Monday, November 9, 2009

Twenty-Six Ounces of Oil (And the Flesh from Several Cows)

Michael Pollan wonders if the fast food burger is part of a sustainable system

On October 15, Michael Pollan, the award-winning author of Omnivore's Dilemma, spoke at a panel discussion at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

He brought a hamburger from McDonald's with him to help articulate the idea of sustainability.

Specifically, it was a double quarter-pounder with cheese.

"So sustainability is really -- it's an ideal, said Pollan. "There are sustainable systems. A forest. A prairie. I mean, these are sustainable systems; they can go on year after year. They don't need inputs. They don't destroy the conditions on which they depend. But as soon as we get involved and start changing things to feed ourselves, we get into more complicated relationships."

"Now the question is, 'is the system we have sustainable today?'"

"It takes a lot of oil to make a modern fast food hamburger," he said. "An astonishing amount of oil. And I did a little research to find out just how much went into this. The oil comes in in several different stages. There is the biggest part, probably: the petroleum needed to create the fertilizer to grow the corn, which is the diet, typically, of these animals. But there's also the moving of that corn, the moving of the burger, the processing, you know, and getting it to a McDonald's near you.

"So oil. Twenty-six (ounces). That's a lot of oil to make the burger! And you have to ask yourself: Is the system that produces that burger sustainable?"

GET INVOLVED

  • Read the transcript of the panel discussion
  • Find out how green your diet is with the Eating Green Calculator
  • Sign the MakeOurFoodSafe.org petition urging the US Congress to pass strong food safety legislation (US citizens only)
  • Download the Environmental Defense Fund's "Pocket Eco-Friendly Fish Selector" to make choices that help prevent overfishing
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
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image: CookieM

Friday, November 6, 2009

The Lost Siblings of the Sun

Many scientists now believe that the Sun is not an only child

Our Sun is a lonely star.

The next nearest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light-years away, or 25 quadrillion miles. It would take our fastest space probes over 200,000 years to reach it.

But about one in ten stars are born as a part of a clusters of hundreds to tens of thousands of stars.

And there is growing evidence that our Sun was born as a part of such a cluster, one of about 1,000 other stars, according to a recent Scientific American article by Simon F. Portegies Zwart.

"Had we been around at the dawn of the solar system, space would not have seemed nearly so empty," writes Zwart. "The night sky would have been filled with bright stars, several at least as bright as the full moon. Some would have been visible even by day. Looking up would have hurt our eyes."

So where are the Sun's siblings?

"Although they have scattered and mixed in with millions of unrelated stars, they should be identifiable with the European Space Agency’s Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics (GAIA) satellite, scheduled for launch in 2011," writes Zwart. "Their orbits and sunlike compositions should give them away."

"Reuniting with our long-lost stellar siblings should enable astronomers to reconstruct the conditions under which a shapeless cloud of gas and dust gave rise to our solar system."

GET INVOLVED

  • Support the WCN Solar Project in their effort to provide solar electricity to conservationists in the field
  • View the World Sunlight Map to see where the Sun in shining on the Earth right now
  • Find out how to use solar power at home
  • Participate in the International Year of Astronomy 2009
  • Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
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image: Ron Miller

Thursday, November 5, 2009

We Didn't Start the Fire

Trees encourage wildfires to protect their habitat

Conventional wisdom says fire is bad for trees. But according to a new study published in the December 2009 issue of the journal The American Naturalist, that is not always the case.

Some trees actually play a part in starting wildfires in order to engineer their own environment, increasing their abundance while keeping competitors out of their ecosystems.

"The research proposes a scenario for the development of savannas in landscapes that would otherwise become closed forests," according to a press release issued by the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis.

"Examples of savanna trees that facilitate frequent low-intensity fires include the longleaf pine and the south Florida slash pine, both of which frequently shed their needles, providing fodder for wildfires. The savanna tree initially invades grassland, but by facilitating frequent fires, it limits its own density and thus prevents conversion to a forest."

GET INVOLVED

  • Support Trees for the Future, a non-profit organization that has been helping communities around the world plant trees
  • Download the Greenpeace Tissue Guide so you can purchase tissue and toilet paper that is manufactured from recycled paper -- not old growth forests
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image: Longleaf pine needles from a 30m specimen near Tallahassee, Florida (credit: Rasbak)

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Putting for Birdie

A new report offers golf course managers an opportunity to help birds

The United Kingdom's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has asked the nation's golf courses to reduce their use of chemicals and fertilizers in unkempt playing areas to provide safe habitats for birds.

According to a recent Telegraph UK story, "There are more than 140,000 hectares of rough and out-of-bounds areas on golf courses across Britain, the same area covered by all the RSPB's nature reserves, which could be managed for wildlife."

"The truth is that every golf course has potential to be a sanctuary for wildlife, and to provide an important stepping stone for birds and other animals whose habitat is under threat," said Nigel Symes of the RSPB, who co-wrote "Birds and Golf Courses: A Guide to Habitat Management."

"We would now like more golf clubs to look at what they can do for skylarks, woodlarks, corn buntings and all kinds of birds," Symes said. "Planting native plants like heather and creating reed beds and hay meadows as well as reducing pesticide and fertiliser use can all make a big difference."

It's a win-win situation that gives new meaning to the phrase, "putting for birdie."

GET INVOLVED

  • Support the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
  • Support BirdLife International in their efforts to prevent bird extinctions
  • Join the Great Backyard Bird Count, a 4-day "citizen-science" project taking place across the United States starting on February 12, 2010
  • Check out these 15 ways to attract birds -- and birdsongs -- into your backyard
  • Read "What You Can Do to Help Birds" (StateOfTheBirds.org)
  • 25 Things You Can Do to Help the Birds in Your Backyard
  • Sign an Audubon petition urging Congress to take action on global warming based on their recent Birds and Climate report which clearly shows that climate change is affecting birds
RELATED POSTS
image: The R&A, St. Andrews

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

She's Got A (One-Way) Ticket to Ride

Fifty-two years ago today, a dog was shot into Earth's orbit

Her name was Laika. She was a three-year-old stray found on wandering the streets of Moscow. On November 3, 1957, she became the first animal to orbit the Earth. Hours later, she became the first animal to die in Earth's orbit.

Part of the Soviet Union's space program, Laika was on board the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, a vehicle that was not designed to be retrievable.

Laika was never meant to come back. Her death was a known part of the mission, which was seen as a necessary precursor to human space flight, as it was not known at the time if humans could survive the effects of such journeys.

It is assumed that Laika died soon after launch from stress and overheating. This animal experiment proved that a living passenger could survive the weightlessness of space.

Though the animal rights aspect of the story was overshadowed by the headline news of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, there were protests. Activists gathered at the United Nations in New York. The National Canine Defence League in the United Kingdom called on all dog owners to observe a minute's silence. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) received protests before the Soviet Union announced the mission's "success."

Like many dogs before and after her, Laika led the way for man to follow. But she had no choice in the matter. Hopefully, if another non-human animal is forced to go into space, he or she will have a return ticket.

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign the Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare
  • Sign the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights
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image: Laika in her space flight harness (Wikipedia)

Monday, November 2, 2009

Was It A Happy Birthday, Vila?

The San Diego Zoo celebrates the birthday of one of the world's oldest known gorillas

October 28, 1957.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the president of the United States. The Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 had just become the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. David Lean's film The Bridge on the River Kwai was playing in theaters. And Vila, a Western Lowland gorilla, was born.

One of the three oldest known gorillas living today, Vila celebrated her 52nd birthday at the San Diego Zoo, where she is known as the "Grand Dame" of the gorilla troop at the zoo's Wild Animal Park. Her only daughter, Alvila, also resides at the park, as do several of her grandchildren, her great-grandson Frank and two great-great-grandchildren, Jamini and Ajari.

"Although she is 'up there' in age, Vila is in excellent health, has a good appetite and normal behavior," writes senior keeper Peggy Sexton on the zoo's blog.

"She does have some age-related issues, so she does get senior vitamins and medicine for arthritis, which works well: she has no trouble getting around. Living in Southern California helps as well, as the temperate climate is very easy on an aging gorilla, and even though she is missing a few teeth, corn on the cob is one of her favorite foods and she never misses a kernel."

Vila may be loved by her keepers and the public, but there is no way that a zoo can replicate life in the wild.

"Wild animals [belong] in the wild, not imprisoned in zoos," said actress Virginia McKenna after starring in the 1996 film Born Free, about a real-life couple who raised Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lion cub to adulthood, and released her into the wilds of Kenya.

"Freedom is a precious concept, and wild animals suffer physically and mentally from the lack of freedom captivity imposes," McKenna said. In 2003, she received an Order of the British Empire in 2003 for her work in behalf of captive animals.

Vila will not be as lucky as Elsa was. Vila will die a prisoner of the San Diego Zoo. No amount of birthday gifts will change that fact. And what will become of her large and growing troop? Will they also spend their entire lives in captivity?

In the wild, Western Lowland gorillas inhabit the forests of Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. There are between 150,000 to 200,000 estimated to be living in these areas.

But although life in the wild in rough -- the gorillas are under constant threat from Ebola, deforestation and poaching -- zoos are not the answer. The solution lies in a combination of concentrated effort towards stopping Ebola, deforestation and poaching.

Sexton writes, "We fully expect Vila to add years and years to the longevity record." But the question should not be, "How many more birthdays will Vila have?" It should be, "How many of Vila's birthdays have actually been happy?"

GET INVOLVED

  • Support the Born Free Foundation
  • Sign the Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare
  • Learn more about zoos and what you can do to help animals in captivity
  • Donate to Conservation International to help their fight to stop the slaughter of mountain gorillas
  • Sign a petition to stop the bushmeat trade and hunting of primates
  • Sign a Born Free Foundation petition urging Argentina's Lujan Zoo to stop allowing visitors to enter animal enclosures
RELATED POSTS
image: Xinhuanet

Friday, October 30, 2009

A Message from the Universe's More Youthful Days

The most distant object ever seen offers some clues about the early universe

Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest known electromagnetic events in the universe.

A typical burst will release as much energy in a few seconds as our Sun will release in its entire lifetime (estimated to be around 10 billion years).

In April, NASA issued a press release about the detection of a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old, or about 5 percent of its current age (the universe is currently 13.7 billion years old).

The burst is the most distant -- and thus, oldest -- cosmic event ever seen.

The remarkable event was dubbed -- in NASA's rather un-catchy lexicon -- GRB 090423.

"The burst most likely arose from the explosion of a massive star," said Derek Fox at Pennsylvania State University. "We're seeing the demise of a star -- and probably the birth of a black hole -- in one of the universe's earliest stellar generations."

Now, the October 29 issue of Nature presents analyses of this Ur-explosion and its afterglow, offering some clues as to what it must have been like in the early days of our universe.

"These are spectacular discoveries, and open up unprecedented new windows on the early Universe," said Edison Liang, an astrophysicist at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Nial Tanvir of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, one of the lead scientists working on characterizing the ancient burst, said, "We're now starting to approach the time when we think the very first galaxies turned on."

"It's one thing to explore such remote recesses of time in theory. It's something else again to witness their afterglow," according to a New York Times op-ed.

"GRB 090423 is an invitation for all of us to unfetter our imaginations. We imagine looking outward from that distant point knowing that our own exploration still lies some 13 billion years in the future."

GET INVOLVED

  • Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
  • Participate in the International Year of Astronomy 2009
  • Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
  • See what's in the sky tonight
  • Buy a telescope from the Discovery Channel store
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image: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler

Thursday, October 29, 2009

A Bacteria for All

A sinister new effect of globalization and industrialization has arrived -- and it's microscopic

Humans first domesticated animals about 10,000 years ago.

Since then, there has never been a strain of bacteria that has jumped from human to another animal and spread, until recently.

Scientists from the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh have found that a strain of bacteria known as Staphylococcus aureus has moved from humans to chickens, according to an October 26 press release issued by the institute, an international center for research on molecular and quantitative genetics of farm animals.

It is believed to be the first evidence of a bacterial pathogen crossing from Homo sapien to another species and then spreading.

Genetic testing revealed that the crossover event occurred about 40 years ago, which coincided with the rise of industrial poultry farming.

The strain found in humans was isolated to one area. However, the chicken strain was found to be global in scope.

"Half a century ago chickens were reared for their eggs, with meat regarded as a by-product," said Dr. Ross Fitzgerald of the Roslin Institute. "Now the demand for meat has led to a poultry industry dominated by a few multinational companies which supply a limited number of breeding lines to a global market -- thereby promoting the spread of the bacteria around the world."

GET INVOLVED

  • Take the GoVeg.com "Pledge to Be Veg" for 30 days
  • Sign a PETA petition urging McDonald's to stop supporting chicken suppliers that use cruel and inhumane methods
  • Sign the MakeOurFoodSafe.org petition urging the US Congress to pass strong food safety legislation (US citizens only)
  • Sign a petition to boycott Kentucky Fried Chicken for animal torture until they adopt a comprehensive animal welfare plan
  • Find out how green your diet is with the Eating Green Calculator
RELATED POSTS
image: Staphylococcus aureus. (Credit: Agricultural Research Service / United States Department of Agriculture)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

We're Not the Only Ones Capable of Suffering

There is no reason that the United Nations should not adopt the Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare

There is only one animal on Earth that has been granted "universal" rights: Homo sapien.

On December 10, 1948, we granted ourselves those rights when the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Unfortunately -- and to some, shockingly -- there is no similar international protection afforded to the other animals with which we share the planet.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) is trying to change that.

They have started a petition urging the U.N. General Assembly adopt international policies on animal welfare with their Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare (UDAW) campaign.

"Animal welfare is not some unaffordable luxury. It's an essential part of solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing us today,” said Mike Baker, WSPA’s director general.

The draft UDAW states that "animals are living, sentient beings and therefore deserve due
consideration and respect" and that member nations would agree that "all appropriate steps shall be taken...to prevent cruelty to animals and to reduce their suffering."

According to the WSPA's Web site:

  • Around 60 billion farm animals are used each year globally to produce meat, milk and eggs. The majority are raised in industrial farming systems where their welfare needs are not met.
  • Globally, there are some 600 million dogs, and a similar number of cats, of which an estimated 80% are stray or unwanted.
  • The illegal and often inhumane trade in wildlife and wildlife parts is a soaring black market worth $10 billion a year, exceeded only by arms and drug smuggling. Millions of wild animals are killed, captured or traded inhumanely in this shady business.
  • An estimated 80% of power input on farms in developing countries is supplied by draught animals, however the resources made available are often woefully inadequate, leading to significant welfare issues.
  • Animals are also affected on a huge scale by natural disasters, though seldom considered.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a direct result of the horrors that were experienced during World War II.

How many more horrors must billions of other animals endure day after day before they receive a similar statement?

GET INVOLVED
  • Sign the Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare
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image: Drew Leavy

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Happy Birthday TR, and Thanks

Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, was born today in 1858

When American president William McKinley was assassinated on September 14, 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became, at 42, the youngest person to have assumed the office of the president, a position he held until March 4, 1909.

During that 2,729-day period, "TR" (as he liked to sign his letters) gave official and enduring protection to over 234 million acres of American wilderness.

"It is hard to believe today that there was a time when securing Pelican Island, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon were controversial decisions denounced as a federal land grab inimical to states’ rights and economic growth," writes Jonathan Rosen in a New York Times review of Douglas Brinkley's recent Roosevelt biography, "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America."

"Of course every generation has its own idea of progress, beauty and necessity," writes Rosen. "What made Theodore Roosevelt a conservationist hero was his conviction that pelicans, 2,000-year-old redwood trees and ancient rock formations belonged to future generations of Americans as well as to the past. Weighed against eternity, what were the arguments of mining magnates, plume hunters, local businesses and assorted congressmen?"

As America remembers the birth of this conservationist hero, a very relevant bill sits on the docket on Capitol Hill -- America’s Wildlife Heritage Act, federal legislation that will help to protect public lands and the wildlife that lives there.

"The America's Wildlife Heritage Act is a commonsense bill that will bring the management of our federal public lands into the 21st century," said Michael Francis, the national forest program director of the non-profit conservation organization The Wilderness Society.

"For too long, our national forests and public lands have been managed without adequately considering the health of the fish, wildlife and plants found on those lands or the people whose livelihoods and traditions depend on them," he said.

Together, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administer 449 million acres of land. "Unfortunately," according to a statement by the non-profit group Defenders of Wildlife, "a growing population and associated development, energy exploration and production on public lands, as well as a changing climate all combine to threaten our fish and wildlife populations and the abundant natural treasures to be found on America’s public lands."

On August 31, 1910, at the dedication ceremony of the John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, Kansas, and surrounded by a throng of 30,000 rapt listeners, Roosevelt gave an impassioned speech later known as the New Nationalism Speech, in which he outlined his conservationist philosophy about the preservation of the nation's wild lands:

"Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part."

As Congress ponders America’s Wildlife Heritage Act, they would do well to remember President Roosevelt's foresight, his commitment to future generations and how at one time, even the Grand Canyon was up for grabs.

GET INVOLVED
  • Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging your U.S. representative to cosponsor the America’s Wildlife Heritage Act, federal legislation that provides for a balanced, common-sense approach to wildlife management on our U.S. national forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands (U.S. citizens)
  • Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging Congress to permanently protect the Arctic refuge (U.S. citizens)
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
RELATED POSTS
image: Theodore Roosevelt at Osawatomie, August 31, 1910

Monday, October 26, 2009

Taming the Mighty Colorado River

Seventy-three years ago today, the first electric generator at Hoover Dam went into full operation

"This morning I came, I saw, and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind," said American President Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 30, 1935, upon visiting the Hoover Dam.

"Ten years ago the place where we gathered was an unpeopled, forbidding desert. In the bottom of the gloomy canyon whose precipitous walls rose to height of more than a thousand feet, flowed a turbulent, dangerous river...The site of Boulder City was a cactus-covered waste. And the transformation wrought here in these years is a twentieth century marvel."

President Roosevelt went on to remark that the dam -- located in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada -- held enough water "to cover the whole State of Connecticut to a depth of ten feet."

When massive arch-gravity dam was was completed in 1936, it was the world's largest electric-power station as well as the world's largest concrete structure. Currently, it ranks as the world's 35th largest hydroelectric generating station.

Hydroelectric plants produce significantly lower amounts of carbon dioxide emissions than their fossil fuel counterparts.

Hydroelectric power supplies the world with about 20% of the world's electricity and represents almost 90% of electricity from renewable sources.

The Hoover Dam is a mighty feat of human engineering and a very smart way to harness nature's power. But though the dam is sight to behold, the majesty of its environs is not something one would easily miss.

The American geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell (famed for his Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869, a three-month river journey down the Green and Colorado Rivers that included the first passage through the Grand Canyon), once remarked on the area that would become the future home of the Hoover Dam: "The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock -- cliffs of rock, tables of rock, plateaus of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock--ten thousand strangely carved forms...cathedral shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast hollow domes and tall pinnacles and shafts set on the verge overhead; and all highly colored."

GET INVOLVED

  • Take an eco-tour of the Hoover Dam
  • Join the Greenpeace "Energy [R]evolution"
  • Sign the EnergyPetition.com petition in support of a "citizen-based effort to encourage a U.S. government alternative energy program"
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
RELATED POSTS
image: Hoover Dam by Ansel Adams, 1942

Friday, October 23, 2009

Time For Your (Wild) Close-up

The results for this year's best wildlife photographs are in

Jose Luiz Rodriguez had planned the photograph for years.

"I wanted to capture a photo in which you would see a wolf in an act of hunting - or predation - but without blood," he told BBC News. "I didn't want a cruel image."

Rodriguez captured his shot, and it won the prestigious Veolia Environment Wildlife Photograph of the Year Award, beating out 43,000 entries.

The competition, now in its 45th year, is run by BBC Wildlife Magazine and the Natural History Museum, London.

An exhibition of the best images from this year's competition opens today at the Natural History Museum.

GET INVOLVED

  • See the image galleries for this year's Veolia Environment Wildlife Photograph of Year
  • Sign a Care2 petition urging Alaska to end the wolf killing
  • Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging your representative to co-sponsor the PAW Act to help stop the Alaska wolf massacre (U.S. citizens)
RELATED POSTS
TELEVISION ALERT

Watch Cloud: Challenge of the Stallions, the newest installment of Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Ginger Kathren's documentary series about America's wild horses, airing on PBS Nature on Sunday, October 25 at 8 p.m. Click here for a sneak preview.

image: Jose Luiz Rodriguez

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Low Country

The Maldives cabinet dives deep to highlight climate change

Spanning about 35,000 square miles (90,000 square kilometers) in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives is a nation comprised of 1,192 islets.

On average, these islands rise a mere 7 feet (2.1 meters) above sea level, making the Maldives the lowest country on the planet.

Considering some predictions about the rise in sea level due to the melting ice caps, the country could be underwater if the effects of climate change are not mitigated.

President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet made that sentiment when they recently met underwater to call attention to his country's situation.

"We're now actually trying to send our message, let the world know what is happening, and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change is not checked," President Nasheed said, according to a recent BBC News story.

When asked what would happen if the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen would fail, he replied, "We are going to die."

GET INVOLVED

  • Watch the BBC News video of President Nasheed's underwater cabinet meeting
  • Subscribe to the United Nations Climate Change Conference newsletter
  • Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
  • Join the Greenpeace "Energy [R]evolution"
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
RELATED POSTS
image: BBC News

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Bullfighting vs. Rodeos

Exporting a more American brand of animal cruelty

"In the municipal bullring in Guadalajara, a small city near Madrid, a bilingual emcee tries to fire up the crowd as 'Miss Rodeos' waving the Stars and Stripes ride out on Harley-Davidsons," writes Jerome Socolovsky in "From Bullfighting to Rodeos: Culture Shock in Spain," a recent story on NPR.com.

"The cowboys rope, steer and ride broncos, as the high-decibel sound system shakes the arena's foundations."

As animal rights activists in Spain have been working to put an end the country's cruel bullfighting industry (Copperwiki.org estimates that more than 30,000 thousand bulls are killed annually), American entrepreneurs have descended in an effort to give Spaniards a more humane alternative -- rodeos.

"All it takes is one visit to the SHARK Web site, including the Rodeo Cruelty section, where you can find far more reports and videos from rodeo investigations than you ever want to see, to know instantly that there is nothing humane, nothing honorable, about rodeos," writes Stephanie Ernst in a story on Change.org.

"Animals are shocked, taunted, and tortured with pain -- and that's even before they're released to be chased down, jerked and yanked around, broken (in the literal sense), and tied up or "dominated" for the crowd. The animals don't run and thrash because they're wild or because they too are engaging in some sort of competition. They run and thrash because they are terrified, because they are trying to escape pain, because their abusers are chasing after them to cause them even more pain, while lights flash and sound systems blare and people scream and laugh all around them."

As they don't involve the actual killing of an animal, rodeos may be construed as more humane than bullfights. But to really answer that question properly, fans of these so-called "sports" should ask themselves, "Would I rather be tortured day in and day out, or be tortured and then killed?"

For Conchita Ruza, who was interviewed by Socolovsky, rodeos just don't have what it takes.

"I'll stick to the bullfights. They're a lot nicer. First of all, you don't have all this racket. Secondly, the bull is a beautiful animal. And lastly," she says, "I'm Spanish."

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign the World Society for Protection of Animals petition to ban bullfighting
  • Sign the RodeoCruelty.org petition to ban rodeos
  • Sign a Care2 petition urging the Cheyenne Frontier Day to ban steer busting, the most cruel rodeo event
RELATED POSTS
image: (left: WSPA, right: Change.org)

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Of People, Pachyderms and Peppers

A brokered peace between the villagers and elephants in Cambodia

Elephants rarely attack humans and livestock. But when human development destroys elephant habitat, the likelihood of attacks increases.

In Cambodia, elephant population numbers are looking much better after suffering losses through many years of war and deforestation.

In an attempt to maintain a healthy population on both sides of the equation, the conservation group Flora and Fauna International has stepped in with a multi-pronged plan that hopes to keep the peace, according to a recent BBC News story.

The organization has funded programs to help villagers start businesses that do not require deforestation -- such as chicken farming.

The conservationists are also helping to keep the elephants away from crops by planting rows of chillies around farms.

Apparently, elephants don't like spicy heat -- at least not in their food.


GET INVOLVED
  • Support Flora and Fauna International
  • Send a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is accepting public comments on the living conditions of captive elephants in the United States (U.S. citizens)
  • Adopt an elephant from the World Wildlife Fund for $25
  • Sign a PETA letter urging U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to immediately seize the elephants in the Ringling Red Unit (U.S. citizens)
RELATED POSTS
image: Barbara Piuma

Monday, October 19, 2009

Numbers Don't Lie

Counting down -- and up -- to the end, whenever that may be

In 1983, British author and futurist Peter Russell published a book entitled The Global Brain, coining a term with the title that Wikipedia defines as "a metaphor for the worldwide intelligent network formed by people together with the information and communication technologies that connect them into an 'organic' whole."

One easy way of seeing the impacts of this "global brain" is Russell's "World Clock," which tells much more than the time.

It counts the increases in the various stressors on the planet, such as human births, species going extinct, hectares of forests cut down, barrels of oil pumped and military expenditure.

It also counts human deaths and their various causes, such cardiovascular disease, AIDS, cancer, diabetes, suicide, war and violence.

Thanks to Russell's clock, we are able to know that the following happened in the past ten minutes:

  • 2,458 babies were born
  • 238 hectares of forests were cut down
  • 110 hectares of land has turned into desert
  • 555,041 barrels of oil were pumped
  • 503,833 tons of CO2 were emitted
  • $22,058,749 was spent on the military
"The real crisis we are facing is not an environmental crisis, a population crisis, economic crisis, a social crisis, or a political crisis," says Russell on his Web site.

"It is, at its root, a crisis of consciousness. A crisis is an indication that the old mode of operating is no longer working, and a new approach is required. This is true of a personal crisis, a family crisis or a political crisis. In the case of the environmental the old way that is no longer working is our self-centred materialistic consciousness. It may have worked well in the past, when we needed to provide ourselves with the basic commodities necessary for our individual well-being -- but it clearly no longer works today."

No species went extinct during our 10-minute observation of the World Clock. For that, you'd have to wait at least 12 minutes.

GET INVOLVED
  • Monitor the growing devastation with Peter Russell's World Clock
  • Feel some optimism with Peter Russell's book The Global Brain
  • Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
  • Support the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Countdown 2010 to save the world's biodiversity
  • Join the Greenpeace "Energy [R]evolution"
  • Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
  • Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
  • Take these seven steps to help save the Amazon rainforest
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image: Peter Russell's World Clock

Friday, October 16, 2009

The World of the Small

The winners for the 35th Annual Nikon Small World Competition are in

Since 1974, Nikon has been given annual awards to the best photomicrographs -- that is, photographs of things taken through a microscope.

From flower stems to fish ovaries, from cotton fibers to magmatic rock, the winning images of the 35th Annual Nikon Small World Competition give just a "tiny" indication of the vastness of the microscopic world.

GET INVOLVED

  • Enter next year's competition
  • Get a digital microscope camera
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image: This photo by Dennis Breitsprecher of fluorescent actin (protein) bundles growing from the surface of coated beads won first place in the popular vote contest

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Bye Bye Biodiversity

An international commitment to stop biodivesity loss will not be met

In April 2002, over a hundred world ministers made a commitment at the 6th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity at the Hague to "achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the local, national and regional levels, as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth."

Well, that's not going happen.

"We will certainly miss the target for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 and therefore also miss the 2015 environmental targets within the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to improve health and livelihoods for the world's poorest and most vulnerable people," says Georgina Mace of Imperial College, London, and Vice-Chair of Diversitas, according to a press release issued by the the international biodiversity science program.

This week, Diversitas is convening a landmark biodiversity conference in Cape Town.

"It is hard to image a more important priority than protecting the ecosystem services underpinned by biodiversity," says Prof. Mace. "Biodiversity is fundamental to humans having food, fuel, clean water and a habitable climate."

"Yet changes to ecosystems and losses of biodiversity have continued to accelerate. Since 1992, even the most conservative estimates agree that an area of tropical rainforest greater than the size of California has been converted mostly for food and fuel. Species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and are expected to continue to increase."

The United States has spent a good deal of money trying to protect endangered wildlife -- in 2007, that sum was over $1.5 billion, according to John Platt in a Scientific American article. The Chinook salmon alone received $165 million towards its conservation.

But, as Platt points out, "This is all just a drop in the bucket of the total funds required to protect endangered species."

Professor Mace believes however that "the situation is not hopeless. There are many steps available that would help but we cannot dawdle. Meaningful action should have started years ago. The next best time is now."

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image: Chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (credit: Zureks)

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The World's First Shark Sanctuary

They've been around for 400 million years. Now, they have a place in the wild where they won't be hunted down

Palau was recently in the news for deciding in June to accept all 17 of the remaining Uyghurs that were held at Guantanamo Bay.

And now, it is also providing sanctuary for another species that is also unfairly judged to be dangerous: sharks.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly last month, President Johnson Toribiong said that his tiny Pacific island nation will create the world's first shark sanctuary.

The country will protect an area of 230,00 square miles (600,000 square kilometers) -- almost the size of France.

President Toribiong also called for an end to the brutal practice of shark-finning, in which the fins are brutally cut off live sharks, their bodies then dumped back into the ocean, where they sink to bottom, unable to swim. They die, often being eaten alive by other predators. The fins are used to supply the global demand for shark fin soup.

He also called for an end to bottom trawling, a destructive form of commercial fishing in which huge nets dredge up the ocean floor, catching a lot more than just the intended fish and causing extreme damage to marine ecosystems.

Scientists estimate that half of the world's sharks face extinction. About 100 million sharks are slaughtered each year.

"Economics is clearly an incentive for the Palau government, which derives most of its income from tourism," writes Richard Black in a BBC News story. "Sharks are themselves a big attraction for scuba-divers, and may also play a role in keeping coral reef ecosystems healthy."

Thankfully for sharks, Palau has figured out what so many other nations have not: Wildlife is more valuable alive than dead.

GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a Shark Angels Alliance petition urging the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board to work on a plan to abolish the nets and work on a zero-kill plan
  • Sign the Coral Reef Care petition supporting an EU Plan of Action for the protection of sharks
  • Sign a petition against bottom trawling
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image: Great white shark. Photo by Terry Goss, copyright 2006. Taken at Isla Guadalupe, Mexico, August 2006. Shot with Nikon D70s in Ikelite housing, in natural light. Animal estimated at 11-12 feet (3.3 to 3.6 m) in length, age unknown.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Of Whales and Shrimp

The demand for a tiny crustacean is harming the biggest animal of all

An island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, Madagascar got its name from the Venetian explorer Marco Polo, who wrote of an island of riches called "Madeigascar" in his memoirs.

Its isolation has played a role in some of those riches, namely a unique array of biodiversity. Indeed, ninety percent of the nation's 10,000 plant species are found nowhere else.

Humpback whales like the area as well. Each year, about 7,000 of them migrate to Antongil Bay in northeastern Madagascar to breed and calve.

But at the same time, huge shrimp trawlers -- many of them unregulated -- dredge up the bottom of the sea floor, damaging this fragile ecosystem and harming a critical habitat for the whales.

The humpback was once hunted to the brink of extinction. Hopefully, our taste for shrimp cocktail won't put them back there.

 GET INVOLVED

  • Sign a Wildlife Conservation Society pledge to reduce your shrimp consumption to help protect an important whale habitat
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image: Protected Resouces Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, La Jolla, California

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