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Archive for April 25th, 2011
Mexican environmental activist shot dead
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 25th, 2011
Mongabay: Mexican environmental activist shot dead
La Morena Mexico in the Petatlán Mountains in the state of Guerroro as viewed by Google Earth.
Javier Torres Cruz, 30, who fought illegal deforestation by drug traffickers in the Mexican state of Guerroro, was murdered a week ago. A member of the local NGO, Environmental Organization of the Coyuca and Petatlán Mountains, Torres Cruz was known as an outspoken activist against illegal logging in the mountainous dry forest region. Logging in the region...
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Losing, but slowly, in struggle to fight back the sea
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 25th, 2011
National Public Radio: Some of the nation's richest and most important ecosystems lie where the ocean meets the land. It's these same coastal areas that are going to disappear as sea level continues to rise as a result of climate change.
But in one wildlife refuge in North Carolina, conservationists are attempting what would seem to be impossible: fighting back the sea.
Effects Of Rising Seas
Much of the coastal land in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is at or near sea level. Maps of this area show the...
Retreating into denial
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 25th, 2011
New York Times: In the U.S., concern over human effects on the natural world began with conservationism, an attachment to particular beloved places and creatures. Then, in 1960s and "˜70s, the ecological movement helped show that the human footprint extends beyond specific locales "” it is systemic, threatening whole species and ecosystems.
Climate change has rendered the green laws of the "˜70s even more far-reaching than their authors intended.
Conservation gave way to environmentalism, the consciousness...
Gold prices spur six-fold spike in Amazon deforestation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 25th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Deforestation in parts of the Peruvian Amazon has increased six-fold in recent years as small-scale miners, driven by record gold prices, blast and clear more of the lowland rainforest, according to a new Duke University-led study.
The study, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, combined NASA satellite imagery spanning six years with economic analyses of gold prices and mercury imports to document the forces responsible for deforestation in Peru's biologically diverse Madre de Dios region....
Texas fires probably due to global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 25th, 2011
Hamilton Spectator: DALLAS Texas horizons have been red lately, but not from great sunsets.
Wildfires have burned roughly 400,000 hectares and destroyed nearly 200 homes this year during one of the state’s worst droughts and through its driest March.
The manifold Texas calamities take on an apocalyptic, Mad Max quality, with exhausted firefighters attacking flames taller than they are and whole towns on alert for evacuation.
Scientists say the immediate cause is a La Nina, a recurring, months-long pattern that...