Tag: Conservation

How to make your yard more friendly for wildlife

When my wife and I bought our current home, I was excited by the fact that it came with a big backyard. Though our total property is a bit less than 0.8 acres, it was significantly more land than we had at our old house.

As a lover of nature, I saw an opportunity to be able to enjoy more of it right out my own back door. I didn’t have a specific goal in mind at first. I just wanted to give myself the best opportunity to see wildlife as often as possible.

If that kind of thing interests you, I’d like to present you with some options along with some of my thoughts and experiences that came with my own journey of making our yard more friendly for wildlife.

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Is the dire wolf back?

You may have seen news in recent weeks about an American company, Colossal Biosciences, proclaiming to have brought dire wolves back from extinction.

The headlines garnered a lot of attention in early April, even gracing the cover of Time Magazine. The hype around this announcement is understandable. This was quite a claim.

But here’s the thing: that’s not what happened.

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Unpacking the feelings

There is no shortage of anecdotal and scientific evidence that being outdoors is good for your mental health.

The ol’ “getting some fresh air” trick has done wonders for countless people, myself included.

Disconnecting from the day-to-day and experiencing the beauty of the natural world, even for a brief period has a way of re-charging our proverbial batteries and leveling us out, often bringing about feelings of peace, calm, and relaxation.

But as you spend more time alone in nature, you’ll find these experiences can offer up more complex emotions. Some that, on the surface, may not necessarily seem positive.

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My Earth Day Wish

Before you roll your eyes and go, “Oh great, another Earth Day think piece just like all the rest of ’em,” I hope you’ll hear me out.

Make no mistake, I am going to get up on my soap box. Today seems as good a day as any to do it. But I’m not going to take the cliche path of imploring you to plant a tree or pick up some trash. Though, those are always wonderful things to do.

In fact, even though there are loads of things we need to do to protect our planet, I’m not going to ask you to take any action at all. Not right now, anyway. My only ask of you throughout this entire would-be sermon is to stop and think. Because, unfortunately, I feel our society is in need of a mindset shift before we are capable of meaningful change.

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Is it ethical to feed birds?

When my wife and I bought our first home, I knew I wanted to put a bird feeder in our backyard. I greatly desired having a little slice of nature in the middle of our town.

As someone who tries to be conservation-minded, before I went to the hardware store and bought all of the necessary supplies, I stopped to ponder a question I still ask myself to this day: “Is it OK to feed wild birds?”

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Gill Shield Review

I am a strong advocate of conservation and caring for our natural resources.

As someone who has released over 97 percent of the fish I’ve caught in the last three years, I am constantly searching for ways to continue to improve the wellbeing of the fish I put back to swim another day. It’s important to remember that releasing a fish and releasing a fish safely are two different things.

Panfish make up a large percentage of my annual catch and, as most anglers can tell you, these fish can sometimes develop a nasty habit of swallowing hooks.

The only thing worse than having to cut lines and re-tie hooks is seeing a fish you intended to safely release splashing about on the surface because it was hooked too deep.

That’s why I was immediately intrigued when I was introduced to the Gill Shield, a product made right here in Wisconsin, that is billed as “a revolutionary way to prevent panfish from swallowing the hook.”

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Reflecting on the East Palestine train derailment

I make a conscious effort to keep my content enlightening, thought-provoking, and positive.

But a news story I was alerted to recently about train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio is going to make the latter difficult. Sometimes, we just need to bring the negativity forward and do our damndest to tackle it, however we can.

In my eyes, I couldn’t tell all of you that I care about the environment and our natural resources without at least openly reflecting on this incident.

I will be the first to tell you that I am not a scientist. I am no longer a reporter. I’m just someone trying to unpack a horrific, impactful event that seemingly no one is talking about.

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