Wildlife Habitat Council Archives - Wildlife Habitat Council

The Carbon-Sequestering Power of Soils

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts about soil.

Big bluestem is one of many deep-rooted prairie grasses in North America that can contribute to soil carbon sequestration.

Earlier this year, scientists announced that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere had reached a record high of 400 parts per million (ppm), more than 120 ppm higher than pre-industrial carbon levels. It seems fitting, then, that I end this blog series with a post about the carbon-sequestering power of soils.

Carbon sequestration is the process by which carbon dioxide is moved from the atmosphere into a non-gaseous form, such as plant matter. Plants do this well, using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into sugars and other compounds that ultimately turn into plant tissues. When more carbon is absorbed then released, the system is considered a carbon sink; the opposite, when a system releases more carbon than absorbs, is considered a carbon source.

When plants die, they decay and become part of the soil. Over time, this process allows soils to store large amounts of carbon and serve as carbon sinks, especially in soils where the decay of organic matter back into carbon dioxide is slow, such as colder regions and areas with low soil disturbance.

Prairie soils can be particularly good carbon sinks. Prairie grasses and wildflowers develop deep, extensive root systems; some prairie plants grow roots up to 15 feet deep! As these root systems decay, organic matter in the soil builds up relatively quickly. In fact, prairies can store more carbon underground than forests can store in trees aboveground.

Corporate conservation programs can help contribute to soil carbon sequestration in a number of ways. As mentioned above, planting native vegetation that is good at sequestering carbon, including trees and deep-rooted grasses and wildflowers, is a great way to do this. Teams can also manage existing habitats in ways that reduce soil disturbance and erosion, improve soil structure, and increase soil organic matter.

So the next time you hear about atmospheric carbon levels, consider how the soil under our feet is so closely linked to the air above our heads!

A Breakthrough Discovery About White-Nose Syndrome

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Finally, there is some hopeful news in the battle against white-nose syndrome!

Last week a team of researchers from UC San Francisco and Brown University published a ground-breaking study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about white-nose syndrome.

The fuzzy white substance on the muzzle, ears, and wings of these bats are indicative of white-nose syndrome. Source: New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

This disease, which is caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has devastated cave-dwelling bat populations across eastern North America. It causes bats to prematurely wake from hibernation during the winter – this uses up their limited energy stores and results in starvation.

The researchers discovered that P.destructans releases digestive enzymes that break down bat tissues, and then the fungus imports the break-down products for its food. Of the enzymes identified by the study, the most likely culprit for tissue breakdown was named “Destructin-1.”

The team then attempted to find a way to block this enzyme. They found that a class of drugs known as protease inhibitors, which are currently used to treat HIV/AIDS, appear to also be effective at knocking out Destructin-1. “Protease” refers to enzymes that break down proteins and peptides. Since the fungus releases enzymes that break down bat tissues, inhibiting these enzymes with protease inhibitors or something similar may be an effective way to prevent bat deaths among infected populations.

Specifically, the team tested a protease inhibitor called chymostatin. When tested in a lab setting, using chymostatin resulted in a 77% reduction in tissue breakdown. The team suspects that the remaining tissue breakdown may be caused by other substances excreted by the fungus that do not respond to chymostatin.

Although it’s not clear if the findings will lead to ways to prevent fatalities caused by white-nose syndrome, it is certainly a major breakthrough in understanding how P. destructans works on a biochemical level and will be extremely beneficial in further studies.

In the meantime, the conservation community must continue its efforts to conserve bat populations in other ways, such as by enhancing bat habitat and implementing accepted decontamination protocols to prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome.

Soils in All the Colors of the Rainbow

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A rainbow of soil is under our feet; red as a barn and black as a peat. It’s yellow as lemon and white as the snow; bluish gray. So many colors below. Hidden in darkness as thick as the night; the only rainbow that can form without light. Dig you a pit, or bore you a hole, you’ll find enough colors to well rest your soil.
– A Rainbow of Soil Words by F.D. Hole, 1985

In my introductory post about the Year of Soils, I explained how soils are made up of numerous components, both organic and inorganic. But no two soils are created equal!

Soils vary widely around the world. They can be organized, or classified, based on the variations in these organic and inorganic components. There are a number of different classification systems, including the USDA’s Soil Taxonomy system and the FAO’s World Reference Base for Soil Resources. These systems organize soils based on considerations like their overall texture (the proportions of clay, silt, and sand, which form from the slow breakdown of bedrock), their mineral composition, and the thickness and composition of their layers.

Oh yes…layers! Soil isn’t the same all the way down–it is much more complex! Over time, it goes through complicated processes like leaching, the addition and breakdown of organic matter (humus), and the breakdown of bedrock. The result is these layers:

Source: South China Normal University

Regional variations in temperature, rainfall, etc., as well as the composition of the underlying bedrock, result in dramatic differences in these layers. Including their colors! Here in Maryland, for example, much of our soil is a bright orange-red near the surface, due to a type of clay that holds large amounts of iron. This iron oxidizes (rusts) in the presence of oxygen, resulting in this vivid color.

And just as the living soil ecosystem can influence the plant ecosystem growing above, these non-living characteristics have an impact as well. Different plants prefer different soil conditions, including depth, moisture/drainage, pH, and texture, which is one of the reasons why all of the different soil types around the world support such variable plant communities.

Soil testing can be a great way to learn about your soil’s classification and associated characteristics. You can use this information to figure out what kinds of plants will grow best on your land, and if any amendments are needed to improve growing conditions.

Have you ever had your soil tested? What did you learn about your soil?

Setting the New Standard: Transparency Matters

in From the President

This is the fourth in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

In “Learning Through Disclosure,” an essay in Transparency in Global Environmental Governance, Graeme Auld and Lars Gulbrandsen show how two types of transparency—procedural transparency and outcome transparency—can impact the legitimacy of a recognition program. Procedural transparency focuses on governance and adjudication, providing a window into how a standard has been developed, who had a hand in developing the standard, and how the standard is defended. Outcome transparency shines a light on the activities being recognized. It holds certified entities to their stated practices and performance. When procedural transparency and outcome transparency overlap, an audience can understand the system in place for recognition and monitoring and view the level of compliance, and the standard can be considered legitimate.

There is enormous diversity in Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) across the globe from what the standards seek to recognize to the methods through which they create and evaluate their recognitions. An alphabet soup of standards is applied to forestry, fisheries, agriculture, tourism, recreation, buildings, energy and municipal policies. Some of these standards are government initiatives –the EPA Energy Star program and the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) –others are private concerns developed by industry, civic institutions and academia. Some standards are complex and expensive, others are simple and direct. Regardless of originating entity, objective, scope or market, the one thing that successful standards share is a commitment to transparency.

In the USA and beyond, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program shares its standards freely and openly to allow anyone to build to LEED standards, whether they seek LEED recognition or not. It also provides potential applicants for certification with a clear picture of how their efforts will score, thus providing a procedural transparency that enhances accessibility, increases uptake of the program and secures the program’s legitimacy. On the other hand, the Director General for Energy, the body that oversees the EU RED, provides information about its program on request only. In addition, RED has unclear assessment criteria, no timeline for recognition, and no clear administrative procedures for post-recognition evaluation. RED is widely perceived as being opaque and unfair.

Currently, WHC provides a measure of procedural and outcome transparency through its website and in its publications. Its members are listed, its governing board is identified and contact details and bios for all staff members are available. All certified programs are listed on the the WHC Index and details of the certification cycle are provided.

When it launches its new standard later this year, WHC will commit to radical transparency in an effort to adopt the best practices of VSS, in order to provide audiences with full and complete disclosure of procedures and outcomes, and incentivize conservation at the highest possible levels.

WHC will provide clear explanations of its new criteria. For the new standard, WHC developed a suite of Project Guidance documents that form the core content of the certification process, i.e, the objectives and project characteristics needed to reach certain levels of recognition. These documents were developed through a multi-stakeholder process that will be fully explained upon launch of the new standard. The Project Guidance documents then evolved into a series of criteria against which a project will be scored. The scoring is being developed in partnership with The Conservation Fund, and a full report on the scoring model will also be available. To facilitate consistent scoring by reviewers, the criteria have been further developed into a series of questions an applicant will be asked to answer. These questions will be freely available.

WHC will provide a clear explanation of its review process. Along with the publication of the scoring model, WHC will also provide an explanation of how each application is reviewed and the measures instituted to ensure consistency and objectivity across the entire process. Governance of the review process will also be addressed to illustrate how the integrity of the process is protected. The ability of an applicant to communicate with a reviewer will be laid out clearly, and limitations set on such communications will also be elucidated.

WHC will provide a clear explanation of the certified projects and their final scores. Currently, WHC provides descriptions of all its certified programs on the Conservation Registry. This valuable tool allows audiences to see what projects are being done where and by whom. With the new standard, WHC is making a commitment to continue contributing to the Conservation Registry, but also plans to provide more evaluative measures of each program through improved data collection. Final design of this data collection is underway, and it is WHC’s hope that all certified programs will be listed along with their final score, the tier of recognition they have achieved, and the conservation outcomes they are focused on, as well as the associated educational efforts and the results of community and employee engagement.

WHC will provide a clear explanation of governance over the new standard. All NGOs have governance bodies. WHC’s Board of Directors ensures regulatory compliance, strategic clarity and ethical leadership. It does not govern programming or content. It will not govern the new standard. To ensure the new standard is governed appropriately–that change is managed, updates reflect changes in the conservation context and best practices, and stakeholders remain key informants—WHC will convene a steering committee specifically focused on governance of the new standard, made up of conservation and education experts, industry and business representatives and those knowledgeable about standards.

This new standard of certification will allow WHC to further its mission to recognize conservation efforts on private lands and encourage more conservation.By providing procedural and outcome transparency, WHC will achieve its recognition goal in a manner that is meaningful, defensible, and that will inspire others to engage in activities to restore habitats and improve biodiversity, while educating and engaging communities and employees.

Get Outdoors this Spring with Citizen Science!

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Bird surveys are a common and enjoyable way to contribute to citizen science. Photo courtesy of Lafarge.

Now that it’s finally spring and things are warming up and beginning to grow, it’s a great time to get your employees and your local community engaged in outdoors activities as part of your corporate conservation program. One great way to do this is by participating in a citizen science project.

Citizen science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by non-scientific professionals. Citizen science projects are designed to be user-friendly for amateurs, and typically involve training to ensure everyone participating is comfortable with the techniques needed for surveys.

Here’s just a few examples of fantastic citizen science projects in North America that your team could participate in this spring and summer. There are many other great projects out there, of course, some of which (like Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count) are even conducted during the winter.

For those of you with corporate conservation programs located outside of North America, here’s a couple of great citizen science programs that are conducted worldwide:

Do you participate in any citizen science projects? Tell us about it in the comments below!

The Soil is Alive!

in WHC Blog

This is the second in a series of blog posts about soil.

The eastern mole (Scalopus aquaticus) is just one of many species that lives in the soil ecosystem. Source: National Science Foundation.

We often think of soil as nothing more than “the dirt beneath your feet,” but soil is much more complex than that. There’s a whole other world of living creatures beneath our feet!

Soils provide habitat for a rich, dynamic ecosystem for organisms ranging from microscopic bacteria and protozoa, to fungi and plant roots, to insects, worms, mites, and other invertebrates, and even subterranean vertebrates like moles.

Most soil organisms live in the top few inches of soil, where oxygen and nutrients are most readily available, though a few microorganisms (like anaerobic bacteria) occur at lower depths.

The soil nitrogen cycle is just one example of how soil organisms affect the availability of nutrients for plants.

Soil is more than just a home for these organisms, however. Many of these organisms can benefit the plant community growing above it by improving the availability of nutrients and organic compounds. Symbiotic bacteria known as Rhizobia, for example, can “fix” nitrogen from the air and convert it to a form that plants can use, in exchange for essential minerals and sugars supplied by roots of leguminous plants. Soil organisms that decompose organic matter also break down complex organic molecules into nutrients that plants can use.

Soil organisms affect plant growth in other ways. Tunneling creatures like moles and worms move the soil around, which aerates it, improves drainages, and creates easier routes for root growth. Some microorganisms can stimulate plant growth by releasing special hormones.

Sometimes soil organisms can negatively impact the plant ecosystem above. For example, subterranean herbivores like voles and white grubs can impact plant growth by feeding on roots, and soil pathogens like wilt-causing fungi can harm or kill plants. Fortunately these species are kept in check by other creatures higher on the food chain.

So the next time you plant your garden, you can thank all those soil organisms for helping your plants grow!

Setting the New Standard: Scalability is Imperative for Accessibility

in From the President

This is the third in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

In previous posts we have outlined the defining tenets of an effective Voluntary Sustainability Standard (VSS) that will encourage broad adoption and ultimately increase conservation on corporate lands. These tenets are accessibility, credibility and the ability to drive change. In this post we will dive deeper into a key aspect of accessibility – scalability.

The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) has been recognizing conservation on corporate lands for 27 years. This experience has shown that the one thing corporate landholders have in common is the diversity of the lands they manage. Auto manufacturers have proving grounds, technical centers, manufacturing facilities and corporate headquarters. Electric utilities have facilities that create, store and distribute energy—namely power plants, transmission systems and substations. In the building materials sector, quarries, cement factories and ready-mix facilities are all part of the supply chain. With over 800 programs currently certified, WHC understands the possibilities and challenges of conservation on a wide variety of lands.

While many VSS systems are designed for larger, more sophisticated operations and, in the case of conservation, the best available lands, WHC sees potential in every landholding and welcomes all practitioners to participate. This is why WHC views scalability as imperative to facilitate broad adoption of the new standard for corporate conservation.

In its new standard, WHC is promoting scalability in many different ways, but the best expression of it will be found in the Project Guidance documents that will provide applicants with a clear path through a conservation project. These Project Guidances are being developed through a multi-stakeholder process that sets the minimum requirements for recognition and defined a variety of options for higher-level conservation and education outcomes.

Project Guidances will recognize a suite of themes that include habitat types, education opportunities, species’ needs and other conservation-related activities that can take place on corporate lands. When launched, the new standard will have Project Guidance documents for grasslands, wetlands, arid landscapes, pollinators, birds, reptiles and amphibians, bats, game species, formal and informal education opportunities, green infrastructure, protected lands, invasive species management, and a host of other themes around which corporate land managers can design their projects.

Every Project Guidance lays out the basic requirement for recognition, i.e., the activities that must be undertaken for the project to meet WHC’s new standard. For every project, these requirements will include the need: to be locally appropriate, to provide habitat or community value, to exceed any pertinent regulatory requirements and, to meet a stated conservation or education objective. Further requirements will be specific to the stated objectives of each project and will reflect the conservation needs of the habitat or species or best practices in the delivery of conservation and education.

Once basic requirements have been satisfied, a landowner can then choose from a hierarchy of activities that will lead to higher outcomes and higher levels of recognition. This will allow a landowner to create projects specific to their site’s spatial or other limitations and then scale up to meet the full potential of the location and its surroundings.

Scalability is not merely about the size of the project. It can be accomplished in a variety of ways, as follows:

In a pollinator project, expanding from a basic native garden to a garden with plants supporting multiple pollinator species across multiple seasons or meeting the entire life cycle needs of a specific pollinator.
When implementing invasive species management, expanding from addressing a single species in a single location at a single time to reviewing operations across the location to ensure the spread of invasive species is minimized both on-site and off.
Creating outreach to a community by providing trails and signage, or expanding to embrace the local schools across a number of grades and connecting into the core learning standards.

Scalability allows a program to start small and then grow to encompass larger amounts of land. At General Motors’ Warren Tech Center in Michigan, the project team started on 8 acres in a former parking lot and now manages over 70 acres across the facility.

Scalability allows a program to add new projects or expand existing projects as it matures and continue to create conservation and education value. In Gaithersburg, Maryland, Asbury Methodist Village manages all available acreage for wildlife, but adds value by creating signs and interpretive materials for residents, hosting guest speakers to talk about the natural world, inviting elementary school students on site and installing structures like bird boxes to support wildlife.

Scalability allows a program to go beyond the fence line and connect to contiguous habitat or into the community. In Brazil, Monsanto Do Brasil’s Camaçari Plant does both as it restores and reforests a parcel of land that will serve to reconnect two large fragments of Atlantic Forest, one of the most threatened biomes in the world, and uses the project as a teaching tool for students from 40 neighboring schools.

For a VSS to be successful, it must be accessible. To be accessible to all landholders, it must be scalable. WHC is enshrining scalability in its Project Guidance documents, which will be published with the launch of the new standard later this year. In doing so, WHC will ensure that every applicant—regardless of the size and other strictures on their landholdings—will be provided with a clear path towards program establishment, growth, and recognition.

Celebrate World Wetlands Day on February 2

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February 2 of each year is World Wetlands Day, which marks the date that the Convention on Wetlands (also known informally as the Ramsar Convention) was signed in 1971. World Wetlands Day provides private and public entities alike with the opportunity to raise awareness about the importance and value of wetlands.

Photo courtesy of Pepco Holdings, Inc.

Wetlands provide vital habitat to a number of species, including (but certainly not limited to) waterfowl, wading birds, frogs and salamanders, aquatic invertebrates, turtles, and fish. They also provide a number of essential ecosystem services like purifying our water, absorbing flood waters, and protecting coastal and riparian areas against erosion. Unfortunately, 64% of the world’s wetlands have been lost since 1900.

Voluntary efforts to manage wetlands and wetland-dependent species on corporate lands are invaluable for wetland conservation efforts, as well as in promoting wetland conservation within local communities. From vernal pool and wetland construction, to frog call surveys, to structural enhancements, WHC-certified programs around the world incorporate a wide range of conservation and education tools to further wetland conservation.

World Wetlands Day provides an opportunity to highlight the wetlands conservation work your program is already doing and raise awareness about the value of wetlands in your local community. There are numerous ways to celebrate World Wetlands Day at your site, even if your facility doesn’t have wetlands. The local community could be invited to help install native wetland plantings or artificial habitat structures for wetland species, or to participate in monitoring wetland birds or water quality. Even if you don’t have a wetland on site, you could use curricula like Project WET to educate young learners about wetland-related topics.

Designing the Ideal Project at Ricoh Group’s West Caldwell Site

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Photo courtesy of Ricoh Group.

When Yoko Perez started working for the Environmental Team at Ricoh Americas Corporation’s West Caldwell Office in June 2013, she started working to align their Wildlife at Work program with the priorities of Ricoh Group’s biodiversity policy, as well as to better engage employees in the program. She and her team recognized that working with WHC offers the Ricoh Americas branch a unique approach from Ricoh Group’s other branches to aligning with the company’s biodiversity policy.

The West Caldwell Office’s program includes five pollinator gardens, which were installed last November with the help of the site’s landscapers to pick the garden locations and 20 volunteers to plant the garden. The Environmental Team chose plant species such as lupine, bee balm, Joe-pye-weed, and black-eyed Susan that would be shade tolerant and provide nectar to pollinators. A small rain garden planted with pollinator-friendly species was also planted in an area near the building that tends to collect water.

Photo courtesy of Ricoh Group.

In addition, invasive species such as multiflora rose, Japanese knotweed, phragmites, autumn olive, and Bradford pear have been observed on the property, so the Environmental Team is looking into controlling these species with the help of employees and local partner organizations.

Yoko and her team work hard to monitor and document their projects, including information on where each species was planted in the gardens and which of those plants survived. Monitoring is a critical part of every project because it provides information about what worked and what didn’t work.

Employees at the West Caldwell Office use the company’s intranet site, RWorld. Yoko attributes the success of her team’s program and the thoroughness of project documentation to their access to this interactive site, which allows employees across the country to post news and information, post comments and feedback, and share photographs. This makes it easy for the Environmental Team to share their monitoring data, wildlife photographs, and other documentation for the program.

Ruby-throated hummingbird observed in one of the pollinator gardens at the West Caldwell Office. Photo courtesy of Ricoh Group.

Yoko says she also uses RWorld to spur employee interest in and support for the Wildlife at Work program. For example, she told me how she posts articles for her garden blog on RWorld, and also posts information and videos for events such as National Pollinator Week and Ricoh’s Global Eco Action Month this past June.

If you’re looking for ideas to better engage your employees or document your program, please WHC.

This Year’s Christmas Tree, Next Year’s Habitat

in WHC Blog

With the winter holiday season upon us and Christmas only a few days away, many living rooms and office lobbies are now decorated (or soon will be) with live evergreen Christmas trees. But once the holidays are over, what should we do with all of those trees?

I suggest using them to create habitat!

Brush pile constructed from evergreen trees. Photo courtesy of the California Dept. of Fish & Game.

A post-holiday Christmas tree collection drive through a local school or community center is a great way to reach out to your local community and spread awareness about your habitat enhancement program, while also providing valuable brush for your projects.

As part of my Three Rs blog series a couple of years ago, I briefly mentioned using old Christmas trees in brush piles. Start by removing the branches from a few trees and using the trunks to create a base that lifts up the brush and provides space for wildlife to move around under cover. Intact Christmas trees or their brush can then be loosely piled on top. The needles can be left on the branches, as they will provide more cover and will be used by many birds for nest building in the spring. Creating these kinds of brush piles along the edge of your woodland or grassland will provide cover for small mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians to escape from predators, find shelter from the elements, and build nests and dens.

If you have a pond or lake, Christmas trees can also be used to create underwater cover for fish and aquatic invertebrates. You can tie together branches from the trees into a brush pile to be partially or fully sunk. Alternatively, you could sink single intact Christmas trees. Wood floats, so you’ll probably need to weigh the trees and brush piles down with a cinderblock.

It may seem obvious, but it’s still a very important to note: be sure to remove all decorations, including lights, artificial snow, ornaments, and tinsel, from the Christmas trees prior to using them in projects. These items will create litter that could harm wildlife and contaminate the water and soil nearby.

Tag Archive for: Wildlife Habitat Council

The Carbon-Sequestering Power of Soils

Read more WHC blogs.

A Breakthrough Discovery About White-Nose Syndrome

Read more WHC blogs.

Soils in All the Colors of the Rainbow

Read more WHC blogs.

Setting the New Standard: Transparency Matters

Read more WHC blogs.

Get Outdoors this Spring with Citizen Science!

Read more WHC blogs.

The Soil is Alive!

Read more WHC blogs.

Setting the New Standard: Scalability is Imperative for Accessibility

Read more WHC blogs.

Celebrate World Wetlands Day on February 2

Read more WHC blogs.

Designing the Ideal Project at Ricoh Group’s West Caldwell Site

Read more WHC blogs.

This Year’s Christmas Tree, Next Year’s Habitat

Read more WHC blogs.

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Tag Archive for: Wildlife Habitat Council

About

Work With WHC

Learn More

Member

UN Global Compact Business for Nature

Official ally

World Benchmarking Alliance

UN Global Compact
Business for Nature