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Few places on Earth are as untouched as the "Crown of the Continent" — a 10-million-acre expanse of mountains, valleys and prairies in Montana and Canada. The area has sustained all the same species — including grizzlies, lynx, moose and bull trout — for at least 200 years.
Now — in one of the most significant conservation sales in history — The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land have preserved 320,000 acres of forestlands in western Montana
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Brazil’s new environment minister, Carlos Minc is committed to serious punative action when it comes to the estimated 60,000 cows that are raised on illegally deforested land in the region of Amazonia.
In fact, cattle pasture now covers 7.8% of the Amazon region, with an ever growing presence as worldwide demand for beef skyrockets. Illegal cattle grazing helped Brazil become the world’s largest beef exporter in 2004, but after several years of declining deforestation rates in the Amazon, degradation of the rain forest is again on the rise. The pressure to produce more and more has led many ranchers to ignore regulation.
It is rare to find a politician who is willing to stand up to an industry that is responsible for a significant portion of the GDP, but Minister Minc made good on his promises to crack down on illegal ranching last week when his office confiscated 3,100 cows from one rancher who used a nature reserve in the state of Para as pasture land, cutting away forest that got in the way of his cattle. Not only is Minc committed to punishing those who clearcut the Amazon, he sees a use for the contraband livestock.
Innovative solutions could very well be vital in the coming years, if we are to solve the worsening pollution of our planet. Whether or not you attribute its increase to global warming, carbon dioxide has long been on the rise and subsequent damages have been seen worldwide in flora and fauna ecosystems.
One of the principal sinks for the carbon we do produce, or that exists naturally, are trees. Naturally, as intelligent humans, we’ve decided to cut down as many of those trees as possible. We cut them down, we burn them, and we destroy entire ecosystems while also destroying our own future.
However a novel idea has been raised by Fritz Scholz and Ulrich Hasse from the University of Greifswald, and has been published in the journal ChemSusChem.
By Sam Aola Ooko •
March 11, 2008
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. - Genesis 2:15
Jim Lackey is not amused that the media - new media bloggers included - keep churning out misleading headlines on what the good old Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti actually said about sinning environmentally.
If you’re wondering who the hell the Lackey fellow is, Jim Lackey is the general news editor of the Catholic News Service and he says there is nothing new about environmental blighting as a sin. He says editors are just having fun and are committing another sin in the process - adulteration of the original ingredient! But the CNS website itself has “NEW SINS” as the sub headline to the big story. Perhaps he means it’s an old sin with a new definition?
By Sam Aola Ooko •
March 7, 2008
A Tragic Case Study
We have seen how local ecology plays an important role in conflicts in Africa, which are mostly camouflaged as political, religious or ethnic. Let us spare a brief moment and look at the Democratic Republic of Congo as a case study outline for ecology as a source of wealth and as a precursor of death for innocent millions of people.
A synopsis of the history of the DRC, as Congo Kinshasa is commonly known, tells us that the plunder of its natural resources begun well in the 19th century when King Leopold II’s Belgium, its former colonial master, demarcated it for its own enrichment with the infamous “Scramble for Africa” - a period in late 19th Century world affairs when Africa’s interior was feverishly carved up by European imperialist expansion.
No Peace Amid Wanton Destruction
Since then, DRC, formerly Zaire under the notorious Mobutu Sese Seko, has not known peace. But the wanton plunder and destruction of its ecology, plentiful of minerals and forest cover, continues. And millions of people have and continue paying the heavy cost of it all - through rape and death under the watchful eye of the world hiding beneath the blue flag of the United Nations. Talk of ecological wealth turned into a curse.
By Gavin Hudson •
January 26, 2008
Not many of us link our soy chai latte or our occasional fast food splurge with Amazon deforestation. However, travel up the Amazon river and you’ll be greeted not by endless lush forest, but by soy farms and cattle ranches.
We’re all familiar with the statistic: every minute, an area of forest the size of five football fields is clear-cut in the Amazon. But a report just released from Brazil’s National Space Research Agency (INPE) reveals unparalleled deforestation in the last part of 2007. To make things worse, this follows three years of some of the heaviest clear-cutting ever. Despite world-wide attention, the Amazon rainforest is disappearing faster and faster.
In the wake of the report, Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called an emergency meeting to formulate a plan for saving what’s left of the Brazilian rainforest.
Economic development in the world’s richest countries has exacted a high ecological cost that’s disproportionately borne by poor nations, according to a study from the University of California, Berkeley.
Graphic by Thara Srinivasan, courtesy of [...]
If the foot feels the foot when it feels the ground, as the Buddha said, then does the hand feel the hand when it feels a tree?
Due to commercial and illegal logging, the rate of deforestation in Thailand has been one of the highest in Asia.
Most of the primary forest in Thailand is gone, with secondary forest only covering roughly 20% of the land area. This is compared to over 70% forest cover prior to World War II.
As Perry Garfinkel states in Buddha or Bust: “The environmental impact [of this deforestation] is inestimable—from silting that kills fish and leaves riverbeds dry, to the loss of nesting and feeding for birds and other wildlife.”
Enter the forest monks of Thailand, who have come to be known as environmental or, “Ecology Monks.”
By Gavin Hudson •
January 16, 2008
Biotech company, ArborGen, is taking steps to eliminate the demand for rainforest logging. The plan: cultivate a half-dozen fast-growing, genetically modified tree species that can be harvested and sold for lumber cheaper than trees from the rainforest. The cost: a smooth $120,000 USD per square mile. The downside: it won’t change clear cutting for farming.
By Olga Orda •
December 3, 2007
Image from www.adsoftheworld.com.
A greenprinteronline.com dispatch.
Next time you use a paper towel in a public bathroom, remember this clever ad from the World Wildlife Federation. The ad makes a direct, visual link between deforestation in South America and habitat loss for wildlife. The same is true here in Canada.
This from the WWF website: “Across Canada, habitat loss, pollution, foreign invaders, climate change, and unsustainable harvesting have pushed over 500 species dangerously close to [...]
