Tag Archives: climate champion

My past is my prologue

Posted on January 27, 2021 by Rishya N.

The first time I saw myself as a scientist was at a very young age, inspired by scouting. My two favorite merit badges were Nature and Environmental Science – but earning them took effort and time. I had to pick three different environments and observe patterns in them.

I vividly remember taking my bike out every day to our local salt marsh, each time with a growing curiosity. What would I hear? What new discovery would I make? Scouting taught me that if I take the time to look in nature, I will certainly discover something new.

Tom Eid, Climate Champion.

My childhood experiences come full circle.

While my scouting days are over, the lessons I’ve learned still ring true today: that as a community, we must look to the patterns in nature to understand what is happening to it.

Right now, that means grasping how nature is changing in order to adapt to our changing climate.

I’m Tom Eid and I’m a Climate Champion.

I act on climate by helping increase our collective, scientific understanding of how nature fares in the face of rising seas, warming temperatures, and shifting seasons through community science.

Community science is public participation in scientific research and decision making. It has provided me opportunities to collaborate with experts and help protect the environment. It is science by people to benefit nature.

What I did as a scout was science. The activities I completed were part of the practice of phenological monitoring: the observation of long-term patterns in wildlife behavior to understand nature and its adaptation to environmental threats. Many years later, I still use phenological monitoring to better comprehend how wildlife behavior is affected by the threat of climate change.

A return to the salt marsh

From July through September 2020, I worked with Mass Audubon on its Coastal Salt Marsh Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment project.

There was a beautiful nostalgia in the field at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary that reminded me of my time scouting. What struck me is that the smell of a salt marsh is the same – no matter where you go or how many years have passed. There’ll always the gentle bending and bowing of salt marsh grasses as the wind blows through. The feeling of the soft, cushion-like peat underneath me. The calls of birds whistling through the air matched with the slight touch of sea salt in the marsh breeze.

While my monitoring as a scout merited me with a badge, these assessments gave me a pathway for climate action. I helped observe nature’s cues, noting shifts in things like where certain marsh plants grow, to inform adaptation strategies that preserve and enhance this critical habitat for people and wildlife. 

The scientist in you

Climate change is our reality: it affects us here and now. We are all responsible for making a difference.

What can you do to act on climate change to ensure a sustainable future for the world around us? Get outside and into nature! Community science can be that opportunity to engage, here’s how to start:

  1. Pursue your passion. What do you love about the environment?
  2. Leverage your skills: What do you bring to the table? How can you engage and educate others about new scientific findings?
  3. Embrace your sector: What type of work do you want to do? Visit Mass Audubon’s website for some ideas.

Together, lets commit to protecting nature. Let’s learn from nature’s patterns and cues, teach each other, and enable current and future generations to act on climate through science.

– Tom Eid, Mass Audubon Community Science Volunteer

On Bug Boxes, Climate Grief, and Human Health 

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Mass Audubon

My connection to nature sparked as a  kid in the eighties. I owned a bug box – my  grandmother’s neighbor made them in bulk and then let the kids on the block decorate them. It was a simple wooden construction with a panel door that swung sideways and up, with fine mesh netting  that let the bugs breathe. I’d catch and inspect all kinds of bugs in there. I especially remember summer nights chasing fireflies, carrying my bug box like a lantern on the lawn of our South St. Louis home as dusk fell, and releasing the fireflies as rogue twinkle lights before I went inside for bed.  

I’m Claire Berman, a nature lover, an author, a health communicator, and an aunt. Each of these roles motivates me to act on climate change.  

Claire Berman, Climate Champion.

As I conducted research for my first novel this year, I learned more about the impact of climate change on birds and other animals. I wanted to write about the way they were being forced to find new homes or change their migration patterns. So I bought a pair of binoculars, made a few birder friends, and became amazed by the herculean task of migration. Yet I was also troubled by the ways human-caused climate change can alter when and where birds migrate because of temperature changes or availability of food.  

In my job as a health communicator, I see firsthand the ways that climate change affects human health in addition to animals. Through this  work, I  have seen communities struggle against intense hurricanes, mosquito- and water-borne illnesses, or displacement from their homes because of climate change. I’ve seen how systemic racism creates conditions that put  people of color and people in poverty  more at risk of respiratory illnesses and other public health threats borne from climate change.  

I’m fighting for the climate on all of these fronts.  

This year, I completed a certificate program in Climate Change and Human Health to learn how we can mitigate, adapt to, and communicate about climate change’s public health impacts. I wrote to my senators in support of the Green New Deal for clean energy and millions of new jobs. I signed up to support the youth-led Sunrise Movement. I phone banked and wrote postcards to get out the vote. I donated to wildlife conservation organizations like Mass Audubon.

Anyone can take actions like these. We can all do our small part to protect the natural world and work towards a safe and healthy future for humanity and all living things.  

Claire’s childhood bug box.

A few months ago, my mom asked if my 8-year-old nephew could have my old bug box. He’d found it buried somewhere in the basement, a bit worse for the wear. I said yes, of course. I want him to find joy in the beauty of nature, just as I did at his age, and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure it survives for his generation of kids and beyond.

– Claire Berman, Mass Audubon Member.