Tools for Building a Planet: artificial whale dung, underwater coral reef sound systems, and a gigantic deserted airport
A new-ish year!
Lake Texcoco Ecological Park (c) Team PELTTwo huge stories this month:
In Mexico City, a massive half-built airport has been abandoned and redesigned as a vast swampy wilderness. I’ve had the chance to spend some time talking to Iñaki Echeverria, who is leading the process to restore the Valley of Mexico’s lake systems. How do you transform a deserted airport, twice the size of Manhattan, into a wetland park? Find out at MIT Technology Review.
And then! Another story in Neo.Life brings together experimental findings from across the globe, showing that survival in extreme environments has more to do with collaboration between lifeforms than Darwinian competition. This means that ecosystem restoration could see massive improvements by systematically integrating the ways that different species support each other — either by bringing back complex communities at the same time or by mimicking species that are absent, including constructing artificial oaks, playing healthy reef sounds to lure back coral, and emitting faking whale faeces. Read it here!
This year, I’m aiming to be in touch more often with some shorter messages. Let me know if you like the format change or if there are any features you miss. I’ll be in touch soon with some more stories, including a Manuals “hero” that I’ve had the chance to interview.
A huge thanks to the Marchus Trust and the National Park City Foundation for grants that are going to be supporting our work in 2023! More to come!
THE PLANETARY REGENERATION TOOLBOX:
Artificial whale dung, mud labs, emulated oaks, habitecture, moss milk soup, sand factories, Ghout Oases, hydroseeding, metropolitan dunes, pigeon towers, wool ropes, railway caves, “veteranised” trees, salmon forests, Anthropocene refugia, seahorse hotels, seed shelters, OECMs, TreeNests, firefly-friendly street lights, Devithan (sacred groves), frankenchestnuts, gatekeeper rats, glider boxes, toad patrols, coral innovation labs, Xingu Seed Collectors, X-Reefs, and Jinx (a cocker spaniel who lives in Wales)