Changing our Parameters

As I followed the news of the terrible wildfires in Los Angeles, I thought back to reading How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition and its definition of nature.

According to Yrjö Haila and Chuck Dyke, the editors of the book, nature is the parameters of what is possible. The Los Angeles fires and their devastation suggested to me new parameters for what is possible and what is not possible.

It is pretty clear that we can and have changed what is possible in terms of wildfires, droughts, and storms. By releasing tons of greenhouse gases, we have warmed the planet, expanding the parameters and therefore the power and impacts of such phenomena.

In return, our expansion of these parameters has received a response from the phenomena. As Haila and Dyke would argue, our actions sent a message to the climate, and the climate engaged with that communication through its parameters. Specifically, the climate is now putting tighter limits on where and how we can live. The increased likelihood and strength of climate-related disasters means that humans will have to adjust to these new parameters. Some areas will likely no longer support the population sizes they once did; others may prove entirely incapable of fostering human life.

We've changed the parameters for nature, and that includes ourselves.

When Martina McBride Showed Me How to Put My Voice into What I Do

Looking back, I probably couldn't have chosen a better person to teach me how to use my voice than Martina McBride.

In July 1994, I first watched McBride's music video for "Independence Day," a song that called attention to the issue of domestic violence. The powerful message of the song and the intensity of the video's images instantly grabbed ahold of me. Even as a kid, I recognized that the singer had done something special: She wasn't just entertaining people for a living; she was trying to make a difference by putting her voice into her work.

From that time on, I was a fan of McBride. She had an exceptional voice and a social conscience, and she continued making music to make a difference.

When it came time for me to find jobs, I made sure to look for ones that mattered. I couldn't sing like McBride, but I could make a difference with what I chose to do. Jobs that communicated about environmental issues were of particular interest because I had always loved animals and the environment.

I have been fortunate enough to find jobs that I think made a difference in society, and many of them have involved some form of environmental communication. Even this blog is a testament to my desire to use my voice for the environment.

McBride's "Independence Day" is an iconic song that has made a major impact on the world, but its less heralded legacy can be found in the way it taught me how to use my voice 30 years ago.

Thanks, Martina! And happy birthday!

Gordon Lightfoot: The Voice of Co-presence

Some voices resonate with you from the first moment you hear them. For example, I still have extremely clear and vivid memories of singing along to Gordon Lightfoot's "Ode to Big Blue" as a child.

However, to me, Lightfoot and his music represent more than simply happy memories from childhood. I think "Ode to Big Blue" touched a tuning fork that had already been developing in me, and in doing so, it left a reverberating effect that's lasted to the present day. Although the song is not one of his most well-known works, it shares with essential Lightfoot hits like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzergerald,""Ghosts of Cape Horn," and "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" themes about human respect for and co-presence with the non-human parts of our environment. 

I would even argue that Lightfoot used his music to contemplate his place in the environment. Songs like "Triangle," "River of Light," "The House You Live In," and "Too Many Clues in This Room," while expanding out to address societal and existential questions, maintain a rooting in environmental elements. It's as if, like many artists, including William Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Hardy, and Willa Cather, Lightfoot needed environmental elements to help him process and articulate his ideas. If that was the case, I can certainly relate, and it helps explain why his music spoke to me in such a powerful way.

It wasn't just that Lightfoot sang about the environment though. The way he sang about it also struck a chord with me (probably before I even fully understood why). As a child, I knew I liked "Ode to Big Blue" because it was about whales, which were among my most favorite animals. What I discovered later was that Lightfoot's music emphasized the connectedness and co-presence of humans and non-humans in the environment. In his songs, human action is inextricably tied to environmental causes and effects. If the "lifeblood" of the Canadian wilderness supplied the means for that country's economic development in "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," then the avaricious whaling depicted in "Ode to Big Blue" demonstrated the impacts that such economic development has on the environment in turn. The emphasis on these connections challenges the typical Western understanding of humans being separate from nature. 

Just as importantly, Lightfoot never sugarcoated the connection between the human and the non-human, producing a sense that while often beneficial to humans, the environment demands respect. The personification of Big Blue demonstrates Lightfoot's sense that a whale exists on equal standing with a person. Meanwhile, the power of the natural world and its ability to wipe away human life in an instant runs through "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Triangle," and "Ghosts of Cape Horn," leaving a jarring lesson about taking the environment for granted. In some ways, this point of emphasis might reinforce the traditional Western understanding of nature as something to fear. Yet because Lightfoot also sings about co-presence and connection with the non-human, even the scarier non-human elements garner more respect than fear in his songs. If we are part of the larger environment, we must recognize the threats it can pose, but that doesn't mean we have to wage war on it as an adversary.

As it turned out, in my adulthood, my work as a scholar of environmental communication would explore many of the same themes Lightfoot's music did. I learned that he and I shared a worldview, and I gained an even greater appreciation for what he was saying in "Ode to Big Blue." In fact, an unmistakeable line of thought runs from the first time I heard that song to how I perceive and act within our environment today. 

Gordon Lightfoot died on May 1. I am very sad the world lost him, but I expect that his music and his voice will continue to influence the way we think about and interact with the non-human environment for a long time.

Goodbye, Gordon. Thank you for singing my song!

Double Coverage

Maybe it was all the twos in 2022, but when this year began, my management of the Facebook page for the Black Hills Audubon Society hit a fitting milestone.

On May 22, 2019, I started managing the page. At that time, it had amassed 364 followers in a little more than seven years. By January 1, 2022, that number had doubled to 728.

To add to the excitement, January 2022 has given the page a good start toward the next 364. Already this month, the page has 21 new followers.

The growth during the last 32 months means a lot to me. It is great to see my work having an impact, and it is equally satisfying watching the organization's Facebook coverage expand.

You could say it's twice as nice when achievements like this go toward a good cause.

Wild Assumptions

The human tendency to insist that animals or other non-human parts of the environment lack some trait or ability happens so frequently that even people who have challenged it sometimes end up doing it.

Our assumptions about what is human and what is wild or wilderness have deep roots. Consequently, they can guide our reasoning no matter how much we try to overcome them. In addition, they tend to result more from our own limits in perceiving the world around us than from the shortcomings of non-humans. This creates major problems for the conclusions we reach because flawed assumptions constrain our ability to assess questions about non-humans and the environment sufficiently. Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-human World, a new book by Emma Marris, provides an example of this.

Marris makes an admirable and good-faith effort to challenge dominant ideas about the relationships between humans, other species, and the environment. However, the discussion presented in the book about the idea of intrinsic value contains some arguments that require further examination. They are limited by the same constraints about the traits and abilities of non-human entities that Marris works so hard to challenge.

Those who support the idea of intrinsic value argue that the value of something exists independent of the valuation of a valuer. For example, a tree has value in and of itself regardless of what value humans might put on it. This idea is used to support arguments that non-humans have the right to exist and that human activity jeopardizing that right is unethical.

While allowing that individual non-humans have intrinsic value, Marris questions whether species as a whole and entire ecosystems have it. This argument centers on the assumption that species and ecosystems are not conscious agents trying to survive. At this point, Marris begins to exhibit that old human tendency to discount the capabilities and characteristics of the non-human.

According to Marris, "The individual living things alive today are here because their ancestors survived and reproduced. And thus each one has inherited many ways of surviving and reproducing. Their goal-directed nature is a product of the brute force of evolution. Individuals that don't try to live and reproduce don't have babies. Those that do, do, and pass on their 'trying' genes. Sometimes selection can act on tightly coordinated groups, like ant colonies, when the whole colony survives or dies together. But 'species are too diffuse and their individual members too uncoordinated and independent from each other for them to constitute an entity on which selection might operate,' (Ronald) Sandler says. They have no goals. If they have no goals, they can't be helped or hindered." Then, Marris applies the same logic to ecosystems, arguing that they lack goals, including the desire to persist.

With regard to species, these claims, especially the quote from Sandler, are incredible. It is difficult to accept the assumptions that species are not "coordinated" and "have no goals" after watching geese migrate, European starlings fly as one big mass, insects mate over streams in the tiny window of time in which they live, or salmon return together from the ocean to spawn. In fact, when the Elwha River was dammed, the individual salmon would constantly bump into the base of the dam in an attempt to follow their instincts to continue upstream. This behavior continued for decades until the dam was finally removed. Clearly, the salmon had a goal in mind. This goal could not have been the result of uncoordinated, individual decisions because the individuals that returned to the river decades after the dam was put in place had no personal knowledge of what was past the structure. Rather, the goal was the product of a species coordinating itself through collective instincts in its drive to survive, a drive that propelled individuals to the point that they would repeatedly throw themselves against solid concrete in vain. The quote from Sandler also seems to disregard the research showing that dolphins possess a social intelligence that allows them to experience each other's experiences, a degree of connection that humans can hardly imagine. And therein lies the central problem of these claims from Marris and Sandler about intrinsic value: They are limited by the human ability to perceive and imagine what is happening in the non-human world. These limitations constrain the conclusions the two writers make.

Demonstrating how assumptions can lead to flawed logic and questionable conclusions, Marris seems to use the claims about intrinsic value to invert the process of evolution. Positioning reproduction as the "product" of evolution, which the writer refers to at other points as a "selector," creates the impressions that evolution is (1) the driving force (rather than a result of reproduction and adaptation to environmental conditions) and (2) an omnipotent agent with the ability to decided the fate of species. In other words, Marris, who is reluctant to grant agency and consciousness to species and ecosystems, apparently has no problem granting these things to evolution. First, evolution is a human concept that is used to explain how species develop and adapt within their environment. It is not an agent of that environment. Second, evolution is the product, not the driver. As life adapts to the planet's different parameters through reproduction, species evolve. No omnipotent "selector" determines this process. Instead, it's a continuous interaction between life and environmental parameters. I would further argue that species play a central role in this process by supplying the drives that organize migrations, mating, and other social interactions. The species are trying to survive. Otherwise, their individual members would be so uncoordinated that life on this planet would have likely been dead on arrival.

Proving intrinsic value in ecosystems presents stronger challenges. Because of human limitations, it is quite difficult to see how entire landscapes might be coordinated and trying to survive. This is why Marris can say ecosystems do not move as units. On this issue, the work of Suzanne Simard, which can be read in Finding the Mother Tree, proves useful yet again. (I previously blogged about that book here.) In showing how entire forests are linked in consciousness and communication through fungal networks, Simard provides strong evidence for the kinds of agency, coordination, and desire to survive that Marris denies to ecosystems. The connections Simard describes go beyond a particular species and far beyond individual members of those species. Furthermore, they show how entire ecosystems respond to environmental signals, sharing resources and information that allow for decisions meant to facilitate survival. As Simard demonstrates, these decisions can even include the ecosystem moving as a unit as changes in the climate make one area unsatisfactory or turn other areas more favorable. Trees moving beyond what once was the tree line represents one such example, and of course, the species linked to those trees follow. In addition, dying trees will share their accumulated knowledge of how to survive with other trees before they die, and such sharing can involve more than one species. These phenomena sound a lot like coordination and a desire to survive that extend to the level of ecosystems.

In Wild Souls, Marris raises important points about animal rights and human attempts to control the entire environment. However, the arguments the book presents about intrinsic value are central to its overall message and need further attention and development before they can be accepted.

All told, it is always worth keeping in mind how human assumptions about the non-human world influence our perception of and perspectives on it.

The Child and the Mother Tree

As a child, I had the fortunate experience of receiving my first bits of education from a forest; years later, I'd discover the science of that knowledge in Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree.

Because the teachings of the forest reached me before social constructs about the non-human world had much chance to mold my perspective, I was free to imbibe that information without a strong human filter. Put simply, I just experienced what was happening in the world around me. It didn't seem weird at all to think of trees as conscious and connected.

After being exposed to more societal ideas about what trees represented to other human beings, I struggled to reconcile the fundamental differences. It just seemed like other people were experiencing something completely different when they couldn't imagine trees as more than lumber growing out of the ground for human consumption. The more I heard what others had to say about trees, the more rare my perspective appeared to be. Such isolation can create doubt, and I wondered if my sense of the forest came largely from my ability to anthropomorphize.

Simard's research in forest ecology dispelled my doubts. Several years before her book's publication, I read a news article that explored how she had produced evidence that trees communicate with each other through fungal networks. For someone with the childhood experience I'd had in the forest and an interest in using environmental communication to break down barriers between humans and the rest of the environment, the research clicked with me; so as soon as I saw that Simard had published Finding the Mother Tree, I bought it.

Reading the book was like having the pieces of my earlier experiences in the forest forged together in solid confirmation. I realized that much of what Simard found through her research closely resembled the lessons my childhood self had absorbed from the trees around it (maybe it was a powerful and unmitigated form of learning through direct experience, or perhaps their fungal network had reached me too). I learned a lot from Simard as well and breezed through the book.

If you are like me and have suspected since you were young that forests included more than a collection of individual plants, or if you are looking for information that can expand how you think about our environment as a whole, I highly recommend Finding the Mother Tree.

A Radical Book

For those interested in communication about the environment, Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World by Jonathan Bate is pure poetry.

When I first read William Wordsworth's poetry as an English major in college, it clicked with me. I understood what he was saying, and beyond that, I recognized a perspective on the world that meshed with mine. My mind couldn't help but attach green colors to his words and images. As a result, when I found out about Bate's biography of the poet, I bought it instantly.

Along with focusing on Wordsworth's most revolutionary work, the book revisits earlier definitions of the word radical to expand our sense of the poet's impact. In particular, the definition of "implanted by nature" contains great importance for students of environmental communication. The biography certainly gives a sense that much of Wordsworth's power as a poet sprang from his feelings of connection with the environment.

Bate makes clear that among the other radical tendencies and sentiments exhibited and expressed by Wordsworth in his early poems, the way in which the poet depicted the environment became his most revolutionary and lasting effect on the world. Wordsworth didn't just challenge dominant understandings of our relationship with the environment, questioning portrayals that granted people power over nature or separated them from it entirely; he prompted us to see connections to all aspects of the environment, no matter how small or obscure. In Bate's estimation, the poetry set the groundwork for movements that promote animal rights and conservation, including the creation of national parks.

By tracing today's language about the environment back to Wordsworth and through the people he influenced such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir, Bate lends great support to his contentions about Wordsworth's importance to the modern environmental movement. He goes so far as to argue that national parks, which have long been called "America's best idea," were actually Wordsworth's idea, and the case Bate builds for this claim is compelling.

I would argue that Bate could have gone even further in establishing Wordsworth's impact on environmental communication. More than simply generating the language to advocate for national parks as basic conservation, Wordsworth preceded the later discussion of national parks as places of ecological importance, which has only gained momentum in recent decades. In addressing the role of every single part of the environment, including the elements we don't typically think of as grand, charismatic, or influential, Wordsworth pushed us to think on a larger scale, and his pen strokes can probably be seen in things like the studies showing wolves' impacts on stream bank erosion in Yellowstone National Park.

Bate might also have extended the discussion of Wordsworth's radical repercussions by examining the poet's influence on Emily Brontë. Scholars such as Stevie Davies and particularly Edward Chitham have shown how Brontë read heavily from Wordsworth's works and often took up his themes. In analyzing the epitaph Wordsworth wrote for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's son Berkeley, Bate looks at language that echoes in Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Describing someone in a grave, Wordsworth writes, "No motion has she now, no force / She neither hears nor sees / Roll'd round in Earth's diurnal course / With rocks, & stones, and trees!" The imagery brings to mind Brontë's depiction of Catherine Earnshaw in her grave, and the words are strikingly similar to those used by Catherine when she compares her love for Heathcliff to "the eternal rocks beneath." Given the argument I made last year about Brontë using imagination to turn the grave imagery into a transformative experience of the connection between people and their environment, I have to conclude that Wordsworth's poetry planted some seeds for such ideas from a woman who arguably surpassed him in radicalness.

Even though I wish Bate would have taken up the points about Brontë and the ecological aspects of the national parks, his biography of Wordsworth is very good, and anyone interested in the environment should check it out. To borrow some popular 1980s language, it's radical!

More Birds of a Feather

Facebook pages of bird-watching groups don't have followers; they have flocks. And the flock following the page for the Black Hills Audubon Society (BHAS) grew a lot last year.

In 2019, I started managing the BHAS Facebook page. As I reported last year, the page saw some encouraging results in the first eight months.

I am happy to report that the trend continued in 2020. From February 1, 2020, to February 1, 2021, the number of followers went from 472 to 619, an increase of 31.1 percent. Furthermore, from my first day back on May 22, 2019, the followers have increased 70.1 percent. Page likes show similar trends, increasing 29.5 percent (417 to 540) from February 1, 2020, to February 1, 2021, and 57.4 percent overall from May 22, 2019.

Despite having fewer birding events in 2020 because of COVID-19, the BHAS Facebook page continued attracting attention. I am proud of the results and look forward to continued growth in 2021.

I'll do my best to keep people flocking in.

What the Flaws in "Macbeth" Mean for Environmental Communication

Macbeth isn’t “a tale told by an idiot,” but it does have a flawed understanding of the environment, and we must learn from those flaws to improve environmental communication.

A fundamental problem in Macbeth arises from William Shakespeare’s depiction of natural and unnatural. It’s a false dichotomy that perpetuates and expands on the flaws in science’s “laws of nature,” flaws highlighted by Yrjö Haila and Chuck Dyke in How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition. Having “laws of nature” requires the conclusion that when those laws are broken, something “unnatural” is done. In other words, these laws imply that a separation exists between what is natural and what is not natural. This is one of the main ways we end up seeing humans and nature as distinct from each other. 

In Macbeth, Shakespeare goes to great lengths to present the title character’s usurping of the Scottish throne as an affront to nature. He does this to protect the “divine right” of kings to hold power, a move intended to curry favor with James I. In this way, the King Duncan of the play and his line embody the “laws of nature,” which, when broken, throw Scotland into an unnatural state of turmoil. As Lady Macbeth’s doctor says, “Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”

For Haila and Dyke, nothing, including deeds and troubles, can be unnatural. Nature is simply the parameters of what is possible. As a result, they argue “that nature’s speech means nature’s presence in everything we humans do.” Killing someone, whether they are a monarch or not, is no more unnatural than not killing them. Humans have simply determined that killing, in most circumstances at least, is morally wrong, and that is where people who study environmental communication must pay special attention.

To argue that some action humans take is “unnatural” is an untenable position. It responds to a question of fact (whether something is true, if it exists, etc.), and that question has only an answer in the negative, setting up the person making the argument for failure. No matter how many human elements are involved in an activity, whether it’s hiking a mountain, emitting carbon pollution, clearcutting a forest, or producing chemical toxins, it can never be unnatural because the environmental parameters allowed for it.

We can still argue against certain actions because of their potential environmental harm, but we must avoid statements based in the issue of what is “unnatural.” For example, if we want to stick with questions of fact, we can argue that an action will create chaos in the environmental system or that such chaos will cause harm to the system. Unlike the claim about unnaturalness, these claims of fact have the potential of being proven as true. We can also examine questions of value (whether something is good or bad, moral or immoral, etc.), which is what Shakespeare seems to have tried to explore with the issue of unnaturalness in Macbeth’s actions. We can claim that some action we take within our environment is immoral (like driving other species to extinction). This, like the questions of fact about systemic balance, is also a question that can be investigated with the potential of the claim emerging victorious.

As compelling of a play as Macbeth might be, it represents a faulty line of thinking about the “laws of nature,” and if we want to improve our communication and understanding of our environment, we must choose lines of inquiry that diverge from the idea of unnaturalness.

A Simple Language with a Lot of Meaning

Actions don't just speak louder than words, in our communication with our environment, they are the words, and yes, they speak very loudly.

When I tell people I study environmental communication, I often get the same question (or at least, variations on it). "You mean, like talking to trees?" they'll ask. In return, I always say yes. I do so partly because I mean it, partly because I do talk to trees, and partly because I love watching the other person's reaction when I give their facetious question a serious answer.

After picking up How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition, a book edited by Chuck Dyke and Finnish professor Yrjö Haila, I think I'll have to adjust my response. In the introduction to the book, Haila and Dyke make the point that "human relationships with the rest of nature begin with deeds, not words." That struck me as a simultaneously simple and profound statement. It's simple because it gives people a concrete concept (their actions) that they know intimately to understand an idea that can sound as abstract and foreign as talking to trees. Haila and Dyke's idea is profound because it can unlock a series of deep and meaningful interactions that alter how we see and relate to our environment. As it turns out, we all talk to trees and our other fellow inhabitants of the environment all the time, and we can do it without speaking a word. 

To take the idea further, Haila and Dyke also explain that the environment and other species speak and respond to us as well. Just like with us, their language comes in the form of actions. My cat says thanks for food by curling up on my lap. On a larger scale, we call the release of methane by thawing permafrost a "feedback loop" to our own release of greenhouse gases and subsequent warming of the atmosphere.

The next time I get asked if I study people talking to trees, I'll probably ask the person what they have said to and heard from trees lately. Maybe then, we'll have a discussion of how actions, particularly in environmental communication, say so much.

Ex-cite-ing News

Having the chance to say something is one thing, but when someone else uses what you said to help advance the conversation, that's really special.

Two years ago, I blogged about the publication of the paper that I wrote with Dr. Michael Salvador. That was a pretty special moment, particularly after the many years of work that went into writing it. However, the newest development in the history of that article might be even more exciting because I recently discovered that for the first time, a paper citing our article has been published.

Dr. Lawrence R. Frey and Dr. Joshua S. Hanan teamed up to write a paper calling for critical rhetoricians to use their work more for direct social activism, and that piece, titled "Toward Social Justice Activism Critical Rhetoric Scholarship," has now been published in the International Journal of Communication. As they make their case, the authors cite the paper Dr. Salvador and I wrote, saying:

"Recent scholarship reveals that rhetoricians—working in conversation with the ideological, critical, and decolonial turns in rhetorical studies—are poised to engage in social justice activism research. For example, during the past two decades, rhetoricians have studied oppressed communities’ social justice struggles; in part, to “interrogat[e] the underlying impulses of rhetorics that appear to be advocating for freedom” (Hartzell, 2018, p. 13). Using primarily textual methods, that scholarship has offered important insights into intersectional and (neo)colonial workings of power, as well as how discourses of freedom, liberation, and emancipation subtly can reproduce hierarchy and inequality (e.g., DeLaurier & Salvador, 2018; Discenna, 2010; Enck-Wanzer, 2011; Hartzell, 2018; Hasian & Delgado, 1998; Hurt, 2007; Kearl, 2015, 2018; Middleton, 2014b)."

To be honest, it's a very cool feeling to know that someone else thought enough of our work to incorporate it in their own. It certainly provides validation and a nice shot of confidence. What's even more encouraging is the objective of Frey and Hanan's article. The idea of using rhetorical scholarship for social activism is a crucial aspect of the foundation for our article, and to see someone taking it further is very heartening. I think this is an important development for rhetorical analysis, academic scholarship in general, and society as a whole, and I am so happy that I was included in it. To read the entire article by Frey and Hanan, click here.

Building on ideas represents the essence of scholarship to me, so I am very pleased I could play a role in developing these ideas, and I am eager to see where critical rhetoric goes from here.

Reflecting on 10 Years of Blogging

What do you do after you have to create a blog for a class assignment and that class ends? If you're a tree-hugger with Finnish heritage, the obvious answer is to retitle it envirofinn and write about the environment for at least 10 years.

For the 2010 spring semester of my Ph.D. studies, I had to start a blog in my rhetoric class. It was simply a blog about assigned readings. Since I didn't have any more of those after the class ended, I decided to take the blog in a new direction on May 19, 2010. I thought it could become a good place to collect and share information about the environment.

Looking back on the last decade of envirofinn, I realize how much I put into its development and maintenance. It turned into a lot more than an information hub. I liked the template I chose so much, I haven't changed it once despite having many new options. The fall theme is just too me. Plus, I think it still looks nice. Besides, I spent a great deal of time trying to find the perfect color scheme for the text, and when I finally found it, I didn't want to let it go. I'm also quite fond of the envirofinn flag I created by adding the green of the blog to the Finnish flag.

A lake in Repovesi National Park reflects
a partly cloudy sky over Finland.

Yes, a lot of myself went into this blog. Eventually, the posts evolved from sharing resources, tips, and events to covering some of my personal experiences and growth as well. A few highlights included going to Finland in 2012 and coming back with material for several posts and the series from summer 2015 that chronicled my coming to terms with the age of global warming.

Some posts also recorded professional accomplishments and development. For instance, I used the blog to announce that I had published a journal article about environmental communication. In addition, I covered my work with Initiative 1631, Carbon Washington, The Nature Conservancy in Washington, and the Black Hills Audubon Society. In short, envirofinn contains some major pieces of my life even though it continues to be a place where I share resources, tips, and events. It probably helped me further my understanding of the environment as much as it helped anyone else learn where to recycle something or how to buy reusable shopping bags.

One thing I take extra pride in is the fact that I have made at least one post in each of the last 120 months. I may not post as often as I once did, but it remains important to me to keep the streak going.

A lot has happened since its inception, but looking toward the future, envirofinn will continue exploring our connection with the environment.

Taking Flight

After a few practice flights, my work managing the Black Hills Audubon Society's (BHAS) Facebook page has begun to take off in earnest.

When I started the work for BHAS last May, I blogged about it here. During the course of the ensuing nine months, I tried a few different things to engage and increase the organization's followers. Starting with 364 followers, I saw a small increase initially, but as I fine-tuned my strategies for making posts, the follower totals and the engagements began to soar.

November represented the point at which everything started to come together. The daily reach of posts dwarfed the rate seen earlier, going from 27 on January 1, 2019, to a current high of 377 on February 10, 2020, (see Graph 1). Likewise, the number of people viewing the site jumped up, particularly when it came to people viewing the homepage and scheduled events (see Graph 2). Paralleling these trends, the number of followers saw a marked rise. Currently, the page has 484 followers, an increase of nearly 33 percent in nine months. What's more, all of those growth points coincided with an uptick in people attending the organization's events, and many of those individuals credited the Facebook posts with bringing them there.

The successes on the BHAS Facebook page have also brought two intangible results. First, I have thoroughly enjoyed doing the work. It's a great combination of strategy and fun. Second, because of the measurable results in followers, engagements, and event attendance, managing the page has been very fulfilling. I can see the impact of my work and know that it's helping a great organization.

Stay tuned to see how high this project flies.

By Necessity, By Design, By Me

Some things don't go exactly like they are drawn up, and some things do. In the case of my work for the Black Hills Audubon Society, both are true.

When I started helping the Black Hills Audubon Society in May, my duties focused on managing the organization's Facebook page. That's gone well. However, a new twist developed in August when the organization sent out a call for help on an upcoming brochure. I'd done some layout projects and worked with graphic designers before, but I had never created a brochure on my own, so I offered to help on this project if the organization couldn't find a professional graphic designer who would work for free.

A look at the brochure I created for
the Black Hills Audubon Society.

Necessity took over when Black Hills Audubon couldn't land a pro. I was it, so they turned to me, and I turned my attention to figuring out what I needed to do. Before I met with them to discuss the project in detail, I created a rough sketch of a simple trifold brochure. My goal was to tell a visual story with the images guiding the reader's eye. Slightly to my surprise (after all, I wasn't a layout expert), they liked it and turned me loose with their only request being that I use a Microsoft Word template, a stipulation that made my design work a bit easier.

That rough sketch proved an effective guide. Using the photographs and text Black Hills Audubon provided and a brochure template I thought worked well, I implemented my vision. By the time I sent out a draft for comments, I started feeling considerable excitement and pride about the product. It just looked good! At least, I thought it did. Still, I was again a little surprised when they agreed with my assessment without requiring any major changes. They were happy, and that made me even happier.

When I received copies of the finished brochure, I couldn't help but smile. There it was: My vision, my design, and my work, all derived from necessity, smoothly developed, and successfully executed.

Back in May, I didn't know my foray into managing a Facebook page would lead to designing and laying out a brochure, but I am glad for the challenge and the chance to put my stamp on this project for Black Hills Audubon.

New Horizons on Feathered Wings

From scholarship to writing and public relations, I've done a lot of work in communication, but starting today, I have the opportunity to do something new.

A yellow warbler I photographed on a recent outing
with the Black Hills Audubon Society.

Despite my time in public relations and my experiences teaching best practices for using social media and even employing Twitter and Pinterest as teaching tools in my classes, I have never managed an organization's social media. That changed today when I started managing the Facebook page for the Black Hills Audubon Society (BHAS).

Envirofinn reflects my affinity for birds. Many of the posts focus on bird-related topics, including my successes in bird-watching during the last few years. On one occasion, I even blogged about a birding event BHAS led. The organization does a nice job of making birding fun and accessible, so when they put out a call for help with their Facebook page, I didn't hesitate to offer my time.

With my background in communication, I can help promote BHAS's events and overall presence. In return, I now have the chance to use social media strategically for a topic I love. I couldn't wait to make my first post, which went up this morning. If you'd like to keep up with the posts and what BHAS is doing, click here.

When looking for new horizons, follow the birds.

First Pieces

My first pieces of content for The Nature Conservancy in Washington and Carbon Washington have hit the Internet.

Last month, I blogged about continuing my work in environmental communication. Now, I am excited to reveal the publication of two of my initial projects, one exploring nature-based solutions (NBS) for The Nature Conservancy and the other highlighting some important legislative work by Carbon Washington.

The most recent publication on The Nature Conservancy's City Habitats site, my article on NBS allowed me to make use of my academic background. It looks at new research into the best strategies cities can use for employing NBS. Translating the research into an article for the general public's consumption gave me the opportunity to combine my understanding of scholarship with my professional work in environmental communication. Check out the full article here.

About a week before the publication of the NBS article, Carbon Washington started making legislative headway on a bill aimed at fostering sustainable farming. With considerable momentum behind the bill, writing about it for the organization proved very exciting. I enjoyed being a part of the move toward progress. Read my write-up here.

These pieces are just the beginning of my work with these organizations. Watch for the addition of more pieces soon.

Doubling Up to Double Down

My path in environmental communication
continues with projects for Carbon
Washington and The Nature Conservancy.

I enjoyed my experience working on the campaign for Initiative 1631 so much that when election season ended, I looked for some new environmental-advocacy opportunities. One would have been great, but I ended up doubling my pleasure with work for both The Nature Conservancy and Carbon Washington.

In November, Carbon Washington put out a call for help with their communication team. Because of their work promoting action on carbon pollution (they had led the charge on Initiative 732 in 2016), I felt like helping them would allow me to continue addressing an issue of particular importance for me. After discussing it with them, I agreed to write content for their communication.

Near the end of December, The Nature Conservancy in Washington state announced that it was looking for volunteers to write for its City Habitats blog. Considering its focus on connecting people in cities with nature, I saw the blog as a wonderful opportunity to help develop the relationship between humans and the environment. My first post should appear in the next few weeks.

To have these two opportunities come up after the I-1631 campaign provided a good outlet for the environmental communication I still have in me. As my work with them continues, I'll post updates on this blog, so stay tuned for more information.

Two chances to work on environmental communication is definitely twice as nice.

Locating Co-Presence: It's in the Journal

Anyone looking for co-presence with the environment can find it in the academic journal Environmental Communication.

After several years of work, "Locating Co-presence in Media Messages about Global Warming," the research paper I wrote with Dr. Michael Salvador, has finally received publication in Environmental Communication.

I last blogged about this paper when the journal accepted it in early 2016. In the meantime, the article appeared in the online version of the journal. However, this publication in Volume 12 Issue 3 of the hard-copy version makes the acceptance feel more real.

As I celebrate the publication, I would like to thank Dr. Salvador for all his work and help on this project. Hopefully, our paper can make a contribution to the ways we analyze and produce environmental communication. The objective always was to improve the relationship people have with the environment. If you would like to access the article, click here.

We can find co-presence with our environment in how we talk and the actions we take, and now, we can find it in Environmental Communication.

Redrawing Our Relationship With Spiders

For many people, the feelings they have about spiders form a tangled web of repulsion, fear, and hate, but animator Joshua Slice has set out to shape a new perspective on these eight-legged wonders.

Using a jumping spider as his model, Slice created Lucas the spider, an animated Internet sensation. The adorable Lucas, voiced by Slices's five-year-old nephew, challenges arachnophobia by striking an engaging tone, which is exactly what the animator intended. To see Lucas and learn more about Slice's approach to creating him, watch the video below:



Lucas represents a smart blend of strategies from animation and environmental communication. First, Slice animated the spider so that it closely resembles a real jumping spider. It also moves like a real spider. The differences between art and life appear subtly. Although he has four large eyes like his counterpart in nature (real jumping spiders have a total of eight eyes but four large ones), Lucas possesses a more doe-eyed look. This gives him a less intimidating presence as does his young voice.

The changes Slice makes from real jumping spiders anthropomorphize Lucas only slightly, allowing people to connect with this eight-legged ambassador without making him so cartoonish that people can't associate him with actual spiders. As environmental communication scholar Julia Corbett argues, although anthropomorphizing contains drawbacks, when used strategically and minimally, it can help people better relate to animals and our environment. Early audience reactions suggest that Slice achieved that balance in an effective way.

With animation like Lucas, perhaps we'll untangled ourselves from our phobia of spiders and start to weave a better relationship with them.

Now Presenting: The Search for Alternative Voices

In our attempts to respond to nature's signals, we clearly need the help of new voices, and I recently gave a presentation on how critical rhetoric allows us to identify these alternative perspectives.

Much of my research in environmental communication focuses on rhetoric, especially one approach to rhetorical criticism called critical rhetoric. When I was asked to deliver a presentation for the Humanities Research Forum Series at the University of South Dakota, I brought together several papers in which I had employed critical rhetoric. Below, you can view the Prezi I used to present my presentation aids for the talk:

Critical rhetoric challenges power by deconstructing meaning and identifying and advocating for marginalized voices. That focus makes it particularly useful as environmental communication scholars pursue new ways of articulating the relationship between humans and nature.

The Prezi above addresses several key aspects of the presentation I gave on critical rhetoric's potential. First, it explains the value of laying out environmental discourse about the human-nature relationship on a continuum. Part of the continuum addresses discourses found in newspaper coverage of global warming. These discourses include nature-as-out-of reach, nature-as-antagonist, and nature-as-co-present, the latter of which represents an important alternative perspective that challenges its more dominant counterparts. Next, the continuum adds components through an analysis of the Web site, The Featured Creature. Together, the discourses from the newspaper coverage and The Featured Creature provide a fuller picture of the human-nature relationship. 

The presentation also discusses how an analysis of The Nature Conservancy's Liquid Courage Web site suggests that elements of physical distance can be added to a public participation model to enhance research into environmental communication. Liquid Courage demonstrates the value of physical-distance elements in our relationship with nature.

As our environmental issues grow more complex and the urgency to address them increases, critical rhetoric presents us with an important tool in finding the voices that can help us respond to environmental signals.