Our Vanishing Night: Light Pollution
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A World of Health: Connecting People, Place, and Planet
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Living Green, Living Good in CNY (www.lglgcny.org) is sponsoring the Northwest Earth Institute's discussion course A World of Health: Connecting People, Place, and Planet.
The course discusses limitations of the current medical model and its approach to health, then addresses the places where our personal health intersects with the environment - from our food and homes, to our communities and society. Throughout the course you will find individual actions that promote good health and in turn, promote a healthier environment.
Here's more information about this course.
We'll meet once a week for six weeks (exact dates TBA). OCPL has purchased a set of course books that can be checked out, so participation is free for the first 8 people who register.
If you're interested
in learning more about participating, contact Janet Allen.
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| Our Habitat Garden |  |
Visit Our Habitat Garden website for information on providing habitat, earth-friendly gardening practices, plants, and various creatures here in Central New York.
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HGCNY Officers
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| President:
Janet Allen
Vice-President:
Carol Biesemeyer
Treasurer:
Randi Starmer
Secretary:
Soule Leiter
Membership:
Linda Rossiter
Program Chair:
Carol Biesemeyer
Newsletter Editor:
Janet Allen
Additional Planning Committee Members:
Beth Mitchell
Dave Mitchell
John Allen
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| HGCNY on Facebook |
As as more of us participate on our Facebook page, this will become a useful resource for asking (and answering!) local HGCNYers' questions about habitat gardening. |
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Join HGCNY!
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Becoming an official member of HGCNY is easy: just join Wild Ones! Basic household membership is $37/year, but there are other options, too. (See membership application or website.)
Wild Ones
P.O. Box 1274
Appleton, Wisconsin 54912-1274
Make checks payable to Wild Ones.
Or telephone toll-free 877-394-9453.
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Our Edible Garden
|  | Visit OurEdibleGarden.org to see an example of a Central New York edible garden, the perfect companion to your habitat garden.
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| Interested in Edible Gardening? | 
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If you'd like to get information on Edible Gardening CNY, just email John to find out about edible gardening tours and monthly programs. Free and open to the public! |
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Greetings!
 | | Green roof in early summer |
Tim Toland, Assoc. Prof. at SUNY-ESF, will discuss the exciting new projects involving native plants that are part of the ESF campus renovations. One project is an innovative 5,000 sq. ft. green roof featuring species from two native plant communities. The projects will not only be an attractive setting for visitors but will also be learning tools for students. When: Sunday, February 24 at 2:00 pm Where: Liverpool Library ( Directions) Free and open to the publicLooking ahead
Save the dates for upcoming programs: Sun. March 24: Dan Segal of The Plantsmen Nursery in Ithaca - and a national Wild Ones Board member - will present "Cultivars of Native Plants: Thanks But No Thanks." (NOTE: NOT our usual "last Sunday of the month" schedule due to Easter.) Sun. April 28: Jim D'Angelo will return to talk about another creature in our habitat gardens. Janet Allen President, HGCNY |
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The end of darkness?
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The earth at night (Photo: NASA)
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We're all familiar with the story of Abe Lincoln studying by candlelight, symbolic of his determination. In our lifetimes, we've overcome the dark. We read when we want, drive on well-lit roads when we want, even play sports at night. We turn night into day.
It has been very convenient for humans, but what effects has it had on the rest of life on earth?
As the National Geographic magazine says, "We've lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth."
Light pollution disorients hatching sea turtles, migrating birds and nocturnal animals, such as frogs and salamanders. It attracts insects, which can interfere with pollination of nocturnal flowers.
Songbirds and seabirds can be "captured" by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop. Migrating at night, birds, especially immature birds on their first journey, often collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Perpetual twilight can induce certain trees to shed their leaves out of cycle, disrupting the basis of the food chain.
It even can negatively affect humans, since it can prevent the production of melatonin, the chemical that regulates sleep patterns.
Read more about light pollution:
The National Geographic: Our Vanishing Night and What is Light Pollution?
U.S. National Library of Medicine: Missing the Dark
And many resources from the Int'l Dark-Sky Asso.
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Our yards at night
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My yard at night
(with a solar light)
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Light from home landscapes isn't the main source of light pollution, but we can help by being good stewards of the night.
* Resist the temptation to "decorate with light." It may be trendy to highlight trees or attractive stone walls, but it contributes to light pollution, harming wildlife on your property and beyond.
* Use motion detector lights for security instead of leaving lights on all night.
* Reduce the wattage of lights you do use.
* According to the National Park Service, 50% of the light from a typical unshielded light fixture is wasted, shining upward, and only 40% lights the intended target. Light emitted horizontally emits glare. Install lighting so that no light is emitted above a horizontal plane running through the lowest part of the fixture.
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Making it through the cold winter nights
 | Bayberries
(Note: NOT Japanese barberries) |
A recent Audubon magazine article points out that to survive freezing nights, birds need berries high in fats and antioxidants.
For example, the 5-inch chickadee weighs only as much as five paper clips. With such a large surface area, they lose heat quickly. Where can they get enough fat to survive the night? Native plants, of course! Having a yard full of lots of native plants with lots of berries helps birds find and harvest the berries efficiently, giving them the fat they need to stay warm. The Northern bayberry (Morella [Myrica] pensylvanica) is a good example. Researchers at the University of Rhode Island found that Northern bayberry -- the Big Mac of plants -- is more than half fat (50.3%)! Other natives with the fatty berries birds need are gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa) at 39.9% fat, spicebush (Lindera benzoin) at 33.2%, and Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) at 23.6%. |
Why we plant trees
An excerpt from The Book of Trees by Alfred C. Hottes,
published in 1932
 1) We plant trees because we love them. Some trees linger in our memories as old friends, from whose branches we have swung and "skinned-the-cat"; under whose cool shade we have rested from play or work. Some trees seem to have moods, changing from day to day, season to season, and from youth to old age.
2) We plant trees for their beauty of leaf, whether green in Summer or red in the Autumn; for the delicate tracery of the branches which frame our view of the eternal blue or star-scattered heavens; for their flowers which seem like giant nosegays.
3) We plant trees to shelter our homes from the Summer sun and the cold sweeping winds of Winter.
4) We enjoy a touch of Nature to form a background and a frame for our architecture.
5) We plant trees to furnish leaf cloisters for the birds which awaken us from our too-late slumbers when all the world of Nature, except ourselves, is awake. The birds pay a liberal rent to the tree in the form of the hordes of insects which they devour. Where would our gardens of fruits, flowers, and vegetables be if it were not for the vigilant birds which catch more than we could spray?
6) We plant trees because, where they expand their verdant branches the air is purer and less dusty. The medical societies are constantly advocating the planting of city trees to temper the heat of Summer on the torrid pavements.
7) We plant forests that floods may be prevented; that fertile soil shall not be carried to the valleys below; that rainfall may be regulated.
8) We plant trees for their economic use - lumber, furniture, turpentine, rubber, quinine, nuts, cork, paper, windbreaks and one thousand and one uses for which we have as yet found no substitute.
9) We plant avenues of trees in cities and along the roadsides because we believe that no road or street is dressed or finished until it has been planted to furnish shade, frame vistas of outlying beauty, and prevent snowdrifts. Aside from this aesthetic and civic value, the realtor knows that trees increase the value of property. Business on a tree-bordered avenue is likely to be brisker than on a sun-parched thoroughfare.
10) Some of us plant trees that we may be silent witnesses to the life processes of the tree.
~ Quoted from the Bow Point Nursery website
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