Our Claws Casco Bay sea kayaking program is getting a major boost this summer! We have joined a collaborative partnership with the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation to develop Field Environmental Philosophy programming at its working waterfront. Located on the Cousins River in Yarmouth next to a salt marsh where fresh water spills into the bay,...Continue Reading

What Happened on Rawson Island On 8/23/23, the last Wednesday of Our Place Summerschool, students and teachers discovered the bones of a human being on Rawson Island near the Rock Dam in Montague. We’ve been exploring this part of the Ct River every summer for over 14 years , because it is where Living Rivers...Continue Reading

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

Our Place Summer School Scholarship Program 2019 Our Place Summer School is designed to “unplug” children by bringing them into direct contact with the creatures, geologies, hydrologies and infrastructures of the Nonotuck biome and the Westfield River watershed. (Click to read the Daily Gazette article about Our Place.) Thanks to the generosity of people who...Continue Reading

Salamanders, newts and wood frogs depend upon the vernal pools that appear during snow melt and vanish as the summer arrives. If you’ve wondered where these neighbors are born, and where they return to make babies, this video is a perfect introduction: Without these havens, our amphibian friends will disappear. In Massachusetts, we can certify...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

1) The problem: what invasives are, botanically and culturally Weeds are plants that grow where we don’t want them to, and invasives are weeds we spread without control, altering ecosystems to such an extent that, sometimes, native species are crowded out and go extinct. Invasives are expressions of our colonial culture; we bring them—and cats,...Continue Reading

This month’s Ripple cross-posted from Hilltown Families: Life Will Return to Our Rivers! The challenge we (who value these nonhuman lives) face is to turn the immense powers we have to obstruct life into powers that liberate it. Sweet as maple syrup, the thaw is coming. Sea lamprey, shad, herring, alewives, eels, sturgeon and the...Continue Reading

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect...Continue Reading

Neoliberalism will destroy everything including itself, but that doesn’t mean the human species will become extinct. I write this, prematurely, to the survivors (& please, may our grandkids be among you). In a few weeks, food prices will skyrocket. They’ve already started to. If there has ever been a time for us to grow a...Continue Reading