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Expanding Gorilla Conservation

Posted by Angel on Wednesday, 29 August 2012 in Wildlife Conservation

Two months after media-mogul Ted Turner donated $1 million to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, the group has already begun to expand conservation efforts in Eastern Congo amid growing regional instability. The gift has allowed the organizatio...

Saving the Forest When Fires Burn

Posted by Angel on Thursday, 23 August 2012 in Forestry

In the 1990s, life was simpler for environmentalists. Crippling the logging industry was all that was needed to protect trees and birds. But, as in abortion or gun control, you have to sue everyone or you can sue no one and even responsible logging and clearing brush was stopped by environmen...

Hot Weather Speed up Harvest

Posted by Angel on Wednesday, 22 August 2012 in Agriculture

John Bollingberg remembers a few other years when the area’s wheat crop was harvested this early. But there’s an important difference with this early harvest. “Those other years, we didn’t have crops of any quality,” says Bollingberg, a retired 78-year-old Bremen, N.D., farmer. “But this ye...

Mississippi River Shows Signs of Drought

Posted by Angel on Wednesday, 22 August 2012 in Climate Change

These images show a stretch of the Mississippi River just south of Memphis, Tennessee. The top one was taken by a NASA satellite on August 8, 2012, and the bottom one by a different NASA satellite on August 14, 2011. See how there are huge patches of light tan along the river in the i...

Cameroon increases elephant protection after mass slaughter

Posted by Angel on Friday, 10 August 2012 in Wildlife Conservation

Yaoundé, Cameroon — Six months after the killing of hundreds of elephants in a Cameroon national park, WWF today is releasing exclusive video material from the scene of the shocking event. The release comes on the eve of World Elephant Day on Sunday, August 12, 2012. WWF fears that soon this event m...

Apple Returns to Green Registry After Dropout

Posted by Angel on Wednesday, 18 July 2012 in Green Products/Services

By Adam Satariano and Kathleen Chaykowski Apple Inc. (AAPL) said it’s rejoining an environmental rating system after its exit from the group threatened to halt sales to governments and universities that use the registry when making purchasing decisions. Apple’s decision to drop out of the environm...

The Challenge of Renewable Energy

Posted by Angel on Thursday, 12 July 2012 in Energy Efficiency

In the aftermath of the recent United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the focus of many industrialized nations is beginning to shift toward planning for a sustainable future. One of the foremost challenges for sustainability is efficient use of renewable energy resources, a goa...

Danger from oil spill may remain for turtles

Posted by Angel on Sunday, 01 July 2012 in Oil Spill

By Harvey Rice Ninety-four tiny members of the world’s most endangered sea turtle species struggled across the beach to reach the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday as park rangers waved away gulls looking for a quick meal. Only a handful of the 3-inch Kemp’s ridley turtles will avoid predators and other ...

Phytoplanktonic Seafood

Posted by Angel on Thursday, 28 June 2012 in Food

What What disturbed chef Angel León most about Spanish fishermen was all the unwanted species they tossed back into the ocean. High-value species went to market; the rest went overboard. These dead fish would never be coming up in their nets again. Bycatch is by no means confined to Spanish fisherie...

Progress on the Sidelines as Rio Conference Ends

Posted by Angel on Wednesday, 27 June 2012 in General Environment

By SIMON ROMERO and JOHN M. BRODER Burdened by low expectations, snarled by endless traffic congestion and shunned by President Obama, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development ended here as it began, under a shroud of withering criticism. The antipoverty organization CARE called the...

The Living Planet Report

Posted by Angel on Monday, 18 June 2012 in General Environment

The WWF’s Living Planet Report (LPR) is the world’s leading science-based analysis on the health of the Earth and the impact of human activity. The ninth biennial publication released in May, reviews the cumulative pressures humans are putting on the planet and the conseq...

A Call to Preserve Biodiversity in Rio

Posted by Angel on Monday, 11 June 2012 in Sustainable Development

An estimated 9 million species of living things inhabit the Earth — plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms such as algae and bacteria. But those species are disappearing at an alarming rate, and this loss of biodiversity appears to be a major driver of environmental changes that can af...

How to destroy the planet from the comfort of your own home; Part 1

Posted by Angel on Saturday, 02 June 2012 in Sustainable Development

By: Matt Grocoff IS NATURE SAFE FROM OUR HOMES? Homes exist to shelter us from storms, protect us from the elements, and keep us safe from nature. But, is nature safe from our homes? Henry Pollack, author of “A World Without Ice” and who with his colleagues on the International Panel on Climate C...

The Phase out of the Plastic Bag

Posted by Angel on Sunday, 27 May 2012 in Sustainable Development

Plastic bags are perhaps the largest source of waste from our modern consumer culture. Stores give them out without question for all products big and small. Later, they can be found littered on the sides of roads and highways, hanging from tree branches, floating in rivers and clogging up our landfi...

Will Algae Biofuels Hit the Highway?

Posted by Angel on Wednesday, 23 May 2012 in Biofuels

An Arizona-based algae technology company says it’s on to something big: harnessing the growth of algae at a commercial scale so that it can ultimately be used as a transportation fuel. “Heliae” broke ground Friday on its new plant. Now, all it needs is an abundance of sunshine, water and carbon dio...

L.A. makes history with ban on plastic bags at stores

Posted by Angel on Wednesday, 23 May 2012 in Sustainable Development

Los Angeles became the largest city in the nation to approve a ban on plastic bags at supermarket checkout lines, handing a hard-fought victory to environmentalists and promising to change the way Angelenos do their grocery shopping.The City Council voted 13 to 1 to phase out plastic bags over the n...

The $6 Gasoline That Almost Was

Posted by Angel on Thursday, 17 May 2012 in Biofuels

A landmark 2009 study, conducted by researchers at Iowa State's Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, and updated this week for impacts through 2011, found that US ethanol production reduced wholesale gasoline prices by an average of $1.09 per gallon, in 2011. ...

the mountain gorilla was swiftly destined to be lost to the world

Posted by Angel on Friday, 11 May 2012 in Wildlife Conservation

Hidden high among the forested volcanoes of central Africa, the mountain gorilla was unknown to science until 1902, when two were first encountered by a German explorer -- and promptly killed. It set the tone for the relationship. For much of the time since, due to deforestation and poach...

Algae Could Help Feed the World

Posted by Angel on Friday, 04 May 2012 in Food

Five years ago, algae was the “it” feedstock in the biofuel realm. The idea of taking an organism that feeds off of CO2 and using it to create fuel was as intoxicating to research scientists as it was to venture capitalists. Financing was available to fund the placement of extremely expensive photob...

Earth Day observed around the world

Posted by Angel on Sunday, 22 April 2012 in Arts and Entertainment

An Indian boy plays in the polluted waters of the Yamuna River in New Delhi. Women wearing leaves and flowers ready for a celebration in Barcelona. A girl holds a poster calling for water conservation amid a rain storm in Washington. The 42nd Ear...