Adam Schiff: Today we will hear from two fruit trees who happened to be in the Ukraine at the time of the back channel visits there by Rudy Guliani. Before we begin with some substance, do you have any fluff to add to todays presentations, Mr. Nuñes?
Devin Nuñes: Oh, here we go with Adam Schiff ’s Storytime of events that did not happen. There is no Ukraine. In fact, there is no Russia. There is no back channel. I have ...
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Crop wild relatives—the wild progenitors and closely related species to cultivated plants—have provided many important agronomic and nutritional traits for crop improvement (Dempewolf et al., 2017; Hajjar & Hodgkin, 2007). As populations of some of these taxa are adapted to extreme climates, adverse soil types, and important pests and diseases, they may provide key traits for the adaptation of crop plants to emerging and projected future challenges (Dempewolf ...
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At Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument today, 320 people of different nations, races, cultures and faiths peacefully came together to grieve the new construction of an unneeded border wall. Its construction activities are already cutting off access to water for the survival of people and wildlife, are violating native and other place-based spiritual practices, and are destroying ancient cactus and ironwood forests.
At Qutobaquito springs along the border–once the most biodiverse oasis in the entire Sonoran Desert– the cumulative destruction of ...
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The only job description that fully fit with his temperament and enormous skill set was that of being in exuberant contact with the wild world. All other job descriptions imposed on him by institutions or scholarly disciplines were side issues, or at best, springboards for getting him into the wilderness: as an ethnographer studying survival on sea ice; a field anthropologist investigating subsistence hunting; an ethnozoologist documenting traditional knowledge and values of Athapaskan fishers, foragers and hunters; a videographer, an ...
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Pomegranate: Next! How can I help you today?
Gary: Well, I feel kinda out of balance with my work these days.
Pomegranate: Have you requested an appointment with your corporations Human Resources Division?
Gary: That’s just the trouble. I feel that my personal human resources have become too divided. You see, I love science and I love poetry, but they don’t always go together in the workplace. Or to put a finer point on it, they almost never go together…
Pomegranate: That’s why you ...
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Gary: Okay, okay, I know you are both sensitive about what has happened between you, but let us see if we can find common ground….
Ironwood: Common ground? I have offered to share my ground with this little upstart not long after his germination. I served as his nurse for over thirty years, protecting him from heat, drought, sunburn, freezes and furry creatures. And what do I get in return? He throws his roots out right over mine and sucks up ...
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Gary: Greetings, master.
Prickly Pear: Greetings. Bless you, my child.
Gary: I am here to ask you to tell me the secrets that have made you so upstanding, so unflappable.
Prickly Pear: Well, I‘m not so sure have always been UP standing. When I was younger, my prickly pads sort of zigzagged their way above the desert floor. And have you noticed how much they look like pancakes/ I would say that they are unflappable, Jack.
Gary: My name is Gary, not Jack.
Prickly Pear: ...
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Gary: Excuse me, I’m lost, can you tell me which way…?
Rivulet: I can’t hear you, the water is roaring so loud, can you just…
Gary: Wait, don’t run away, I just need a little help…
Rivulet: Well, then just don’t stand there, jump in!
Gary: But what if it won’t take me to where I’m trying to reach?
Rivulet: Reach? Don’t just stand there! See, you’re going nowhere right now…
Gary: But I’m lost!
Rivulet: That’s because you’re not moving toward anything.
Gary: But what the way ...
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Dirt: So you occasionally write about us?
Gary: Well yes, on occasion. Why?
Dirt: What do you think entitles you to pry into our lives?
Gary: I’m not prying, exactly…I’m sort of crumbling you between my hands.
Dirt: While you are writing, you crumble us between your hands. Gads!
Gary: Only metaphorically so… teasing you apart, then rolling you back into a ball, so to speak.
Dirt: I just hate to be teased. What gives you the license to write about us?
Gary: Well, I sort of ...
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Most of us have heard the devastating reports of how the new construction of a thirty-foot wall and floodlights along our southern border has begun to impact water flows, wildlife and archaeological resources long-protected by federal laws. The federal protection of endangered species, critical habitat and cultural antiquities has been waived along a three-hundred foot swath along the U.S./Mexico border. Eminent domain under the auspices of homeland security has allowed U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Army Corps of Engineers ...
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In the face of unprecedented climatic disasters, social conflict, and political uncertainty, integrating in situ and ex situ strategies may become increasingly necessary to effectively conserve crop wild relatives (CWR). We introduce the concept of trans situ conservation to safeguard CWR genetic diversity and accessibility for crop improvement. Building on initiatives to combine in situ protection with ex situ backup in genebanks, trans situ conservation dynamically integrates multiple in situ and ex situ measures, from conservation to research to education, ...
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Construction is underway on a 30-foot-high steel wall along Arizona’s southern border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. As several reports have recently warned, the wall will hurt many endangered desert species, from Sonoran pronghorns to cactus ferruginous pygmy owls. To understand how the wall will further fragment habitats for these already-declining plants and animals, let’s go deep with one rare species that’s at grave risk: a cactus called the night-blooming cereus.
Sacamatraca, a beautiful and rare ...
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An ancient spring near Lukeville has slaked the thirst of desert travelers for centuries, but its days may be numbered as groundwater is pumped to build a 30-foot border wall.
Water has bubbled out of the granite at Quitobaquito Springs for thousands of years, making it a key watering hole for the Tohono O’odham, Spanish missionaries, U.S. and Mexican boundary surveyors, and countless other humans and animals.
The Trump administration decided to build a wall along 44 miles of the border in ...
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Building resilience in renewable energy and food production is a fundamental challenge in today’s changing world, especially in regions susceptible to heat and drought. Agrivoltaics, the co-locating of agriculture and solar photovoltaic panels, offers a possible solution, with new University of Arizona-led research reporting positive impacts on food production, water savings and the efficiency of electricity production.
Agrivoltaics, also known as solar sharing, is an idea that has been gaining traction in recent years; however, few studies have monitored all aspects ...
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Americans now spend a stunning 90 percent of their time indoors. Our sedentary, screen-addicted lifestyles have been blamed for a range of ills — including obesity, attention problems, allergies and more.
We know that getting out of the house and into nature confers many benefits for physical and mental health. But there’s an additional benefit you might not know about: contact with the soil — good old dirt — enriches the gut microbiome, the community of microorganisms ...
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Scientists working on the US-Mexico border face unique challenges when trying to study borderlands ecosystems, from outright harassment by Border Patrol officers to tight restrictions on travel and what natural materials can cross the border. It’s all gotten worse under the Trump administration.
“In the course of talking to scientists, I found that nearly everyone I spoke to had some story about how the wall and the crackdown on immigration is affecting their ability to do their work,” says Living ...
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I’m surrounded by date palms. Around them run dry watercourses that look like ones I find not far from my home in Tucson, Arizona. The traditional architecture in town would not be out of place in Tucson, either—or almost anywhere from southern Spain to Mexico and up into the southwest us. The fruit trees and grapevines hark back even further, to traditions of my ancestors from Syria and Lebanon. Perhaps this is what a visit to the ...
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This week, we’re airing a series of interviews called Bearing Witness: Voices of Climate Change. They’re stories told by longtime Arizonans about changes they’ve seen in the familiar landscapes of their lives. While personal experience, in and of itself, is not scientific conclusion, many researchers believe long-term observation is a critical component to understanding how climate change affects humanity and the planet. Today’s interview is with teacher, author and ecologist, Gary Nabhan.
He is the founding director of Northern Arizona University’s Center for ...
Continue Reading →When President Trump initiated his trade tariff wars with China a year ago, economists warned that it could precipitate the second-worst farm crisis in a half century.
Most farmers in Arizona did not get hit as hard as those in Corn Belt states. The tariff wars alone didn’t seem to precipitate a crisis in Arizona. But last month, other danger signs began to register in the Grand Canyon State. The long-standing relationship Arizona has had with its strongest trade partner, Mexico, ...
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in the darkest of times where I go
is to a place somehow hidden
in the midst of pain
a place where microbursts of light
breaks through to reach us
a crack of light like the very one
you may have seen on stormy days
right at dusk when darkness
tried enveloping entire skies
but failed
fails because the sun sent out a call
a grace note so bright
it cut across the horizon
right into our hearts
and sangs to us
“do not give in
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