Lightning Updates
Making Carbon Markets Accessible to Small Landowners
Image: Marking Milestones, CCP, (Nicholas A. Tonelli)Voluntary carbon offset programs are growing dramatically, driven by corporate net-zero pledges and increasing interest in carbon offsets to achieve Paris climate goals.1 Conservation, restoration and management of...
Celebrating the Natural and Cultural Diversity on the Chesapeake Bay
A group of African Americans pose aboard the bugeye Thomas Blades in the harbor of St. Michaels, Maryland, c. 1910. Image courtesy gift of Mary V. Thomas to the collection of Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Our sense of belonging is often tied as much to a physical...
Smithsonian Grassroots Approach helps Biodiversity Bloom
Image courtesy of Virginia Working LandscapeLand use and biodiversity – can we have our cake and eat it too? Yes, these can indeed be compatible. Smithsonian scientists are collaborating with multiple partners, including landowners, to embrace grassroots approaches to...
Legislative Outlook in PA, MD, and VA
John Griffin & Warren Brown2022 is likely to be an unpredictable year during the General Assembly Sessions in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia for similar and distinct reasons. This is an election year in PA and MD. The Governors of both of these states are term...
Making Connections for Wildlife
Warren BrownCrossing the Road Imagine motoring down the road and being confronted by a very large animal with formidable antlers. This might seem like the opening scene for a story about nature’s revenge for all the little creatures that have been flattened by...
Beach Week: A Quest for Sandy Toes that Was So Much More
At Beach Week 2021, Beach #20, Gloucester Point Beach Park on the York River, Gloucester Point, Virginia, I met Louis, another avid fisherman. It was his first time at the park. This landscape, once known as Tsenacomoco, was home to some of the tribes in the...
Pushing Boundaries
Written by Jonathan L. DohertyAfter writing weekly Lightning Updates for almost three years, I’m about to enter a new post-full-time-job phase of life. Perhaps you will pardon my using this and next week’s updates for some personal observations. Here’s part I. I’ve...
A Poem on Earth Day
On Earth Day 2021, we offer these words from the poet Julie Cadwallader-Staub. Praying In the garden early, I'mtransplanting echinacea while robins and flycatchers confirm that our winter--complicated and compoundedby COVID--has succumbed to spring at last. I'm...
A Vivid Illustration
How many birds are killed by vehicles along a single stretch of rural highway? (Photos: above -- Janet Griffin/Shutterstock; below -- Jay Falstad)From time to time, these updates share information that may not be the best of news, but does shed light on the importance...
Public Access & Democracy
News and images of this week’s closures of the National Mall and its memorials, the U.S. Capitol, and public streets in Washington are arresting. And yet, there have been so many dramatic images from public open space in the past year. Park closures from the...
