Green Options

PacRim Coal’s plan to strip mine coal right through 11 miles of salmon-bearing streams in Alaska would destroy critical wetlands and headwater streams beyond the point of restoration, according to three new studies by scientists.

The salmon fisheries along the Chuit River would be severely damaged, so much so that the researchers say that restoration would be “virtually impossible”.

A new series of wildlife-rich ponds and marshlands will attract frogs, toads, water voles, great crested newts and dragonflies to London’s city center.

The habitat will be found in Paddington Recreation Ground, and it will be made readily accessible to the public via a network of decking pathways and a wooden “dipping” platform to allow school children to take part in pond-dipping and to learn about the variety of animals that live in the water.

Most of us think that we can do pretty much whatever we want with our property. If we own land, we can build a house, right? Well, that’s what Jack Barron of Bonner County, Idaho thought, too. However, the EPA says otherwise.

The US Federal Aviation Administration released a document as a companion to their
online wildlife strike database. The numbers for both the research document and the database could be off by 80%, as the website states only about 20% of wildlife strikes are reported. So the number of bird strikes and animal strikes could be much higher. (The data has been entered only up to Dec. 2008 perhaps due to collection difficulties).

Some people like to call them swamps — usually folks who want to turn them into concrete developments.

Others call them wetlands, for their abilities to reduce flooding and filter out contaminants that run off of city landscapes.

The fact is, you may not like wetlands or swamps (mosquitoes), but they do a lot of good. The next time it rains, watch the water run off of a driveway, sidewalk, street or nearby parking lot. That water used to go into wetlands, depending on where you live. Now it goes into sewer systems, and often ends up being flushed untreated, or only partially treated, to rivers and lakes.

What to do, short of “The World Without Us“?

Many cities are turning to constructed wetlands, which can’t replace the natural work of Mother Nature, but can do a pretty good job of keeping contaminants out of waterways that supply drinking water, fishing and good ol’ recreation.

Dr. Ian Player knows Lake St. Lucia, located in South Africa’s Wetlands Park, intimately. He’s dedicated 60 years of his life to saving it. In his youth, Dr. Player fished the lake. By 1970, he would be wrestling and airlifting 50 large crocodiles to save them from salinity of the lake’s waters. Here is Dr. Player’s story, published with permission from WILD.

Iraq’s marshlands are the largest wetland habitat in the Middle East, but years of damming, drainage, and pollution have rendered the area inadequate for the survival of the area’s plants, animals, and humans.

Untold numbers of people, many of whom living in extreme poverty, have been displaced by the drying marshlands. After initial improvements after the expulsion of Saddam Husein’s regime, water levels have shrunk down to below 2003 levels due to drought, causing many who returned to the area to leave.

China has often by-passed the internationally prescribed EIA regulations to go ahead with socially & environmentally sensitive projects. The Chinese government is trying to block public scrutiny of an oil refinery to be set up in wetlands near Hong Kong.

Following last week’s post on contamination of the water supply for the city of Yancheng, China, state-run media Xinhua News has released an update on the news item.

According to a government circular cited in the Xinhua article, seven officials responsible for water supervision have been punished and two have been removed from office for lacking oversight. The Mayor of the city has pledged to close over 10% of the city’s [...]

Authorities from China’s coastal city of Yancheng, in the province of Jiangsu, shut off water last Friday and restricted the supply for most of the weekend following citizen reports of foul smelling water. An estimated one million of the city’s 1.5 million residents were left without water due to what government identified as the presence of two variants of carbolic acid – carcinogen hydroxybenzene and phenol — in the city’s water supply.

The local government identified Biaoxin Chemical Company as the party responsible for the tainted water, which illegally discharged the toxic chemicals from its facility, said state media Xinhua news agency. Xinhua also reported that the plant has been shut down and its top executives arrested. Officials have not provided any additional information; and state media China Daily reports that no one has come forward with symptoms of poisoning have not been independently confirmed.

Less than an hours drive from downtown Shanghai, Chinese conservationists have created a mile long wetland nature reserve in an area that, just three years ago, was littered with mountains of steel slag more than ten yards high.

In an amazing tribute to Chinese ingenuity, the Paotaiwan Wetland Park is now home to thriving populations of Egrets and Wild Water Bamboo, and has just been awarded the coveted China Habitat Environment Award.

“The 50-hectare wetland is a precious treasure for the ecosystem here,” says Yang Xin, president of the Shanghai Baoshan Greening Management Bureau. He calls wetland “the kidney of Earth,” a purifier and filter that protects water resources.