BEET Rangers at Academy of Sciences!

Today the BEET Rangers got a special treat, as our near-end-of-program celebration! They have been working so hard, and today was a day to celebrate and enjoy at the new Academy of Sciences!

The new building is pretty amazing. It was super crowded, but we were able to weave our way through to enjoy the incredible aquarium, complete with sea dragons, an albino alligator, an anaconda, and some really neat turtles. We also checked out the indoor rainforest, which kinda blew our minds. There were lots of amazing frogs, chameleons, and geckos. Snakes that looked like sticks with really long noses, and butterflies everywhere. One of them almost landed on Naz's head!

The penguins were as entertaining as ever, and the living roof is spectacular. Jeffrey wrote down the names of a lot of the plants for his garden at Gateway High School. We will help him get some of those native plants come spring, when the garden has more space to plant them. There was some lovely yarrow growing up there, definitely a beautiful sight covering a really big roof in the middle of San Francisco! There is so much space to grow on, everywhere, if we use a little imagination. Rooftop gardens could be happening all over this city!

We had a great time looking around, and learned a lot. It is always uncomfortable to see animals in cages- we talked about that quite a bit. We agreed it was challenging to enjoy some aspects of visiting the Academy of Sciences, but overall, we could see how hopefully it was bringing people closer to nature, and to caring about the environment and their impact on the world. Maybe one day we won't have to see animals from really far away up close in order to feel our connection to them, and we won't make choices to use resources that result in rainforest destruction, or the destruction of any environment, for that matter.

Growing and eating local, with organic systems that encourage lots of animal habitat and native plants ecosystems are so essential to fighting habitat destruction caused by corporate agribusiness. Every little patch counts, from the living roof at the Academy of Sciences, to our garden at Koshland with our Monarch butterfly visitors. It all makes a difference, and we can keep growing more and more... let's do it! Overgrow!