Green Options

Croatia and Hungary signed an agreement yesterday to protect a major biodiversity area that crosses borders along three rivers. The agreement is being called a “Trans-Boundary UNESCO Biosphere Reserve” and has resulted in the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) awarding the two countries with a “Leaders for a Living Planet” award.

The reserve will preserve several endangered species, among other environmental jewels. There is also the possibility of the reserve expanding several times over into neighboring countries in the future.

Subsistence farmers in Bolivia have been given help to change their technology – moving away from pipe and sprinkle irrigation systems to an aeons-old technique of hand-built raised clay platforms that are surrounded by canals.

Endangered Greater One-Horned Rhinos become extra vulnerable when the waters of the Brahmaputra River flood Kaziranga National Park. The annual deluge forces the rhinos to move toward higher ground near highways, where they are easily located and killed by poachers.

This year, wildlife officials have already posted forest guards at vulnerable areas along Kaziranga’s border. Although the rainfall has been lighter than usual, nothing is being left to chance when it comes to protecting Greater One-Horned Rhinos and other inhabitants of the park.

It is also hoped that Kaziranga’s first “floating anti-poaching camp” will discourage poachers from using the Brahmaputra to move in and out of the park. The small floating vessel, made by Assam’s P. Das & Company, accommodates four rangers, and includes a lavatory and cooking facilities. Rangers will use the boat to patrol the Brahmaputra River.

Kaziranga National Park was unfortunately the location of a shockingly cruel rhino slaughter on January 19, 2009. Poachers shot a mother rhino, and killed her calf. As she lay breathing, but unable to escape, the killers hacked out her horn.

Sometimes the solution to a complicated problem arrives in a simple form, and that’s the case with Hydro International’s Hydro Stormbloc system.  The Stormbloc modules look like nothing more than oversized milk crates but they could help some communities finally resolve chronic stormwater flooding problems that have bedeviled them for years, and harvest rainwater for recycling, to boot.

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, [...]

Global warming forces natural resources into unnatural conditions, and the people who rely on them are similarly forced into unnatural positions

According to reports, the floods destroying Queensland and other parts of Australia are now causing an even bigger problem - crocodiles in the streets.

One 5′3″ crocodile was hit by a car earlier this week, and there are reports of more of the large reptiles washing into the area. From Yahoo! News:

The army has been called in to help with rescue and recovery efforts, while three reports of large crocodiles washed

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10 minutes of raw video clips from the coal slurry pond disaster in Tennessee.

Unnatural disasters have become a fact of life dependent upon fossil fuels. The latest of these disasters came early Monday morning when a coal slurry impoundment at the TVA Kingston Power Plant near Harriman, TN burst, allowing approximately 500 million gallons of toxic coal ash to rush into the surrounding community.

Climate change must be factored into all new planning to safeguard coastal developments against sea level rise, the State of Victoria in Australia has decided.

What if your house could simply walk away from natural disasters? This house can. Designed by an art collective in Denmark, the 10 foot high house is solar and wind-powered and can walk across a variety of terrain. It is equipped with a living room, bed, toilet, kitchen, and wood stove, and is controlled by an internal mainframe computer.