Rootball is the newsletter of Pando Populus.

Pando unites the people who care most about the future of Los Angeles. Focuses them on the right things. And motivates them. With passion. To implement LA County’s sustainability plan.

Artwork copyright (c) 2025 Michael Braley.

Create PandoMonium!

The Pando Days 2025/26 season is officially open and you’re cordially invited to create PandoMonium! 


Pando is collaborating with education and civic leaders to produce two things America needs most:


  • a generation of capable young people who take on real issues with the courage, knowledge, and sticktoitiveness needed to invent and develop –
  • real projects that make an actual difference in the world – now – for sustainability, justice, and democracy. 


And we’re succeeding beyond our dreams.

Map shows colleges/universities, middle schools, select community partners, and public agencies participating in Pando projects.

In total, we’ve seen 73 Pando Days projects come alive in collaboration with 25 higher ed institutions and 125 community partners. Last year alone, 21 Pando Days projects were successfully developed – an astounding 80% of which are alive in the real world making real change at real street addresses, right now. 


Our beloved John Cobb always thought that what we were doing amounted to a sea change in education, and stats like this are proving him right. 


Pando America


Now, we’re aiming to spread PandoMonium coast-to-coast over the Pando Days 2025/26 school year, accepting great projects into the Pando Days program from across the country, as funding allows. 


Pando Days enrollment for college/university courses, studios, and labs is open from now through December. 


Interested in helping? Please consider funding a Pando Days project at your favorite college or university: $5,000 per school project.* 


See our most recent Pando Plan deck for program and funding description. 


Help educators and young people do something to improve the world. 


To dream up projects that will make a real difference. 


To actually build those projects. 


And to see themselves as capable, caring citizens. 


Because that’s what they actually become. 


*Outside SoCal, there is an additional one-time “set-up cost.” So $7,500 the first year, $5,000/year thereafter. All of it tax deductible and possibly matched by your employer (in which case, we would need just half as much from you).

The Pandos are coming!

Join us on Sunday, Oct. 5 from 2:00-5:00 p.m. for The Pando Sustainability Awards at the extraordinary Resnick Sustainability Institute on the Caltech campus in Pasadena. 


We will be honoring outstanding projects from the 2025/26 Pando Days season. For a preview of the projects you’ll see, go here – and prepare to be astonished. 


Meet the instructors and student leaders who are mounting these initiatives across the Southland, network with funders, elected officials, agency heads, and caring folks of all kinds, and – for the first time – place your vote to award a cash prize. 


Seating is limited. Watch for details.

Getting by on $100 Million -- and the Pando Plan

Andy Tobias, best-selling writer and Treasurer Emeritus of the Democratic National Committee, blogs about us in his August 18 post. He writes:


A Gen Xer sold his company for $1.6 billion. He kept less than $100 million and gave the rest away because he doesn’t ‘believe in billionaires’


Crazy, no?


One cause he may want to support is the now-proven… Pando Plan.


For just $5,000, you can improve a lot of lives. Perhaps at your alma mater; or at a school down the street from you. (Just $1,500 in a middle school.)


If you’re looking for a highly-leveraged, non-political (tax-deductible) way to make a better world, check it out.


International Day for Biodiversity and the Convention on Biological Diversity


By Mark VanderSchaaf

Did you know that May 22 is the International Day for Biodiversity? Until recently, I didn’t. And moreover, I didn’t realize this date has been the annual International Day for Biodiversity since 1992. And there has also been an official International Year of Biodiversity (2010), and even an International Decade on Biodiversity (2011-2020). How can it be that there have been such high-profile official global celebrations of biodiversity for more than 30 years, and yet they haven’t been publicized much here in the US? Is it just that we’ve decided that Earth Day in April suffices for our nation to think about environmental issues? Or is there a deeper reason?

The world’s first prairie restoration project, initiated in 1935 at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum and supervised by renowned ecologist, Aldo Leopold. Credit: Molly Fifield Murray. Copyright: University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.

National biodiversity research and policy in the United States


By Mark VanderSchaaf

In this blog, I’ll take a look at what national biodiversity efforts have occurred in the United States even without our country’s complete involvement in the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).


In my research of this topic, I’ve found four research and policy endeavors that at one time established a basic national biodiversity foundation for the United States. Sadly, all of them appear to be marginalized nationally as of 2025.

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