Two peaceful protestors with the environmental nonprofit International Rivers were deported from Turkey today after revealing a banner reading “No Risky Dams” just before the conference was set to begin.
The forum, held every three years, discusses global challenges and solutions to the water crisis. International Rivers advocates alternatives to large dams, which flood large areas, block the flow of rivers, and displace people and animals.
In coal mining country, companies are encroaching more and more into old graveyards for the coal underneath. Unfortunately, they’re not the best at keeping track of the bodies they remove from the ground.
Walter Young, a 63-year-old man from Pigeon Creek, West Virginia, told the Associated Press that he went to check on the site of his great-grandmother’s grave one day only to find that the entire cemetery was gone. And upon questioning the coal mining company, no one had any clue where his relative’s grave had been moved.
Around $10,000-worth of timber was confiscated from a lumber company after their illegal activities were exposed on their very own reality TV show on the History Channel.
Before we get into the details, let this sink in for a second: there’s a reality TV show that documents people competing to cut down trees. We’ve all seen some horrible television, but how on earth is this considered entertainment? Apparently 2 million people think so.
An Arizona man who was caught by police in August 2008 after tying his horse to the back of his truck will face charges for animal cruelty in federal court this Tuesday.
Gorden Allen Bates tied a horse to the back of his truck and then proceeded to stop the vehicle and beat the animal with a PVC pipe while his 13-year-old daughter kicked it in the face. Luckily, a state trooper happened onto the scene.
The bird, also known as the Spanish Imperial Eagle (Aquila adalberti), is one of the three rarest birds of prey on the planet, with only around 400 surviving, and is classified as ‘vulnerable to extinction’ in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Pending legislation would require that any group looking to issue a stay against a project to prevent environmental harm must first post a bond to cover any potential monetary losses that the company in question may incur during the trial. The bill is predicted to pass sometime in the next week.
This video is very hard to make out (and all online Turkish-to-English translations don’t yield much more insight), but this appears as if a small town in Turkey gathered together to encourage their dogs to attack and kill a captive wolf. Please comment if you have any idea what is going on.
Contrary to previous reports, Iceland’s new government announced that they will keep the controversial increased whaling quota that the outgoing Fisheries Minister enacted last month, just one day before leaving office.
Steingrimur J Sigfusson, Iceland’s new Fisheries Minister, said that the country will keep the whaling quota, but added that whalers should not expect the quota to extend five years, as was originally planned. The quota increase has been criticized by environmental groups because it allows the killing of 150 endangered fin whales.
A man in Hong Kong was arrested yesterday for stuffing his luggage with 46 live animals, presumably for sale on the black market. Some animals were crammed into the tiny boxes pictured above.
He traveled fro two endangered Angonoka tortoises, 21 hedgehogs, and 23 sugar gliders into boxes filled with packing materials with small holes punched into the sides to allow the animals to breathe.
Well, at least if you’re stupid enough to post the photos of you eating it on Facebook.
A couple vacationing in the Bahamas has been arrested after they posted pictures of themselves cooking and eating an iguana. Police said the photos showed the American couple “catching an iguana, parts of an iguana on a grill, two men eating the iguana pieces, and a man and a woman cleaning what appears to be undersized conch.”
“Leave No Trace” has always been an honored credo of the Boy Scouts of America. The trumpeted tenet is supposed to refer to ethical guidelines which preach having a minimal impact on land, nature and wildlife. But according to a recent investigation, the Boy Scouts have been caught logging over 34,000 acres of pristine forest over the last 20 years, including 60 clearcuts and 35 salvage harvests. They’ve literally left no trace– of the forests.
Furthermore, the survey showed that most of the acreage was logged to turn a backdoor profit, and there’s evidence of corruption. A number of Scout councils submitted inaccurate and misleading logging plans, and allegedly disregarded rules and regulations which were in place to protect wildlife and the watershed. Some of the deals even involve cozy relationships with private companies and state regulators.
