Cheri bibi

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Florida just did something so massive it is hard to wrap your head around. The state passed a law that legally connects 18 million acres of wilderness into a single continuous corridor, and in a place famous for paving paradise and draining swamps, that is like watching a casino give back land to the alligators.
For decades, Florida panthers, black bears, and migrating birds were running into walls they couldn't see. Subdivisions, orange groves, and highways chopped the peninsula into ecological islands. Animals would wander out of protected land and hit a Walmart parking lot or a six-lane arterial. Gene pools shrank. Populations bottlenecked. With fewer than two hundred Florida panthers left, a broken corridor was practically a death sentence.
The Florida Wildlife Corridor Act changed the math. It doesn't just encourage connection. It legally protects it. The state is now obligated to maintain a continuous path of wild land stretching from the Everglades to the Georgia border, using conservation easements, state acquisitions, and strict development buffers. That panther in the photo isn't crossing a random marsh. He's walking a route that is now protected by statute, moving through cypress domes and wet prairies that developers can no longer fragment into useless pieces.
What makes this different from typical conservation is the scale and the permanence. Eighteen million acres is larger than most states. It means seed dispersal happens naturally again, with plants hitchhiking on fur and in droppings across intact landscapes. Pollinators find new habitat. Predators follow prey without becoming roadkill. And the water that flows through these connected wetlands recharges aquifers that millions of Floridians drink from.
Florida didn't just save some parks. It stitched the wild back together with legal thread.

All love at the #pride🌈 parade #weho - view from the parade!

Colorado brought the wolves back and the rivers remembered how to grow green again. It sounds like folklore, but the before-and-after is documented in willow stems, water temperature logs, and beaver lodge counts that biologists have been tracking for years. For decades, elk herds in the western part of the state had turned riverbanks into browse lines — every sapling, every shoot, every tender cottonwood nipped off before it could anchor soil or cast shade. The water ran hotter, faster, and emptier because nothing was holding the banks together, and the fish followed the shade out of existence while birds stopped nesting in the bare stubs.
Then the state reintroduced gray wolves, the keystone predator that evolution had already calibrated for this exact landscape, and the elk had to start acting like prey again. They stopped camping in wide-open valleys. They moved to higher ground. They looked up. And for the first time in a generation, young willows and cottonwoods got a full growing season without being eaten to the root.
The change was almost rude in its speed. Roots grabbed gravel. Banks stabilized. Shade dropped water temperatures just enough for trout to return. Beavers moved back in and started damming, spreading water sideways into meadows that had been dust for years. Scientists call it a trophic cascade. The old ranchers and river guides just say the valley feels thick again, like something invisible got put back where it belonged.
The politics of wolf reintroduction are still loud — livestock losses, fear, the usual arguments at every town hall. But rivers do not vote. They respond to physics and biology, and the ancient contract between predator and prey that keeps green things growing where water meets land. Colorado didn't just release a predator into the mountains. It reintroduced consequence, and the whole watershed is cashing the check.

Happy Birthday Sir Thomas Jones Woodward born 7 June 1940) Tom is a Welsh singer. His career began with a string of top 10 hits in the 1960s and he has since toured regularly, with appearances in Las Vegas from 1967 to 2011. His voice has been described by AllMusic as a “full-throated, robust baritone”. Tom Jones & Stereophonics - Mama Told Me Not To Come **Have a great night- will not be posting tomorrow- 5:45am big day..** Mama Told Me (Not to Come)”, is a song by American singer-songwriter Randy Newman written for Eric Burdon’s first solo album in 1966. Three Dog Night’s 1970 cover topped the US pop singles chart. Tom Jones and Stereophonics’ version also reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart in 2000. Tom Jones and Stereophonics covered the song for Jones’ 34th album, Reload, in 1999. It was released as a single on March 6, 2000, and reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart, No. 7 in Iceland, No. 11 in Ireland and No. 45 in New Zealand. This version was produced by Steve Bush and Marshall Bird (also known as “Bird & Bush”). Stereophonics lead singer Kelly Jones (no relation to Tom) shared the lead vocals with Jones. The video featured an appearance by Welsh actor Rhys Ifans. #sirtomjones #mamatoldmenottocome #stereophonics #popmusic #psychedelicpop kellyjones randynewman threedognight

The Yurok Tribe just proved that the condor remembers home even after a century away. In partnership with state agencies, they confirmed a California condor egg in the Pacific Northwest redwood range for the first time in over a hundred years, meaning the largest land bird in North America is nesting again in the fog-drenched forests where it once soared before lead poisoning and habitat loss drove it to near extinction. Condors are massive, with wingspans over nine feet, and they need old-growth forests for nesting, thermal updrafts for soaring, and clean carrion for food. The Pacific Northwest population was wiped out by the early 1900s, and the species survived only through captive breeding programs in Southern California. The Yurok Tribe led the push to reintroduce birds to their ancestral territory, managing habitat, monitoring releases, and now confirming that the condors are not just visiting. They are breeding. The egg represents a full circle: a species returning to a landscape that never stopped being suitable, only empty. Redwood forests get their cleanup crew back, scavenging dead marine mammals and deer, cycling nutrients, and restoring an ecological role that has been missing for generations. Other tribal and state partnerships are watching because the Yurok proved that reintroduction works when the people who know the land lead the effort.

Billie Jean instrumental

News-Press reporter Julianna Lozada gives us an inside look at the grand opening of Santa Barbara's newest jazz club: The Grand on State Video by Aston Smith

Kudos to the artists at @thirdactorg for this bit of brilliant resistance. Grateful. ❤️🤍💙