posted March 27, 2006 08:25 PM              

awwwww c'mere whoo wittle seal, whet me skwatch yoo under yoo wittew arms.....

posted March 27, 2006 10:20 PM              

quote:

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cuddling a white baby seal .......interfering with a marine mammal

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******

11 activists got 22 days in jail!!

posted April 10, 2006 02:30 AM              

SAVE THE SHEEP!!

Lying nude and cuddling a rescued lamb alongside the tagline "The Naked Truth: Lambs Suffer and Die in Live Export," model and actor Annalise Braakensiek appears in a brand-new ad for PETA.

posted April 18, 2006 01:00 AM              

Really.

Thursday (March 30), Interior Secretary Gale Norton called a press conference to claim our long nightmare of wetlands loss had finally come to an end due to unprecedented gains since 1997 (click hear to read the report she cites). However, she then admitted much of that gain has been in artificially created ponds, such as golf course water hazards and farm impoundments.

The sporting community--from Ducks Unlimited to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership--reacted quickly, and not favorably. Researchers long ago established that natural wetlands such as marshes, swamps and prairie potholes are far more productive than even the best-designed artificial wetlands. And sharp-edged water bodies like water hazards, farm ponds, and even reservoirs offer very little for wildlife. Putting man-made ponds in the same class as natural wetlands is like ranking pen-raised quail with wild coveys.

The boldness of Norton's claim was particularly galling given the Bush Administration's record on wetlands. President Bush, like other presidents before him, promised a policy of “no net loss” of wetlands, but his administration has consistently supported rollbacks of the Clean Water Act to satisfy industry and development.

In fact, at the same press conference, the Fish and Wildlife Service reported a continued loss of 523,500 acres of natural wetlands during the same time period. So how could the nation have come out ahead if it lost more than half a million acres? Norton didn't try to hide the truth: The 715,300-acre “gain” was mainly artificial ponds.

While saying the nation's wetlands picture remains “precarious,” Norton added that "even ponds that are not a high quality of wetlands are better than not having wetlands." Now there's ringing endorsement of the president's program.

Norton's announcement was likely an act of setting the table for more administration assaults on wetlands protections. It was probably no coincidence that three days earlier, the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations that encourage development of companies that build artificial wetlands used by industries that destroy the vital natural habitats. It's part of the wetlands mitigation banking concept--which gives companies permits to drain wetlands, as long as they produce “new” wetlands somewhere else.

Norton may think a water hazard is better than no wetlands but for fish, wildlife and sportsmen, but it may be even worse. That type of public policy provides an excuse for more permits to drain more natural and productive wetlands to be replaced by non-productive water hazards. Those might be good for real estate values along the 18th fairway, but for fish and wildlife that rely on wetlands ecosystems to survive, it's terrible.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/columnists/conservation/article/0, 13199,1179434,00.html#

posted April 29, 2006 07:06 PM              

********

The Boreal Forest: Earth's Green Crown
Canada's vast boreal forest is among the largest intact forest ecosystems left on earth, and must be preserved.

In the far-north latitudes, just below the treeless tundra of the polar region, a forest of evergreen trees encircles the earth. This is the boreal forest, and it is the biggest terrestrial ecosystem in the world. It is also largely intact, free of roads and industrial development -- especially in Canada, where more than 1.3 billion pristine acres are found. The global boreal forests are larger than even the Amazon rainforest.

Like the Amazon, the boreal forest is of critical importance to all living things. Its trees and peatlands comprise one of the world's largest "carbon reservoirs"; carbon stored in this way is carbon not released into the atmosphere, where it would trap heat and accelerate global warming. Its wetlands filter millions of gallons of water each day. And as a vast and intact forest ecosystem, it still supports a natural food web, complete with large carnivores like bears, wolves and lynx along with thousands of other species of plants, mammals, birds and insects. The boreal forest is also home to hundreds of First Nations communities, many of which rely on fishing, hunting and trapping for their livelihoods.

Despite its global significance, Canada's boreal forest is in great danger today. Large industries -- timber, mining, oil, gas, and hydropower companies -- are eyeing it for development, and less than 8 percent of the boreal forest is protected from large-scale industrial development. NRDC is partnering with many other environmental groups and with First Nations to forge lasting agreements that will ensure the survival of Canada's boreal forest -- to stay abreast of our work in the boreal, bookmark this page and check back. And to learn when you can take online action to help protect the boreal, subscribe to Earth Action, NRDC's biweekly email alert.

Read on for a close-up look at some of the plants, animals and natural systems that make the boreal so special.

http://www.nrdc.org/land/forests/boreal/intro.asp#

posted June 24, 2006 05:34 AM              

These satellite images show the same section of a Brazilian rain forest found along the Amazon river taken in 1975, left, 1986, center, and 1992, right. The diagonal striations indicate the progressive destruction of trees over a 17-year period. Among the human activities leading to this widespread deforestation are commercial logging, agriculture, mining, and oil exploration as well as small-scale subsistence activities, such as slash-and-burn agriculture, charcoal production, and firewood collection. Fire is used as the primary means to clear forests for agriculture and development, a dangerous method that frequently escapes control and destroys large areas of forest.

posted June 24, 2006 06:15 AM              

Changing planet revealed in atlas

Satellite images reveal how the environment has changed dramatically in recent decades.

In pictures
An atlas of environmental change compiled by the United Nations reveals some of the dramatic transformations that are occurring to our planet.

It compares and contrasts satellite images taken over the past few decades with contemporary ones.

These highlight in vivid detail the striking make-over wrought in some corners of the Earth by deforestation, urbanisation and climate change.

The atlas has been released to mark World Environment Day

The Almeria province of southern Spain has undergone massive and rapid agricultural change. In 1974 the landscape is one of traditional farmland but by 2000 a huge area has been covered by greenhouses for the mass production of market produce for export.

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The date palm forest lining the Shatt al-Arab estuary in Iraq is the largest in the world. In 1975 the date palm belt - shown dark red - was thriving but by 2002, the pallid colour indicates dead vegetation. The UN estimates war, pests and salt have destroyed 14 million palms.

**********

Iguazú National Park, located in Argentina near its borders with Brazil and Paraguay, contains remnants of highly endangered rain forest. These images clearly show how protecting an area can halt encroaching deforestation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4607053.stm

posted July 08, 2006 08:45 PM              

Chad Hanson

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Rep. Richard W. Pombo, R-Tracy, and his allies in Congress have been leading an aggressive campaign to gut, and render meaningless, the nation's most important wildlife protection law: the Endangered Species Act. Last September, the House of Representatives passed Pombo's bill, HR3824, largely along party lines. It could now see action in the U.S. Senate.

Among other things, the bill would eliminate the requirement to designate critical habitat for endangered species, thereby removing one of the most central protections for them. Listed endangered species have been recovering twice as fast as those without critical habitat designation.

The bill would also weakens the "jeopardy" standard used to determine when projects would threaten a species with extinction, and guts the act's sections that provide for "recovery plans," thus allowing federal agencies to ignore such plans and destroy the habitat of endangered species.

Pombo has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that the Endangered Species Act's recovery plan provisions don't work, citing a misleading statistic that only 1 percent of the 1,300 species listed under the act have fully recovered and been removed from the endangered list. However, species have been protected under the act for only about 16 years, on average, while the average federal recovery plan predicts that 35 to 50 years will be needed to restore populations.

In fact, the act has a near-perfect record in preventing extinction once species are listed, and nearly 70 percent of endangered species are stable or increasing in population after being protected under the act. The bald eagle, gray wolf and many other species have seen populations recover as a direct result of the act's protections -- the same protections that Pombo's bill would eliminate.

Yet, another sneak attack on the act's provisions has been initiated by anti-environmentalists in the House, which passed HR4200, a bill that would suspend environmental and scientific analysis in order to expedite logging and clear-cutting in our national forests following wildland fires.

The bill would also suspend the Endangered Species Act's requirement that federal agencies consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prior to logging the habitat of endangered species. As such, tens of thousands of acres of critical habitat could be logged before it is determined that such actions may cause extinction. The Senate version of the bill, S2709, which could see a vote soon, is being led by the anti-environmental Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., though some key Democrats with a history of allegiance to the timber industry, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have not yet made clear their positions.

If these bills designed to dismantle the Endangered Species Act are passed by the Senate, hundreds of imperiled species will lose protection, and countless thousands of acres of open space and public forestland will be bulldozed or clear-cut. Without vigorous public opposition sufficient to counter the campaign contributions being showered on legislators by developers and logging companies, the Endangered Species Act itself could soon become extinct.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/07/05/EDGOB IPUA61.DTL

posted July 28, 2006 01:31 AM              

Across America, cement kilns emit thousands of pounds of mercury pollution into the air we breathe.

This past February, more than 11,000 Earthjustice supporters sent emails to the Environmental Protection Agency, calling for stronger protections against mercury pollution from cement kilns. This public outcry spurred EPA to reconsider its minimal approach to regulating some of the biggest sources of mercury pollution.

The agency recently published a revised rule limiting toxic
pollution from cement kilns, but more can still be done. Now
is the time to continue the pressure and send EPA a
message: Mercury pollution from cement kilns has got to
stop!

Submit a comment to the EPA demanding stronger protection from mercury
emissions from cement kilns!

posted August 02, 2006 01:23 AM              

Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2006

The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."

As the weed blanketed miles of the bay over the last decade, it stained fishing nets a dark purple and left them coated with a powdery residue. When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.

After one man bit a fishing line in two, his mouth and tongue swelled so badly that he couldn't eat solid food for a week. Others made an even more painful mistake, neglecting to wash the residue from their hands before relieving themselves over the sides of their boats.

For a time, embarrassment kept them from talking publicly about their condition. When they finally did speak up, authorities dismissed their complaints — until a bucket of the hairy weed made it to the University of Queensland's marine botany lab.

Samples placed in a drying oven gave off fumes so strong that professors and students ran out of the building and into the street, choking and coughing.

Scientist Judith O'Neil put a tiny sample under a microscope and peered at the long black filaments. Consulting a botanical reference, she identified the weed as a strain of cyanobacteria, an ancestor of modern-day bacteria and algae that flourished 2.7 billion years ago.

O'Neil, a biological oceanographer, was familiar with these ancient life forms, but had never seen this particular kind before. What was it doing in Moreton Bay? Why was it so toxic? Why was it growing so fast?

The venomous weed, known to scientists as Lyngbya majuscula, has appeared in at least a dozen other places around the globe. It is one of many symptoms of a virulent pox on the world's oceans.

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas.

The causes are varied, but collectively they have made the ocean more hospitable to primitive organisms by putting too much food into the water.

Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients — the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

Modern industry and agriculture produce more fixed nitrogen — fertilizer, essentially — than all natural processes on land. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, enter the ocean every day.

These pollutants feed excessive growth of harmful algae and bacteria.

At the same time, overfishing and destruction of wetlands have diminished the competing sea life and natural buffers that once held the microbes and weeds in check.

The consequences are evident worldwide.

Off the coast of Sweden each summer, blooms of cyanobacteria turn the Baltic Sea into a stinking, yellow-brown slush that locals call "rhubarb soup." Dead fish bob in the surf. If people get too close, their eyes burn and they have trouble breathing.

On the southern coast of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, high tide leaves piles of green-brown algae that smell so foul condominium owners have hired a tractor driver to scrape them off the beach every morning.

On Florida's Gulf Coast, residents complain that harmful algae blooms have become bigger, more frequent and longer-lasting. Toxins from these red tides have killed hundreds of sea mammals and caused emergency rooms to fill up with coastal residents suffering respiratory distress.

North of Venice, Italy, a sticky mixture of algae and bacteria collects on the Adriatic Sea in spring and summer. This white mucus washes ashore, fouling beaches, or congeals into submerged blobs, some bigger than a person.

Along the Spanish coast, jellyfish swarm so thick that nets are strung to protect swimmers from their sting.

Organisms such as the fireweed that torments the fishermen of Moreton Bay have been around for eons. They emerged from the primordial ooze and came to dominate ancient oceans that were mostly lifeless. Over time, higher forms of life gained supremacy. Now they are under siege.

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