THE WILDLANDS NETWORK vision for an 'Eastern Wildway' is bold and visionary............... "Once as wild as anywhere on Earth, Eastern North America is now a patchwork of protected lands sown into a human-dominated landscape"..............."Conservationists have long dreamed of restoring a vast network of wildlands in this region, from the Acadian forests of Maritime Canada to the subtropical Everglades of Florida"............. "In the early 1920s, wilderness visionary Benton MacKaye imagined an “Appalachian Trail” running the length of the Appalachian spine"............."Millions of hikers have since explored this trail as a portal to wildness"..........."Wildlands Network launched its first blueprint for a wilder East in 2002, when it released the Maine Wildlands Network Vision—a detailed, scientific approach to reconnecting the landscape of New England’s largest and most heavily forested state".............."This ambitious report set the stage for the 2006 report: From the Adirondacks to Acadia, an even bolder Wildlands Network Design comprising the entire Greater Northern Appalachians region"..............."Today, significant progress is being made toward creating a continental-scale Eastern Wildway—an extensive wildlife corridor linking eastern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico"................"The Eastern Wildway contains some of North America’s most beloved national parks, preserves, scenic rivers, and other wild places, from the wilderness of Quebec, the Adirondacks, and the Shenandoah Valley, to the Great Smoky Mountains and Everglades National Park"............."Protecting and expanding these and other key core areas is crucial to rewilding the East"............."The Eastern Wildway also traverses a wide array of eco-regions and climates, with the latter ranging from arctic to tropical. An equally broad diversity of wildlife inhabits these eco-regions, including red wolves, Canada lynx, cougars, eastern coyotes, martens, and other native carnivores".............. "Many resident plants, birds, fish, salamanders, and butterflies are found nowhere else on Earth—particularly those in the southeastern U.S., which was recently identified as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots".............."In 2015, we formed the Eastern Wildway Network (EWN) to advance our efforts in eastern North America—more than 100 conservation leaders working to restore, reconnect, and protect regional habitats, and to help native species move safely through the landscape and adapt to climatic change"............"Although scientists and conservationists have conducted extensive planning, data analysis and mapping throughout the Eastern Wildway, these efforts have not kept pace with habitat degradation".............."Eastern mountain ranges are located so close to mega-population centers that development has spread into once-remote places"............... "Notably, the cities of Montreal, Quebec, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta are all located within the Eastern Wildway"................"To further complicate matters, many rural landowners are selling off large land parcels for development, logging, and resource extraction as rural economies continue to stagnate"............... "And with a growing number of Easterners building first or second homes in relatively wild places, people are collectively destroying the natural environments and solitude they seek".................To overcome these obstacles will require bold and collaborative action at many levels to make an Eastern Wildway a reality".............."From creating new conservation lands, reforming policies, and providing incentives for private land stewardship to working with transportation agencies to construct wildlife underpasses and overpasses, incorporating smart growth into local planning, and passing new legislation to confront growing challenges, each and every step will bring us closer to rewilding the East"............ "Ambitious? Absolutely!"........... "Necessary? No question!"

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2018/08/national-parks-core-reserves-eastern-wildway&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoUMTgyOTQ5MDM4Mzg2MjY4NDE2MjAyGmMxODQwZGYxM2VhNGIxOGU6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNFKKsa8hr2Sh6l93x5ZD6aRXh3E2Q

National Parks: Core Reserves Of The Eastern Wildway

By Erika Zambello on August 19th, 2018

Standing along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, staring out over the overlapping peaks of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I was wrapped in the seasonal hues of orange, red, and yellow donned by nearby trees. Cars buzzed past, the parkway acting as a beautiful connector within the larger transportation system. The protected area not only aids human travel, but is a critical component of the Eastern Wildway.

The rumpled landscape of Great Smoky Mountains National Park is seen as one link to a north-south corridor along the Eastern Seaboard that would aid movements of flora and fauna/Erika Zambello

Ecologists have long recognized the importance of linkages between critical wildlife habitat regions. Now the Wildlands Network has emerged as a leader in establishing north-south corridors in the Northeast and western half of the United States and Canada. The need is obvious: migratory animals care little for political boundaries around states, national parks, and other reserves. When these wild regions are isolated, flora and fauna struggle to move freely between them, and the fragmented habitat cannot sustain healthy populations.

The Wildlands’ strategy is straightforward: protect, manage, and connect “core reserves” through natural corridors. The land I gazed over in Great Smoky Mountains is one of these core reserves, large enough to provide havens to bears and other large carnivores in addition to migrating birds, elk, rare salamanders, and so much more. Yet the challenges faced by the Smokies are emblematic of other national parks— Everglades in Florida, Shenandoah in Virginia, even Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine—that are anchors of the corridor.

Aerial view of Moosehead Lake, Moose Island, and Squaw Bay, Maine. Photo: George Wuerthner

National parks receive a lot of visitors every year. Great Smoky saw more than 11 million people crowd through its entrances in 2017 alone. Overuse of park facilities and the landscape can lead to degradation. Plus, many of the core reserves are near population centers (Shenandoah is but 75 miles from Washington, D.C.) and are at risk for the effects of creeping development.

“And with a growing number of Easterners building first or second homes in relatively wild places,” the WN says, “people are collectively destroying the natural environments and solitude they seek.”

One of the 50 Red Wolves alive in the Wild today on the North

Carolina barrier islands

There is ongoing research to pinpoint corridor hotspots that need protection. For example, Interstate 40 separates Great Smoky from nearby national forests, hampering migration of a variety of species.

Using GPS and camera traps along roads, teams are working to identify corridor crossings. Road-kill surveys also help pinpoint areas where wildlife bridges could be built to allow unfettered movement in and out of this section of the national park.

Such an approach has been successful in Florida’s Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. A barrier wall-culvert system reduced recorded annual wildlife deaths from 2,411 to just 158. More than 50 vertebrate species use the culverts, including fish, frogs, alligators, turtles, snakes, armadillos, shrews, rats, raccoons, and rabbits.

When private land can be used to enhance the Eastern Wildway, the WN works with local land trusts or national nonprofit organizations to either purchase the land directly or arrange conservation easements to facilitate wildlife migrations.

A proposed National Wildlife Corridors bill would provide a federally recognized “corridor” designation, which could be used to both highlight areas where management must not impede wildlife migration (such as building pipelines or mining) and/or focus federal funding on purchasing land or easements in identified corridor areas.

The Essential 16 Wildways/Wildlands Network

Already, the Essential 16 Wildlife Habitats have been identified to improve connectivity in the North and Southeast. Near Great Smoky, stakeholders are working to protect a dozen miles between two protected areas, including the park and national forests.

“Restoring this connection would enable wide-ranging species to move across a vast network of ridge tops and deep forest coves,” the WN team writes.

New national parks could further enhance the corridor; the envisioned High Allegheny National Park in West Virginia could encompass 500,000 acres.

If fully connected, the Eastern Wildway would link nearly half of land and water in eastern North America, encompassing habitats of black bear, bobcat, timber rattlesnakes, and box turtles in the southern Appalachians, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, red wolves, Florida panthers, and gopher tortoises in the Southeastern coastal plain, as well as moose, lynx, fishers, martens, and eastern wolves in the northern Appalachians.

Map of eastern North America showing the rough extent of the Eastern Wildway in yellow, and lands under some form of protection in green. Source: Esri, i-cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, GeoEye, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, GIS User Community

Large protected areas are beneficial to humans as well. As I sat on a ridge beneath Clingmans Dome, the surrounding trees, birdsong, and mountain vistas instantly relaxed me. My breathing slowed and deepened, my mind cleared. “In wilderness,” notes the Wildlands Network, “we find solitude, spiritual renewal, and a quiet setting for backcountry recreation.”

While not nearly well known for his biophilia as Billionaire Ted Turner(who owns 2 million protected acres of Ranch lands across the USA), Paul Vahldiek's HIGH LONESOME RANCH northeast of Grand Junction, Colorado is big enough at 260,000 acres(394 square miles) to be a national park..........."These are not exactly untouched lands—some portions have been homesteaded and grazed for more than 100 years—but they’re largely undeveloped"............."The High Lonesome Ranch extends from the desert washes near Highline State Park to Douglas firs atop 9,000-foot Middle Mountain to the beaver ponds of the North Dry Fork valley"..............."If these private lands were deeded to the U.S. Department of the Interior as a national park, they would become America’s 27th largest unit—ranking right behind Rocky Mountain National Park in size"..............."Vahldiek, however, doesn’t want his private property to be like BLM lands or national parks"............."He believes he can do better"..........."Old school and self made, the son of a butcher, Vahldiek lost his mother to lupus when he was 11 years old".........."Coming out of High School, he accepted a scholarship to Trinity University in San Antonio, where he majored in business and played basketball"................."He also made a pact with his college roommate: The first one to buy a ranch would invite the other to come hunting. (Vahldiek was first.)".............. "He parlayed a degree from another San Antonio school, St. Mary’s University School of Law, into a highly lucrative career in personal injury litigation".................."He bought HIGH LONESOME with the goal of improving his hunting grounds by repairing the eroded streams and overgrazed fields".............."Some of what he’d learned came from his participation in the venerable Boone and Crockett Club, whose meetings attract some of conservation’s brightest minds (Vahldiek is one of around 100 regular members who, like the club’s co-founder Theodore Roosevelt, pledge to devote their means and influence to conservation)"..............But how to keep his open space intact for generations to come and fulfill his Roosevelt pledge?...............A innovative combination of select gas extraction combined with best ecosystem sustainability practices and ecotourism has earned him praises from great individual consultants and conservation leaders, ranging from Michael Soulé to Cristina Eisenberg to Shane Mahoney, Roger Creasey, David Ford and Rose Letwin...........Click on the link below to read in full the Conservation vision of Paul Vahldiek

http://www.5280.com/2018/01/a-modest-proposal/

A Modest Proposal

The High Lonesome Ranch in western Colorado is big enough to be a national park, but its owners, led by Paul Vahldiek Jr., don’t take their cues from the government. Instead, they’ve developed a unique approach to land management that could revolutionize the conservation movement for both private and public open spaces.

BY KELLY BASTONE | 5280 FEBRUARY 2018

Paul Vahldiek Jr.

The High Lonesome Ranch’s 260,000 acres are largely undeveloped and home to a variety of wildlife, pristine fishing holes, and beaver ponds. Photo by David Clifford

The owners of  High Lonesome encourage shooting and hunting. Photo by Mark Lance / Courtesy of High Lonesome Ranch

Ranch structures, including a greenhouse. Photo by Russ Schnitzer / Courtesy of High Lonesome Ranch

View a video of Paul Vahldiek's vision of conservation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Vi7nsz1wc

Why do Frogs croak and "sing?".........."Most frog sounds we hear are advertisement calls to attract mates, and the callers are usually males"..........."In some species, these vocalizations also help male frogs maintain territories against other males"........."If you look closely around the shore of a pond, you often see male green frogs spaced at regular intervals".............."Songs are quite varied, ranging from the quacking of the wood frog to the musical trill of the toad and the soft, grating snore of the pickerel frog"..........."The differences in pitch, timbre, duration, intensity, and spacing of calls help frogs distinguish members of their own species"..........."The calls also provide information on a frog’s individual identity, reproductive status, location, and the resources in its territory"

"Jug-o-Rum!"

“Jug-o-Rum!”

by Susan Shea

August 13, 2018

0 Comments

6510

Illustration by Adelaide Tyrol

If you walk by a pond on a summer evening, you may hear the deep “jug-o-rum” of a bullfrog or the “tung” of a green frog, sounding like a plucked banjo string. Sometimes you’ll hear a whole chorus of frogs, the songs competing with each other for attention.

The frogs are not singing for our enjoyment, of course.  Most frog sounds we hear are advertisement calls to attract mates, and the callers are usually males. In some species, these vocalizations also help male frogs maintain territories against other males. If you look closely around the shore of a pond, you often see male green frogs spaced at regular intervals.

Frogs make sound by shunting air from their lungs over their vocal cords, causing them to vibrate. The mouth and nostrils are kept closed. Slits in the floor of the mouth allow air to pass to an expandable throat. In many frogs, the elastic skin of the throat balloons out as a translucent, round sac, or in some species, a pair of sacs. The vocal sac reverberates the sounds, serving as a resonator. Some species, such as the tiny spring peeper and the warty American toad, have external vocal sacs. Others like the bullfrog, our largest frog, have an internal sac; the throat merely swelling when the frog calls.

Songs are quite varied, ranging from the quacking of the wood frog to the musical trill of the toad and the soft, grating snore of the pickerel frog. The differences in pitch, timbre, duration, intensity, and spacing of calls help frogs distinguish members of their own species. The calls also provide information on a frog’s individual identity, reproductive status, location, and the resources in its territory.

Frogs in our region have two basic breeding strategies. Some, such as the wood frog, a brown frog with a black mask that spends most of its time on land, are known as explosive breeders. On the first warm rainy nights of spring, all the sexually mature adults migrate to fishless, often temporary pools. Within a few days, they go through a frenzied courtship, the females lay eggs, and then they all migrate back into the woods. Male wood frogs float around on the surface of the pool, some even sitting on floating sheets of ice, and call to attract females. The first time I heard one of these loud, quacking choruses, I thought it was a flock of ducks.

Other species such as bullfrogs and green frogs are prolonged breeders. Males set up and defend territories in permanent bodies of water. They wait for females to move into the breeding grounds over a period of weeks during spring and summer. In A Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles, author Thomas Tyning describes a territorial skirmish he observed between two huge male bullfrogs: “They were only six inches apart when we first noticed them. Suddenly they lunged at each other; they hung on tightly with their front legs and feet. The water boiled with their activity as they wrestled for half a minute before breaking apart. In another minute they started again … Eventually one of the two frogs took several leaps away. The other followed closely on his heels. The territory dispute was over.”

In both types of breeders, female frogs select mates partly on the basis of call characteristics  such as pitch, rate, or length of the call. Females prefer calls that are energetically costly to produce. A male frog that produces these calls shows he has substantial energy reserves and is healthy and vigorous. Females also select a mate based on the quality of his territory and whether it is a good site for egg-laying. Male frogs on the other hand, are not so discerning, says Vermont herpetologist Jim Andrews. He has seen them clasping salamanders, dead mice, and the tops of cattails floating in the pond.

Male frogs assess the threat posed by other males by listening to the properties of their calls that imply bodysize, strength, and willingness to fight. Vocal exchanges between males may precede bouts of wrestling such as the one described between the two bullfrogs.

Frogs make other sounds in addition to mating and territoriality calls. They will emit an alarm call as they leap off a pond shore into the water to escape a potential predator. The call may  startle the predator and warn other frogs. If a frog is caught by a predator or even held by a person, it may emit a distress call — a loud scream (unlike other calls, the scream is produced with the mouth open). A male frog will croak or chirp when in the frenzy of the breeding pool another male clasps it, attempting to mate. This functions as a release call.

You can learn to identify the frog songs in your area by listening to recordings, such as those on Lang 

Elliott’s website.

Susan Shea is a naturalist, writer, and conservation consultant who lives in Brookfield, Vermont.

 Download the Article

Following up on our POST of the other day discussing NATURE DEFICIT IN CHILDREN......Follow you instinctive "gut feeling" to get you and your loved ones outdoors as often as possible..........And here is why that "outdoor instinct" will pay you dividends......"Your microbiome and your immune system have a close relationship: since 80% of your immune system is located in your gut, the healthier your gut microbiome is, the better your immunity tends to be, and vice versa"..........."Part of this has to do with your body switching into "rest and digest" mode, which it does when you're relaxed and surrounded by nature".......... "When your body gets into this mode, it focuses on bodily functions that tend to get shoved to the side when you're in "fight or flight" mode, like your immune system"............"Likewise, being around plants means that you get exposed to phytoncides, which are chemicals that plants use to protect themselves from certain types of bacteria and fungi"........."When these chemicals enter your body, your immune system responds by increasing the number of specific types of white blood cells called natural killer cells".........."Despite the name, these cells are actually really beneficial: they go after things in your body that are associated with many different health conditions"......... "Bottom line? When your immune system is supported, your gut microbiome can do its work properly––which includes further benefiting your immune system".............."It's a win-win cycle of support".............. "Speaking of immunity...being outside can also help keep your immune system from overreacting to certain stimuli"........... "If you regularly get a temporary runny nose, itchy eyes, or general feeling of haziness when you're exposed to things like pollen, pets, or dust, it's likely that your immune system is overreacting to these things, making you feel less than your best in its overzealous attempts to protect you"........"The answer may just be to spend more time outside, since people who are born or live in microbe-rich environments tend to have immune systems that are "trained" to react appropriately to these types of stimuli"..............Bottom line: "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE, GET YOUR BUTT OUTSIDE---HUGE HEALTH DIVIDENDS TO BE GAINED!

http://thescienceexplorer.com/brain-and-body/scientists-reveal-why-forest-bathing-or-going-beach-boosts-our-well-being

Scientists Reveal Why "Forest Bathing" or Going to the Beach Boosts Our Well-Being

February 3, 2016 | Kelly Tatera

It’s more than just a happy mindset — it’s in the air.

"Male Pumas make what are known as 'scrapes' to look for mates but also to mark their territory"........ "The scrapes are usually located along Puma travel routes, such as ridgelines, canyon rims, drainage bottoms, under large trees and ledges, and at kill caches"...........Carnivore Tracker Sue Morse of KEEPING TRACK explains this behaviour in detail as follows: "With his hind feed, a Puma will scrape the ground backwards creating a small mound of dirt and leaves with a shallow hole about 8 inches long in front of it"............."The mound is then urinated upon and sometimes also marked with scat"..............."Although other species of cats "spray" urine and other fluids to scent mark, Pumas do not appear to conduct this behavior"..............."Scratch piles can be found throughout a Puma's homerange but may be found more often along the borders or where his territory overlaps with another cat's".............."By advertising, an adult male may demonstrate his dominance and thereby reduce the degree of trespass by other males (both resident and new immigrants), increase his own chances of breeding with resident females, and decrease the chances his mates and offspring will be harmed"............"Long-term residents have the opportunity to cover an area with scent marks, giving potential intruders ample opportunity to retreat before there is a life-threatening encounter".............."In addition to scat and urination for scent communication, Pumas sometimes also leave scratch markings on tree trunks or stumps through a process called claw raking"..........."Similar to a house cat scratching furniture, a Puma will stand on its hind legs and drag its claws down a tree trunk"..........."The scratches will be approximately four to eight feet off the ground, depending on the size of the cat, and run parallel and vertically down the tree a few feet"............."Although these scrapes may simply be part of the claw-grooming process, many researchers believe it is another way for the cats to announce their presence"............"Scent from the paws is left behind in the tree bark and cougars have been observed sniffing the scratches made by other cats"................"Likely, it marks one's territory to deter intruders and serves as a dating bulletin board for those ready to mate"

click on this link to view a video, showing how a male Puma makes a scrape. A few evenings later several coyotes come to investigate. They leave their own calling card. Then a female Puma arrives to smells the scrape.

https://thehumanfootprint.wordpress.com/tag/panthera-teton-cougar-project/

Pumas leave their mark

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Leslie

Biologist Max Allen and his colleagues worked on analyzing puma scrapes in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains and Mendocino County. Allen put up trail cameras on puma scrapes, hoping to find answers to research questions.

 How are cougars using scrapes to communicate? Why do they go to such elaborate means, rather than simply urinating as canines do? After analyzing more than one thousand videos of scraping behavior, he concluded that lions could distinguish not only the freshness of scrapes, but also the individual lions who made them. This knowledge is only an icebreaker; biologists are still in the dark as to what information cougars learn from scrapes.

Puma Scraping behaviour sequencing below

Interestingly, Allen, who was working in northern California where the top predators are cougars and black bears, discovered foxes were routinely cheek rubbing on puma scrapes, and doing this more frequently on the fresher ones. Cheek rubbing releases chemicals from the sebaceous gland, allowing animals to deposit their own scent, but it can also be a way of accumulating scent from the object rubbed. Since the fox cheek-rubbing visits didn’t correlate with fox breeding season, or with how recently other foxes had visited, Allen believes foxes were applying puma scent for protection from larger predators like bobcats and coyotes. In other words, foxes, being the crafty animals they are, were attempting to disguise themselves as pumas.

Male Puma Scrape 
depression (above picture) and female
Puma investigating a scrape left by a male

Here in the Yellowstone Ecosystem where cougars are subordinate to wolves, black bears and grizzly bears, red foxes don’t use this camouflage technique since smelling like a cougar might be an attractant, not a deterrent.

But cougar researcher Mark Elbroch discovered a different unique behavior of Yellowstone’s crafty red foxes. Elbroch wonders if foxes might be following pumas around in wintertime, since foxes seem to locate a cougar kill so quickly. On the Panthera Teton Cougar Project in Jackson Wyoming, with the advantage of G.P.S. collars, Elbroch might, for instance, see a cougar make a kill at 4:00 a.m., and he would be at the site by 8:00 a.m. When the crew arrived, there’d be a fox on it already. Foxes take great risks, he told me, and, incredibly, they are rarely killed.

Research on cougars in Yellowstone National Park used trail cameras on scrapes. Dan Stahler, project manager for the current Yellowstone cougar study, has video of scores of other animals investigating these scent marks, including a grizzly bear that laid down on the scrape and napped for the day.

If you’ve enjoyed learning a little bit about cougars (sometimes called pumas, mountain lions, panthers, and many other names), then look forward to my new book that will be published in 2018 called Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion’s Soul through Science and Story.

I have told my friends and family for years that it is a crime that our schools do not teach our kids the names of the trees, shrubs and flowers that are indigenous to our "neighborhoods.............And the Wall Street Journal today published an article about this, reaffirming my long held belief-----"The country has a growing case of ‘plant blindness’—a term used by botanists to describe the inability to identify basic plants"............."Even biologists struggle".............."“Imagine a medical doctor who didn’t know how to identify the correct body parts,” said William Friedman, a Harvard biology professor"..............“You wouldn’t want that guy working on you"..............."The term plant blindness was discussed in a 2001 essay in the Bulletin, a publication of the Botanical Society of America"............."It laid some blame on how few Americans today make their living off the land"............I would go further and say the blame lies with how disconnected from nature so many of us are.............Add to this the change in growing-up lifestyle that has evolved over the past 50 years with parents being afraid to let their kids play alone outside fearing they will be snatched by some lunatic........Throw in the spiraling epidemic affliction of tick-borne diseases and the lure of social media and on-line gaming and you have kids indoors 24/7, knowing even less of their immediate natural surroundings than that of their mostly un-aware parents..............“We are creating a virtual world and we are not paying attention to the natural world around us"................Does not bode well for enhancing and optimizing biodiversity!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB11442974274115914724804584407500626942702.html?mod=ITP_AHED

Rhododendron? Hydrangea? America Doesn’t Know Anymore

The country has a growing case of ‘plant blindness’—a term used by botanists to describe the inability to identify basic plants. Even biologists struggle.

by: Douglas Belkin; 8/15/18

The U.S. is running short of people who can tell the forest from the trees.

A woman and her dog walk the trails in Mayor Baxter Woods in Portland, Maine. Can she name the trees on her path? PHOTO: BRIANNA SOUKUP/PORTLAND PRESS HERALD/GETTY IMAGES

Organizations such as the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management can’t find enough scientists to deal with invasive plants, wildfire reforestation and basic land-management issues.

Botanists use the term “plant blindness” to describe the growing inability by Americans—and even well-degreed biologists—to tell the difference among even basic plants. Quick: Rhododendron or hydrangea?

The issue has prompted botanical gardens around the nation to raise the alarm. Colleges are beefing up plant identification coursework for a generation of botanists more focused on their microscopes than studying leaf patterns. Bills introduced in the U.S. Senate in July and the U.S. House last year are aimed at promoting botany education.

Poison Ivy

Virginia Creeper

“Imagine a medical doctor who didn’t know how to identify the correct body parts,” said William Friedman, a Harvard biology professor. “You wouldn’t want that guy working on you.”

Camila Martinez, who is finishing her doctorate, bumped into this phenomenon when she interviewed for a spot in the botany Ph.D. program at Cornell University. Afterward, she and a handful of other candidates took a tour of the plant conservatory.

One candidate stopped in front of a magnificent orchid, she said. He remarked on its strange leaves. Ms. Martinez grew up in Colombia, where she studied plant identification. She waited for someone to say something. No one did.

“There are two plants in that pot,” she finally said. “That leaf is a part of a fern.”

Another result of the declining interest is that schools are getting rid of their herbaria, the sometimes vast collection of plants that form the spine of a botanist’s education. In the past 30 years, the New York Botanical Garden alone has absorbed collections from 15 colleges and universities that no longer have space, budget or interest in maintaining it.

Live Oak Leaf

Red Oak leaf

White Oak leaf

Barbara M. Thiers, who directs the herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, estimates about a quarter of the world’s 3,200 herbaria are at risk because of physical threats such as hurricanes or administrative apathy.

“If a collection is sitting stacked up in a hallway, it’s just bug food,” said Austin Mast, director of the herbarium at Florida State University.

The term plant blindness was discussed in a 2001 essay in the Bulletin, a publication of the Botanical Society of America. It laid some blame on how few Americans today make their living off the land. It also noted that animals have faces and can move; plants can’t. The paper noted “zoochauvinistic introductory biology instructors” who use “zoocentric examples” to teach basic biological concepts to stack the deck against plants.

Also, “human-eating plants do not exist, and we all know it.”

The authors complained that botanists aren’t particularly good advocates. At the entrance to the Royal Botanic Gardens near London was an intricate, wood-relief mural depicting the gardens during a storm. “Yet, inexplicably, about two-thirds of the sculpture’s surface area is devoted to images of animals.”

MORE OF THIS 

Less of this

Co-author Elisabeth Schussler, now an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said plants have an uphill battle because children are raised to like animals better. Think stuffed animals and Snoopy.

Not only are there fewer university botany programs but those who graduate from them may not be well versed in plant identification. The cutting edge of plant science, which has commercial applications, is molecular. Students and universities are following the significant money.

“Molecular biology is the underpinnings for how organisms work, at the other end of the spectrum there is global ecology,” said Dr. Friedman, the Harvard biology professor who runs a course every summer which helps graduate students learn how to identify plants. “The area in the middle is all about how a plant grows; that is disappearing from most university curricula and we need this information because things are changing really fast.”

The Harvard program addresses the deficit with an intensive two-week course in an arboretum to help them learn to identify plants in their natural environment.

Molly Edwards, who attended Dr. Friedman’s course two years ago, said students looked closely at the difference between thorns, spines and prickles. It may sound esoteric but since each is generated by a different biological system (leaves, epidermis and stems), it is fundamental to their structure.

“It’s addicting,” she said. “It’s like a gateway drug to the sciences.”

Many botanists who accrued knowledge specific to their regions over decades are retiring from the federal government faster than they can be replaced, said Greg Mueller, a chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Today, there is roughly one botanist on the federal payroll for every 20 million acres of land, he said.

Dennis Woodland, a professor emeritus at Andrews University in Michigan, said the extent of plant blindness was made clear to him several years ago when a man came to his office and asked him to identify several flowers and shrubs that were growing in his yard. The visitor said he had been to four other colleges and no one had been able to help.

The plants were neither rare nor uncommon, Dr. Woodland said.

“We are creating a virtual world and we are not paying attention to the natural world around us,” he said.