Ecology & Action Magazine

Interacting with green spaces close to Halifax’s urban core is a way for communities to channel fear and grief for our environment into hope and action. The Halifax Green Network Plan provides an opportunity to protect these spaces from threats of development, but is real progress being made? 

While often overlooked or avoided in conversations, death is an essential part of the ecosystem. In this article, learn how rotting trees and spores of fungi pave the way for new life to thrive.

In the summer of 2024, an intense wildfire swept through Jasper, and this writer was evacuated from the backcountry – an experience filled with grief and resilience. How do forest ecosystems regenerate in the hours, days, months and years after a fire? Find out in this article.

We are living through accelerated and converging crises: climate breakdown, fascist authoritarianism, oppressive inequality, species loss. We can fall into apathy, or panic, but there is another path: the Spiral of the Work that Reconnects, developed by Joanna Macy. 

“Climate change is collective grief. We don’t know when we will lose what we have; we don’t know when those memories will become all that we have left. Every day I feel like I am grieving a world I still live in. But I want to love, I want to feel, I want to live.” Read this reflection on memory here. 

Every day, we make thousands of decisions. Although the immediate environmental consequences may not be evident, these choices affect the world in ways that we may not consider. By paying attention to our invisible footprint, we can harness our power to create change. 

What if the time we spend outside could benefit both ourselves and nature itself? In an ever-increasingly digital age, we can spend more time outdoors, while at the same time contributing to plant and species-saving research through the practice of citizen science. 

Highly acidic with low oxygen, peatlands, among other wetlands, have long been termed ‘barren’ or ‘lifeless’ environments. Dive into the language of usefulness and extraction, and the ties of wetlands, infertility, restoration and hope.

Love, grief and land are entangled in an intimate web of connections in Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s writings. Reading them is an act of resistance and relation-building, showcasing how storytelling can be an act of decolonization and climate action.

From the Los Angeles fire to hospice care: as our ecological crisis continues, we can set our intention to remain present and accounted for; doing what we can, from wherever we are. If we listen deeply, we’ll hear the web of life that sustains us, calling us to face loss courageously from the other side of grief.

As microplastics affect fragile marine ecosystems, our food and our health, why is an international treaty on plastic pollution still not in place? From apathy to slow political will, get the breakdown in this article. 

As our present and future look increasingly unrecognizable, we turn toward the one thing that holds a degree of certainty and stability: the past. But the urge to consume nostalgic commodities is at the root of our dread. We must resist the temptation of the past that pacifies us into stagnancy and passive consumption. 

"Sable Island is a remnant of glacial history – a realm where life and death intertwine with an inextricable sense of wilderness pervading every inch of the landscape. The windswept dunes and barren stretches are reminders of a world where survival demands loss and resilience as a form of companionship." Read reflections from Sable Island here.

These delicious white pine cookies with citrus glaze involve not only baking but also the mindful act of foraging – choosing each needle with care and gratitude and deepening our relationship with the land. Get the recipe here.