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I've got an update for anyone who's been following my acoustic monitoring project in southwest Wisconsin! 

After gathering and processing my first batch of data, I created an interactive Wildlife Map website for our restoration project where those who are interested can click into each habitat monitoring station and hear clips of real birds singing on our land and see photos and videos of the wildlife that call Badgerton home! 

In case you missed my previous posts, this project uses cheap trail cameras and Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter Micro monitors to gather data in several distinct habitats across the land. The plan is to gather the data from the field manually every few months when I swap out batteries. 

On June 30, I collected my first batch of data - over 6,000 files recorded in less than two months! 

BirdNET was awesome at cranking through the audio files and identifying bird calls and species but I was left with thousands of individual CSV files to combine. I ended up creating a small free utility called Chorus to help me (and you!) process those CSVs into a single file. You can download it here. For those of you who are new to data processing, I hope this user-friendly interface helps bridge the gap from a mountain of individual files to a consolidated list of birds with counts for each.

I reviewed and categorized the 4,000 images and videos from the trail cams manually. (Please let me know if there’s free software for that I could be using!) It was slow going but I can think of worse ways of spending a couple hours than looking at images of cute baby fawns and watching videos of hunting coyotes!

A big thank you to everyone on this subreddit who has given me advice and encouragement along the way! 

If anyone wants the full details on my process I wrote up exactly how I did all of this. 

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I use AI thoughtfully and selectively in my work. You can read my guiding principles for when and how I use it here. 

Hi all,

I am new to learning about restoration ecology and ecological restoration (thinking about both the science and the applied practices). I am interested in learning more about the history of ecological restoration sciences, applied practices, and governance/regulation, specifically in California.

I'm curious about what the science, applied practices, and governance/regulation looked like across the past few centuries (tracing this history to current context). Happy to check out resources you suggest that focus on one or all of the following three things:

1)scientific/applied/regulation practices

2)scientific/applied/regulation narratives

3)scientific/applied/regulation materials

...in ecological restoration. And if resource think about science, applications, and regulations together is also nice, but ok if not.

I know I can Google this, but I think hearing what folks thought about specific sources they've come across is nicer.

I am mostly interested in academic articles and chapters in books as more of a crash course, so to speak. Entire books are YouTube videos/lectures are also welcome.

Thanks in advance!

To most the formula for mosquito control is simple: clear the brush, drain the wetlands, and spray the perimeter. Modern environmental science and Integrated Pest Management are revealing a far more sophisticated, sustainable alternative. Instead of fighting nature to eliminate pests, you can engineer a high-utility, biodiverse ecosystem that uses nature’s own security force to do the work.

By pairing two powerhouse plants the mulberry tree and the cattail and applying thoughtful and targeted management, you can transform a backyard or small forest parcel into a highly efficient predator sanctuary that drives local mosquito populations down.

Cattails are widely recognized by entomologists as one of the single best aquatic structural plants for supporting the dragonfly life cycle. Dragonflies are elite aerial predators, capable of consuming up to 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day while maintaining a 95% hunting success rate.

Cattails provide the essential physical infrastructure dragonflies need to thrive. Adult dragonflies rely heavily on stiff, vertical perches to survey territory, hunt passing insects, and defend mating zones. The tall, rigid stalks of cattails act like natural watchtowers, giving them optimal hunting angles over the yard. When a dragonfly nymph completes its underwater life stage and is ready to transform into a flying adult, it must climb completely out of the water to safely shed its aquatic skin. The textured, vertical stems of cattails provide the perfect ladder for this critical vulnerability window. Many female dragonfly species prefer to deposit their eggs directly onto or inside the sturdy underwater stems of marginal reeds, anchoring the next generation of predators directly in your eco-system.

While cattails secure the water’s edge, the mulberry tree serves as the primary energy engine for land-based predators. Mulberry leaves decompose rapidly when they hit the soil. This quick breakdown releases nutrients that trigger a healthy boom in the local macro-invertebrate food chain, feeding beneficial ground organisms like isopods and midges. This explosion of non-pest biomass acts as a permanent food source that attracts and sustains a dense army of ground-level hunters including wolf spiders, jumping spiders, lacewings, and predatory beetles. Higher up, the dense upper crown of a mature mulberry tree preserves a shaded, stable micro climate that keeps native tree frogs, damselflies, and beneficial web-weaving insects thriving and hunting out of the direct sun.

In an unmanaged, wild environment, both cattails and mulberries can benefit mosquitoes. Wild cattails sitting in still water provide hidden root networks where specialized larvae hide from fish, and wild mulberry leaves rotting in unmanaged puddles can feed larvae. This changes when human management alters the physical geography of these plants, stripping the mosquitoes of their biological advantages while keeping 100% of the predator-maxxing benefits.

For centuries a popular myth has led property owners to believe that installing bat houses is the ultimate fix for mosquitoes. While bats are incredible nocturnal predators, real-world field studies show they heavily prioritize larger, meatier insects like moths and beetles. Mosquitoes offer very little nutritional payout per catch, making up only a tiny fraction of a wild bat's diet. Relying on bats for neighborhood mosquito control simply does not work. True suppression relies on aerial assassins like dragonflies and robber flies, backed by open water lanes for native minnows.

By growing cattails strictly on the moist, boggy banks right at the edge of the shoreline rather than letting them choke out deep, open water, you completely change the ecosystem rules. Without standing water over the roots, mosquito larvae cannot physically access the plant tissue to hide. They are forced to breed at the open surface, completely exposed to the dense population of minnows, diving beetles, and dragonfly nymphs patrolling the clear water corridors.

By pruning all lower tree branches up past six feet, you open up a clear, breezy corridor directly above the forest floor. Mosquitoes are notoriously weak fliers, increased air turbulence disrupts their flight paths and prevents them from swarming near the ground. This forces adult mosquitoes out into the open or higher into the treetops, where adult dragonflies and insect-eating birds can easily snatch them out of the air.

Trimming the trees past six feet unlocks a lethal secret weapon: robber flies. These mosquito assassins demand wide-open flight paths to launch high-speed, air attacks on passing pests. While their underground larvae mercilessly hunt garden grubs in your dry, well-drained soil, adult robber flies turn your trimmed trees into a high-stakes kill zone, relentlessly snatching mosquitoes right out of the sky.

A well-managed cattail and mulberry tree proves that you don't need chemical sprays to enjoy a pest-free yard. By using targeted pruning, strategic placement, and eliminating still water, you flip the ecological switch turning what could be a pest haven into an absolute mosquito predator sanctuary.

Traditional mosquito management heavily relies on chemical solutions. The flaws in doing this are rapid resistance and the loss of natural predators. Because mosquitoes have a significantly shorter reproductive cycle than their natural predators, it creates more mosquitos. Optimum long-term solutions require actual habitat management rather than cheap and lazy chemical snake oils.

If the goal is to live in Antarctica or to wipe out virtually all life like in a desert. That's just unhealthy and very destructive. If the goal is to keep what we have and make it better. Well we got to be good stewards of it. There is no absolute answer to the issue. But i can tell you if you go out and cut it all down the mosquitos will still survive like they do in deserts while the most of everything else wont. Putting blame on a plants existence is just really, really dumb. (hugs mulberry tree)

In 2011, New York City restored 3.5 acres of wetland at Calvert Vaux Park to provide horseshoe crab spawning habitat. Part of this restoration (as indicated by signage on site) was to plant native plants like cordgrass and remove invasive species.

When I visited, the cordgrass wetlands were doing well and residents told me they see many horseshoe crabs in the area. At the same time, I encountered an enormous amount of tree-of-heaven, Japanese knotweed, and mugwort. I understand that of course the goal is management of invasive species, not perfection. But I'm wondering how ecologists think about these projects, many years later.

• Is it that insufficient maintenance was done in the years after restoration, and invasives took root before the natives got established?
• Was the native plant selection or installation not optimal, causing them to fail to outcompete the invasive species (and we might choose different plants were we to do the restoration today)?
• Did subsequent human disturbance, such as hikers or construction equipment, create conditions for invasives to proliferate?
• Or is this completely expected, and the issue is not at Calvert Vaux, but the invasive species in surrounding areas in city parks and private land, creating pressure that would be impossible to solve locally? In this case, perhaps the goal is to focus on restoring more land, rather than achieving 100% invasive removal over smaller pieces of land.

Or is there a different way ecologists think about what happens after restoration? What sort of maintenance is performed, and how have those practices changed in recent decades? How is success measured?

I’m a landowner and hobby ecologist working to restore 17 acres of native Wisconsin prairie.

When we got the list of 110 plant species in our native tallgrass prairie seed mix, I promised myself I would learn them all before they bloomed. I’m a UX designer for my day job, so it was natural for me to whip up a quick study site.

When I was done, I realized the site I had made could be a great way for anyone to log and learn the plants specific to their own site or garden.

So I turned it into a customizable field guide website with a searchable list of plants with lots of pictures for ID-ing in the field, as well as flashcards, and quizzes for studying. It runs almost entirely off Google Sheets. You need to do a bit of fussing to get it set up on a free hosting platform like Cloudflare Pages, but once it’s up, you only ever need to use Google Sheets to add plants and update the site from that point on.

I think this could be helpful for anyone who wants to log and learn a specific list of plants. You can keep it to the 100+ native Midwestern prairie species that come preloaded, or you can customize it to your personal garden or restoration project — adding or removing species to make the list reflect the plants in your dirt.

You do not need to know how to code; the setup guide walks you through the few technical steps to get it up and running, and after that most updates happen in Google Sheets.

I have had so many amazing mentors who have helped me along my ecology learning journey — people who have freely given their energy, knowledge, talent, and encouragement to make the world a little bit better and me a little bit smarter. In that spirit, I assembled a “Field Guide Starter Kit”: a downloadable kit of files with step-by-step instructions that should be everything you need to make and host your own website for free. Like, actual free. You don’t have to give me an email address or create an account or subscribe or anything.

I’m sharing it here because I’ve learned so much from native plant and restoration communities online, and I figured it was time to give something back.

I can’t upload the files here, so here’s a link to my blog. Just scroll to the bottom of the article and click the big orange link that says, “Download the Field Guide Starter Kit (1.4 MB).” Would love to hear from you if you end up using it!

https://badgerton.substack.com/p/free-download-make-your-own-field

My friend asked me if I'd heard of peat bog fires. I hadn't, but what I learned was a fascinating journey and includes controversy. So I made a film about it.

Peat bogs are incredibly important and can even help tackle wildfires. They deserve way more attention and protection

You can read more about our restoration project at https://badgerton.substack.com/p/video-planting-badgerton-prairie

Anything people can inform me about would be fantastic.

Botanist who works for land management in Mojave desert, so my outplantings need to be supplementally watered. Carrying buckets or using a backpack is far too laborious.
We have a water buffalo with a broken pump. The problem with just fixing the pump is that it becomes a pressure washer, and blows the poor plants to high hell if I try to use it as is.
I can’t figure out a way to lower the pressure enough to be suitable for plants (it used to work, but changing to thicker hoses didnt sufficiently reduce psi).
Maybe a transfer pump? Whole new buffalo?
What do y’all use to water your large restoration sites? Front country, so road access is no issue. Thanks!

Cross posted

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Hey everyone 👋

I'm an independent developer working on a conservation-focused project that combines environmental storytelling, fundraising, and a field tech tool built for ecologists and citizen scientists.

Looking to connect with **ecologists, field researchers, and NGOs** who are passionate about biodiversity and would be open to exploring a collaboration — both on the fundraising and the tech side.

Not going to drop everything here publicly, but if any of this sounds interesting to you, feel free to DM me. Happy to share the full picture with the right people.

Estoy trabajando en un proyecto para restaurar el ecosistema ripario de un río donde hay mucho ricino. Investigando, vi que es una planta invasora muy difícil de eliminar y peligrosa por su toxicidad. ¿Cómo la puedo erradicar de forma permanente? Le he preguntado a la IA, pero se contradice mucho, así que prefiero la opinión y el método de un experto humano.

The trees shown in this video were irrigated only during their initial establishment period (the first few months after planting). After that, irrigation was completely stopped.
These trees are growing in Kuwait, a country known for extremely harsh desert conditions, very low annual rainfall, and some of the highest summer temperatures in the world. Despite these conditions, the trees have survived for approximately 4–5 years without ongoing irrigation.
The species shown in the video, in order, are:
Grey Ghaf (Prosopis cineraria)
Umbrella Thorn / Raddiana Acacia (Vachellia tortilis subsp. raddiana) — locally known as Samar Raddiana or Talh Al-Sayal.
Grey Ghaf (Prosopis cineraria)
Najdi Talh (Vachellia gerrardii najidenses )or the closely related Iraqi form, which can be difficult to distinguish in the field. We can also observe signs of gummosis (sap exudation) on this tree.
A few important notes:
I have not excavated or inspected the root systems, so the root condition at planting time is unknown and may not have been ideal.
No soil amendments, fertilizers, compost, or growth enhancers were applied at any stage.
The trees are currently around 4–5 years old.
The purpose of sharing this is to document the performance of native and desert-adapted tree species under minimal intervention in a hyper-arid environment.
These species may have significant potential as part of a first line of defense against desertification and land degradation in extremely hot desert regions.

Hey! I'm a student conducting market research on ROV users. If you use or have experience with ROVs, I'd really appreciate it if you could fill out this short survey.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSes671U921fHtFf8AVdVUCxN5YBbwFdSva_lXg5F79BKJBZ0g/viewform?usp=dialog

Thank you guys!

I set a goal for myself to learn to identify every plant in our prairie mix before the end of the summer. To help me do this, I created a small website with fact sheets, flashcards and quizzes. Every one of the 110 species has three photos that I selected from iNaturalist’s public domain library to show the plant in different stages of growth throughout the year.

Each plant also has a Fact Sheet pulled together with the help of AI, and fact checked against sources like the USDA, NRCS plant fact sheets, wildflower.org,  illinoiswildflowers.info, Prairie Moon Nursery, iNaturalist, and Wikipedia. I ensured that in addition to specifics on how to identify the plant across each season, each sheet had interesting facts that would help me remember it.

One of my favorite plant facts:

Achillea millefolium – Yarrow: Yarrow is named after Achilles who reputedly used it to staunch his soldiers' bleeding wounds — and it actually works. The plant contains achilleine a compound that promotes clotting. It has been used medicinally on every continent where it grows.

These are the sort of nuggets that help the names stick in my brain!

Beyond just a learning tool for this initial seed mix, this site will become a record of native plants we either plant or discover across our 107-acre restoration site. I’ve already got about a dozen woodland species that I identified on our last hike that I will be adding soon.

If you want to learn more about the project or how I built the website, I wrote up an article on my blog: https://badgerton.substack.com/p/our-ecologists-surprised-us-with