Should Shipping on the Yangtze be Made Safer and Cleaner?
Even when everything's going according to plan, cargo ships can be
major sources of air pollution (see "
Just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars"), but when things go wrong and they're carrying dangerous chemicals, things can degenerate quite a bit. Chinese workers are currently trying to clean up two spills that took place on the Yangtze River this week (oil was spilled in one case and hydrochloric acid in the other)....
Photo via schizoform
Earthworms in Britain are seeing their turf taken over by a European species that is better suited for warmer, drier climates...the type of climate we're seeing more of thanks to global warming. At Whitley Wood in the New Forest, the change in the ecosystem has made it too much of a battle for native earthworm species to keep European invaders at bay. As non-native earthworms continue to make their way to Britain, hitching rides with imported plants, the balance of species will continue to shift. ...
That's Quite a Nice New Toy You Got There, and It's Not Even Xmas
Has the Oracle of Omaha seen the future? If so, it seems to include more trains, because Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's investment vehicle, decided to buy the remaining 77.4% of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railway that it didn't already own, and the price tag wasn't small: 44 billion dollars when cash, stock and debt are included. Mr. Buffett says that he's betting on "the United States", because "railroad operators cannot do well unless American businesses were producing goods and customers were buying them." But is it possible that he's also betting that relatively fuel-efficient trains will play a bigger role in the future of transportation?...
The monitor lizard is under threat due to habitat loss and hunting by humans for food. All images: ICUN.
The latest update to the
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is in and if you were expecting good news prepared to be disappointed. Of the more than 47,000 species surveyed, about 17,000 are at serious risk -- of those 21% of the world's mammal species, 12% of birds, 28% of reptiles, 30% of amphibians, 35% of invertebrates, 37% of freshwater fish and 70% of plants:...
photo: derekkeats via flickr.
As if Zimbabwe didn't have enough problems:
The Economic Times forwards on the news that Zimbabwe's director of national parks has told a parliamentary committee that one-quarter of the nation's
rhinoceros population has been killed by poachers, just in the last three years:...
Photo: Montane
Montane may not be one of the iconic names of outdoor gear, having only been around for 16 years. But they are taking it to the big boys by offering part of their outdoor sport clothing line in eco materials. The garments shown below, for example, use recycled polyester in either shell fabrics or insulations. Yet British-based Montane are still able to offer their signature low weight and pack size, demonstrating that eco-textiles still offer performance characteristics....
Photo: Flickr, CC
Tragedy of the Commons?
Vélib, the Parisian bike-sharing program, is great. But it would be incorrect to pretend that
tout est parfait dans le meilleur des mondes (lit. transl.: everything is perfect in the best of worlds).
Vandalism and theft has been a problem, and the latest news aren't good: About 80% of the original 20,600 bicycles have been damaged or stolen and the resources required to fix them or replace them are straining the program's budget. There's even a black market for stolen Vélib bikes in Eastern Europe and Africa......
The Black Sea is an integral part of millions of peoples' lives. Photo of Trabzon, Turkey, by Whewes via Flickr.
With its watershed covering almost one-third of continental Europe, an area home to some 160 million people, there are plenty of opportunities for pollution to run into the Black Sea -- and only one outlet to the world's oceans and seas, the Bosphorus straits in Turkey. It's little wonder, then, that a dozen years ago, it was described as "facing an environmental catastrophe." More surprising, perhaps, is that conditions in the
Black Sea have shown any improvement at all....
Me, pictured center, with just one of six million indigenous Mayans living in the Maya Forest.
Why I didn't know much about Mesoamerica's Maya Forest (or 'Selva Maya' in Spanish), I'm not sure (and yes, am admittedly embarrassed). My guess is that since the Amazon takes the gold for being the largest rainforest, it receives the most attention. (A quick search on TreeHugger results in pages upon pages of
Amazon news and you guessed it, close to zilch on the
Maya Forest).
Luckily, a pre-arranged meeting with Ann Snook,
The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) Mayan Forest Program Manager (a Planet Green non-profit partner) and Victoria Santos Jimenez, the Technical Director of the Organization of Forestry Producer Ejidos (OEPF), during
my green get-away in Mexico's Mayan Riviera, would open my eyes to its importance. It also presented me with the perfect opportunity to blog about it--giving it its deserved slice of the TreeHugger limelight....
photo: W.B. Karesh
Modern technology came in handy for several scientists tracking the marathon migration of pronghorn antelopes. Using GPS collars, the scientists were able to follow the species in what is being called the longest migration of any land mammal in the Western Hemisphere.
...
Credit: GLERL.
Once upon a time, a president named George W. Bush called the Great Lakes "
a national treasure," formed a group to come up with a restoration plan, and did nothing.
That was in May 2004. The regional group he formed later came up with
a $20 billion plan to clean up the lakes.
This year, 2009, Part 1 of that regional strategy is about to kick off, to address threats like invasive species, scoop out contaminated sediments and restore wetland and other habitat in the five Great Lakes. ...
Photo: Rent-a-Ruminent LLC
Could goats be the past and the future?
We've written many times about goats being used to replace lawnmowers and to clear brush (for example,
in Arizona,
in North-Carolina, and even at
Google's Mountainview HQ). Well, we can now add to that list the Seattle-based
Rent-a-Ruminant company. More before & after pics below....
Photo: Flickr, CC
Storing, Changing, Buying, Repairing, Inspiring
The UK transport secretary, Andrew Adonis, has launched a new program to encourage more people to commute to work on bicycles. Currently, only about 3% of UK citizens do that, compared to about 40% in Copenhagen. The initiative is named the
Cycle to Work Guarantee and it is a voluntary program that workplaces can join. Members are basically sending the message to their current and potential employees that they'll take measures to make safe storage and changing facilities available to bike commuters. The government is also investing about £140m in improved facilities for cyclists over the next three years....
Image credit: worak/Flickr
Anyone who has seen
Little Shop of Horrors has felt it: that sinking feeling that something is not right. And I'm not talking about Rick Moranis singing. I'm talking about sinister carnivorous plants.
We all know plants can poison us, sure, but it seems unnatural for a plant to eat another living thing. It's hard to believe that a member of the largely peaceful and beneficent Plantae kingdom would lurk in the forest, waiting for prey.
Well believe it. You're about to see a whole hoard of horrifying plants that eat the living.
...
The Gulser Ana going down. Photo via Australia
A ship carrying toxic waste sunk off the coast of
Madagascar, and thousands of tons of refuse were emptied into the rich marine ecosystem. The wreck has had devastating effects on the sea life and the health of people who live inland--causing whales to mysteriously beach in greater numbers, and afflicting the locals with grave respiratory and skin diseases.
...
Image via: Be True to Blue
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It's easy to harp on the big guys for creating massive big-box stores that sell massive piles of cheap products that ultimately end up in landfills. But let's be honest, from time to time we're still going to need to buy stuff and like it or not, sometimes those items come from chain or department stores. Action sports items in particular wear out just by virtue of the activity they are used for. When
I spoke with Vipe Desai, founder of project BLUE this time last year, project BLUE was just getting started and there were big hopes that encouraging people to choose better products could ultimately raise money for conservation. Turns out, it worked!...
For at least the past eighteen months there have been consistent cries that a fishing ban on
Atlantic bluefin tuna was required to prevent the iconic species being relegated to extinction. Now, scientists at the
International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas say (finally) that position is supported by data indicating the species has declined so much it should be listed under the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species:
ICCAT scientists just met in Madrid to assess current stock levels and found that the current spawning biomass is less that 15% of historical levels.
Only a Fishing Ban Can Save Bluefin
Greenpeace and WWF hailed the announcement. Dr Sergi Tudela from WWF Mediterranean said, "What's needed to save the stocks is a suspension of fishing activity and a suspension of international commercial trade -- this is the only possible package that can give this fish a chance to recover."...
Camels are "like the bank for the Turkana." Photo by xikita via Flickr.
The
global economic crisis has shattered many families' financial security as the value of investments plummet and jobs become vulnerable, or nonexistent. But in the rural Turkana district of northwest Kenya, the culprit robbing peoples' bank accounts is climate change....
Photo via NM
Researchers were recently surprised to find that the world's longest cave formation--the Fort Stanton Cave in New Mexico--is growing even longer. They discovered that calcite is still accumulating in the trough of the cave, which cuts through miles and miles of rock. More photos of the stunning, tunnel-like cave after the jump....
photo: Photos8.com via flickr.
Recently we heard that Africa's elephants face a bleak future, but it seems the world's tigers aren't long for this world either.
The Economic Times reports that at the
Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop, the latest numbers show that the world population of 3,500 tigers could all be extinct in 15-20 years without better conservation efforts:...
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on 11. 7.09
In the loop: a botanical garden inside a highway interchange (inset). Photos via 
The Pirin mountains are among Bulgaria's threatened natural habitats. Photo by 
