Donna VanBuecken
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust.
Happy New Year! And may things be much better in 2021!
To see the full article, read the Twin Cities Pioneer Press of Duluth, Minnesota.
While taking a break from the spring turkey hunting season in 2007, I watched a bobcat as he turned up the lane and directly into the cabin where I was taking pictures. During the archery deer hunting season this September 2020, my brother Doug saw four bobcats — a female and kittens.
Native to North America from southern Canada, through most of the contiguous United States, to the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, the bobcat is twice the size of a domestic cat. Weighing about 20 pounds, it has distinctive black bars on its foreleg. The top of the tail is black with a white underside. The bobcat has large ears with pointed tufts of hair at the ends, and has an orange-tan pelt with black stripes on the face and spots on the body. Bobcats have a white chest and belly, but the belly is heavily spotted. These spots and the color of their coat helps camouflage the bobcat in the thick underbrush.
The bobcat is often confused with the lynx. The bobcat has irregular dark markings only on the top half of their tail, and they have shorter tufts of hair on their ears. The tracks of the bobcat are just slightly larger than a house cat, while the tracks of the lynx are more than 4 inches across. The bobcat is also known as the red lynx.
The thickly forested areas of northern Wisconsin are home to the bobcat. They like alder thickets and coniferous swamps with black spruce, white cedar, or balsam fir trees especially.
Bobcats are on the move during the twilight hours of sunrise and sunset during the summer, but they often hunt during the day in winter. The bobcat specializes in taking larger, rabbit-sized prey. Like most cats, the bobcat is territorial and largely solitary. It uses several methods to mark its territorial boundaries, including claw marks and deposits of urine or feces. The bobcat breeds from winter into spring and has a gestation period of about two months. (EEK and wikipedia)
This clip was given to me by a friend Rick Webb:
Canadian lynx at Big Run Wolf Ranch in Lockport, Illinois.
Note: One reader wrote to tell me that the Lynx link above doesn’t work for her. If that’s a problem for you, try this one.
The first formal study of erosion took place under the Soil Conservation Act of 1935. Through the years, it has been updated by many Acts. The Rural Development of Act of 1972 implemented a land inventory and monitoring program, which generally follows a complex sampling of five-year increments. For 35 years, the NRCS (USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service) has been collecting information on the status and condition of land, soil, water, and related resources on the nation’s non-federal lands. It covers erosion, agricultural, rangeland, forestry, wetlands, and other lands. It covers 49 states (Alaska is excluded), Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands to assess resource quantity and quality.
The National Resources Inventory (NRI) is a statistical survey of natural-resource conditions and trends in the United States. Non-federal land includes privately owned lands, tribal and trust lands, and lands controlled by state and local governments. The 2020 report shows that about 44 million acres of land were developed between 1982 and 2017, bringing the total to about 116 million acres. This represents a 61 percent increase during the last 35 years. However, the developed land has been increased less and less proportional to population change. This results in less land available for agricultural, rangeland, and forests. Loss of rural land will have an impact on wildlife and native landscaping.
Taken from “What’s Happening on America’s Lands, Soils, and Waters?” by Bob Sowers, NRCS.
“The 2017 report shows trends from 2012 to 2017,…Conclusions from the report will take years to evolve as people study the data, but we can already see that cropland acreage increased, erosion rates stabilized, and the expansion of developed land decreased. Some highlights include:
The report also gives a statistical perspective on natural resource and environmental conditions for these lands, with the specific goal of supporting agricultural and environmental policy development and program implementation. It serves as the foundation for critical analytical efforts for USDA and other agencies and groups.”
*Palustrine wetlands include all non-tidal wetlands dominated by trees, shrubs, persistent emergent plants, or emergent mosses or lichens, as well as small, shallow open water ponds or potholes (called swamps, marshes, potholes, bogs or fens.)
**Estuarine wetlands are tidal wetlands that are usually semi-enclosed by land but have open, partly obstructed or sporadic access to the open ocean, and in which ocean water is at least occasionally diluted by freshwater runoff from the land (where a river flows into the ocean).
For the complete report, see the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s What’s Happening on America’s Lands, Soils, and Waters?
The net change of rural land into developed land has averaged 1.6 million acres per year over the last 25 years. This results in reduced agricultural land, rangeland, and forests. This loss of rural land — compounded by climate change — leads me to think that our environment and the extreme weather caused by climate change will result in a loss of wildlife and native landscaping.
This week, June 22-28, 2020, is when we celebrate pollinators. This is the week we celebrate the special species in our lives – the bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles. It is a special time to pause, celebrate pollinators and focus on what we can do to help pollinators thrive in this world of global climate change and global warming.
Reprinted from my blog, here is Gardening for Pollinators.
It all starts with ecosystems. The Earth is made up of naturally occurring geographical areas with similar climate, geology and soils. Typically, within each of these ecoregions, there are a number of ecological regions referred to as ecosystems made up of plants, animals, birds, butterflies, insects, organisms and the physical environment or habitat in which they live. Typically, all these elements in the ecosystem develop a mutually dependent relationship that becomes a Circle of Life.
Pollination is a very important element in the Circle of Life. Why? Because the Circle of Life starts with plants, and most plants depend upon pollination to reproduce.
Pollination is a reproductive process. Flowers offer food (nectar) to pollinators in exchange for reproduction. It occurs when pollen is transferred from the anther (male part of flower) to the stigma (female part of flower). And, it’s very important, because without pollination, we would not have vegetables and fruits to eat, and plants could not reproduce from season to season.
Although some pollen is dispersed by the wind, birds, butterflies, bees and other insects and animals are the main transporters of pollen between flowers, hence the term pollinators. They carry the pollen, which is a fine powdery dust found in the male part of the plant (anther) and contains the plant’s sperm, to the female part of the plant (stigma). Some pollinators have special structures by which they carry the pollen – like the native bees. Others, such as butterflies, bats and other insects carry the pollen from one flower to another when it affixes itself to their bodies, legs and wings.
Flowers and pollinators co-evolved, developing features that make the exchange of pollen and nectar successful. To support native pollinators, we need to grow the native plants with which they evolved. Because they evolved together, native plants have the “right” features. Here are some examples.
Native habitat is disappearing rapidly as fencerows are being destroyed for crop farming, and land is being developed for residential, commercial and manufacturing use.* It is important to support pollinators by growing native plants to provide nectar and pollen throughout the seasons, and to make sure host plants are included that provide food and shelter for larval development. It is also important to provide access to clean water and to create variable heights for shelter and nesting. Most importantly, use insecticides sparingly, if at all.
Last, tolerate a little mess – leave dead snags and leaf litter, keep some areas bare for ground-nesting insects, and tolerate non-noxious, non-invasive weeds that provide food and shelter for pollinators.
*According to Doug Tallamy in the film Hometown Habitat, only 5 percent of our land remains as native habitat. 42 percent is being used for crop framing, and 53 percent for development.
See also A Naturally Landscaped Yard and A Living Landscape Mimics Nature. Although focusing on birds, these yard designs are appropriate for pollinators as well.
For more on the Gardening for Pollinators, see Part 2, Pollination continued.
