UPPER LAKE, Calif. — The Lake County Outdoor Passion Play is preparing for its next performances in May.
The play will be presented on Saturday, May 20, and Sunday May 21, from 4 to 6 p.m.
The event is free but donations are gratefully accepted.
The Passion Play invites everyone to join them as they share the story of the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.
Lake County’s Passion Play has been rated by many spectators as among the best in the world.
The play is a prayerful expression of the faith of the people involved.
Men, women, and children from many denominations have come together to make what organizers call “a truly ecumenical experience, touched by the Holy Spirit.”
For the performances, bring your own chair. There are facilities for the handicapped. Water will be available.
There is no smoking, food, drink or pets allowed on the grounds.
The Lake County Outdoor Passion Play grounds are located at 7010 Westlake Road in Upper Lake, about four miles north of Lakeport, off Highway 29.
For more information, visit the Passion Play Facebook page or website, or call 707-263-0349.
LAKEPORT, Calif — Lakeport Unified School District property was used as a backdrop this week to active shooter training for local law enforcement.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation led two 16-hour Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, or ALERRT, sessions in Lakeport this week.
The training at Clear Lake High School was coordinated by the Lakeport Police Department during the school’s spring break.
This program is the national standard, research-based active shooter response training for peace officers.
Officers are trained to respond alone or to respond with a group of officers to an active shooter call with the priority of stopping the threat.
ALERRT is based at Texas State University and certified for credit by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST.
Sixty officers from eight local and state agencies attended this training, including Lakeport Police Department, Clearlake Police Department, California State Parks-Clear Lake Sector, California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office, Lake County District Attorney Investigations Division, Lake County Probation Department, Lake County Sheriff’s Office and the California Department of Corrections Parole Division.
Four of these courses have been held in Lakeport in previous years, training 115 officers.
The Lakeport Police Department offered its thanks to the FBI, ALERRT, POST the attending agencies, and the Lakeport Unified Safety Committee, Lakeport Unified School District and Clear Lake High School for making this valuable training happen to further our ongoing and combined efforts to keep our schools and communities safe.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Clearlake City Council on Thursday evening approved contracts for two road projects and agreed to a property sale.
The meeting began with several proclamations, followed by public comment in which several community members called out North Bay Animal Services for its performance in handling the city’s animal shelter.
In recent weeks the organization, based in Petaluma, has been coming under fire for a variety of issues related to housing and handling of animals and treatment of volunteers.
City Manager Alan Flora said he’s given directives for improvement in treatment of animals to the organization and Clearlake Police Lt. Ryan Peterson has been assigned to investigate the allegations about the conditions in the shelter.
After the meeting, Lake County News reached out to North Bay Animal Services about the situation for an article on the city’s plans to address the shelter’s operations.
On Thursday’s agenda were two road projects.
The first was for the 18th Avenue Improvement Project, which the council voted unanimously to award to Argonaut Constructors, which was the low bidder at $4,632,295. The highest bidder was Granite Construction at $7,234,337.50.
The council approved a second contract with Argonaut Constructors for the Dam Road Extension/South Center Drive Improvement Project in the amount of $989,009.85. Ghilotti Construction was the high bidder at $1,386,441.25.
Both contracts allow Flora to approve up to 10% in additional cost due to unforeseen contract amendments.
Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg, who was at the meeting for a proclamation presentation, said there is a school immediately adjacent to the Dam Road Extension area and he hoped in the next few years the city can address the need for a sidewalk there.
Public Works Director Adeline Brown said that is part of the project, to have curb, gutter and sidewalk on both sides of the road.
Flora added that there is a section of the project that extends to the southern boundary of a planned housing development on 18th Avenue, with the developer required to do the rest of those improvements along that property.
In other business, the council approved selling a vacant, city-owned lot at 16178 35th Ave. to an adjacent property owner for $6,950.
The council on Thursday appointed an alternate member to the Lake County Recreation Agency JPA Board of Directors; offered proclamations for Child Abuse Prevention Month; Sexual Assault Awareness Month; Arts, Culture, and Creativity Month; Public Safety Telecommunicators Week; and hosted a presentation by the Lakeshore Lions Club to the Highlands Senior Service Center.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has lots of dogs waiting to go to their homes this Easter.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Akita, Anatolian shepherd, Australian cattle dog, blue heeler, border collie, boxer, Chihuahua, German shepherd, Great Pyrenees, Labrador retriever, pit bull and terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
‘Ivy’
“Ivy” is a 2-month-old Akita-Anatolian shepherd mix with a short brown and black coat.
She is in foster, ID No. LCAC-A-5031.
‘LilDan’
“LilDan” is a 7-month-old short coat Chihuahua-terrier mix.
He is in kennel No. 2, ID No. LCAC-A-4719.
Male American blue heeler
This 1.5-year-old male American blue heeler has a blue and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 3, ID No. LCAC-A-4961.
Female pit bull terrier puppy
This 3-month-old female American pit bull terrier puppy has a short black and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 4, ID No. LCAC-A-4788.
‘Shasta’
“Shasta” is a 1-year-old female pit bull terrier with a short black and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 5, ID No. LCAC-A-4873.
Male border collie-shepherd mix
This 2-year-old male border collie-shepherd mix has a long black coat.
He is in kennel No. 9, ID No. LCAC-A-5012.
Male Chihuahua-terrier mix
This 3-year-old male Chihuahua-terrier mix has a short buff coat.
He is in kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-5008.
Female border collie
This 1-year-old female border collie has a black and white coat, and one brown eye and one blue eye.
She is in kennel No. 11, ID No. LCAC-A-4903.
Female pit bull terrier
This 1-year-old female pit bull terrier has a brindle and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 16, ID No. LCAC-A-5000.
Female Great Pyrenees puppy
This 3-month-old female Great Pyrenees puppy has a short tan coat with black markings.
She is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-5026.
Male pit bull terrier
This one and a half year old male pit bull terrier has a black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 19, ID No. LCAC-A-4843.
Female pit bull terrier puppy
This 3-month-old female American pit bull terrier puppy has a short brindle coat.
She is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-4787.
Male pit bull
This 2-year-old male pit bull has a short brindle coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-5029.
Male mixed breed
This 2-year-old male mixed breed dog has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-5024.
Male boxer-pit bull mix
This 8-year-old male boxer-pit bull mix has a short brown brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 26, ID No. LCAC-A-4678.
Male Great Pyrenees
This 2-year-old male Great Pyrenees has a long white coat.
He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-4821.
Male shepherd
This 2-year-old male shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-5023.
Female German shepherd
This 1-year-old female German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-5015.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has a wide array of canines needing homes.
There are 28 dogs available this week for adoption, with several having been adopted in the past week.
They include “Dennis,” a male Labrador retriever mix puppy, and “Bella,” a female pit bull terrier mix.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
What’s Easter about? In some ways, the answer is pretty simple: Jesus Christ, and Christians’ belief that he rose from the dead.
In other ways, though, the springtime holiday is far from straightforward. How did rabbits get involved? Where did the name “Easter” come from – and why is the English word different from the way many other cultures refer to the holy day? Even theologically, exactly what the Resurrection means is not universally agreed upon.
Here are four articles that delve into Easter’s history, its significance – and what a rock ‘n’ roll Broadway show has to do with it.
1. Picking the date
First things first: Easter is what’s called a “movable feast,” a holiday whose exact date changes year to year. In the Northern Hemisphere it falls soon after the spring equinox, as the world comes back into bloom – a fitting time to celebrate rebirth.
But Easter’s dating “goes back to the complicated origins of this holiday and how it has evolved over the centuries,” wrote Brent Landau, a religious studies scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. Similar to Christmas and Halloween celebrations today, Easter blends together elements from Christian and non-Christian traditions.
The name “Easter” itself seems linked to a pre-Christian goddess named Eostre in what is now England; she was celebrated in springtime. And in fact, in most languages, the word for the holiday is related to Passover, since the Gospels say Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish festival in the days leading up to his crucifixion.
But “celebrating” Easter, per se, wasn’t always in fashion with Christians. For the Puritans, Landau explained, these holidays were regarded as too tainted by merrymaking and un-Christian influences. As 19th-century American culture embraced the idea of childhood as a special time in life, though – not just preparation for adulthood – both Christmas and Easter became popular occasions to spend time with family.
2. Holy hares
The Easter bunny’s bio starts long before the 1800s, though. Rabbits’ and hares’ famous fertility has made them symbols of rebirth for thousands of years. Some were ritually buried alongside people during the Neolithic age, for example.
Of course, that fecundity also makes them symbols of sex, as anyone who’s seen the Playboy logo is aware. “In the Classical Greek tradition, hares were sacred to Aphrodite, the goddess of love,” explained folklorist Tok Thompson, a professor at USC Dornsife. The goddess’s son Eros was also depicted carrying a hare “as a symbol of unquenchable desire,” and even the Virgin Mary is often painted with a rabbit, to symbolize how she overcame desire.
Modern-day Easter bunny traditions stem from folk traditions in Germany and England, and there is evidence that the goddess Eostre’s symbol was the hare as well.
3. Victory over death
Holy Week, the series of events in Christian churches that lead up to Easter, traces Jesus’ final days before death and resurrection, including Palm Sunday and the Last Supper. Easter Sunday itself is the climax of the story: his triumph over death.
“As a Baptist minister and theologian myself, I believe it is important to understand how Christians more generally, and Baptists in particular, hold differing views on the meaning of the resurrection,” wrote Jason Oliver Evans, a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia.
Over the centuries, Evans wrote, Christians have had “passionate debates over this central doctrine of Christian faith” and what it means for Jesus’ followers – such as whether his body was literally raised from the dead.
4. Superstar
There are many ways to share the story of Holy Week – and one of the most controversial ones debuted on Broadway in 1971.
“Jesus Christ Superstar,” the rock musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, struck some Christians as blasphemous with its modern-day telling of the Passion and “Jesus is cool” ethos. Then there’s the show’s ending, which cuts off after the crucifixion – cutting out the Resurrection, and its theological message, entirely.
Half a century later, though, “Superstar” raises fewer eyebrows – a reflection of changes in U.S. culture and Christianity, wrote Henry Bial, a theater professor at the University of Kansas. Maybe that shouldn’t be such a shock: As he pointed out, theater and drama have always been entwined with Bible stories.
Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — A month after it was closed due to damage from the heavy winter storms, the Highland Springs Recreation Area has reopened for recreational activities.
The county of Lake recommended that visitors use caution while recreating due to continued storm damage, including downed trees and partially fallen limbs on the disc golf course and recreational trails.
Due to wet weather conditions, trails are still closed to equestrians and bikers, officials said.
The Lake County Water Resources Department will continue to mark hazardous areas around the recreation area and continue cleaning up post-storm damage.
Officials said they appreciate the public’s continued patience and caution while enjoying the park.
Highland Springs Recreation Area is owned by the Lake County Watershed Protection District and managed by the Lake County Water Resources Department.
For more information, contact Water Resources at 707-263-2344 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announced a request for a federal fishery disaster declaration to support the salmon fishing industry as it faces a closure for the 2023 salmon season.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council, or PFMC, on Thursday acted unanimously to recommend a full closure of California’s commercial and recreational ocean salmon season.
Options put forward by the PFMC last month for public review, which were developed by industry representatives, all proposed closure of both commercial and sport ocean salmon fisheries off California.
This action follows recent projections showing Chinook salmon abundance off California is at historic lows.
Recognizing the importance of salmon to California’s commercial fisheries, acting Gov. Kounalakis, on behalf of Gov. Newsom, submitted the request to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo immediately after the Pacific Fishery Management Council made its recommendation.
If approved, the federal fishery disaster declaration would begin the process of providing needed relief to fishing communities financially impacted by a closure.
“Countless families, coastal communities and tribal nations depend on salmon fishing – it’s more than an industry, it’s a way of life. That’s why we’re requesting expedited relief from the federal government,” said Newsom. “We’re committed to working with the Biden Administration and Congress to ensure California’s fisheries aren’t left behind.
“To California’s salmon fishing communities, we’re working to get you expedited relief,” said Lieutenant Governor Kounalakis. “The Federal Fishery Disaster Declaration we’re requesting today is vital to supporting our coastal regions, and we look forward to getting families the help they need.”
After reviewing the council’s recommendation, it is expected that the National Marine Fisheries Service will take regulatory action to enact the closure, effective in mid-May.
In addition, the California Fish and Game Commission will consider whether to adopt a closure of inland salmon fisheries at its teleconference on May 17.
“This decision, while difficult, is intended to allow salmon to recover in order to provide future fishing opportunities,” said California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton H. Bonham. “Salmon are an iconic species in California. We treasure them for their intrinsic, cultural, recreational and commercial values. The state is committed to ensuring long-term survival of our salmon runs and supporting our struggling fishing communities. We are looking into all possible options to bring relief as soon as possible to fishing businesses to addresses costs incurred to maintain their commercial licenses and lost revenue when the season is entirely closed.”
Prolonged and historic drought, severe wildfires and associated impacts to spawning and rearing habitat, harmful algal blooms, and ocean forage shifts have combined to result in some of the lowest stock abundance forecasts on record for Sacramento River Fall Chinook and Klamath River Fall Chinook.
The low ocean abundance forecasts, coupled with low 2022 returns, led the PFMC to recommend full closure of California’s commercial and recreational ocean salmon fisheries.
In part, the low returns and abundance forecasts are due to difficult environmental factors faced by these salmon on their initial journey out to the ocean three years ago.
Following a drought sequence, the 2016-2017 Sacramento and San Joaquin numbers were less than 135,000 returning fall-run Chinook.
Three years later, after rains, it was over 200,000. Similar rebounds happened after 2010 had above average rainfall.
Salmon returns three years later more than doubled from around 163,000 to around 448,000. These patterns indicate that salmon returning three years from now will benefit from the ample precipitation California has experienced this year.
“This closure is painful,” said Director Bonham. “We deeply appreciate the fishing community in California voicing support for this serious step to help these stocks recover. We have worked with our commercial and recreational partners over the years to rebuild other fisheries following closures and now some of those, like some groundfish populations, are providing opportunities for fishing for the first time in years.”
More information regarding the PFMC actions can be found on the PFMC website at www.pcouncil.org.
The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic.
A new mid-infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example. It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago from Earth’s perspective.
Cas A is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy, which makes it a unique opportunity to learn more about how such supernovae occur.
“Cas A represents our best opportunity to look at the debris field of an exploded star and run a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there beforehand and how that star exploded,” said Danny Milisavljevic of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, principal investigator of the Webb program that captured these observations.
“Compared to previous infrared images, we see incredible detail that we haven't been able to access before,” added Tea Temim of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, a co-investigator on the program.
Cassiopeia A is a prototypical supernova remnant that has been widely studied by a number of ground-based and space-based observatories, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The multi-wavelength observations can be combined to provide scientists with a more comprehensive understanding of the remnant.
Dissecting the image
The striking colors of the new Cas A image, in which infrared light is translated into visible-light wavelengths, hold a wealth of scientific information the team is just beginning to tease out.
On the bubble’s exterior, particularly at the top and left, lie curtains of material appearing orange and red due to emission from warm dust. This marks where ejected material from the exploded star is ramming into surrounding circumstellar gas and dust.
Interior to this outer shell lie mottled filaments of bright pink studded with clumps and knots. This represents material from the star itself, which is shining due to a mix of various heavy elements, such as oxygen, argon, and neon, as well as dust emission.
“We’re still trying to disentangle all these sources of emission,” said Ilse De Looze of Ghent University in Belgium, another co-investigator on the program.
The stellar material can also be seen as fainter wisps near the cavity’s interior.
Perhaps most prominently, a loop represented in green extends across the right side of the central cavity. “We’ve nicknamed it the Green Monster in honor of Fenway Park in Boston. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s pockmarked with what look like mini-bubbles,” said Milisavljevic. “The shape and complexity are unexpected and challenging to understand.”
Origins of cosmic dust – and us
Among the science questions that Cas A may help answer is: Where does cosmic dust come from?
Observations have found that even very young galaxies in the early universe are suffused with massive quantities of dust. It’s difficult to explain the origins of this dust without invoking supernovae, which spew large quantities of heavy elements (the building blocks of dust) across space.
However, existing observations of supernovae have been unable to conclusively explain the amount of dust we see in those early galaxies.
By studying Cas A with Webb, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of its dust content, which can help inform our understanding of where the building blocks of planets and ourselves are created.
“In Cas A, we can spatially resolve regions that have different gas compositions and look at what types of dust were formed in those regions,” explained Temim.
Supernovae like the one that formed Cas A are crucial for life as we know it. They spread elements like the calcium we find in our bones and the iron in our blood across interstellar space, seeding new generations of stars and planets.
“By understanding the process of exploding stars, we’re reading our own origin story,” said Milisavljevic. “I’m going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand what’s in this data set.”
The Cas A remnant spans about 10 light-years and is located 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
On April 3, 2023, NASA announced the four astronauts who will make up the crew of Artemis II, which is scheduled to launch in late 2024. The Artemis II mission will send these four astronauts on a 10-day mission that culminates in a flyby of the Moon. While they won’t head to the surface, they will be the first people to leave Earth’s immediate vicinity and be the first near the Moon in more than 50 years.
This mission will test the technology and equipment that’s necessary for future lunar landings and is a significant step on NASA’s planned journey back to the surface of the Moon. As part of this next era in lunar and space exploration, NASA has outlined a few clear goals. The agency is hoping to inspire young people to get interested in space, to make the broader Artemis program more economically and politically sustainable and, finally, to continue encouraging international collaboration on future missions.
From my perspective as a space policy expert, the four Artemis II astronauts fully embody these goals.
Who are the four astronauts?
The four members of the Artemis II crew are highly experienced, with three of them having flown in space previously. The one rookie flying onboard is notably representing Canada, making this an international mission, as well.
The commander of the mission will be Reid Wiseman, a naval aviator and test pilot. On his previous mission to the International Space Station, he spent 165 days in space and completed a record of 82 hours of experiments in just one week. Wiseman was also the chief of the U.S. astronaut office from 2020 to 2023.
Serving as pilot is Victor Glover. After flying more than 3,000 hours in more than 40 different aircraft, Glover was selected for the astronaut corps in 2013. He was the pilot for the Crew-1 mission, the first mission that used a SpaceX rocket and capsule to bring astronauts to the International Space Station, and served as a flight engineer on the ISS.
The lone woman on the crew is mission specialist Christina Hammock Koch. She has spent 328 days in space, more than any other woman, across the three ISS expeditions. She has also participated in six different spacewalks, including the first three all-women spacewalks. Koch is an engineer by trade, having previously worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The crew will be rounded out by a Canadian, Jeremy Hansen. Though a spaceflight rookie, he has participated in space simulations like NEEMO 19, in which he lived in a facility on the ocean floor to simulate deep space exploration. Before being selected to Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009, he was an F-18 pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
These four astronauts have followed pretty typical paths to space. Like the Apollo astronauts, three of them began their careers as military pilots. Two, Wiseman and Glover, were trained test pilots, just as most of the Apollo astronauts were.
Mission specialist Koch, with her engineering expertise, is more typical of modern astronauts. The position of mission or payload specialist was created for the space shuttle program, making spaceflight possible for those with more scientific backgrounds.
A collaborative, diverse future
Unlike the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, with Artemis, NASA has placed a heavy emphasis on building a politically sustainable lunar program by fostering the participation of a diverse group of people and countries.
The participation of other countries in NASA missions – Canada in this case – is particularly important for the Artemis program and the Artemis II crew. International collaboration is beneficial for a number of reasons. First, it allows NASA to lean on the strengths and expertise of engineers, researchers and space agencies of U.S. allies and divide up the production of technologies and costs. It also helps the U.S. continue to provide international leadership in space as competition with other countries – notably China – heats up.
The crew of Artemis II is also quite diverse compared with the Apollo astronauts. NASA has often pointed out that the Artemis program will send the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon. With Koch and Glover on board, Artemis II is the first step in fulfilling that promise and moving toward the goal of inspiring future generations of space explorers.
The four astronauts aboard Artemis II will be the first humans to return to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972. The flyby will take the Orion capsule in one pass around the far side of the Moon. During the flight, the crew will monitor the spacecraft and test a new communication system that will allow them to send more data and communicate more easily with Earth than previous systems.
If all goes according to plan, in late 2025 Artemis III will mark humanity’s return to the lunar surface, this time also with a diverse crew. While the Artemis program still has a way to go before humans set foot on the Moon once again, the announcement of the Artemis II crew shows how NASA intends to get there in a diverse and collaborative way.
More than half of all people on Earth live in cities, and that share could reach 70% by 2050. But except for public parks, there aren’t many models for nature conservation that focus on caring for nature in urban areas.
One new idea that’s gaining attention is the concept of food forests – essentially, edible parks. These projects, often sited on vacant lots, grow large and small trees, vines, shrubs and plants that produce fruits, nuts and other edible products.
Unlike community gardens or urban farms, food forests are designed to mimic ecosystems found in nature, with many vertical layers. They shade and cool the land, protecting soil from erosion and providing habitat for insects, animals, birds and bees. Many community gardens and urban farms have limited membership, but most food forests are open to the community from sunup to sundown.
As scholars who focus on conservation, social justice and sustainable food systems, we see food forests as an exciting new way to protect nature without displacing people. Food forests don’t just conserve biodiversity – they also promote community well-being and offer deep insights about fostering urban nature in the Anthropocene, as environmentally destructive forms of economic development and consumption alter Earth’s climate and ecosystems.
Protecting nature without pushing people away
Many scientists and world leaders agree that to slow climate change and reduce losses of wild species, it’s critical to protect a large share of Earth’s lands and waters for nature. Under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, 188 nations have agreed on a target of conserving at least 30% of land and sea areas globally by 2030 – an agenda known popularly as 30x30.
But there’s fierce debate over how to achieve that goal. In many cases, creating protected areas has displaced Indigenous peoples from their homelands. What’s more, protected areas are disproportionately located in countries with high levels of economic inequality and poorly functioning political institutions that don’t effectively protect the rights of poor and marginalized citizens in most cases.
In contrast, food forests promote civic engagement. At Beacon Food Forest in Seattle, volunteers worked with professional landscape architects and organized public meetings to seek community input on the project’s design and development. The city of Atlanta’s Urban Agriculture Team partners with neighborhood residents, volunteers, community groups and nonprofit partners to manage the Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill.
And those gaps still exist. In 2021, the city reported that communities of color that had been subjected to redlining in the past had 16% less parkland and 7% less tree cover than the citywide median. These neighborhoods were 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.8 degrees Celsius) hotter during the day and 1.9 F (1 C) hotter at night, making residents more vulnerable to urban heat waves that are becoming increasingly common with climate change.
Encouragingly, Boston has been at the forefront of the national expansion of food forests. The unique approach here places ownership of these parcels in a community trust. Neighborhood stewards manage the sites’ routine care and maintenance.
The nonprofit Boston Food Forest Coalition, which launched in 2015, is working to develop 30 community-driven food forests by 2030. The existing nine projects are helping to conserve over 60,000 square feet (5,600 square meters) of formerly vacant urban land – an area slightly larger than a football field.
Neighborhood volunteers choose what to grow, plan events and share harvested crops with food banks, nonprofit and faith-based meal programs and neighbors. Local collective action is central to repurposing open spaces, including lawns, yards and vacant lots, into food forests that are linked together into a citywide network. The coalition, a community land trust that partners with the city government, holds Boston food forests as permanently protected lands.
Boston’s food forests are small in size: They average 7,000 square feet (650 square meters) of reclaimed land, about 50% larger than an NBA basketball court. But they produce a wide range of vegetables, fruit and herbs, including Roxbury Russet apples, native blueberries and pawpaws, a nutritious fruit native to North America. The forests also serve as gathering spaces, contribute to rainwater harvesting and help beautify neighborhoods.
The Boston Food Forest Coalition provides technical assistance and fundraising support. It also hires experts for tasks such as soil remediation, removing invasive plants and installing accessible pathways, benches and fences.
Hundreds of volunteers take part in community work days and educational workshops on topics such as pruning fruit trees in winter. Gardening classes and cultural events connect neighbors across urban divides of class, race, language and culture.
A growing movement
According to a crowd-sourced repository, the U.S. has more than 85 community food forests in public spaces from the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South. Currently, most of these sites are in larger cities. In a 2021 survey, mayors from 176 small cities (with populations under 25,000) reported that long-term maintenance was the biggest challenge of sustaining food forests in their communities.
From our experience observing Boston’s approach close up, we believe its model of community-driven food forests is promising. The city sold land to the Boston Food Forest Coalition’s community land trust for $100 per parcel in 2015 and also funded initial construction and planting operations. Since then, the city has made food forests an important part of the city’s open spaces program as it continues to sell parcels to the community land trust at the same price.
Smaller cities with much lower tax bases may not be able to make the same sort of investments. But Boston’s community-driven model offers a viable approach for maintaining these projects without burdening city governments. The city has adopted innovative zoning and permitting ordinances to support small-scale urban agriculture.
Building a food forest brings together neighbors, neighborhood associations, community-based organizations and city agencies. It represents a grassroots response to the interconnected crises of climate change, environmental degradation and social and racial inequity. We believe food forests show how to build a just and sustainable future, one person, seedling and neighborhood at a time.
Orion Kriegman, the founding executive director of the Boston Food Forest Coalition, contributed to this article.