Oh yeah. Clicked at 4:30 a.m. (Got so much rest this past weekend, can't sleep in this morning.)
Good pictures.
The birds, the bees and the turtles... :wink:
Kids and dog went to the Danube yesterday. They watched a swimming beaver.
The dog went swimming too-
Running to warm up again
The 2007 Goldman Prize recipients tackled some of the most pressing environmental issues of the day by halting unregulated mining, protecting essential forests, fighting against controversial oil and gas projects, building sustainable development programs, and protecting biodiversity. All of them, through grassroots efforts, helped educate and motivate local communities to get involved in the effort to protect the natural environment around them and to stand up for their rights.
Meet the winner
http://goldmanprize.org/recipients/current
Individual efforts can do wonders.
Science
Notebook
Monday, April 23, 2007; A06
Mystery Fossil Is Identified
What grew out of the ground like a 20-foot tree trunk, had no branches or leaves, and lived more than 100 million years before the dinosaurs?
For nearly a century and a half, scientists have been asking themselves and each other that question. The mystery revolves around the fossilized remains of an organism originally believed to have been an ancient evergreen and since hypothesized to have been an oversize alga, fungus or lichen.
Now a team of scientists has concluded that the bizarre life form, which no longer lives among us, was in fact a humongous fungus.
Prototaxites grew like a smooth-skinned, armless saguaro cactus 400 million years ago, a time when giant millipedes and other spineless creatures roamed among the first terrestrial plants. At the time, it was the largest land-based organism on Earth. But what was it?
After microscopic analysis of the organism's fossil fibers failed to settle the question, C. Kevin Boyce of the University of Chicago and Francis M. Hueber of the National Museum of Natural History in the District took a new tack. Working with colleagues from Harvard and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, they analyzed the fossil's carbon-atom variants, or isotopes.
Plants that use photosynthesis rely on atmospheric carbon dioxide as their source of carbon, so they tend to have a uniform ratio of carbon isotopes in their remains. But the team found that Prototaxites specimens varied considerably in their carbon composition. That suggests it was getting its carbon from varied sources in the ground -- strong evidence that the fossilized protuberance was the fruiting body of a giant fungus, they report in the May issue of the journal Geology, released today.
-- Rick Weiss
Fin Trade Imperils Basking Shark
Basking sharks continue to be hunted for their fins despite global protections for the world's second-largest fish, a new report indicates.
Using DNA analysis, researchers found fins from the sharks -- which have been declared endangered by the World Conservation Union and are under strict international trade regulations -- in both the Japanese and Hong Kong markets.
The findings, published in the online edition of the journal Animal Conservation, indicate that the trade in shark fins continues to pose a threat to the species. The sharks can grow as long as 40 feet and are considered vulnerable because they mature late and have few offspring.
"The demand for basking shark fins, which can fetch prices in excess of $50,000 for a single large fin, is continuing to drive the exploitation, surreptitious and otherwise, of this highly threatened species," said Mahmood Shivji, who led the research and directs the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. "This finding, along with our recent research documenting extremely low genetic diversity in basking sharks worldwide, raises urgent concerns about the longer-term health of this species."
The scientists, who also came from the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, Imperial College London and Britain's Durham University, said they learned that when Chinese fin traders used the term "Nuo Wei Tian Jiu," they were often referring to basking sharks.
-- Juliet Eilperin
From today's Washington Post
Thanks for the link, ul.... I think people around the world will become more concerned about our environment in the future.
Morning all, especially the 0430 riser....
Great photos all.
clicked for another tree.
Luv the photos!
Hurray for the Goldmans! Individuals par excellence!
Good articles, sue.
Victory: the U.S. Forest Service agreed to abandon nine large timber sales in wild areas of Alaska's Tongass National Forest and not to offer any new timber sales in Tongass roadless areas. The Tongass, which spans 17 million acres in Southeast Alaska, is the world's largest temperate rainforest. The forest is home to old growth trees, wolves, bears, salmon, moose and bald eagles, and provides some of the few remaining wild places after 50 years of industrial logging.
Birds healthy, not injured, and flew away!
That is SO GOOD about the Tongass.
yep
More wilderness news...
Soon, your Senators and Representatives will be voting on the first wilderness bills of the 110th Congress-- the Wild Sky Wilderness Act and America's Red Rock Wilderness Act. Together these bills will protect over nine million acres of forests and canyons, saving our wilderness heritage.
```
Over 20 years ago, Congress protected America's coasts, beaches, and marine ecosystems from the threats of oil and gas development when they adopted the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Moratorium. But now our fragile coasts are again being threatened by destructive drilling. Permanent protections are needed to protect those valuable resources.
Representatives Lois Capps (D-CA) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) are circulating a Dear Colleague letter to the House Committee on Appropriations. The letter urges Chairman Dicks and Ranking Member Tiahrt to continue the moratorium on drilling in the outer continental shelf (OCS).
You can ask your Senators to sign the letter and keep the moritorium active!
That's great news about your guestBird, stradee!
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ul's post makes a lot more sense here than it did at work, where only one of the pix came up - I thought she was offering up some kind of poetry :wink:
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aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,734,195.9 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 160,044.9 square feet.
American Prairie habitat supported: 59,483.0 square feet.
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,514,667.9 square feet.
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1 Aktbird57 .. 1790 62.765 acres
2 313 38.002 acres
YAH!!!!!
McDonald's (yes, the corporation) and Greenpeace formed an alliance to got a moratorium of clearing rainforest along the Amazon for farmers to convert land to grow soy. I thought I had captured article in my mouse but can't get it out.
Today's Washington Post.
New Allies on The Amazon
McDonald's, Greenpeace Unite To Prevent Rainforest Clearing
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; D01
It was an unusual group to be sharing a small boat making its way up the Amazon River.
There were four environmental activists from Greenpeace -- Brazilians and others who flew in from Europe for the trip. And there were four corporate leaders of McDonald's, the world's largest fast-food chain, from its Chicago headquarters and from Europe.
The eight were in the rainforest together on a mission to see firsthand where farmers were cutting down virgin forest to grow soy beans for, among other customers, McDonald's. And though Greenpeace had not long ago been accusing McDonald's of complicity in the deforestation, by the time of the Amazon trip in January, the eight officials were calling each other partners.
Those weren't just words. The ubiquitous fast-food company and the global environmentalists had already jointly pressured the biggest soy traders in Brazil into placing an unprecedented two-year moratorium on the purchase of any soy from newly deforested areas.
Officials at Cargill, the huge multinational company that supplied McDonald's with Brazilian soy for chicken feed and ultimately pushed fellow soy traders to accept the moratorium, confirmed that the odd couple of McDonald's and Greenpeace made it happen.
"McDonald's and, yes, Greenpeace, were the catalysts," said Laurie Johnson, a spokeswoman for Cargill. "They brought together a wide range of people and created a sense of real urgency."
The tale of how the two heavyweights came together reflects the complexities, pressures and ironies of the globalized economy. It also illustrates how once-unthinkable partnerships can become forces for addressing environmental and social problems that governments cannot handle.
With Brazilian soy, the problem at least partially grew out of an unrelated dispute over genetically modified food products.
While U.S. consumers and many others largely accept biotech foods, the products are unpopular with Europeans, and most companies doing business in Europe make a point of using only soy, corn and other staples that have not been genetically modified. With U.S. and other major soy growers increasingly turning to biotech crops, Brazilian growers saw a market opportunity in traditional, non-modified soy.
With help from multinational companies such as Cargill, some Brazilian farmers began cutting down trees in the interior of the Amazon rainforest to grow soy and other crops. The scale of the operation did not become apparent until 2003, when Greenpeace and other activists saw satellite maps that showed significant new deforestation. Because of the Amazon rainforest's central role in modulating global climate, the maps caused immediate alarm.
Greenpeace's investigators searched records to see which companies were involved in the destruction and which were buying the rainforest soy. One relatively small-scale but high-profile buyer was McDonald's European operation, which fed the soy to chickens destined to become McNuggets.
Greenpeace and other non-governmental organizations have become adept at putting pressure on big companies like McDonald's, which don't want customers to think they are unfriendly to the environment or mistreating animals. Greenpeace not only staged rainforest protests at McDonald's outlets in Europe last spring, but it also sent its ship, the Arctic Sunrise, to block Cargill's port in the Amazon city of Santarem.
Following the protests, the fast-food chain and the environmentalists got together and brought in Cargill. The company had opened a port and series of soy silos at Santarem in 2003 and encouraged some farmers to grow soy for it -- though Johnson, the spokeswoman, said the company thought most of the 150 to 200 farmers it worked with were tilling land that had been deforested long ago. She also said the port was used to ship soy grown outside the rainforest.
At first, Cargill took the stand that it was bringing economic development to an impoverished region and was already working with the Nature Conservancy and others to promote good stewardship practices. Greenpeace, and soon additional environmental groups, replied that the company was inducing farmers to move into environmentally fragile areas, where they often began planting with fake property papers, without proper permits and with little understanding of forest conservation.
Faced with its unhappy McDonald's client, Cargill brought together other Brazilian soy traders, and they ultimately agreed on the moratorium -- an unthinkable action just a few months before.
"We really didn't see an immediate problem with the soy farmers, but we could see how it could grow into a big problem in the future," Cargill's Johnson said. "The moratorium will give everyone time to plan how to better control the farming and protect the forest."
A working group of soy traders and environmental and community organizations is scheduled to meet this month to discuss the soy farmers, this time with representatives of the Brazilian government, too.
For McDonald's, working with a group like Greenpeace was unusual but not unprecedented. The company has joined with a variety of environmental and animal welfare groups over the years on issues including the company's packaging, the use of environmentally harmful refrigerants and treatment of farm animals. Creating a responsible supply chain is part of the corporate culture, its officials say, though it clearly is also good public relations.
"We listened to what Greenpeace was saying about soy from the rainforest, and I think we surprised them at first by saying, 'You're right. We have a problem here,' " said Bob Langert, McDonald's vice president for corporate citizenship. "We have a firm policy against using beef -- or any other products -- that come from the rainforest. So when we learned that some of our soy was coming from there, we got involved."
John Sauven, head of Greenpeace's rainforest initiative, said that joint efforts between nonprofit groups and major corporations have become increasingly important and sophisticated but that the idea of partnering with McDonald's was hardly in the initial plan.
"We have an active campaign to save the rainforests, and it turned out that we and McDonald's had very similar goals," he said. "We didn't start out with the idea of focusing on McDonald's or partnering with them, and someday we may well go after them again on other issues. But on this one, they played a highly positive role."
John Buchanan, director for agriculture and fisheries for Conservation International, a nonprofit group, said his organization has been working with the big traders of soy and other grains in Brazil for some time, helping them create "environmental scorecards" to see how they are doing throughout their long supply chains.
Buchanan said Greenpeace and McDonald's uncovered a growing problem that had not been flagged before. Together they "shook the tree" in "soil that had been cultivated by others," and now unprecedented environmental progress is possible, he said.
"You never know how things will ultimately turn out, but this could be an important model for attacking very complicated social and environmental problems in the future," he said.
That's great, sumac......
I can see it now - - - Willard Scott reporting the weather from the Rain Forest....
(He was the original Ronald McDonald)
See what is beginning to happen now that the Hard Shelled Conservatives aren't still in power!!!! I like the middle myself - so I can gather info and decide to my satisfaction which is the best thing to do.
I developed a saying years ago, "Anyone who is so far left or right of a subject that they can't even discuss the issue, is crazy."
That apparently holds true with the sectarian issue in Iraq today.
One more tree smiling......
Excellent news, sue!
The Dems are moving forward....
Senator Feinstein {D-CA} authored a Bill {S.887} The bill reinstates the USDA for Animal and Plant Health inspections. Currently fewer agricultural inspections are being conducted at our borders and ports, and
there is also decreased communication between the program and
state agricultural organizations. surprise
The Gov Accountability Office reviewed the transfer in a report sent to congress entitled "Homeland Security: Management and Coordination Problems Increase the Vulnerability of U.S. Agriculture to Foreign Pests and Disease"....The report found that the rate of inspections at several key American points of entry has significantly decreased....fewer inspections...to few specialists....
Still researching why bees are falling out of the sky....suspect insecticides for larger producing nations, but smaller countries that do not subscribe to using industrial insecticides - bee conlonies faring better.
Looking at every aspect of issues is the only way we can find answers and implement intelligent solutions.
--Stradee
Well, this wildclicker will be outdoors for the rest of the day. April has graced the Sierras with two days of sunshine and warm temps.
Me too. Lunch and out I go.
aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,734,828.0 square feet!
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1 Aktbird57 .. 1791 62.782 acres
Just had to share this =
Our Senator John Cornyn sent an email to me - and millions of other Texans I suppose - asking for help in defeating the Democratic response to Bush's recent push in Iraq... My reply to him =
(((Senator Cornyn,
Thank you for your email - however, I cannot in good conscientiousness agree with all of your message.
President Bush's agenda in the entire Middle East is missing the point completely. We should concentrate our funds on America. Not Iraq. It was a mistake from the beginning to invade. I have lost close friends here in Atlanta as a result of my saying that just days prior to the invasion four years ago. My then 'friends' are now concluding that I was correct in my assessments - as are the apparent majority of Americans.
Our president has made our country look foolish in the eyes of the rest of the world. I want that to change. There is no reason to say to anyone, "If you aren't with me, then you're against me." That is and was a childish statement - alienating the USA.
So, to your appeal - my response is - Let us get back to fighting the real war against terrorist, in Afganistan. Let the Bush family deal with the Bin Ladens in their own way and leave the USA out of it.
I fought honorably for my country in Vietnam. Even at my age I would still defend freedom - but, this is different. Let's get back to the real war.
I have no doubt you will never read this - but, it might make a small difference if someone in your staff makes a mark in the right column of the right report that sufficiently validates my point.
Major R. D. Hampton (Ret.)
Another early riser on the east coast. Hiya MA. Dan, I think I might have used stronger language than "foolish", but no one contacts me with such a request for action in support of Bush.
Mornin', Sue. Yeah, I'm an early riser. Have to be; have to be at work by 7:30. (I've already clicked. It's often the first thing I do while sipping my first cuppa.)
