Podcast

Snakes, Forest Preserves and Green Divas

October 17, 2020November 2, 2020 Mike Nowak Cassandra West, eco-influencer, environmental politics, Forest Preserve Foundation, Grace Wu, Green New Deal, Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, Peggy Malecki, Racial Equity and Access to Nature, snakes of the upper Midwest, The Green Divas, The Mike Nowak Show

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:56:47 — 53.5MB)

(October 18, 2020 – Featured photo courtesy of Chicago Herpetological Society) What do snakes, forest preserves and Green Divas have in common? For starters, they’re all featured on today’s show. So, let’s take them in order.

Skip to a specific segment in this podcast

5:13 Herpetologist Grace Wu from Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
34:41 Cassandra West of the Forest Preserve Foundation
1:01:20 Green Diva Meg and Green Diva Lisa from The Green Divas
1:32:36 Meteorologist Rick DiMaio

If you’ve listen the The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki over the years, you know that Peggy and I are big fans of Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County just outside of Chicago. In fact, just two years ago, we traveled to Midewin to do a broadcast from just outside an abandoned bunker. Bunker, did you say? Yes, I did.

Here’s what you should know about Midewin.

The first national tallgrass prairie ever designated in the U.S. and the largest conservation site in the Chicago Wilderness region, it is located on the site of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant between the towns of Elwood, Manhattan and Wilmington in northeastern Illinois. Since 2015, it has hosted a conservation herd of American bison to study their interaction with prairie restoration and conservation.

In 2018, we talked about those bison. In 2019, we welcomed Trevor Edmonson, who at the time was Midewin Project Manager with The Wetlands Initiative. On that show, we talked frogs.

Today, the conversation turns to snakes. It’s just getting better and better!

We welcome Grace Wu, a graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying Natural Resources and Environmental Science. After receiving a bachelor’s in Environmental Science from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA she started working at the Midewin 2011. She says,

My passion for wildlife and biology started young. I was either watching Nature and host David Attenborough on TV or sitting quietly outside studying the backyard wildlife around me. I chose snakes as my study subject because I love herpetology and because snakes are often hard to study and underrepresented. I like a challenge.

Wu is part of the Population and Community Ecology Lab, headed herpetologist Dr. Mike Dreslik. By the way, herpetology is the study of amphibians and reptiles. Which is why Dr. Dreslik works with animals like the Blanding Turtle, Alligator Snapping Turtle, and Massasauga Rattlesnake, advocating for their conservation and study.

Wu says she is studying the effects of tallgrass prairie restoration on snake communities in Northern Illinois as she works on her thesis. She encountered 7 snake species in two years of data collection.

Common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis)
Plains garter snake (Thamnophis radix)
Fox snake (Pantherophis vulpinus)
Smooth Green snake (Opheodrys vernalis)
Brown snake (Storeria dekayi)
Blue racer (Coluber constrictor foxii)
Northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon)

We’ll talk about fact, fiction and a little bit about the mythology of snakes on today’s show. By the way, Wu will talk about how are snakes involved in the world’s food chain and in restoring prairie on Thursday, October 22, 7 to 8 p.m. during a virtual interpretive program. You can register here via email at SM.FS.Midewin_RSVP@usda.gov or call: (815) 423-6370.

Racial Equity and Access to Forest Preserves

Part II of our discussions about snakes, forest preserves and Green Divas takes us to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. More specifically, this segment is about an event presented by the Forest Preserve Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting and restoring the natural habitats of the Forest Preserves of Cook County by encouraging and administering private gifts.-

On Thursday, October 22, the Foundation presents its 2020 Symposium, Racial Equity and Access to Nature from 9:00 -10:30 a.m. via Zoom.

The virtual event will address ways to make outdoor recreation more equitable and diverse, opportunities for enjoying nature and more. In the wake of injustices exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, fair access to public lands is more crucial than ever. The symposium will feature an Advocates Panel, which will share experiences of environmental inequity unique to their communities and will shine a light on how creative leaders are working to close the nature gap across the country.

Heather Miller, Executive Director, American Indian Center
José Guadalupe Adonis González Rosales, Founder, Latino Outdoors
Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Ph.D., MPH, Assistant Professor, Environmental & Health Sciences, Spelman College

Then, the Forest Preserves of Cook County Panel will share how the Forest Preserves of Cook County is working, through its policies and practices, to be a community asset, one where everyone feels safe and welcome enjoying nature.

Arnold Randall, General Superintendent, Forest Preserves of Cook County
Raquel Garcia-Alvarez, Stewardship Program Coordinator
Emily J. Harris , Conservation and Policy Council; Principal, Harris Strategies, LLC

The moderator is Cassandra West, who I call the hardest working woman in sustainability because of her affiliation with so many different evironmental groups. In this case, she’s wearing the hat of Forest Preserve Foundation communications manager. And she joins us this morning.

The Green Divas are back!

Part III of snakes, forest preserves and Green Divas features, of course, The Green Divas. They describe themselves as a “podcast revolution for mind, body, spirit, earth and of course fun!” Sounds a lot like what we do at The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki. Which explains why we’ve been working with Green Diva Meg for years.

Mike at GD Studios — Mike at the GD Ponderosa Studios

The newest part of the Green Divas empire is the GD Ponderosa Studios, which are not in Nevada but in upstate New Jersey. Kathleen and I had the pleasure of visiting the joint last summer, and we were pretty impressed with the operation. As they say,

Our recording studio offers the professional New York experience and sound in a private creative setting. We strive to provide excellent service to everyone from those who are new to recording to those who are veterans of the industry.

Today, Green Diva Meg and Green Diva Lisa join us from GD Ponderosa. But they’re not here to talk music, though they might be able to show us a little of the Ponderosa Studios.

Nope, we’ll be talking about the environment and perhaps some politics. Meg says we might touch on a couple of stories that involve the future our our planet. The first is a New York Times article on 100 environmental protections Trump is reversing. The second is how the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court could mean bad news for our climate.

Meg picks it up from there.

In the one and only hot mess in a dumpster fire of a train-wreck debate, Joe Biden confused some folks by saying he does not support the Green New Deal.

…Trump repeatedly tried to link the Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president to the ambitious resolution, dubiously claiming that it would cost $100 trillion and eliminate airplanes and cows. Joe Biden’s campaign website says he ‘believes’ the Green New Deal is a “crucial framework” for addressing the environmental and economic challenges of climate change.

Biden will put back the hundreds of EPA regulations that Trump rolled back, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the reduction of mercury in emissions, coal ash, car and truck emission standards and more.

Slate describes Biden’s Climate Plan as “The Green New Deal minus the Crazy” – it goes on to describe why he needed to distance himself from the GND in order to be more in line with the more conservative middle-of-the-road dems and independents who felt the GND was too extreme.

Make no mistake. Biden’s plan is actually MORE aggressive and ambitious in many ways… carbon neutral by 2050!? I really hope we can make that happen and that I live to see it

…Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face. It powerfully captures two basic truths, which are at the core of his plan: (1) the United States urgently needs to embrace greater ambition on an epic scale to meet the scope of this challenge, and (2) our environment and our economy are completely and totally connected

He’s adopted much of it into the Biden Plan…

- Ensure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050.
- Build a stronger, more resilient nation.
- Rally the rest of the world to meet the threat of climate change.
- Stand up to the abuse of power by polluters who disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities.
- Fulfill our obligation to workers and communities who powered our industrial revolution and subsequent decades of economic growth.

She has more to say, but I think we’ll leave it at that.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Look for some special programming that combines the GD and MN forces. We’ll be making an announcement about that this morning. So tune in.