Annual TMN State Meeting

Registration for the TMN Statewide Annual Meeting & Advanced Training is now available! This years statewide Annual Meeting and Advanced Training is taking place October 23-25th, 2009 at Mo Ranch. Early Bird Registration at a discounted rate is available through September 27th. Prices increase by $40 across the board after that. You may register NOW by navigating to: https://www.regonline.com/TMNconference2009 The State Coordinator suggests that you view (and maybe even print out) the Conference Website information from the four tabs shown before clicking the "register now" button.



GCMN Partial Scholarships to TMN annual meeting

The GCMN Board has approved offering partial scholarships of between $50 to $100 (final amount reimbursed to each applicant to be determined by the number of applicants).  In order to receive this scholarship, you must:

Notify the board (just reply to this e-mail) of your intention to attend by Friday, September 25th;

Include a list of the classes/workshops you plan to attend;

Submit a brief report on the event with specific comments on the workshops you attended by November 10th (an e-mail to the board will be sufficient).

Scholarships will be paid following the December board meeting.  Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions about this.

The Texas Master Naturalist t-shirt design contest was won by Jerrel Geisler of the Gulf Coast chapter. Shirts will debut at the annual meeting October 24-26.

Text by Lan Shen

Texas Master Naturalist Program
News and Notes
July 2008

What Can One Person Do? By Brian Yeoman

It seems as if there is more and more interest in doing something about the state of the environment. Frequently the question is asked of me, “What can I do? The problems are so big, so complex, that I feel helpless. Tell me, what can just one person do?” This question is always disturbing because it demonstrates the degree to which we all have become victims of something we do not understand and, thus, victims for many other events in our lives. In this instance, however, there is a great deal that just one person can do!

Everyone wants to care for the environment at some level. No matter where they live, how much money they make, how old they are, how much education they have, or where they were born, people want to leave a safe world for their children and grandchildren. They want those children and grandchildren to have a quality life experience.

The problem comes when they try to decide just what to do. There is so much information, so many choices, and it frequently may seem like it is not enough or that it is not worth it. But in each case, it is. Every little baby step we take with a little bit more care for the long-term health of our environment makes a difference.

How do we know this? Because we have a myriad of success stories where the aggregate actions of everyday people doing relatively simple things clean up streams and rivers, improve the functioning of a wetland, avoid the cutting down of thousands of trees, slow down the depletion of soil, reduce the number of miles driven in cars, and on and on. Consider this excellent statement by Sir Edmund Burke: “Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”

If you do not know what to do or what else to do about your environment, you might want to sample some of the ideas from the list that follows:

Food Purchasing/General Shopping Buy products grown locally. Avoid highly packaged items. Do not use shopping as a therapy. Buy hormone-free milk and meat. Buy fair-trade coffee. If the grocer doesn’t have it, ask! Don’t accept plastic bags. Ask for cardboard - you can recycle it! Try eating one organic fruit or vegetable per week. Compost all of your nonmeat and nondairy leftovers.

In the House Don’t run the water while you brush your teeth. Use cotton instead of paper napkins/towels. Use ceramic or glass instead of plastic or Styrofoam. Use nonfossil-fuel-based cleaning agents such as those based on citrus products

In Paper Products Remember that (generally) recycled paper is just scrap paper from the mill and that post-consumer waste paper is the paper you likely recycled. Buy chlorine-free, 100%-post-consumer recycled paper products (copier/fax and printer paper), and use both sides whenever possible. (This is part of a longer article that appeared in the December 2005 issue of the Educational Procurement Journal. Brian K. Yeoman is director of Education and Development at NAEP, the National Association of Educational Procurement. He is also a retired associate vice president for Facilities Planning and Campus Development at the University Texas Health Science Center at Houston. In 2005, he received a CEC Synergy Award.)

Dear Texas Master Naturalist,

A fellow environmentalist with the Hermann Park Conservancy invited me to attend the Texas Tree Print program concerning urban trees and how they equate to clean air. This enlightening program was held at the Houston-Galveston Area Council building, here in Houston on July 31, 2008. There were many people from various organizations such as the mayor of Pearland, Harris County Extension Office, Land Trust, Arbor Day, Texas Forestry Service and many more. With all the wonderful trainings I’ve received through the TMN program I couldn’t imagine what else could be brought up. Let me tell you what I learned.

   · Dr. Farber conducts asthma research at the Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children’s Hospital. Through his studies it has been determined that our children are at the greatest risk of receiving harm from air pollutants and young adults may not be taking this into consideration when making decisions about a child’s future growth or education.

   · David Hitchcock outlined the 6 ways in which trees improve air quality: planting different tree species can outweigh the volatile organic compound emissions from trees; removes pollutants from the ozone depositing them into the body of the tree; shade trees provide energy savings; reduction of emission evaporation as when cars are parked under trees; mowing emissions are reduced because of less grass to cut; and heat island reduction (buildings and pavements that cause higher temperatures than the surrounding areas).

   · Gary Allen from Maryland spoke about tree canopies and how trees can provide a quantifiable measure for governments to monitor, track and report on how trees are beneficial monetarily as well as environmentally in our air-shed. He also discussed the importance of having a strategy to re-forest private land and how a state can comply with the federal Clean Air Act. He discussed the importance of volunteers necessary to implement SIP (State Implementation Plan) programs.

   · Mr. Hughes Simpson provided information regarding a program in which communities can become part of a Carbon Trading program that can result in cleaner air and financial gain for certain land owners and companies.
There were several other guest speakers such as the City Forester from Missouri City, TX, which was named one of the best places to live in the U.S. and a member of Galveston’s TX Master Naturalist chapter who also heads up a major tree planting and restoration project in the Westbury district in Houston. Even though there was a lot of information there is never too much for taking care of the great state in which we live. There is a wealth of information regarding trees and how volunteers can help can be found on Web site: http://www.treescleanair.org/.

I do not get to volunteer as often as I use to since I’ve been attending college and working full time. However, it is important for us to remember that whether volunteering once a week, once a month, or once a year, we are planting seeds of caring, knowledge and action; and that makes a difference!

My best to all of you and hope to see more of you soon once I graduate.

Diane Kerr

The Native Plant Bed at the Houston Zoo is the project of GCMN and Zoo Volunteer, Lisa Yelenick, who had the idea, obtained the support of the Zoo personnel, coordinated plant donations by GCMN-PPP (Plant Propagation Program) and NPSOT-H (Native Plant Society of Texas – Houston) and assembled volunteers for workdays. The Bed, near the Children's Zoo entrance, was cleared in January and planted in April.

For this workday, GCMN Lisa, Susan Harris, Sharon Young, and Lan Shen and NPSOT-H members Kelly Walker and Jane Reierson planted the little bluestems provided by the Houston Zoo and GCMN-PPP donations of 8 x 4inch pots of Eryngium hookeri seedling, 2 x 1 gallon Turk's cap, 1 x 5 gallon Gaura lindheimeri, 1 x 4 inch Echinacea sanguinea, 1 x 4 inch Passiflora lutea (donated by T. J. Marks), 1 x 2 gallon gulf muhly, 1x1 quart Swamp sunflower, 1x4 inch American Basketflower, 1 Amsonia, and 1 x 1 gallon St. Andrew's Cross, propagated from cuttings stuck in July, 2007.

We were all amazed at how well the plants were doing. In bloom were the purple hooker's eryngo (Eryngium hookeri), partridge pea, prairie Indian plantain (Arnoglossum ovatum), the many black-eye susans (Rudbeckia) generously donated by Marian Sullivan, and white spider lily. The tall liatris flowerstalks were waving in the air, but the pink blooms were not visible yet. The horticulture crew at the zoo has done a fantastic job taking care of the plants. The weeding did not take too long and we were able to finish before it became too hot.

Text and photos by Lan Shen
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