The new home for CoOL  (Conservation Online)

"CoOL" or Conservation OnLine gathers resources for preservation and conservation

Deadline: May 5, 2009 Challenge grants augment or establish endowments that support humanities activities in education, public programming, scholarly research, and preservation. Examples include:

• faculty and staff positions,
• fellowships,
• lecture or exhibition series,
• visiting scholars or consultants,
• publishing subventions,
• maintenance of facilities,
• faculty and staff development,
• acquisitions, and
• preservation or conservation programs.

Deadline: May 5, 2009 Challenge grants augment or establish endowments that support humanities activities in education, public programming, scholarly research, and preservation. Institutions may use the income from invested funds to meet ongoing humanities-related costs. Examples include:

• faculty and staff positions,
• fellowships,
• lecture or exhibition series,
• visiting scholars or consultants,
• publishing subventions,
• maintenance of facilities,
• faculty and staff development,
• acquisitions, and
• preservation or conservation programs.

Deadline: July 1, 2009 These grants support national or regional (multi-state) education and training programs on the care and management of, and the creation of intellectual access to, library, archival, and material culture collections.

• digitizing collections;
• arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
• cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving image, art, and material culture;
• preservation reformatting;
• deacidification of collections; and
• preserving and improving access to humanities resources in “born digital” form.

Deadline: May 14, 2009 Preservation Assistance Grants help small and mid-sized institutions, such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, ... and colleges and universities, improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections. These may include special collections of books and journals, archives and manuscripts, prints and photographs, moving images, sound recordings, architectural and cartographic records, decorative and fine arts, textiles, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, furniture, and historical objects.

• General preservation assessments
• Consultations with professionals to address a specific preservation issue, need, or problem
• Purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies
• Purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for humanities collections
• Education and Training

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This place is an amazing place to hike.

Founded in 1970, the Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust is a nonprofit land trust headquartered in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. The Trust is staffed by professionals and volunteers dedicated to the stewardship of the lands that are protected by the Trust in its Pennypack Preserve natural area. The Trust offers a variety of programs and services including, but not limited to:

• Trails in the Preserve open free to the public to explore
  and enjoy the natural world all year long
• Professionally managed natural area restoration
• Urban deer herd management
• Volunteer training
• Meeting facilities for community organizations
• Professional education and internships

This is an informative piece written by a conservationist who has spent his life researching sharks as a result of Jaws.  The article effectively addresses both the positives and negatives that came from the film.  While the author is clearly biased as a conservationist, he raises many interesting points.  For starters he notes the huge increase in brutality against sharks that stemmed most certainly from the movie.  The movie regarded great white sharks as “sea-going homicidal maniacs lurking just out of sight off your local beach, ready to shred your very own personal body into strips of bloody flesh or to simply gobble you whole.”  Because of the film’s power in portraying this idea, many vigilantes made it their own mission to get revenge.  In this sense, Spielberg’s portrayal of sharks was disastrous for the shark population.  The author claims, “JAWS has been strongly condemned as the impetus for the shark slaughtering obscenities of the past and the disconcerting scarcity of White Sharks in the present.”  This is not supported with data, however, many would agree with these claims as Jaws brought sharks into the spotlight.  With that being said, the article still concludes with a pro-Jaws stance, claiming that shark research has taken great strides since 1975 mostly as the result of Jaws.  By drawing so much attention to sharks, many wanted to learn more.  As a result, individuals such as the author took up learning about sharks as their lifetime goal.  The increased attention and funding would lead to a much greater understanding of sharks, in which scientists have been able to discover that sharks aren’t out to harm humans.  So although the immediate consequences were harmful to many species of sharks, years later the film has helped us to better understand sharks and learn that we shouldn’t be so scared.

Clive Thompson Thinks: Desktop Orb Could Reform Energy Hogs

Mark Martinez couldn't get Southern California Edison customers to conserve energy. As the utility's manager of program development, he had tried alerting them when it was time to dial back electricity use on a hot day - he'd fire off automated phone calls, zap text messages, send emails. No dice.

Then he saw an Ambient Orb. It's a groovy little ball that changes color in sync with incoming data - growing more purple, for example, as your email inbox fills up or as the chance of rain increases. Martinez realized he could use Orbs to signal changes in electrical rates, programming them to glow green when the grid was underused - and, thus, electricity cheaper - and red during peak hours when customers were paying more for power. He bought 120 of them, handed them out to customers, and sat back to see what would happen.

Within weeks, Orb users reduced their peak-period energy use by 40 percent. Why? Because, Martinez explains, the glowing sphere was less annoying and more persistent than a text alert. "It's nonintrusive," he says. "It has a relatively benign effect. But when you suddenly see your ball flashing red, you notice."

...The time has come to consider zoning the whole 2,600-square-mile county.That is the only way, Skinner has reluctantly decided, for Gallatin County to preserve its wild landscapes and also save a treasured way of life in farm and ranching communities. Last year, the county won a Trust for Public Lands award for a $20 million open-space program that’s saving 40 square miles from subdivision. But the county’s three commissioners have come to believe that’s not nearly enough to get a handle on growth that’s overwhelming isolated communities and ruining wildlife habitats. “Even though you’re not seeing a lot of development up here now, you will,” Skinner told Sedan’s ranching families. “We need to start doing things differently.”

Power Line Could Undo Open-Land Conservation
Soaring Usage Puts 3 N.Va. Counties in Path

By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page A01

Dominion Virginia Power is planning to build a high-voltage power line that could stretch across parts of Prince William, Fauquier and Loudoun counties, an answer to the region's growing energy needs that has raised fears of spoiling some of the state's most fiercely protected open land.

Philanthropist's legacy: Green space, questions
By Jeff Shields

Fitz Eugene Dixon Jr. was the philanthropic heir to a vast fortune, but more important to the residents of Whitemarsh Township and its environs, he was the squire of Erdenheim Farm, a 450-acre panorama of green space unrivaled in Philadelphia's inner suburbs.
Following Dixon's death on Aug. 2, the question is: What happens to it all?

From the Partnerships for New Jersey Plant Conservation.

This is a database compiling the flora and fauna of Pennsylvania.