tagged w/ Species Extinction
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Biodiversity loss does not get center stage, but nevertheless it is an environmental tragedy that must be addressed along with climate change. I do believe they are intertwined. Take potatoes as an example. We have gone in this world from thousands of seed varieties to about ten or less worldwide. That does not bode well for sustaining a growing population, especially with GMOS contaminating natural seed varieties. It is the same with the corn varieties of Mexico. And those actions alone can effect species that feed on them as well as other factors regarding Forests being cleared to grow them. Also, climate change effects such as drought, deforestation, etc. as well as air and water pollution. Biodiversity is the reason we thrive on Earth. If we can't find time to pay attention to that, then I don't understand how we can begin to think this planet can be saved for the future.
But hey, MSM, let's focus on Sarah Palin and her book for another day, shall we?Biodiversity loss does not get center stage, but nevertheless it is an environmental... more
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The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
The last big promise to act was in 2003, when government ministers from 123 countries committed to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.
Experts convening an international meeting in South Africa this week agree that target will not be met next year, which is also the International Year of Biodiversity.
"It is hard to imagine a more important priority than protecting the ecosystem services underpinned by biodiversity," said Georgina Mace of Imperial College in London, and vice chair of the international DIVERSITAS programme, a broad science-based collaborative.
"We will certainly miss the target for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010," said Mace in a statement.
Biodiversity is not just weird-looking animals and pretty birds. It is the diversity of life on Earth that comprises the ecosystems that provide vital services, including climate regulation, food, fibre, clean water and air.
By some estimates, 12,000 species go extinct every year, and the rate is accelerating. Akin to a cataclysmic asteroid, pollution, logging, over-exploitation, consumption, land use changes and engineering projects have produced the planet's sixth great extinction of species.
Freshwater ecosystems may be the first collapse of one of Earth's life support systems in 13,000 years. Species that live in lakes and rivers are vanishing four to six times faster than anywhere else on the planet, said Klement Tockner of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany.
"There is clear and growing scientific evidence that we are on the verge of a major freshwater biodiversity crisis," Tockner told IPS.
Some experts predict that by 2025, not a single Chinese river will reach the sea, except during floods, with tremendous effects on coastal fisheries in China. Worldwide, all 25 species of sturgeon and all species of the river dolphins are either extinct or facing extinction. The species remaining in the world's great rivers like the Danube, Rhine, Hudson and Mekong are mostly non-native species, Tockner said.
"This is a complete change, and few are aware of the threat," he added.
Freshwater ecosystems cover only 0.8 percent of the planet's surface, but they contain roughly 10 percent of all animals, including more than 35 percent of all vertebrates. The pace of extinctions is quickening, Tockner warns - especially in hot spot areas around the Mediterranean, in Central America, China and throughout Southeast Asia.
"Our priority must be to conserve the last free flowing river systems...there are very few left," he said.
And many have new dams proposed to generate carbon-free electricity. Ironically, freshwater ecosystems do a better job at keeping carbon out of the atmosphere as they absorb and bury about seven percent of the carbon humans add annually to the atmosphere.
"Scientists are alarmed at how fact things are unraveling," said Hal Mooney, an environmental biologist from Stanford University in California and the chair of DIVERSITAS, which is convening its Second Open Science Conference Oct. 13-16 with 600 experts from around the world.
"There is a real sense of urgency, but not amongst policy-makers," Mooney told IPS from Nairobi, Kenya last week.The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of... more
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A new documentary seeks to unravel the mystery of why billions of honey bees have been disappearing from hives across the United States.
"Vanishing of the Bees" follows a group of U.S. beekeepers hit by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which first struck in 2004 and made U.S. headlines three years later.
Countless bees would suddenly vanish, leaving an empty hive but few bodies. While all of the causes of this disaster are yet to be established, strong evidence suggests a link to Bayer's insecticide imidacloprid.
The film is out in the UK, but hasn't hit the US yet. You can make that happen:
Support the Filmmakers:
http://vanishingbees.co.uk/take_action/support_the_filmmakers/A new documentary seeks to unravel the mystery of why billions of honey bees have been... more
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WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene around 10 years ago, he gave birth to a powerful idea: that human activity is now affecting the Earth so profoundly that we are entering a new geological epoch.
The Anthropocene has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest - and the last. It is not hard to imagine the epoch ending just a few hundred years after it started, in an orgy of global warming and overconsumption.
Let's suppose that happens. Humanity's ever-expanding footprint on the natural world leads, in two or three hundred years, to ecological collapse and a mass extinction. Without fossil fuels to support agriculture, humanity would be in trouble. "A lot of things have to die, and a lot of those things are going to be people," says Tony Barnosky, a palaeontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In this most pessimistic of scenarios, society would collapse, leaving just a few hundred thousand eking out a meagre existence in a new Stone Age.
Whether our species would survive is hard to predict, but what of the fate of the Earth itself? It is often said that when we talk about "saving the planet" we are really talking about saving ourselves: the planet will be just fine without us. But would it? Or would an end-Anthropocene cataclysm damage it so badly that it becomes a sterile wasteland?
The only way to know is to look back into our planet's past. Neither abrupt global warming nor mass extinction are unique to the present day. The Earth has been here before. So what can we expect this time?
Take greenhouse warming. Climatologists' biggest worry is the possibility that global warming could push the Earth past two tipping points that would make things dramatically worse. The first would be the thawing of carbon-rich peat locked in permafrost. As the Arctic warms, the peat could decompose and release trillions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere - perhaps exceeding the 3 trillion tonnes that humans could conceivably emit from fossil fuels. The second is the release of methane stored as hydrate in cold, deep ocean sediments. As the oceans warm and the methane - itself a potent greenhouse gas - enters the atmosphere, it contributes to still more warming and thus accelerates the breakdown of hydrates in a vicious circle.
"If we were to blow all the fossil fuels into the atmosphere, temperatures would go up to the point where both of these reservoirs of carbon would be released," says oceanographer David Archer of the University of Chicago. No one knows how catastrophic the resulting warming might be.
That's why climatologists are looking with increasing interest at a time 55 million years ago called the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, when temperatures rose by up to 9 °C in a few thousand years - roughly equivalent to the direst forecasts for present-day warming. "It's the most recent time when there was a really rapid warming," says Peter Wilf, a palaeobotanist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. "And because it was fairly recent, there are a lot of rocks still around that record the event."
By measuring ocean sediments deposited during the thermal maximum, geochemist James Zachos of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has found that the warming coincided with a huge spike in atmospheric CO2. Between 5 and 9 trillion tonnes of carbon entered the atmosphere in no more than 20,000 years (Nature, vol 432, p 495). Where could such a huge amount have come from?
Volcanic activity cannot account for the carbon spike, Zachos says. Instead, he blames peat decomposition, which would have happened not from melting permafrost - it was too warm for permafrost - but through climatic drying. The fossil record of plants from this time testifies to just such a drying episode.
Continued at link . . .WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene... more
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The picture you see is the sharp contrast between forest and pasture in Mato Grosso.
Shocking!
Excerpts:
"As the world's biggest cattle producer, Brazil braces for change:
While you're browsing the mall for running shoes, the Amazon rainforest is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Perhaps it shouldn't be.
The globalization of commodity supply chains has created links between consumer products and distant ecosystems like the Amazon. Shoes sold in downtown Manhattan may have been assembled in Vietnam using leather supplied from a Brazilian processor that subcontracted to a rancher in the Amazon. But while demand for these products is currently driving environmental degradation, this connection may also hold the key to slowing the destruction of Earth's largest rainforest."
"Cattle ranching is overwhelmingly the biggest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: the fate of nearly 80 percent of cleared rainforest land is to serve as forage for livestock. Since 2006 more than 38,600 square miles has been cleared for pasture, bringing the total area occupied by cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon to 214,000 square miles, an open space larger than France."
"The green group issued Slaughtering the Amazon, a report that linked some of the world's most prominent brands to illegal destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The fallout was immediate and substantial.
Days after the report was released, Brazil's biggest domestic beef buyers, supermarket chains Wal-Mart, Carrefour, and Pão de Açúcar, announced they would suspend contracts with suppliers found to be involved in Amazon deforestation.
Bertin, the world's second largest beef exporter, saw its $90 million loan from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation withdrawn..."
More at the link.
Last passage:
"To some, these issues may suggest that curbing beef consumption is the ultimate solution to deforestation in the Amazon as well as other environmental problems, but in the meantime it is clear that industry will play a critical part if the tide in the Amazon is to be turned.
'The whole Amazon will be torn down if we don't come up with a sensible and effective system," said Carter. "The time to act is now.' "
I think the whole world has to rethink the consumption of meat as it causes deforestation, hunger, poverty, desertification, water contamination, water scarcity, species extinction and the death of the indigenous people.
Join Organic:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/The picture you see is the sharp contrast between forest and pasture in Mato Grosso.... more
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Never in my lifetime did I think I would read the headlines I am reading now. I truly am saddened by this because it is just one event in a chain of events suggesting that the human race needs a wake up call.
excerpt:
Kenya has been losing 100 lions a year for the past seven years, leaving the country with just 2000 of its famous big cats, says the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) — which concludes the country could have no wild lions at all in 20 years. Conservationists have blamed habitat destruction, disease and conflict with humans for the population collapse.
But Laurence Frank, a wildlife biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks the KWS estimate is optimistic. "Lions are disappearing so fast from Kenya, as well as the rest of Africa, that I think they will disappear [from Kenya] in less than 10 years if action is not taken very quickly," says Frank, who runs several lion conservation projects in the country.
The IUCN suggests that large lion populations of 50 to 100 prides are necessary to conserve genetic diversity and avoid inbreeding.
Frank says that the decline of the big cats is due to the inexorable growth in human population and consequent conflict with people over livestock, rather than disease.Never in my lifetime did I think I would read the headlines I am reading now. I truly... more
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Environmental information message, music video and animation
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radfax
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5 months ago
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Governments are failing to stem a rapid decline in biodiversity that is now threatening extinction for almost half the world's coral reef species, a third of amphibians and a quarter of mammals, a leading environmental group warned Thursday.
"Life on Earth is under serious threat," the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a 155-page report that describes the past five years of a losing battle to protect species, natural habitats and geographical regions from the devastating effects of man.
IUCN, the producer of the world's Red List of endangered animals, analyzed over 44,000 species to test government pledges earlier this decade to halt a global loss in biodiversity by 2010.
That target will not be met, the Gland, Switzerland-based body said, describing the prospects of coral reefs as the most alarming. It also said slightly more amphibians, mammals and birds were in peril compared to five years ago, with species most prized by humans for food or medicine as disproportionately threatened.
"Biodiversity continues to decline and next year no one will dispute that," said Jean-Christophe Vie, the report's senior editor. "It's happening everywhere."
Vie told The Associated Press that biodiversity threats need to be highlighted and combatted, even at a time when many world leaders are preoccupied by economic recession and financial instability. Unlike markets and debts, animal extinction is an irreversible element of today's "wildlife crisis."
He urged governments to usher in major changes to society, such as reducing energy and overall consumption, redesigning cities and reassessing the environmental consequences of globalization - producing goods in one part of the world and sending them thousands of miles to be sold.
Vie said climate change only threatened to make the situation worse.Governments are failing to stem a rapid decline in biodiversity that is now... more
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Mark 16:15 John 1-5 Ephesians 1: 3-4 & 1: 9-10
(Valparaiso, Indiana) - Rev. Dr. George Cairns of Chesterton, Indiana delivers a Sunday homily about “the major evils of today – genocide and ecocide” entitled “Repent or the Time is Near” on May 31, 2009 at the Union Community Church in Valparaiso, Indiana.
In this two part homily video series, Rev. Cairns discusses the “Cosmic Christ” and a related story in “The Lutheran” magazine by Elaine Siemsen, the United Nations definition of genocide, the loss of language and other heritages in Indigenous peoples like the American Indian, Ecocide, the acclaimed ABC News Special “Earth 2100” and how many experts believes the Earth and its inhabitants are facing the “the Sixth Great Extinction” of the world.
Cairns talks about the results of the American Museum of Natural History national survey on Ecocide that “reveals a biodiversity crisis” and is entitled “Scientific Experts Believe we are in the Midst of Fastest Mass Extinction in Earth's History: Crisis Poses Major Threat to Human Survival; Public Unaware of Danger”
With the statute of limitations up, Rev. Cairns confesses his childhood antics to prevent a highway construction project from ruining the woods in which he played - now an interstate freeway has “vaporized” those woods that meant so much to him while growing up.
The other homilies on Celtic Christianity take a look at several topics including the European roots of the Celts (primarily Scotland and Ireland) and how Earth-based cultures can impact the future of civilization including actively protecting the environment, respecting fellow humans, different cultures and nature.
Cairns works closely with Rev. Gregory Jones on several social fronts.
Rev. Jones is the pastor of the Union Community Church and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theology at Valparaiso University.
Founded in 2007, The non-profit Turtle Island Project is known for its ongoing work with Native American issues and the other wing involves other Earth-based religions like the Celts. Dr. Cairns is the co-founder of the nonprofit Turtle Island Project.
Rev. Cairns continues to work closely with the foremost Celtic group in the world, the Iona Community in Scotland.
Celtic Christianity Today
www.celticchristianitytoday.org
youtube & bliptv:
http://celticchristianity.blip.tv
www.youtube.com/celticchristianity
Rev. George Cairns, Spirit Cafe blog, United Church of Christ
http://i.ucc.org/FeedYourSpirit/SpiritCafe/CafeBlog/tabid/83/Default.aspx
Iona Community
www.iona.org.uk
www.isle-of-iona.com
www.iona-nwf.org/links.htm
Union Community Church, Valparaiso, IN
http://unioncommunitychurchucc.blogspot.com
Rev. Gregory Jones, Theology Department Valparaiso University
www.valpo.edu/theology/faculty/gregoryjones.php
http://faculty.valpo.edu/gjones
The Lutheran Magazine: Who is the Cosmic Christ? By Elaine Siemsen
www.thelutheran.org/article/article_buy.cfm?article_id=2696
United Nations: genocide
www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm
www.hawaii-nation.org/genocide.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Native American Genocide:
www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/genocide.shtml
www.exiledmothers.com/babies_taken_for_adoption/native_american_babies.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death
www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/01/a-native-american-language-goe.html
Ecocide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocide
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1574160052/bookrags
American Museum of Natural History survey on Ecocide:
www.well.com/~davidu/amnh.html
www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html
www.well.com/
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/02/is-mass-species.html
ABC News Special “Earth 2100”
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100
Sixth Great Extinction:
http://rewilding.org/thesixthgreatextinction.htm
www.nerc.ac.uk/research/issues/biodiversity/sixth.asp
www.well.com/user/davidu/sixthextinction.htmlMark 16:15 John 1-5 Ephesians 1: 3-4 & 1: 9-10
(Valparaiso, Indiana) - Rev. Dr.... more
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(Valparaiso, Indiana) - Rev. Dr. George Cairns of Chesterton, Indiana delivers a Sunday homily about “the major evils of today – genocide and ecocide” entitled “Repent or the Time is Near” on May 31, 2009 at the Union Community Church in Valparaiso, Indiana.
In this two part homily video series, Rev. Cairns discusses the “Cosmic Christ” and a related story in “The Lutheran” magazine by Elaine Siemsen, the United Nations definition of genocide, the loss of language and other heritages in Indigenous peoples like the American Indian, Ecocide, the acclaimed ABC News Special “Earth 2100” and how many experts believes the Earth and its inhabitants are facing the “the Sixth Great Extinction” of the world.
Cairns talks about the results of the American Museum of Natural History national survey on Ecocide that “reveals a biodiversity crisis” and is entitled “Scientific Experts Believe we are in the Midst of Fastest Mass Extinction in Earth's History: Crisis Poses Major Threat to Human Survival; Public Unaware of Danger”
With the statute of limitations up, Rev. Cairns confesses his childhood antics to prevent a highway construction project from ruining the woods in which he played - now an interstate freeway has “vaporized” those woods that meant so much to him while growing up.
The other homilies on Celtic Christianity take a look at several topics including the European roots of the Celts (primarily Scotland and Ireland) and how Earth-based cultures can impact the future of civilization including actively protecting the environment, respecting fellow humans, different cultures and nature.
Cairns works closely with Rev. Gregory Jones on several social fronts.
Rev. Jones is the pastor of the Union Community Church and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theology at Valparaiso University.
Founded in 2007, The non-profit Turtle Island Project is known for its ongoing work with Native American issues and the other wing involves other Earth-based religions like the Celts. Dr. Cairns is the co-founder of the nonprofit Turtle Island Project.
Rev. Cairns continues to work closely with the foremost Celtic group in the world, the Iona Community in Scotland.
Celtic Christianity Today
http://www.celticchristianitytoday.org
youtube & bliptv:
http://celticchristianity.blip.tv
www.youtube.com/celticchristianity
Rev. George Cairns, Spirit Cafe blog, United Church of Christ
http://i.ucc.org/FeedYourSpirit/SpiritCafe/CafeBlog/tabid/83/Default.aspx
Iona Community, Scotland
www.iona.org.uk
www.isle-of-iona.com
www.iona-nwf.org/links.htm
Union Community Church, Valparaiso, IN
http://unioncommunitychurchucc.blogspot.com
Rev. Gregory Jones, Theology Department at Valparaiso University
www.valpo.edu/theology/faculty/gregoryjones.php
http://faculty.valpo.edu/gjones
The Lutheran Magazine: Who is the Cosmic Christ? By Elaine Siemsen
http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article_buy.cfm?article_id=2696
United Nations: genocide
www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm
www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm
www.hawaii-nation.org/genocide.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
Native American Genocide – then and now:
www.unitednativeamerica.com/aiholocaust.html
www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/genocide.shtml
www.exiledmothers.com/babies_taken_for_adoption/native_american_babies.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death
www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/01/a-native-american-language-goe.html
Ecocide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocide
American Museum of Natural History survey on Ecocide:
http://www.well.com/~davidu/amnh.html
http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html
http://www.well.com/
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/02/is-mass-species.html
ABC News Special “Earth 2100”
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100
The Sixth Great Extinction:
http://rewilding.org/thesixthgreatextinction.htm
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/issues/biodiversity/sixth.asp
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/sixthextinction.html(Valparaiso, Indiana) - Rev. Dr. George Cairns of Chesterton, Indiana delivers a... more
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The End of the Line, directed by Rupert Murray, on release from 8 June
"BEAUTIFUL" and "vast" are words that come to mind when thinking of the world's oceans. "Inexhaustible" is another, which might explain why we think it is fine to plunder them for our dinner plates.
The End of the Line is a powerful wake-up call for anyone who heads straight to the menu's fish section. It documents how overfishing is decimating the oceans, and makes alarming predictions about how fish stocks might look in 30 years' time.
Adapted from the book by Charles Clover, the film opens with stunning footage of our reefs and oceans. Unusual camera angles explore fishing nets from the inside out. The film follows Clover as he asks top restaurants why they still serve critically endangered species like bluefin tuna, and speaks to industry whistleblowers about how our love of fish is driving some species to the brink of extinction.
This is investigative journalism at its best. More importantly, it is an engaging film that provokes anger and sadness in equal measure. Anger at the greed of multinational companies who seem intent on catching as many tuna as they can before stocks run out, and at the politicians who do little to stop them by setting their fishing quotas well above what scientists recommend. Sadness, too, at the loss of species, and the wasted by-catch casually tossed back into the sea.
end of excerpt
more at this link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227112.600-the-end-of-the-line-plenty-of-fish-in-the-sea.htmlThe End of the Line, directed by Rupert Murray, on release from 8 June
"BEAUTIFUL"... more
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Chilean scientists are investigating three mysterious ecological disasters that have caused the deaths of hundreds of penguins, millions of sardines and about 2,000 baby flamingos in the past few months.
The events started to unfold in March, when the remains of about 1,200 penguins were found on a remote beach in southern Chile. Then came the sardines -- tons of them -- dead and washed up on a nearby stretch of coastline. The stench forced nearby schools to close, and the army was called in to shovel piles of rotting fish off the sand.
Farther north, thousands of rare Andean flamingos abandoned their nests on a salt lake in the Atacama Desert. The eggs failed to hatch and, over a period of three months, all 2,000 chicks died. The extent of the damage was discovered in April, during an inspection.
No one knows for sure what caused these three apparently unrelated ecological tragedies, although there are many theories. Global warming has been blamed, as have overfishing, pollution and bacterial disease. In the north, ecologists have accused mining companies of fatally altering the flamingos' habitat by draining the area of subterranean water.
Whatever the explanations, the events have caused unease. A suspicion that mankind is to blame has created the feeling that maybe Chile should be doing more to protect its spectacularly rich wildlife.
''Chile has very primitive legislation governing the management of its fisheries,'' said Alex Muñoz, executive director of Oceana, an international marine conservation group with offices in Santiago. ``Our marine resources are facing big problems such as overfishing, and the destruction of vulnerable marine ecosystems by industrial trawling.
``We are still waiting for an official report from the government, but we should consider the lack of sound management of fisheries if we want to work out what caused the death of the penguins and the sardines.''
Muñoz said the penguins might have starved to death due to depletion of fish stocks. While a preliminary report from a local university supports this theory, another suggests they were killed by a bacterial infection. It's unclear whether the deaths were related to those of the sardines just days later.
end of excerpt
We aren't only putting our own species in danger with our behavior, we are killing others.Chilean scientists are investigating three mysterious ecological disasters that have... more
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Good interview with a very dedicated woman who has tracked these penquins for over twenty years and sees the changes taking place.
Q. HOW DID THE PENGUIN PROJECT BEGIN?
A. In the early 1980s, a Japanese company went to the Argentine government and said, “We’d like a concession to harvest your penguins and turn them into oil, protein and gloves.” There was a public outcry. This was during a military dictatorship when dissidents were being thrown into the ocean from airplanes. And yet people said, “We object to having our penguins harvested.”
So the military regime did what any government facing a controversy might do — they said, “Let’s have a study.” Not long after that, the Wildlife Conservation Society entered into an agreement with the Argentine Office of Tourism and the Province of Chubut to set up a research project at Punta Tombo where there was the world’s largest colony of Magellanic penguins. Once that agreement was in place, it was the end of the concession idea.
I came to Punta Tombo in 1982 to determine how many penguins were actually there. I didn’t think I’d be doing a long-term study of them. But we didn’t know how long wild penguins lived. With time, we discovered that penguins are quite long-lived, 30 years, more. So I’ve ended up going to Argentina every year since 1982.
Q. WHAT DOES YOUR RESEARCH INVOLVE?
A. I’m a kind of census taker of the 200,000 breeding pairs of penguins at Punta Tombo. I track who is at home, who gets to mate, where the penguins go for the meals, their health, their behaviors.
On a typical day, I’ll get up before dawn. The penguins rise early, but they spend the morning calling to each other from their nests and socializing. Around 8 or 9, they head down to the beach. Once they’re out, we check the nests, see who’s stayed behind, weigh the babies, band them, and we put satellite tags on some birds so we can track them while they’re swimming.
I’m interested in where they go. Through the tagging we’ve been able to show that in the last decade, the birds are swimming about 25 miles further in search of food. They’re having trouble finding enough fish to eat. That costs a penguin energy and time while their mate is sitting on the egg, starving. So when they return to the nest to relieve their mate, they arrive in poorer body condition. And then, the mates also have to go farther to find food.
These penguins are now laying eggs on the average three days later in the season then they did a decade ago. That means that the chicks may leave for sea at more inopportune times, when fish may not be close to the colony. Many will not survive to come back and breed. The Punta Tombo colony has declined 22 percent since 1987. That’s a lot. This type of penguin is considered near-threatened. Of the 17 different penguin species, 12 are suffering rapid decreases in numbers.
Q. Why is this decline occurring among the Magellanic penguins?
A. Changes in the availability and abundance of prey. And we think that’s due to both climate change and exploitation of the penguins’ food sources by commercial fisheries.
There’s also oil pollution in the South Atlantic. There’s dumping from ships. For a while in the 1980s, 80 percent of the dead penguins found along the coast were covered in oil. In 1994, we were able to get the Chubut authorities to move the oil tanker lanes further from the coast. That’s helped.
But as the birds take these longer migrations in search of food, they sometimes find themselves outside of Chubut’s protected areas. Some of our tagged penguins have been located as far north as Brazil. When they’re in the waters of northern Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, where the laws against oil dumping are less enforced, they’re encountering problems.
more at the linkGood interview with a very dedicated woman who has tracked these penquins for over... more
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Marquette, MI - Northern Michigan teens are continuing their mission to protect pollinators during 2009 by helping butterflies & restoring native plants to areas of the Upper Peninsula.
The best know, pollinators are bees - like honey bees & bumble bees.
Billions of these bees are dying across the world in a syndrome called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Bees are disappearing & it’s not clear why - although human impact on the environment are among the suspected causes like pesticides & global warming. A world without bees would mean world without food, as was dramatically pointed out in the Jerry Seinfield 2007 comedy Bee movie. Bees go on strike causing plants across the world die. That means no food, no flowers, no trees, the death of civilization. After bees, the next best pollinators are butterflies.
Marquette, MI area teens & Native American youth spent the summer of 2008 building butterfly houses that are longer & slimmer than birdhouses & are lined with bark.
Teens participating in the KBIC Summer Youth Program built & painted the houses at the tribe’s Natural Resource Department along Lake Superior.
KBIC Natural Resource Department Director Todd Warner said the Zaagkii Project is a good way for youth to become aware of their connection to natural resources & nature.
The butterfly houses offer protection to butterflies that can enter thru tiny slits.
Butterfly houses also offer rest to migrating monarchs & can be used for reproduction.
Marquette teens have planted or distributed 26,000 native plant including at the Hiawatha National Forest greenhouse in Marquette.
In the spring of 2009 some of the plants will be planted at several areas across northern MI including at Sand Point, a beach that the KBIC has been repairing from the effects of copper mining. About 100 years ago, the mine dumped copper processing waste into Lake Superior polluting miles of shoreline. KBIC capped the pollution & the native plants will be used to attract wildlife & restore the ecosystem. The Zaagkii Project was founded by the non-profit Cedar Tree Institute in Marquette that has sponsored numerous environment projects. The Zaagkii Project is sponsored by the CTI, Marquette County Juvenile Court, KBIC & the United States Forest Service.
Future videos include a look at a bee farm in Marquette County that fascinated Zaagkii Project teens.
Contributors include: Marquette Community Foundation, Negaunee Community Fund, Negaunee Community Youth Fund, M.E. Davenport Foundation, Kaufman Foundation, Phyllis & Max Reynolds Foundation, Upper Peninsula Childrens Museum, Borealis Seed Company.
KBIC Ceo Chris Swartz Jr.
906-353-6623
KBIC Natural Resource Department (NRD)
Todd Warner, Director
Evelyn Ravindran, Natural Resources Specialist
906-524-5757
Kim Klopstein, KBIC Summer Youth Program
906-201-0020
USDA USFS Milwaukee
Jan Schultz, Botany & Non-native Invasive Species
414-297-1189
Beekeeper Jim Hayward
906-475-7582
Cedar Tree Institute Ex. Dir. Rev. Jon Magnuson
906-228-5494
http://www.cedartreeinstitute.org
Mqt Cnty Juvenile Court:
http://www.co.marquette.mi.us/probate.htm
Mqt/Neg community foundations
http://www.mqt-cf.org
U.P. Children's Museum
http://www.upcmkids.org
Bee Movie Jerry Seinfeld & DreamWorks Animation
http://www.beemovie.com:
http://monarchwatch.org
Monarch Author Lynn M. Rosenblatt
http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/Magic.htm
Austin, Texas Honeybee video: Johnnie Hargrave
Photos: Richard Burkmar; Paul Billiet & Shirley Burchill
Wikipedia photos: Tübingen-Hagelloch, Björn Appel, Warden, Debi Vort, Kristof Van der Poorten, John Severns, Waugsberg, Kenneth Dwain Harrelson, Derek Ramsey, John O'Neill
http://zaagkiiproject.wordpress.com
http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/519835.html?nav=5001
http://indiancountrynews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5028
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/28395844.htmlMarquette, MI - Northern Michigan teens are continuing their mission to protect... more
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After a decade of nothing being done to address this serious environmental problem, let's see what Lisa Jackson does under the Obama administration. She will have to coordinate her efforts with Tom Vilsack of the USDA, and that may prove to be a sticky situation if he has to put pressure on Monsanto and other agribusiness companies (factory farms) whose phosphate herbicides and fertilizers are contributing in great part to this problem. Monsanto knowingly poisoned an entire town in Alabama with PCBs. Now their chemicals along with other toxic runoff and fertilizers poison our waterways. It has to end.After a decade of nothing being done to address this serious environmental problem,... more
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And yet, world leaders sit on their hands at all of these meetings saying they can put off emission targets to the next year and then the next, or making up excuses for why we do not have real action to curb greenhouse gas emissions such as a financial downturn. This is not a political issue! This is a matter of the survival of the human species and the climate balance of this planet. When will they and all of the partisan political Al Gore haters, and all of these flatearthers GET IT! This is not about perpetuating some global slave system. We are already slaves. Conspiracy theorists need to get a grip about this and actually read what NASA and other scientific organizations are seeing WITH THEIR OWN EYES. And yes, some of that melted ice came back in the positive feedback loop, but winter ice which is the key to global warming/climate change is becoming less and less as well. THAT is your canary in the coal mine.
And this media including CURRENT needs to have a greater sense of urgency in reporting these findings. This is not a game or a joke or something we can continue to just talk about on a blog. Blogging is necessary, but we also need concerted action to DEMAND that politicians do the right thing, and the right thing is not 20-20-20 like the EU, or even Obama telling us he is going to invest 15 billion dollars a year in solar energy for the next ten years(way below that 700 billion dollar bailout he voted for BTW) and the standard 80% by 2050 emissions cut line. WE do not have that kind of time. All you need to do is do the math. We need to stop the cause AT ITS SOURCES: the smokestacks, the deforested rainforests, the cars, the meat industry, overpopulation, and human apathy and waste. And if the politicians of this world do not have the guts to do what must now be done, then the people need to do it. I personally am sick and tired of sitting here and watching this all unfold while political leaders drag their feet. Stop pussyfooting around and caring more for your bank accounts and poll numbers than this planet!And yet, world leaders sit on their hands at all of these meetings saying they can put... more
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A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada-s oil sands region threatens to kill as many as 166 million birds over the next five decades and is calling for a moratorium on new projects in the region.
The coalition-s groups, which include the Natural Resources Defence Council, the Boreal Songbirds Initiative and the Pembina Institute, say petroleum-extraction projects in the oil-rich region of northern Alberta are a threat to migratory birds and the boreal forest they rely on.
Their study concluded that development of the oil sands, would be fatal for 6 million to 166 million birds because of habitat loss, shrinking wetlands, accumulation of toxins and other causes.
The solution, the groups say, is to halt new projects in the oil sands and to clean up existing facilities. They are also calling for strengthened regulations to protect Canada-s vast boreal, or northern, forest and for Alberta, whose government has backed oil sands developments, to prove the resource can be exploited without serious environmental harm.
People need to take a hard look at whether this can be mitigated or if tar sands development is just incompatible with conservation of bird habitat said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defence Council.
The report estimates about half of North America-s migratory birds nest in the boreal forest and between 22 million and 170 million birds breed in areas that could be subject to oil sands development.
The oil sands contain the biggest oil reserves outside the Middle East but the crude is expensive and difficult to extract. Mining projects strip large areas of land to access the oil-laden soils below the surface.
While the report has not yet been made public, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which represents the country-s big oil firms, said the oil sands industry complies with environmental regulations and dismissed calls for a moratorium.
We need a balanced conversation, supported like a stool with three legs, environment, economy and energy, David Collyer, the association-s president, said in a statement. Calls for a moratorium that consider only one leg of the stool, in a vacuum, are not constructive.
Developments in the region have been criticized for pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, using too much water and being harmful to wildlife.
Indeed, the death of about 500 ducks earlier this year after they landed on a toxic tailings pond operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd, the biggest oil sands producer, brought international attention to the region.
The environmental groups' forecast is based on a big expansion of oil production from the region. The oil sands currently produce more than 1 million barrels a day, but the report is based on an eventual output of 5 million barrels a day, in line with industry forecasts of production in two decades or more.A coalition of North American environmental groups says the development of Canada-s... more
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Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long 16 years and said on Monday it may be possible to use the technique to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species.Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long 16 years and... more
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The Native Village website does stories on Native Village youth and education. Each month this unique website puts out an issue of news about Native youth.
http://www.nativevillage.org
In the November 2008 issue, Native Village takes an extensive look at the Zaagkii Wings & Seeds Project in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
The Zaagkii Project thanks and honors Native Village and its Editor Gina Boltz for the excellent story and all the work and effort that went into creating the impressive layout.
To contact Native Village staff or for more info, please email:
NativeVillage500@aol.com
Native Village is a supporter of the Link Center Foundation:
http://www.linkcenterfoundation.org
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This summer, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) youth and Marquette, MI teens built the first of dozens of butterfly houses and planted 26,000 native plants that help pollinators thrive.
The three-year project is important because bees are disappearing around the world at a shocking rate.
It's called Colony Collapse Disorder and the cause is unknown although human impact is suspected.
If all the world's bees disappear - all plant and human life will vanish in about 4 years.
The second biggest pollinator are butterflies - and that's why the Zaagkii Project is protecting butterflies and teaching youth about bees.
The Zaagkii Project contributors include the Marquette Community Foundation, the Negaunee Community Fund, the Negaunee Community Youth Fund, the M.E. Davenport Foundation, the Kaufman Foundation, the Phyllis and Max Reynolds Foundation, with assistance from the Upper Peninsula Children's Museum in Marquette and the Borealis Seed Company in Big Bay.
The Zaagkii Project was founded by the non-profit Cedar Tree Institute (CTI) in Marquette whose other environment projects have included wild rice restoration (Manoomin Project) and Earth Day hazardous waste collections (Earth Keeper Clean Sweep).
The Zaagkii Project is sponsored by the KBIC, CTI, Marquette County Juvenile Court and the United States Forest Service (USFS).
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Keweenaw Bay Indian Community:
http://www.kbic-nsn.gov
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Rev. Jon Magnuson, Zaagkii Wings and Seeds founder & Executive Director of non-profit Cedar Tree Institute
906-228-5494
http://www.cedartreeinstitute.org
CTI volunteer media advisor Greg Peterson:
906-401-0109
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Jan Schultz, Botany & Non-native Invasive Species Program Leader
USFS Milwaukee, WI
(414) 297-1189
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Terry Miller, forest botanist
Hiawatha National Forest
Escanaba, MI.
906-789-3319
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Deb LeBlanc, WestSide Plant Ecologist
Hiawatha National Forest
Munising, MI
906-387-2512 ext. 19
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Marquette County Juvenile Court:
http://www.co.marquette.mi.us/probate.htm
http://www.co.marquette.mi.us/courts.htm
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Upper Peninsula Children's Museum
http://www.upcmkids.org/
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Monarch Watch::
http://monarchwatch.org
Monarch Author Lynn M. Rosenblatt
http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/Magic.htmThe Native Village website does stories on Native Village youth and education. Each... more
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