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Showing posts from September, 2014

Tree guides to five Manhattan playgrounds

Image: London planetrees tower over the jungle gym at the Playground of the Americas My most recent collaboration with ioby was the successful fundraising campaign for a mobile map of the trees and other wild things in Washington Square Park also known as Washington Square Park Ecology .  A couple of years ago, I was invited by the organization to write a local ecology series for the organization's blog. We decided on tree guides to five playgrounds in downtown Manhattan.  Naturally, a guide for Washington Square Park was the first installment! Learn about the Trees in Tot Playground in Washington Square Park .  The remaining four guides are the Trees of the Playground of the Americas , the Trees of Minetta Playground , the Trees of the Playground at Pier 25 , and the Trees of Evelyn’s Playground in Union Square Park. Do you have a favorite treed playground? Let us know in the comments. This post has been edited. It was originally published on June 25, 2012.

Martha and the extinction of passenger pigeons

"...100 years ago this week, the very last pigeon of her kind died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and her passing merits our close attention today." Read Cornell Lab of Ornithology director John Fitzpatrick essay about the "swift" eradication of the species and the lesson of "timely conservation" in the New York Times Sunday Review. Joel Greenberg, who wrote a book and produced a film about passenger pigeons, penned a requiem for Martha at Yale E360. Barry Yeoman for Audubon Magazine also wrote about what this species' extinction can teach us . NPR covered a commemorative event for Martha at the Cincinnati Zoo . National Geographic wrote about the de-extinction of the passenger pigeon ! P.S. In today's Times, Andy Revkin argues that the 19th century social network, the telegraph, hastened the demise of the passenger pigeon , while today, social media might "forestall future extinctions." P.P.S. Was th