Keith Bennett is a seed harvest and restoration technician for The Nature Conservancy’s Dunn Ranch Pawnee Prairie in Hatfield, Missouri. He is helping restore Missouri’s native tallgrass prairie by collecting as much as 800 pounds of native seeds by hand in a season. In this interview, read about the importance of protecting tall grass prairie, how cemeteries are great places for collecting the native plant seeds, and how prescribed fires can be beneficial for prairie plants.
America’s landscapes are unlike anything in the world. But the twin crises of climate change and global biodiversity loss present an existential threat to these places and our future. The America the Beautiful initiative is an ambitious but achievable goal to respond to this threat by conserving, connecting and restoring 30% of our lands and waters by 2030.
Perennial grain crops hold unique and robust potential to help mitigate climate change by capturing significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and putting it back into the soil.
Blue carbon ecosystems are exceptional at storing carbon because they are more effective at burying plants that have settled in the soil. When these plants get buried they do not decompose, which keeps the carbon that is stored in them from being released back into the atmosphere. Learn how WILDCOAST, an international conservation team, is helping to conserve and restore blue carbon ecosystems.
Agroforestry is, in a nutshell, farming with trees. A renewed interest in agroforestry comes from the opportunity it presents to turn farmers into climate heroes, sequestering carbon on working farmland while keeping it productive and profitable.
Climate change is here. As the Minnesota’s climate becomes warmer—and drier during the growing season—these cold-hardy trees are beginning to struggle. The Forest Assisted Migration Project is the kind of big solution needed to adapt to climate change in Minnesota.
Since 2000, wildfires have burned an average of 7 million acres per year, more than double the average annual acres burned in the 1990s. Proper wildfire management is critical to reduce risks for American communities, protect fragile ecosystems and prevent millions of tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere.
Betsy Cook, the Maine state program director at The Trust for Public Land, discusses the community forest model and why it holds promise to protect forests.
Shared stewardship is revolutionizing wildfire management, forest and watershed protection, drought control, and the ongoing battle with disease and pest outbreaks across the United States. American Forests outlines the potential impact of the innovative forest management approach of shared stewardship.
Idaho farmers share stories of transforming their lands and livelihoods with regenerative agriculture.