Ask anyone how long the bald eagle has been the official bird of the United States, and the answer is likely to be 200 years or more. In reality, the bald eagle has been the official bird for less than two years. In December 2024, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill designating the […]
Environmentalism
Posted inRecreation
Can I eat that? An educational outing with the Prairie States Mushroom Club
Hunters waited at the Ryerson’s Woods trailhead in Iowa City on a beautiful late April Saturday morning. Older men with walking sticks wore blaze orange caps. University students in shorts and sneakers chatted among themselves. A handful of middle-aged women and a few retired folks rounded out the group. I joined them with my notebook […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The contender and the longshot: Two Democrats are determined to flip the House seats in Iowa’s 1st and 4th Districts
Democrats Christina Bohannan and Ryan Melton are campaigning for Congress on opposite sides of the state and in very different districts, but they have one thing in common — firsthand experience running for the U.S. House. In 2022, Bohannan challenged the Republican incumbent in Iowa’s eastern-most congressional district, the 1st, while Melton ran in the […]
Posted inRecreation
An Iowa bicycle collective can help you find, fix and fall in love with your ride
If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you give a man a bicycle, teach him how to keep it in tip-top shape, and advocate for there to be safe spaces for him to ride, you’re a bike collective. Iowa’s bike collectives are nonprofit community programs that focus on […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘Teach someone to love something and they’ll take care of it’: Paddle Fest wants more people, fewer fish floating in Iowa waterways
Everything in nature is connected, including us. Humans have been struggling with this concept since Alexander von Humboldt, in the mid-19th century and somewhat radically for the time, suggested that all of nature is an interconnected ecosystem. Even if this idea may seem obvious to us in the 21st century, we still struggle with it, […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Petition asking EPA to crack down on water pollution from factory farms is rejected — six years after it was filed
This week the Environmental Protection Agency rejected a petition from a coalition led by Food & Water Watch that asked the agency to strengthen regulations regarding water pollution from factory farms. “For more than 50 years, EPA has knowingly shirked its crystal clear obligation to regulate factory farms under the Clean Water Act,” Food & […]
Posted inStatewide
Contact Buzz: Environmentalism isn’t anti-business
“Land, water and vegetation are just that dependent on one another. Without these three primary elements in natural balance, we can have neither fish nor game, wild flowers nor trees, labor nor capital, nor sustaining habitat for humans.” ––Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling (1876-1962), two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist I’m often asked why my writing and […]
Posted inStatewide
Small farmers are being the change they want to see in Iowa agriculture
It will take a lot to turn the massive ship of Big Agriculture around in Iowa, even if the benefits — from improved water quality to a more competitive food market — are many. It is important for those who reside in the city and are generations removed from farm work to understand the perils […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Five questions with Keith Summerville, Drake Environmental Science and Sustainability professor
Iowans are taking notice of the environmental changes affecting not only the livability of the state, but the globe. Keith Summerville, a professor and the chair of Environmental Science and Sustainability at Drake University, started at Drake in 2002 and has been working in the field for over 26 years. He’s published dozens of peer-reviewed […]
Posted inFood & Drink
For Iowa brewers, water quality is ‘a really big deal’
According to Iowa brewers, a beer is only as good as the water used to make it. Inside West O Beer’s taproom in West Okoboji is a poster that proudly states, “To us, the water is a really big deal.” West O owner Matthew Matthiesen said the poster has been there since the taproom opened, emphasizing how important clean water is to
Posted inLetters
Letter to the editor: Protecting the environment and the economy is not a zero-sum game
Florida’s global warming climate-catastrophe hurricane dominates the news, momentarily eclipsing even the presumptive leader who calls this situation a hoax. Too many liars have access to public attention, voicing the dangerous and defeatist idea that there is a “cost” to defending the earth’s
Posted inFood & Drink
Family Dinner: Brenda Nations and Art Bettis discuss food justice over food
The good news concerns zucchini: There’s plenty of it. Arguably too much of it, although environmentalists Brenda Nations and Art Bettis (armed with an abundant CSA share and a very tasty summer squash galette recipe torn from the pages of a Better Homes and Gardens) do not seem to mind. The bad news is the […]
