– Wednesday. Nov. 27, 2024 –
Good morning! As Thanksgiving approaches I’m feeling grateful to our Current and Coast Watch readers. Your engagement always makes our work here more rewarding and often it makes it more fun. Thank you!
As you travel to your Thanksgiving destination or take a break from cooking, take time to learn about the redevelopment of an old paper mill in St Marys, intriguing research on the value of seagrass, a debate about an invasive state flower and an update on the annual return of north Atlantic right whales.
Questions, tips or concerns? Send me a note at mary.landers@thecurrentga.org
NEWS: ENVIRONMENT
A nearly missed $736,000 bond payment is drawing attention to the ongoing redevelopment at St. Marys’ old Gilman Paper site, as The Current’s Maggie Lee reports.
Atlanta-based developer Jim Jacoby came through with the money belatedly after a subdeveloper backed out of plans to build an assisted living facility at Cumberland Inlet, as the 700-acre site is called.
Jacoby Development intends to rebuild St. Marys’ waterfront as an ecotourism base camp with a marina, a RV park, a hotel, home rentals and commercial space. The company’s previous projects include the high profile brownfield redevelopments that created Atlantic Station and the Porsche headquarters in Atlanta.
NEWS: ENVIRONMENT
Storing carbon in seagrass
A Georgia Southern researcher is looking at seagrass as a carbon storage solution. Seagrass already punches above its weight as a climate change solution, covering less than 1% of the seafloor but storing about 11% of the ocean’s buried carbon, as Emily Jones of WABE/Grist reports. GSU Professor Tyler Cyronak wants to boost that effect with “enhanced weathering,” which adds add alkaline rock to seagrass beds.
NEWS: ENVIRONMENT
Georgia state flower a ‘pest’
Georgia’s official state flower is a pest, and The Georgia Native Plant Society wants to change that. Lawmakers made the non-native, invasive Cherokee Rose an official symbol of Georgia in 1916 thinking it traced its origin “among the aborigines of the northern portion of the State of Georgia.” The climbing rose bush actually hales from southern China, Taiwan and Vietnam.
In its place, the plant society supports another white petaled flower with a yellow center, the sweetbay magnolia. This one is native and grows wild in much of the state. Polishing the sweetbay magnolia’s resume is the fact that it supports the lifecycle of Georgia’s state butterfly, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Rep. Deborah Silcox (R-Sandy Springs) and Sen. Rick Williams (R-Milledgeville) plan to introduce the required legislation next year according to The Georgia Native Plant Society. A similar effort failed last year.
If successful this time, the legislature will still have three other nonnative state symbols to ponder: the state insect, the Western honey bee; the state crop, the peanut; and the likely unassailable state fruit, the peach. Pawpaw state anyone?
ENVIRONMENT: NEWS
Right whales return
North Atlantic right whales are swimming south from Canada and New England toward their calving grounds off Coastal Georgia, an annual migration. As they do, scientists are tracking them, both acoustically and visually, from the water and from the air. A team from Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute spotted the first migrating whale of the season, a 19-year-old female nicknamed “Black Heart” located just east of Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina on Nov. 20. Black Heart has had at least one calf in the past.
Two additional sightings of two whales each were reported Sunday north of Charleston. Check the whales’ progress at this interactive map.
About 370 north Atlantic right whales remain, and fewer than 70 of those are reproductively active females, making conservation efforts urgent for these bus-sized animals.
To lessen a key threat to right whales of being injured or killed by a ship strike, speed limits are in place for vessels 65 or more feet long when right whales are expected to be present, including November through mid-April off Georgia. A federal proposal to include smaller vessels in the speed rule has stalled, with Coastal Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter (R-St. Simons) calling for a technological fix instead of an expanded speed reduction. Reporting for Reasons to Be Cheerful, Brianna Randall examines the limits and promise of acoustic detection.
Also noted
- “Longleaf pine forests increasing Coastal Georgia,” Emily Jones of WABE/Grist reports.
- Human-caused climate change intensified the vast majority of Atlantic hurricanes during the most recent five-year. GPB‘s Benjamin Payne reports.
- Georgia’s first Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Joe Tanner has died, as Gov. Brian Kemp posted on X. Tanner was a longtime lobbyist after leaving government service.
- Advocates of solar power are again pushing to allow Georgia Power customers buy electricity from third-party providers of solar energy, as Dave Williams of Capitol Beat reports.
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Longleaf pine forests increasing Coastal Georgia
The number of longleaf pines is increasing across the Southeast, with some of the biggest improvements in Georgia, according to a new study from the U.S. Forest Service.
Cumberland Inlet developer Jacoby skirts foreclosure notice
The Camden County Joint Development Authority voted on Sept. 30 to pursue foreclosure if necessary against JDI Cumberland Inlet LLC — a development partnership mostly owned by Atlanta developer Jim Jacoby’s Jacoby Development.
Georgia scientists look to seagrass for climate solutions
Georgia researchers are studying ways to encourage seagrass to store more carbon.
Aided by super glue, a butterfly emerges
A time-lapse video shows a monarch butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
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