Calendar
From our local parks to our backyards or balconies, nature can be found almost anywhere as long as we remember to look for it. This monthly program will help you learn more about the natural world around your home and how you can provide for it. In each informal class we will spend most of our time outside, using a variety of methods to observe and identify our flora and fauna. You may want to bring a hat, optics, and a notebook.
This program is best suited for adults and kids ages 10 and up.
From our local parks to our backyards or balconies, nature can be found almost anywhere as long as we remember to look for it. This monthly program will help you learn more about the natural world around your home and how you can provide for it. In each informal class we will spend most of our time outside, using a variety of methods to observe and identify our flora and fauna. You may want to bring a hat, optics, and a notebook.
This program is best suited for adults and kids ages 10 and up.
The Wild & Scenic Film Festival On Tour is returning to Houston on January 29, 2022. Hosted by the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, this year’s film fest will be a hybrid event, taking place both online and in person at MATCH to accommodate everyone’s COVID safety preferences.
SPONSORS
Thank you to our 2022 Sponsors:
Eco Shares: New Ecology-Friendly Economics
Tuesday, February 08, 2022 – 6:30 PM
Nature-based carbon capture and storage is among the hottest topics in industry and agriculture today. The ecological systems of the Earth provide many different services for humans that until recently have not been part of the human economic system. That is changing and will continue to change as we evolve a new economy that is circular rather than linear as it is today. Prairies, forests and oyster reefs can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in trees and soil and the reef itself, and a market is emerging for buying and selling credits that are certified scientifically. But, with various types of credits being offered by different types of entities, it can feel like the wild west out there.
Joining the Houston Museum of Natural Science this evening is Rice University Professor Jim Blackburn for a discussion of nature-based carbon and other transactions as we delve into the economy of the future.
Parks and Natural Areas Awards
H-GAC established the Parks and Natural Areas awards program in 2006 to highlight best practices and innovative approaches to parks planning and implementation. H-GAC honors projects in the categories of Projects Over $500,000, Projects Under $500,000, Planning Process and Policy Tools, and Programming.
This program recognizes outstanding parks and natural areas around the region. No funding is associated with this award program.
From our local parks to our backyards or balconies, nature can be found almost anywhere as long as we remember to look for it. This monthly program will help you learn more about the natural world around your home and how you can provide for it. In each informal class we will spend most of our time outside, using a variety of methods to observe and identify our flora and fauna. You may want to bring a hat, optics, and a notebook.
This program is best suited for adults and kids ages 10 and up.
Join Jim Blackburn, Professor in the Practice in Environmental Law at Rice University, who will discuss his new book, Earth Church, which he co-authored with artist Isabelle Scurry Chapman. Earth Church is a book about Earth-based spirituality, a subject that will become much more prominent in a future defined by a changing climate and the creation of a new economic system that is circular rather than linear. At the center of Earth-based spirituality is the Earth itself, that wonderful planet without which we would not be. Blackburn will weave a narrative around the poetry and art of Earth-based spirituality. Time for interactive discussion with the speaker will be provided. Please register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com with any questions.
In a generation, much of the U.S. will resemble the lower Galveston Bay Watershed, a 10-county region surrounding Houston which Bayou City Waterkeeper (BCWK) serves. Home to the most diverse population, and also one of the most ecologically diverse major urban areas, our waterways — consisting of 2,500 miles of bayous, as well as creeks, coastlines, and the ocean — support immense biodiversity. Our region has lived through unprecedented storm surges and widespread flooding from hurricanes and heavy rain storms over the last two decades. Amplifying the worst effects of these storms are the region’s long-time underinvestment in forward-thinking flood prevention, lax attitudes towards land use regulation, and historic redlining practices which have driven over-development of ecologically sensitive wetland areas and the outer-lying parts of our city. Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud, Executive Director of BCWK, will explore the critical role that collective visioning, ecological imagination and storytelling play in connecting to and advocating for our region’s waterways and our community. Beyond the built environment, how can we use imagination as a tool to explore new ways to restore prairies and wetlands, which hold rainfall and prevent flooding? How can we use imagination as a tool for new approaches towards water infrastructure that center ecological impacts and environmental justice. Established in 2001, Bayou City Waterkeeper is a Houston-based organization working at the confluence of conservation and environmental justice toward cleaner water, wetlands and healthy ecosystems, and just, resilient communities. Time for interactive discussion with the speaker will be provided. Please register for this talk on www.eventbrite.com at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/collective-visioning-for-our-regions-water-tickets-288968451417. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com with any questions.
Conservation Grants
Conservation Grants can be awarded to projects anywhere in Texas. In its first 25 years the Birding Classic has donated $1,071,000 in conservation funding to nature tourism and avian habitat restoration, enhancement, and acquisition projects throughout the state!
Number of grants awarded (and their amounts) are determined based on team registration fees (independent and sponsored) and corporate sponsorship dollars collected each year. The Birding Classic is a cost-recovery event, so once minimal event costs are covered all remaining funds go to conservation grants in Texas. Organizations are not required to register a team in the Birding Classic to be eligible to submit a project proposal.
All approved projects submitted by the May 1st deadline will be provided to winning Birding Classic teams to select which projects are funded by Conservation Grants.
Members of Citizen’s Climate Lobby explain the ins and outs of carbon fee & dividend as an economic policy tool to address climate change. Learn about the positive impact not only on the environment, but also on jobs, the economy, and human health.  And, carbon fee & dividend has been deemed by economists as the fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of any economic policy approach. But, best of all, carbon fee & dividend is designed to ensure equity and justice, a key concern of people of all faith/spiritual traditions. Please register for this event on www.eventbrite.com at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/carbon-fee-dividend-whats-justice-got-to-do-with-it-tickets-307725203367. Contact Lisa Brenskelle at gcs.lrc@gmail.com for more details.