1. Our oceans got some love in this 30-second Super Bowl ad. (Care2)
2. Puerto Rico adds non-native iguanas to their menus. (Washington Post)
3. The Olympics bring Britain their biggest urban park. (Guardian)
4. We heart TreeHugger’s new Valentine’s Day green gift guide. (TreeHugger)
5. A warming ocean actually boasts some coral reef growth. (Huffington Post)

1. Are jellyfish taking over our oceans? (Nature)
2. Turning down the thermostat saves energy and helps you lose weight. (The Chic Ecologist)
3. Atlantic sturgeon added to the endangered species list. (Huffington Post)
4. How do you fight invasive species in Australia? Bring in Komodo dragons. (TreeHugger)
5. Spider webs may hold the clue to better buildings. (Christian Science Monitor)

1. World’s first hybrid shark found in Australia’s waters. (Discovery News)
2. Hehe. Scientists are tickling animals to learn how laughter has evolved. (BBC)
3. China’s city dwellers will be breathing unhealthy air for at least another 20 years. (Guardian)
4. African elephant ivory trade sadly rises in 2011. (Green)
5. Ecuador makes a deal and raises $116 million to not drill in the Amazon. (Mongabay)

“You can think of every language as being an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of social and spiritual possibilities.”

That’s a line that stuck with me from Dr. Wade Davis’s Thomas Conservation Oration, delivered recently at Sydney’s Australian Museum and presented by the Conservancy in partnership with the Thomas Foundation. Davis is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, a position that’s taken him around the globe several times over and put him in touch with some of the world’s oldest, most remote cultures—so he’s someone who knows about social possibilities.

Watch Wade Davis’s entire oration here (or download it here).

How the full breadth of human experience intersects with the natural world was the focal point of Davis’s oration, which was the third in a series of annual addresses. My interest in having Davis out here to speak stemmed from his deep experience in living and working with diverse cultures. In his speech, he traced the arc of his career and took the audience on a journey from the mountains of Colombia to the Canadian Arctic in order to reveal how cultures are inextricable from the environments where they developed.

That’s a crucial message in Australia, where The Nature Conservancy works hand-in-hand with Indigenous people to conserve the vital natural places that have supported humans on this continent for millennia. The lesson that losses to Indigenous culture damage the environment—and vice versa—is strikingly resonant in a country where Western settlement supplanted peoples that stewarded (and were stewarded by) the land with great care and success.

To me, Davis’s thinking about language’s relationship to the protection of biodiversity—both around the globe and here in Australia—is particularly fascinating. In his speech, Davis noted that the number of languages spoken in the world had declined from 7,000 to 3,500 during the average lifespan of one of his audience members. At the time of British settlement, 670 Indigenous languages and dialects could be heard in Australia—now, that number’s been whittled down to around 20 that are thought to be strong enough to survive.

Losing a language isn’t just losing grammar, syntax and vocabulary—it obliterates expression, leaving a culture unable to articulate its way of knowing. There’s a disturbing parallel to biodiversity loss, here. As anthropologist Russell Bernard puts it, “Any reduction of language diversity diminishes the adaptational strength of our species because it lowers the pool of knowledge from which we can draw.”

To wit: conservation knowledge occupies a particularly prominent place in Indigenous Australian cultures, some of which have been around for more than 40,000 years. Over that time, Indigenous people have developed an intimate knowledge of Australia itself and, in many cases, can tell us more about how to protect the land than any conservation science textbook.

A cohesive theme throughout Wade’s body of work is that all human cultures share the same DNA and have equal cognitive capacity, but that they focus and apply their collective intellect in different ways. This results in different ways of knowing and different conceptions of what it means to be human and alive. For many Westerners, nature occupies too small a place in our worldview; we’ve lost touch with the land and forgotten how to care for it.

In Australia, we have a tremendous opportunity to learn from Indigenous people and the emphasis they’ve placed on caring for their country. Toward that end, the Conservancy has supported the establishment of Indigenous Protected Areas and the Indigenous Rangers working to manage their lands.

“For all of us and for all time, these peoples—like ourselves—represent the collective heritage of humanity, the multiple voices of humanity, and altogether they become our collective geography of hope,” Davis said to conclude his lecture. Davis used his oration to deliver an important reminder: that culture is not trivial and it’s important to listen to those talking on behalf of the Earth, as they have great knowledge and wisdom that’s crucial to humanity.

The director of The Nature Conservancy’s Australia program, Michael Looker is a trained botanist and one of Australia’s leading scientists. Under his direction, the program has protected 8.9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) of biodiversity rich land in Australia through 27 direct land acquisitions.

(Image: National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis. Image credit: © Ryan Hill)

1. A Pennsylvania school district saves $$ and cuts carbon by hiring sheep to mow their lawns. (Treehugger)
2. Americans “don’t have a clue” about the top green brands on the market. (Green Biz)
3. Solar employs more people than steel, which means green jobs are a reality. (Grist)
4. Can sustainable palm oil plantations actually help preserve the Amazon? (YaleE360)
5. A group of Australian scientists are trying to clarify the climate change conversation. (Dot Earth)

In the 1960s and 70s, Billy Frank Jr. was arrested some 50 times—all in the name of salmon.

The Washington resident and member of the Nisqually Tribe is famous for his fight to preserve tribal fishing rights. His grassroots campaign–an effort marked by fish-ins and arrests– culminated in a landmark decision by federal Judge George Boldt that said tribes were entitled to half the salmon harvest in their traditional waters. It made them co-managers of the fisheries in Washington.

Today Billy Frank Jr. is 80 years old, and he’s still fighting. This time the fight is about saving salmon, which he says are essential to the survival of his people.

“We’ve got to work together,” he says. “We’re running out of time.”

Billy Frank, an environmental icon in Washington and beyond, was at The Nature Conservancy’s Seattle office recently for a panel discussion with indigenous leaders from Kenya, Australia and Washington’s own Yakama Nation. The Conservancy has long relied on partnerships with indigenous communities to accomplish its mission. These guests came to share their ideas and lessons learned.

I was privileged to listen in on the forum and get an inside look at conservation from an indigenous perspective—one rooted in tradition, culture and in some cases, spirituality. In an era of computers, cell phones and increasing development, I’d venture we could learn a lot from what they have to say about protecting and respecting the planet.

One of the speakers was Joe Morrison, an indigenous leader from Northern Australia. He said that conservation and human rights are “inextricably linked.”

Joe has both Dagoman and Torres Strait Islander heritage. He heads the Northern Australian Indigenous Lands and Sea Management Alliance, an organization that helps indigenous communities preserve their culture and protect their land from the increasing pressures of development. “There’s been a long struggle for recognition of ingenious people’s place in the nation,” he said. “In Northern Australia, we’ve got an opportunity here to get things right, and we can do it through the lens of conservation.”

How deeply should indigenous people be involved in conservation projects? According to these speakers, they should be right in the middle of it all. Joe stressed the importance of empowering indigenous groups to be managers of their land. Getting the communities involved—and getting them to own the projects— presents a better chance of success. It’s critical, given that indigenous people live on some of the most threatened and biologically diverse lands.

This sentiment was echoed by others at the panel, including Paul Ward, Conservancy board member and Fisheries Manager for the Yakama Nation, who described success the Yakama Nation has had developing staff resources to protect salmon.

Salmon have long been a source of conflict between tribes, fishermen and even farmers in Washington. Their decline affects economies, tradition and something even deeper. Paul says, “Taking a child out there, teaching him to fish, being able to catch that fish and bring it back, that ties you back to who you are, who your grandparents were. It’s part of who you are, how you identify yourself in this world. If there’s not Chinook salmon there to catch, that’s when things start falling apart.”

This is powerful stuff. The speakers at this panel stressed the necessity of conservation for people. I was reminded of a Native American Studies course I took in college, in which the professor equated the relationship that Native Americans have with the land to the relationship Christians have with church. This analogy has stuck with me for years. How would I feel if people tore down my church and built skyscrapers on top of it?

We also heard from Tom Lalampaa, a member of the Samburu tribe who lives in Northern Kenya, an area that’s experienced massive degradation and fragmentation of land. His organization facilitates community-led conservation projects across more than 3 million acres.

Where Tom is from, rangelands are communal and purely owned by communities – some of which speak different languages and have longstanding conflicts. Getting people to come together isn’t easy, he said. It takes time. “First of all they have to trust you,” he said. “The process of building trust and confidence, it takes time, but it’s working for us.”

I appreciate what these folks have to teach. Perhaps the most compelling theme from their discussion was the call for all people to come together to protect nature. But who will bring us together? That’s a role I think organizations like The Nature Conservancy can take the lead on.

As Billy Frank Jr. says, “Our world is just little. Whatever we do over here, it affects us over there. We’ve got to start making decisions about how we’re going to work together and make it happen.”

Katherine Sather works as digital marketing specialist for The Nature Conservancy. A former journalist, she left the world of breaking news reports and daily deadlines in 2009 to work for the Conservancy’s Washington program. She lives in Seattle.

(Image: Billy Frank Jr. Image credit: Barbie Hull)

1. Climate scientists say Chicago will get warmer and wetter—and urban planners are taking heed of the warning.  (The New York Times) 
2. Meanwhile, the Australia Climate Commission projects global sea-level rise will be higher than previously thought. (BBC)
3. Get the latest update on declining bats, penguins and lemurs. (Extinction Countdown) 
4. How could fewer people mean LESS biodiversity in Mexico? (Conservation Journal Watch)
5. Barcodes on trees could help save rainforests in war-torn Liberia. (YaleE360)

UPDATE: You can now listen to a recording of Annamaria’s winning essay here.

“This country immerses you, wraps its stories round you, makes you care about them.”

That line comes from Annamaria Weldon’s winning entry to the inaugural Nature Conservancy Australia Nature Writing Prize. Her essay, entitled “Threshold Country,” tells a story that is at once so deeply personal and sweepingly engaging that it — like the country it lovingly celebrates — can’t help but make you care.

It’s the kind of writing we were hoping to inspire when we launched this new biennial contest roughly a year ago. We solicited essays that celebrated both nature writing and Australia’s landscapes. What we received was an extraordinary mosaic of language that not only describes the magnificence of natural Australia but also makes a compelling case for why conserving our continent is so crucial.

That made picking a winner all the more difficult. When it came time to review submissions, we found that we’d collected 136 entries. Our judges had a tough task ahead of them.

Luckily, they were up to the challenge. The able jury was composed of Mark Tredinnick — an acclaimed poet and essayist who makes nature a frequent subject — and Sally Blakeney, a literary journalist and reviewer. Together, they winnowed an impressive pool of essays down to a short list of five pieces, including one penned by famed Australian novelist Nick Drayson.

And then there was Weldon’s essay. Weldon lives in Fremantle, Western Australia, but she was born in Malta and her childhood took her through North Africa, Central America and the U.K. She came to Western Australia in 1984, and her well-traveled background gives her special insight into how a landscape’s physical characteristics create a sense of place.

Annamaria Weldon.

That insight permeates “Threshold Country,” which explores the impermanence of Yalgorup National Park’s fragile thrombolites (column-like microbial structures) and their vulnerability to the increased development occurring in the nearby city of Manduray. Weldon describes the time she spends among the thrombolites and the feeling of comfort — of being at home — that she derives from them. “Can we learn in time to tread more lightly here?” she wonders.

“Threshold Country” earned Weldon a $5000 prize, generously provided by the McLean Foundation, and it was published in the final volume of indigo, a Western Australian literary journal. Tredinnick and Blakeney referred to the piece as “a marvellously orchestrated, complex meditation on belonging. It is at once assured and yet gently voiced.”

For my part, I was entranced by the ease with which the essay places readers in Yalgorup among the threatened thrombolites. Weldon writes of how the land’s Traditional Owners, the Bindjareb people, based their culture on an understanding of the region’s natural beauty. It’s a message with special significance to the Conservancy: a major focus of work is helping Indigenous Australians manage protected areas to yield both natural and livelihood benefits.

“I felt this terrain had something to tell me, something I needed to learn, about loss of country and recovering a sense of place,” Weldon writes. Her essay helps us understand just how important conserving that sense of place is, and we’re grateful our new nature writing prize gave her a chance to do so.

Read the full text of Annamaria’s essay here.

Read the full text of other essays short-listed by the contest’s judges:

Steve McAlpine — Living on the Edge: Observations from the Darling Scarp

Tanya Massy — Pulse

Nick Drayson — My Place

(First Image: Containing rivers, salt lakes. arid lands, mountains and ancient eucalyptus forests, the landscape of the Gondwana Link project area in south Western Australia is an extraordinarily rich and complex ecological mosaic containing some the world’s most ancient habitats. Image credit ©Ami Vitale. Second image 2: Courtesy Annamaria Weldon. Audio credit: Lee Kennedy @ Studio Kraze).

1. A new federal report paints a grim picture of water resources in the 21st century. (Green)
2. Australia’s 2009 wildfires may have helped save the rare Buxton silver gum tree. (Extinction Countdown)
3. Three dogs helped sniff out the habitat of an endangeredVietnamese turtle. (Conservation Journal Watch)
4. Have you thought about the energy footprint of your web surfing habit? Greenpeace has. (Grist)
5. In case you doubted the benefits of the Clean Air Act, a new study says it helps you live 4-8 months longer. (Treehugger)

1. Which state is the greenest? Check the list and see where yours is ranked. (Green House)
2. Australian mathematicians say some endangered species are “not worth saving.” (Extinction Countdown)
3. The Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore are among national parks threatened by uranium mining. (LA Times)
4. A bizarre ecosystem has been found hiding in an Antarctic lake. (Discovery News)
5. You won’t believe what’s used to make this new, sustainable golf ball. (Huffington Post Green)