Here are some of the programs supported by the Southern Environmental Center at Birmingham-Southern College:
What do you get when you combine great libations, a harvest supper by Whole Foods Market, and Birmingham’s coolest live & silent auction? EcoFest 13, October 6 at the Harbert Center! Proceeds from this annual fundraiser support our EcoScape community parks program, and underwrites the cost of bringing underprivileged school groups to the Southern Environmental Center (SEC).
Turkey Creek Nature Preserve was established through a partnership between Alabama’s Forever Wild Program and the Freshwater Land Trustand is co-managed by the Southern Environmental Center (SEC). In late 2008, an agreement was reached with the SEC to setup an environmental education center at the entrance to the preserve. The SEC opened this facility on May 9, 2009 and provides school groups, scout troops, and others with hands-on educational programming. For additional information, call the Turkey Creek office at 205-680-4116. http://www.bsc.edu/ sec/ecoscape/turkeycreek.cfm
SEC Ecoscape Program: Established in 1996 on BSC’s campus, this program has expanded to the surrounding communities and utilizes local art work to illustrate organic gardening practices, provides a nuts and bolts overview for schools and communities interested in creating low cost nature centers or outdoor learning sites and offers an oasis of natural beauty in our communities. www.bsc.edu/sec/ecoscape/index.cfm
This from Bama Environmental News.
Scientists predict that a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico could expand to between 8,500 and 9,421 square miles this year, roughly the size of New Jersey and Delaware combined. Dead zones are oxygen-depleted, lifeless expanses of water. The dead zone in the Gulf, 60 miles off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, is one of the largest in the world and has more than
doubled since the 1980s. In 2002, a staggering 8,400 square miles of the Gulf was “hypoxic” or lacked sufficient oxygen for most marine life to live. http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/dead-in-the-gulf Thousands of volunteers answered the call at the 24th annual Alabama Coastal Cleanup Saturday when organized groups and individuals spent the morning combing the coast from Orange Beach to Dauphin Island. At Five Rivers Delta Resource Center on the causeway, a maritime effort was underway, with members of the Mobile Bay Kayak Fishing Association loading their vessels with waterlogged refuse. http://www.baldwincountynow.com The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) will conduct an in-depth status review of 374 rare southeastern aquatic, riparian and wetland animal and plant species to determine if any or all of them warrant federal protection as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). www.fws.gov
Alabama’s governor on said the state will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to decide a dispute over Georgia’s ability to use water from a reservoir that’s the main water source for roughly 3 million people in metro Atlanta. www.gadsdentimes.com
The Bama Environmental News (BEN) is Alabama’s first statewide weekly environmental online newsletter. First published in October 1998, BEN has grown from a circulation of 50 to 3900 in January 2010. The newsletter is considered the state’s leading environmental and natural resource for information.
Since its inception more than 350 editions of BEN have been produced. Each copy of BEN is archived at the BEN website, bamanews2.blogspot.com
This from The Lost Angler at www.lostangler.com/blog/. Before anybody gets the idea that I have a problem with farmers, loggers, or anybody else making a living to feed a family, I just want to say I don’t. At the same time, though, I have a big problem with when we do these things at the expense of our natural resources. If we go back, say, 40 years ago, the state of Alabama had been largely cleared of trees for agriculture in places where the farming was better than average. Take Dallas County for example, when my dad was starting out on his job as a Ranger for the Alabama Forestry Commission, Dallas County was only 20 some odd percent forested. Today, due to their efforts with land owners who saw a future in timber and a problem with the way things were, the county is close to 75% forrested. www.lostangler.com/blog/
What is it about fly-fishing that makes people get so addicted to it? There are by far easier and more efficient ways to catch fish. By all means conventional tackle allows you to cover more water and to cover it faster and most often this results in more fish. But really is that what we are really after? www.lostangler.com/blog/
