Green Options

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

Ecosystem will be severely fragmented by fence

The Bush administration has announced it will wave more than thirty federal laws to finish building a wall along the Mexican border by the end of this year. The Washington Post calls the move the most sweeping use of the administration’s waiver authority during the wall’s construction. The waivers allow the Bush administration to bypass mandatory reviews on how the wall will affect ecological areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. House Homeland Security Committee chair Bennie Thompson called the waiver “an extreme abuse of authority.”

Environmental groups have filed petitions challenging the waivers before the Supreme Court siting several potential ecological hazards that would be created by the fence. Biologists are especially concerned about a handful of extremely rare jaguars that prowl up from Mexico over mountain trails in some of the wildest country in the southwest.

In a stunning reversal of direction, the Bush administration has officially requested a new addition to the Endangered Species list. What threatened species could elicit this drastic change of course for the Bush Administration? It is, of course, the elusive Climate Change Skeptic (dubium mundus fervesco), whose habitat is being threatened by rational thinking, increased rates of deforestation, low gas-mileage standards, and the abundance of “cheap” coal. The stunning news comes just after a story in the Washington Post reported that the current administration has never requested that an animal be protected by the Endangered Species Act. Of the current administration’s 59 listed species, none of them were requested by the administration themselves.

But the Bush administration is not alone in wanting to protect such skeptics as Fred Singer and Patrick Michaels, in fear that the breed may die out completely in the coming years. Fortunately, the skeptics have received significant funding from coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil.

Five years have gone by. The U.S. casualty toll is now 4,000. It is estimated that some 80,000 plus Iraqi civilians have lost their lives in the war.

Photo Courtesy of Luke Plunkett @ Kotaku.com

There isn’t a body count for wildlife, native plants, or eco-systems that have been killed in the struggle.

War takes a priceless toll on everything natural. Yet, nature may be the last thing that nations go to [...]

A few hours ago I sat down to write my piece for our EcoWorldly Wildlife Week. I have to admit that I know little about animals. I live in a city – I can’t even remember the last time I saw a real animal. I do remember my insurance salesman mentioning that I should buy an additional car insurance against an animal called a Martin, which has a habit of chewing through pipes in the engine, but other that that I’m clueless. With this confession in mind I make limited apology for the fact that this post may sway off topic.

Having waited all week for a relevant wildlife related idea to pop into my head, I ventured onto Google to look for information on local Swiss animals. I was surprised to learn that the chief animal topic in Switzerland does not relate to rare alpine species becoming endangered due to de-glaciation, or to urban foxes, or squirrels, or other wild animals, or to any thing else I might have guessed, but is principally related to the fair treatment of animals used in meat production.

I’ve yet to see a red squirrel in the wild. Such is this animal’s continued population freefall that I may never see one. Full stop. Though once a common site down in the south of England, now it is mainly in the north and in Scotland that it survives.

It’s been a native of the British Isles for 10,000 years now, yet the naivety of the Victorian era threatens this creature with extinction.

In 1876, one Mr Brocklehurst, formally of Cheshire, in the north of England, now turning in his grave, decided it was a good idea to release a pair of North American grey squirrels into the wild. The rest, as they say, is history.

The one thing that struck me about the story of Joseph Carey Merrick a.k.a. The Elephant Man was that he could never smile. However, he could weep a lot, so documented Sir Frederick Treves, the English surgeon who rescued him after years of performing in carnival freak shows. His great deformity, now postulated as the rare Proteus syndrome (named for the shape-shifting god Proteus) which affects tissue other than nerves, was allegedly caused by the trampling feet of a rogue elephant, many decades before some wildlife conservationists ever thought of culling.

In his brief autobiographical note just before he died, he wrote: “The deformity which I am now exhibiting was caused by my mother being frightened by an Elephant; my mother was going along the street when a procession of Animals were passing by, there was a terrible crush of people to see them, and unfortunately she was pushed under the Elephant’s feet, which frightened her very much; this occurring during a time of pregnancy was the cause of my deformity”. But that was all allegory.

The Culling Debate is back! Fast track to the 21st Century and focus on the wildlife fields of southern Africa. Do you support South Africa’s decision to cull its elephant population? Do you believe the elephant’s trampling is that bad for the local ecology? This is where animal conservationists (or ain’t they?) differ.

There are 1000 species of birds in Argentina and 120 of them are endangered according to Aves Argentinas, a non profit organization.

In Argentina one of the main factors that puts wild birds in danger is unrestricted hunting. Most Provincial Governments don’t put a limit on this. When a limit is set, there is no control over its observance.

One of the most beautiful and more threatened species is the cauquenes or kaikenes (Ruddy-headed Goose or Magellan Goose), similar in aspect to the goose.

Editor’s Note: during our week-long discussion of wildlife around the world, we’re pleased to offer this guest post by Anna-Lisa from Green Girls Global.

Did you know that 2008 is the 100th anniversary of that wonderful children’s book, ‘Wind in the Willows’?

For those of you who recollect the classic story you will remember characters such as Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, Mr. Badger, Mole and also ‘Ratty’ who was actually a European Water Vole.

In addition to 2008 being the anniversary of the book, it is also the year that the Water Vole has been finally provided full legal protection. Six years after a change in the law was first recommended, ‘Ratty’ is finally to receive full protection from the law, under new proposals announced by the UK Deparment for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

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

[...]

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.

Large herds of buffalo once trampled the Great Plains, making the landscape appear black and in motion. Wolves roamed the continent, creating complex societies. This time period now lives as legend, in accounts from early settlers and Indian stories. Scattered reserves are home to relatively small populations.

A recently study by scientists from the Princeton University and the World Wildlife Fund found the story of the buffalo and the wolf [...]