I have climate anxiety.

I think many folks in my generation – what I call the ‘Captain Planet Generation’ – do. I spent all of my school years being told to save the rainforest, save the everglades, save the oceans by recycling and cutting up the plastic rings from pop cans so they don’t strangle sea turtles.

Back then, we still had a chance to save those places by doing those things. But thirty years later, we’re in a worse predicament. Even Dr. Jane Goodall, my childhood idol who left her field work with chimpanzees 37 years ago to try to help the cause, can’t inspire much hope for me. It’s incredibly overwhelming. I still want to help the environment, but if my efforts are at the front of my mind every single day, I risk drowning in a sea of climate grief.

My solution? Make a positive difference by doing high-impact, low-mental-energy things. I call it ‘lazy environmentalism.’

Though the word ‘lazy’ typically has a pejorative meaning, I am reclaiming it in this context. Lazy environmentalism doesn’t mean I don’t care enough to do anything. Rather, it means that I care a great deal, but don’t have the mental bandwidth to make the kind of changes that require a lot of time and energy, such as going vegan or riding a bicycle for daily transportation.

For me, lazy environmentalism means I only have to think about a given effort once or twice a year.

Don’t blow, barely rake

The ultimate lazy environmentalist move? You’ve probably heard of it: ‘Leaving the leaves.’ It turns out that not doing yard chores is a great way to help the environment.

This is the time of year when I’m driven crazy by leaf blowers running at all times of the day. I embrace the silence and simplicity of not raking my leaves at all, except for maybe along walking pathways.

Perhaps, like me, you’d never given much thought to what happens to bugs in the winter. They just seem to suddenly disappear in the fall and magically reappear in the spring. Well, what really happens is they burrow under those fallen leaves where it’s nice and warm from the slow decomposition process that occurs between winter and spring.

Maeve Rafferty, Tree Pittsburgh’s education coordinator, says, “I love to watch robins come to my yard in the spring and flip over the leaves with their beaks to find insects. So you’re really providing benefits to all sorts of species by leaving the leaves.”

Housing for bugs

Another thing I don’t do is clean up my garden beds until early spring. I leave all the hollow stems up, again to provide shelter for overwintering insects, which are facing population collapse that could endanger the entire food chain. Rafferty says I could also cut the stems back to about six inches, since in the wild said stems would be naturally broken by animals wandering through the landscape, and the hollows are what the insects need more than the intact stems. “It’s just giving them a bit of help in a more managed landscape situation,” she says.

To supplement my stems, I also keep a small insect house on my front porch. I bought mine at a local dollar store, and it looks like an open birdhouse with straws inside. This mimics those natural hollow stems and offers a place for insects to burrow, lay eggs or hibernate.

“I love them,” Rachel Handel, communications director for Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, says of insect houses. “Though they actually require maintenance that a lot of people don’t do on them. If you don’t maintain them, it’s not doing all the good it could do.”

To maintain your insect house, check it at the end of summer and clean out unoccupied cells. You may want to move an occupied insect house into a garden shed or unheated garage for the winter to protect it from wind and snow. You’ll also want to replace the parts every few years to avoid attracting mold or parasites.

If the idea of cleaning an insect house doesn’t appeal, then you can still provide shelter for native insects by – yet again – not doing a yard chore, this time mulching. “You can leave bare patches of soil that aren’t covered in mulch, especially in the sunlight, as a place for bees to nest in the ground,” Rafferty says. “These are native bees that don’t sting or make hives. They make individual nests in the ground.”

Let it grow before you mow

Once spring arrives, there’s more good news on the yard chore front: Delay that first mowing as long as you can.

“There’s a new movement called No-Mow May,” Handel says. “People wait as long as they can to mow their lawn for the first time each spring.”

Delaying that mow, or simply mowing less often (“Low-Mow Spring”) allows dandelions and clover to bloom in your yard. “It gives you an opportunity to support wildlife while the rest of the world is catching up,” Handel says. “The trees aren’t in bloom in early spring; there aren’t a lot of flowers yet. You’re creating a little environment right within your lawn so that if you don’t cut it, you’re providing food for pollinators ahead of other plants.”

Of course, your neighbors or local code enforcement officials might not be as enthused about No-Mow May. To help with that, the Audubon Society sells signs in its gift shops that say, “My yard isn’t mowed on purpose: I’m helping pollinators!”

To avoid the need for mowing outright, Phoebe Shackeroff, a leader of Climate Reality Pittsburgh and Southwest Pennsylvania, suggests planting more densely. “Some people call it meadowscaping,” she says. “Groundcover-style plants can fill in the spaces between larger plants and shrubs, keeping grass from growing.”

Plant local

Once the warmer weather starts and you begin thinking about plants for your garden, all of the folks I spoke to for this article said the same thing: Go native. “It doesn’t get a lot easier than native plants,” Handel says. “They’re uniquely designed to thrive here, and they’re perennials.”

I planted native common milkweed in my yard years ago, and have had the pleasure of hosting many monarch butterflies and other pollinators within it. It’s one of the few plants that doesn’t get zapped by the full afternoon sun in front of my house, so I’m even happier to have it.

Helpfully, the Audubon Society holds a native plant sale at Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve starting in May each year featuring flowers, shrubs and trees for a variety of environments. Whether your yard is sunny or shady, wet or dry, you can find low-maintenance plants there that will help create an oasis for native wildlife.

You can even get native trees for free. “If you don’t have trees but you’d like one, Tree Pittsburgh has a tree adoption event every spring and fall and people can register for up to three trees,” Rafferty says.

Both Rafferty and Shackeroff pointed out that native plants absorb far more stormwater than grass does, keeping it out of your basement. Even planting native plants in pots along a patio can help with this, Shackeroff says.

Constrain the cat

This one might not even sound like environmentalism: I keep my cats indoors.

Outdoor cats can be incredibly destructive to native wildlife. The International Union for Conservation of Nature includes domestic cats on its World’s Worst Invasive Species list, and a 2016 study by Australian researchers cited cats as having contributed to the extinction of 63 species of mammals, birds and reptiles, and placing further species at significant risk.

Seeing as bird populations have plummeted by 29% since 1970, according to a 2019 study led by Cornell University – that’s nearly 3 billion missing birds – they need all the help they can get. Your cat will thank you, too: even well-cared-for cats face significant health risks by going outside, from parasites and disease to physical dangers.

Buy thoughtfully

At the consumer level, Shackeroff suggests buying more products packaged in cardboard than in plastic, such as powdered laundry detergent, deodorant and lip balm. Bar soap can also cut down on single-use plastics, though you’ll want to find a variety that uses sustainable palm oil.

Another of my tricks is to bulk-buy coffee from Grounds for Change, a family-owned, certified organic processing company that is also carbon-free certified. I buy their Rainforest Trust blend, through which they make a donation to that organization. We also prepare it using an electric percolator, which is far more energy-efficient than the gas stove for heating water.

Low-effort energy changes

The best lazy environmentalism is the kind that is completely out of sight, out of mind. Several years ago, my family took advantage of Phipps Conservatory’s ongoing Green Power Drive to switch to a green energy provider. You can visit daily from noon to 5 p.m. and find representatives – typically in the Tropical Forest Room – to help you make the switch. The best part is that if you change providers on the spot, you get a free 12-month Phipps membership, or a free 6-month renewal if you’re already a member.

Since I set up the new plan, I simply call once per year to lock in a steady rate, though if you don’t mind a variable rate, you can be even lazier and forgo the call altogether.

Because you’re still drawing power from the local grid, you may not be using the actual green energy generated by the company you’ve chosen. But Dr. Joseph Conklin, senior extension educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension, explains that “when you switch to a green energy provider, you’re essentially offsetting the impact of your energy use.”

The biggest thing you can do to help the environment around your house?

“Awareness,” Conklin says. “Look at your electric bill. It should give you a number there to compare your energy use to your neighbors’. It’ll tell you if you’re energy efficient or not.”

Conklin recommends checking with your energy company to see if you can get a free energy audit of your home. If you can’t get a free audit, you can get a reduced price – 30% of the normal cost – through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Turn down the heat bill

One easy thing to do is to use an attic bag. “This is an insulated bag that costs about $35 on Amazon that you put around the attic hole to your crawlspace,” Conklin says. It can reduce a major source of energy leaks in your home and cut down on heating costs.

Conklin also recommends installing a smart thermostat. “That’s huge,” he says. “The average homeowner, with the help of a YouTube video, can install one in an hour or two.” Once installed and programmed correctly, you can see how environmentally friendly your heating and cooling habits are. “If you like your house to be 72 degrees, how about trying 71?” Making this small change can have big environmental benefits.

Appliance science

In terms of household appliances, Shackeroff recommends replacing gas appliances with electric ones as they reach the end of their usefulness. Both she and Conklin recommend installing a heat pump in place of a HVAC unit. “A heat pump is three times more efficient than an air conditioner,” Conklin says. He also suggests heat pump dryers and water heaters.

There’s a lot of government funding available for homeowners to make energy-efficient improvements to their homes. The Penn State Cooperative Extension is keeping up with all the latest information for these programs and hosts regular webinars to educate homeowners.

I was happy to pick up some new tips from the professionals I interviewed for this article; I’m hoping to add some of them to my ‘lazy’ repertoire. If this list seems like too much for you, start small and add in steps as you can. It’s better to do one small thing than to do nothing.

Your climate anxiety will thank me.

Melanie Linn Gutowski is a freelance writer and museum educator and can be reached at melanielinngutowski@gmail.com.

The post The lazy Pittsburgher’s guide to going (a little) green appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

If your social media feeds are anything like mine, they’ve been filled with “my Barbie collection” posts ever since Margot Robbie started doing press events dressed in designer versions of the doll’s most iconic outfits. Weeks before Greta Gerwig’s film was actually released, my friends were posting about Barbies they’d had in their own collections, whether they still had the actual dolls or could only share stock images. This exercise in collective nostalgia led me back to one extra special Barbie memory from when I was 11 years old.

It was Christmas Eve 1993. My family and I had gathered at my paternal grandmother’s house for our annual feast of fish (not seven, but plenty). Once the calamari, smelts and shrimp were cleared away, it was time for the part every kid looks forward to at the holidays: presents!

There were 17 of us grandchildren – 14 granddaughters, with birth dates ranging from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. As you’d imagine, Christmas shopping was quite an undertaking. Typically, my grandmother would buy one type of present for the younger girls and another for the older ones. But Christmas 1993 was different: One by one, we were each handed a rectangular box, all the same size and weight. And all around the room, we each unwrapped Italian Barbie. Fourteen of them!

Now 95, my grandmother, Antonetta Conforto Kovacic, can’t recall exactly where she purchased all those dolls. That’s not surprising, because she had to visit multiple stores to get her hands on 14 Italian Barbies – as collector’s items, these dolls tended to be sold in fancier department stores rather than toy stores or the local Hills or Kmart. What she does clearly remember is having purchased one for each of her 14 granddaughters, including her newest one, then an 8-month-old infant.

It may seem odd to give 14 girls of such varying ages the same gift. But looking back 30 years, it’s clear to me that my grandmother’s gift-giving that Christmas embodies so much of the complexity of the immigrant experience in America, which she personified but could never express as perfectly in words as she did through those wrapped boxes.

In 1979, Mattel began releasing international Barbie dolls, the first cohort of which included Italian Barbie, Parisian Barbie and Royal Barbie (England). As the series went on, they were dubbed “Dolls of the World” and the featured countries greatly expanded. These were intended as collector’s items and were not marketed as part of the “play line” commonly found in toy stores and advertised on television.

The first Italian Barbie was dressed in clothing that was clearly more about American ideas of ethnicity than about actual ethnic garb. 1979 Italian Barbie wore a green, white and red colorblock skirt with a blue fringed apron, a frilly peasant blouse and a floppy sun hat. Looking at pictures of that original doll, I get clear Sophia Loren vibes, but the clothing is more kitsch than an homage to Italians.

Luckily, in 1993, Mattel released a second version of the doll, this time sporting actual folk costume. And it wasn’t just any folk costume; it was specifically the Neapolitan costume. I think this detail especially is what made my grandmother so keen to buy an Italian Barbie for each of her granddaughters.

My grandmother, a war bride at age 17, immigrated to the United States in 1946 from Naples. She had been dreaming of “l’America” for years by that point, and given the destruction caused by the Allied bombings of her hometown during World War II, it’s not difficult to understand why she might have dreamed of an escape.

She says she had dolls growing up – “babydolls,” as she has always called every doll as long as I can remember, no matter what age group the doll in question is meant to represent. Though none of them made the journey with her to the States, where she settled in McKeesport.

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When Barbie was first created in 1959, my grandmother was in the thick of raising six children, only one of whom was a girl. My aunt was the main recipient of the dolls until, in her later years and with grandchildren now, my grandmother started collecting Barbies for herself. Of course, as an adult, she didn’t intend to play with them. What had started as a clandestine collection of Holiday Barbies hidden from her third husband under the bed gradually migrated to a special case in her living room.

For many women, my grandmother included, Barbie represents something very American. A Barbie doll, with her pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair, is the exact inverse of women like my grandmother – immigrant women with dark skin, hair and eyes, who were trying to assimilate as best they could into American culture. In my mind, finally seeing herself and her own specific Neapolitan culture reflected in a doll she’d been purchasing for decades is what made it so important to her that all her granddaughters have one. While not all 14 of us have outwardly Italian features, we are all part of the Italian heritage that my grandmother has always been so proud to share with us, especially through food.

If there was a “representation matters” conversation happening in 1993, I was obviously not aware of it at 11 years old. But I do know that seeing a Barbie who looked like me – with brown hair and brown eyes and olive skin and wearing the gold hoop earrings I favored – made me glad. My sisters and I opened and played with our Italian Barbies, dressing them in clothing we’d stripped from their blonde counterparts. The earrings were inevitably lost and parts of the traditional costume were scattered among various toy bins. But my Italian Barbie was well-loved – so well-loved that I felt the need to hunt down a pristine one on eBay once the “Barbie” movie nostalgia machine began.

Now, as a mother myself, I can appreciate the time, effort and care that went into my grandmother’s gift-giving 30 years ago. To us as kids, they were just pretty dolls we got to unwrap. But with the benefit of hindsight, I know that particular Barbie was so much more.

Melanie Linn Gutowski is a writer and historian. If you would like to send a message to Melanie, email firstperson@publicsource.org.

The post How 14 Italian Barbies expressed, in plastic, what my immigrant grandmother could never put into words appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

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Chances are, you’ve been building the skills needed to do citizen science projects already — obsessive pandemic bird feeder watching, anyone? — so recording and sharing your observations are a natural next step. What’s more, getting youngsters involved in projects like these now may make that middle school science project way easier years later.

Most of these projects require minimal training — the ability to count and an interest in nature are the basic tools needed. You likely have the other equipment, like a pair of binoculars, a porch light, and yes, even your smartphone.

The following projects allow for casual participation and are easy to do with young children. And with frequencies varying from a single day per year to weekly and season-long runs, you are sure to find a project that will satisfy the nature nerds in your life.

As far as ease of participation and accessibility go, Firefly Watch is the perfect gateway project to get folks of all ages into citizen science.

“You just have to be old enough to count, and be sighted,” says Alex Dohan, the statewide education department coordinator at Mass Audubon, and coordinator of Firefly Watch. “It’s definitely family-friendly.”

Firefly Watch started in 2008 and was originally based at the Museum of Science in Boston. When its founder retired, the project was taken over by Mass Audubon — the oldest Audubon organization in the country — where Dohan has managed it since 2018.

Participants are asked to spend 10 minutes per week watching fireflies — alias lightning bugs — in their backyard, or in another habitat they can visit consistently. During those 10 minutes, they’ll count the fireflies during three 10-second intervals, taking note of their flashing patterns.

Data is reported through an online form. The counting period varies by region, but in Western Pennsylvania, it would be mid-May through late August.

If you’d like to encourage more fireflies to visit your backyard, Dohan offers these tips:

• Leave as much leaf cover as you can, to allow firefly larvae to burrow under it and hatch the following year.
• Turn off any outdoor lighting that isn’t needed for safety, or install motion-sensor lights. Avoid bug zapper-style gadgets, because they’ll kill fireflies, too.
• Don’t use pesticides on your lawn, and mow it less often — every two weeks or less.

Aside from the beauty of their soft glow on a summer evening, Dohan points to more practical benefits of having lightning bugs around. “If you don’t want slugs in your garden, firefly larvae are a good thing to have,” she says.

Turkeys are clearly the star birds of the fall season, for better or worse, but the time to look for them is during the summer. If you’ve seen turkeys wandering around your yard or community, wild turkey biologist Mary Jo Casalena of the Pennsylvania Game Commission wants to know about it.

“The objective of the survey is to know what the reproductive success of wild turkeys is across the state,” Casalena says. “That helps us to assess population trends to determine the structure of the hunting season and what implements can be used.”

All you need to do is count the number of “big birds and little birds,” per the PA Game Commission’s website. At this time of year, that’s easy, because baby turkeys — called poults — are still quite small. Casalena is particularly interested in what she calls the “hen-to-poult ratio.” (Males can be counted and reported, too.)

While there has been a Wild Turkey Sighting Survey conducted in Pennsylvania since 1953, it was only in 2016 that the PA Game Commission invited the public to participate. Previously, data was collected only by commission staff, which limited the observation area. 

“We were capturing a large enough sample size for statistics, but we weren’t capturing enough from different habitats across the state, like people’s backyards,” Casalena says. “When we engaged the public, we were increasing the sample size significantly.”

Casalena compiles an annual report for each sighting survey’s results, and the data is shared with approximately 30 states.

The current Wild Turkey Sighting Survey began on July 1 and runs through Aug. 31. The observation reporting form, as well as photos to help you identify the sex of the birds, are available on the PA Game Commission’s website. Any turkeys you find can be counted, whether they’re on your own property, walking along the road, in a cemetery, or in other public areas. 

A turkey hunter herself, Casalena is quick to point out that the data collected in the survey is for research only. 

“Turkey hunters never like to let other people know where the turkeys are,” she says. “[Survey] data is only used for population tracking and not for law enforcement, and the public can’t see it, either. So hunters aren’t giving up their ‘honey pots’ by participating in the survey.”

A second annual turkey survey takes place in winter, typically from Jan. 1 to March 1. 

“The winter survey helps us locate where we can trap turkeys in the winter and put leg bands on them for research purposes,” Casalena says. 

If you find a turkey with a leg band, alive or dead, Casalena asks that folks use the information on the band to report it. “That’s another way of helping with citizen science,” she says.

Step outside at night and turn on a light — that’s all it takes to attract moths to your yard and observe their eerie beauty. And that’s exactly how easy it is to participate in National Moth Week, according to co-founder Liti Haramaty.

“Any light that is close to a place [the moths] can rest on” will do, says Haramaty.

A marine biologist at Rutgers University, Haramaty co-founded National Moth Week (the last full week of July each year) with entomologist David Moskowitz in 2012, expanding on moth nights the two had organized in earlier years.

“To my surprise, it was a great success,” she says.

The week has two goals. The first, Haramaty says, is “to collect data on moth distribution and biodiversity.” The second? “To just get people outside and looking at the wildlife in their backyards.”

While other projects require counting or collecting data, all you need to do for National Moth Week is take photos once your light and resting spot are set up (a white wall or white cloth will do). Participants then submit photos using the iNaturalist app, Project Noah website or a number of other platforms. The organization also runs a flickr group where participants share their findings.

“There are 10 times more species of moths than butterflies — many of them have not been discovered yet,” Haramaty says. “New species have already been discovered from photographs people have submitted. You don’t have to know what the picture is of — just upload it and other people will identify it for you.”

It may be easy to dismiss moths as pests, but that’s not how Haramaty sees it. “Moths are very important ecologically,” she says. “They are pollinators, especially for species of flowers that open at night. They’re also a food source for bats and birds; many of the caterpillars will be eaten by hatching chicks.”

Several local organizations have scheduled events for this year’s National Moth Week, including the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, Latodami Nature Center and Tree Pittsburgh at Northern Tier Regional Library.

If you’re a fan of things that go “croak” in the night, then FrogWatch USA is the project for you. 

Cori Richards-Zawacki, a professor of biology at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology, has been training Western Pennsylvanians to track local frog species since 2016 (full disclosure: this author is a trained frog watcher).

She and her colleague, Chris Davis, identified FrogWatch “as an easy extension of their existing outreach programs.”

“It’s an easy way that we can keep tabs on amphibians,” Richards-Zawacki says. “There are many threats facing amphibians right now, including disease.”

Frog watchers are trained to monitor wetland habitats, identify the calls of local frog and toad species, and then report their data through a standardized online form. Monitoring takes place after sunset and can occur year-round, as even the absence of calls is valuable information.

“These populations can blink out while we’re not looking,” Richards-Zawacki says. “Having as many ears and eyes on the ground as possible is helpful against that.”

While it can be more challenging to find wetlands to monitor in the city, trained frog watchers can monitor any wetland habitat, including man-made ponds in Western Pennsylvania.

Training sessions typically happen in the late winter, as frogs are preparing to emerge from their cold weather hideouts. Richards-Zawacki and her team provide detailed information on the frog species native to Western Pennsylvania and how to report calling activity. Since the pandemic, the Pymatuning team has conducted all training via Zoom.

“One benefit of Zoom training is that now we can hand over our PowerPoint presentation to participants and they can play the embedded frog call files as many times as they want,” Richards-Zawacki says.

“I’m surprised at how many people know things about their local wetlands already, and they’re in tune with the habitats around them,” Richards-Zawacki says of participants. “There’s a lot of folks out there that are in tune with their environment and I’m always excited to see young people interested in the project.”

Richards-Zawacki credits citizen science with laying the foundation of her own career in biology.

“I got involved in science myself as a young teenager because of participating in a similar project in my home state of Michigan,” she says. “So I’m a good example of how important programs like this are in getting people involved in science and interested in nature.”

In terms of tradition, the Christmas Bird Count has the other citizen science projects beat: It’s the oldest in the country, dating back to 1900. According to Brian Shema, operations director for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, our area has been part of the project since its earliest years. 

“We have data in Pittsburgh to 1903,” he says. “From about 1950 on, we have a really complete set of data.”

Prior to the start of the bird count, hunters observed a tradition known as the Christmas Side Hunt, during which groups of hunters would split into two groups, with the winning side bagging the most birds and other critters. An early Audubon official, ornithologist Frank Chapman, proposed a counter-tradition — an annual Christmas Bird Census.

The highly coordinated project occurs annually on the Saturday following Christmas Day. Shema is the official compiler for Western Pennsylvania’s count, which also means that he coordinates all participation. 

“We welcome families, newcomers, but they need to contact me to participate,” Shema says.

All counting happens within designated “count circles,” each of which is 15 miles in diameter. If your backyard happens to be within one of the circles, you can count at home, or you could count in a park or other area. Shema says he regularly pairs up families or individuals with groups of experienced birders to count together.

While it’s not strictly necessary, the Audubon Society does offer training sessions on how to conduct a count, during which volunteer naturalists go over counting methods and bird identification skills.

“We want to make sure people feel comfortable and be sure that they’re equipped to participate,” Shema says.

“Because the Christmas Bird Count is done in these prescribed circles and on the same day every year, we can track changes in bird ranges,” Shema says. “That’s the power of citizen science — without all the people participating, we would never be able to count all the birds we need to count.”

Great Backyard Bird Count

If staying closer to home and having date flexibility is more your speed, you’ll want to check out the Great Backyard Bird Count. Run by the National Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology, this project takes place over a four-day period every February. 

Participants spend at least 15 minutes on one of the four designated days counting each bird they see or hear during the time period. After identifying the species using a field guide or similar tool, all data is reported directly through the eBird or Merlin Bird ID mobile apps.

“There’s not as many people involved to assist, but it’s more flexible,” Shema says.

You can participate even if you don’t have a backyard. This bird count accepts data from anywhere you find birds, even along your street or in a public park.

“In wintertime, we are counting resident birds, non-migrating birds,” Shema says. “The wintertime birds are the ones we share habitat with for our whole lifetimes.”

Melanie Linn Gutowski is a historian and museum educator.

The post How you can get involved in science from your own Pennsylvania backyard appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.