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Archive for March, 2010
Common pesticide changes male frogs into females, likely devastating populations
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Mongabay: One of the world's most popular pesticides, atrazine, chemically castrates male frogs and in some instances changes them into completely functionally females, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors conclude that atrazine likely plays a large, but unsuspected role in the current global amphibian crisis. To study how atrazine impacts frogs, researchers studied the long-term effects of the pesticide on an all-male group forty of ...
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Comments Off on Common pesticide changes male frogs into females, likely devastating populationsUN proposes WTO-style environment watchdog
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Business Green: A global environmental watchdog modelled on the powerful World Trade Organisation (WTO) could be formed as part of any international climate change treaty, according to environment ministers meeting in Bali last week who agreed to form a new working group to investigate proposed reforms to environmental governance procedures. Speaking to reporters at the close of the meeting, Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), signalled there was growing support ...
Green Measures Expose Bias Against Urban Poor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Inter Press Service: Edgar Borras sifts through his remaining possessions in a demolished shanty beside a Manila waterway, preparing to bring them to his wife and 12-year-old son who now live in a remote relocation site in a province outside the Philippine capital. "They want to come back here. They don't like it there. It's too far," Borras said in an interview, referring to the site in Calauan in Laguna province, some 74 km away. Before a November 2009 government order to move flood-prone ...
Oil firms braced for anti-tar sand resolutions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Business Green: British companies involved in the controversial extraction of oil from Canadian tar sands in Alberta are preparing themselves for a backlash from shareholders and environmentalists hell bent on highlighting their opposition to the plans. According to reports in The Observer yesterday, an increasingly vocal group of shareholders and environmentalists are planning to turn the forthcoming BP, Shell and Royal Bank of Scotland annual meetings into a referendum on these controversial ...
United Kingdom: Thames Barrier closed again to protect capital
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Press Association: The Thames Barrier was closed for the third time in two days today to protect London from a combination of high tides and swollen rivers following heavy rainfall over the weekend. But the Environment Agency said the risk of flooding across England and Wales was easing, and the number of flood warnings and watches in place is expected to decrease. The flooding risk rose after days of heavy rain swelled rivers and saturated the ground. A storm which left at least 51 people ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: Thames Barrier closed again to protect capitalGuyana bans gold mining in the ‘Land of the Giants’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
Mongabay: Guyana has banned gold dredging in the Rewa Head region after an expedition turned up unspoiled wilderness and mind-boggling biodiversity. The researchers, in just six weeks, stumbled on the world's largest snake (anaconda), spider (the aptly named goliath bird-eating spider), armadillo (the giant armadillo), anteater (the giant anteater), and otter (the giant otter), leading them to dub the area 'the Land of the Giants'. "During our brief survey we had encounters with wildlife that ...
Discovery in legumes could reduce fertilizer use, aid environment
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2010
ScienceDaily: Nitrogen is vital for all plant life, but increasingly the planet is paying a heavy price for the escalating use of nitrogen fertilizer. Excess nitrogen from fertilizer runoff into rivers and lakes causes algal blooms that create oxygen-depleted dead zones, such as the 6,000 to 7,000 square mile zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and nitrogen in the form of nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas. But new findings by Stanford researchers that reveal the inner workings of ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Discovery in legumes could reduce fertilizer use, aid environment