The public land deal process can stretch over many years. While some projects are on our docket for a few months, WLP tracks others for years as they wind through federal procedures. As a specific example, WLP continues to work with two Idaho grassroots organizations on a proposed exchange that would cede over 28,000 acres of National Forest land to Western Pacific Timber in exchange for more than 39,000 acres of clear-cut forest in the upper Lochsa River drainage. In November 2010, the revised Draft EIS was completed which included this option. The staff attorney for WLP submitted in-depth comments and continues to follow this deal closely and provide technical and legal assistance to local grassroots groups and concerned citizens.

Similar monitoring work is ongoing in a proposed land exchange within the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument in California, the Eagle Valley Land Exchange in Eagle County, Colorado, and a proposed land exchange between the BLM and Howell Petroleum Corporation in Wyoming. The WLP also has dozens of projects with a focus on citizen education and empowerment, policy reform and advocacy, and ongoing legal work including their longest-running legal battle challenging a proposed land exchange to expand an open-pit copper mine into adjacent wildlife corridors in Arizona’s White Canyon Resource Conservation Area.

For more information on the Western Lands Project, visit their web site here.

Reinventing Fire’s research phase had two main objectives: 1) to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of achieving at least an 80-percent reduction in total fossil fuel use below 1990 levels by 2050 and elimination of all oil and coal combustion, while sustaining or improving supply reliability, energy security, economic growth, and prosperity; and 2) to derive and illuminate the implications for the U.S. energy system over that period, especially the next five years.  The resulting book (and supporting web site to be released simultaneously) is described on Amazon.com as follows:

Imagine fuel without fear. No climate change. No oil spills, no dead coalminers, no dirty air, no devastated lands, no lost wildlife. No energy poverty. No oil-fed wars, tyrannies, or terrorists. No leaking nuclear wastes or spreading nuclear weapons. Nothing to run out. Nothing to cut off. Nothing to worry about. Just energy abundance, benign and affordable, for all, forever.

That richer, fairer, cooler, safer world is possible, practical, even profitable-because saving and replacing fossil fuels now works better and costs no more than buying and burning them. Reinventing Fire shows how business-motivated by profit, supported by civil society, sped by smart policy-can get the US completely off oil and coal by 2050, and later beyond natural gas as well.

Authored by a world leader on energy and innovation, the book maps a robust path for integrating real, here-and-now, comprehensive energy solutions in four industries-transportation, buildings, electricity, and manufacturing-melding radically efficient energy use with reliable, secure, renewable energy supplies.Popular in tone and rooted in applied hope, Reinventing Fire shows how smart businesses are creating a potent, global, market-driven, and explosively growing movement to defossilize fuels. It points readers to trillions in savings over the next 40 years, and trillions more in new business opportunities. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, this major contribution by world leaders in energy innovation offers startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.Pragmatic citizens today are more interested in outcomes than motives. Reinventing Fire answers this trans-ideological call. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, its startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.

This peer-reviewed “grand synthesis” shows how the U.S. in 2050 could need no oil, coal, or nuclear energy to run a 158% bigger economy, $5 trillion cheaper (not counting externalities), with the transition led by business for durable advantage and requiring no Act of Congress.

For more information on pre-ordering the book, see the Amazon.com book site.

Grant proposals to the Conservation and Research Foundation are due by August 31st in order to be considered during the Fall board meeting. The CRF funds small grants, typically between $500 and $5000 per proposal. While projects vary from year to year, we have provided both base institutional support and education and research grants focused on five broad areas:

1. Limiting population growth
2. Biodiversity protection
3. Law and the environment
4. Agriculture conservation
5. Pollution and energy solutions

In addition, the Foundation funds general ecological research and environmental education that doesn’t necessarily fit into one of these categories.

The Foundation responds to an initial 1 to 2 page letter of inquiry, followed by a full proposal by invitation only. Full proposals should include a 2-page project description plus bibliography, resumes of participants (in the case of research proposals), budget, and contact information, with web links to appropriate supporting materials.

Please send letters of inquiry or invited proposals to:

Conservation and Research Foundation
P.O. Box 909
Shelburne, Vermont 05482-0909

Or by e-mail to Minda Wetzel at mwetzel@kc3ol.dynip.com.

The 2009 Children’s Programs included: Plant Your Own Chia Pet; Name that Tree!; Understanding Ocean Currents; Learning to Use a Map and Compass; Woodland Wildflowers – An After School Adventure; A Buried Treasure: Fun with Fossils; A Pizza Garden Planting; Ten Native Trees Walk and Workshop; A Pond Walk and Dragonfly Tale; Art in Nature: Creating sculpture with John Sargent; Picnic in the Caroline Black Garden; Hunting for Botanical Treasures on the Campus; What on Earth Can you do with an Old Pickle Jar?; Creating Autumn Sculptures in the Arboretum; Pumpkin Circle: Storytelling and Crafts; Boo! It’s A Halloween Party; Life in the Desert Workshop; If I were an Oak Tree Games and Crafts; Creating Holiday Ornaments from Nature Workshop, and the New London Youth Environmental Conference.

Congratulations on a successful year!

The work of Ernesto and his Agroecology and Rural Livelihoods Group was just highlighted in an article in the Burlington Free Press.  You can also visit his ARL Group’s home page, and learn more about about the broader Community Participatory Action Research Network that he co-chairs at the University of Vermont.

Welcome Ernesto!

Nominations for the 2011 award should include a list of all of the nominee’s work to be considered for the 2009-2010 period, a statement in regards to the merits of the nominee’s research, and must be sent by April 1, 2011. More information and an online nominating form are available on the BSA’s Pelton Award nominating site.

This past year the CRF supported a broad array of environmental projects, including the pioneering efforts of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) to educate the public about alternative energy for individuals, industry and the military. One of its current projects has been termed “off-coal”, a sequel to its earlier efforts to find valid alternatives to oil as a major energy source. Both oil and coal produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming. RMI’s emphasis is on reducing energy demand through resource efficiency as well as increased use of non-polluting renewable resources such as wind and solar power. They have instigated formal meetings with electric utilities to present their research on how best to achieve low carbon electric systems for specific territories. Smart cars with electrified motors and city-wide readiness for charging plug-in hybrid vehicles are also current priorities for RMI. Because buildings consume 38.5% of all energy in the world and are responsible for 34% of all global carbon dioxide emissions, RMI is working on retrofitting buildings including the Empire State Building in NYC which will reduce its energy consumption by 40%.

Imagine the thriving village of Grand Lake Stream surrounded by protected lakes and 55,000 acres of community forest supporting public recreation, fish and wildlife, and sustainable forestry. Citizens of Grand Lake Stream unanimously supported this vision with a $40,000 contribution. The West Grand Lake Community Forest will protect the key 21,700 acre gap in a nearly 1.4 million acre international wildlife corridor between Maine and New Brunswick. This is a big hurdle in a successful effort to conserve the Downeast Lakes and over 370,000 acres of forests.

This project is the #1 national forest conservation priority, selected through a rigorous competitive process by the U.S. Forest Service Forest Legacy Program for FY2011. There is no better opportunity to protect a forest economy, ecological values, and outdoor recreation.

PMC-Ethiopia has now celebrated ten years and 740 episodes of its radio serial dramas and other programs such as traveling stage plays, workshops and printed materials. Ethiopia is the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the poorest developing nations. PMC has strongly focused on the Somali and Afar regions including the introduction of workshops for religious leaders to encourage social change. PMC has been active world-wide, while focusing on Africa. New areas they are exploring for future programs include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Fiji, India, Cameroon, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and Uganda. Ongoing projects in Senegal, Rwanda and Mali have gained financial support from USAID and the United Nations. PMC has recently branched out to include climate issues, endangered species and eco-tourism in their programs.