This past Saturday, I rose early from sleep and donned my very best work clothes and boots in preparation to join eight of my fellow graduate students and two rangers in a morning event that could best be described as “trashy.” The rangers that joined us were representatives sent from the East Bay Regional Parks District. Together, the eleven of us spent three long hours in the warm morning sunshine recovering trash from the Emervyille Crescent Shoreline, which is a part of the Eastshore State Park network. This special shoreline cleanup event was organized by the new Community Outdoor Cleanup and Outreach (COCO) project, funded and sponsored by the Graduate Assembly (GA) of UC Berkeley.

The new COCO project is the culmination of a year’s worth of effort on the part of concerned graduate student Dillon Niederhut, the GA delegate from Anthropology, and the GA Community Outreach Workgroup that he was pivotal in founding. This cleanup was COCO’s trial event, largely organized by fellow Workgroup member Christopher Klein, the GA delegate from Astronomy.

“We are the stars burst into consciousness.” This is my favorite bit of wisdom from evolutionary philosopher Brian Thomas Swimme. His words are not simply metaphor; we truly are made of the stars. While stars are initially composed of just hydrogen and its fusion product helium, at the end of the star’s life carbon, oxygen, and all the rest of the elements are rapidly formed before the star’s last massive explosion into both nothingness and everything.

Swimme spoke at this year’s Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, CA after a screening of his new movie Journey of the Universe: An Epic Story of Cosmic, Earth, and Human Transformation.  (As a side note for those of you interested in environmental advocacy, conservation politics, and edge-of-your-seat epic adventures — think free-soloing El Cap and class V white-water in the crocodile-filled Nile — I highly recommend next year’s festival).  In just 57 minutes, Swimme’s movie highlights 14 billion years worth of history, from the Big Bang to the beginnings of life and finally to our current precarious place on this planet.  But as environmental pressures mount to historically severe levels, Swimme says in his post-screening talk that it is difficult not to fall into despair if you are an intelligent and aware human being.

If I told you that I recently travelled to Brazil and saw a number of the world’s most unique plants and animals while trekking through a densely vegetated, humid environment, you’d probably assume I was referring to a hike through the Amazon rainforest, right? That’s because, for good reason, the Amazon attracts quite a bit of international attention — its struggles against deforestation and pollution make their way onto the pages of mainstream news outlets frequently. Meanwhile, we rarely, if ever, hear about the determined fight for the survival of Brazil’s other great forest: the Atlantic Forest on Brazil’s southeast coast. But the Atlantic Forest is exactly where I found myself over winter break, and while my excursion into a protected area of the forest accounted for just one day of the two-week long trip, its beauty and fragility left a lasting impression on me and my fellow travelers.

The main thing to know about the Atlantic Forest is that it is currently about 85% smaller than it was five centuries ago, yet it still houses nearly as much biodiversity as the much larger Amazon rainforest to the north. A large fraction, up to 40%, of its biodiversity cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. Extensive deforestation and fragmentation has made it necessary for NGO’s to step in and help maintain the vibrancy of the now fragile ecosystem. For example, my excursion was guided by members of a non-profit organization called Projeto Juçara, whose mission is to protect the Juçara palm tree. Juçara (juice-ARE-uh) palms are heavily poached for their edible palm hearts, and over time the trees have become one of the many endangered species residing in the Atlantic Forest. As my companions and I walked through the forest, we scattered Juçara seeds alongside the path in the hope that we could help restore the tree to healthy numbers in that area of the forest.