Environmental Stewardship is one of our core values and this article appeared in a recent parent newsletter to help support our commitment to nature:
Finding Subirdia
Unfortunately, when many of us think about nature, we imagine a pristine preserve far from our neighborhood. This disconnection to nature is one of the main reasons for our Field Day – to empower us and our sprouts to connect with nature in our daily lives.
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By John Marzluff/The Nature Conservancy
My research and that of other urban ecologists suggests that, despite the great loss of biodiversity caused by our actions, we also have a lot to celebrate. I’ve spent most of my spring and summer mornings counting birds in national parks, industrial parks and suburbs. It is not surprising that the most-heavily paved portions of the city hold few birds, but it is not the case that the least-disturbed places on Earth always hold the most birds. Wild reserves provide shelter for unique birds not found in the city, and they are absolutely essential. But the greatest variety of birds is often found in the suburbs.
With my graduate students I have counted birds from Seattle’s urban core to its fringing forests nearly every spring and summer morning for the past decade. We expected the suburbs between the city center and the forested reserves to support an intermediate number of species, but when we listened as these neighborhoods awoke each morning, we were astonished by the dawn chorus of thrushes, tanagers, wrens, towhees, finches, crows and woodpeckers. Read More @TheNatureConservancy