites are in flower, and the violets on the raised bed on the east of the backyard are already a glorious deep purple.

So, let’s go back to the beginning. As we watched the house sparrows demolish the food and leave, we decided not to refill. Then a female red-bellied woodpecker arrived, poked and pecked into the empty space of the suet holder, obviously perturbed. She left. Her partner followed, and he was also visibly put out by the state of affairs. The next in line were the downy woodpeckers, scurrying low along the branch, down to the empty suet holder. Last was a Carolina wren who jumped excitedly around in the suet holder, flew off, and then returned to repeat its antics. We got the message. Directly after lunch, Jeremy refilled the bird feeders.

We made the right decision. Although the house sparrows were back within ten minutes of the refill, they did not consume all the food in a day. On Thursday we had a magical visitation by a male pileated woodpecker. The pileated looks like something out of Jurassic Park. He is about the same size as a crow and, like a crow, black but with white under the wings, a bright red crest, and a beak as big as its head. He hung upside down at the bottom of the suet holder and jabbed repeatedly at the suet with great ferocity, showering suet pieces in all directions. His mate, a little smaller and with a red bonnet, was in attendance, rocking her way down the trunk of the tree. All our regular customers had cleared off, and even the house sparrows retreated to the tips of the maple branches and the privet hedge, where they chattered excitedly.

So, a week after the refill, the suet holder is empty and the seed holder nearly so, courtesy of the house sparrows and a pileated woodpecker. It is time to move on. Spring is upon us, even though it is forecast to snow tonight. Our dilemma is resolved, and our regular customers must forage elsewhere.

March 29, 2020

spring is coming . . .

Theywere brave words, last week, about the start of spring. The threatened overnight snow happened, and we woke on Monday morning to a thin white covering, not enough to make a snowman but certainly enough to remind us that the pendulum between winter and summer is swinging wide. But this pendulum has a bias, and summer will win in the end.

I have kept up what Jeremy grandly calls my daily half-hour run just before lunch. Of course, it is more of an ambling trot. To avoid the day-long parade of dog walkers on the street, I trot up and down our drive, which runs north to south by the east fence. This gives me plenty of practice of trotting turns because our drive is rather short. More importantly, I have a brief thirty minutes to absorb each day’s mood. On Monday the mood was gloves and dribbling snow. I got caught by a hailstorm on Tuesday, trotted under gray skies on Wednesday and Friday and in persistent rain on Saturday. Thursday was this week’s single day of spring—clear blue skies, brilliant sunshine, and warm enough to discard my coat at twenty minutes. Thursday felt very special.

So, what have I absorbed during my daily trots? First, I thought about US culture. You would imagine that our tarmacked driveway to the garage would be for the car. But that makes no sense

because the driveway is too narrow for any car. No, the garage is for storing all your myriad of complex, noisy machinery that you need for the backyard, from the outdoor grill, through the snowblower and leaf blower, to winter sports gear and then your summer water sports equipment. And what do we store in the garage?

During the winter, our supersized wooden deck table and bench, inherited from the previous owners, fill most of the space. And then we have a lawnmower, spade, and rake, a trowel, and a rusty pair of secateurs. We also keep the dustbins (they are called garbage cans here) in the garage to protect them from the raccoons. Jeremy is sympathetic about raccoons (except when they go for the garbage), but I see a raccoon and, correctly, think one word: rabies!

But one rarely sees raccoons by day, thank goodness, and my daily trots last week were certainly raccoon-free.

Despite the mostly atrocious weather, the raised bed by the east fence has, each day, had more violets in flower than on the previous day. We now have a wonderful display of more than one hundred deep-purple flowers, plus one white violet. The forsythia bush next to the garage was just a tangled mass of thin brown twigs on Monday, but from Thursday onward it has been tinged in yellow. It will be in bloom very soon, I am sure. Our first scillas are in flower, brilliant blue, one just next to one of the composters and two haphazardly located in the lawn. It is the start of the season to watch your step on our lawn. Advance warning: step watching will become more interesting as the weeks progress.

The birds that kept me company through my trot varied from one day to the next. Monday and Tuesday, the real-winter days of the week, were the days of the blue jays. A group of six to eight blue jays flew around from one tall tree to another, enthusiastically

squawking and screaming to one another the entire time. Blue jays do this all year round, for they always have something to say. Well, almost always. There was an exception this morning. A perfectly silent blue jay on a branch of the red maple. He was bobbing up and down on his skinny black legs, presumably trying to impress his lady love.

The robins have been back for several weeks now. Our robins are, of course, not the same as the European robins that adorn Christmas cards, but a kind of thrush with an orange breast extending to its belly. Robins abandon us for several months of the winter. They may not travel far. Some go into the woods, and many go south, perhaps only to the south of New York State. Their return to the backyard is an early sign of spring. They have been very busy on our lawn, often as singletons or in small groups, foraging for worms and upending dead leaves for insects and spiders for some days now. But by Wednesday and especially Thursday, they had sorted themselves out and we now have our one resident pair. Well, there will be some male incursions, but any wayward male will be chased off in great alarm. On Thursday, our day of spring, I shared my driveway run with our robin pair. The two birds were so busy attending to each other that they neglected my regular back-and-forth. The male took center stage on the drive, strutting around and shaking his wings amorously at the female. She appeared to be impressed. At least, she ignored me as much as he did, as I trotted along the edge, to keep out of their way. They also have their territory in place. Since midweek we have been hearing the daily early morning robin song. He starts about an hour before dawn, always the first, and his song is the most boring thrush song you can imagine.

I will finish with some birds that passed through on Monday. They were mainly to the front. The road was invaded by a large

1869

The Cornell University Press Podcast

aN iNtErviEw with Marianne Krasny, hoStEd By JohNathaN hall

JoNathaN

The following is a transcript of an episode of 1869, the Cornell University Press podcast. It has been transcribed using AI software. Any typos, errors, or inconsistencies may be the result of the transcription or the natural pattern of the human voice and speech. If you wish to listen to the origial, search 1869 podcast through whicever podcast service you prefer.

Welcome to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast. I’m Jonathan Hall. This episode we speak with Marianne Krasny, author of In This Together: Connecting with Your Community to Combat the Climate Crisis, now available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Marianne Krasny is Professor and Director of the Civic Ecology Lab in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University. She is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of several books, including Civic Ecology, Communicating Climate Change, and Grassroots to Global. You can follow her on Twitter @KrasnyMarianne. We spoke to Marianne about the most impactful things you can do to reduce emissions and fight climate change, how you can scale up your positive impact by inviting friends and family to take action alongside you, and how becoming more climate-friendly can actually add meaning and happiness to your life. Hello, Marianne, welcome to the podcast.

MariaNNE

JoNathaN

Hi, Jonathan, I’m really excited to be able to talk with you.

Well, I’m really excited as well, your book really speaks to me, it’s about climate change what we can do about it. And I know that I’m not alone, in feeling despair, and kind of helpless when I see the headlines coming out with this new book In This Together: Connecting with Your Community to Combat the Climate Crisis. Tell us how this book came to be?

MariaNNE

Okay? Well, the truth is that I walk to work every morning, it takes me about an hour and I walk in the dark, because I get up early. And I love to be out in the dark. And what that means is that I think a lot because I’m by myself in the dark. And a lot of times, there’s a lot of litter on my way to work. And I feel compelled to pick up the litter. But it just seems like so useless. And I always hope well, maybe some days people stop littering, but they don’t. And there’s always more litter. And it seems like ridiculous to pick up litter. But, you know, as I’m sort of thinking about it and thinking about it, I’m also thinking about well, it also seems like anything we can do to address climate is also sort of so small, given the scale of the problem, of course, an even bigger problem than literate. So just one day, I thought about the idea of well, maybe we could scale up our action. So it’s not just me picking up litter or doing something to address the climate crisis. But I’m also somehow influencing other people to do that. And that way, we could have more impact. And I think my initial thoughts was a few years back, I don’t remember all the details was that, you know, I could be or you could be an influencer, right? Like, we see all these people on social media, and they say do something a lot of people

do something, do that thing? Well, we’ll talk about that a little bit more later. Because that’s actually not how the ideas developed.

So the idea of individual action versus collective action, we’ll get to that in a second. But there have been some climate activists that say, you know, it’s, it’s the problem is too big, that collect that individual action is just a tiny drop in a much larger picture. And it’s almost pointless there. So tell us this, this idea that some environmentalists are saying, like, we can, that industry can coop that like they did recycling, like, don’t worry about what we’re doing, it’s up to you as an individual to, to solve this. And so then the onus is on the individual versus the actual corporations that are causing the problem in the first place.

Yeah, I think that’s true. But so the idea that, you know, and I don’t know that industries are doing, they are still doing that they’re sort of saying, well, we won’t build electric cars, because there’s no demand for electric cars, like, you know, consumers want to drive their gas cars. And so unless they change, we won’t change. But on the other hand, if you think about this, like how do we change, government, you know, laws, regulations, rules, is really individual action, that just becomes scaled up to a lot of people getting involved. So whether we’re thinking about, I don’t really want to focus on recycling anymore, that effective inaction. But let’s look at some of the more effective ways that I as an individual in my everyday life, could drive down the greenhouse or reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that I’m responsible for. They would be things like eating less meat, or especially beef and sheep. So eating a plant rich diet, reducing food waste, so I can do that as an individual. I can involve my family, you know, my friends, those people around me and doing those things with me, I can invite them over for dinner. But let’s just say I’m trying I need to change a policy. Well, what’s the most effective way I can, as an individual write a letter to Congress, or to maybe a business. But I can also do that as part of a group. And I think the most effective way to do that is through volunteering. So right now, I’m volunteering for several organizations. And we can talk about that if you’re interested. But I’ll just mention, one of them is climate action now. And it’s essentially an app. And it’s geo located. So if I put in my zip code, I can read, there’s a lot of options like they’re sort of like car do, you kind of, you know, flip through. And so it’s a like, write a letter to your congressman about supporting food donation programs in the Farm Bill, if I click on that, there’s a letter, I can edit it, but I probably won’t. And then I just press enter, and it automatically goes to my Congress person, my senator or my house representatives, because it has the app has my zip code. So I can write that letter. I’m an individual, right, it’s not going to have much impact. But because a lot of people are using the app, and I volunteer, and some of my students have volunteered as content creators for the app. In other words, we write these letters, where we’re still, in some sense, scaling up our actions, just as I get more people to reduce their personal lifestyle emissions through eating less meat or reducing food waste.

JoNathaN MariaNNE

JoNathaN JoNathaN

Fantastic. I like that Climate Action Now. Okay, I’m going to get that

Just download it on your phone.

It’s on my phone. That’s how convenient is that? So you, you had mentioned eating less meat? And, you know, there’s the idea of electric vehicles, what there there are plenty of websites and books and 50 things you can do to reduce your your impact and reduce climate change. What would you say are for you, in your research, what are the most impactful things we can do as individuals, and then we’ll talk about scaling it up?

Well, I use the drawdown.org website. I don’t know if you’ve been to it, but it has a list of I think 82 or 84, climate solutions. And you can order them according to their potential for drawing down greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So if you order them, this is why I mentioned plant rich diet and reducing food waste those almost always, depending on you know, how the science is done in the priorities come up near the top, usually in the top five. So that those are impactful. Recycling, I can’t even remember if it’s on there. But you know, it’d be way down, even LED light bulbs is quite a bit down further down than things related to our food system, then there’s, of course, there’s a lot of actions that you can’t really take as an individual. So there’s one called health and, or I think they changed it now to family planning and education. So the idea is supporting women in particular, to be able to choose the family size that they want. So that one is very important, I think in terms of thinking about climate, and also about individual rights, human rights. But, you know, there’s not a lot of opportunities for me to maybe go out and do that in my everyday life, I might volunteer for an organization, but I can also donate to organizations. So one that my students have donated to, and that I’ve joined their network to donate to, is called Femme International. And what they do is they work with women in developing countries who don’t have access to menstrual supplies. So if you can’t, if you don’t have access to menstrual supplies, you often have to stop going to school, and you can’t get a job, right, because you have blood all over your clothes. So kind of a, you know, really hard thing for us to think about since it’s not something we see in everyday life. But this organization found international supplies, the mental supplies to women in developing countries so that they can keep going to school, and work. And so that’s just an example of an impactful action that we can take through donations, rather than through lifestyle. It’s something we do in our everyday life. And then there’s lots of others like refrigerant management, you know, forest restoration, of course, all the ones having to do with a renewable energy sector. And again, those may be donations, like to an organization working in forest restoration, or tree planting, but also actions like writing letters to policymakers, like I mentioned with climate action now.

Great, great, this is all great information. So these are the things that we

MariaNNE

can do as an individual, but they also connect and as you said, kind of scale up our activities. You had in the book, you mentioned how we can harness the power of the collective with with a term that you call network climate action. Tell us more about this.

Yeah. Well, earlier I mentioned influencers, right? And so the whole idea is influence, like I’m some person, I’m gonna put something on social media and zillions of people will do what I say, well, there are some influencers, but I don’t think, no, no, I don’t mean to insult you or anything, but probably you’re not much on. And I’m not one, right. I’m not famous. Also, I think when we think about what behaviors are influencing, they might not be difficult behaviors, right? Like changing your diet is kind of hard, but might convince you to go out and buy, you know, some sort of Gucci pocket book or something like that. So So consumer activities that pretty good at. So I started researching this, and there’s two authors that are particularly important, although they aren’t the only ones ones Damon Centola at the University of Pennsylvania, who has written books about how behaviors spread. And the others here at Cornell, Robert Frank, who’s also looked at sort of how behaviors spread. So one of Frank’s more famous examples is solar panels. And they’ve done work looking at solar panels in different neighborhoods. And if one person puts a panel on the roof, other people are likely to follow, right, so these solar panels and their current kind of clusters and neighborhoods rather randomly distributed. So this is about influencing people in our neighborhood. Sentosa is more not so much the spatial influence that Frank has, of course, Frank talks about other kinds of influence, too, like, we influence by our smoking behaviors, we influence our friends and our friends, friends, is another example. But if we think of climate behaviors, the same thing sort of implies, like, if I want a friend or somebody I know to reduce their meat consumption, then it’s going to work better if I’m kind of close to that person. So we maybe have meals together once in a while. And it’s also going to work better if my friends are their friends. So in other words, the message is going to getting communicated multiple times or multiple messengers is not just one time from somebody who’s really famous going out there to zillions of people is what they call these clusters or lattice networks, where people are closely connected, that means they’re talking to each other, seeing each other relatively frequently. And they’re a cluster of people who, again, you know, if I invite my close friends over for a meal and as a plant rich diet, then that message that they get might be reinforced by not just me, but by the other person who came to that dinner. So that’s idea of network climate action is that you think about who are your networks, your close family and friends, and you take action within that network, you realize that your influence is most on those you’re close to?

JoNathaN

That makes sense. Yeah, that you’re not going to be you don’t have a YouTube channel that you’re going to be broadcasting out, but just having an impact on the individuals in your life. So the one thing that you brought

MariaNNE

up in the book, there’s this is a quote that you had, as evidence suggests that if you want to influence others, it might be better to admit that you were struggling and not doing everything, rather than to be perceived as an annoying, do gooder. Tell us more about that.

Well, that’s this idea of moral rebels, right? So I mean, I’ll give you an example of I tried to do my own network climate action. And my network was my colleagues in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell. So I first started with this kind of influencer idea, I just tell them and you know, we’re all sort of interested in the environment, it’s a natural resource environment department. And then they would just sort of do this action, which happened to be buying offsets to offset our air travel because we travel for work, right? So and that, of course, produces a lot of emissions. So that first part of thinking that I was just going to influence everybody by sending out an email didn’t work. And then at some faculty meetings, I got some really bad pushback, like, Oh, this is ridiculous, like, this is going to do nothing. Like, you know, how are we going to reduce air, travel or whatever. And, you know, I think people thought I was lecturing to them, and, you know, being this sort of goody two shoes and making them feel guilty. And so the whole idea is to be transparent about your own struggles. That, oh, I’ve, you know, I’m really trying to reduce my air travel, but my family is super important to me. And you know, my kids live in Europe. And so I’m going to travel to keep my family together and do things with my children. You know, and you could probably think of other examples of How you can instead of saying, Oh, you I can’t believe you flew down to the Bahamas yesterday, you know, that was like, ridiculous waste of resources. So to say, you know, that’s great. Did you have a good time? You know, did you think about maybe working with a finger like Climate Fund? I’ve been working with them, because they have this great program where you can pay a little bit of money that is equal to the amount of emissions or reflects, I should say, the amount of emissions that that trip to the Bahamas took. And then that money is donated to low income people to weatherize their homes. So, you know, and I’ve tried to do this a little bit. It’s hard, I don’t do it for every travel that I do, but you might want to think about it. It’s a super great organization, because we can help the low income people living near us, and still enjoy travel.

JoNathaN

That’s smart. But I can see that working rather than saying, Why didn’t you reduce your plane travel or anything like that? Basically, yeah, take making it a personal thing and saying, I struggle with the same issue when I have to travel. But then you had mentioned this the is it the Fingerlakes Climate Fund? Yeah, I mean, that’s such a great idea. But then, yeah, leading by example, but not being kind of a goody goody. Or like, people, then people that might feel like shame or guilt about like, Oh, I’m not doing the right thing. We’re all trying our best, but we’re not we’re all human to speaking of speaking of feeling, and I mentioned this in the beginning, and you mentioned in your book, you have this quote from

scholar, Robin Kimmerer. And it really rang true to me. But here’s the quote, “Despair is paralysis, it robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth. Environmental Despair is a poison.” So I think a lot of us are feeling environmental despair, was we’re seeing the headlines we’re experiencing. Now again, this could just be a freak winter, we’ve had like a mild winter, we’ve seen environmental degradation around the world. What are your words of advice for people that do see the headlines or feel sad about seeing the the changes that are happening on the planet? And what is your advice to counteract the despair?

Yeah, so let’s just imagine that you’re a black person, and you’re living in the South in the US and the 1950s. I mean, you might not have any hope at all, that things could change, right. But we know that people came together, and they built these networks, and they took action. And they really changed American society. And I think that importantly, along the way, they lives also gained meaning for themselves. And they turn despair into action. So I would say there are two reasons to take action, even if, you know, we may not succeed, right, they didn’t know that they would succeed in changing the way America society operates. But, you know, I don’t think they would have wanted to lose the fight without trying. And I don’t think we want to lose the climate fight without trying, we still might be able to turn this around. Certainly a lot of scientists are saying that we can still turn this around. And we’re seeing promising signs of transitions to clean energy. For example, we’ve seen the government starting to act over this last year in the US. And we’re seeing a lot of innovation around energy and even food systems with alternative proteins. So that’s one reason you don’t want to lose the fight without trying, we may succeed. Second, I think that taking action can make our own lives better. My students and I, we’ve really enjoyed cooking plant based meals for our friends and family is a way to connect with family and particularly for my students, but also just do fun things with their friends, and even doing fundraisers. You know, for that organization, Femme International that I mentioned, I have students do do fundraisers, they showed a movie called Period. End of Sentence., which is about this issue of women and menstrual supply. So you know, and, you know, with climate action now app we can even do we do action parties where everybody takes actions together. So it can even be fun writing letters to Congress, we often think about climate action as a sacrifice, oh, you know, they’re gonna take away your gas car or whatever. But you know, electric cars, I think, eventually gonna be a lot cheaper to operate, right? We don’t have to have so many repairs. So and it can be fun. It can be enjoyable if you do things with people that you enjoy doing things with. And that can also add meaning to your life. So I just add one last bit of advice, and that is that if you want to do something, choose something that really works for you. If you have kids at home, you might not have that much time to volunteer But you could work on say reducing your family’s food waste or cooking new recipes with less meat. If you have time to volunteer like I do, but you get bored with one volunteer position, then switch to a new one that’s

MariaNNE

more meaningful for you. So the point is, you’re not going to be able to sustain something, doing something different, or doing something for the climate, if it’s not really fitting into your lifestyle, and what you’re passionate about and what you enjoy doing. But there’s plenty of actions, I think that each of us can take and can take with family and friends that will really enjoy and it will add meaning to our life, and maybe we’ll win the fight.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, that’s great advice and great insights. You had mentioned in the book, there’s a Japanese word, and I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing it, right. Ikigai is that correct?

I have no idea how to pronounce it.

JoNathaN

JoNathaN MariaNNE MariaNNE

JoNathaN

But it was a Japanese word for purpose in life or life worth living. And you said, one of the examples would be, you know, taking care of grandchildren or volunteering or keeping the streets clean and pretty. And you tie that into taking environmental action, that, that that just taking action of some sort, whether as you said reducing food waste, or having more plant based diet, to volunteering to using the climate action now app, all these little things can help reduce the despair and make a life worth living so so it sounds like a win win by doing things that are positive for the environment, your also puts you in a more positive emotional space to carry on and as you said, hopefully we’ll win this fight together. So I am so glad that you wrote this book. I’m so glad to be able to talk to you about this, your new book in this together, connecting with the community to combat the climate crisis. Thank you so much, Marianne.

Thank you, Jonathan. It’s been a pleasure.

Same here, take care. That was Marian Krasny, author of Marianne Krasny, author of In This Together: Connecting with Your Community to Combat the Climate Crisis, now available as a paperback ebook and audiobook.

thrEE QuEStioNS with LINDA TUTTLE-ADAMS author

of Baby Bird Identification

1. What inspired you to write this book?

The driving force that led me to the field of biology and eventually to write this book, has been a lifelong compassion of wanting to help all animals, especially endangered, persecuted, and those most misunderstood. In 2008, as a new wildlife rehabilitator, I realized that to meet the unique needs of each species, correct identification of the bird early on, was paramount. However, other than picture matching (which can lead to misidentification) and a few basic mouth color charts, there lacked a stepby-step process and detailed information in a comprehensive form.

identification so that imprinting, habituation, and other important behavioral issues can be immediately addressed.

3. In what ways will your book resonate with readers?

The importance of early identification for purposes of providing proper care in captivity.

The illustrations, diagrams, descriptions, and anatomical features described in the guide, show how truly unique and amazing baby birds are.

2. How will your book make a difference?

Wildlife rehabilitators cannot exactly duplicate what baby birds receive in the wild from their own parents. Each species has its own special requirements. Thus, the earlier a rapidly growing baby bird can be positively identified, it can receive species-specific care. Wildlife rehabilitation isn’t just about food and housing. The psychological development of a growing bird is just as important. When a bird first opens its eyes it imprints on its parents, siblings, and surroundings. Imprinting is widely misunderstood, especially in songbirds. Raising birds with their own kind is ideal, especially in higher-learning or highly social species. This guide explains the importance of early

Identification and assessing the age of a baby bird helps determine if it truly needs a helping hand.

The earlier a rapidly growing baby bird can be positively identified it can receive species-specific care.

THE EXCERPT

INTRODUCTION

This volume is intended to celebrate and extend the now classic and out-of-print work by Tolson and Henderson (1993)—the last focused volume on the West Indian boas (see end of this section regarding “West Indian”). This fascinating group of largely insular snakes consists of three genera: Boa, Chilabothrus, and Corallus, which are represented by eighteen extant species and at least two extinct species in the Caribbean region. Thus, this work focuses only on the islands of the Bahamas (Lucayan) Archipelago, the Greater Antilles, and the Lesser Antilles and does not include natural populations of boas found on continental islands in the greater Caribbean region, such as Boa constrictor, Boa imperator, Corallus ruschenbergerii, and Epicrates maurus, as these would best be treated in a volume that was inclusive of the mainland Neotropics (although we do discuss introductions of these species to the Caribbean). Further, we do not include the genus Tropidophis, commonly known as dwarf boas, pygmy boas, or wood snakes, as they belong to a highly evolutionarily divergent and non-booid lineage. We include short accounts for two recently described fossil species—one which did not occur in the West Indies but is a member of the otherwise exclusively West Indian genus Chilabothrus, and one recently characterized extinct Boa species from Marie-Galante Island in the Guadeloupean Archipelago. Three additional fossil Boa, the Antigua boa, the Guadeloupe boa, and the Martinique boa, have yet to be fully characterized, and each is included here as Boa sp.

Numerous taxonomic arrangements have flowed through the boa literature over the years, with addi-

tions of new species as well as the elevation and sinking of specific, generic, and familial epithets, resulting in a somewhat confusing web in which to navigate for anyone who is not a boa systematist. Such alterations are generally a positive outcome because they follow the process of science, that is, the accretionary growth of knowledge. Happily, boa taxonomy was recently organized in Pyron et al. (2014) and in a monographic treatment by Reynolds and Henderson (2018). Here we follow the taxonomy of that latter work, noting that since its publication one new species has been described (Chilabothrus ampelophis; Landestoy T. et al. 2021b). We further follow the use of common names recommended in Hedges et al. (2019) in an attempt to insert stability into the use of common names. We further note that we distinguish between the words “boa” and “boid” and “booid.” The first term, boa, refers generally to any member of the superfamily Booidea; the second term, boid, refers specifically to a member of the family Boidae; and the last term, booid, refers specifically to members of the superfamily Booidea. We use the term boa throughout the text unless specificity is required.

We provide a comprehensive review of the literature on West Indian boas, attempting to incorporate as much published material as possible to provide an extensive reference list. We cite references parenthetically in the text to facilitate tracing ideas and data to published papers and authors. As we have collectively conducted over a century of work on these boas, we also include substantial amounts of our own data and observations, some of which have been published and

some of which have not. We occasionally provide annotations for this, such as the designation “personal observation,” when such distinction is useful, but for the most part provide such information without citation to add additional depth and detail to the text. Thus, many accounts contain data and information drawn directly from our field notes, and statements of fact without citation should be regarded as coming directly from our own data and experiences and communicated to the literature via this volume.

To the extent that we are able, we have tried to include relevant and comprehensive distributional data for each species and subspecies treated here. Nevertheless, in some cases we feel that adding precise locality information would be detrimental to the species— particularly for critically endangered species or threatened populations. In those cases, we intentionally obfuscate some locality data. While it brings us no joy to do so, in all cases we try to be as forthcoming as possible regarding distribution, striking a balance between providing as much information as possible while also protecting especially sensitive populations. Maps are intended to serve as approximations of species’ ranges, and for the above reasons do not include point locality data (although this is available in other volumes). Several species of West Indian boas have poorly characterized ranges (e.g., Chilabothrus fordii, C. gracilis), hence we attempt to use distributional data as well as topographical and environmental data to suggest likely areas of occurrence. For species with recognized subspecies, we include those ranges in alternate colors.

We do not include much anecdotal information related to captivity for the species represented here. Although a tremendous amount of information has been accumulated by the dedicated and passionate keepers of these species, much of this information is not available in the primary literature, and we feel it is best left to a different type of work than the present one.

We have further added a wide variety of images to illustrate the range of phenotypes and behaviors of these incredible snakes—especially as several are cryptic, endangered, or otherwise unlikely to be seen by anyone but specialists. We are indebted to the photographers, credited in the text and thanked in the acknowledgements, who have helped tremendously in this regard.

Why “West Indian”? The term West Indian refers

to the collection of islands between North and South America, lying within what is also called the Caribbean Basin. The term itself is one imparted to the region by Europeans, and it gained particular use in the English language to refer to colonial territories and possessions in the western Atlantic. The word Caribbean is another term that refers to the indigenous group named the Caribs by Europeans, the name being a corrupted version of the name of the group who referred to themselves as “Kalinago.” Thus, both words referencing this geographic region in English come to us from European colonialists. Some people of the region prefer the term Caribbean, sensing that West Indian has more of a colonial connotation, whereas Caribbean is at least an attempt to use an indigenous name (even if incorrectly). However, Caribbean tends to refer to all islands in the region as well as the coasts of the mainland (e.g., the Caribbean coast of Panama). West Indian connotes the islands that form the core of the region itself, exclusive of the continental islands. Further, West Indian is the term most widely used by current and former herpetological works in the region. For these reasons, we have chosen to use West Indian, with the use of Caribbean interspersed, but with the acknowledgement that both terms were born out of colonialism.

EVOLUTION AND BIOGEOGRAPHY OF THE BOAS

Although the full story of the arrival, dispersal, and evolutionary change in the West Indian boas is shrouded by time, we have nevertheless learned a significant amount about how these boas came to be. Through centuries of observation, dedicated fieldwork, and the advent and application of modern molecular and statistical techniques, we are now able to tell a remarkable story about the origins of the boas in the region, as well as a fascinating story about the evolutionary process.

The boas—snakes that we collectively recognize as members of the superfamily Booidea—are currently represented by sixty-seven species and thirtythree subspecies distributed across a huge swath of the globe (Reynolds and Henderson 2018). Boas are found in Africa, southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, south and central Asia, Mada-

tion from Labat (1724) is “l’ani mal paraissait avoir 10 pieds de long” (translation: the animal appeared to be 10 feet in length), which suggests some uncertainty in the estimate (i.e., Pere Labat did not actually measure the animal directly). Taken together, these observations suggest that we did not, in fact, have solid evidence that boas occurred on Martinique—contrary to what is suggested by Breuil (2002, 2009, 2011) and Lorvelec et al. (2007). Nevertheless, Dewynter et al. (2019) recently insisted on listing Boa from Martinique (“La présence passée d’un Boa en Martinique est con-

firmée”; translation: the historical presence of a Boa in Martinique is confirmed), and Bochaton (2020) described the presence of Boa vertebra in middens from Dizac Beach, possibly modified into decorative items like beads. Given the biogeographic likelihood that Boa existed there, as well as the recent finding of vertebrae on the island, we choose to include Boa as part of the historical fauna of Martinique.

Subfossil B. constrictor are known from Antigua (Table 0.1), where they have been found at two sites. Material from Indian Creek dates to 1915–845 years

Fossil and subfossil material attributed to boas in the West Indies. See the C. angulifer account for extensive fossil material for Cuba.

Table

Radiometrically calibrated ages are given as mean years ± SD before present [BP].

Grand Turk Coralie 1280 ± 60–900 ± 50 Chilabothrus chrysogaster

Florida Thomas Farm, Gilchrist County 18,000,000 Chilabothrus stanolseni

Vertebrae Carlson 1999; Newsom and Wing 2004

Vertebrae Onary and Hsiou 2018

Abaco Sawmill Sink “Late Pleistocene” Chilabothrus exsul Vertebrae Mead and Steadman 2017

Greater Antilles

Puerto Rico Northern Karst Region “Late Pleistocene” Chilabothrus inornatus Skull bones and vertebrae Pregill 1981

Lesser Antilles

Antigua Indian Creek 1915 ± 80–845 ± 80 Boa constrictor Unknown Steadman et al. 1984; Pregill et al. 1988

Antigua Burma Quarry 4300 ± 150–2560 ± 70 Boa sp. Vertebra Steadman et al. 1984; Pregill et al. 1988

Basse-Terre Cathedral Site Saladoid Boa sp. Vertebra fragment Bochaton 2020

La Désirade Pointe Gros Rempart 6

Marie-Galante Cadet 2 Cave, Cadet 3 Rock Shelter, and Blanchard Cave

Martinique Dizac Beach

blanchardensis Skull bones and vertebrae

2020

and Bailon 2018

0.1.

tion from Labat (1724) is “l’ani mal paraissait avoir 10 pieds de long” (translation: the animal appeared to be 10 feet in length), which suggests some uncertainty in the estimate (i.e., Pere Labat did not actually measure the animal directly). Taken together, these observations suggest that we did not, in fact, have solid evidence that boas occurred on Martinique—contrary to what is suggested by Breuil (2002, 2009, 2011) and Lorvelec et al. (2007). Nevertheless, Dewynter et al. (2019) recently insisted on listing Boa from Martinique (“La présence passée d’un Boa en Martinique est con-

firmée”; translation: the historical presence of a Boa in Martinique is confirmed), and Bochaton (2020) described the presence of Boa vertebra in middens from Dizac Beach, possibly modified into decorative items like beads. Given the biogeographic likelihood that Boa existed there, as well as the recent finding of vertebrae on the island, we choose to include Boa as part of the historical fauna of Martinique.

Subfossil B. constrictor are known from Antigua (Table 0.1), where they have been found at two sites. Material from Indian Creek dates to 1915–845 years

Fossil and subfossil material attributed to boas in the West Indies. See the C. angulifer account for extensive fossil material for Cuba.

Table

Radiometrically calibrated ages are given as mean years ± SD before present [BP].

Island

Bahamas/Florida

Grand Turk Coralie 1280 ± 60–900 ± 50

Chilabothrus chrysogaster

Florida Thomas Farm, Gilchrist County 18,000,000 Chilabothrus stanolseni

Vertebrae Carlson 1999; Newsom and Wing 2004

Vertebrae Onary and Hsiou 2018

Abaco Sawmill Sink “Late Pleistocene” Chilabothrus exsul Vertebrae Mead and Steadman 2017

Greater Antilles

Puerto Rico Northern Karst Region “Late Pleistocene” Chilabothrus inornatus Skull bones and vertebrae Pregill 1981

Lesser Antilles

Antigua Indian Creek 1915 ± 80–845 ± 80 Boa constrictor Unknown Steadman et al. 1984; Pregill et al. 1988

Antigua Burma Quarry 4300 ± 150–2560 ± 70 Boa sp. Vertebra Steadman et al. 1984; Pregill et al. 1988

Basse-Terre Cathedral Site Saladoid Boa sp. Vertebra fragment Bochaton 2020

La Désirade Pointe Gros Rempart 6 577–369

Marie-Galante Cadet 2 Cave, Cadet 3 Rock Shelter, and Blanchard Cave

Martinique Dizac Beach

Bochaton 2020

blanchardensis Skull bones and vertebrae Bochaton and Bailon 2018

2020

0.1.

before present (BP) and has been identified as “Boa constrictor ” (Steadman et al. 1984; Pregill et al. 1988). Material from Burma Quarry is older, dating to 4300–2560 years BP, and consists of a single vertebra from a boid snake, but without conclusive features that would allow identification to genus (Steadman et al. 1984; Pregill et al. 1988). Thus, the evidence appears to weigh in favor of a Boa species present on Antigua into the Holocene; although owing to the lingering uncertainty regarding these specimens, and a lack of recent reexamination, we hesitate to consider the Antiguan boas at the specific level, preferring instead to continue to treat them as Boa sp.

Much speculation existed regarding whether boas colonized the Guadeloupean Archipelago. Breuil (2002) noted that some authors have posited the certainty of the existence of a boa on Guadeloupe prior to the introduction of mongoose, while others have rejected this hypothesis. Happily, the historical presence of Boa in the Guadeloupe islands appears to have been confirmed. Recently, fossil material from MarieGalante has been described as Boa blanchardensis, an extinct species that did not survive to the Holocene (Bochaton and Bailon 2018). Fragments of skull and jaw bones, as well as trunk and caudal vertebrae, were well known and collected from three different sites on the island (Table 0.1; Bochaton et al. 2015). Additional vertebrae from a recent (577–369 BP) owl deposit on La Désirade might represent a Guadeloupe boa species that survived into the pre-Columbian Holocene (Bochaton 2020). Further, ~1500-year-old material from Basse-Terre fashioned into beads suggests that the Guadeloupe boa was present on all three main islands (Bochaton et al. 2021).

A further interesting anecdote is that a midnineteenth century reference in a contemporaneously well-publicized naturalist’s account of the West Indies suggests the presence of a large snake on Nevis and St. Kitts (Lynch 1856). The author described it as “yellow striped with black,” 10 feet long, and readily consuming domestic fowl. Other exaggerations by the author elsewhere in this text lend support to the likelihood that, while suggesting a boa based on some of these characteristics, almost certainly this is an account of the red-bellied racer, Alsophis rufiventris, which is decidedly yellowish ventrally and with dark striping anteriorly (although a mere 1 m long).

Thus, some fossil and subfossil specimens suggest that boas could very well have occupied most of the Windward Antilles at some point and that they might have dispersed as far north as Antigua prior to going extinct on some islands. Alternatively, it is possible that boas happened to establish on some islands and not others or that some Holocene material, such as that from Guadeloupe, Antigua, or Martinique, was the result of animals or animal material brought to the islands by people.

Chilabothrus

The genus Chilabothrus was the name originally given to the first boa in the group described (Chilabothrus inornatus Duméril and Bibron 1844) in the Caribbean, although they were subsequently placed in the genus Epicrates (Boulenger 1893). Reynolds et al. (2013a) used molecular phylogenetic data to show that the insular Epicrates represented a distinct clade and should therefore be named Chilabothrus. This genus is represented by fourteen extant species distributed in the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico Bank, and Hispaniola) as well as Isla de Mona and the Lucayan Archipelago (Little Bahamas Bank, Great Bahamas Bank, Conception Bank, Crooked-Acklins Bank, Inagua Bank, Caicos Bank, and Turks Bank). Most of these major islands or island banks are single-species islands, in that they contain only one boa species. On Cuba, the large C. angulifer is found island-wide, although it is presently restricted to certain regions by habitat modification (see C. angulifer account). On Jamaica, the large C. subflavus has been reduced to a few pockets of protected areas from a former large range across the island. On Isla de Mona, the single species C. monensis is found island-wide, although it is a somewhat more recently divergent lineage from boas (C. granti) on Puerto Rico to the east. In the Lucayan Archipelago—a series of geologically similar island banks comprising the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands—boas can be found on some, but not all, of the island banks. Where boas occur, there is only one species of boa, never more, although this likely was not the case in the past (more on this below). Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, on the other hand, have four and two species present, respectively, resulting in some remarkable evolutionary inferences (more below).

Our fossil record of boas in the West Indies is poor

(Table 0.1), being mostly represented by subfossils of extant species found in human middens in places like Grand Turk (Carlson 1999), in sinkholes on Abaco (Mead and Steadman 2017), or in deposits in the Lesser Antilles (e.g., Bochaton 2020). Thus, we are somewhat limited in our ability to consider what species might have occurred on these islands at various points in the past. For example—did Cuba or Jamaica ever have a small species of boa? It is certainly plausible on Cuba, as the present island existed as a series of separate paleo islands throughout the Miocene and Pliocene and thus might have housed additional boa species that have since gone extinct. Nevertheless, all fossil and subfossil material so far reported from this archipelago belong to the extant species C. angulifer. Alternatively, the fantastic radiation of Tropidophis species on Cuba (seventeen species currently described with more to come; Díaz and Cádiz 2020) might have provided such strong competition that boas evolved large body size to prey on hutias and solenodons instead of competing with the smaller tropes (RodríguezCabrera et al. 2016a). On Jamaica it is possible that a species of boa existed prior to the near-complete inundation of the island around 8 MY. Such questions remain in the realm of speculation unless additional fossil material is uncovered.

Recently, a fascinating discovery has been made— the description of fossil Chilabothrus material from peninsular Florida dating to the Miocene (Onary and Hsiou 2018). Estimated to be 18 million years old, this extinct species (Chilabothrus stanolseni) suggests that boas colonized Florida from the Caribbean less than 5 million years after they colonized the West Indies. There are few examples of squamate reptiles crossing the Straits of Florida, although the well-known Anolis lizards are perhaps the best example (Anolis carolinensis). These fossils of C. stanolseni are further suggestive that we might soon discover more about the evolutionary history of Chilabothrus, as the fossils were repeatedly identified as different genera before a recent reevaluation determined that they most resembled Chilabothrus.

Corallus

The genus Corallus, like the genus Boa, is represented by two species that likely arrived relatively recently (~1 MY) in the Windward Antilles from South America. On St. Vincent, Co. cookii occurs island-wide, although its abundance is highly variable depending on habitat type. Corallus grenadensis occurs on Grenada as well as on at least ten islands in the Grenadines. These two species are sister lineages nested in the widespread species Co. hortulana, suggesting that an ancestor of the species Co. hortulana colonized the Windward Antilles from South America and gave rise to these two lineages that we today recognize as separate species (Colston et al. 2013; Reynolds and Henderson 2018).

PHYLOGENETICS OF WEST INDIAN BOAS

A major building block in understanding the origins of West Indian boa diversity has been the ability to infer the evolutionary relationships among modern boas accurately. Like most studies of phylogeny, or evolutionary relationships, our understanding has changed as we continually generate new data and deploy new methods to reconstruct the origins of boa biodiversity. Early data sets used morphological data, or measurements and observations regarding the shape, size, and habits of boas, to attempt to infer evolutionary relatedness. This shifted toward quantifying anatomical features—meristic measurements and morphometric analysis of increasingly finer-scale features such as scale counts or skeletal elements. These early studies provided an important backbone to our understanding of boa relationships, but they also set up testable hypotheses to be investigated by increasingly fine-scale and more powerful data sets and statistical analyses. In particular, the application of genetic data gave us tremendous ability to reconstruct the evolutionary history of boas, particularly when paired with advanced statistical and computational techniques such as maximum likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic inference.

Genetic data initially took the form of examining whole proteins extracted from tissues, called allozymes, that allowed us to estimate relationships by examining whether species shared similar protein sizes

THE EXCERPT

the starfish flinger

As an old man walked the beach at dawn, he noticed a young girl ahead of him. She was picking up starfish and fl inging them into the sea. Finally catching up to her, the old man asked why she was doing this. She replied that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun.

“But the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of starfish,” countered the old man. “How can your effort make any difference?”

The young girl looked at the starfish in her hand and then threw it to safety in the waves and replied, “It makes a difference to this one.”1

When a friend shared this story with me thirty years ago, I taped it to my desk as an everyday reminder that one person can make a difference, even when the odds are against you. As an environmental consultant, I lived that message 24–7 for a while, running myself ragged trying to make a difference here, there, and everywhere. But back then, most of the starfish I threw into the waves washed back to where I’d found them, no better off than when I had tossed them.

If I hadn’t witnessed so many examples of one person moving the environmental needle against seemingly impossible odds, I would have stopped believing that one person could make a difference. To figure out what effective environmentalists were doing that I was not, I tore off my dunce cap and compared their successful approaches against mine. Over the years, and with the help of many along the way, I began figuring out which approaches worked, which didn’t, and why, ultimately coming up with effective approaches of my own. And it’s these approaches that I now share with you in this book—so you can make a difference too.

1. My thanks to Loren Eisley for this story.

What This Book Is About

An Environmental Leader’s Toolkit is a Cliff Notes-type training handbook of tools, techniques, approaches, and practical how-to skills for taking on placebased conservation and natural resource challenges and problems. It is for environmentally inclined people who want to make a difference—but lack the experience, knowledge, confidence, or skills to be effective. If you are a planner, consultant, activist, educator, or other environmental professional who needs help developing particular skills that you have not yet mastered, this book can give you the guidance you need. That said, this book is primarily for the unpaid heroes who wrestle with local problems because they care about what is happening in their backyard. You are the heroes who come from every political, ideological, religious, race, socio-economic stripe—from farmer to lawyer to teacher to mechanic. You are the ones who step forward to volunteer your time; you are the ones who show up for meetings when you could be home with your kids. You are the ones, through seemingly small actions, who make big things happen.

Th is book focuses on how to get things done at the local level, where so many meaningful environmental actions take place. Making headway on headline-grabbing environmental issues like climate change and social justice takes time—lots of time—and after years of trying you may not know if you have made any headway at all. Not knowing if your exhaustive efforts have made a difference is discouraging and probably explains why so many eager advocates for global causes lose hope and leave environmental advocacy altogether. Working at the local level is more gratifying because one person’s efforts—your efforts—can have large, immediate, and lasting payoffs. Each success builds on the last one. Plus the tools, skills, approaches, and knowhow that you need to be effective on environmental matters at the local level are also needed to be effective at regional, national, and international levels. In fact, you will not be successful without them.

Now, the best way to learn real-world environmental skills is to seek guidance from experienced people who know things that you don’t—masters who can take you under their wing and show you the way. Some real-world knowhow can also be learned through trial and error, of course. And you can always seek advice from the countless books, journals, YouTube videos, Ted Talks, podcasts, advice columns, and online postings out there. But a master’s wing rarely is handy when you need it most. Learning as you go doesn’t work so well when time is limited and you cannot afford to make mistakes. And sorting through all the material out there to find a few useful gems takes

especially those you disagree

meaningful things done in the real world. Understanding respect for where others are coming from is the fi rst feel certain that you are right and another person is wrong, that person is saying.

time—lots of time—and it is hard to discern which advice is credible and time-tested, and which isn’t. What then?

An Environmental Leader’s Toolkit is the place to turn when you do not have a master to show you the way, or when you do not have time to read a three-hundred-page treatise on a single, narrow topic, or when you cannot drop everything to spend hours searching for useful, practical, time-tested advice. In this book, you will find a broad array of practical, accessible, time-tested, how-to lessons from environmental practitioners like myself who have found what works. The book does not try to be the be-all-end-all source of wisdom on any single skill or tool. But it will show you what you need to know to get where you want to go so you can make a difference. And it may just help you do so before you’re in the midst of a challenging situation and don’t know what to do—after all, best intentions often go awry. Reflecting after the fact on what you could have done differently will make you more effective next time, but after-the-fact learning will not undo what went wrong. Knowing ahead of time what could go wrong— and what you could do to avoid it—works much better. The varied mix of skills, mindsets, and approaches in An Environmental Leader’s Toolkit will help you with that.

As it turns out, people are also your greatest resource edge. Some of the tools in An Environmental Leader’s gins in published research, but much of what the book I have learned these last forty years working with conservationists, mental advocates, governmental employees, environmental cators, graduate students, environmental planners, scientists. Working with farmers, loggers, hunters, ranchers, added real-world perspectives; everyday people trying have shown what works and what does not.

These individuals and organizations I’ve worked enced my decisions on which tools to include in this guide. I was inspired by what they most often wanted, advice for. I myself sought advice from a dozen leaders have been especially effective at getting things done. ing three questions:

1. Which tools do they most wish that they’d had

2. Which tools are the most difficult or most painful

3. Why do they think so many well-intentioned eff

About the Tools in This Book

Environmental tools can take many different forms: from scientific gizmos having digital readouts to interpersonal strategies that bring people together and regulations that change human behavior. With so many different environmental problems and challenges out there, in so many different places, with so many different interested parties, you might wonder how it is possible for a tool to be universally useful.

Some of the questions in this book, as well as the tools used to answer them, may not at fi rst glance seem especially environmental—they are more what you might fi nd in a leadership or people skills book. That may not sit well with scientists and engineers who believe that environmental decision making and action should not be sullied by messy human perceptions, whims, and personalities. Being a scientist myself, I held those same views until recurring failures eventually convinced me—against my will—that getting meaningful things done in the real world was more important than scientific purity. That is when I really started taking the people factor seriously. Much too often, good intentions and hard work are nullified by insufficient understanding of, or respect for, people. Scientists achieve more when they accept the reality that science alone is never enough to move the environmental dial; in the end, people and their values ultimately decide what happens and what doesn’t. The power of stepping out of one’s lab coats and connecting with people as fellow human beings, in language laypeople understand, cannot be overstated. And regardless of whether you’re a scientist, knowing how to work with people— especially those you disagree with or do not understand—is how you get meaningful things done in the real world. Understanding and showing respect for where others are coming from is the fi rst step. In fact, when you feel certain that you are right and another person is wrong, listen hard to what that person is saying.

As it turns out, people are also your greatest resource for how-to knowledge. Some of the tools in An Environmental Leader’s Toolkit have their origins in published research, but much of what the book offers comes from what I have learned these last forty years working with conservationists, environmental advocates, governmental employees, environmental consultants, educators, graduate students, environmental planners, lawyers, and fellow scientists. Working with farmers, loggers, hunters, ranchers, and miners have added real-world perspectives; everyday people trying to make a difference have shown what works and what does not.

These individuals and organizations I’ve worked with also strongly influenced my decisions on which tools to include in this toolkit instructional guide. I was inspired by what they most often wanted, needed, or sought advice for. I myself sought advice from a dozen leaders and practitioners who have been especially effective at getting things done. I asked them the following three questions:

1. Which tools do they most wish that they’d had from the get-go?

2. Which tools are the most difficult or most painful to learn the hard way?

3. Why do they think so many well-intentioned efforts fall short?

Answers to the fi rst two questions (which have been woven into the Toolkit ’s chapters) were quite varied. That was not the case with the third question, however. One reason topped everyone’s list: many well-intentioned efforts fall short because people take action before they have accurately identified the exact problem that they want solved. When people jump on a bandwagon prematurely, they invariably choose the wrong tool for the job and come up with a “solution” that achieves nothing useful. Everyone feels the need to rush out and do something when crunched for time. But doing something makes sense only if you do the right thing.

Three Underlying Realities

This book teaches many science- and people-related skills, techniques, and approaches. Broadly, these are divided across the book’s three parts into tools for making sure your actions match up with your desired outcome, tools for getting along with the people you’ll encounter and work with, and tools for finding support for your cause and, importantly, for yourself. But none of these tools are of any use unless you internalize three realities.

The fi rst reality is that a tool is a means to an end—not an end in itself. Stated another way: a tool has worth only if it changes a situation from where it is to where you want it to be.

Taking that simple truth to heart is challenging. When upset by a perceived wrong or need, the natural inclination is to get out there and do something right away, before you have carefully thought through whether the doing will deliver the outcome that you ultimately seek. That approach rarely ends well: in fact, as alluded to earlier, it accounts for many well-intentioned environmental efforts falling short.

The book’s fi rst chapter, “Don’t Hammer Nails with a Saw: How to Problem-Solve Effectively,” protects you from this fate by showing you how to make sure that what you do gives you what you need. The skills and mindset you will develop in this fi rst chapter—the book’s most important chapter— will help you select and use the right tool for the job.

The second reality is that humility makes you more effective. Stated another way: what you take to be the right way or the best way may, in fact, be neither.

When you believe that you are right and the other side is wrong, know this: those on the other side are equally convinced that they are right and you are wrong. They may have good reason to feel that way, too, and not because they are stupid or uninformed.

The third reality is that people complicate every environmental equation. Stated another way: solutions that lack buy-in have short life spans.

When you are anxious to get something done, it is tempting to skip over dealing with people who might slow your progress. That certainly seems like the path of least resistance, but know this: the people you skipped over will feel disrespected, and some are likely to fight back by sabotaging or undermining your efforts. In addition to making your life miserable, their spiteful actions may completely derail what you are trying to accomplish.

Of course, moving the environmental needle takes more than internalizing the three realities above, it also takes getting out there and actually doing something. An Environmental Leader’s Toolkit will help you figure out what those somethings are. Having a good sense of the problem you want to solve, and the research skills you need to achieve your desired end (Part I), is where we will begin.

thrEE QuEStioNS with HELEN JUKES author of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

1. What inspired you to write this book?

Becoming a beekeeper in Oxford, UK, was a very transformative experience for me. I became passionately curious in these strange creatures, and how they exist within and through our human environments. The more I learned about them, the more they seemed to communicate something important about the state of our relationship with nature more generally. I wanted a way to explore that, and to articulate the very strange effect they had on my life.

3. In what ways will your book resonate with readers?

It has a love story at its heart

It’s about feeling trapped, isolated, overworked and ground down by the modern world

It’s a story of obsession and fascination

People have said it’s hugely comforting, regenerative, lucid – one reader said it was like being wrapped in a ‘warm hug’!

2. How will your book make a difference?

While beekeeping is considered by many to be a pastoral pursuit, this book reveals the ways it has been co-opted as part of industrial farming practices – and the consequences of that. It explores our relationship with nature and proposes a care-oriented, listening-centred approach to our dealings with other species. It foregrounds the importance of attunement and careful observation. It asks people to pay attention to the world on their doorstep – to become aware of what creature life exists within and through our ‘human world’.

“I ask people to pay attention to the world on their doorstep”

Over the course of the next twelve months we will publish more than fifteen new books about science and nature under our Comstock Publishing Associates. You can find these, as well as all books previously published by Comstock on our website. Either use your smartphone camera to scan the QR code below or visit cornellpress.cornell.edu/imprints/comstock-publishing to see our extensive list.

If you are a Comstock author and would like to have your work featured in the next issue of Comstock Publishing Associates: A Cornell University Press Magazine please contact the marketing department.