It’s known for secreting fluid around the carcasses of birds and rodents in the Nebraska Sandhills to disguise their scent and then using the decaying remains as hatching sites for its eggs.
The endangered beetle is also known for the challenge it presents to construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a point seized upon again on Tuesday by the Center for Biological Diversity and other pipeline opponents from environmental ranks.
The rapid disruption of tropical forests worldwide probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other force today.
The best hope lies in protected areas.
Yet many protected areas are not effectively protecting biodiversity.
The authors write:
Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health:’ about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally.
Comparison of ecological changes inside vs outside protected areas, for selected environmental drivers. The bars show percentage of reserves with improving vs worsening conditions: Laurance, et al, Nature 2012, DOI:10.1038/nature11318
Here at the EF! Newswire, we received a response from a local EF!er on this story, which we felt was worthy of relaying on to readers:
“This is total bullshit by the way. I live in Jackson County, and work on the protection of water resources. This guy built dams on ephemeral streams and created ponds that hold 40 acre feet of water. For non-water geeks, that that’s one acre of water, 40 feet tall. That’s a lot of water.
As much as I may not be thrilled with my local rag, they got this one right.[According to the article: “Water managers say the water Harrington has captured is a tributary of nearby Crowfoot Creek.
It is troubling that the government apparently can enforce jurisdiction over every drop of water in the Bug Butte Springs Watershed. But anyone hoping to see the law reconsidered should find a more sympathetic victim of government overreach.”]
Creating dams on streams and removing it from the ecosystem isn’t cool folks. There are Earth First!ers out there using the system to try and keep water in the streams. This guy ain’t one of them.
Don’t swallow the tea party line.”
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Thanks for calling us out, folks. Below is the original article, for reference. We apologize for allowing this to be carelessly reprinted. Lesson hard learned…
Oregon Criminalizes Permaculture; Claims State Ownership Over All Rainwater – Ponds and Swales Restricted – Jail Time for Violators
July 29 2012
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor naturalnews.com
There’s nothing more refreshing than standing in a cool, summertime rain shower. Or bathing in the warm sunlight on a crisp spring day. Or inhaling the cool autumn air, fresh with the scent of turning leaves and pine needles. These things — rainwater, sunlight, air — have long been assumed to be not only free, but un-claimable. You can’t claim to own the sunlight that falls on my front yard, for example. A corporation can’t claim intellectual property ownership over the air that you breathe and demand you pay a royalty for inhaling.
But today, Jackson County, Oregon says it owns YOUR rainwater, and the county has sentenced a man to 30 days in jail and fined him over $1500, for the supposed “crime” of collecting rainwater on his own property.
Friday’sCritical Mass, a monthly mass bike ride through central London, was the focus of a huge police operation on Stratford High Street, with 182 arrests made.
The Met [police] attempted to limit the ride under provisions in section 12 of thePublic Order Act 1986, which states that the police can impose conditions on a public procession if they hold the reasonable belief that “it may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community.” As Critical Mass, which uses the roads entirely legally, has been taking place monthly since 1994 without ever previously incurring the imposition of a section 12 order its potential to “result in serious public disorder” seems doubtful. It is open to all and welcomes cyclists, skateboarders, wheelchair users and other self-propelled people.
In a statement, the Met said that the order was put in place “to prevent serious disruption to the community and the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.”
Protesters hold placards and shout slogans as they march to form a ‘human chain’ around Japan’s parliament in Tokyo, to demonstrate against nuclear power plants. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images
Tens of thousands of people protested againstnuclear powerplants outsideJapan‘s parliament on Sunday.
The protesters, including pensioners, were pressed up against a wall of steel thrown around the parliament building. Some broke through the barriers and spilled onto the streets, forcing the police to bring in reinforcements and deploy armoured buses to buttress the main parliament gate.
A new scientific study indicates the turn-of-the-century drought in the North American West was the worst of the last millennium—with major impacts to the carbon cycle and hints of even drier times ahead.
The study, titled “Reduction in carbon uptake during turn of the century drought in western North America,” indicates that the major drought that struck western North America from 2000 to 2004 severely reduced carbon uptake and stressed the region’s water resources, with significant declines in river flows and crop yields. It was published on July 29 in Nature-Geoscience. NSIDC scientist Kevin Schaefer is a co-author on the study, along with Christopher Williams of Clark University. The study was led by Christopher Schwalm of NAU, formerly at Clark University.
Researchers found that the turn-of-the-century drought was the most severe region-wide event of its kind since the last mega drought 800 years ago. “The turn-of-the-century drought may be the wetter end of a new climatology that would make the 21st century climate like mega-droughts of the last millennium,” said Schwalm.
BURLINGTON, Vt. July 30, 2012—Members of the Innu First Nation from Quebec and the Nulhegan Abenaki of Vermont were denied access to the 36th Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers this morning.
Around 9:30 am, while governors and premiers were discussing access to renewable energy, Charles Megeso of the Nulhegan Abenaki and Elyse Vollant, from the Innu community of Uashat-Maniutenam entered the Hilton Hotel and asked to speak with governors and have a seat at the table, according to Megeso.
According to Megeso, they were told by conference director John Shea, “we just don’t have enough room for you here. There’s not enough breakfast.”
The war came home this weekend, as thousands of people whose land has been under siege by the U.S. government and corporate interests gathered in Washington, D.C. No, they weren’t victims of drone attacks or 10-plus years of fighting in Afghanistan. They were ordinary Americans, whose neighborhoods, townships and states have been struggling to put an end to fracking, a destructive form of natural gas drilling.
Protest at the Department of the Environment in Ireland earlier this year calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to reject Teagasc’s recent application to introduce GM potatoes to County Carlow
It was reported last week that Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency had approved the trial of a genetically modified potato crop. The decision has, unsurprisingly, attracted criticism from environmental protesters.
Other campaigners against the crop have stated their fears that it will ruin the country’s reputation Continue reading →
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