Macska Moksha Press -

My projects

March 5, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

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Macska Moksha Press
This site, which is my blog & bookstore.
Substack: “Speaking for the Trees (No Matter Where They’re From)”
Content focused on plants and ecology. No posts about politics (except how it relates to the environment). Both free and members-only content (including excerpts from the book-in-progress about “invasive” plants by Nikki Hill & me).
Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country—photography & nature literacy
A field guide of plants in the Mojave Desert and nearby locales, featuring animal associations, Native American ethnobotany & translations of scientific names. Non-commercial & educational. Structured around my own photography.
YouTube: Radio Free Sunroot channel—podcasting and more
“Speaking for the Trees, No Matter Where They’re From” (active) plus the back catalogs of “Voices for Nature & Peace,” “Kollibri’s Weekly Column” and “Farmer K’s Diary.”
Radio Free Sunroot—podcasting hub, with links to subscribe on various services
Patreon—members-only content

“Green” Energy vs. the Mojave Desert: interview with Kevin Emmerich of Basin & Range Watch

December 2, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Mojave Desert collage from my photo collection: Clockwise from top left, Sphinx Moth. wind farm, solar farm, Desert Tortoise

I interview Kevin Emmerich, co-founder of Basin & Range Watch, a non-profit environmental organization based in southern Nevada that educates people about threats to public land from industrial development and energy extraction in the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin. These regions have been ground zero for “green energy” due to their plentiful sunlight, strong winds and lithium deposits.

Kevin enjoyed a career in the National Park Service for 20 years in seven different National Parks and Monuments, including Death Valley National Park since 1991 (now retired). He has also worked as a field biologist for research on desert species such as the Panamint Alligator Lizard, Desert Tortoise, and Mojave Fringe-toed Lizard.

I’ve been following Basin & Range Watch’s work for over a decade, since I saw Kevin quoted in an LA Times article about a “green energy” project in California. I’ve interviewed both Kevin and the organization’s co-founder Laura Cunningham a number of times for print and podcast. I appreciate not only their knowledge and experience, but also the love they both so clearly have for the Southwest, a love that I share. So when I had questions how the incoming Presidential election might affect “green energy” projects in this area, my first email was to Basin & Watch.

Too Much Focus on Carbon; Not Enough on Habitat Destruction

November 18, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Sonoran desert habitat in southern California being wiped out for a solar facility, October 2022. This site is in the range of the Desert Ironwood tree (Olneya tesota), a long-lived species that in exceptional cases can reach 1500 years in age, making them old growth treasures of the desert. [Photo by author]

On right is the unbulldozed habitat, of a type called “Creosote Scrub.” The predominant plant species is Larrea tridentata, known as “Creosote Bush” or, in Spanish, Governadora, which is “governess plant,” so-named because she acts as nurse plant for other plants by providing shade. Known in herbalist circles, oddly, as “Chapparal” though “Chapparal” is an entirely different landscape type with a different suite of plants.

I recently had an exchange with a climate specialist on Substack that illustrated one of the major problems with current climate discourse. It doesn’t matter who; they do a good job calling attention to important news, and the limitation of their worldview I am highlighting here is not at all unique to them, so I won’t name them. They had put up a post enumerating many of the threats to the environment posed by the incoming Trump administration and its Project 2025, which I certainly appreciate since the more people who call attention to these threats, the better. After expressing that appreciation for their contribution the the topic, I commented:

For the record, a possible silver lining of a Trump administration for some of us is that wildlife habitat, especially in the western deserts, might face fewer threats from industrial green energy projects. For example, Trump’s cancellation of the Crescent Peak Wind Project preserved a site that’s within the area that became the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument under Biden.

I was pointing out the paradoxical fact that Trump’s strike against a wind project ended up sparing an area that Biden then saw fit to protect, though Obama had sought to degrade it. I went on to say:

Read More…

“Invasive Plants”: Immigrants Who Nice People are Allowed to Hate

November 11, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

A Salt Cedar / Tamarisk tree (genus Tamarix, species unknown) at an undisclosed location in southern California. (Photo by the author)

When I first started hearing the rhetoric of the “invasive plant” narrative in the early 2000s, I was living in the progressive bastion of Portland, Oregon. I was taken aback by the vitriol being dished out by people who were otherwise prided themselves on being accepting and nonjudgmental. I concluded that many secularists, lacking a religious dogma, needed a Devil to hate, and “invasive plants” fit the bill.

I find that conclusion overly simplistic now, but it certainly contained a big nugget of truth. Through my research into the topic of “invasive plants” over the last few years—which has included a deep dive into the scientific literature, my own field observations, and many discussions with other people with varying views on the subject—I’ve come to see that the “invasive plant” narrative is more a product of culture than it is of science.

Learn How Project 2025 Threatens the Environment

November 7, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Four Corners Generating Station in New Mexico. Photo taken prior to installation of emission controls equipment for removal of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter. (Credit: National Park Service)

In our corporate-ruled system, which only allows candidates who put profit over planet, those of us who care about the environment had our work cut out for us no matter who won the presidential election. (See my 10/7/24 post: “The Environment & the Election.”) But with Trump at the helm, we know specifically what we’re up against: Project 2025.

We all need to familiarize ourselves with Project 2025 because the time to start resisting it is now. Below is a list of educational resources I recommend, in article, video and podcast form.

The broad strokes: Project 2025 is a 900-page document put out by the right-wing Heritage Foundation that’s intended to guide policy and staffing in a Republican presidency. It covers all areas of governance, with environmental topics taking up a full 150 pages. The main thrust of Project 2025 is to dismantle the administrative state, which will include weakening or eliminating regulation that protects the environment.

Paraphrasing a summary by Earthjustice, Project 2025 proposes to gut the Endangered Species Act, repeal the Antiquities Act (which empowers the president to declare national monuments), weaken the Clear Air Act and undermine NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act), which is one of the best tools that environmentalists have for pushing back on environmental destruction in the US. It also seeks to maximize fossil fuel production, cut EPA funding for studying toxic pollution, shut down climate research, and reject the concept of environmental justice. (Their full summary: “What Project 2025 Would Do to the Environment – and How We Will Respond.”)

That’s the tldr, but we need to know more than that, hence the list of resources. But before that, I want to address the feelings of despair or helplessness you might have about both Trump’s vote total and the harrowing details of Project 2025. Let’s put these things in perspective.

Autumn in The Gila, 3 of 3: Insects (& one fish)

November 4, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Queen butterfly (Danaus gillipus). Closely related to the Monarch.

This is part 3 of a 3 part series. See part 1: Trees and part 2: Wildflowers. I took all these photos in the upper Gila River valley in southwestern New Mexico.

Autumn in The Gila, 2 of 3: Wildflowers

November 2, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Spear Globemallow (Sphaeralcea hastulata)

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. See part 1: Trees. I took all these photos in the upper Gila River valley in southwestern New Mexico.

Autumn in The Gila, 1 of 3: Trees

October 31, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Inverted photograph from a pond at the Nature Conservancy plot down the road

It’s a really buzzy time because of the US elections, so rather than putting out some writing that’ll just get lost in the noise, I’m offering a 3-part series of photos. I had originally planned just one post, but have been taking so many pictures, I broke it into sections: Trees, Wildflowers and Insects.

I’m currently staying at a friend’s rural property in the upper Gila River valley in southwestern New Mexico. If anyplace can be said to be the home-base in my nomadic existence, this is it. It’s in a remote, sparsely populated location. The pavement ends a mile further down, and the road dead-ends entirely a couple miles later at a campground in the Gila National Forest. From there you can be hiking in the Gila Wilderness in just a few minutes. Also down the road is an old farm owned by the Nature Conservancy where they’re doing passive restoration, where I take walks regularly. It’s also chill enough around here that you can just take off across the pastures to get to the river and nobody pays any mind.

So I’m blessed with a lot of space to explore, full of plants and other creatures, and I’ve been carrying my camera with me so I can share what I find. I hope you enjoy this 3-part visual offering of the more-than-human world.

Meet the new Roundup, worse than the old Roundup

October 28, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Two bottles of Roundup Weed Killer, facing each other as if meeting, with a skull and crossbones superimposed

Photos by Flo Beck, public domain

If we brought Rachel Carson back from the grave, I’m sure she’d be shocked and dismayed at the increased use of pesticides since her book, “Silent Spring,” was published in 1962. For those who don’t know, “Silent Spring” was all about the dangers of pesticide use to people and planet, and had a profound impact on raising awareness among the public about pesticides and their dangers. The book is credited with the banning of DDT and the launching of the modern environmental movement, which led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Nixon administration.

Despite those victories, and a few others, the overall situation is much worse now, with worldwide agricultural pesticide use more than doubling since 1990. Since the 1996 introduction of “Roundup Ready” crops (which are genetically modified to tolerate Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Bayer/Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide), Glyphosate usage has gone up 15-fold. I would guess that another factor in the increase of herbicide use over the last couple decades has been the heightening of the war against so-called “invasive” plants, since spraying is such a common method of attempted (and usually failed) eradication, especially (and perversely) in restoration projects. (See: Methods used by land managers to control “invasive” plants at the Conservation Sense & Nonsense website.)

Glyphosate has taken a hit in both the public consciousness and the legal arena, though. When the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found that Glyphosate was a “probable” carcinogen in humans, the lawsuits started, and Monsanto (at the time recently purchased by Bayer) ended up paying out billions in damages for disease and death by users of their products. Most of the victims were grounds keepers, landscapers and home owners. Thousands of cases are still working their way through the legal system.

In response, Bayer/Monsanto pledged to remove Glyphosate from their consumer products beginning in 2023. Because they were concerned about health? Nope. The report quotes a Bayer statement: “We have taken this action exclusively to manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns.” Nonetheless, phasing out Glyphosate sounds like a great idea. Two questions: A) Have they? And B) if so, how?

Patriarchy is an Environmental Issue

October 22, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

March in Portland, Oregon, 2017. Photo by Karney Hatch, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“Patriarchy” isn’t a very common word in mainstream US American discourse. When it does come up, it usually refers to the inequities of power between women and men in terms of rights, opportunities and outcomes within our socio-economic system. Such inequities are very real, and issues like access to safe abortion are vitally important.

However, Patriarchy goes deeper than the particular struggles of our time and place. Patriarchy is not only the oppression of women as a class by men as a class—and the resulting abuse of individual women by individual men—but also the suppression of that which is considered feminine by that which is considered masculine. Patriarchy is a framework of values. Everything is gendered—qualities, ideas, objects, living things and even colors—and anything feminine is relegated to secondary status. Competition is elevated over cooperation; authoritarianism over agreement; muscle over emotion.

So, Nature itself—because we perceive it as herself—is debased.

The Environment & the Election

October 7, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Photo by Missvain, CC BY 4.0, via WikiCommons

[Important autobiographical note: I’ve never voted for a Republican for any office, but I haven’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1992. Which is to say, I’ve been an outside observer for three decades, and that’s the perspective I’m drawing from for this piece.]

No matter whether Trump or Harris wins the White House, those of us who oppose ecocide will face daunting challenges during the next presidential administration. There’s no “lesser evil” between these two; just different evils.

Okay, some folks just clicked away and that’s fine. For those who stayed, I’ll spell it out.

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