The Scientist Using Fire to Save Orchids From Extinction

Lucy Sherriff 17 hrs ago


On a hot, humid Maryland afternoon in August 2017, Deborah Landau nervously scanned a clearing for signs of life. Clad in tick-proof clothing from head to toe—uncomfortable in this weather but necessary as Landau had twice before contracted Lyme disease—she had been waiting almost a year for this moment.

The 53-year-old conservation ecologist for The Nature Conservancy who specializes in rare plant species had taken a huge risk the previous year. She had burned the entire area, in the hope of saving the Oxypolis canbyi plant, also known as Canby’s dropwort. There’s only one location in Maryland where this white-flowering plant grows: in the Delmarva Bay, an area of ephemeral wetlands that are wet in the fall and winter, and prairie-like and dry in the summer and spring.

“This plant is super rare, very imperiled,” said Landau. “I’ve spent many years opening this wetland back up and the population increased, but it was still struggling.”

Landau lives and breathes plants, and her work at the conservancy plays a vital role in keeping some of the country’s rarest flora alive. Through controlled burns, careful and painstaking monitoring, and warding off would-be poachers, Landau is responsible for not only ensuring they stay alive—but that they thrive. We think of orchids as tropical plants, but a number are found right here in the U.S., and some of the world’s rarest are located in a preserve in Maryland. Just Landau and a small team of dedicated conservationists and volunteers are all that stand between these plants and extinction.

Months before Landau’s humid August visit, she had been at the very same site, drip torch in hand, ready to send fire dancing across the land in front of her.

In the past, the wetlands would have had fires sweeping through them, keeping them open for these flowers to grow. But a history of stringent fire measures, thanks to a misunderstanding of the role fire plays in the ecosystem, has meant that if a wildfire does start naturally, the flames are extinguished before they can burn as nature intended. That has allowed trees and long grasses to take over, creating too much shade for the flowers to thrive. After intense lobbying, The Nature Conservancy was granted permission to carry out a burn in order to save the Canby’s dropwort species.

“It took years and years to get the approval and to figure out how to burn this site in an ecologically sensitive way,” Landau said.

She and her team came up with a plan so that only the wetland would burn. They needed a day when it had rained the day before so that the forest was wet and unlikely to burn. That would allow fire to spread through the grasses of the wetland without causing unintended harm to the forest. When a day with optimal conditions arrived, Landau and her team suited up in fire-proof gear and set the ground ablaze. They used the transition from grass to shady forest as a natural fire break and minimized how much fuel they used in such an ecologically sensitive area.

As Landau and her team lit up the drip torches, the reality of what was about to unfold truly took shape. Sitting in the middle of the meadow were three Canby’s dropwort plants. Sending a wall of flames racing across the landscape, even after a day of rain, came with real risks to the very plants Landau was trying to save from extinction.

“I was terrified when we were doing it,” she said. “I could’ve killed the entire Maryland population.”

But knowing the fire might be their only salvation had led the team to this point, and so the burn began.“All it took was three lines of ignition, and the wetland just wanted to burn, it was just screaming fire-adapted, the way these fuels carried was so beautiful,” Landau said, recalling the day

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After years of planning, the burn was over in just 45 minutes. “It was almost anti-climactic, after all those years of planning,” she laughed.

As soon as the fire was out, Landau ran to the patch where they had been and put her hand on the ground.

“The soil was actually still damp, even though it had burned,” she said. “The seeds were protected.”

But Landau had to wait nine months to see if the plants grew back and flowered, a metric of whether the fire had done its job. The very goal of the burn was to clear the area, and Landau had an idea that the plant may thrive in fire-treated soil.

“It was very stressful,” she recalled. “I had a lot of second-guessing. You know, maybe I shouldn’t, maybe this is the wrong thing. Maybe I should go and wet the area first. But thinking it through. We knew it was a fire adaptive plant. We knew that this is probably why the plant was there in the first place, because historically there had been fires in the area and naturally it wouldn’t have gotten a little sprinkling of water beforehand. So we just did hands off. And we burned it.”

That August day Landau finally returned to the burn site to carry out her survey is ingrained in her memory. To the untrained eye, the field looked like any other grassy forest opening. But to Landau, who scanned the landscape feverishly for signs of the telltale white almond blooming flowers, it was the site of something spectacular. She immediately spotted the sprinkling of snow in the middle of the wetland, visibly larger than the previous year—and a surefire sign that her risky burn had worked.

“There’s no counting needed,” she said. “I counted, but I didn’t have to. It was quite an emotional moment. As a woman in the field I try not to be emotional, and I won’t but yes, oh, it’s, yeah, it absolutely was so gratifying.”

Before the burn, there were just three plants. As of 2021, there are around 3,000 Oxypolis canbyi plants.

“I literally spent five years planning that burn, and being told by our managers that you can’t burn this. And it worked. ... It’s really just nature saying ‘you did the right thing.’ It really brings home the importance of this ecological restoration.”

The Nature Conservancy owns around 30,000 acres in Maryland, and Landau is responsible for overseeing the plant species, running the program, and monitoring plants of interest. An integral part of Landau’s work is controlled burns, which are increasingly used by conservation organizations and land managers as public and scientific opinion towards fire as a management tool shifts.

Last year, Landau and her team had the most successful burn season they’d ever had. When her team isn’t lighting fires, though, Landau is busy planning them by updating maps, setting objectives based on previous burns, and drafting burn plans.

A lot goes into organizing a burn like the one she carried out last August, and Landau is responsible for making sure everything goes according to plan. Measurements of the conservancy’s land have to be precise, and every forest edge, grassy plain, and watershed must be documented in order to plan out burn areas. Getting it wrong could mean whole regions go up in flames. It’s also imperative that Landau has the locations of the very plants she’s trying to save, so she can track their progress and develop conservation plans appropriate to the species.

© Photo: Chase McLean A survey in the field looking at Canby’s dropwort (Oxypolis canbyi).

“We need to get approval from a lot of different levels,” she said, “and we have to make calls to adjacent landowners to let them know there’ll be a burn, figure out whether we need to work with partners as sometimes our borders are adjacent to state or private land.”

It’s also important she has coordinates in hand before she heads out into the field. There’s rarely any signal in the areas she monitors, and so she creates maps in the office and uploads them to her phone prior to setting out. It’s a big change from her early work when she was in her 20s when, Landau said, she spent a lot of time “getting lost” in the field. “I would have these big topography maps and roll them out in the field and try to understand where I was with my compass,” she recalled.

Landau is often required to spend the night in the field, as many of the sites are a two-hour-plus drive away from the office in Bethesda. Over her two decades of working with the conservancy, (this year marks her 20th anniversary) she has learned to pack “twice as much water as you think you’ll need” and dry socks “because there’s nothing more miserable than driving home for four hours in wet socks.”

Half the time, Landau goes out on her own. On monitoring trips, such as when she has to check up on another rare plant—harperella—she’ll have a crew of around five people with her. The plant grows on the banks of a particularly clean river along Maryland’s Sideling Hill Creek.

“The only way you can monitor it is by literally walking in the creek,” Landau said. “I just walk down the middle of the creek, with people on either side of the banks, and it’s six or seven hours of that. It’s a small plant, so you really have to be looking.”

When Landau is monitoring orchids, and in particular the Cypripedium candidum, more commonly known as white lady’s slipper, she needs a small, carefully chosen team because they need binoculars to even spot the flowers. They’re a select group of people who she uses regularly year after year. The group is instructed to turn off GPS functions on their phones, to guard the secret location.

The plant is highly sought after by collectors, who will think nothing of stealing into the preserve at night and nabbing the flower. The white lady’s slipper is so-called for its bulbous, white oval petal, speckled with pink, which folds over to create a pouch, with the lip covered by a yellow petal that delicately drapes over the opening. The reason the stunning plant is still in this area is that it is so hard to get to.

The river where the orchid grows in proximity to sits hundreds of feet below the undulating western Maryland mountains. Dirt roads wind through farms and forest, but none make it to the river bottom. The terrain is so steep that it’s simpler for Landau’s team to wade through the river itself to access the sites where the flower grows.

© Photo: Gabe Cahlan A white fringed orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis) with a butterfly landing on it.

A white fringed orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis).

It’s not a simple wade in the park, though; the team must also slide down a steep creekside, battle coarse undergrowth, scramble around rocks, wade through chilly streams, and finally perch on a precarious ledge so they can scan the tough, unforgiving landscape with binoculars in hopes of sighting the elusive orchid. Luckily, it takes dedication to hunt for the white lady’s slipper, which is helpful in keeping this fragile, enigmatic species protected.

Like the Canby’s dropwort, suppression of natural fire cycles, leading to an encroachment by woody plants and brush has contributed to pushing this flower to the brink of extinction. Residential development, alterations in the watershed system, and competition for resources with other invasive species have also made the chances of survival increasingly slim.

And despite the challenges, sometimes the most determined of orchid poachers manage to locate the delicately blossomed flower, leaving Landau to simply hope the collectors will look but not touch.

“I’m in a lot of rare plant groups on Facebook,” Landau said. “And every now and again I’ll see my orchids. I know a couple people know where that site is, and they’ll scramble down and take a picture. I’ll reach out to them and very kindly, but personally say this is a private property, this is a rare plant, please respect the fact that we’re protecting it for a very good reason. And they usually understand.”

Landau has had run-ins with poachers, one who had asked permission to collect rare carnivorous pitcher plants on the eastern shore of Maryland. Of course, Landau declined, but on one occasion found the person driving out of the site where the plants are located.

“I notified the Department of Natural Resources, and they said they’ve got their eye on him,” she said. “But there wasn’t anything they could do.”

So Landau reached out to the man directly.

“I said no,” she quipped, impersonating a schoolteacher-like tone. “As far as I know, he hasn’t been back.”

Landau’s passion and love for her land are overwhelmingly obvious and have been the driver behind her decades of work. So, too, is her relationship with the orchids she’s fighting to keep alive in a world increasingly pushing them to the brink.

“I really do love them,” she said. “They’re so mysterious, so much is [happening] behind the scenes, underground. They are so tied in with the ecosystem. They need their pollinators. But you don’t see the microbial fungi although you know it’s playing a role, and the fungi is probably associated with the adjacent deciduous trees that’s 20 feet [6 meters] away. They’re always an exciting find anytime you run across one. Even if it’s the 100th that you’ve seen that day.”

Landau can wax lyrical about her love of orchids for hours. Just don’t ask her for tips on how to raise them.

“I can’t grow them for the life of me. I have a horrible green thumb. I’m terrific in the field. Restoration is what I was made to do. When it comes to house plants? Forget it.”

Lucy Sherriff is a freelance multimedia journalist who covers the environment and human rights. She’s based in Los Angeles, and usually focuses on American West and Latin American coverage.

Anglo-Saxon cave dwelling may have been home to a king who became a saint

By Jack Guy, CNN 

Archaeologists in England have identified a near-complete Anglo-Saxon cave house, which, they say, may once have been the home of a king who became a saint.

© Edmund Simons/Royal Agricultural University Archaeologists say the cave dwelling is much older than previously thought.

Thought to date from the early 9th century, the dwelling in the central English county of Derbyshire was discovered by a team from the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) and Wessex Archaeology, according to a news release published Wednesday.

The team carried out a detailed survey of the Anchor Church Caves in south Derbyshire, concluding that the caves probably date from the early medieval period rather than the 18th century as previously thought.

Edmund Simons, a research fellow at the RAU, told CNN the cave is a "small, intimate space" that is one of the oldest domestic interiors surviving in the UK.

While there are a few churches with intact interiors that date from a similar period, Simons said, "there's nowhere else really where you can walk into somewhere where somebody ate and slept and prayed and lived."

"It's quite remarkable," he added.

The researchers carried out a detailed study to reconstruct a house featuring three rooms, as well as a chapel.

Dating the cave house

A number of factors combined to date the dwelling to the early 9th century, Simons said.

The caves are cut from soft sandstone rock and their narrow doorways and windows resemble Saxon architecture, while a rock-cut pillar is similar to one found in a nearby Saxon crypt.

The Anchor Church Caves are also linked by local folklore and a fragment of a 16th-century book to a saint.

St. Hardulph has been identified as King Eardwulf, who ruled Northumbria until 806. He died around 830 and was buried five miles from the caves, in Breedon on the Hill in Leicestershire

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© Edmund Simons/Royal Agricultural University The cave house is believed to have been home to a former king, Eardwulf, who was later canonized.

Around the time of his death, Viking raids on Britain, which started in the late 8th century, had grown in size.

The Vikings arrived in the area and set up a winter camp in nearby Repton shortly after Hardulph's death. As their Great Heathen Army slaughtered all the local religious figures, this suggests the cave house must date from before their arrival, Simons explained.

"All of these things fit together," he added.

© Mark Horton/Royal Agricultural University The cave was altered in the 18th century, with brickwork and window frames added.

Hardulph would not have been a "beardy weirdy" who lived in the cave alone, said Simons, but a kind of living saint who had servants and disciples and visitors who would come to consult him.

He is one of a number of deposed Saxon kings who lived out their years as monks or hermits as a way of keeping their status.

"A hermit is an important and holy person," said Simons. "It's an incredibly religious period."

18th century renovations

In the 18th century, the caves were modified by local landowner and aristocrat Robert Burdett, who added brickwork and window frames so that he could invite friends for dinner in the "cool and romantic cells" of the caves, according to the press release.

At the time there was a growing interest in Romanticism, an artistic and literary movement that made connections to the medieval period, as well as the picturesque aesthetic of rural England.

Burdett also widened the entrances to get tables, drinks and women in wide skirts into the cave, Simons said.

The analysis is part of a wider project involving more than 170 cave houses in the English Midlands, he said, adding that some date from a similar period and preliminary investigations suggest that a few could be even older than the Anchor Church caves.

"It is extraordinary that domestic buildings over 1200 years old survive in plain sight, unrecognised by historians, antiquarians and archaeologists," Mark Horton, professor of archaeology at the RAU, said in the news release.

"We are confident that other examples are still to be discovered to give a unique perspective on Anglo Saxon England."

The study is published in the Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society.

© Mark Horton/Royal Agricultural University Researchers are analyzing more than 170 cave houses as part of a wider project.

Over 10,000 Amazon rainforest species risk extinction, landmark report warns

CBC/Radio-Canada 

© Leo Correa/The Associated Press Smoke rises from a fire in the Amazon rainforest near the Trans-Amazon highway in Ruropolis, Para state, Brazil, in this November 2019 photo.

More than 10,000 species of plants and animals are at high risk of extinction due to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest — 35 per cent of which has already been deforested or degraded, according to the draft of a landmark scientific report published on Wednesday.

Produced by the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), the report brings together research on the world's largest rainforest from 200 scientists from across the globe.

It is the most detailed assessment of the state of the forest to date and both makes clear the vital role the Amazon plays in global climate and the profound risks it is facing.


Cutting deforestation and forest degradation to zero in less than a decade "is critical," the report said. It also called for massive restoration of already destroyed areas.

The rainforest is a vital bulwark against climate change both for the carbon it absorbs and what it stores. According to the report, the soil and vegetation of the Amazon hold about 200 billion tonnes of carbon, more than five times the world's annual CO2 emissions.

Furthermore, the report said the continued destruction caused by human interference in the Amazon puts more than 8,000 endemic plants and 2,300 animals at high risk of extinction.
'Narrow window' for change, scientist warns

Science shows humans face potentially irreversible and catastrophic risks due to multiple crises, including climate change and biodiversity decline, said University of Brasilia professor Mercedes Bustamante, in a statement published by the SPA.

"There is a narrow window of opportunity to change this trajectory," she said. "The fate of Amazon is central to the solution to the global crises."

In Brazil, deforestation has surged since right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, reaching a 12-year high last year and drawing international outcry from foreign governments and the public.

Bolsonaro has called for mining and agriculture in protected areas of the Amazon and has weakened environmental enforcement agencies, which environmentalists and scientists say has directly resulted in the rising destruction.

A week ago, neighbouring Colombia reported that deforestation rose eight per cent in 2020 versus 2019 — to 171,685 hectares. Nearly 64 per cent of the destruction took place in the country's Amazon region.

According to the report, of the Amazon basin's original size, 18 per cent has already been deforested — mostly for agriculture and illegal timber. Another 17 per cent has been degraded.
Some spots emit more carbon than they absorb

The destruction may threaten the very ability of the rainforest to function as a carbon sink, with potentially devastating results for the global climate change.

A separate study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday showed that some parts of the Amazon are emitting more carbon than they absorb, based on measurements of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide taken from above the rainforest between 2010 and 2018.

Lead author Luciana Gatti, a scientist at Brazil's Inpe space research agency, suggests the increased carbon emissions in southeastern Amazonia — where deforestation is fierce — is not only the result of fires and direct destruction, but also due to rising tree mortality as severe drought and higher temperatures become more common.

Sha’Carri Richardson’s experience hits home for Black women using cannabis for self-care
Julianne McShane 

When Mary Pryor’s mother, 63-year-old Deborah Ann, was struggling with multiple sclerosis-induced pain in 2015, she turned to cannabis after morphine stopped being effective, her daughter said.

© Provided by NBC News

As a result, before she died, her mother’s pain drastically reduced, and “she was able to eat some of her favorite foods,” said Pryor, 39, who lives in New York.

That same year, Pryor — co-founder of Cannaclusive, a group that promotes inclusive representations of cannabis consumers — had started using cannabis to manage her Crohn’s disease after a slate of 20 different medications had left her both in pain and homebound for about a year, she said.

© Cannaclusive Image: Mary Pryor (Cannaclusive)

“When I was taking more aggressive pharmaceutical items, it made my system suffer more,” she said. Pryor felt like she had to choose between cannabis or “medication that makes my life miserable.”

When Pryor heard the news earlier this month that U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson would be barred from competing at the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for THC, the chemical in marijuana, which Richardson said she used to cope with the death of her mother a week earlier, it “struck home for me,” Pryor said.

She’s not alone: Pryor is one of five Black women who told NBC News that they see Richardson’s removal from Team USA as the product of an enduring social stigma against cannabis, particularly against Black people, who are about 3.6 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession despite similar usage rates, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

But these women characterize the plant as a cornerstone of their self-care, particularly through the last year, when daily stressors were exacerbated by both the Covid-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacted Black Americans, and high-profile incidents of police killings of Black people.
An Olympic dream deferred

Richardson tested positive for THC based on a sample collected during the Olympic trials in June. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced, based on the new rules by the World Anti-Doping Agency, that she would be banned from competition for one month, opening the door for her to be placed on a relay team during the later parts of the Olympics in Tokyo.

Richardson earned a shorter ban after completing “a counseling program regarding her use of cannabis.”

“I want to take responsibility for my actions,” she said on NBC's "TODAY" show earlier this month. “I’m not looking for an excuse.”

“I would like to say to my fans and my family and my sponsorship, to the haters, too, I apologize,” she added. “As much as I’m disappointed, I know that when I step on that track, I don’t represent myself; I represent a community that has shown me great support, great love.”

The USADA’s decision would not have prevented Richardson from competing in the 4x100-meter relay at the Olympic Games, but USA Track & Field did not select her for a spot on that team, the governing body announced July 6.

In a statement, USA Track & Field noted it was “incredibly sympathetic toward Sha’Carri Richardson’s extenuating circumstances and strongly applaud her accountability,” but “our credibility ... would be lost if rules were only enforced under certain circumstances.”

The governing body also acknowledged it “fully agrees that the merit of the World Anti-Doping Agency rules related to THC should be reevaluated.”

 Patrick Smith Image: Sha'Carri Richardson (Patrick Smith / Getty Images)

In an earlier statement, USA Track & Field said, “We will work with Sha’Carri to ensure she has ample resources to overcome any mental health challenges now and in the future.”

Video: U.S. track star Sha’Carri Richardson speaks out after suspension over positive marijuana test (NBC News)

Marijuana is legal in Oregon, where the trials were held, but it is still illegal on a national scale. Senate Democrats plan to reveal a draft bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level.

A Gallup poll last year found that 68 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana — the highest rate the polling agency has found since it first started measuring public opinion on the issue in 1969, when only 12 percent of the country supported it.
Cannabis as a way ‘to find center and calm’

Women are turning to cannabis in droves, constituting 59 percent of new cannabis users in 2020, according to research conducted by Brightfield Group, a cannabis market research company. It also found that 21 percent of female respondents used cannabis daily, and 81 percent of overall respondents said cannabis helped them deal with the stress of the pandemic.

For Black women, those stressors have been acute. And for Ebony Andersen and Whitney Beatty, cannabis was crucial to getting through the past year: Both have sons who were aware of — and anxious about — last summer’s uprisings in response to police brutality against Black people, leading the women to turn to the plant to manage the stress that came with talking to their boys about anti-Black racism.

“My son is biracial — having one Black parent and one white parent in the middle of what looked like war was very confusing to him. There was some self-medication that happened for sure, just to survive during that time,” Andersen, 49, said. “It was very much clear and apparent to me that we have to take our own health and our own well-being into our hands.”

Whitney Beatty, left, and Ebony Andersen of Josephine and Billie's. (Robiee Ziegler)

Part of how Andersen and Beatty did that was by launching Josephine & Billie’s, a cannabis dispensary slated to open in Los Angeles in September. (California legalized recreational marijuana use in 2016, but arrests continued to disproportionately target Hispanic and Black people, who were, respectively, about twice and four times more likely than white Californians to be arrested for marijuana in 2019, according to the state’s arm of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.)

Aimed at educating women of color about how to use cannabis as a form of self-care, Josephine & Billie’s will host classes for mothers and older people, among others, about how to make cannabis work for them. They’ll also educate customers about how to use it in conjunction with meditation and other wellness practices, the duo said.

Both Beatty, Josephine & Billie’s chief executive officer and founder, and Andersen, its chief operating officer, came to use cannabis after the medical establishment failed them, they said: Beatty started using it after a doctor recommended she try it following an anxiety attack, and Andersen began using it to manage both her insomnia and migraines. Those experiences shape how they want to teach other women of color to use cannabis — especially in a society in which Black women, like Richardson, continue to be penalized for doing so.

“It is a radical act of resistance. It’s a radical act of taking back a plant that our ancestors cultivated and grew, to utilize the plant for self-care and recreational purposes,” Beatty, 42, said. “Sometimes it’s hard to find educational information that teaches you how to use cannabis specifically. We want to allow people to understand how to apply cannabis to their lives in a way that’s helpful and useful.”

Wanda James is driven by a similar mission, as the first Black woman legally licensed to sell cannabis in the country, she said. The owner of Denver-based dispensary Simply Pure, James, 57, is dedicated to combating the decades-old racialized stigma around cannabis — often by confronting it head-on.

“The way that I normalize cannabis is that I talk about it — when I’m around somebody who has an issue with it, I bring it up,” she said.

In Colorado, longstanding legalization means cannabis use is relatively normalized, James said: Voters approved a plan for medical marijuana in 2000, and recreational sales began in 2014. Black people make up less than 5 percent of the state’s population, but they have been disproportionately penalized for cannabis use, having been arrested on marijuana charges at nearly double the rate of white people in 2017, according to a 2018 state report.

These are among the inequities that drive James to turn to cannabis to find moments of peace.

“We live in a world where we need to find center and calm,” she said. “I believe, for me, that enjoying a joint is that five minutes [of calm]. ... It’s calming, it’s relaxing, it helps you get your head together.”

For Jessamyn Stanley, cannabis is one half of how she finds calm. The other is yoga, and the two are inextricably linked as part of her wellness practice, she said.

 Jessamyn Stanley (Jade Wilson)

“Cannabis really allows for a lot of patience and presence in a way that I think our lives in capitalist society don’t always allow for,” Stanley, 34, said. “In yoga, it allows you to really tap into your most true self, to connect your mind, body and spirit — so cannabis is really the cleansing agent within yourself so that you’re able to have that deeper internal conversation.”

Stanley — who shares her yoga practices and cannabis use with more than 467,000 Instagram followers — began posting about yoga in 2012 and went public with her cannabis use about six years later, she said. The initial reaction from followers was mixed, Stanley said.

“The stigma of what it means to be a cannabis user is so profound,” she said. “It’s something that, as a Black woman, I definitely am very aware of the way that I’m perceived by other people. … Black women are held to a standard that is completely different than the standard that others are held to.”

That double standard is part of what drove Stanley to co-found We Go High NC, a “cannabis justice organization” dedicated to destigmatizing and decriminalizing cannabis use in the state.

Stanley is one among many Black female cannabis users who see the double standard at play in Richardson’s case, she said. But, like James, she sees speaking out about the power of the plant as a personal form of resistance.

“I realized that the reason I never talked about cannabis is because of this stigma, and then I was like, ‘I am a part of the stigma — my silence in not speaking is my co-signature on the whole system,’” Stanley said.

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RIP

Tim Tabbert was known as the singing farmer with very deep ties to the NFU

Forester’s Falls – A solitary tractor stood guard outside the cemetery not far from Tim Tabbert’s farm on the Queen’s Line as a reminder of a man with a deep love for farming, passion for karaoke, a penchant for old tractors and an irrepressible twinkle in his eye.

“He was known as the singing farmer,” his cousin Christine Tabbert said while delivering his eulogy at the cemetery on Monday morning. “He loved karaoke. He loved the attention and the music.”
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Mr. Tabbert, 62, passed away on July 6 at Renfrew Victoria Hospital with family by his side. He had been diagnosed two months before with Glioblastoma, the same brain tumour which took the life of many others before him including Canadian singer Gord Downie.

Born and raised in the farming community, he was the eldest son of five and came from a large extended family, including 33 first cousins.

“The values Tim learned on a farm growing up lasted a lifetime,” Christine said.

As an adult he moved into the Broome homestead of his maternal ancestors and farmed there. He also did custom fieldwork and had a business spreading liquid manure.

“Tim became known up and down the Valley for his hard work and his antics,” she said.

He was also a man of faith, who could be heard telling others “the Lord will provide” when there were the farming concerns of too little rain, too much rain and other issues.

A father of three, she said her cousin showed his love and affection through action and service. He was the dad who would make the ice on the rink at Queen’s Line and took great pride in the quality of the ice and making sure there was a fire for the children to warm up to. After this he also made sure there was a rink at the farm for them too, she added.

Readers of the Leader and the Cobden Sun are familiar with the by-line of Connie Tabbert, who married Tim in 2008 and the two have been inseparable since. Their love was so strong Connie gave up most of her journalistic efforts for farming and milking, joining her husband in his farming life and passion for farming issues. Their love story and wedding in which the happy couple left on one of Tim’s tractors – he had 13 – still captivated the imagination of those who were at the event many years later. They were both deeply involved in the National Farmers Union (NFU) where Tim served in executive positions as director, vice president and president of the local branch as well as regional director and was active at provincial and national conventions.

“He loved going to protests in Ottawa with his manure truck or one of his tractors,” Christine recalled.

One time he filled the manure spreader with water and close to Parliament Hill decided to spread the water. Unbeknownst to him, a police officer was right behind him and it appears Mr. Tabbert did not do a complete job of cleaning out the manure spreader before filling it with water, so the officer was showered with a smelly liquid. The officer started writing up every ticket he could think of, only to be told by his commanding officer no tickets were to be given to protestors.

Known for his white “Santa Claus” beard, he shaved it off for Hospice Renfrew and raised $270 in the proceeds. He was also known for his smoked sausage and loved making it with extended family using the traditional recipe.

His local NFU colleagues recalled a sharp, quick-witted man who was a loyal member and passionate about farming issues.

Lauretta Rice pointed out since Mr. Tabbert grew up on a dairy farm and then raised beef cattle he had a good understanding of various aspects of farming. She also laughed as she recalled his spirit of fun.

“He was always playing tricks,” she said. “He was the joy of the national convention every year. He was up till 4 o’clock having fun and up again at 7.”

She also pointed out she never heard him say a derogatory word about anyone. “He was complementary regardless of who you were,” she said.

Marshall Buchanan, the president of the local NFU chapter, said he appreciated while Mr. Tabbert was a committed farmer, he never let his business take over his life.

“Tim learned he wanted to make a success with his relationship with his friends,” he said. “He spent a lot of time supporting his friends.”

Despite strong opinions, Mr. Tabbert never lost his temper at meetings, he said.

“He would deliver his opinions carefully,” he said. “He did not lecture you. He had dignity in the way he conducted himself.”

He is survived by his wife Connie, children, Christopher (Amy), Amanda (Alain) and Shaun and grandchildren, Henry and Veronica, as well as his mother, Eleanor and siblings, Terry (Jennifer), Bonnie (Kent), Danny (Lynda) and Linda (Vivian) and many nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Debbi Christinck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Eganville Leader

Two endangered right whales entangled in fishing gear in Gulf of St. Lawrence

FREDERICTON — A New Brunswick-based whale-rescue team says two North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are entangled in fishing gear, a dangerous situation experts say risks killing the endangered animals.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Mackie Greene, director of the Campobello Whale Rescue program, said Wednesday the group tried last week to free Snow Cone, a female who had been originally spotted entangled off Cape Cod, Mass., last spring. Greene said an American crew removed some of the rope at the time but had to call off their efforts because of bad weather, adding that the whale continued north into Canadian waters.


"She was spotted in May in the Gulf and we responded and were able to get 30 feet of rope off of the whale, but she still has rope wound in her mouth, in her baleen and some trailing lines," he said.

Greene said his team was able to remove three pieces of rope last week, adding that the animal appears healthy and is feeding; however, he said, more rope needs to be removed. "Snow Cone has a pretty sad story," Greene said. "She's a female, born in 2005. The year before last she had a calf and was coming north and the calf was run down and killed."

He says a larger, mature whale that's also entangled in gear has been spotted about 80 kilometres northeast of Shippagan, N.B., in an area where all the right whales appear to be congregated. Unlike Snow Cone, Greene said it appears the whale likely became entangled in the Gulf — perhaps the result of fishing gear that had been lost.

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans issued a statement Wednesday saying the whale is a five-year-old male and the first entangled North Atlantic right whale reported in Canadian waters since 2019. The whale, it said, appeared to be badly injured, according to a report from a crew aboard a New England Aquarium research ship operating in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

A satellite tag was attached to the gear, the department said, adding that it will continue to track the whale. Greene said his group will try to free that whale this weekend with the help of the Fisheries Department.

As for Snow Cone, Greene said rescuers put a lot of strain on the whale last week and want to give her a bit of time to recover. "We are going to try again to see if we can cut those lines closer to her mouth," he said. "Unfortunately, that's about all we can do. The mouth is always the hardest part to get at. When you get close to them, they'll dive."

Last month, scientists reported a troubling reduction in the length of North Atlantic right whales, suggesting their stunted growth could be the result of hauling around fishing gear. Since June 2017, an unusually large number of the whales have died, reducing the population to fewer than 400 animals — a number that has some experts warning that the species is on the brink of extinction. Ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements account for most of the deaths.

The Canadian government has imposed a series of measures over the past four years to protect the whales, including periodic fisheries closures and mandatory speed limits. At least 34 North Atlantic right whales died between 2017 and 2021 — 21 of them in Canadian waters.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2021.

Kevin Bissett, The Canadian Press

IT WAS A FALSE ARREST ALL THE SAME
Officers cleared of misconduct in takedown of Alberta teen in 'Star Wars' costume

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. — Three southern Alberta police officers have been cleared of misconduct after a restaurant worker in a “Star Wars'' storm-trooper costume and carrying a plastic gun ended up with a bloody nose when she was forced to the ground.© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Lethbridge officers had already been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing for the arrest in May 2020, but were being investigated by the Medicine Hat Police Service for professional misconduct under Alberta's Police Act.

"There is no doubt that this incident was extremely stressful for the woman involved as she likely did not understand what was happening and was not able to see or communicate well through her helmet," Lethbridge police Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh said in a statement Wednesday.

"Firearm calls like this are also very stressful for officers who are trying to process everything very quickly, while protecting themselves and other people in the area from a potentially lethal weapon."

The owner of the Coco Vanilla Galactic Cantina in Lethbridge has said the 19-year-old employee had agreed to carry a toy blaster and wear the elaborate white uniform to get the attention of people celebrating May 4. The day is popular among fans of the movie franchise because of the famous line “May the force be with you.''

That day, two separate 911 calls came in to report a person dressed as a storm trooper was carrying a real firearm, Lethbridge police said.

Three officers responded and saw the person was carrying "what appeared from a distance" to be a black gun, police added.

In the statement, police said two of the three officers drew their weapons and the woman was told to move away from the gun and lay face down on the pavement.

"While the person did drop the weapon, step back and eventually kneel down, they appeared non-responsive to subsequent demands, and there was a belief the person might be searching for a path to escape," the release said.

Brad Whalen, the restaurant owner, said police forced his employee on her stomach, she hit her face and her nose started bleeding.

A video of the encounter, shared on social media, shows an officer standing by the blaster while Whalen yells from the restaurant door that it's fake. A woman can be heard crying.

Mehdizadeh said he reviewed the 250-page report from the Medicine Hat investigators and concluded no officers were guilty of misconduct. He said they saw the subject of the 911 call with what looked like a weapon "alone in the parking lot with no signs, music or activity to suggest the officer should not take seriously the potential threat that was reported."

The police chief also said the officers' actions were consistent with use-of-force policies, the encounter was less than three minutes long and they offered to help the women once they realized there was no threat.

"We do acknowledge the stress and confusion endured by the young woman in the costume, through no fault of her own," he said.

"I am satisfied, however, that our officers, operating in the face of their own stressful circumstance did everything in their power to minimize the impact of this event."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2021.

— By Daniela Germano in Edmonton

The Canadian Press

ENDANGERED WHOOPING CRANES SUMMER IN ALBERTA

Rare whooping cranes raised for wild as COVID rules relax

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A year after pandemic precautions all but halted work to raise the world’s most endangered cranes for release into the wild, the efforts are back in gear.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Fourteen long-legged, fuzzy brown whooping crane chicks — one more than in 2019 — are following their parents or costumed surrogates in facilities from New Orleans to Calgary, Canada.

“We are thrilled to have bounced back in the wake of the pandemic,” said Richard Dunn, assistant curator of the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans.

Adult whooping cranes are white with black wingtips and red caps, and at 5 feet high are the tallest birds in North America. Only about 800 exist, all descendants of about 15 that survived hunters and habitat loss in a flock that migrates between Texas and Alberta, Canada.

Last year, zoos and other places where the endangered birds are bred had to cut staff and reduce or eliminate use of artificial insemination, which requires close work by two or three people, and of having people in shape-disguising costumes raise chicks.

“One chick hatched out at the Calgary Zoo,” Dunn said. “And it had to stay in Calgary because they couldn't cross the border" to get it into either of two U.S.-only flocks.

Both a flock based in southwest Louisiana and one taught to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida by following ultralight aircraft were created in hopes of mitigating disaster should anything happen to the original border-crossing flock, now about 500 strong. The original flock is the only one that can survive without human assistance to increase its numbers.

Seven chicks hatched this year at the Species Survival Center.

Aurora, a male produced there by artificial insemination, is being brought up by his mother and “stepfather,” though his mother is temporarily hospitalized after chipping her beak on their enclosure's chain-link fence.

The other six — five hatched from eggs taken from the wild in Wisconsin and one from an egg bred at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin — are being raised by staffers.

Video: Rare cranes raised for wild as COVID rules relax (The Canadian Press)

The Milwaukee Zoo is raising one chick from an egg received from the crane foundation, and the foundation and the Calgary Zoo are each raising three chicks. The Milwaukee Zoo's chick will remain captive for breeding, Dunn said.

Dunn said Audubon and the crane foundation are the only facilities that use costume-rearing as well as having mated crane pairs bring up babies, and this year only Audubon did so.

Pandemic prospects were still uncertain and vaccines not yet readily available in February, when the foundation had to make its decisions, crane foundation aviculturist Kim Boardman said in an email. “We expect to costume and parent rear again in 2022,” she said.

Audubon’s keepers do checkups and other tasks the chicks won't appreciate while wearing regular clothes, to teach them that humans are to be avoided.

When teaching the chicks to hunt and other crane behaviors, they dress in baggy costumes with the neck of a crane-head hand puppet holding in one loose, black-tipped “wing.” The puppet demonstrates how to pick up insects from the ground, then passes the tasty morsels to a chick.

Although the chicks will be given identifying numbers such as L1-21 when they're released as mottled brown-and-white juveniles late this year, at Audubon they have names: Blizzard, Fog, Hurricane, Lava, Lightning, Tornado — the only female — and Aurora.

It's been a good year in the wild, too — Louisiana's 68 adults included a record 24 nesting pairs. They hatched a record 14 chicks. including two in Texas, and five have survived into July, said Sara Zimorski, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Youngsters that live long enough to fly get numbers starting with LW and the number assigned at hatching. One of Louisiana's five has been seen flying, and, along with a yearling is counted in the 70-member flock. If all five become fledglings, that will tie a record from 2018.

The Wisconsin-Florida flock numbers about 80, with about 120 birds in captivity. Seven eggs were taken from Wisconsin's flock to be raised in captivity, at least 14 more hatched in the wild and six of those survived through June.

Eggs are collected from early wild nests because parents will lay a second if the first doesn't hatch or the chicks die. Collections not only increase the number of chicks per year but in Wisconsin, help keep wild chicks from hatching when bloodsucking black flies are at their worst.

One of Louisiana's Texas-nesting pairs also hatched a chick last year — the first documented since the early 1900s, Zimorski said. Texas is the original flock’s winter home but those birds nest in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.

This year's Texas survivor was hatched by first-time parents and is still very young, Zimorski wrote in an email. “It has a long ways to go!” she said.

Janet Mcconnaughey, The Associated Press

IN EGYPT THE WHOOPING CRANE IS KNOWN AS AN IBIS

Psychedelics Could Be a Medical Game-Changer—So I Tried Them for My Debilitating Headaches
Katherine Ellison

© Julien Pacaud Hallucinogenic drugs are showing promise in treating various health conditions. One writer explores their history and tries one for cluster headaches.

The beefy armed guard at the door of the Church of Entheogenic Plants chuckled at the sight of me, and I guessed what he might be thinking: What’s that 60-something lady doing here?

It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to wonder—and not just because everyone else waiting to pass through the metal detector that day last winter was roughly 40 years younger than I. Vice News has called the Oakland, CA, church, also known as Zide Door, America’s “most prominent ‘magic mushroom club,’ ” implying that its religious decor is a ruse to evade state and federal laws against selling psychedelic drugs. In accepting “contributions” for strains of ’shrooms with names like “Blue Meanies” and “Penis Envy,” Zide Door claims the same exemption that lets the Navajo legally ingest peyote, a traditional sacrament.

Ruse or not, that hasn’t offered much protection. In August 2020 police raided the premises and seized about $200,000 worth of cash and drugs. Pastor David Hodges told me he planned to sue the city government for violating his congregants’ religious freedom.

Potentially breaking the law was not my only concern when it came to trying magic mushrooms. I was an unusually suggestible child in the 1960s, when well-meaning parents scared their kids straight with stories about acid trippers who went blind from staring at the sun, mistook a baby for a turkey and stuffed it in the oven, or woke up convinced they’d turned into a glass of orange juice. In the late 1970s, when many of my college pals were experimenting, I declined even to smoke weed.
The pain in my brain

But last February, I was standing in front of the church out of desperation, hoping that psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms, would relieve my excruciating pain. I was in my 12th week of a siege of cluster headaches, and I felt as if a Lilliputian with a tiny ice pick were jabbing at the back of my right eye for an hour each day, starting at 5 a.m.

Cluster headache is a rare disorder, estimated to affect roughly one or two in 1,000 people (migraines are at least 120 times as common). They’d plagued me for a month or so every two years since 2005, and usually prednisone knocked them out. But this time the only thing that brought even brief respite was—no joke—snorting cayenne pepper, which made me sneeze until I felt as if I might pass out. I also worried that it might be corroding the inside of my nose.

I’m far from the only person seeking out these long-demonized drugs for medical reasons. Using LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA (Ecstasy) to relieve suffering appears to be on the rise. While most self-experimenters use psychedelics to enhance well-being, a portion “self-medicate preexisting mental health conditions,” wrote psychiatrist Adam Winstock, M.D., in the Global Drug Survey. His annual polls of more than 500,000 people suggest that the use of LSD and psilocybin among respondents has roughly doubled over just the past five years. An honorary clinical professor at the Institute of Epidemiology at the University College of London, Dr. Winstock joins other experts in comparing the drugs favorably with prescription antidepressants. “The benefits are really clear for patients,” he says. “They want things that work, work quickly, and don’t require them to take medications every day.”

Americans’ interest in hallucinogens was supercharged by Michael Pollan’s 2018 best seller, How to Change Your Mind. A year later, Johns Hopkins launched a $17 million center to study a variety of illicit-drug therapies that showed promise in treating disorders such as depression, trauma, anorexia nervosa, tobacco addiction, and even post-treatment Lyme disease. Researchers are excited, even as psilocybin and LSD continue to be classified as Schedule I substances, which are seen as having no medical use, a high potential for abuse, and unacceptable risks even under professional supervision.

But if you’ve ever had cluster headaches, you know why they’ve been called“suicide headaches.” People in the midst of an attack are believed to die by suicide at roughly three times the rate of the general population, and sufferers describe the attacks as more painful than childbirth, gunshot wounds, and kidney stones, according to University of West Georgia psychology professor Larry Schor, Ph.D., who has conducted a large survey of cluster-headache patients (and suffers from them himself). On average, cluster-headache patients take more than five years to be properly diagnosed, after which even prescribed drugs may fail. Early on, I tried taking sumatriptan, a drug for migraine headaches, and at first it was helpful, but then made my headaches worse, sending me to an emergency room three times. As this latest attack stretched on, I knew I had to try something new

.

© Julien Pacaud woman with a headache on a bench

From hedonism to healing

Researchers first investigated the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs in the 1950s and 1960s, when hundreds of Americans, including actors Cary Grant, Rita Moreno, and Jack Nicholson, joined a series of supervised experiments in California. (Grant credited acid with helping him control his alcohol use and cope with the long-unexplained disappearance of his mother when he was a child.) The backlash began after Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary and psychologist Richard Alpert (who became known as Ram Dass) championed wider use of LSD and psilocybin, with Leary’s call to “turn on, tune in, drop out” becoming a slogan of the counterculture. President Richard Nixon branded Leary “the most dangerous man in America” and in 1971 launched the war on drugs.

These days, the hope is that psychedelics may help the many millions of Americans who suffer from depression and other serious mental disorders, particularly when nothing else has worked. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 17.3 million U.S. adults have at least one major depressive episode each year, while up to 30% don’t receive sufficient help from mainstream anti-depressants. PTSD affects nearly 8 million people, including more than half a million U.S. veterans, while 40 million adults have anxiety. (Some of these rates were higher during the pandemic.) Researchers have been studying psychedelics to alleviate cluster headaches since 2006, but I learned of them through an activist patients’ group called Clusterbusters, which has touted their use since 2002.

Amid all the hoopla, some people may get a boost from just the idea of psychedelics: More than 60% of participants in a 2020 study said they’d experienced mind-altering effects after taking a placebo. Still, researchers have gathered sufficient evidence of psilocybin’s power to convince the FDA in 2019 to classify it as a“breakthrough therapy” for two types of severe depression. That fast-tracked it for approval, similarly to how esketamine (related to ketamine, an illegal party drug) was OK’d for treatment-resistant depression that same year.

Video: We're bring back these psychedelic drugs, 'but as a medical treatment against various forms of mental health issues': atai Life Sciences Founder (Yahoo! Finance)

The treatment of PTSD may be the next potential boon: Some scientists have found MDMA both safer and more effective in treating trauma than conventional antidepressants. In May, a major study published in Nature Medicine provided new evidence along these lines, and late last year Rick Doblin, executive director of the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), predicted that MDMA-assisted psycho-therapy for PTSD could win federal approval as soon as next year.

It’s not clear just how psychedelics might supply mental and emotional benefits—or, in my case, relieve physical pain—but scientists have some ideas. Studies suggest that psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs affect levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter and hormone involved in regulating mood. MDMA is believed to activate receptors for oxytocin, a peptide linked to trust and bonding, possibly helping soften trauma sufferers’ defensive shells. So far the explosion of discoveries has involved small studies that need to be expanded and replicated. Yet the drumbeat of positive developments has likely helped increase official tolerance in some parts of the nation.
Risky business

Many jurisdictions are considering rewriting their laws on psychedelics. In May 2019, Denver became the first U.S. city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, and Oakland, CA, followed suit. Voters in Oregon and Washington, DC, have approved the therapeutic use of psilocybin, while California lawmakers recently took up a bill to decriminalize some hallucinogens. The trend is familiar: Whereas barely 20 years ago cannabis was outlawed everywhere in the United States, today 36 states and four territories have legalized it for medicinal purposes. (Decriminalization doesn’t make a drug legal. It simply reduces penalties associated with it. Selling psychedelics is still illegal everywhere, and possession of them can lead to federal prosecution that could result in up to a year in prison and $1,000 or more in fines.)

Of course, breaking the law isn’t the only risk involved. Some recreational magic mushroom users have reported frightening bad trips, panic attacks, seizures, and hospitalizations. Scientists and drug aficionados alike warn against casual use, and participants in psychedelic studies to date have all been carefully screened and supervised, with researchers rigorously excluding subjects with preexisting conditions such as heart trouble, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. “I really worry about people in a time of crisis choosing to take psychedelics without supervision and making themselves worse,” says Dr. Winstock, whose surveys indicate that approximately 8% of LSD and psilocybin users had a bad experience over the past year.
Targeting my headaches

Still, in reporting a story for the Washington Post, I learned that many scientists regard psilocybin as one of the least toxic and addictive of all recreational drugs, and that the reports of bad trips involved much larger doses than the therapeutic amount for my cluster headaches. In severe pain, I decided to give it a try.

“Psilocybin’s chemical structure is similar to melatonin’s,” says Yale University neurologist Emanuelle Schindler, M.D., Ph.D., referring to a hormone that regulates circadian rhythm and is taken supplementally for insomnia as well as headache prevention. It is also akin to triptans, which are prescribed to treat one headache at a time. “Psilocybin has a longer-term effect, though,” notes Dr. Schindler, who is currently working on a study on its effects for cluster headaches.

Over the years, Clusterbusters members have offered invaluable support to Dr. Schindler and other scientists, recruiting patients for their studies and providing them with information from their self-treatment with psychedelics. In 2004, the group convinced Harvard researchers to conduct a pioneering study on psilocybin and LSD. The Harvard team gathered testimonies from 53 cluster-headache patients, most of whom said the drugs had helped. John Halpern, M.D., a psychiatrist who led the Harvard study, told me he has since seen many patients go from being “incapacitated” to “having as close to a functional cure as you can get.” The two drugs may prove to be “the best we have to offer” to cluster-headache patients, he adds, “although legally we can’t offer them.”

I followed Clusterbusters’ recommended protocol of taking small amounts of psilocybin—more than microdoses, but short of what would lead to tripping—brewed in a multi-ingredient tea containing lemon, honey, vitamin C, and a little instant coffee, with three doses spaced five days apart. The first time I didn’t feel anything remarkable until the next

morning, when I had a more-awful-than-usual headache: the “slap-back” side effect the website had warned me to expect. Over the next five days, however, I noticed that there were two days when I didn’t have a headache at all.

Maybe a little overconfident, I overestimated with my second dose. Twenty minutes after sipping the tea, I found myself staring for half an hour at our backyard pistache tree, which seemed to have grown beckoning silvery branches. I felt as if I could see the tree breathing, which was wondrous. I was back to myself within a couple of hours, and the next morning I had another slap-back headache. But the two mornings after that—nothing. For the rest of the week, the headaches were milder.

Then I took my third dose, measuring carefully this time. The only psychedelic-ish effect that I noticed—really noticed—was that my dog’s face was utterly gorgeous. Then I fell asleep next to my husband. I woke up to yet another fierce headache the next morning, but the morning after that I had zero pain. Zero again the next day, and the next. Two months have now passed without my having a single headache.

© Julien Pacaud scientist researching psychedelics

Increasing availability

As the psychedelic-therapy revolution matures, there have been calls to ensure that its potentially powerful benefits are accessible to all. That will require some significant change considering that Black people are much more likely than white people like me to be arrested for possession of any drug, even after decriminalization.

“Equity of access to these drugs will address the burden of disease we know is greatest among people of lower socio-economic status, who have higher rates of depression and PTSD,” says Dr. Winstock. MAPS has trained scores of therapists of color to prepare for the time when treatment with them becomes legal.

In the meantime, research continues. “It doesn’t strike me as weird that the same molecule used by someone in a bedroom listening to Pink Floyd can also be a healing drug,” says Dr. Winstock. He says that psychedelics’ capacity to “disrupt existing brain networks and allow new pathways and new ways of thinking is why they can have wide potential in so many different conditions.”

As for me, I can’t say whether my cluster-headache siege ended on its own or whether using ’shrooms really did do the trick. But I do know that I’ve got a plan if the headaches return—and that I’ll never look at our pistache tree the same way again.

This article originally appeared in the August 2021 issue of Prevention.

Watching for birds & diversity: Audubon groups pledge change


BOSTON (AP) — When Boston socialites Minna Hall and Harriet Hemenway sought to end the slaughter of birds in the name of 19th century high fashion, they picked a logical namesake for their cause: John James Audubon, a naturalist celebrated for his stunning watercolors of American birds.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Now, 125 years after the founding of the Massachusetts Audubon Society for the Protection of Birds, the organization and the nearly 500 Audubon chapters nationwide it helped inspire are reckoning with another side of Audubon’s life: He was also a slaveholder and staunch opponent of abolition.

In the year-plus since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, Audubon chapters have pledged to do more to atone for the past, including diversifying their staff and finding ways to make natural spaces more welcoming to people of color. It’s part of a broader reckoning within the wider environmental movement, which for years has faced criticism for its racist origins and lack of diversity.

“At this point, if people are not part of what they’re trying to protect, that’s an issue,” said Debbie Njai, an Illinois resident who founded the outdoor group BlackPeopleWhoHike.

The Mass Audubon published an essay last fall acknowledging how Audubon’s family's wealth came in large part from running a Caribbean sugar plantation. It has also pledged to have people of color make up 25% of its board of directors, and hopes to open more wildlife sanctuaries in communities of color.

The National Audubon Society, which is based in New York and is separate from the Mass Audubon, has similarly delved into its namesake’s legacy in a series of essays.

And the Sierra Club publicly apologized last July for the racist views of its founder, John Muir, who openly dismissed American Indians as dirty savages. The Oakland-based group has also committed $5 million to boost its environmental justice work and recently voiced support for Black reparations.

Environmental groups understand the future of their movement hinges on changing their white, elitist reputation, said David O’Neill, president of the Mass Audubon.

“If we don’t get younger and we don’t get more diverse, we’re not going to have people to advocate on behalf of nature, and that’s not good for anyone,” he said during a recent visit to the group’s Boston Nature Center, an urban wildlife sanctuary in a majority Black neighborhood that it hopes to replicate in other Massachusetts communities of color.

Green organizations appear to be making progress on improving staff diversity, but their leadership remains predominantly white, said Andres Jimenez, head of Green 2.0, a Washington, D.C., group that puts out an annual report card on diversity in the environmental sector.

In its most recent report, Green 2.0 found that the nation’s largest green groups added, on average, six people of color to their staff, two to their senior management and one to their board of directors between 2017 and 2020.

“We need to see that change up top to move the ball in an accelerated way," Jimenez said.



Bird conservation brought the country’s latest racial reckoning to the environmental movement’s doorsteps, and, in many ways, it’s where the calls for change are most acutely felt.

There's a growing campaign, for example, to drop the eponyms of birds that honor slaveholders and white supremacists — Bird Names for Birds.

The catalyst was a dispute between a Black birdwatcher and a white woman with her dog in New York’s Central Park that went viral last summer, sparking #BlackBirdersWeek and other similar efforts to highlight Black nature enthusiasts and the discrimination and other challenges they face in the outdoors.

Christian Cooper, the birder at the center of that controversy, stressed organizations like the Audubon have been taking steps to address diversity long before his viral moment, even if some have yielded mixed results.

A board member with the New York City Audubon Society, Cooper said his chapter has been trying to draw more diverse members through modest events like last month's Juneteenth birdwatching and potluck picnic.

“The organizations that are having the most success are those that are trying new things,” Cooper said. “The reality is that fixing centuries of ingrained racial bias as it manifests in the environmental movement is hard and uncomfortable work."

At the National Audubon Society, the racial reckoning has boiled over into staff unrest.

Spurred by complaints of a toxic workplace, an outside audit concluded in April that a “culture of retaliation, fear, and antagonism toward women and people of color" existed at the organization. Longtime CEO David Yarnold swiftly resigned.

Tykee James, who serves as the organization’s government affairs officer in Washington, is among the staffers pushing to form a labor union to address diversity and other workplace problems. He also wants the Audubon to be more vocal in publicly advocating for environmental justice causes.

“The culture that we’ve had in this organization hasn’t been one for workers of color, hasn’t been one for women, hasn’t been one for nonbinary folks,” James said.

Matt Smelser, a spokesperson for the Audubon Society, referred to a May statement from the group, which said “bullying and other bad behavior” won't be tolerated going forward. The organization also continues to search for a permanent CEO and has committed to remaining neutral in the unionization efforts, he added.

Back at the Mass Audubon, O’Neill says the organization’s board has added new members so that 17% of them are people of color. The staff of more than 950 is about 65% white.

Scott Edwards, an ornithologist at Harvard, said the jury’s still out on whether these early steps are enough. Some green groups will have to re-imagine their mission and pivot to more urban populations, he said.

“Organizations will have to think creatively about how to get communities of color more connected with nature,” said Edwards, who is Black. “Show them that their voices are needed and wanted. Make them feel included in the larger effort of conservation.”

Mamie Parker, who worked for decades at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and was its first Black regional director, advises environmental groups to approach racial equity like a conservation challenge.

“When you plant a tree to restore a forest or take care of bald eagles to rebuild their population,” the retired biologist from Dulles, Virginia, said, "it takes years before those efforts bear fruit.”

Philip Marcelo, The Associated Press