Whales Get New Sanctuary in Chile

Whales scored a major victory earlier this month with the historic approval of a new sanctuary off the coast of Chile, a significant step in an effort to create a network of protected reserves for the endangered animals throughout the country's waters. The decision was hailed by many conservation groups, including the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and Centro de Conservación Cetacea, that hope the sanctuary will allow them to better study and protect the area's Southern right whales and Risso's dolphins.

GET INFORMED

• Read "New Whale Sanctuary Created by Chile" (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, September 12, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the Whale's Revenge petition urging the International Whaling Commission to close the loophole that allows whaling in the name of so-called "scientific research"
• Adopt and whale or dolphin from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

photo courtesy Chewy Chua, Creative Commons

Using Art to Tell the Sad Tale of Polar Bears

From Dada to Guernica, art has -- at some very crucial times in history -- played a significant role in transforming the abstractly political into the deeply personal. Now Greenpeace, in collaboration with street artist Mark Jenkins, has added its own artistic contribution to the art of politics in an attempt to highlight the plight of the polar bear. The project puts humans in polar bear costumes on the street in homeless situations. Greenpeace hopes that these art installations will "help people draw a deeper and more immediate connection to the reality of the crisis," one that has seen the loss of a polar bear habitat three times the size of Texas due to receding ice.

Though the polar bear was placed on the US Endangered Species List in May, loss of sea ice due to global warming continues to destroy their habitat and eliminate their food sources, forcing them to resort to life-threatening swims miles from the safety of the shore and in some cases, even cannibalism. Energy developers and government regulators share some of the blame as well. Earlier this year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that oil companies are permitted to "disturb" the polar bears that live around Alaska's eastern coast, the site of the oil-rich Chukchi Sea. The environmental groups Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Environment have filed a lawsuit challenging the ruling.

GET INFORMED

• Watch a Greenpeace behind-the-scenes video of the project (Greenpeace, September 23, 2008)
  
• Read "As Arctic Sea Ice Reaches 2008 Low, Street Art Project Highlights Shared Fate of Polar Bears, Humanity" (Greenpeace, September 18, 2008)
  

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a World Wildlife Fund petition urging your representative to co-sponsor the Polar Bear Seas Protection Act, which would halt oil and gas leases in polar bear habitats until scientists can fully assess the environmental impacts
  
• Adopt a polar bear from the World Wildlife Fund for $25

photo: Greenpeace

First US Emissions Trading Market Opens

Lacking guidance from the Bush administration on the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, 10 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states have taken matters into their own hands. Following in the footsteps of the European Union, which started the world's largest emission trading scheme in 2005, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is America's first mandatory, market-based effort to reduce emissions from greenhouse gases, binding together Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Under this cap-and-trade agreement, the member states will cap carbon emissions from the power sector, requiring a 10 percent reduction by 2018. Power generators will be able to buy, sell and trade emissions allowances, using the market to drive up the cost of polluting, rewarding the low polluters and allowing generators to more easily invest in low-carbon energy alternatives.

GET INFORMED

• Read "First U.S. greenhouse cap-and-trade market opens" (Environmental News Network, September 26, 2008)
• Visit the RGGI Web site

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe

photo courtesy Victoria Belanger, Creative Commons

Natural Gas Drilling at Center of Colorado's Senate Race

Rising 3,500 feet above sea level in the Colorado River Valley, the Roan Plateau is one of the region's last wild tracts of public land, a pristine area rich with rare plants and wildlife such as mule deer, elk, black bears, cougars, cutthroat trout and Peregrine falcons. It also holds the biggest reserve of federally-owned natural gas outside Alaska. Not surprisingly, what to do about Roan's buried treasure has been the subject of great debate among conservationists, energy developers and the government. This summer, despite receiving 17,000 letters from concerned citizens and protests from conservation groups, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctioned off energy leases for the Roan's remaining public land -- about 55,000 acres. Several environmental groups have sued the BLM.

The issue has ratcheted up a notch as Republican Bob Schaffer and Democrat Mark Udall fight it out for a Senate seat being vacated by retiring GOP incumbent Wayne Allard. The battle lines could not be more distinctly drawn. Schaffer has received contributions from ExxonMobil and Halliburton, while many of Udall's campaign ads have been paid for by the League of Conservation Voters. Schaffer is a former executive of Aspect Energy, an oil developer, while Udall is a former executive of the Colorado chapter of Outward Bound, an outdoor adventure and awareness program. Though it's obvious where they lean on the issue of drilling, neither candidate has taken an extreme position. But after the election is over, the decade-long debate on the Roan's future may finally be entering its last phase.

GET INFORMED

• Read "To Drill or Not to Drill? Energy Policy Surfaces in Colorado's Senate Race" (Scientific American, September 24, 2008)
• Visit the Save Roan Plateau Web site

GET INVOLVED

• Sign Mark Udall's petition to protect federal lands on top of the Roan Plateau from massive drilling by the oil and gas industry

photo courtesy Niels Wouters, Creative Commons

Ted Danson's Fight to Prevent A Bluefin Tuna Collapse

Ted Danson is probably known best for his character Sam Malone on the classic American sitcom, Cheers. What is less known is his work as a founding member of Oceana, the largest international ocean protection and restoration environmental advocacy group. This summer, Oceana launched a new campaign which Danson has written about in an essay published by BBC News -- saving the northern bluefin tuna. Fetching up to $100 a pound, bluefin is what he calls "an elite fish" whose populations have plummeted since the mid-1990s due to overfishing -- and the explosion of the global sushi industry. Danson argues that the catch quotas set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas are unenforceable, saying that bluefins "need a generational breather to prevent total collapse."

GET INFORMED

• Read Ted Danson's "The plight of the bluefin" (BBC News, September 15, 2008)
• Visit the Oceana Web site

GET INVOLVED

• Download the Environmental Defense Fund's "Pocket Eco-Friendly Fish Selector" to make choices that help prevent overfishing
• Sign the Pew Environment Group petition urging the US National Marine Fisheries Service to stop overfishing

photo courtesy tegoblue, Creative Commons

Turning Gorilla Poachers Into Eco-Tourism Guides

Advocates of market-based conservation initiatives just got a big boost with the success of Edwin Sabuhoro, a Rwandan national and graduate of Kent University's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology who has been named Young Conservationist of the Year by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network. His program to transform his country's gorilla poachers into eco-tourism guides has resulted in a reduction of poaching by 60% as the local populations have seen and felt the tangible benefits of preserving the animals. And the other figures are no less startling: the indigenous people own 100% of the project and eco-tourism has increased 40%. Uncovering new, local economies that increase the standard of living and also help endangered species survive is a win-win situation that hopefully will inspire other communities around the world. There are about 175,000 western lowland gorillas -- and only about 720 mountain gorillas -- that survive today in the wild, all in Central Africa.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Conservation Program In Rwanda Helps Turn Gorilla Poachers Into Ecotourism Guides" (ScienceDaily, September 22, 2008)
• Read about mountain gorillas on the International Gorilla Conservation Programme Web site

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Care2 petition urging Congo's Ministry of Environment to protect gorilla habitats from deforestation
• Donate to Conservation International to help their fight to stop the slaughter of mountain gorillas

photo courtesy YoungRobV (away), Creative Commons

Senate Holds Hearing on Bush's Environmental Record

Its title ain't pretty, but the United States Congressional hearing known as "The Bush Administration Environmental Record at the Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency" is likely to uncover some nasty bits. The hearing -- held today by Senator Barbara Boxer, the junior Democrat from California who chairs the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee -- comes at a time when the beleaguered head of the EPA, Stephen L. Johnson, is fighting off lawsuits from 12 states claiming his agency violated the federal Clean Air Act by refusing to issue emissions standards for oil refinery pollution, a critical step in the fight against global warming. Some claim political foot-dragging. In April 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. But earlier this year, Johnson shelved the agency's findings from its study of the effects of greenhouse gases on public health and the environment, making any new emission regulation nearly impossible before President Bush leaves office. In July, four Democratic senators called for Johnson's resignation.

Conservationists hope that Boxer's hearing will also help reverse the recent moves by Bush to undermine the landmark Endangered Species Act. His administration has proposed to eliminate the current requirement for agencies like the EPA to consult with either the Fish & Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before making decisions about federal projects that could harm endangered species, such as America's iconic bald eagle, a species considered one of the act's greatest success stories.

GET INFORMED

• Read "US Environmental Protection Agency sued – again" (GLOBE-Net/Environmental-Expert.com, September 2, 2008)
• Read "An Endangered Act" (New York Times, August 12, 2008)
• Read "EPA chief weighs risks of greenhouse gases" (Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2008)
  

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Defenders of Wildlife petition opposing the Department of the Interior's proposal to remove the consultation requirements provided by the Endangered Species Act
• Sign Senator Boxer's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee petition urging Stephen L. Johnson to turn over all communications related to the EPA's findings about global warming's consequences to public health and the environment
• Sign an open letter by former Congressman and chair of the National Black Leadership Roundtable, Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, calling for the resignation of Stephen L. Johnson

photo courtesy gwburke2001, Creative Commons

Chicago Challenges Residents to Go Green

Instead of creating new regulations that would legally require people and businesses to change their non-green habits, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daly is taking his city to task using the more inspirational tack of leading by example. His "13-Point Global Warming Challenge" urges residents to do such things as recycle the Sunday paper, change nine incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, cut shower times by one minute and reduce heating levels by three degrees -- all simple and easy parts of an overall plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Take the Chicago 13-Point Global Warming Challenge" (The Daily Green, September 19, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Take Chicago's 13-Point Global Warming Challenge
• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe

photo courtesy Tiago Daniel, Creative Commons

Californians to Vote on Landmark Anti-Cruelty Act

New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof called it "the most important election you've never heard of." It's Proposition 2, the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, a landmark initiative in California that would ease the suffering of millions of animals confined in small crates on factory farms. And it will be on the California ballot on November 4. Big agribusiness firms have raised $10 million to defeat the initiative, which proponents argue will not only help reduce the torturous conditions of farm animals, but also lower risks to the human food supply and reduce land and water pollution.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Proposition 2: Elbow (Wing, Trotter) Room for Farm Animals – YES" (California Progress Report, September 19, 2008)
• Download a PDF of the full text of Prop 2

GET INVOLVED

• Donate to the Humane Society of the United States Vote Yes to Prop 2 Campaign
• Tell a friend about Prop 2

photo: Humane Society of the United States

Hundreds of Species Discovered on Great Barrier Reef

Among other things, this year marks the second International Year of the Reef, a worldwide campaign to raise awareness of coral reefs and their importance to healthy ecosystems. And the organizers now have something big to cheer about -- the discovery of hundreds of species in the waters off two islands on the Great Barrier reef and another reef along Australia's northwestern coast. The discoveries (quite surprising considering how well-traveled these waters are) include 300 species of soft corals, dozens of crustaceans, a rare jellyfish, many tiny amphipods and various "vultures of the sea" -- parasitic isopods that feed on dead fish. The remarkable findings come as conservationists lament the decimation of coral reefs, which are disappearing in the face of various threats such as global warming, overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Explorers Find Hundreds Of Undescribed Corals, Other Species On Familiar Australian Reefs" (ScienceDaily, September 19, 2008)
• Visit the International Year of the Reef Web site
  

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the Reef Check Foundation's International Declaration of Reef Rights
• Sign a Care2 petition supporting the United States conservation plan to create the world's largest marine reserve

photo: Gary Cranitch, Queensland Museum, 2008

First-Ever Whale Songs Heard in New York Waters

This past spring, acoustic monitors were placed off of Fire Island, about 13 miles from the entrance of New York Harbor. And now, these devices have captured whale songs, the first time such sounds have been heard around the city's waters. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is hoping that this research will help policymakers make more informed conservation decisions to protect the endangered whales, such as planning sea vessel routes that avoid ship collisions and limiting harmful, man-made sounds such as sonar. The DEC was joined by the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in this long-term study, set up to record the migration of whales from their calving grounds off of Florida's east coast to their feeding grounds in the waters of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Whale Songs Are Heard For First Time Around New York City Waters" (ScienceDaily, September 17, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the International Fund for Animal Welfare petition supporting the creation of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary
• Sign the Whale's Revenge petition to end whaling
• Donate to help the Ocean Conservancy stop the US government from weakening the laws protecting the North Atlantic right whales
• Adopt a whale from the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society for $30

photo courtesy joesflickr, Creative Commons

Good News for America's Wolves, Maybe

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service said that the gray wolf of Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies will be placed back under federal protection due to legal and scientific problems with their plan to delist the endangered species. But though conservation groups like the Defenders of Wildlife have been thanking all the people who have helped their cause through petitions and letters to officials, there is still a concern about whether or not a scientifically-based management plan will be put into effect.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Feds keeping Northern Rockies wolf listed for now" (Associated Press, September 17, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the Defenders of Wildlife petition urging Dale Hall, the head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, to institute a responsible plan that will maintain healthy, sustainable and diverse populations of America's wild wolves

photo courtesy digitalART2, Creative Commons

Ancient Forests Not Something to Sneeze At

It is the home of caribou, wolverines and grizzly bears. Half of North America's birds live there. It combats global warming by storing immense amounts of carbon. It is one of the largest intact forests on the planet, and it is under attack. Photo and video footage released this week by Greenpeace shows a massive stockpile of old-growth logs cut from the ancient Ogoki, Ontario's most ecologically valuable boreal forest, destined to be manufactured into toilet paper and Kleenex by tissue giant Kimberly-Clark. In addition to Kleenex, the wood is slated to be used to make Cottonelle, Viva and Scott brand products to be distributed throughout North America and Europe. The Ontario Ministry of Environment estimates that the stockpile had 85,000 cubic meters of wood as of March, an amount that could fill 7,000 logging trucks.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Exposed: Photos Show Kimberly-Clark Gets Trees From Ancient Forests" (Treehugger, September 16, 2008)
• Watch the Greenpeace video of the Ogoki log stockpile
  
• Visit Greenpeace's Kleercut campaign Web site

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Greenpeace petition urging Kimberly-Clark to implement a responsible fiber-sourcing policy

photo: Kleercut.net

Turning the Presidential Debates to Energy and Global Warming

Next week, the United States presidential debates will begin, pitting Barack Obama against John McCain. Some environmental advocates believe that the moderators -- Tom Brokaw from NBC, Bob Schlieffer from CBS and Gwen Ifill and Jim Lehrer from PBS -- may not ask the hard questions about the energy crisis and global warming. And even if they do, they might not get clear answers. Gabe Pressman, a senior correspondent at WNBC, writes that, when it comes to their energy policies, the candidates are "causing confusion and uncertainty."

GET INFORMED

• Read "McCain, Obama Lack Energy Crisis Solution" (WNBC, August 6, 2008)
  

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the Environmental Defense Fund petition urging the debate moderators to ask the presidential candidates about their plans to solve the climate and energy crises

photo courtesy altopower, Creative Commons

Protecting Africa's Great Cats and Wild Dogs

In the past two decades, Africa's lion population has dwindled by more than 75 percent. Less that 13,000 wild cheetahs remain on the continent, while only 5,000 wild dogs are left. Conservationists warn that their disappearing numbers will have an adverse effect on the ecosystems in which they live.

On September 17, the United States Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a committee mark up of the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act -- legislation already passed by the House that will help protect more than two dozen endangered species around the globe, including wild dogs and great cats like cheetahs and lions, from human development, poaching and other threats.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Help Globally Endangered Great Cats and Dog Species" (African Wildlife Foundation)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Care2 petition urging the US Congress to support the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act

photo courtesy Storm Crypt, Creative Commons

An Eruption 165 Years Ago Signaled the Death of a Star

It's 4 million times more luminous than the Sun, with 100 times its mass. And after the Sun, it is quite probably the most studied star in our galaxy. It is Eta Carinae, a rare hypergiant luminous blue variable star 7,500 light years away and visible on Earth only from the Southern Hemisphere. First catalogued in 1677 by the famed astronomer Edmund Halley, Eta Carinae is nearing the end of its two to three million-year-old life.

But its importance to astrophysics lies in the year 1843, when it had a historic eruption that created a slow-moving cloud of gas and dust -- the two-lobed "Homunculus" nebula -- that we can only now see. And astronomer Nathan Smith, using international telescopes deep in the Andes mountains of Chile, has made new observations about the dying star that reveal its famous outburst as possibly a new type of stellar explosion, one where the star sheds layers of hydrogen before it dies, finally exploding into a supernova that could briefly outshine the entire galaxy. He says, "This could be an important clue for understanding the last violent phases in the lives of massive stars."

GET INFORMED

• Read "1843 Stellar Eruption May Be New Type Of Star Explosion" (ScienceDaily, September 11, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Donate to the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize, awarded every two years for outstanding research contributions to astronomy or astrophysics
• Sign a petition to save the Jodrell Bank Observatory, a historic radio telescope in Cheshire, UK, from closure
• Download this month's free night sky map and calendar from Skymaps.com

photo: NASA/ESA/HST

Conservationists Call Palin's Wolf Program "Brutal"

As the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has been a champion of a controversial wolf control program in which the animals are killed by high-powered rifles shot from helicopters and airplanes. Four conservation groups -- Friends of Animals, Defenders of Wildlife, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Sierra Club -- contend that the science used by the state's wildlife managers is not sufficient to justify the killing of almost 800 wolves in the last five years. Though a federal judge in March upheld the aerial killing program in a lawsuit brought by these groups, four areas covering about 15,000 square miles were banned from the program. Last year, Palin approved a $150 bounty to hunters who brought in the severed left foreleg of a wolf shot in this manner.

GET INFORMED

• Watch a 60-second Defenders of Wildlife TV commercial about Palin's wolf-killing policy
  
• Read "Alaska Judge Upholds Aerial Wolf Killing But Limits Extent" (Environmental News Service, March 18, 2008)
• Read "Singer Pink leads the pack against Sarah Palin" (Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2008)
  

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Defenders of Wildlife petition urging Governor Sarah Palin to end aerial wolf hunting
• Donate to the Defenders of Wildlife to help run their new TV ad
  

photo courtesy ucumari, Creative Commons

Court Makes Deadline for Penguin Decision

Penguins may finally be getting the official protection they need. A US federal judge this week approved a settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the latest move in a long legal battle that includes a petition in 2006 and a lawsuit in 2007, both filed by CBD. The settlement mandates that the Service must decide by December 19, 2008, whether the penguins require protection under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists widely agree that they do, as their numbers have been dwindling due to the effects of global warming, such as higher water temperatures and melting sea ice, as well as destructive fishing practices.

GET INFORMED

• Read "March of the penguins: Court urges decision on protection" (Scientific American, September 9, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a petition calling for the establishment of Antarctica as an animal sanctuary by 2018, to help protect the Adélie penguins, 65% of which have disappeared in the last 25 years.
• Adopt a penguin from Defenders of Wildlife for $20
• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
• Download the Environmental Defense Fund's "Pocket Eco-Friendly Fish Selector" to make choices that help prevent overfishing

photo courtesy *christopher*, Creative Commons

Asian Vulture on the Edge of Extinction

The Asian vulture is in trouble. According to a new report from the University of Michigan, its population has dwindled from tens of millions to just a few thousand, and current captive breeding colonies are too small to protect the species from extinction. A main reason for their decline is the drug diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug given to livestock in India, Nepal and Pakistan. The vultures that feed on these carcasses die of kidney failure soon after eating the tainted meat. Though the drug has been outlawed since 2006, it is still available and being used.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Recovery Efforts Not Enough For Critically Endangered Asian Vulture" (ScienceDaily, September 10, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Support the Peregrine Fund, which is working to save the vulture and other birds of prey in nature

photo courtesy . SantiMB ., Creative Commons

Fighting Global Warming with White Roofs

Data released Tuesday at California's annual Climate Change Research Conference in Sacramento shows that global warming would be significantly slowed down if the world's 100 largest cities installed white roofs and reflective pavement such as concrete, a change that would reflect a great amount of the sun's heat. According to Hashem Akbari, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- whose paper, "Global Cooling: Increasing Worldwide Urban Albedos to Offset CO2," will be published in the journal Climatic Change -- changing the roofs of the planet's 100 biggest cities would offset 44 metric gigatons of greenhouse gases. Roofs represent about 25% of the surface of most cities around the world.

GET INFORMED

• Read "To slow global warming, install white roofs" (Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Make your roof white with Duracool reflective roofing
  
• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe

photo courtesy Sarey*, Creative Commons

US Roadless Rule in Danger

In 2001, the Clinton administration enacted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a major environmental conservation policy meant to protect almost 60 million acres from logging and road construction. President George W. Bush overturned the rule when he entered office, but a federal judge reinstated it in 2006. Today, the United States Forest Service will hold an open house in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, to tell the public about a proposed rule for managing the roadless areas of national forests in Colorado and Idaho, two states where environmental groups claim the Bush administration is using legal loopholes in an attempt to open up land for road construction to benefit oil and gas drilling projects that would destroy the pristine wildlife habitats of many animals, including raccoons, bears and mountain lions.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Forest Service to discuss roadless area management" (Aspen Times, September 4, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the Heritage Forests Campaign petition telling the US Forest Service that you oppose the Bush administration's attempts to repeal the landmark Roadless Area Conservation Rule

photo courtesy shashchatter, Creative Commons

Getting Closer to Understanding Bee Deaths

Last month, the non-profit environmental group National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to disclose research they have on the effects of the pesticide clothianidin on honeybees. They believe that this chemical plays a part in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a mysterious condition that has caused an unprecedented amount of bee deaths. Now, Bee Alert Technology in Montana has made a breakthrough using Army technology that will help root out the cause of the disease.

Ninety percent of America's commercial crops -- including apples, berries and soybeans -- and are pollinated by bees, an industry worth $15 billion. Since it was identified in 2006, CCD has claimed the lives of one-third of America's bees.

GET INFORMED

• Read "UM plays role in understanding Colony Collapse Disorder" (Montana Kaimin, September 5, 2008)
  
• Read "Mysterious Honey Bee Disorder Buzzes into Court" (Environment News Service, August 19, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Find eight companies and organizations helping honeybees
• Sign a Dutchess County Legislature Environmental Committee petition to ban neocotinoid seed-treatment pesticides to save honeybees
• Join the Global Healing Center's boycott of the world's eight biggest pesticide companies

photo courtesy Andreas., Creative Commons

Geo-Engineering the Climate

The Royal Society, England's oldest scientific academy, has published a series of papers in its Philosophical Transactions that offer some possible geo-engineering solutions to fight global warming. "In the past," according to the Economist, "geo-engineering was taboo because many felt that the very possibility of fiddling with the climate would create an excuse to avoid the hard choices a low-carbon economy would impose." The suggestions include injecting the ocean with iron to promote algae blooms that will absorb more carbon dioxide and increasing the amount of sulphur-based pollution in the atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. And though these ideas are purely theoretical with unknown side effects that could cause more harm than good (producing more algae in the ocean would affect the entire food chain in unpredictable and possible damaging ways, for example), many scientists believe that they are well worth exploring. "Global warming is such a threat that all the options deserve to be explored," the Economist writes. "It would be a big experiment, but it would at least be a planned one—unlike the equally big, but unplanned experiment that is now being conducted by motor cars, power stations, cement factories and logging companies all across the planet."

GET INFORMED

• Read "A changing climate of opinion?" (The Economist, September 4, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe

photo courtesy ruei_ke, Creative Commons

Getting Close to the Galaxy's Big Black Hole

Linking together observatories in Arizona, California and Hawaii, astronomers have been able to create a virtual telescope capable of seeing details 1,000 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, and with it have captured the closest views of Sagittarius A, a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, a development that will allow scientists to test Einstein's theory of gravity.

GET INFORMED

• Read "New Virtual Telescope Zooms in on Milky Way's Super-massive Black Hole" (ScienceDaily, September 5, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Donate to the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize, awarded every two years for outstanding research contributions to astronomy or astrophysics
• Sign a petition to save the Jodrell Bank Observatory, a historic radio telescope in Cheshire, UK, from closure
• Download this month's free night sky map and calendar from Skymaps.com

photo: Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*): The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. (Credit: NASA, /CXC, MIT, F.K.Baganoff et al)

Beauty Doctor Not A Friend of Sharks

Sharks are one of the world's top predators. But according to conservation organization Oceana, they have found a mortal enemy in Dr. Susan Lark, a beautician who sells products using squalene, a substance made from shark liver oil that she claims is an effective skin moisturizer. Lark contends that the oil is obtained from sharks that end up as a by-catch from fishing orange roughys through the destructive practice called trawling, which involves deep-sea nets that scoop up everything in their paths, including fish, sponges and thousand-year-old coral reefs, many endangered and all vital to marine ecosystems.

GET INFORMED

• Visit Dr. Lark's Web site

GET INVOLVED

• Sign an Oceana petition urging Dr. Lark to stop buying and selling squalene

photo courtesy alfonsator, Creative Commons

Marine Life Threatened By Bush Coastal Oil Rig Plan

The Bush administration is pushing for a plan that would line the American coastline with oil rigs, threatening the ecosystems upon which dolphins and other endangered marine life depend. The animal conservation group Defenders of Wildlife contends that offshore drilling creates mercury and hydrocarbon contamination of both the water, through toxic spills, and the air, through hazardous fumes. Additionally, they cite sonar experiments as very disruptive to dolphins' ability to communicate, as well as the danger of tanker spills for all marine life, including fish, turtles and seabirds. The US Minerals Management Service is accepting public comments before the final decision is made.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Proposed OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program 2007-2012" (US Department of the Interior

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the Defenders of Wildlife petition to reject the Bush oil rig plan
• Comment directly on the US Department of Interior Web site

photo courtesy FadderUri, Creative Commons

Future of Water Looking Murky

Colin Chartes, the director general of the Sri Lanka-based non-profit research group International Water Management Institute, is very concerned. But though his concern is shared by many experts and is widely known around the world, he says that journalists aren't talking about it and politicians aren't doing enough to fix the situation. It's the water problem. Soon, we're not going to have enough of it. Every calorie of food requires one liter of water to produce it. With a global human population that will increase from 6.5 billion to 9 billion over the next four decades, we're going to have a harder time finding enough water not only for our day-to-day use, but also for all those additional calories.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Water everywhere, and not a drop to grow" (BBC News, August 20, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the petition to adopt Article 31 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which will give all people the right to clean and accessible water

photo courtesy dbarronoss, Creative Commons

Saving Animals from Hurricane Gustav

At the request of the of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the Louisiana State Animal Response Team, the Humane Society of the United States has been at the forefront of the evacuation of thousands of animals from Hurricane Gustav's path, housing them across three "mega-shelters," which are staffed around the clock with animal care volunteers. In Shreveport, which has the state's largest animal shelter, evacuees were housed in co-located shelters, so that pet owners could easily visit and care for their animal companions. This set-up was a result of one important lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina: Many pet owners will not leave their homes without their pets.

GET INFORMED

• Read the HSUS Disaster Update (Humane Society of the United States, September 2, 2008)
• Watch other HSUS videos
  

GET INVOLVED

• Donate to the Humane Society of the United States
  

video: Humane Society of the United States

Bush Proposes World's Largest Marine Reserve

President Bush has proposed that pristine US territories of the western and central Pacific be given national-monument status, an act that would effectively create the Earth's largest marine reserve, covering over one million square miles that would include the deepest part of the planet, the Mariana Trench, and some of the world's best preserved coral reef ecosystems. Among the species that would be protected include hundreds of fish, dozens of seabirds, as well as many whales, dolphins and turtles. The Bush administration has not had the best environmental record, but Amanda Leland, policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, said, "If he does this before he leaves office, he could go down in history as being the best president on ocean conservation."

GET INFORMED

• Read "World's Largest Marine Sanctuary Proposed by U.S." (National Geographic, August 26, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Care2 petition supporting the Bush ocean conservation plan

photo courtesy jlambusphotography, Creative Commons

Emissions 6,500 Light-Years Away Detected

When a massive star experiences a gravitational collapse, it's called a supernova. And one of its by-products is something that rotates about 30 times a second, creates energies a hundred times stronger than mankind's most powerful particle accelerators and contains the Sun's entire mass packed into a space only about six miles across. It's a neutron star. And scientists have come one step closer to understanding these massive beasts with a discovery made by a team of British and Italian researchers led by Professor Tony Dean of the University of Southampton. They detected high-energy gamma ray emissions from the neutron star at the center of the Crab Nebula, a remnant of a supernova explosion 6,500 light-years away, seen on Earth and recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers on July 4, 1054. The results of the study could have a significant impact on fundamental physics -- even on such basic principles of how light moves through space.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Origin of High Energy Emission From Crab Nebula Identified" (ScienceDaily, August 29, 2008)

GET INVOLVED

• Donate to the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize, awarded every two years for outstanding research contributions to astronomy or astrophysics
• Sign a petition to save the Jodrell Bank Observatory, a historic radio telescope in Cheshire, UK, from closure
• Download this month's free night sky map and calendar from Skymaps.com
  

photo: The Crab Nebula from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU); Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (Skyfactory))