07.03.22: Woods Hole’s Woodwell Climate Center; Kelp Us If You Can, Bags from Barkcloth, and a Meaty Poll for You

Saving Birds, Saving More

Our Bluedot email was active this weekend when co-editor Jamie sought advice on what to do regarding a Belted Kingfisher that had flown into a glass door. Should she move the bird? Leave it alone? Move it out of the blazing sun and into the protected shade of a shrub while it recovered? (Answer to that last one was yes.) Biodiversity Works’ Luanne Johnson (that’s her in the photo, with Angela Luckey) responded with this handy info. We all want to do what’s right and kind, to protect what we can.

As we continue to absorb what feels like a firehose of bad news (we’ll have more to say about the SCOTUS ruling on West Virginia vs. the EPA, which paves the way for lots of anti-climate litigation), I take comfort in the work being done by so many of us. Not just save-one-Belted-Kingfisher work, but work that is broad and focused on systemic change. Work on building out EV infrastructure, like the woman I spoke with this week at Union of Concerned Scientists. The Oak Bluffs Planning Board finally killing artificial turf. The work of the two women in Oregon’s depavement movement, featured in an upcoming “What’s so bad about…?” story. Work that reflects the Think Global, Act Local ethos.

That ethos will be celebrated on July 19 at the MV Museum in “Crafting Equitable Solutions to the Climate Crisis,” sponsored by MV Bank and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and featuring Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah, among others. The event is available to all via Zoom; info is here. Happy Independence Day. —Leslie Garrett and Jamie Kageleiry

Making your way down the Woods Hole road from Falmouth to the ferry, you’ve probably seen the wind turbine spinning next to a building that some of us might have assumed was part of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. It’s not a WHOI building, but instead an internationally renowned center for climate research that George Woodwell started almost 40 years ago in his basement. “Today,” Sam Moore writes, Woodwell “employs nearly 100 scientists and staff, whose work on everything from permafrost to wildfires is shaping our understanding of the world we live in — and what we’re doing to it.”

Dear Dot,
Why can’t you compost cheese, yogurt, or meat?
—Nina Maruca, via email

Dear Nina,
I am meticulous about clearing my plate. Even so, the occasional meat scrap or piece of cheese evades my stomach. And I feel guilty about tossing those morsels in the trash to rot in a landfill.

While you technically can compost meat and dairy products, a lot can go wrong along the way. The Environmental Protection Agency places meat and dairy on its “What Not to Compost” list along with pet waste, charcoal ash, and diseased plants among other items.

But why? Meat, to start, can attract rodents or pests to your compost bin. Raw meat also could be infected with E.coli or salmonella, which would allow bacteria to spread to the crops you’re putting compost on and ruin them.

Dairy products also attract pests. And they can cause the food scraps to clump together, creating anaerobic digestion, which results in foul smells.

While there are a few options to compost such items at home, the process is a lot more difficult to get right, especially for the beginner composter. I chatted with Roxanne Kapitan from Garden Wisdom to get her two cents…