Manuel said:
"This is great news! I hope all cities pass this into law.The practice of using plastic bags just to quickly dispose of them has been going on far t..." [read]
Jay Knecht said:
"What are the performance stats for the Son of Max? ..." [read]
gazelle said:
"@ Dallas:
The book, and the supplementary videos in the "How It All Ends" youtube series, address this in detail, but I'll try to paraphrase:..." [read]
Barry said:
"Kofi Annan has about as much of a clue about electric cars and developing countries as Ann Ann the Panda.
He underestimates the ingenuity o..." [read]
JJ said:
"Very cool. I didn't thought that biodesel might be our future fuel...." [read]
Derek said:
""I guarantee you this will spark huge debates around the world," she said. "We have to delve into this in a way that hasn't been done in a long tim..." [read]
Wild tigers in China are on the Brink of Extinction
Xie Yan, the China Country Program Director for the Wildlife Conservation Society, estimates that fewer than 50 South China Tigers are left in the wild, with about "10 still live in the southwestern province of Yunnan, some 15 in Tibet, and 20 or so in northwestern Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces." Even if take a step back and look at 12 Asian countries and Russia, it is estimated that only about 3,500 tigers are left in the wild, compared to around 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.
Do you know of a green person, product, company, event, or concept that deserves to be lauded for the positive environmental change it has enacted? Let us know! In TreeHugger's second annual Best of Green Awards, we're looking to bestow top honors on the people, places, and things that are helping move sustainability into the mainstream.
Last year, we awarded more than 170 prizes across eight general themes. This year, we're asking for your help making some of the selections. Let us know who you think should be nominated for a Best of Green Award. Then we'll ask for your help picking the cream of the crop in dozens of specific categories in our new-this-year Readers' Choice Awards. Click the link below for nomination instructions.
Trees. They provide shade. They turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. They're the perfect shape for hugging. Unless they're riddled with disease. There are dozens of diseases that sicken or kill trees in the United States. There also are bugs that make trees more prone to disease, like the Emerald Ash Borer, first found in Detroit in 2002.
The bug, native to Asia, likely arrived here in shipping containers. It starts out as larvae that feed on the inner bark of ash trees, and has killed tens of millions of ash in Michigan, other states, and Canada since first being discovered, according to emeraldashborer.info, a clearinghouse site.
The borer is just one of a number of insects and afflictions that make trees less huggable. Climate change is likely to bring news diseases to new areas, according to U.S. Forest Service officials. Get ready to meet some of your new neighbors.
The White Shark Café is a remote area in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, and it's the winter and spring habitat of great white sharks. It was coined in 2002 by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium who were studying the geolocation information of tagged sharks. While researchers know where the sharks hang out, they don't know why. White Shark Cafe follows researchers off the coast of San Francisco as they tag and track white sharks, hoping to find out more about why they congregate for long periods of time away from their primary food sources along the coastlines. Check out footage from the film, and meet one of the sharks, Omoo, who has his own Facebook page.
Klättermusen, the Swedish outdoor gear design firm, just keeps on winning official kudos for its innovative clothing and equipment, having amassed 12 international design awards in the past four years alone.
Their latest creation, the Bilskirner Jacket, recently picked up an ISPO Outdoor Award for Textiles, as well as a 100% ranking in Klättermusen's own internal Eco Index. Although not strictly a waterproof garment, the Bilskirner, available later in 2010 if highly wind and water resistant due to an ultra-dense woven, certified organic cotton, shell fabric. Overlays of 100 % fluorocarbon-free, recyclable polyester fabric increase the weatherproofing. And if returned, at the end of useful life, Klättermusen will offer a refund of 10 Euros.
Many researchers feel that sea birds could be the perfect species to study in order to see how climate change is affecting marine life on a large scale. In the film Arctic Cliffhangers, biologist and filmmaker Steve Smith travels along the eastern Canadian Arctic to talk with specialists who are tracking information about several cliff-dwelling species. Because their nesting is coordinated with arctic ice break-ups, and their feeding takes them as far as 500 kilometers out to sea, they have the ability to show us what is happening both on land and far out in the ocean depths.
What Can We Learn From The Highways in the Sky Science recently published a study titled "Flight Orientation Behaviors Promote Optimal Migration Trajectories in High-Flying Insects". It's about how migrating insects have evolved to take advantage very efficiently of high speed winds (while you're stuck in traffic, butterflies whiz by at up to 60 MPH, possibly more) to travel hundreds of miles in relatively short periods of time, all that while correcting for crosswinds taking them off-course, and expanding as little energy as possible. This made me wonder, in the spirit of biomimicry, what can we learn from that?
Researchers monitoring three-toed sloths in the jungles of Panama came upon a shocking discovery after one of their radio-collared animals stopped moving. The sloth had been killed, its organs eaten, and left on the forest floor. Upon closer inspection, researchers determined the sloth to be a victim of a surprising killer: The tiny spectacled owl.
Photo: Flickr, CC
I Feel a Great Disturbance in the Force
Finding new uses for equipment that you already have is always satisfying (at least to engineers). One very cool example of this is the use of cell phone towers to measure rainfall in real-time; the rain interferes with the radio signals, and this interference can be measured with "greater spatial resolution than traditional point measurements provided by rain gauges." How is this green? Well, in general it could provide better data about our planet and changing rain patterns, but on the more practical level, it could help reduce the dumping of polluted water in lakes and rivers....
Photo via *christopher*
Killer whales are fierce apex predators of the ocean. But fierce enough to take down a great white shark like it's no problem at all? Apparently so. In an unprecedented sighting, a killer whale takes on a great white shark who approaches too close for comfort to the whale's pod, which includes a new calf. The documentary The Whale That Ate Jaws describes the whole event as it happened in the waters off San Francisco, California. ...
Image credit: Roger B./Flickr
Rising sea levels, we know, will bring substantial flooding to the world's coastal communities. But oceans will not be the only driver of severe flooding in the future. More serious storms, too, will increase the chances of riverine flooding and land stripped by agriculture will help contribute to landslides and muddy floods.
...
Photo via pats0n
For the first time, wildlife experts have observed sea lions native to the Galapagos Islands establishing colonies over 900 miles away in the waters off of Peru. According to researchers, ocean temperatures in Peruvian waters has increased over 11°F in the last ten years--making it the perfect new getaway for the sea lions once unique to the remote Galapagos. Experts are concerned that more animals will begin migrating away from the islands, home to a host of species found nowhere else on earth, as climate change continues to warm waters in other regions....
Image via Bryant Austin
Bryant Austin is a photographer with a big goal: to save whales by photographing them. But it's not just photographing them - it is all in how he displays his work. Bryant will find a pod of whales, and then stay at the surface of the water, waiting for one of the whales to approach him. When they do, he starts photographing them, swimming less than six feet away from them. After taking hundreds of high resolution images of a whale - all on the whale's terms - he pieces them together into one complete, life-size whole. He's the first artist to show photos of whales at life-size, and the impact is profound. By showing these massive images in whaling countries like Norway, he hopes to change perceptions about the animals and - with luck - slow or even stop whaling. Check out the documentary on Bryant Austin's work, an interview with him, and more of the stunning images. ...
Photo via Flickr Creative Commons
In Puerto Rico, it is illegal for developers to create projects that close off public access to the ocean. Yet, well-connected developers are still able to do just this. The Edge of the Sea is a 26-minute documentary that explores the issues of how privatization of public marine areas affect the social and environmental fabric of Puerto Rico. Focusing in on a 61-year-old fisherman from a small village that has experienced massive coastal development at the cost of fishermen and the marine life, the documentary explores the battle over beach-front property. ...
Screenshot via YouTube
Sharks were a big part of the film fest, and conversations revolved around finning and the massive decline of an apex predator that holds the balance of the oceans together. But not every video at the Ocean Film Festival was serious footage about the decline of the oceans. There was a fair amount of fun to be had, and no other film brought forth as much laughter from the audience as The Great White Shark Song - a music video that tells exactly what a shark might think and do if it found you in the ocean. Check out the video after the jump, as well as a Q&A from the filmmaker, songwriter & shark junky Andy Brandy Casagrande IV....
Photo via San Francisco Ocean Film Festival
Isla Holbox is a small island off the coast of Mexico that boasts an unusually large whale shark population. The nutrient-rich waters are a perfect feeding ground for the largest fish in the ocean. Whale sharks congregate here by the hundreds, but that means tourists are now flocking here by the thousands. It's a wonderful possibility for habitat and species conservation since the whale sharks are worth more alive than dead. But what does all that eco-tourism do to the local area? Is it really a paradise for whale sharks, or a precarious situation? This film explores the topic, and director Kip Evans discusses the pros, cons, ups and downs of species preservation. Video after the jump. ...
Image via KQED
Seahorses are some of the most beloved of the tropical fish. But, they're also very popular in traditional Chinese medicine, used for for male virility, and as souvenirs. The Monterey Bay Aquarium describes the fragility of seahorse populations: "Seahorses and the places they live face a range of threats in the wild, including destruction of the coral reefs and sea grass beds where seahorses live, fishing techniques which mistakenly catch seahorses, and collection of seahorses for souvenirs or for use in traditional medicines." Seahorse Sleuths is a film by KQED that explores the struggle they face for survival in their threatened habitats, working with local scientists who are trying to understand more about seahorses so that they can be better protected. Check out the film after the jump. ...
Image: Völkl
Another winner of an ISPO Eco Responsibility Award is Völkl for their Amaruq Eco skis, picking up top honours in the hardware category. German company impressed judges with their ski construction and manufacturing processes.
The Amaruq Eco ski has a wood core, that is wrapped with sidewalls and topsheet of wood, whereas normally these are fibreglass. The layers of wood are bound, not with the common epoxy, but with "a natural, regenerative organic wood resin." Wooden surfaces are protected by a factory application of linseed oil. The ski's base is said be made of a 100% recyclable material, whilst the metal edges employ 60% recycled steel....
At about noon today, Australia time, at a location about 180 miles off Cape Darnley in Australian Antarctic Territory the Sea Shepherd vessel Bob Barker collided with the Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru 3. No injuries have been reported.
As it to be expected, both sides had rather different accounts of who was at fault in the situation:...
Photo: Sad and blobby blobfish (Greenpeace)
Without the redeeming good looks of other endangered species, the rather unfortunate-looking but aptly-named blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) may not figure in anyone's glitzy conservation campaign. Nevertheless, the fact is that this jiggly, jelly-like creature is threatened with extinction, thanks to the overfishing antics of deep sea trawlers scraping the bottom of Australian and New Zealand waters.
...
The Asiatic jackal, shown here in Tanzania, Africa, is under consideration for Afghanistan's endangered-species list thanks to student research. Photo by Stig Nygaard via Flickr.
The ongoing conflict in Afghanistan has made it nearly impossible for researchers to conduct on-the-ground fieldwork to find out how species such as the Kashmir cave bat, Asiatic jackal, and Afghan tortoise have fared during the last 30 years of war. So conservation organizations and the Afghan government have turned to an unlikely source of assistance: A class of American college students, some 7,000 miles away....
Elk sightings mapped on the WildObs website.
Wondering which species of bird you spotted on the local lake the other day? Or what that little critter escaping into the woods might have been? The Internet comes to the rescue once again with a variety of applications that let wildlife watchers share their animal sightings -- and help each other identify them -- online....
France, Italy & Spain account for half of the world's catch of bluefin, while Japan is the largest consumer. Photo: Stewart Butterfield via flickr.
In a move which could bode well for the future of endangered, but still being overfished, Atlantic bluefin tuna, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has backed a proposal to enact a ban on trade in bluefin. Here's what the head of CITES' scientific unit, David Morgan, told Reuters:...
Image from engadget
The Vancouver Winter Olympics are starting next week and there is a lot of rain in Vancouver...and not that much snow on the mountain. The truth is they are calling them the Spring Olympics because there is a little too much green happening right now. Let's focus on the positive: there are some surprising sustainable aspects to the event.
Like the medals! They are made of recycled circuit boards. A Canadian mining company reduced the gold, silver, and bronze from the circuit boards of old computers and has melted them down and re-cast them into the Olympic medals. That was part of the brief of the competition. The designs are by a First Nations artist from the Raven Gwa'waina clan, of the Kwakwaka'wakw village on Vancouver Island....
Photo: Wikipedia, CC. FedEx.
A Panda Express Ride for Mei Lan (3 years old) and Tai Shan (4.5 years old)
Mei Lan and Tai Shan are two US-born giant pandas that are about to leave their homes at the Washington D.C. Smithsonian National Zoological Park and the Atlanta Zoo to go back to their homeland, China. This is done to fulfill some international conservation agreements, but such a trip is not routine; it can be traumatic for a panda, and so a lot of attention was paid to making the trip as comfortable and as fast as possible. The centerpiece of the plan is a new plane recently acquired by FedEx, a super fuel-efficient Boeing 777F dubbed the Panda Express (see photos below)....
Image credit: ed7929/Flickr
From Toto to Twister, Storm Chasers to Greensburg, tornadoes have swept into our imaginations.
And with good reason: Every year, tornadoes in the United States cause millions of dollars in damage and lead to several severe injuries and even fatalities.
Due to urban land use practices and climate change, severe tornadoes will only become more common.
...
Photo: Edelrid
When you are hanging by your fingertips, the environmental credentials of a climbing rope are probably the furthest thing from your mind. But that doesn't mean the ropes maker didn't give it some thought. For example, German mountaineering firm Edelrid believe they are the "first rope company world wide to successfully certify our ropes under the stringent bluesign standards."
Doing so has enabled Edelrid's 9,2mm Kite climbing rope to pick the 2010 ISPO (International Sports Expo) Eco Responsibility Award for a Winter Accessory. The ISPO jury reviewed ecological aspects of products, and examined the sustainability of the overall manufacturing concept, including logistics, production, and company culture.
So how does a product meet bluesign standards?...
Photo via Metro
With habitat loss and climate change threatening ecosystems across the world, animals have enough to worry about, but now it seems some are picking up on our unhealthier habits as well. Sure, we've seen alcoholic monkeys tipping back a few on St. Kitts, and that's bad enough--but they do have hands, after all. That can't be said for Po the snake, who's picked up a nasty habit of his own. Po can't start off his day without his morning cigarette--that is, according to his owner, who smokes a pack a day herself. Does this count as animal cruelty?...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 02. 9.10
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Image: Völkl
Another winner of an ISPO Eco Responsibility Award is Völkl for their Amaruq Eco skis, picking up top honours in the hardware category. German company impressed judges with their ski construction and manufacturing processes.
The Amaruq Eco ski has a wood core, that is wrapped with sidewalls and topsheet of wood, whereas normally these are fibreglass. The layers of wood are bound, not with the common epoxy, but with "a natural, regenerative organic wood resin." Wooden surfaces are protected by a factory application of linseed oil. The ski's base is said be made of a 100% recyclable material, whilst the metal edges employ 60% recycled steel....
Photo: Sad and blobby blobfish (
The Asiatic jackal, shown here in Tanzania, Africa, is under consideration for Afghanistan's endangered-species list thanks to student research. Photo by 
Elk sightings mapped on the 
France, Italy & Spain account for half of the world's catch of bluefin, while Japan is the largest consumer. Photo: 
Image from 
Photo: 
Image credit: 
Photo: Edelrid
When you are hanging by your fingertips, the environmental credentials of a climbing rope are probably the furthest thing from your mind. But that doesn't mean the ropes maker didn't give it some thought. For example, German mountaineering firm Edelrid believe they are the "first rope company world wide to successfully certify our ropes under the stringent bluesign standards."
Doing so has enabled Edelrid's 9,2mm Kite climbing rope to pick the 2010 ISPO (International Sports Expo) 
Photo via 
