“The News From the Land” by Wendell Berry first appeared as the foreword to Kentucky’s Natural Heritage: An Illustrated Guide to Biodiveristy published in 2010. It was published as its own essay in The Progressive in 2011, vol. 74 no. 12.

As Mr. Berry writes, “the news from the land under our feet is not good”. No need to sugar coat it. It seems I am seeing creatures and habitat disappear before my eyes. A weedy pasture along a local creek was torn out for a winding cul-de-sac.

They tore out the fence rows of Osange Orange too. I used to watch eagles perch on nearby oaks. They blew out the beaver dam but fortunately the adaptable rodents moved further upstream. I can’t say as much for the bobwhite that whistled from the fencerow. It seems I see less of birds in general these days. If I doubted myself, this sense was morbidly confirmed by a new study in the journal Science (Rosenberg et al. 2019, 3billionbirds.org) that found out North America has lost approximately 2.9 billion birds since 1970, equivalent to 1 in every 4 birds gone. Where are the flocks of cardinals that used to gather in the late winter snows? Where are the late winter snows? Perhaps I should just be happy that our January rain did rejuvenate our spring fed creeks and streams so they are flowing again. But for how long? From August to December one of our many spring fed perennial creeks was bone dry.