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Monday, 08 April 2013 14:57 |
By Sandra Postel – National Geographic – April 2, 2013Traveling south from the Mexican border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, we stop about 20 miles (32.2 km) from the Upper Gulf of California. It feels like the middle of nowhere. We’re surrounded by vast stretches of cracked, dried-out mudflats layered with salt. Although we’re in the historical floodplain of the mighty Colorado River, there is no water, no vegetation, and no sign of life at all. “Thousands of acres look just like this,” says Osvel Hinojosa Huerta, an ecologist with the Mexican conservation organization, Pronatura Noroeste, and a National Geographic Explorer. As we travel on through the barrenness, I take in what the delta has become from eighty years of damming and diverting this iconic river. Then suddenly – like a mirage in the desert – an oasis appears. Marshes of cattails and bulrushes and a maze of lagoons open up before us. As if out of nowhere, birds come into view. Fishing boats sit hitched to a wooden dock. We have arrived at La Ciénega de Santa Clara, one of the largest and most significant wetlands in the entire Colorado River Basin. It would be no exaggeration to say it is one of the most important desert wetlands in all of North America. Its 40,000 acres (16,000 hectares) of marshes and mudflats support 280 species of birds, including the elusive and endangered Yuma clapper rail. Some 300,000 migratory birds spend their winters here. For full article, click here.
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Monday, 08 April 2013 00:00 |
By Stephen C. Webster – The Raw Story – April 7, 2013 Activists with the group Tar Sands Blockade published new videos on Sunday showing oil from the Arkansas pipeline rupture purportedly diverted from a residential neighborhood into a wetland area to keep it out sight and, most importantly, out of the media. While it’s not clear if the oil was intentionally moved into the wetland, the company says it is cleaning pavement with power washing devices, which could cause some of the oil to be pushed off neighborhood streets and into other areas. For full story, click here.
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Friday, 05 April 2013 00:00 |
By John Waldman – Yale 360 Environment Blog – April 4, 2013In most major rivers in the U.S., maintaining some semblance of the integrity of migratory fish runs past hydropower dams is dependent upon the fish using ladders and elevators as freely as do two-legged humans. But is this asking too much? For full blog post, click here.
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Monday, 25 March 2013 17:24 |
By Benjamin D. Duval – EarthSky – March 24, 2013Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University published a study in the March 5, 2013 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), showing that grasslands in what is called the western corn belt of the United States are being increasingly converted to farm for corn and soybeans. The likely cause is the demand for biofuels, which has been driving the prices of these crops to an all-time high. Wright and Wimberly focused on the U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa. By using newly available data on crop cover from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), they demonstrated that the rate of land use change to corn and soy has not been this high since the 1920s and 30s, and is comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil and Indonesia in the 1980s. For full story, click here. To read the study on Recent land use change in the Western Corn Belt threatens grasslands and wetlands, click here.
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Monday, 08 April 2013 00:00 |
By Elena Day – the Crozet Gazette – April 6, 2013I feel heartened by the Buy Local/ Eat Local aspect of the “good food /slow food movement.” However, I can’t help suspect that the encouraging word “local” is one easily coopted by Kroger, WalMart, et al., and not necessarily indicative of a healthfully produced product. After all, we have plenty of factory-farmed egg layers and broilers over in the Shenandoah Valley within a 50- to a 100-mile radius, which implies “local.” Tyson’s chickens are “local.” “Natural” is another one of those words that are overused and misleading to the consumer. High fructose corn syrup is “natural” and in many processed foods. It is a major contributer to our collective increasing girth. Over 90 percent of U.S. corn is genetically modified (GMO) “Monsanto Roundup Ready.” GMO corn is in cereals labeled “natural.” For full article, click here.
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By Katie Oxford – Culturemap – March 31, 2013
When we moved to talking about the impact of the oil spill, Xuan was quick to make a point straight away — that it will take another five to 10 years (at least) of gathering more information before we can know the full effects. Or, as Xuan thought, probably 20. I couldn’t agree with him more. Mother Nature has her own clock. If only we, the public, would listen better. If only there were more stewards like Xuan. Since the oil spill, he’s studied the coastal region between Padre Island and Florida, specifically, in the wetlands and in the dunes. From the graphics that Xuan drew for me, ants have dramatically diminished both in species and in numbers. “Except for fire ants,” he said. Interestingly, fire ants, he explained, love new environments. Therefore, whether the environment has changed due to nature disturbance (hurricanes) or human disturbance (oil spill) they remain standing and a lot more. They beat up, so to speak, on the other species trying to return. For full story, click here.
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Monday, 25 March 2013 00:12 |
By Philippe Cousteau – CNN – March 25, 2013My grandfather Jacques Cousteau and my father Philippe dedicated their lives to revealing the ocean's wonders and helping us understand our connection to this vast expanse of water. Their work inspired generations and filled people with awe. Times have changed and so have circumstances and perceptions about the ocean. In recent years, the focus has been on the very serious challenges the ocean faces and the impact these challenges are already having on our daily lives. The effects of climate change, pollution and overfishing should be making headlines because the ocean and all of us -- and I literally mean all humankind -- who depend on its resources are facing the very real prospect of the catastrophic collapse of ocean ecosystems if we continue on our current course. For full story, click here.
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