The official International Tiger Day Poster for 2014.
Source: tigerday.org
GR: During the past century, we lost 97% of all wild tigers. Habitat loss and hunting eliminated 97,000 of the 100,000 tigers we had a century ago. At this rate, all tigers living in the wild will be extinct in 10 years! Celebrate International Tiger Day and encourage others to join in.
MADRAVENSPEAK
By Patricia Randolph
“I do not think we in any way should feel complacent that we are not on the list of possible extinctions.” ~ Richard Leakey, paleontologist
“Every day that passes the world is in worse shape.
“Humans are in the process of destroying more species on earth in this 100 years than have gone extinct in the past 65 million years. We hear overwhelming statistics and we dissociate. Earth is in human-caused crisis on almost every level – overpopulation of humans doing the wrong things in energy and mining extraction, poisoned and genetically altered food supplies, accelerating climate change, and destroying biodiversity to a tipping point of collapse.
“Politics operates within the framework that humans are the lords of creation, and all life and the natural world are just a commodity for our abuse and consumption. In 1950, 2.5 billion people walked the planet. Now, 64 years later, we have nearly tripled our numbers, with no policies in place to quell our breeding. Heck – not just no policies – no discussion. We need a moratorium on human pregnancy. We act like other populations should be managed, but not our own?
“It is not just overpopulation – it is also the rate of consumption. A child born in the United States consumes as much as 15 children in poor countries. But the developing world is also exploding into consumption. The lifestyle of “modern” industrial society is now served by tar sands development covering an area greater than the state of New York where Canadian boreal forests recently sustained life.
“Amazon deforestation is even faster than Canada in the rush to grow feed for global meat consumption.
“Poisoned, genetically manipulated food supplies and exhausted aquifers service the human confinement of 60 billion farm animals globally moved annually to slaughter.
“The 7-year-old “Call of Life” documentary puts it in stark terms: “Natural systems that have been stable for millions of years are in turmoil.”
“It’s people carrying out the most basic of human activities that is causing all these things we share the planet with to disappear forever,” laments Gretchen Daily, director of the Tropical Research Center at Stanford University. She says it is hard to wrap our minds around our driving into oblivion so many species evolved over millions of years as our only known living companions in the universe. We are likely to wipe out half of the estimated 10 million species on earth in this century.
“The film explores how many people will die from the loss of biodiversity. It is estimated to be billions from loss of ecosystem services and the web of life that supports us.”
“The international community is engaged in a race to halt biodiversity loss and reduce carbon emissions caused by deforestation. Funding for environmental protection is currently scarce; yet keeping wild areas free of roads is a remarkably cost-efficient way of protecting biodiversity and keeping the planet cool, and is an antidote to slow political decision making. RoadFree brings together environmental experts and partners who are working to keep wild places roadfree.”
Watch the Video.
More posts about roads:
“At least 88 percent of the surface of the world’s open oceans is polluted by plastic debris, says a new scientific report. The findings raise large concerns of the safety of marine life and how this ocean litter may affect food chains.
“High concentrations of floating plastic debris have been reported in remote areas of the ocean, increasing concern about the accumulation of plastic litter on the ocean surface. Since the introduction of plastic materials in the 1950s, the global production of plastic has increased rapidly and will continue in the coming decades. However, the abundance and the distribution of plastic debris in the open ocean are still unknown, despite evidence of affects on organisms ranging from small invertebrates to whales. In this work, we synthetize data collected across the world to provide a global map and a first-order approximation of the magnitude of the plastic pollution in surface waters of the open ocean.
“Those little pieces of plastic, known as microplastics, can last hundreds of years and were detected in 88 percent of the ocean surface sampled during the Malaspina Expedition 2010,” lead researcher and the author of the study Andres Cozar from the University of Cadiz, told AFP.”
“The results of the study “Plastic debris in the open ocean” are based on 3,070 total ocean samples collected around the world by Spain’s Malaspina science expedition in 2010. They have been recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).”
“Ocean currents carry plastic objects which split into smaller and smaller fragments due to solar radiation,” says Cozar. “These micro plastics have an influence on the behavior and the food chain of marine organisms.”
“Cozar added that most of the impacts taking place due to plastic pollution in the oceans “are not yet known.”
See more on this subject at: SprinterLife
GR: Every day the air, the rivers, and the barges carry our garbage out to sea. Plastic might be the least harmful ingredient.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association, along with allies like Monsanto and Dow, have teamed up with Koch-backed Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas to introduce a federal bill that would deny your right to know what is in your food.
This bill, (HR 4432), which has been called the “Denying Americans the Right-to-Know Act” (DARK Act), is on the march and has just gained 20 new Republican co-sponsors, bringing the total up to 25. That’s 25 members of Congress who stand with industry in an effort to keep consumers in the dark.
“This backwards bill would:
“GE labeling is important to Americans, with over 90% consistently supporting transparency in the marketplace through mandatory GE labeling. In 2013 and 2014 there were over 70 GE labeling bills and ballot initiatives introduced across 30 states, with laws being passed in Maine, Connecticut and Vermont. The DARK Act would shut down these efforts and replace them with an undemocratic, hollow “voluntary” labeling scheme. In the 13 years that FDA has allowed companies to voluntarily label GE foods, a total of zero companies have done so. This is not the solution consumers have been demanding.”
Source: salsa3.salsalabs.com
GR: Here’s congress teaming with industry to block our right to know what’s in our food. And this time it’s the Republicans.
Pesticide-resistant GMO crops pose a serious threat. Now that we know pesticides are killing pollinators and other essential elements of our Earth ecosystems, we need to be able to discourage pesticide use by avoiding the foods made from resistant GMO’s.
Systemic pesticides pose global threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services.The conclusions of a new meta-analysis of the systemic pesticides neonicotinoids and fipronil (neonics) confirm that they are causing significant damage to a wide range of beneficial invertebrate species and are a key factor in the decline of bees.
Concern about the impact of systemic pesticides on a variety of beneficial species has been growing for the last 20 years but the science has not been considered conclusive until now.
Undertaking a full analysis of all the available literature (800 peer-reviewed reports) the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides – a group of global, independent scientists affiliated with the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management and the IUCN Species Survival Commission has found that there is clear evidence of harm sufficient to trigger regulatory action.
(Photograph: David R. Frazier/Alamy)
Source: havehest.wordpress.com
GR: This article from IUCN is about insecticides. Herbicides are equally dangerous. When I finally got my own place and began preparing pastures for cattle (pets, not food), I used mechanical means (mowing and pulling) to subdue the weeds. The weeds (most were human-introduced invasive species from Asia) kept spreading.
My father said the herbicide “2,4-D” was safe for people and animals. I checked the literature and found hundreds of studies confirming the harmless nature of the compound. I began using it. I never used the insecticides. Studies showing the damaging effects of “2,4-D” began appearing, and I stopped using it. Numerous studies have since shown links between “2,4-D” to everything from cancer to food-chain disruption to colony collapse in bees.
Mechanical weed removal is initially more expensive than the herbicides, but it is the only safe option. Mechanical weed removal is one step in an effective weed management. My website (https://garryrogers.com/nature) has descriptions of the other steps required for efficient weed control.
GarryRogers Nature Conservation 