PelicanZell Blog

Book published in 2020 & review by Richard Zell Donovan, February 2024 This intriguing 258 page book, loaned to me by another swimmer, is basically a tribute to swimming. The California-based author tells stories from around the world about competitive and non-competitive swimmers, including survivors of unplanned cold water adventures (typically long) and also just…

Published in 2018, with translation from German by Jane Billinghurst, 165 pages, sponsored by the David Suzuki Institute of Canada and published by Greystone Books. The book was a gift from my wife Karen. Review done by Richard Zell Donovan, January 2024. This engaging book is beautifully illustrated with photos from various “Shutterstock.com” and other…

January 2024 by Richard Zell Donovan Note: In 2021 I produced a perspective on forests and biomass energy. For better or worse, the following is a mild rewrite of that, with some updating after my last 4-5 years of experience in the sector. My fundamental message is that biomass energy, based on wood or forests,…

Book by Richard Powers, W.W. published in 2018 by Norton & Company, 502 pages, reviewed December 2023 by Richard Zell Donovan This Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 novel is perplexing to review. It received many incredibly positive reviews by luminaries around the world….making my own independent reflections on it a bit daunting. But here goes…. Through the…

For the first time in USA history, the heads of the US Department of Interior and the US Bureau of Land Management are indigenous. We now have a new marine sanctuary off the coast of California – the Chumash National Heritage Marine Sanctuary – being championed by the Chumash AND the National Park Service. Parallel…

A Global History of Forest Management by Brett Bennett, 2015, The MIT Press – Reviewed 2023

This 2009 book goes through the historical (including political) antecedents, happenings and postmortem of “The Big Burn Fire” of 1910. I read the book as I was cycling through part of the tristate area of Idaho, Oregon and Montana that was deeply affected by this fire, which affected over 3 million acres of forest and…

We all live in different communities – our families, our towns, our “online” world, and our professions. In my tree- and forest-dominated world, tectonic change SEEMS to be happening. Often change brings up more and more questions, some comfortable, some not, but probably most necessary to think about. What’s happening? What am I talking about?…

November 25, 2022 Over the past 30 years in particular there has been an almost constant ratcheting up of our expectations around transparency – amongst non-governmental organizations (NGOs), researchers, companies (brands, retailers, producers) and international organizations (certification programs, other due diligence initiatives, etc.). This is GOOD and necessary. However, personally I continue to confront situations…

There is a lot of attention on the topic of restoration now, from the new UN Decade on Restoration (officially starting in 2021) to the Bonn Challenge to the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, the “Trillion” & “Billion” tree planting initiatives, AFR100 in Africa, 20X20 in Central/South America and more.  On the positive side, these…