AI for nature Archives - Favorite World Press

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

Herd of Elephants in Africa walking through the grass in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

1.5-minute read

As you chart your course for 2022, whether you choose the road less traveled or the path of least resistance, to get to your best there from wherever your current here is may require a few rounds of trial and error. For many of our friends in the animal kingdom, when it comes to fulfilling their creature-life destiny, picking the right path comes naturally. They instinctively follow patterns that meet their needs for food, water, space, family, and safety. So, when conservationists working in Kenya set out to pinpoint and protect the most critical habitat and travel corridors to help ensure the survival of African elephants, they let the perceptive pachyderms lead the way.

The accelerating loss of roaming room is one of the greatest threats to the iconic, endangered mega-mammals. To determine which areas and pathways are vital to supporting the species, from 2001 to 2019, researchers from the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory and Save the Elephants used GPS tracking to monitor the movements of 138 elephants whose environment was under pressure from rapid infrastructure development. They mapped the nearly two decades of movement information using Artificial Intelligence to identify the elephants’ preferred pathways and habitat—dubbed the movescape.

Like most living beings, African elephants can’t survive in just any old place. The AI-enhanced elephant expertise can help determine conservation area carve-outs based on what the elephants have shown us they need to exist in the natural world. Preserving wildlife habitat is not just essential to saving endangered species; protecting and restoring the wild also helps keep humanity on the right path by providing valuable environmental, social, educational, and economic benefits—free of charge.

Exercise Your Grey Cells
FYI, today, January 14th is World Logic Day. Exciting! What are we celebrating? Logic and reason! Why are we celebrating? We’ll let you draw your own conclusions—or you can read about the thought behind the commemoration here.

If you’re keen to give your grey cells a workout in between bouts of COVID dodging, you can take a crack at the hardest logic puzzle ever—no peeking at the solution. Or here are some kinder, gentler nature riddles for you and your budding in-house brainiacs. If you don’t have the energy to tackle any of those, how about some soothing animal cams from the Bronx Zoo—no active thought required. From our perspective, logically speaking, leaping lemurs equals blissful brain!

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Lisa S. French January 14, 2022

Where, Oh Where Are The Walruses?

1-minute read

The monitoring of wildlife, habitats, and ecosystems is critical to conservation. But keeping tabs on what’s happening in the natural world—changes in the number of different species and populations of specific species, and how they move and interact with the environment across millions of square miles of land and sea—is no simple task. Now, thanks to advances in conservation technology, tracking endangered, elusive, and widely dispersed animals is getting a whole lot easier. Scientists are employing a diverse range of tech tools, including radar, sonar, motion sensors, camera traps, drones, smartphones, and satellites, to gather information that will aid in the development of nature-saving strategies. One of the greatest remaining challenges is deciphering all of that captured data. That’s where citizen scientists come in.

Walrus Headcount
To amplify global conservation efforts, researchers are asking all of you wildlife watchers out there to pitch in with planetary health checks by keeping a lookout and sharing what you see. One of the crowdsourced projects taking place right now is Walrus from Space, the Atlantic and Laptev walrus census. The World Wildlife Fund and the British Antarctic Survey hope to enlist half a million people over the next four years to contribute to the counting of walruses by searching for the tusked creatures in satellite images. This sea mammal census aims to determine how environmental changes, like global heating, impact the walrus populations of Canada, Norway, Greenland, and Russia.

Do you have an eagle eye—or two? Do you know a walrus when you see one? Although an adult walrus can weigh as much as a Mazda Miata—about 2,200 pounds—pinpointing the massive sea creatures in the vast expanse of Arctic waters is trickier than you might imagine. Are you up for the challenge? Become a walrus detective and put your keen sight to the test. Register with the WWF here to see what you can see—in the sea—and help to secure the future of these iconic marine animals.

More People-Powered Projects
If you’d like to explore more ways to connect with the conservation community to share your observations of our planet’s flora and fauna, check out these “I spy” projects:

Bird Alert
Before we go, a quick heads up that polling is now open for New Zealand’s Bird of the Year. Exciting! Get to know the 2021 contestants and cast your votes! We think all of the birds are winners, but we’re going to go out on a limb and predict that the rockhopper penguin will be this year’s it bird. The endangered little rock climber most definitely looks like a champion.

Turtle Tsunami
Oh, and one more helping nature heal, turtle-y amazing conservation item: news of an extraordinary mass hatching event. Thanks to the successful monitoring and management of giant South American river turtles by the World Conservation Society Brasil, tens of thousands of the little shelled critters made their way to the water world they’ll call home. Behold the turtle tsunami!

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Lisa S. French October 17, 2021

Traveling Wildebeest Alert

1.5-minute read

One of the most spectacular events in the natural world is taking place now in the African Serengeti—the awe-inspiring, seasonal wildebeest migration. In late spring through fall, up to 1.5 million wildebeest and thousands of zebra and Thomson’s gazelles embark on the long trek from the treeless plains of the southern Serengeti in Tanzania, north to the savannas and woodlands of Kenya.

Navigating Mara River rapids and dodging the hungry lions, cheetahs, and hyenas that trail the herd is no small feat, so what motivates these high plains drifters to travel so far in such massive numbers? Survival.

Like many migrating species, wildebeests are on a mission to find food. These bearded relatives of antelopes can weigh up to 600 muscle-packed pounds. Maintaining almost a billion pounds of wildebeest-i-ness across the herd requires a tremendous amount of grass and water. When the dry season begins in May and food and water are in short supply, wildebeests head west and north, following a route determined by rainfall, grass growth, and access to prime grazing real estate. In early winter, they complete the 300-mile migration loop, tracking the rain and grass back down to the southern plains. Every February, approximately 8,000 calves a day are born in transit and are up on their hooves toddling along with the herd in just three hours—the great migration and life cycle of the wildebeest continues uninterrupted.

The remarkable journey of these African ungulates has now inspired scientists to create algorithms that mimic the highly efficient swarm-like movement of the herd, which instinctually finds the shortest route to the greenest pastures. Intelligent algorithms based on these natural patterns of wildebeest herd migration could be used in cutting-edge applications ranging from unmanned vehicles and planetary mapping to nanobots that can target and destroy cancer cells—because nature is the most intelligent system of all.

Wherever you are in the world, you can keep tabs on the amazing traveling wildebeests courtesy of HerdTracker. Compared to the congestion of mega-migration, this summer’s bumper-to-bumper beach-bound traffic doesn’t seem so bad after all…

If you’d like to learn more about the megafauna of the Serengeti, we highly recommend Animals of the Masai Mara (Wildlife Explorer Guides), by Adam Scott Kennedy and Vicki Kennedy.

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Lisa S. French July 30, 2021

Keeping High-Tech Tabs on Endangered Sea Turtles

2-minute read

These are tough times for sea turtles. For over 100 million years, the armored reptiles (Chelonians) have peacefully paddled the Earth’s oceans, but due to overharvesting, loss of nesting habitat, and chronic egg collecting and trafficking, six out of seven species are currently listed as threatened or endangered.

In addition to being valued for their obvious sea creature charisma, turtles play a vital role in the health of undersea ecosystems, helping to bolster coastal economies around the world. Because demand for turtle products is at an all-time high, the marine megafauna is at extreme risk of becoming extinct in the wild, and conservationists are racing to develop advanced tracking systems to help keep closer tabs on eggs, turtles—and traffickers.

Satellite monitoring of sea turtles in aid of conservation began 25 years ago. With advancements in the miniaturization of tracking tags and improvements in bandwidth, transmission, and data analysis, GPS technology has come of age, and scientists can monitor all seven species in oceans globally. A small tracking device, easily attached to a turtle’s shell, can capture information about the animal and its environment, including how it navigates the oceans, where it feeds and nests, how many clutches of eggs it lays, down to the granular level of describing flipper beats and daily dives. Changes in signal speed or movement can also indicate that a turtle has been fished or captured and taken ashore.

Pinpointing the location of adult turtles and nesting sites is a fundamental aspect of conservation. Protecting sea turtle eggs from the devastating impacts of poachers is also essential to the species’ long term survival. To help ensure the tiny reptiles get the chance to crack out of their shells and trundle to the sea, the ingenious scientists at Paso Pacifico have taken egg monitoring to the next level with the creation of InvestEGGator. Designed to document the movement of illegally harvested sea turtle eggs, the 3-D printed wildlife tracker employs web-based smart-phone applications to covertly trace poachers. The plastic devices replicate olive ridley turtle eggs in size, shape, texture, and weight and can be hidden in turtle nests and remotely monitored in real-time to deter poachers and reduce illegal trade. Turtley egg-citing!

Whether olive ridley, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, or hawksbill, sea turtles need safe operating space to survive on land and in our oceans. By mapping and monitoring adults, eggs, and nesting sites, working with local communities to promote conservation, and strengthening enforcement of anti-poaching laws, conservationists aim to keep sea turtles right where they belong—paddling around the big deep blue. If you’d like to learn more about mission-critical efforts to save sea turtles from extinction, check out what’s happening at the World Wildlife Fund.

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Lisa S. French October 19, 2020

To Bee or RoboBee

3-minute read

Sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;
where bees pray on their knees, sing praise
in pear trees, plum trees; bees
are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them. — Carol Ann Duffy

Keep your eyes peeled, autonomous robotic bees may be coming to crop-fields near you. Measuring about half the length of a paper clip and weighing in at less than one-tenth of a gram, the insect-inspired microbots were developed by scientists at Wyss Institute to replace rapidly dwindling populations of bees, the world’s natural food crop pollinators.

While a global fleet of Robobees may sound pretty cool from a tech-wow perspective, when it comes to substituting pollinating machines for the real deal, researchers at the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research and Institute of Bee Health say not so fast. Before we roll out tiny red carpets to welcome substitute bees to the planet, according to an analysis published in Science of the Total Environment, we should consider a simpler, more holistic solution—protecting our natural pollinators and the landscapes they depend on for survival.

In the debate around bees versus Robobees, it turns out that replacing live bees with pollinating machines is not that straightforward. Bees have been honing their sophisticated sensory abilities and specialized pollination skills for over 130 million years in response to the unique shapes, scents, and colors of hundreds of thousands of flowering plants. While microbots may be capable of pollinating easy-access plants like sunflowers, the innate expertise of bees is hard to replicate across diverse crop species.

Not only are bees adaptable and super-skilled at their jobs, they also work for free, contributing between $235 to $577 billion to annual global food production. In contrast, robotic bees are pricey. At an estimated cost of $10 per microbot, replacing the billions of bees needed to pollinate crops with machine bees would run in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And unlike live bees, robotic bees need maintenance. Rather than creating a new machine-bee rental and repair industry, scientists argue that restoring pollinator habitats would be a far more cost-effective way to support food production. At a time when we are aiming to reduce our global carbon footprint, the environmental impact of manufacturing, distributing, and disposing of fleets of robotic bees could be enormous.

And bees don’t go about their important business in isolation. They’re critical components of biodiversity, helping to maintain the balance of environmental systems that support life on Earth. Replacing diverse pollinators with a single microbot is a risky business. It’s not clear what impact swarms of machine bees may have on the delicate interdependent workings of nature. The adage when you fix one thing, be careful not to break something else comes to mind.

The idea that we can address environmental problems by replacing elements of the natural world with technology-based substitutes is not a new one. As the guardians of the planet, we have the ability to transform our relationship with nature and apply innovative, emerging technologies to map, monitor, protect, and restore rather than replace. Because beyond their much-appreciated bottom-line contributions to food security, bees are iconic and beloved members of the community of life and play an important role in human culture and well-being.

How components of nature are valued depends on who is doing the valuing. We treasure these industrious insects not just for their productivity but also for their poetry. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a pollen-flecked bumblebee drowse in a dahlia, we think you’ll agree that there are some things in life for which there are no substitutes. It’s just better with bees—tiny, perfect soul anchors for a world in flux.

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Lisa S. French August 24, 2020

Rescuing Coral Reefs: Cloud Brightening, Bionics, and Super Corals

3.5-minute read

If you’ve not had much mental bandwidth left to ferret out non-COVID-19 news, we totally empathize. In case you missed the story of the third mass bleaching event in five years of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, here’s a quick what’s what—along with a roundup of some inventive strategies aimed at keeping all of the world’s precious corals out of hot water.

Although some of the creature components of the natural world are currently experiencing a welcome period of rest and recovery, as a result of rising ocean temperatures, the large colonies of thousands of tiny animals that make up coral reefs are facing unprecedented heat stress that is exceeding their ability to adapt and survive. These architecturally complex living structures support beautifully biodiverse undersea communities that encompass up to 25 percent of all marine species, including 4000 types of fish and an estimated 8 million yet-to-be-discovered organisms. As critical parts of our planetary infrastructure, coral reef ecosystems contribute to the livelihoods of 500 million people in 100 countries, adding approximately 30 billion dollars to annual GDP.

Under normal environmental conditions, corals can live forever. Sadly, recurring and prolonged bleaching events caused by changes in water temperature and acidity as a result of oceans absorbing increasing levels of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) from the atmosphere have pushed corals beyond their comfort zone. During a bleaching event, stressed corals expel the symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) embedded in their tissues, which they rely on for nutrition and which give them their often vibrant color. Without a consistent source of nourishment from their algal occupants, bleached corals slowly become weakened and may die, causing a chain reaction of equally adverse impacts for reef inhabitants. Depending on the amount of damage that occurs during a bleaching event, it can take decades for a coral reef to recover. To date, up to half of the world’s reefs have been severely damaged.

Okay, what’s the good news, you ask? Is there good news? Because we could use more of that. It’s undeniable that earth systems wait for no one, and our oceans have already been committed to a certain degree of warming. Now, one of the most important things we can do to create good news for corals and other marine wildlife is to help prevent bleaching events by reducing the GHG emissions that absorb radiation from the sun and raise ocean temperatures. As we sprint to ramp up mitigation efforts, scientists around the world from biologists to chemists to geophysicists are tackling the coral crisis from a few different angles in hope of changing the current trajectory from despair to repair. Here are some highlights from projects focused on saving our reef ecosystems from extinction:

Brightening Marine Clouds:
Earth scientists are geoengineering cloud parasols for the planet to cool waters around reefs and buy more time for corals. Through a process called marine cloud brightening, clouds are seeded with salt crystals to increase their reflectivity. These artificially enhanced bright clouds reflect solar radiation away from the earth lowering ocean temperatures in targeted reef areas. In late March, researchers at Southern Cross University in Australia conducted the first successful, small-scale cloud brightening experiment over a portion of the Great Barrier Reef. You can watch how they did it here.

Printing 3-D Bionic Corals:
Figuring out the symbiotic relationship between corals and algae will be critical for reef conservation in a warming world. To gain a better understanding of why corals expel algae under stress, bioengineers at the University of Cambridge have created bionic corals that can mimic the behavior of different coral species using biological materials and specialized 3-D printers. The Cambridge researchers also plan to construct large-scale colonies of man-made corals to grow algae for carbon capture and storage.

Breeding Climate Resilient Super Corals:
To create more resilient reef systems in anticipation of future warming, scientists at the Gates Coral Lab Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology are giving nature a helping hand through the breeding of corals that have successfully adapted to environmental stressors. By selecting the hardiest corals for reproduction and replicating various conditions of acidification, pollution, and temperature over time, marine biologists hope to grow more highly stress-tolerant super corals for use in reef restoration. You can learn more about these forward-thinking cultivators of corals in Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink by Irus Braverman.

If you’re concerned about coral reefs and would like to keep tabs on how they’re holding up in near real-time, there are NOAA satellites for that at Coral Reef Watch.

You can also dive in and participate in some armchair ocean conservation by playing NeMO-Net, a new video game that helps train a NASA supercomputer to map the world’s corals.

If you’d like to follow a collaborative community of earth scientists working to maintain the healthy functioning of our planet, check out EarthCube.

And because gazing at marine life is good for you, to help tide you over until you’re free to roam, the Ocean Conservancy has coral reef wallpaper for your phone and desktop. Download away!

As always, hang in, stay safe, and be well!

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Lisa S. French April 29, 2020

Red Panda Pause

2.0-minute read to distract yourself while distancing

We’re guessing you haven’t spent any time recently (or perhaps ever) thinking about the facial features of endangered red pandas (Ailurus fulgens). But if you’re up for a time-in programming break, here’s a quick creature feature challenge to test your visual acuity. Look closely—can you tell the difference between the panda on the left and the one on the right? Do you think you could pick these two out of a line-up of identical-looking, gingery, bamboo eaters? They may appear alike, but the differences lie in their fine facial details. Even amongst experts, without obvious distinguishing markings to tell one red panda from another, monitoring their dwindling populations has posed a significant challenge. However, new developments in face recognition technology are making the gathering of conservation-critical information on animal species with subtle variations in appearance a whole lot easier.

Until recently, researchers had resorted to micro-chipping and collaring to identify and track at-risk species; now, computer vision tech upgrades are helping to eliminate the stress and risk of capturing and tagging threatened wildlife.

Working in close collaboration with biologists, computer scientists are creating AI-assisted facial recognition programs that map and record granular visual characteristics of individual animals. In much the same way facial recognition software works for humans, Automatic Individual Identification Methods used for wildlife first process and reorient the photographic images so that they are as close in size and shape to one another as possible. Then, distinguishing features such as eye size, fur texture, or whisker spots are isolated and identified for comparison to a database of existing images, greatly expanding researchers’ ability to pinpoint new individuals and track populations.

According to the IUCN, the number of red pandas in the world has decreased by 40% in the past 50 years. As a result of habitat loss and hunting, there are now only 16,000 to 20,000 left in the highland pine forests of Nepal, India, Myanmar, Bhutan, and China. Because every creature counts, for wildlife threatened with extinction like the red panda, innovations in machine learning are becoming increasingly important to monitoring their demographics, health, and response to environmental change. These transformative technologies also hold great potential for expanding the community of citizen conservationists by enabling the public to help track endangered species through online contributions to image database portals.

You can learn more about red panda particulars here and other animal facial recognition projects like LemurFaceID here, and Lion Identification Network of Collaborators here.

We hope you are hanging right on in there, but if the news updates start to feel overwhelming, here’s an NYC semi-pro tip to lighten up your headspace: even if your only view of the outdoors is through a window, remember to turn your face towards the sun and just breathe.

And, today is National Doctor’s Day! For all of the healthcare professionals on the front lines working around the clock to save lives, including the 79,000 medical volunteers in New York, here’s today’s uplifting open-window whoop of extreme gratitude from Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Replay as needed!

As always, take good care and be well.

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Lisa S. French March 30, 2020

Conservation Takes Flight

2.5-minute read

With one in four species currently at risk of extinction, conservationists dedicated to maintaining the biodiversity of our big, beautiful planet are tackling an urgent to-do list—from monitoring whale health to conducting penguin counts, to planting a trillion trees. Over the last decade, scientists have added a hi-tech tool to their arsenal to help solve some of our most challenging environmental problems—the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), commonly known as the drone.

Thanks in part to rapid innovation in smartphone technologies like the miniaturization of cameras, GPS, and sensory devices, advances in the development of environmental drone applications are revolutionizing the mapping, monitoring, and recovery of the natural world. Customized drones rigged out with mission-specific gear like tracking systems, optical and thermal cameras, and seed dispersers are enabling the observation, protection, and restoration of flora and fauna in both wide-open and previously inaccessible places.

One promising new drone design developed by Macquarie University in Sydney, NSW, Australia, is helping biologists to safely assess the health of marine megafauna. Sidling up to a pod of migrating humpback whales to collect biological samples is tricky business. Now, researchers can get a snapshot of the cetaceans’ physical condition through UAV capture of whale blow without endangering the animals—or the humans. If you are wondering what in the world whale blow is, it’s the vapor that forms from warm air exhaled through the blowhole in the top of a whale’s head when it surfaces to breathe. Drones swoop in and hover over the humpbacks and collect the vapor in a remote-controlled petri dish for analysis of respiratory bacteria, lipids, hormones, and DNA. These custom-built mini sky-labs are helping researchers keep tabs on health changes of individual marine mammals resulting from increasing environmental stressors like climate change and water pollution.

Another breakthrough in planet-preserving drone technology from U.K.-based environmental services company Dendra Systems may seriously speed up the rate of global reforestation and ecosystem restoration. Using a combination of satellite images and drone-collected data to pinpoint locations for seed dispersal, Dendra aims to plant 500 billion trees by 2060. Customized “SKAI-Tractors” capable of firing seedpods into the ground at the rate of 120 per minute will enable governments to restore forests 150 times faster and ten times cheaper than planting by hand. At a time when we are losing an estimated 27 soccer fields of forest every minute, Dendra’s technology represents a radical improvement in the speed and accuracy of reforestation.

In an effort to engineer an even faster, smarter drone, scientists at Brown University and the University of British Columbia are drawing inspiration from nature to enhance the speed and agility of the miniature flying machines by analyzing the uniquely flexible wing structure and flight dynamics of bats. Researchers believe that the stretchy skin and multi-jointed wing configuration of the furry, night fliers may hold the key to improving the lift, maneuverability, and efficiency of drones, especially when flying in challenging environments.

It’s clear that inventive upgrades in drone technologies used for reforestation, and wildlife and ecosystem monitoring and management will continue to play a pivotal role in combatting the increasing global threats to biodiversity. So, to all of you flight-tech game changers out there working to protect and preserve the natural heritage of our planet, first, thank you very much, and second, please drone on.

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Lisa S. French March 3, 2020

Decoding the Floral Language of Love

3-minute read

Some of our most beautifully poetic expressions of feeling are those drawn from the language of nature. Throughout history, flowers and plants have been used to signify deep and enduring connections to a specific culture, place, or time and as a lyrical means of communicating the nuance of human emotion and remembrance. The symbolic meaning of flowers that evolved into the coded language of floriography was rooted in the traditional customs, folklore, and religious belief systems of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Following the publication of the first detailed floriography reference book in 1819, La Langage des Fleurs, dictionaries assigning sentiments to individual plants and flowers became increasingly popular in Western culture.

During the Victorian era (1837-1901) in the United States, France, and England, when public expression of emotion was culturally suppressed and in some cases forbidden, communicating private feelings through the secret language of flowers was readily embraced by the seriously smitten as well as the lovelorn. Flowers carefully chosen from floriography dictionaries to subtly convey heartfelt words that could not be spoken were arranged into bouquets and presented as gifts. A bouquet received from an ardent admirer and held at heart level signaled glad acceptance. Holding a floral gift upside down was a silent, but undoubtedly no less painful indication of a message received—and rejected. Floriography dictionaries could also serve as handy reference guides for those motivated to crankily communicate through a bouquet of bad feelings symbolizing negative sentiments such as disdain, disappointment, fickleness, or the all-encompassing heartlessness.

Expressing emotion through floral gift-giving is as popular in 2020 as it was in the Victorian era, and now thanks to the work of researchers in Sunnyvale, California, floriography is getting an artificial intelligence upgrade. Because one flower may have multiple meanings and multiple flowers may have the same meaning, to help ensure no important sentiment is lost in translation, believe it or not, a machine-learning algorithm has been developed to help express your flowery feelings with science-based, petal-point accuracy. To spare you the trouble of searching through an A-Z directory, emotive words and phrases that you would like to communicate to your bouquet recipient are mapped against a compendium of all possible flower meanings drawn from multiple dictionaries. Those blooms best expressing your particular level of besottedness are then rank-ordered for inclusion in the ultimate neural-network-optimized-and-designed floral arrangement. Build a better bouquet and they will come!

If you are currently preoccupied with conjuring the most meaningful way to communicate your tender feelings towards the highly esteemed object of your affection and can’t wait until there’s an official AI app for that, here’s an old-school crash course on decoding the floriferous language of love. By the way, if you thought roses were the definitive symbol of adoration, you may be surprised to learn that a bouquet of pineapples*, while a bit unwieldy, could be equally swoon-worthy, not to mention salad-worthy and certainly more memorable. Just be sure to include a translation—and a fork.

African violet • Such worth is rare
Alison • Worth beyond beauty
Calla Lily • Beauty
Camellia, red • You’re a flame in my heart
Carnation, pink • I’ll never forget you
Clematis • Soul mates, mental beauty
Chrysanthemum, red • I love you
Common lilac • Reminder of young love
Dahlia • Elegance and dignity
Daisy • Innocence and hope
Forget-me-not • True love memories
Gladiolus • Strength of character, moral integrity
Globe amaranth • Endless love
Heliotrope • Eternal love and devotion
Honeysuckle • Bonds of love
Hyacinth, white • Loveliness
Lavender • Constancy and devotion
Lily of the valley • Sweetness and purity
Mimosa • Elegance, sensitiveness, endurance of the soul
Orchids • Love and beauty
Peony • Bravery, beauty, honor
Peruvian Lily • Powerful bond
Phlox • United hearts and souls
*Pineapple • You are perfect
Ranunculus • You are radiant with charm
Rose, red • I love you
Rose, white • I’m worthy of you
Spiderflower • Elope with me
Strawberry tree • You are the only one I love
Sunflower • Adoration
Tickseed • Love at first sight
Tulip, red • Declaration of love
Wild pansy • You occupy my thoughts

And if you’d like to present your best ever, most-favorite favorite person with a living symbol of everlasting, not to mention carbon-storing love, you may want to consider a sampler of saplings. Plus, there’s a song for that.

Apple tree • Love, healing, immortality
Apricot tree • Love
Linden tree • Protection, good luck, love
Oak tree • Character, courage
Olive tree • Peace, healing, protection
Peach tree • Generosity, hope, love
Pine tree • Peace, harmony
Plum tree • Healing, beauty, longevity
Willow tree • Love, protection, health

For a beautifully illustrated excursion through the definitive history of the language and folklore of flowers, check out The Complete Language of Flowers, by S. Theresa Dietz.

Whether you’re all about AI or more into old school, a flower plucker or a tree planter, wishing you a joyful heart on St. Valentine’s Day and all of the days after that.

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Lisa S. French February 11, 2020

Precious Parrots

Standing almost two feet tall and weighing in at approximately nine pounds, the moss-green kākāpō is the world’s largest and only flightless parrot. It is also one of the most critically endangered. Known as the “owl-parrot” due to its large eyes and head, this charmingly chubby forest inhabitant was common in its native New Zealand where it evolved over 30 million years, free from the threat of natural predators. Over the past few hundred years with only the minimal protection offered by its mottled, camouflaging feathers, the defenseless, ground-dwelling kākāpō was hunted to the brink of extinction by both humans and the invasive species introduced by European settlers. Habitat loss from forest conversion to farm-land also contributed to the parrots’ plummeting numbers, and by 1977 the solitary, nocturnal kākāpō had been reduced to a tiny population of just 18 birds. Although kākāpōs rebounded slightly to 51 individuals in the 1990’s, their future looked decidedly grim.

The plight of the kākāpō is further complicated by infrequent breeding. The parrots only mate every two to four years when native coniferous rimu trees bear the vitamin D rich fruit which they feed their young. And because females are solely responsible for incubating, parenting and foraging for food, eggs and fledglings are extremely vulnerable to predators when out of necessity they are left alone in the nest. Factoring in a loss of genetic diversity which helped to ensure the survival of chicks, the kākāpō was in desperate need of some avian assistance.

Fast-forward three decades, thanks to the intensive and innovative management of the critically endangered parrots by scientists at the New Zealand Department of Conservation, as of 2017, the kākāpō count was at 154. Following the transfer of the entire population of birds to three remote predator-free islands, Whenua Hou, Anchor, and Hauturu, the kākāpō recovery programme began monitoring the birds through every stage of development pitching in with nest protection, supplementary feeding and the hand raising of chicks. As a result of around the clock intensive care, this year the kākāpōs had a record-breaking breeding season resulting in 76 hatchlings. Scientists expect that about 60 of the young birds will make it to adulthood. While the kākāpō population is on the upswing, conservationists won’t breathe easier until their numbers get closer to 500. In the meantime, preservation of these precious parrots continues with international efforts aimed at ensuring their survival, including genome sequencing, drone-supported artificial insemination and the world’s first successful bird brain surgery. In honor of Endangered Species Day on May 17, we tip our wings to the captivating kākāpō and the dedicated scientists who continue to work tirelessly to save this rare species–bird by bird.

Update:

Following a tremendously successful 2018/2019 breeding season, and the unprecedented survival of 71 chicks to juvenile age, as of September 2019, the critically endangered kākāpō population has reached a record high of 213! You can read more about the ground-dwelling parrot progress here.

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Lisa S. French May 16, 2019