Day of Prayer on Climate Change and Environment

Churches Together in Settle and District are going to have a
Day of Prayer on Climate Change and the Environment on Sunday 4th October. See our programme

Churches all over the country are invited to hold a Climate Change Day of Prayer - see the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland Website.
A friend in Bradford has designed a user friendly EXCELLENT USEFUL triptych leaflet with the quotes made by important church leaders about the importance of prayer and the Copenhagen talks.

I recommend printing it and showing it to people at your church.

Do let me know if you are having a Climate Change Day of Prayer at your church...
or even better like us extending it to all the environment so we can pur more emphasis on saving rainforests and rare habitats and species under threat.
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Algae and Lichens Walk

We held the Algae and Lichens Walk on Wednesday 26 August.
Five people came plus Allan and I which made for a nice group. Yes it did rain a bit.
We spent more than half an hour in the National Park Car Park., there was so much there to see.
We sheltered in Janet's Foss Wood. Allan later emailed me to say the blue-green in roadside puddle: Oscillatoria brevis - not one of the commoner species.
filaments on stone in beck: Ulothrix zonata
green stuff on fence post : Klebsormidium crenulatum
So there - I'll put the pictures up later.

Algae (and Lichens) for Beginners - Malham Walk

This was written in 2009.         Click for Other Posts about Lichens on this blog

Note added on 8 Sept 2012: Today On 8 Sept 2012 I am leading a walk along the same track - meeting at 10.30am in Malham Yorkshire Dales National Park Car Park. - - I have added some notes in red today to this blog post which was otherwise written in 2009. 

Today's walk is run for Plantlife members and for everyone else local or visitors who would like to come. Now back to my preparations in 2009..

We haven't got Rainforest in Yorkshire - so lets look at Nature at a small scale - algae, bluegreen bacteria and lichens.



On Wednesday 26 August 2009 I am helping Allan Pentecost in "An Algae and Lichens Walk" - Let's be honest - I have organised the walk and put the posters up .. and now hope to learn as much as I can from him!! - Thanks Allan. This Monday evening after it had stopped raining I went to Malhamdale to take some photos. The views just before I dropped down to Malham village were great! You are looking towards Gordale above.

Focusing on the wall top we see Verrucaria nigrescens and on top of the cap stone is a yellower lichen, seen closeup below.




On the other side of the road I looked across a stone along the road - You can see Malham Cove in the distance. On the stone there is a white lichen Aspicilia calcarea  and an orange one Caloplaca flavescens. Here below is the same rock and lichens but closer up.

Once in the village, I park in the National Park Car Park. the sun is shining on the trunks of the two small ash trees. Near the base of the trunk is Xanthoria parietina and next to it a species of Physcia. Let's go for Physcia tenella

The tape has mm on one side and 1/8 ths of an inch on the other. The pictures below have ended up sideways.


This is of Lecanora chlarotera.


This lichen has black fruiting bodies.



On a Mountain Ash trunk near by is some Usnea subfloridana  (Sadly by 2011 it had disappeared)





this tree has Ramalina farinosa

and Parmelia sulcata

The border of the door for both Ladies and Gents toilets is sandstone. This lichen grows on it.It is Lecanora campestris




Outside the chapel the wall tops are also sandstone and have large patches of a whitish lichen



and also one with black fruiting bodies




On the fence post over the road is this green. Is it alga or is it lichen?.. I think it will turn out to be the filamentous alga Klebsormidium crenulatum


I set off. at the footbridge on the back wall of the Blacksmith's is some Caloplaca flavescens.


by now the batteries in the camera and the spare batteries are flat. . I have only gone 100 yards. Time to go home!.


Click for Other Posts about Lichens on this blog

Jungle Jamboree

It went well

Smallest Monkey in the world - Philippines

I went to visit a friend with dementia condition in a Nursing Home/Old Peoples Home in Grassington. Many of the staff are from abroad from many different countries. For those residents capable of in depth conversation this should make for a more interesting life..

I chat with the nurse who came to our little group. She comes from the Philippines. "Which part?" I ask.

"The Chocolate Hills" she replies " It is a tourist area with tropical forest and the smallest monkey in the world."

Jungle Decorations

After the service today the team organising the Jungle Jamboree Children's Holiday club went across to the church hall to decorate it, and to practise the sketches for the club.

I took down the rest of the Churches Together Stuff and the rest of the Rainforest Project Display. Hilary helped me. We put my green and orange batik cloth (from Sierra Leone) across the St John's Display notices. We put some of my fungi shapes on the green card where the Forest Display had been. I made a large chimpanzee on a branch brown silhouette on the red card where the Chruches Together Stuff had been. Then we found a space above the coat pegs where evening activity notices were on display and partly covered them with green card and put a little of the Fainforest Project signs up, including the nice Cool Earth Poster.

Any way it is certainly simpler.

In the Evening I was able to use the Stainforth Parish Photocopier to produce some A3 sized colour pictures of Cameroon rainforest.


I am now scheduled to be a thief on day two of the sketch at the Children's holiday club - a walk on run off part.

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Keep it Simple, Less is More

Today I went to the Rainforest display in the church hall and to the Churches Together in Settle display next to it. I took half the pinned up pictures and notices down. This was to make space for something on a jungle theme that I might create for the children's holiday club next week.

The remaining pictures looked really effective!!.
If only I had had the nerve to remove the extra pictures earlier.


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Burning the Forest

Burning the bush is an easy way of getting rid of scrub and weeds.

I took this outside out house at Mathora near Magburaka in Sierra Leone, when I was teaching there.

The area round our school was farmed - the villagers grew rice in the swamp areas and vegetables, and cassava

I wonder how much CO2 goes up in the air .. Still here most of the plants will only have grown in the past few years since the land was last burned, so it will only be the Carbon fixed in the last few years.
However, thirty miles north, where there were mountains and fewer people we met missionaries who said "When we first came here (? in the 1940s?) this was primary forest."


Just look at the steep slopes - and think of the erosion.


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Green Books Resource Library in Settle

Want to borrow a book on pemaculture? or transition towns. Or organic gardening?

At the Eco-nite on Wednesday, Ann Ambrose suggested having good eco-books available for loan.- She showed us the two boxes she already has.

Since it is not possible to put them in the County Library she suggested putting it in the Settle Parish Church initially for two months.

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Eco-nite at Settle - 1st Wed of month

A group of people have started meeting at Settle on the first Wednesday evening of each month to meet fellow green/eco minded people and discuss various issues. We meet at the Royal Oak. It is the third time I have been. Each month there are new people.

Tonight a man came and told us about a day he is organising on 5th Sept at the Victoria Hall when people can bring goods to give away for free and who can collect goods for free. A sort of Freecycle.

Later one of the people suggested starting up a Settle Freecycle since it is a long way to Skipton which is what our area comes under. Look out for this!

Rainforest loss News - FOE and Greenpeace

Here are some articles about Rainforest Loss

1. Amazon rainforests pay the price as demand for beef soars (Guardian 31 May 2009)

2. Gitta Ashworth, of Leamington and Warwick Friends of the Earth, said: "When people think of climate change they picture cars and planes, but few realise that the meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing gases than all the world's transport.

"The government must help farmers to switch to home-grown animal feed and planet-friendly farming that delivers a better deal for farmers and families in Britain and we very much value James Plaskitt's support in this campaign."

3. The new Greenpeace report, “Slaughtering the Amazon,” tracks beef, leather, and other cattle products from ranches involved in illegal deforestation in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. The investigation indicates the “laundering” of leather and beef into supply chains of top brands such as Adidas, Reebok, Nike, Clarks, Timberland, Geox, Gucci, IKEA, Kraft, and Wal-Mart.

Jungle Jamboree

The theme of the children's holiday club which will be held at St John's Church Hall next week (10-13 Aug) is "We're going on a Jungle Jamboree" children from anywhere in the area - even on holiday - are welcome.

I think the theme is to act out some adventures in the jungle and play some games related to this and to have some bible stories relevant to the adventures.

I am sure the children will enjoy playing at being in a jungle

Although they will be doing most of the decorations in the "Primary Room" of the church hall, it would be good if I could update the notice board in the main hall. Must think about that.
I suppose the easiest thing is to make a lot of leaves with long tips that allow the rain to run off them..


Last week I attended a barbecue with friends who have worked a lot in Borneo. They pointed out that although, from the air, in places there seems a lot of forest, much of it is Secondary Forest, that has regrown after the primary forest is cut down.. You can tell if you are in Primary Forest because there is very little undergrowth and it is easy to walk through it. When the forest is cut down and regrows again there is light and much more undergrowth- and that is when it become impenetrable jungle..

Long Preston Deeps Flower Walk

Today 24 people came on the Wild Flower walk I led at Long Preston Deeps. This was a Craven Conservation Group event, and we had 6 CCG people, but we gained about 8 through the local paper the Craven Herald, about 6 through the Flower Festival Leaflet and about 4 through my emails on local events.

The land we walked on is not normally open to the public so I think several people came out of curiosity to see what is there...

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Day of Prayer Re Climate Change - 4th Oct

There is to be a national Day of Prayer in UK about Climate Change and the Environment on 4th October. I have just sent an email about it to my friends and contacts in Churches Together in Settle and District. I hope we can organise one here.

Lots of resources have been prepared if people want to organise a Day of Prayer. You can download them from the Operation Noah Website and Christian Ecology Link Web Site and I hope soon from Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.