Planetsave

The Canadian government opted last week to allow the killing 500 narwhals trapped beneath ice rather than calling in icebreakers to free the animals, claiming the process would have been too stressful for the whales.

Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and star of Animal Planet’s Whale Wars, wrote a lengthy condemnation of the Canadian government’s decision. He noted that the government provides millions to fund ice-breaking for the annual baby seal hunt, but rejected the idea when proposed in order to save the whales.

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The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the government of Cameroon have just created a new national park to preserve habitat for the Cross River gorilla, the world’s most endangered great ape.

Besides the Cross River gorillas, the 261 square mile Takamanda National Park will also protect populations of forest elephants, chimpanzees, and a rare primate and close relative of the mandrill, the drill.

Takamanda also forms part of a trans-boundary protected area with Cross River National Park in Nigeria, safeguarding about 115 gorillas (a third of the Cross River gorilla population). Trans-boundary protected areas allow species to roam freely between nations.

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As seen on TV, the Sea Shepherd Society is once again readying their boat in order to thwart the efforts of Japanese whalers

Just earlier this week the Japanese whaling ship called the Nisshin Maru left port to begin hunting and slaughtering an expected 1,000 whales. Luckily enough, the Sea Shepherd Society has the whales’ backs…er, fins? It’s an annual confrontation between the society and the whalers, one that I’m enormously grateful for! Read the rest of this entry »

Japan will drop its minke whale targets from 935 to 750, the first reduction made in over 20 years.

On top of reduced whale meat demand and world-wide pressure, Japan cites the unrelenting sea protests as a reason for this decision. This comes as both a huge victory for the animal rights community and also as breaking news, considering stories earlier today reported this season’s quota to be the same as it had been in previous years.

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Once severely endangered, elephants in South Africa now thrive, causing some to worry that their population could threaten smaller species.

While some are calling to reinstate culling of elephants for the first time since 1994, other conservationists worry that the effects of killing elephants run deeper than we understand.

In 1900, the elephant population sunk to only 200 due to hunting; now, the population is estimated to be 17,000. This soaring number combined with their individual demand for feed can result in over-grazing, which hurts the rhinoceros and gazelle populations first.

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The USDA has confiscated Ned, a severely underweight male elephant from circus trainer Lance Ramos, aka Lancelot Kollman. Only the second elephant to have been confiscated by the USDA, Ned was taken from Ramos for failure to comply with the Animal Welfare Act and was placed with The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

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Combined Water Issues Map from WaterCAMPWS

In reporting about our current and impending national freshwater issues I have occassionally received criticism/feedback along the lines of “water conservation may be important in places like Africa, but we live in the U.S…so quit the scare tactics!”.

I find this ‘we-invented-water!’ attitude troubling considering the myriad of water issues facing our country today. Issues that, if not dealt with soon, will become a crisis making the oil problem look like a bad hair day.

So how best do I illustrate our current water woes to the folks who do not appreciate my water conservation tips?

…I got it! How about I get some leading minds in the field together to impart their focused wisdom? And accompany said wisdom with PICTURES!

Great idea me!

WaterCAMPWS, help!…

WaterCAMPWS (Center of Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems) consists of university faculty, research scientists, graduate and undergraduate students, and municipal practitioners in fields related to water purity from University of California Berkeley, MWRDG-Chicago, Clark Atlanta University, Howard University, University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NRMRL-EPA, Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, Sandia National Laboratories, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Yale University.

WaterCAMPWS has listed the threats to our water supply as:
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Captain Paul Watson, leader of the controversial direct-action anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, said in the first episode of Animal Planet’s Whale Wars that his organization disrupts whaling because governments refuse to enforce the International Whaling Commission’s guidelines on their own.

It looks like Sea Shepherd will be left to disrupt the Japanese without government assistance this whaling season yet again, which starts in about a month.

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South African National Parks (SANParks) held a UN sanctioned auction on November 6th,  where they sold off 47 metric tons of stockpiled ivory, earning the government conservation agency US$6.7 million.

The auction in South Africa marked the end of a “once-off” sale of ivory approved by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) involving South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.   Since October, the four countries have participated in a series of legal ivory auctions and have sold over 100 metric tons of ivory, mainly to Chinese and Japanese buyers.  All together, the UN sanctioned auctions have earned about US $15 million.

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Thousands of anti-nuclear campaigners have assembled along a train route in Germany to protest the annual convoy carrying tons of nuclear waste from France to a storage facility in northeastern Germany.

In what is becoming an annual ritual of civil resistance and direct action in Germany, more than 15,000 anti-nuclear protesters turned out along the route to Gorleben on Sunday—twice the number at a similar protest at the site two years ago—in the largest and most violent anti-nuclear protest in Germany since 2001.

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