By: Autumn Ricksecker When you think of Southern California, what plants come to mind? Perhaps it’s palm trees lining the streets of Los Angeles, citrus orchards cascading across Orange County, or eucalyptus groves offering a fragrant canopy on college campuses. However, these trees are not …
Ecology
Protecting Bull Creek, a Central Texas treasure
By: Verónica Godoy The Bull Creek watershed, located in Austin, has been called “the Galapagos of Texas” by locals due to its ecological diversity and geological features. With an 11-mile spring-fed creek dotted with waterfalls and swimming holes, limestone seeps, and scenic cliffs, the …
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Bounce Back
By: Laura Vessey Bounce Back, the fourth installment in A Rocha’s ‘Elements of Hope’ video series, asks us to examine where we find our hope amidst environmental disaster, such as extreme wildfires or terrible floods. The film explores the idea of ‘refugium’, defined as an area in which a …
Small-Scale Fisheries, Fishers, and Marine Biodiversity
By: Allison Cutting We are all connected through one ocean. The sea is teeming with life of incredible diversity -- from blue whales being the largest animal to have ever lived to microscopic phytoplankton which produce half of the world’s oxygen. Bodies of saltwater link continents and …
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Marine Conservation in the Indian River Lagoon
By: Michaela Stenerson Titusville is a town on the east coast of Florida. At its eastern-most point you will not be looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean, you will be looking onto the Indian River Lagoon (IRL), a 156-mile long estuary which is a key biological highway for migratory birds and a hub of …
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Space Coast A Rocha – An Interview with Bob Sluka
We are excited to welcome Dr. Robert Sluka, head of A Rocha International's Marine and Costal Conservation Program, to the A Rocha USA team as he begins a new conservation project on the Space Coast of Florida. We caught up with him to hear more of his story and vision for this project. In a few …
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Living Planet Report
By Tom Rowley, A Rocha USA Executive Director Findings of World Wildlife Fund’s just-released Living Planet Report 2014 are grim. Population sizes of vertebrate species—mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish—have declined by 52 percent over the last 40 years. In other words, those …
Conservation From the Top Down
By Peter Harris, co-founder of A Rocha Scientific research doesn’t ‘prove’ religious truth but nevertheless each set of convictions addresses the same reality. So it shouldn’t be surprising that a recent insight within the discipline of ecology aligns beautifully with the foundational biblical …
Profiles in Stewardship: Dave Timmer
Dave Timmer (Au Sable Alum '98; Grad Fellow '04-'05) serves as Stewardship Director for A Rocha USA in Northwest Washington. Timmer's talents and demands are many, as evidenced by the three-part exchange between him and Brook Wilke on the role of farmers markets in sustainability agriculture. His …
The Emerging Role of Place in Ecology and Education
By Jonathon Schramm , Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Environmental Education at the Merry Lea Center of Goshen College We all live in it, move in it, feel it solidly under our feet daily, and yet we don’t often think of ourselves as creatures of it. What is it? Place. How is it that …
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