Solutions

Forage Friday Series

Foraging reminds me that food is truly at your feet and that sometimes the best way of reconnecting with the natural world is by eating it. On Forage Friday we go into the woods together, find food, and prepare a delicious meal. Foraging is not only good exercise but its also a way I deeply reconnect with the natural world all around me.

Whale Wednesdays Series

Since 2001, through Blue Ocean Society’s beach clean up programs they removed over 195,000 pounds of litter from our beaches.

The gulf of Maine is one of fastest warming waters in the world. Many Marine mammals are climate victims as sea temperatures rise. But the folks at Blue Ocean Society are helping mitigate those effects by inspiring the community around them to get involved.

Kings Bay Restoration Project

The Kings Bay restoration project is a community-led movement to save Florida’s Crystal River and restore eelgrass to the underwater landscape. I was lucky enough to jump into the Crystal River and see the red fish, turtles, and beloved manatees that have returned to the ecosystem since the restoration began just seven years ago. Through demonstrating the positive changes of clean up, replanting, and establishing environmental protections, this project is an inspiring example of how humans and communities are at the heart of climate solutions.

What We Can Learn From The Forest (with Ecologist Tom Wessels)

Join me on a walk with Tom Wessels, an ecologist, educator and author, in Mount Desert Island. His book Forestry Forensics: A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape has forever changed how I look at the forest. Walking in the woods with someone who has a literacy of the forest illuminates everything seemingly invisible about it. In this video series we explore everything from Mutualism, Mycorrhizal Fungi, and Lichen.

Trout Unlimited

Trout Unlimited is a coalition dedicated to conserving, protecting and restoring America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds so that our children can enjoy them in the future. They have literally “put the bends back in the river.”

Soul Fire Farm

When I went to Soul Fire Farm in Grafton NY, I learned that every tree is treated as an extended member of the family. They ask the land for permission. Part of the work of fighting climate change is healing our relationship and estrangement with soil. At Soul Fire Farm, they do this work by unearthing and relearning the lessons of soil reverence from the past using Afro-Indigenous practices to sequester carbon and increase biodiversity. They created an easement so the indigenous community can come at any point to perform religious ceremonies in the fields, forests, and rivers. It’s a magical place of interwoven stewardship.

Caring for people and caring for the earth are never separate. Regenerative farming is the intersection of people care and planet care. Soul Fire Farm’s food sovereignty programs reach over 50,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.

Bringing Back The Bison

​​​​​​​​​American plains bison were reintroduced in fall 2022 to a 150-acre prairie at Dakota County’s Spring Lake Park Reserve.

Their grazing habits boost plant diversity by giving wildflowers the chance to compete with the tall grasses. By boosting plant diversity, grazing helps to make the prairie resilient and stable.

GreenWave

Kelp is one solutions I am most excited about. It absorbs CO2 from seawater and makes the water less acidic. It can grow 2 feet per day, helps protect the coastline from storms, and if you add kelp to cow’s feed it reduces their methane burbs by up to 60%.

GreenWave’s 10-year goal is to provide training, tools, and support to a baseline of 10,000 farmers to catalyze the planting of regenerative ocean crops and yield meaningful economic and climate impacts.

Ikaarvik

Ikaarvik was envisioned over a decade ago by a group of youth in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, who wanted to create greater and more meaningful Indigenous involvement and leadership in Arctic research. Ikaarvik youth and mentors are now doing amazing things in Inuit communities and First Nations across the Canadian North. In addition to developing and leading their own research projects, Ikaarvik youth explore ways to effectively combine local Indigenous Knowledge with Western science for better, more robust and relevant results.