A new project in the Florida panhandle is ensuring military readiness while conserving one of the most biodiverse regions in the country.

Federal agencies have designated 7.7 million acres from Tallahassee to the Alabama border as a Sentinel Landscape. The area encompasses multiple military bases, including Eglin Air Force Base and a hub for training operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Kent Wimmer, senior Northwest Florida representative for Defenders of Wildlife, said Sentinel Landscapes are conservation partnerships between the military, state, local and nonprofit organizations.

"What we're trying to do is, we're trying to protect base missions," Wimmer explained. "We're trying to protect working lands, so working farms and forests. And we're also trying to protect habitat for threatened and endangered species."

Wimmer pointed out the Northwest Florida Sentinel Landscape provides an important opportunity to conserve the panhandle rather than clear the way for more development.

Wimmer emphasized the project also will build more resilience against the impacts of a changing climate, such as flooding. The region already is experiencing more extreme weather. Tyndall Air Force Base received a direct hit from Hurricane Michael in 2018, resulting in a rebuilding price tag which could reach $5 billion.

In addition, Wimmer noted the panhandle is home to the highest species diversity of reptiles and amphibians north of Mexico.

"We're also looking for opportunities where we can protect some of the last remaining habitats for endangered species like the eastern indigo snake or flatwood salamanders or the Okaloosa darter or the gopher tortoise," Wimmer outlined.

Other Sentinel Landscape designations have been announced in Texas and Indiana. Next Wednesday, the Sentinel Landscapes Partnership, composed of the U.S. departments of Agriculture, Defense and Interior, will host a webinar on the new conservation projects.

By Michaela Haas for Reasons to be Cheerful.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

By any definition, Leah Garcés considered Craig Watts her enemy. As CEO and president of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals, Garcés has devoted her life to protecting animals. When she met Watts in the spring of 2014 at his poultry farm in North Carolina, he was one those factory farmers she deeply despised. In fact, she was so worried that his invitation to meet was an ambush that she gave her husband the address with the reminder, "If I don't come back, look for me rotting away in the chicken litter."

Watts had raised over 720,000 chickens in 22 years for Perdue, the fourth-largest chicken company in the US. He had been searching for ways to stay on the family land in one of North Carolina's poorest counties, and when Perdue offered him a contract to raise chickens, it sounded like a lucrative opportunity. He took out a $200,000 bank loan to build four giant chicken houses. But soon the chickens, crammed 25,000 wall-to-wall in the ammonia-laden air, started to become sick or died, and squeezed by Perdue's profit margins, Watts struggled to pay the bills.

To her surprise, Garcés realized that Watts was not her enemy, but an ally: Chicken farmers like him wanted to end chicken farming as much as she did. He described the enormous toll this kind of farming took on his physical and mental health. Yet because of his hefty loans, Watts saw no way out. "I realized he was trapped in a system I am advocating against," says Garcés. Their meeting in 2014 changed the trajectory of both their lives.

Together, they released footage from the horrors of chicken farming in the New York Times. In the first 24 hours, a million viewers saw the panting birds at Watts's farm living in their own excrements. Two years later, the whistleblower quit the chicken business for good and took a paid job for the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, warning other farmers not to trust the promises of the chicken industry while still paying off his debt from the chicken houses.

A farmer at heart, Watts has now become one of the poster farmers for the Transfarmation Project, which Garcés founded as an offshoot of the nonprofit Mercy for Animals in 2019. "I remember standing in his barn and thinking, could we make it into a strawberry farm? Repurpose the land?" Garcés shares. Watts started small by installing a 300-square-foot shipping container in his large poultry house with a small grant from the Transfarmation Project and cultivating specialty mushrooms like shiitake. He told Garcés he wanted his new operation "as removed from the industrial model as it can be," while not abandoning farming: "It's part of me, in the blood. It's a calling. I like to watch things grow."

Garcés describes the story of how she helped Watts leave factory farming in her new book, Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us From Factory Farming.

As she details in the book and as Watts can attest, it is surprisingly difficult for contract farmers to abandon factory farming. More than 70 percent of poultry farmers live below the poverty line and have to pay off crushing loans. When given the option, an increasing number of farmers and their children want to quit factory farming. "Though we didn't advertise the Transfarmation Project, as soon as we rolled out the website, hundreds of farmers immediately contacted us," Garcés says. "We had no idea interest would be that high."

But collectively, the poultry farmers owe $5.2 billion. "As long as they have too much debt, they can't leave because their farm is at risk," says Garcés. "We can't override so much debt as a small nonprofit. There has to be government action, like it did with the tobacco industry."

The farmers need to find an alternative source of income that is healthier and more lucrative in order to keep their land. "It's a solutions-oriented project where we're rolling up our sleeves and testing what works," Garcés says. "Many times, when people are tackling systemic challenges, they write about either the problem or the solution. But a gulf is left in the middle: the complexity of how."

Garcés hired the consulting firm Highland Economics to analyze which crops are likely to succeed, ideally while using the large structures already built. Specialty mushrooms, including shiitake, oyster, reishi and lion's mane, top the list while microgreens came out second, followed by produce like tomatoes and hemp last. Two transformation hubs serve as a blueprint for other farmers to copy.

As a chicken farmer, Watts made $0.05 per pound of flesh. Now, he can get $6 per pound for shiitake mushrooms. The switch to mushrooms is a compelling exit strategy because mushrooms need a similar temperature, humidity and lighting. "But unlike the chickens, mushrooms can't suffer," Garcés points out. "They don't have to be killed and incinerated when things go wrong."

For Garcés, her mission is not just about the "80 billion land animals that die for people's palates in the most horrific conditions" every year worldwide, but also about climate change. "Collectively, farmed animals emit more greenhouse gases than the world's planes, trains and cars together," Garcés reasons. "A third of our precious arable land is used to grow feed for factory-farmed animals rather than food we humans could eat directly." Considering all this plus the considerable amounts of chemicals and logging of ecologically important habitats like rainforests, Garcés concludes, "industrial agriculture is one of the most destructive industries on our planet."

The suffering is not reserved for animals. The ammonia in chicken waste harms farmers and ecosystems. "Agricultural work is some of the most dangerous work in the country," Garcés knows. Suicide and depression rates are 60 times higher for male farmers than for the average male American, and she recounts with sadness the suicide of a Texas farmer she was trying to help, Bo Halley. With failing physical and mental health after decades of poultry farming, he did not live to see the transformation of his family farm into a hemp farm and dog rescue.

Duped by ads of happy cartoon chicken, consumers love their cheap chicken, with an average of 182 million chickens slaughtered every week in the US. "The typical American still believes their meat is raised on a family farm," Garcés says, "though the data clearly shows that 97 percent of chicken come from factories." While 90 percent of farmed animals are chickens, the situation presents similar challenges for hog and dairy farmers. Living near hog farms shortens the lives of farmers and neighbors. "When it comes to the meat, dairy and eggs we eat, the price at the grocery store or restaurant is never a fair reflection of the true cost," Garcés points out. "In factory farming, risks and liability are mostly externalized by the industry, and most often to the most vulnerable among us. This damage, this harm, is borne by many - from the workers to the animals to the farmers."

Ultimately, Garcés's vision is not just "helping a few dozen farmers transition to a healthier and more sustainable model, it is about how we transition away entirely from factory farming." The Transfarmation Project connects farmers with consultants and is producing resources and pilots to model successful transitions.

In the same warehouse where Watts once had to kill chickens and where he and Garcés filmed the whistleblower video, he is now harvesting mushrooms. In front of rows of corn, squash and okra he planted on his land, Watts describes how much happier he feels now.

He has named his mushroom farm "Victors' Village Farms" after the Victors' Village in The Hunger Games. He told Leah Garcés that "leaving contract poultry on my own terms was like winning The Hunger Games." But a victor is "a triumphant decider of his fate."


Michaela Haas wrote this article for Reasons to be Cheerful.


get more stories like this via email

The sale of Ohio's Gavin coal-fired power plant is sparking uncertainty among residents and energy experts alike. The plant, which has been one of the state's largest electricity providers for the past 50 years, is now being sold. The Gavin Power Plant, notorious for its high emissions, is the fifth-largest carbon dioxide emitter in the U.S., releasing more than 100 million tons of carbon dioxide in the past seven years.

Dennis Wamsted, an energy analyst for the with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said the sale raises questions about Gavin's future operations and impact on the environment.

"The Gavin coal-fired power plant is being sold from one private equity company to another private equity company. And that brings great uncertainty into whether that plant will continue to operate into the future," he said.

As part of the sale, Gavin will be separated from three gas-fired plants also included in the deal. Some argue that this separation could indicate the new owner, Energy Capital Partners, may not see Gavin as a long-term asset, raising speculation about a potential shutdown or conversion.

While environmental concerns are central to the conversation, the sale also has economic implications for the surrounding communities. Wamsted said the potential for a sudden shutdown could affect local jobs and tax revenues, affecting families that depend on the plant's operations.

"Transitions are going to be hard, but they're a lot easier if you plan for them than let them happen to you. And the reality is Gavin is going to close, so you plan for it or you let it happen to you," he continued.

The new private equity owner has positioned itself as a leader in energy transition. But the ongoing debate about the future of the Gavin plant will likely draw attention from both environmental advocates and those concerned with the plant's role in Ohio's economy.

By Isabelle Atkins for Grady Newsource.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Picture a mountain of discarded material, towering as big as the University of Georgia’s 200,000-square-foot Miller Learning Center, destined for the landfill.

That is the size of the 10 million pounds of materials UGA sends to the landfill each year. But through the doors of that same building is a place where unwanted items can be traded instead of discarded.

In 2021, two UGA students, Jenna Franke and Avery Lumsden, started Swap Shop to lessen overconsumption and waste on campus.

The clothing industry has become one of the most polluting. According to the World Wildlife Fund, making one cotton shirt takes 2,700 liters of water. Then when those clothes are thrown away, they can take over 200 years to decompose in landfills. During decomposition, textiles generate greenhouse methane gas and leach toxic chemicals and dyes into the soil and groundwater.

But Franke and Lunsden remembered the old saying: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

With the help of a grant from the University of Georgia’s Office of Sustainability and a partnership with UGA libraries, they set up a small room on the second floor of the Miller Learning Center. The room holds clothes, shoes, textbooks and other household items that once belonged to members of the Athens community and are ready to be traded. 

Saumya Malik, director of marketing and communications for Swap Shop, says that as fast fashion is on the rise, sustainable practices are needed more than ever.

“There has been a rise of fast fashion, which has really accelerated these trend cycles in a way that people are buying new clothes every season and because they are buying new clothes, they are not using the ones that they were using earlier, and they are not mending things as much,” Malik says. 

At Swap Shop’s repair workshops, they provide materials and teach people how to fix their items, such as mending a hole or replacing a missing button. 

Not only is overconsumption costly to the environment, but people are suffering too. Sara Idacavage, a fashion historian and sustainable fashion educator, says that the bombardment of advertising we access through technology makes us more susceptible to overconsumption.

“Our phones really kind of tell us to buy more and more, so I think it is perfectly natural to overconsume in today’s day and age,” Idacavage says. “The problem is that we are so disconnected from the people who are making the clothing that not everyone even stops to question ‘how could a shirt possibly be $3.99…’”

According to Idacavage, it is not possible to produce clothing for that cheap unless someone else is being exploited, such as through wage slavery or pollution. Even the people living in the surrounding areas of these factories are negatively impacted due to pollutants entering their food and water supply as dyes find their way into local waterways. Yet buying reliable pieces or second-hand provides an inexpensive solution. 

In the fall of 2023, Swap Shop says they diverted 872 pounds of trash from the landfill, and since its founding, the effort has saved 2,709 pounds from the landfill. 

One of Swap Shop’s most familiar faces is Abigail Ventimiglia. Since her sophomore year, she has stopped by the shop about once a week to drop off her used items and see if she can swap anything. She notes that a common misconception is that you must give something away to receive an item. However, if you have nothing to give away, you can still receive items and contribute to extending its life cycle.

“I go like every week and all of the staff, or volunteers, know me, and it’s just this very fun community, where I show up, we chit-chat for like 15 minutes and then I leave. It’s a very small, but important highlight of my week,” Ventimiglia says. 

Although Swap Shop does not take any items with major quality issues, sometimes clothes need alterations or small repairs. For Ventimiglia, this is actually a positive.

“I actually think it’s a very fun opportunity like I started doing embroidery during the pandemic, but I ran into this issue where I love my clothes. I’ve spent so much money and time finding them, I don’t want to just ruin it on my amateur embroidery, but with the Swap Shop, if something has a stain or a little cut, and I need to fix it I can just make that my next embroidery project,” Ventimiglia says while showing three flowers neatly embroidered into her green t-shirt.


Isabelle Atkins wrote this article for Grady Newsource.


get more stories like this via email