Archive for December 27th, 2011

FINAL APPEAL! Please Help Ecological Internet to Continue Serving Earth and You

** A final year-end funding appeal from Dr. Glen Barry to support Ecological Internet's ground-breaking, visionary and highly effective efforts to sustain Earth's ecology. Vital unmet needs remain unfunded. Please donate now at http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/donate/ Dear Earth Loving colleagues, We are very pleased that our shortened year-end fund-raiser has provided nearly $15,000 in resources for Ecological Internet's unique brand of global grassroots biocentric advocacy, committed to sustaining global ecology. For the first time in years, Ecological Internet is on a sound financial footing. Please help us make further progress towards our 2011 funding goal - and meet our programming, computer, data input expenses - by donating what you can online or by check now at: http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/donate/

Canada must protect North

Star Phoenix: Canada captured the world's attention by becoming the first signatory to extricate itself from the flawed Kyoto protocol, but it won't be able to extricate itself from the already apparent impact of the climate change the deal was meant to address. Environment Canada's recently released list of the top 10 weather events for 2011 is a reminder that weather patterns are changing and that the changes come with significant costs attached. Senior climatologist David Phillips, who has been putting out...

Confusing year of weather for Britain’s wildlife

Guardian: It was an odd sort of year for weather: effectively two springs and not an awful lot of summer. But it proved an interesting one for Britain's flora and fauna. The National Trust, which produces an annual end-of-year report on how the British weather has affected its creatures and plants, recorded a boom year for creatures ranging from the grey seal to the large blue butterfly. A warm spring meant creatures such as mining bees, which nest in the ground, and their parasite, the bee fly, thrived...

Peru: No Time Left To Adapt To Melting Glaciers

Eurasia Review: The water supplied by the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca, vital to a huge region of northwest Peru, is decreasing 20 years sooner than expected, according to a new study. Water flows from the region`s melting glaciers have already peaked and are in decline, Michel Baraer, a glaciologist at Canada`s McGill University, told Tierramérica. This is happening 20 to 30 years earlier than forecasted. "Our study reveals that the glaciers feeding the Río Santa watershed are now too small to maintain...

United Kingdom: The year of strange weather

Independent: The topsy-turvy weather of 2011 had a roller-coaster effect on British wildlife, it has now become clear. The freezing winter, the hot spring, the cool summer and the near-record warm autumn of the year just past produced a mixture of striking but very different effects on birds, mammals, insects and plants, first devastating their populations, then allowing them to rebuild at record rates, and in cases such as butterflies, letting them linger on far longer than normal. Small birds in particular...

Fish in Small Tanks Are Shown to Be Much More Aggressive

New York Times: Tropical fish hobbyists will tell you their tanks are a source of relaxation, but recent research suggests the fish might disagree. Nearly 13 million American households contain a fish tank, and the average tank size is less than 10 gallons. Yet a study comparing the behavior of common freshwater fish in a variety of habitats found that those kept in such small tanks were considerably more aggressive than those in larger ones — more likely to fight, flare their gills and guard whatever tiny alcoves...

A Strong Year for Spawning Salmon in Maine’s Rivers

New York Times: Ernie Atkinson waded up Old Stream on a warm fall afternoon, peering through polarized sunglasses to scan the streambed. Before long, he pointed out a place where the bottom looked different. “You can see how the gravel is a lot cleaner right here — it kind of shines,” said Mr. Atkinson, a fishery biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources. “O.K., we’ve got one, two, four redds right here.” Redds are places where spawning salmon use their tails to dig holes in the gravel, deposit their...