Green Options

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I remember vividly the sight of my dad running for cover, making slow groaning sounds, thrashing wildly at the air like some madman from a B-movie.

I was a mere toddler, blanket in one hand, thumb in mouth (think Linus) - wondering what all the fuss was about.

It was dusk and the bats were out, darting this way and that, catching insects as the summer’s sun slid from view, leaving that beautiful blue light before darkness descends.

I shrugged in an awfully precocious manner, looked at mummy, then turned my eyes back to the bats.

And today, Defra (the UK’s Department for Environment, Food And Rural Affairs) have announced that bats are to be used to help measure the biodiversity of the UK.

Editor’s note: For the last few months, we have run a number of guest posts from students in Professor Simran Sethi’s “Media and the Environment” course at the University of Kansas. We’ve all been pretty impressed with the work these students have done, so we were delighted to agree to publish a small-group final project from students J.J. DeSimone, Lindsay Crupper, Denzyl Janneker, Bobby Grace, and Adam Bowman. They focused on biodiversity in their project, and we’ll publish all five parts over the course of this week. Today’s post was originally published on May 9, 2008.

As humans, we collectively tend to be self-absorbed and not think outside our sphere of influence. More specifically, if something in the world doesn’t directly affect us we give little or no attention to it (I’m one of the worst culprits, myself). As such, it’s very easy for us not to think about what human wastefulness and global warming are doing to our plant and animal life. However, losing our earth’s bio and eco-diversity has frightening ramifications for humanity.

Photo credit: Adam Bowman

Taken in the Uintah Mountains, this photo illustrates what humans could lose unless they act to preserve open spaces.

According to Baker University Biology Professor and Natural Areas Director Roger Boyd, biodiversity is the amount of species in a given area. More broadly, eco-diversity refers to the number of ecosystems there are on the planet. If eco and biodiversity continues to decrease on the planet, then less food is available to sustain life. In essence, all of the earth’s biological life is interconnected; if our furry and scale-covered brethren run out of food, so do we.

Paso del Istmo is a 20 kilometer-long land bridge in Nicaragua. Conservationists believe that the narrow strip of tropical forest could absorb some 170,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years. What’s more, carbon offsets might make these forests worth more as trees than as lumber.

For millennia, the land bridge has been a corridor allowing animal migration between North and South America. It now has some of the most highly concentrated biodiversity in Nicaragua. Conservation group, Paso Pacifico, wishes to permanently protect the land bridge from developers, but where could they find funding to make this dream a reality?

Enter the carbon offset company, CarbonFund. In league with Paso Pacifico and the Rainforest Alliance, carbon offsets offer the funding to make conservation of the Paso del Istmo land bridge a reality; and they’re not stopping at just conservation.

In Africa, the sun is abundant, yet traditional energy sources mostly derived from the local ecosystem like firewood and charcoal are getting depleted daily by a large measure.

The devastating aftermath of this depletion and its toll on the environment should call for another cheaper, plentiful and vastly accessible source of energy on the continent.

Solar cooking is now taking root in Africa more than ever before. Solar cooking projects are springing up on the continent mostly spearheaded by local cooperatives and non-profits working with rural women to assemble cheap solar cookers. Which works for environment.

Clearing of mangroves in the name of land reclamation — land to be used for shoreline development — is a worldwide activity. According to University of Virginia and University of Georgia scientists William Odum and R.E. Johannes, more acres of mangrove may have been cleared worldwide than any other type of area except desert, an estimated “many hundreds of thousands of hectacres.” Clearing often results in high, long-term costs of battling increased erosion.

Mangroves are not areas to be “reclaimed.” They not only belong where they are, but they are actively reclaiming and preserving land on their own. The whole process is cyclical, beginning with the mangroves’ role as recyclers, and ending with protection of the outlying coral reefs.

The Role of Mangroves in Protecting Coral Reefs
The reclaiming process is as simple as it is vital. The mangrove roots act as natural filters, trapping sediment and run off from the land, thus preventing or slowing erosion.

Removal of mangroves causes a chain reaction. If the mangroves are cleared the sediment and pollutants run unchecked into the sea grass beds. The nutrient-rich effluent promotes the growth of phytoplankton and filamentous algae, which, combined with the sediment clouds the shallow water and blocks out light necessary for sea grass beds to flourish. The environment becomes anoxic, and the sea grass ecosystem dies.

Dear Readers,

We’ll be dedicating many of this week’s upcoming articles to wildlife around the world. From March 17-24, we’ll by exploring six continents firsthand for interesting animals that we can share with the community at EcoWorldly.

In addition to sharing some of our planet’s unique wildlife, we’ll also take a look at the issues that are important for protecting wildlife. These issues include:

• Habitat preservation and habitat loss
• Preserving biodiversity and what biodiversity means for individual species
• The

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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened today with the beginning shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. The seeds represent everything from food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato. The vault, located on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, will be home to the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held anywhere in the world.

The structure itself is an ice-bound fortress built with a tunnel that goes deep into the side of a mountain. During the winter, Arctic aire -10°C to -20°C will be drawn into the vault. The surrounding rock will naturally keep the desired deep freeze, and during the summer refrigeration equipment will be used.

The unique structure is its own failsafe, in the event of equipment failure temperatures in the vault take months to warm up to a maximim of -3.5°C. The inside of the seed storage vault is lined with insulated panels as well. Electronic transmitters linked to a satellite system monitor temperature, and send this information back to the Longyearbyen and at the Nordic Gene Bank, where staff will be managing the Seed Vault.

Additional security measures, besides the extreme cold and remote location, include motion detectors and in the event of that failing, there is also the native polar bear population.

(More on the importance of preserving seed diversity after the jump).

I used to work on the Chattooga River, which is the northwest border of South Carolina and Georgia. Designated “Wild and Scenic” by Congress in 1974, it is one of the last undeveloped free-flowing rivers on the east coast. Located in three National Parks, it is carefully protected and jealously regulated by the National Forest Service. Only three professional outfitters are allowed to operate on its pristine waters and enjoy world-class white water rapids. But the proposed development of a major Interstate highway threatens the river. Nearly all attractions in the area are directly connected to the Chattooga or the many local waterfalls; damaging the watershed would damage the outdoor tourist industry, which brings hundreds of thousands of people to the region each year.

The valleys and gorges through which the river flows are beautiful examples of Appalachia’s rich biodiversity.

“Local researchers have established that the Chattooga River watershed is a unique ecotone for the temperate deciduous forest — a transitional area providing habitats for both northern boreal and southern tropical species in one drainage basin” (Bruce et al., 1995).

Many threatened and endangered species live here, and the well-managed head waters ensure that the river is clean and clear. If you don’t mind giardia, you can even drink the water. Tourists travel hundred or thousands of miles to sample the Chattooga’s rugged wilderness, unique and exciting rapids, and get a taste of Hollywood history: Deliverance was filmed here and is often credited for bringing white water sports into the public eye.

Never mind the ever-accelerating signs that the Earth is being stressed to multiple tipping (or breaking) points: rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, acidifying oceans, threatened fisheries, dwindling water resources. Like an addict who’s spiraling out of control, the world’s powers-that-be seem hellbent on taking a “just-this-once” [...]

Humans have so altered the Earth — from carbon dioxide levels to wholesale changes to plant and animal populations — that we’ve created a whole new geological epoch for ourselves, according to research published this week by the Geological Society of America. The authors of the study conclude that Nobel

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The Center for Biological Diversity went to court today seeking to overturn the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision not to grant the giant Palouse earthworm Endangered Species status. The worm, native to Washington and Idaho, can [...]