The Blog

I have grown milkweed at commercial scale for 35 years. My family has been in the nursery business since 1959, and our farm in Tennessee sits in the middle of the eastern monarch migration corridor. I have watched this crisis unfold from the field, not from a research station or a policy desk, but from the rows where the plants come out of the ground.

Have you heard of permitting reform?
It’s one of the hottest topics in the United States Congress, and four influential Senators recently unveiled a new permitting reform bill aimed at speeding up industrial energy projects of all types, from oil and gas pipelines to wind and solar facilities. Permitting reform changes the rules and timelines that govern how large projects receive government approval.

Seven former leaders of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries have sent a letter to Interior Secretary Douglas Burgum and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urging the administration to withdraw its recent rollback of the Endangered Species Act’s definition of “harm.”

From 3-inch fireworms to 6-foot nurse sharks, these reefs are alive.
That statement is subjectively true, but what does it mean for a reef to be alive in today’s world?

Throughout my career as a conservationist, I’ve often been asked some version of the same question:
“Where do you find the motivation? How do you keep from losing hope?”