Welcome to the Spring 2024 issue of From the Ground Up!

Bloodroot, so beautifully pictured in our cover image by artist Susan Bull Riley, is the essence of spring. In early April, the leaves of bloodroot emerge from the ground up, shielding the delicate flower buds from the cold and the snow. The flowers open from April to early May, and by the time you read this, in mid-May, the petals will have dropped and you will see the fruits of the plant’s labor: a plump pod that bears seeds, which will be carried by ants to their nests to nourish their young.

This is a metaphor for what we strive for here at From the Ground Up. We hope to protect and nourish ideas about conservation, as they emerge and develop and grow. Ideas about how we can have hope in this frightening, climate-challenged world, and ideas about how action can make things better. We hope to spread and sow these ideas, like seeds, so that we can all learn from each other and move forward to make our world a better place.

In this issue, we look more deeply at conservation, its many forms, its huge positive impacts, and some of its tricks.

Conrad Vispo, in “Agroecology as Faith,” opens with a compelling picture of ecological agriculture, beginning with the region’s history of dramatic change and the responses of wildlife, and offering hope for a richer and more diverse landscape through farming with biodiversity in mind. From insects to grassland birds to large mammals, his essay brings us into the world beyond rows of food and feed crops.

And Doug Tallamy brings us hope, in smaller landscapes—our own backyards. He talks about the decline of insects, including the iconic monarch butterfly but also many other species, and provides some hope that we can help those small creatures through our own action.

Beyond the ‘Illusion of Preservation’, an important new report released earlier this spring, examines the balance between protecting land and producing the products we need. Hans Carlson’s piece, “A View from the North,” introduced this topic in Issue #2, noting that what we do here in New England affects the Cree to the north. Beyond the ‘Illusion of Preservation’ expands on the problem of consuming more than we can produce, and proposes remedying the problem by 1) increasing  protection of both wildlands and actively managed forests; 2) reducing consumption; and 3) expanding ecological forestry. Several of the authors offer reflections on the report here.

Looking beyond New England to the broad sweep of the Appalachians, Heather Furman of The Nature Conservancy talks in an interview about the significance of the region’s forests and the importance of conserving them in the ways that Beyond the ‘Illusion of Preservation’ describes.

And we hear about policy news and conservation actions throughout the region, with recommendations for further reading, watching, and listening.

As always, we invite you to join the conversation and share your thoughts in our reader survey. We also hope you’ll join us for our first live launch event: Nature as Our Teacher on May 29th—featuring conversations with contributors to this issue.

With gratitude,
The Editors of From the Ground Up

Brian Donahue, David Foster, Marissa Latshaw (Publisher), Alex Redfield, Liz Thompson (Managing Editor)