Well … this is a bit off topic, but it's a really inspiring story on the possibilities for biodiversity and environmental restoration through the prison system in Oregon (
Sustainable Prisons Project). What they've found, inmates have much better skills and even long-standing and continuous commitment to environmental restoration than zoos or other groups in private and public sector, namely because of abundance of time, and it's helped out a great deal in terms of important job skills development, education, environmental education, pride, self-worth, etc. The prison also has a water treatment plant on its grounds, and biodiversity and green efforts have returned huge cost benefits and economic savings too. I really like stories like this … areas where biodiversity and environmental work can return important benefits in terms of jobs, education, economy, benefits to science, reducing crime (in Chicago, community gardens have an important co-benefit in crime reduction by simply putting more eyes on the street), and also help out the environment. The Oregon prison project has been most important in returning endangered Oregon spotted frogs back to their natural habitat. There's a shorter text version of the story
here. Break the law, and do your time and give something back by getting "close to nature."
Quote:
TOBY ERHART: The first year, we did about 120,000 of nine different species. This year, we're doing near 400,000 of 13 different species.
JULE GILFILLAN: Stafford Creek inmate, Toby Erhart, is growing prairie grasses for the Lewis McChord restoration with the help of Evergreen graduate student, Carl Elliott.
CARL ELLIOTT, graduate student, The Evergreen State College: So the training is basic horticulture techniques. And I spent a lot of time teaching them sensitivity and observation. I want them to be able to observe what they see and be sensitive to changes in the plants or insects that they may see affecting them.
And that's why they're good for the insects, because --
JULE GILFILLAN: The time these inmates have for observation and recordkeeping also results in valuable scientist data.
TOBY ERHART: There's virtually no science on the germination or growth of these species, because they are wild and no one has cultivated them for profit so there's no mass sowing (ph) information on them.
JULE GILFILLAN: The program may be without a profit motive, but there's plenty of motivation.
NALINI NADKARNI:I mean I came to a prison thinking it was going to be so tough and so hard to break through to these guys with bald heads and -- and tattooed. And they've been the easiest. They've been the ones who have accepted and wanted more -- more than other audience I've
-- I've ever worked with.
TOBY ERHART: The scientist aspect of this project has been pretty much new to me. I had never even heard of any of these things. These are called lomatium that we're planting right now. These ones, they're little phylum linatum (ph).
You know, I -- I'm learning Latin, for goodness sakes. You know, linatum means to provide with wool or covered with wool.
JULE GILFILLAN: In addition to educational and scientific benefits, there also seems to be a social upside.
NALINI NADKARNI: What I've seen is that their stress levels go down and their fear levels go down. Their aggression levels go down. It's a hard thing to measure in a prison, but we have some deep sense of that in each one of the prisons that we're working in and each type of the projects that we're working, as well.