Category: Environment

Sealing on thin ice

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2012:

 

CAP-AUX-MEULES, Quebec— Seal clubbing and shooting started on March 22,  2012 for Iles-de-la-Madeleine vessels,  five days ahead of schedule,  because ice floes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence were receding so rapidly that Quebec sealers were at risk of finding no seals to kill.
Canadian Fisheries Department area director Vincent Malouin told Canadian Press that only two to five boats from Iles-de-la-Madeleine were expected to hunt seals in 2012. Iles-de-la-Madeleine was allocated a sealing quota of 25,000,  from a total Canadian quota of 400,000,  the same as in 2011,  despite a lack of evident markets for seal pelts since 2010, when the European Union banned seal pelt imports. Read more

Veg or Non-Veg? India at the Crossroads

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  March 2012:

Veg or Non-Veg?  India at the Crossroads
by Mia MacDonald & Sangamithra Iyer
Brighter Green,  2012.  Free 46-page download: <http://www.brightergreen.org/files/india_bg_pp_2011.pdf>

 

Brighter Green founder Mia MacDonald and associate Sangamithra Iyer ask,  “Can India provide enough food for its people as well as support hundreds of millions of cows and buffalo and billions of chickens in increasingly industrialized conditions?  And can it do so while protecting its natural resources and the global climate,  and ensuring progress in human development?” Read more

Beaver & Climate Change Adaptation in North America: A Simple, Cost-Effective Strategy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  March 2012:

Beaver & Climate Change Adaptation in North America:  A Simple, Cost-Effective Strategy
by Bryan Bird,  WildEarth Guardians,  Mary O’Brien,  Grand Canyon Trust,  & Mike Petersen,  The Lands Council

Free 55-page download from: <www.wildearthguardians.org/site/DocServer/Beaver_and_Climate_Change_Final.pdf?docID=3482>

“The reestablishment of American beaver and  its habitat  is a viable and cost-effective climate change adaptation strategy,” begins Beaver & Climate Change Adaptation in North America.  “Due to the unique hydrological engineering accomplished by dam-building beaver,  support and reestablishment of beaver constitute an important climate change adaptation tool in the United States.” Read more

Green mambas, crocs, & the risk of infection lurked

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

BANGKOK–-The floodwater rising over Thailand was one problem,
and what was in it was–and remains– another.  Along with the threat
of zoonotic disease and insect plagues that accompanies most floods,
Bangkok rescuers found themselves handling more than 200 animals of
protected species,  “ranging from deer and tigers to monkeys,”
reported Apinya Wipatayotint of the Bangkok Post,  amid rumors that
“deadly green mamba snakes got loose in Nonthaburi after escaping
from a flooded house in Pak Kret.” Read more

Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, 71

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  October 2011:

 

Wangari Maathai,  71,  winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize,  died of cancer on September 24,  2011,  in Nairobi,  Kenya.

Maathai “won a scholarship to study biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison,  Kansas,  receiving a degree in 1964,” wrote New York Times obituarist Jeffrey Gettleman.  “She earned a master of science degree from the University of Pitts-burgh.  She went on to obtain a doctorate in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi,  becoming the first woman in East or Central Africa to hold such a degree,”   Gettleman continued. Read more

WWF to review ties to logging firms

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  September 2011:

WASHINGTON D.C.— World Wildlife Fund director general James P. Leape on August 23,  2011 announced that WWF would review its relationship with all participants in the Global Forest & Trade Network.

“WWF’s flagship scheme to promote sustainable timber–the Global Forest & Trade Network–is allowing companies to reap the benefits of association with WWF and its iconic panda brand,  while they destroy forests and trade in illegally sourced timber,”  charged the British organization Global Witness on July 25,  2011,  in an internationally syndicated report entitled Pandering to the Loggers. Global Witness cited for example the Malaysian logging firm Ta Ann Holdings Berhad.  Ta Ann,  alleged Global Witness,  is “destroying rainforest,  including orangutan habitat,  within WWF’s own Heart of Borneo project.” Read more

EDITORIAL: Animal husbandry & the Horn of Africa famine

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  September 2011:

Editorial feature:
Animal husbandry & the Horn of Africa famine

“In central and western Kenya,  farmers have had a bumper crop of plump ears of corn and earthy potatoes.  Yet in the north,  skeletal children wait for food aid amid a growing emergency,”  recounted Katharine Houreld of Associated Press on September 1,  2011.

Altogether,  Houreld wrote,   3.75 million Kenyans are at risk of starvation. Another eight million people are at risk in Ethiopia,  Sudan,  and Somalia. Read more

UNESCO statement raises false hope of Serengeti highway cancellation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2011:
NAIROBI, PARIS, DAR ES SALAAM, WASHINGTON D.C.–The
United Nations Educational & Scientific Organization on June 24,
2011 declared victory over the Tanzanian government plan to build a
highway crossing Serengeti National Park, but apparently had not
examined the details of the letter from Tanzanian Natural Resources
and Tourism Minister Ezekiel Maige that prompted the celebration.
“The Serengeti road project has not been abandoned. We have
just revised it. I don’t know where all this confusion comes from,”
Maige told Reuters reporter Fumbuka Ng’wanakilala on July 1, 2011.

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Tsunami damage to Pacific atolls seen as harbinger of climate change

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
AIR STATION BARBERS POINT, Hawaii –“This is a problem that
we expect to have again, not because we’re expecting another tsunami
but because of changing climate,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
biologist Elizabeth Flint told Audrey McAvoy of Associated Press.
The March 11, 2011 tsunami that devasted northeastern Japan
did relatively little damage to U.S. territory, but “offered a
preview of what could happen to low-lying atolls,” McAvoy explained,
“as global warming lifts sea levels and causes storms to develop more
frequently. Flint said she expects the high water events such as
these to eat away at seabird habitats.”
The 60-year-old albatross Wisdom survived and returned to her
nesting area on Midway Atoll, Hawaiian & Pacific Islands National
Wildlife Refuge Complex project leader Barry Stieglitz reported.

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