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Fish Fillets and Environmental Justice

1/29/2021

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There are many rewards to keeping water healthy, including delicious fresh fish

Healthy fresh fillets of fish are one benefit of healthy water.
Clean water stewardship has many benefits, including healthy, fresh fish for dinner!
With our good fortune, last night we dined on fillet of Haddock, a wonderful, mild flavored cold water marine fish, and Largemouth Bass derived from Fish Fry Lake, our research pond. We leverage nature’s wetland effect in Fish Fry, and cycle nutrients into healthy fish, instead of algae and cyanobacteria. Three of us had equal portions of both types of fish. The fish fillets had been dusted with chestnut flour and toasted onion powder and sautéed in olive oil. They passed muster even by my partner Anne’s discerning palate.

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Get US into the Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) Game

1/14/2021

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With the ongoing transition from obtuse and flat-out harmful environmental stewardship associated with Donald Trump, FII has quantified some of the impact of eutrophic, nutrient enriched agricultural water relative to greenhouse gas emissions. In a nutshell, by teaming with BioHaven’s nutrient reduction capacity, the Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) game can see bigger wins with carbon credit reduction revenue. By transitioning nutrient rich water, already at pandemic levels in the developed world (in particular here in the U.S.) FPV launches will qualify for carbon credit revenue.

There are other “applications” for BioHaven’s tried and true capabilities. These include key habitat expansion for critical biota, like pollinators and the growth of native sport fish. Safeguards the world's natural capital, and promises biodiversity! But FPV has not, to this point, been a water quality pitch.

Our company has thousands of island launches under its belt, compared to just hundreds by the entire FPV industry. FII is the American embodiment of constructed wetland, but much more resilient, more versatile, and has a minimal footprint, particularly in the form of real estate, required to pull off a BioHaven water quality solution.

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Invariably Resilient Life

1/8/2021

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The most invariably resilient lifeforms are some of Mother Nature's many prototypes.

Human-scale thinking relative to durability and resilience does not necessarily track with environmental reality. Humans and our science are caught up in intellectual inertia. Here’s a quick, but fundamental example: Today many wetland experts are operating within a belief system that is focused on a mistake. They believe that nature’s food web is initiated by plant life, specifically, by phytoplankton. In fact, in freshwater, this presumption is almost always wrong.
Illustration of nature's way of accomplishing Phophorus uptake

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End-of-Ditch Stewardship Woes Have a Silver Lining

1/7/2021

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First-hand experience of nutrient pollution led us to biomimicry to help solve water's problems

The author shown examining a peat-based natural floating island in Northern Wisconsin to gain a better understanding of how nature cleans water
Bruce Kania examines a peat-based natural floating island in Northern Wisconsin to gain a better understanding of how nature cleans water
My company has spent the better part of a million dollars experimenting with "magic pills". These take several forms in connection with water. But they are truly just experiments. They aren’t magic at all. They are like shooting at clay pigeons… in the dark.

There is a real, and simple, explanation for this. It explains why results are never exactly replicable in natural systems. Put very plainly, there are too many variables in natural systems. From our human perspective this is a problem. From nature’s perspective, this is biocomplexity. It’s a wonder!

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Natural Midge and Mosquito Management

1/6/2021

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In farming, stewardship is fundamental. It must include water. When it doesn’t, nature steps in and provides niche biota that fill every biotic opportunity with some form of life.

Minnows are natures remedy for mosquito and midge larvae
Fathead minnows flourish within the stream channel of a BioHaven StreamBed, with plenty of periphyton to sustain them.
In June here in Montana, conventional farming is tightly focused on silage corn and sugar beets. In this shortgrass prairie setting, irrigation is fundamental. Fly east out of Billings at night and trace agriculture by the lines of lights that depict where water occurs. You see a tree of lights branching out from the Yellowstone, or the Missouri to the North. Montana is limited by water. Eleven inches of moisture per year is the average in this setting.

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January Musings, Basic Health

1/2/2021

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COVID and Basic Health
As our nation transitions through COVID we’ve learned several lessons. People of color are more vulnerable to this particular virus. A higher proportion of this fraction of our population dies when exposed. But think back on the original news blasts about COVID: The luxury cruise liner, the Diamond Princess, where essentially 700 out of 3,711 became infected, and fourteen died over the space of several weeks. None of us knows for sure whether we will survive and sustain through this virus, if and when we are exposed. But we have learned several critical lessons over the last ten months.

  1. If you have a “significant” underlying health condition, you are particularly vulnerable. Significant health conditions include vascular disease, like diabetes, or heart conditions, or respiratory conditions. But not something as mundane as high blood pressure. That is not thought to be a “real” underlying health condition. When you track the incidence of diabetes among people of color, certain ratios jump out. Vascular disease is endemic in certain populations. Often a sign of a lack of basic health, it is both culturally and environmentally induced. Diet and health are culturally and environmentally conditioned.
  2. If you are black or brown, you don’t want to catch COVID. Your diet, your lifestyle, your status relative to underlying health conditions, sets you up to be a victim of this coronavirus. Hopefully readers of this post are among the exceptions to the rule. Hopefully you’ve gone paleo, or gluten free, or ketogenic, with your diet. Hopefully you’ve succeeded in transitioning those around you, your loved ones, towards health by diet. I assure you, that if you’ve succeeded in this that you are the outstanding exception. But know that you are truly present as a major force within our culture’s “transition.” For now, many people of color will die, needlessly, as a result of cultural neglect.
  3. Health by diet is the one variable that all of us can employ against COVID. Personal health is a weapon, a choice, and a tool. It preserves our individual ability to sustain, to live, and to impact those around us. It means you will be there to contribute to transition. It means you can still act, and vote, and demonstrate, and move towards the future we all see in our mind’s eye.

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