Green Options

It’s no surprise that the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufactures oppose the American Clean Air and Security Act, but so does Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Dow Chemical and Ford Motors support it.

Phallus drewesii, named after Dr. Robert Drewes of the California Academy of Sciences, is a 2 inch long phallus-shaped mushroom that grows on wood, smells like rotting meat and curves awkwardly downward.

Upon discovering that the new species would be named after him, Drewes remarked: “It is a wonderful honour and great fun to have this phallus-shaped fungus named after me. I have been immortalized in the scientific record.”

In the constant push for ever newer and greener technology and energy, we sometimes forget that it is often both simpler and cheaper to revisit old techniques in new ways. And that’s exactly what a group of researchers in California has done.

A post of a few months ago considered whether the Cape Town City Council would have to charge residents to manage the Peninsular Baboons - now they have approved funds and plan a workshop while residents have baboons droping into their bathroom.

City Supports Baboon Monitoring and Wants to Develop a Plan

In the first news story since the recent post on the Cape Peninsular baboons, the Cape Town City Council has set aside a quarter of a million dollars to continue the funding of the baboon monitoring programme on the Peninsula.
This was good news for many as there has been uncertainty, as to whether the city council would continue to fund a ten-year-old baboon monitor programme. The programme has minders keeping watch over baboon troops and where possible keeping them away from the urban areas. Sensibly the city has also decided that the quarter of a million dollars is only an interim solution and will also be working with South African National Parks (Sanparks) and Cape Nature Conservation to address the problem. The city will host a baboon expert workshop at the Civic Centre on July 2, with the aim of finding “the most effective strategy for baboon management in the Cape Peninsula” and determining how best to implement it.

Results recently published in the journal Global Change Biology show a population drop of 60% in worldwide caribou and reindeer numbers over the last three decades.

The dramatic decline in population is likely due to climate change and increased industrial development in boreal forests around the world.

According to a new study, climate change could drastically alter 88% of the waters where dolphins, whales and porpoises are found. While some species may stand to benefit from the changes, the research concluded that one fifth of cetacean species could be lost forever.

The cetaceans most at risk are colder water species and species with restricted ranges in shallower waters. All in all, as many as half of cetacean species should experience a shrinking of their habitat as the oceans warm.

In an exciting effort to protect its natural heritage, the National Environment Protection Agency of Afghanistan has released the country’s first list of protected species, which includes 20 mammals, 7 birds, 4 plants, an amphibian and an insect.

The protections come at a crucial time for many of the species, since a previous Presidential Decree which outlawed hunting of endangered animals expired last March. Among the animals now protected from pelt-traders and poachers are snow leopards, wolves and brown bears.

Salt Lake City, UT - The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) announced that on May 28, 2009 an agreement was made with Equity Oil Company (”Equity”) concerning oil and gas leases on lands in Utah’s San Juan County.

The agreement “gives SUWA certainty that oil and gas development in an important part of the Hatch Point proposed wilderness area will be subject to the applicable Resource Management Plan and additional restrictions,” said Stephen Bloch, Conservation Director and Attorney for SUWA.

Utah’s Book Cliffs exist as one of the largest expanses of land in the lower 48 states without a paved highway.  The BLM, however, is considering a project that would change that. Uintah County’s Seep Ridge Road Paving Project proposes paving over an existing road, which would allow greater recreational (and other, including hunting and oil and gas exploration) access.  The proposal states that:

“the road is currently composed of dirt or native material and several segments of the existing road do not meet current federal and state road design standards for public safety. All projections indicate a continued substantial increase in light and heavy vehicle traffic on the road, primarily associated with energy development in the Book Cliffs area.” (UT-080-08-0238 section 1.2)

There are no security guards or high-tech alarm systems to protect this treasure. Instead, it is the rock climbers, hikers, campers and recreationists that are working overtime to protect this gem from being stolen. Rock Canyon in Provo, Utah has long been a haven of solitude for the humble seeker of peace and the nature lover alike; but recent disputations over land rights have formed darkening clouds on the horizon.

In the mid-1990s Richard Davis purchased nearly 80 acres of Rock Canyon along with a 1906 mining claim. Recently, Davis has sought to use his claim in order to mine quartz from the mountain; a prospect that has recreationists and naturalists up in arms.

Richard Davis, however, has legal rights to the land; and with consent from Provo city and the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, Davis has control of the reigns with how he will use his land. His plan: mine quartz, which is beneficial for the lucrative minerals with which it is layered. In order to obtain the quartz, rock would be cut away from the mountain, which one pro-canyon activist, Jim Knight, compared to cutting off the nose of the Mona Lisa.

Slash-and-burn agriculture may be bad for the environment, but in southeast Asia, the cure may be worse than the disease. Endorsed by multiple governments, at both the local and national levels, as well as numerous business interests, everyone from individual farmers to massive corporations has been replacing the traditional slash-and-burn, more technically known as swidden, method of farming with rubber plantations managed with European techniques. In the last 20 years, over 1.2 million acres of land in China, Thailand, Vietnam, [...]