WHAT IS BIOCITIZEN? The word “biocitizen” is a contraction of “biotic citizen,” a term and idea conceived by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) who is widely celebrated for conceiving the “land ethic.” A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. A...Continue Reading

  What is the Biocitizen Corps? There is a moment when a student wants to do more than learn about their biome. They want to care for it. They want to act on what they’re learning, turn theory into practice, and bring health and vitality to the world. The Biocitizen Corps offers these students structured...Continue Reading

How do spring peepers know when to start singing? They don’t have weather reports, or the ability to see the buds forming on trees, the snow melting, or teens walking around in shorts and T’s when it’s 40 degrees and climbing.How do spring peepers know when to start singing? Certainly, there are scientific reasons that...Continue Reading

Biocitizen is pleased to welcome Brigid Ryan onto the staff as our Westfield River Fishways public education assistant! Brigid is a recent graduate of UMass School of Natural Sciences (congratulations!) and a Now Voyager who surfed the waves at Punta de Lobos, explored the green canyons of the midlands and then climbed the Andes in Chile...Continue Reading

Now Voyager Four Corners is a field environmental philosophy expedition that prepares students to be environmental protection action leaders. Early announcements did not make this clear, so Biocitizen is adding a subtitle to the course: Now Voyager Four Corners: Escalante- and Bears Ears- National Monuments Campaign of Witness DETAILED INFO Sometimes bad things happen that...Continue Reading

Now Voyager Four Corners Sun.-Sun. March 11-18 and Sun.-Sun. March 18-25   Expeditions to Utah’s Grand Staircase and Bears Ears National Monuments Explore a wilderness that might vanish— More information.  Continue Reading

Now Voyager Tuition and Logistics From December 27, 2016 to January 6, 2017, Now Voyager takes college students (& 18+ year olds) on an ecstatic journey through South-Central Chile, following the path of water from the Pacific Ocean in Pichilemu across the Central Range, the agricultural Central Valley, and onto the high Andean peaks of...Continue Reading

In part 1, we learned that there is no scientific basis for “race” and “racism” and, therefore,  both are “cultural constructs”—myths invented and used for centuries by European marauders to justify and excuse their cruel economic behaviors of colonization and slavery, and their extensive crimes against humanity. Now, let’s examine how these constructs continue to...Continue Reading

Alan Lightman, of the physics & creative writing departments at MIT, has published an essay in the NYTs that expresses his fear of “nature” and of dying. It is wonderfully naive, and a perfect example of the collapsing epistemology of industrial capitalism (that MIT has for its entire existence promulgated with brownfield, cancercluster and bankrupt-economy...Continue Reading

“Epistemology” is a word that describes a system of knowledge and values. Every culture has an epistemology, as we find when we travel internationally and/or compare, say, Holland and Saudi Arabia. Epistemologies appear and disappear, along with their cultures. We can’t explain to ourselves what the Mayan epistemology was. We’ve seen a new one whelped...Continue Reading