May 2022 Monthly e-mail newsletter

Each month, The Plant Initiative sends out an e-mail newsletter to provide timely information and resources about improving the plant-human connection as well as to keep you up to date on our work.

Here's the link to the May 2022 e-newsletter which was sent on May 15, 2022.

To subscribe to the e-newsletter, just visit our home page and enter your e-mail address on the form at the bottom of the page. If you have a suggestion for a resource, event, or other item that may be of interest to subscribers, please consider sharing it with us at info@plantinitiative.org. 

Thank you!

2021 was the first full year of The Plant Initiative! We have made some real progress toward our mission of building a movement to increase respect for plants through advocacy, collaboration and partnerships, and education and outreach. We feel encouraged about what has been accomplished in our first year as outlined in this annual report, particularly since we are an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff. We greatly appreciate all of the support and interest you have shown over the past year and look forward to more progress in 2022!

Learn more about our work by reading or downloading the report here or by clicking on the report cover,

These grants totaling $3,000 were provided  in November 2021 to organizations working to increase respect for plants, encourage ethical behavior toward plants, and/or to support development of an effective movement toward these goals.

Grants of $500 each were provided to:

Center for Biological Diversity (Tucson, AZ) to support the Center's legal advocacy and monitoring efforts to save the endangered Tiehm's Buckwheat, a rare flowering plant that only exists across a few acres of rocky soil in Nevada, with most of its remaining population facing imminent threat from a mining company.

Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (Spokane, WA) to support creation of a training workshop to be held in early 2022 on the White Earth Rights of Manoomin law (recognizing Manoomin [wild rice] as possessing legal rights) and the associated recent court case, with the workshop focused on tribal attorneys as well as tribal members and their elected leaders.

Dogwood Alliance (Asheville, NC) to produce 4 episodes of Woods & Wilds: The Podcast, in collaboration with a Black, female-led media group, highlighting the deep connection to forests and nature we all share as a birthright, with stories focusing on times when people were inspired, healed, transformed, or even saved, by forests and nature; a portion of the grant funds will also be applied to online education to improve editing skills.

Earth Law Center (Boulder, CO) to host a roundtable with politicians in El Salvador (and other Latin American countries, as appropriate) on how to implement the legal rights of forests through specific standards as well as through the appointment of legal guardians to represent the rights and interests of forests.

Old-Growth Forest Network (Easton, MD) to cover printing costs for a poster that will provide information on the steps involved to save old-growth forests, to be distributed broadly in 2022 to all of Old-Growth Forest Network’s 5,000+ supporters and to others who request it.

WildEarth Guardians (Santa Fe, NM) to support a social media campaign to raise awareness and mobilize people about the plight of the Joshua tree, generating more visibility on the issue, by going toward hiring of a social media contractor with extensive expertise on social media platforms to lead this effort.

With your support, The Plant Initiative plans to continue to provide grants in 2022 to organizations working on behalf of plants! 

Scholars and editors of The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence John Charles Ryan, Patricia Vieira and Monica Gagliano participated in a conversation on December 15, 2021 with moderator Laura Pustarfi, board member of The Plant Initiative, about plant thought, including what plants themselves think, and the varied and entangled relations between humans and plants. Questions from the audience followed the discussion.

Watch the video recording of this program here. 

This free event was sponsored by The Plant Initiative and cosponsored by the Literary and Cultural Plant Studies Network and the CIIS Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program.

Use coupon "plantminds20" for 20% off your purchase of the book here through January 1, 2022.

The Plant Initiative was one of several sponsors of an online conference Toward a New Way of Being with Plants held June 17 - 18, 2021. Over 1,600 people worldwide registered for this free event which included more than 30 speakers! This conference explored human plant connections, including ethics in human treatment of plants, plant sentience and communication, and opportunities for developing more respectful and reciprocal relationships between humans and plants. 

The conference agenda and listing of speakers, including board members of The Plant Initiative Laura Pustarfi and Paul Moss, can be found on the conference web site. Video recordings of the conference sessions are available free on the conference's YouTube channel.

This conference provided a forum for learning, discussion, and interaction among those interested in advancing the status and treatment of plants, with the goal that this collaboration will continue after the event. The Plant Initiative will play an active role in the follow up from this conference. Sign up for our e-mail list for updates!