naturalnews--2019-12-03--Rise of the superbugs: Bacteria are outsmarting humans. Will they eventually kill us all?

(Natural News) It is getting hard to keep track of all the recalls and outbreaks associated with foodborne illness lately. In the last month, apples, vegetable products, meat, and fish have all been recalled for possible Listeria contamination. In the same time frame, a Salmonella outbreak that has been linked to ground beef has been making the rounds, and an E. coli outbreak has been linked with packaged salad products (romaine lettuce is once again the suspect).  What is the reason for all of these recalls and outbreaks? Cat Ellis summed it up in the article Here’s Why There Are SO MANY Food Recalls Lately:  To make matters worse, superbugs are rapidly becoming a serious threat, and we are running out of ways to kill them. Several new studies and reports shed light on just how dire the situation is.  In the future, superbugs will kill millions every year.  Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that by the year 2050, 10 million people worldwide could die each year from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Currently, the WHO estimates that 700,000 people globally die from infection with drug-resistant microbes every year. At that point, these “superbugs” will have surpassed cancer, heart disease, and diabetes to become the main cause of death in the human race.  Superbugs are bacteria that have developed resistance to one or more classes of antibiotics, rendering those antibiotics less effective in treating infections. They are also known as antimicrobial-resistant bacteria (ARB).  One of the reasons antibiotic resistance is a growing problem is their widespread use in animals raised for food.  According to a recent study published in the journal Science,  There is a clear increase in the number of resistant bacterial strains occurring in chickens and pigs. Globally, 73% of all antimicrobials sold on Earth are used in animals raised for food. A growing body of evidence has linked this practice with the rise of antimicrobial-resistant infections, not just in animals but also in humans. Beyond potentially serious consequences for public health, the reliance on antimicrobials to meet demand for animal protein is a likely threat to the sustainability of the livestock industry, and thus to the livelihood of farmers around the world. (source).  The CDC recently published a report on Antibiotic/Antimicrobial Resistance, which revealed that more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result. In addition, 223,900 cases of Clostridioides difficile occurred in 2017 and at least 12,800 people died.  Clostridioides difficile (C.diff) is of special concern because it causes a dangerous infection that is linked to antibiotic use. It can cause deadly diarrhea when antibiotics kill beneficial bacteria in the digestive system that normally keep it under control. When the C. diff. illnesses and deaths are added, the annual U.S. toll of all these pathogens is more than 3 million infections and 48,000 deaths.  C. diff., drug-resistant gonorrhea, and carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE) are known as “nightmare bacteria” because they pose a triple threat. They are resistant to all or nearly all antibiotics, they kill up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from them, and the bacteria can transfer their antibiotic resistance to other related bacteria, potentially making the other bacteria untreatable.  Candida auris, a dangerous fungal infection that preys on people with weakened immune systems, is quietly spreading across the globe, as we reported earlier this year:  The CDC is concerned about C. aruis for three main reasons, according to the agency’s website. It is often multidrug-resistant, meaning that it is resistant to multiple antifungal drugs commonly used to treat Candida infections. It is difficult to identify with standard laboratory methods, and it can be misidentified in labs without specific technology. Misidentification may lead to inappropriate management. It has caused outbreaks in healthcare settings. For this reason, it is important to quickly identify C. auris in a hospitalized patient so that healthcare facilities can take special precautions to stop its spread. As of August 31, 2019, 806 confirmed cases of C. auris have been reported in the US. Beyond the reported clinical case counts, an additional 1642 patients have been found to be colonized with C. auris. While exact figures are not available (many infected people had other serious health issues that contributed to their deaths), an estimated 30-60% of those infected with C. auris die. (source)  One form of Acinetobacter, a group of bacteria commonly found in the environment (like in soil and water) has developed resistance to nearly all antibiotics:  Acinetobacter baumannii can cause infections in the blood, urinary tract, and lungs (pneumonia), or in wounds in other parts of the body. It can also “colonize” or live in a patient without causing infections or symptoms, especially in respiratory secretions (sputum) or open wounds. These bacteria are constantly finding new ways to avoid the effects of the antibiotics used to treat the infections they cause. Antibiotic resistance occurs when the germs no longer respond to the antibiotics designed to kill them. If they develop resistance to the group of antibiotics called carbapenems, they become carbapenem-resistant. When resistant to multiple antibiotics, they’re multidrug-resistant. Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter are usually multidrug-resistant. (source)  Pigs are one of the most intensively farmed animals in the world, according to a new report from nonprofit World Animal Protection. The organization tested pork products sold in two well-known national retail chains in the US, including Walmart.  Here is an excerpt from the report’s summary:


newsweek--2019-02-04--Ocean Bacteria Is Making Microplastics Stick Together to Form Bigger More Dangerous Pieces

Ocean Bacteria Is Making Microplastics Stick Together to Form Bigger, More Dangerous Pieces

Microscopic pieces of plastic waste floating in our oceans are sticking together to form larger pieces, potentially posing a risk to animals and starving deep-sea ecosystems, scientists have warned.  Microplastics measuring 5 mm or less are being fused together by exopolymers, a type of tacky biopolymer let off by organisms such as bacteria, according to research published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.  To investigate how biopolymers and plastics react when they meet, the team took Scottish water from the Faroe-Shetland Channel and the Firth of Forth: an estuary of a number of rivers. They then re-created the ocean surface environment and added polystyrene microplastics and nanoplastics (measuring between 1 to 1000 nanometers or less) to the water.  After a few minutes, organic substances including microorganisms and algae fused with the plastics and created masses called agglomerates. It was the biopolymers that caused the biggest formations.  Dr. Stephen Summers, an author of the study and research fellow at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, explained in a statement: “We found that the biopolymers envelop or engulf the nanoplastic particles, which caused the plastics to agglomerate into clumps.”  The nanoplastics are 100 to 200 times smaller than the individual bacteria, Summers said, and were “incorporated into the agglomerates, which became visible to the naked eye in our lab experiments.”  “The fact that these agglomerates become large enough to see raises concern, as they are likely to be seen as a food source by small marine animals,” he said.  Dr. Tony Gutierrez, a microbial ecologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, who was in charge of the study, said the “shower of organic detritus” which form agglomerates was comparable to marine snow: where organic matter like carbon and nutrients travel from the ocean surface to the bottom. This feeds the creatures who live in the deep sea.  “It will be interesting to understand if these nano- and micro-scale plastics of different densities could affect the food flux from the upper to lower reaches of the ocean,” said Gutierrez.  “Heavier plastics could drive marine snow to fall at a faster rate to the sea floor, while the opposite could happen with lighter forms of plastics in making it more buoyant and to fall more slowly. In that case, deep-sea ecosystems could become starved of food,” he warned. "To understand this scenario, we need data on how abundant these invisible plastics are in the ocean."  Gutierrez told Newsweek that members of the public concerned about their environmental impact could make a difference by using "more eco-friendly materials" and cutting their use of single-use plastic.  Since plastic started being manufactured on a large scale around 1950, humans have created more than 8,300 million metric tons of the stuff. Of that, around 6,300 metric tons is waste, and only 9 percent has been recycled. As much as 79 percent has ended up in landfills or in the natural landscape.  As such, scientists are grappling to understand just how this huge amount of material will impact the environment, including Earth’s bodies of water. Last week, researchers published the findings of a separate study where every washed-up sea animal that was tested contained microplastics.  The team assessed 50 animals, including dolphins, whales and seals, who were stranded off the coast of the U.K. The team found pieces of plastic at 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) or below in each.  Brendan Godley, an author of the study and professor of conservation science at England's University of Exeter, told Newsweek that the research “highlights the magnitude of plastic pollution. We expected to find plastics but were somewhat surprised when we found fibers in every single animal of all species.”  This article has been updated with comment from Dr. Tony Gutierrez.


activistpost--2019-09-16--Yale Study Wild Mosquitoes Retained Genes Of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

Yale Study: Wild Mosquitoes Retained Genes Of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

In Brazil a genetic engineering test of mosquitoes appears to have failed, with genes from the mutant mosquitoes now mixing with the native population, Nature reported. This comes as mad scientists in the U.S. are finding they are getting bitten back by messing with nature after running their own program to genetically modify mosquitoes.  The experiment involved a company called Oxitec which took male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and genetically engineered them to have a dominant lethal gene. The idea was first proposed in 2016, according to an article by Science Magazine that discussed the plans to release the GM insects.  According to the hypothesis when the genetically modified mosquitoes mated with wild female mosquitoes, the gene was supposed to drastically cut down the number of offspring they produced. Further, the few that were born should have been too weak to survive a long period of time.  A team of Yale students then studied the genomes of both the GM strain and the wild species before the release, then again six, 12 and 27 to 30 months after the release began.  Around 450,000 modified males were released in Jacobina, Brazil every week for 27 months straight, totaling tens of millions, according to the Yale study.  Sure enough, by the end of the test there was clear evidence that genes from the transgenic insects had been incorporated into the wild population. Although the GM mosquitoes only produce offspring about three to four percent of the time, it seems that those that are born aren’t as weak as expected. Some appear to make it to adulthood and breed themselves.  In theory, if the experiment worked it would have cut down the population of mosquitoes in an area estimated up to as much as 85 percent. This of course if successful would translate to fewer bug-borne diseases, like — dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and malaria in humans and animals alike.  However, that’s not what the final results were according to Yale University. Yale explains that some of the native bugs, they found, had surprisingly retained genes from the engineered mosquitoes; and even worse, the experiments made them more resilient.  According to New Atlas there are now three different strains of mosquitoes mixed together in Jacobina and other places of Brazil.  “The claim was that genes from the release strain would not get into the general population because offspring would die,’’ Jeffrey Powell, senior author of the study said. “That obviously was not what happened.”  Other researchers released genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in a controlled environment, into a high-security laboratory in Terni, Italy earlier this year, NPR reported.  Another research firm called Target Malaria research consortium also released 6,400 GM mosquitoes in West Africa, Burkina Faso, this year, which was condemned by the Civil Society, a group of organizations. The tests were funded by organisations linked to the Gates Foundation, Facebook, and – indirectly – the Pentagon, as part of a project to eradicate malaria, The Guardian reported.  The release of GM mosquitoes in the village was an unethical experiment, as Target Malaria acknowledges that there are no direct benefits to the local population of this particular GM mosquito release, in terms of malaria control. This was not an early stage trial of the GM mosquitoes intended to be tested later for their impact on malaria, but a release of an entirely different GM mosquito. Thus, there was no justification for making the releases. According to the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, which is based on the Nuremberg Code and outlines the internationally agreed ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects, such research “may only be conducted if the importance of the objective outweighs the risks and burdens to the research subjects” (Article 16). Indeed, the release of the GM mosquito in Burkina Faso poses risks, including the incidental release of some biting female GM mosquitoes during the experiments. While Target Malaria claims that the number will be small, nevertheless, since GM female mosquitoes can bite humans and spread disease, the release of biting females still poses some risk to local people.[ii]  Yale’s study is especially alarming because here in the U.S. the same company Oxitec was approved in the U.S. by the Food Drug Administration (FDA) in 2016, to genetically modify mosquitoes to fight against the Zika virus. This trial allowed the release of mosquitoes in the state of Florida for testing purposes in Key Haven, Monroe County.  Oxitec also obtained funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop the GM insects. It’s worth noting that Bill Gates has said just this year that “mosquitoes are the number one killer.”  Gates also released a swarm of mosquitoes on an unsuspecting audience at a TED conference in 2009 to prove a point.  But Oxitec’s experiments don’t end in the U.S. and Brazil, the lab was also approved to release its hellish X-Files like mosquitoes in France and the Netherlands in 2017.  Christoph Then for TestBiotech commented about the study stating,  Florida isn’t the only state that we may have to worry about releasing GM mosquitoes. In 2017 it was reported that the EPA officially registered another company named MosquitoMate’s Asian Tiger mosquito with a five-year license to sell their lab mosquitoes in as many as 20 states, Nature reported.  In 2017, that same year, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that mosquitoes carrying disease could invade as much as 75% of America in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. Last year, the CDC stated that the number of illnesses caused by mosquito, tick, and flea bites has tripled in the United States over the last 13 years, CBS reported.  It’s of particular interest to express that a mosquito-borne virus that causes brain swelling and can be fatal in humans was recently detected in Florida, according to the Florida Department of Health in Orange County. It may be a coincidence, but the research by Yale indicates that it may not be, but this was after Florida released GM mosquitoes in 2017-2018.  After being bitten by an infected mosquito, it takes four to 10 days to develop symptoms of the Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In severe cases involving brain inflammation, symptoms start with the sudden onset of headache, high fever, chills, and vomiting. The infection can then progress, causing disorientation, seizures, and coma, Yahoo News reported.  If that’s not enough, in 2018, the first reported mosquito-borne disease called the Keystone virus was thought only to be transmitted to animals, but jumped to infect humans according to doctors.  Where there have been negative results, there have also been positive results achieved by researchers at London’s Imperial College using “gene drive” technology to successfully eradicate a whole population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in their lab by making the insects infertile.  However, as Hellen Wallace wrote in Scientific American in 2011, “the release of genetically modified (GM) insects should follow a precautionary approach, because what appears well understood in the lab can have unintended consequences when released on a large scale into the environment.”  It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time that GM mosquitoes has come into question in Brazil. In 2016, the Mirror reported in a brave headline: “Was Zika outbreak caused by release of genetically modified mosquitoes in Brazil?”


naturalnews--2019-12-08--It's not climate change: Our DISPOSABLE society of plastic trash is killing the natural world, as ov

It's not climate change: Our DISPOSABLE society of plastic trash is killing the natural world, as over 70 gray whales have died on West Coast beaches

(Natural News) The trouble with a dogmatic belief in global warming is that it tends to color the believer’s view of every situation involving the environment. When hurricanes strike, it must be global warming; when there’s a flood somewhere, it must be global warming; when a species becomes extinct, it must be global warming. And somehow that has become the narrative that explains every single crisis facing the environment.  This obsession with global warming diverts our collective focus from the fact that the Earth is under tremendous strain from multiple different directions, none of which have anything to do with so-called climate change.  The truth is, our planet is drowning in plastic and other pollution, our oceans are overfished, our food is contaminated with pesticides and other toxic chemicals, and the global population is growing at a pace that cannot be matched by the Earth’s supply of natural resources.  Environmental crises are happening around us, all the time, for the most part ignored or simply lumped in with everything else that gets blamed on global warming.  One example of this is the recent unexplained death of more than 70 gray whales along the west coast of America – a disaster so alarming that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has labeled these strandings an Unusual Mortality Event (UME). This will allow the government to dedicate additional resources to finding out exactly why so many whales are dying. (Related: Massive whales mysteriously wash ashore on New Zealand beaches.)  At one time it seemed certain that whales would become extinct. Back in 1946, after years of whaling, only 2,000 gray whales were left in nature.  Support our mission to keep you informed: Discover the extraordinary benefits of turmeric gummy bears and organic "turmeric gold" liquid extract, both laboratory tested for heavy metals, microbiology and safety. Naturally high in potent curcuminoids. Delicious formulations. All purchases support this website (as well as your good health). See availability here.  In the late 1800s, the gray whale breeding grounds were discovered, and whalers killed a large percentage of the population. The drop in population made it no longer profitable to hunt gray whales; they were left alone and their numbers recovered. However, the early 1900s brought the invention of factory ships, which processed whales aboard the vessels. This new technology allowed intensive hunting on the grays once again, and their population again dangerously dropped to probably fewer than 2,000 individuals. Protection finally came in 1946 through an international agreement to stop hunting them.  Whale populations recovered and everything seemed fine until 1999/2000, when another UME was declared after the whale population dropped all the way down to 16,000 and nobody could figure out why.  Now something is once again killing gray whales, and scientists are at a loss to explain it. There are clues as to what could be going on, however, and while some scientists have (as usual) blamed global warming, others point to other causes.  Back in 2015, there was another spate of whale deaths and scientists commented on some of the likely causes.  The Guardian reported at the time:  Oceans attorney for the environmental law organization Earthjustice Andrea Treece says the most common causes of whale deaths in recent years are the result of ships and the mammals being tangled in fishing gear and nets.  While numbers are limited due to scientists’ unwillingness to give definitive causes of death, collisions with ships are a serious threat to some species. Of the North Atlantic right whale, the International Whaling Commission says: “It is thought that mortality due to ship strikes may make the difference between extinction and survival for this species.” [Emphasis added]  And ships are not the only threat to the giants of the sea. Scientists warn that commercial fishing lines also pose a serious threat. Multiple sightings have been reported of whales entangled in fishing lines, with many dying as a result. And experts have also expressed grave concerns about the effects of the military’s increased use of sonar along the Pacific coast on whale populations. Likewise, recent whale deaths in the UK were found to be caused by the ingestion of plastics and trash from the oceans.  Clearly, global warming – if you choose to believe in it – is just the tip of the iceberg. Mankind is facing serious problems, most of them of our own making. And we ignore these environmental dangers at our peril.  Learn more about the real issues facing our planet at Environ.news.


naturalnews--2019-12-20--Manmade toxins are destroying the natural world and will lead to ecological collapse

(Natural News) Talk of a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems” is not hyperbole; that’s the exact terminology used in the first global scientific review of the world’s insect populations.  Overall, more than 40 percent of insect species are seeing declines, while a third are considered endangered. The extinction rate of insects is eight times that of reptiles, birds and mammals. If they continue at their current rate of 2.5 percent decline per year, they could disappear completely within the next 100 years.  Speaking to The Guardian about the insect losses, review author Francisco Sanchez-Bayo said: “It is very rapid. In 10 years, you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.”  Experts believe our planet is starting its sixth period of mass extinction, and tremendous losses have already been noted in bigger animals that can be studied more easily. However, insects are a greater indicator of overall problems in the environment because they’re the most numerous and varied creatures on our planet, outnumbering humans by 17 times.  Their loss is something that will be deeply felt by all of us as they’re vital parts of all ecosystems, serving as nutrient recyclers, food for other creatures, and pollinators.  Certain species have been hit especially hard. Topping the list is caddisflies, who have seen their numbers decline by 68 percent in the past decade. Butterflies have experienced a drop of 53 percent, while beetles and bees have seen drops of 49 and 46 percent, respectively. Insects such as mayflies, dragonflies, stoneflies and flies have also seen declines of more than 25 percent. The analysis was published in the journal Biological Conservation.  Sponsored solution from CWC Labs: This heavy metals test kit allows you to test almost anything for 20+ heavy metals and nutritive minerals, including lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, aluminum and more. You can test your own hair, vitamins, well water, garden soil, superfoods, pet hair, beverages and other samples (no blood or urine). ISO accredited laboratory using ICP-MS (mass spec) analysis with parts per billion sensitivity. Learn more here.  These numbers make it quite clear that human toxins are ruining the planet and setting us on the path toward collapse. The study’s authors identified intensive agriculture as the main reason for the declines, singling out heavy pesticide use as being a major contributor.  Sanchez-Bayo said: “The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification. That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.”  He believes that it’s some of the newest insecticides that are the most damaging. Neonicotinoids and fipronil, which were only introduced in the past 20 years, have been especially damaging given their persistence and widespread use. He said they essentially sterilize the soil.  Certain places are experiencing especially big losses. For example, in Puerto Rico, a 98 percent drop in ground insects has been reported over the past 35 years, while the number of butterfly species on farmed land in England dropped by 58 percent. In fact, the UK has seen the greatest drops in insect numbers overall, although it’s important to keep in mind that it’s one area that has been studied in more depth than many other places.  In Oklahoma, only half of the bumblebee species that were present in 1949 could still be found in 2013, while the U.S.’s overall honeybee colony numbers have dropped by 3.5 million since 1947.  For some insects, there is a lack of data. While we don’t have a lot of specific figures for ants, shield bugs, crickets, and aphids, experts suspect they are experiencing a similar fate to that of the studied species.  If we don’t stop destroying our planet with toxic pesticides, humans will pay the ultimate price – and according to this report, it’s not going to take long for the insects that all life on Earth depends on to disappear completely.


theguardianuk--2019-08-03--We are silencing the natural world can the turtle dove be saved

‘We are silencing the natural world’: can the turtle dove be saved?

Under the torrential rain of a fickle British summer, 25 soggy pilgrims gather in front of the Plough, an ancient oak-beamed pub in the West Sussex village of Rusper. Above the drone of planes bringing travellers into Gatwick, the walkers – variously devotees of trekking, folk music or wildlife – raise their voices to sing an old English folk song that is told from the point of view of a globetrotting visitor to these shores: “Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone / And leave you for a while / If I roam away, I’ll come back again / Though I roam 10,000 miles, my dear / Though I roam 10,000 miles.”  The song, The Turtle Dove, was discovered by Ralph Vaughan Williams when the Plough’s publican sang it to him more than 100 years ago. It is a forgotten lament for a bird that has inspired writers, musicians and country-dwellers for centuries. This small, delicate wild dove, with grey feathers blushed pink and ginger, is a symbol of renewal in the Old Testament and an emblem of love and constancy for Shakespeare. The romance embodied by the turtle dove has fluttered into countless songs, from The Twelve Days of Christmas to Elvis Presley’s Baby If You’ll Give Me All Your Love and Cliff Richard’s Bachelor Boy. But this celebrated bird is slipping towards extinction in Britain.  The turtle dove is a global citizen, spending winter in the Sahel region of Africa before flying to Europe to breed. The Victorians observed great flocks of turtle doves assembling to begin their migration south. As recently as the 60s, there were 125,000 pairs in Britain. Between 1967 and 2016, their numbers plummeted by 98%. Each year, population estimates are revised downwards: there may be fewer than 2,000 pairs left. Most worryingly, there is no agreement about how we can reverse the decline.  The pilgrims, led by the singer Sam Lee, are beginning a two-day walk from the Plough to one of the turtle dove’s last strongholds, the Knepp estate in West Sussex. In a quixotic act of faith, they plan to sing the song to the doves. If we all paid more attention to this enigmatic bird, thinks Lee, perhaps we could save it from disappearing.  “We’re casting a magical spell,” says Lee. “Vaughan Williams was passing this pub on his bicycle 113 years ago and he popped in and said: ‘Anyone know any songs?’ The landlord sang him The Turtle Dove, which he’d never heard before. He took it away to London and he made a global hit.” Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of the song has been recorded, in different forms and with different titles, by artists including Joan Baez, Marianne Faithfull and Nic Jones, yet the song’s original meaning has been forgotten, explains Lee, especially in its Sussex heartland. “We’re going to rewild this song,” he says. “The amazing connection is that the song itself is about extinction.” The turtle dove sings of its migration, its disappearance and its devotion to its unnamed love, which could be for a place as well as a person.  The turtle dove is a symbol of the extinction crisis unfolding in Britain. Our intensively farmed, densely populated country can still look pretty, but experts agree that lowland Britain – the turtle dove’s home – is one of the most nature-depleted landscapes in the world. More than half of Britain’s plant and animal species are in decline and one in 10 is severely threatened. More than 40 million birds have vanished from this country in 50 years.  The Victorians may have seen flocks of turtle doves, but today they are elusive; the best chance of encountering one is to hear a calling male, which makes the soft “tur-turr” that gives the dove its name. The sound is gentle, summery and somnolent – one of the most soothing in nature, according to Victorian admirers. When I search for it this summer, I hear it only beside the old walled courtyard at Pensthorpe, a Norfolk nature reserve that has run a trial to breed the doves in captivity. “It’s so sad that the only place to hear them is in our aviary,” says Chrissie Kelley, head of species management at Pensthorpe Conservation Trust. “It used to be a common sound.”  Kelley takes me through the turtle dove’s troubled recent history. It has been affected badly by recent droughts in Africa and the Mediterranean penchant for shooting migrating birds each spring and autumn (traditionally for food, but now more for fun). It has been estimated that 3 million turtle doves are shot each year. While EU law bans the hunting of birds during periods of breeding and migration, the turtle dove is still shot in many countries during autumn. In addition, BirdLife International estimates that 600,000 are killed illegally each year.  But these trends do not explain entirely the loss of British turtle doves. Although the bird is declining across Europe (down more than a third this century), only in the similarly intensively farmed Netherlands is there a decline to match Britain’s. Turtle doves eat mostly grains, living on wild plant and weed seeds. Since the 50s, Britain has destroyed almost all its wildflower meadows, while chemical pesticides have removed arable weeds. “Back in the day, when turtle doves were very numerous, they’d feed on farmers’ grain spills,” says Kelley. “Fifty years ago there was a lot more mess – stubble fields and open barns. We’ve got so clean in our farming practices now, that there’s no spillage, no waste.”  Britain has also lost dense hedgerows where the turtle dove likes to nest. “They need thick, scrubby hedgerows, because as far as turtle doves are concerned they think a couple of twigs is a nest,” says Kelley, pointing out the feeble construction her captive doves have made in a thicket inside the aviary. “They need food and water fairly close by, sucking up water to make crop milk for their young.”  Pensthorpe is working with a group of mid-Norfolk farmers to preserve hedgerows, restore farm ponds and offer the birds supplementary food. It is a formula being repeated across the turtle dove’s last strongholds in the south-east and Yorkshire, as part of Operation Turtle Dove, a partnership by charities including the RSPB and Natural England, the government’s advisory body on the environment. But earlier, similar, schemes have not worked. One Norfolk farmer who planted field margins with wild seed mixes succeeded in boosting bird populations, but not turtle doves.  Isabella Tree, the co-owner of the Knepp estate, is critical of recent attempts to provide the doves with additional food. Knepp is one of the few places where turtle doves are increasing: from none at the start of the century, the 1,400-hectare (3,500-acre) farm now has 20 calling males. In the book Wilding, Tree’s account of how she and her husband, Charlie Burrell, returned their farm to nature over two decades, she argues that our categorisation of the turtle dove as a “farmland” bird is misleading. What did it eat before there were farms? What does it eat in sub-Saharan Africa? Tree believes turtle doves that have been observed eating spilled arable grains in Britain are starving and desperate. Any dove breeder will tell you about the dangers of feeding wheat and corn to the birds: cracked grain can tear the throat, while in the gut it absorbs moisture and can cause fungal diseases.  When Operation Turtle Dove launched in 2012, the RSPB wanted to scatter a mix of wheat, oilseed rape, millet and canary seed at sites including Knepp. Tree and Burrell politely refused. Knepp’s farm produces no such seeds, yet their turtle doves are thriving. “Why can’t modern conservationists go back to the meticulous records of the Victorians to find out what turtle doves were actually eating?” asks Tree.  While conservationists agree that turtle doves love weed seeds such as common fumitory (which has returned to rewilded Knepp), most weeds do not produce seeds until the middle of summer; the turtle dove arrives in Britain, undernourished, in April and May. In fact, says Tree, there are old accounts of turtle doves eating snails. They may peck at hawthorn shoots, too. Ornithologists have observed continental turtle doves eating berries, fungi and invertebrates.  One theory is that Knepp’s turtle doves are thriving because they can easily find seeds on the bare ground created by the rootling of the wild pigs that Tree and Burrell have restored to their farm. “We know the turtle doves like bare earth, where their little legs aren’t having to cope with anything too scraggy or long,” says Tree. “They want areas where they can see what’s coming and fly off quickly.” Turtle doves at Knepp this summer are being caught and fitted with a radio tag that should help scientists identify where they have been feeding and deduce precisely what they need.  Increasingly, however, conservationists fear there are other, even more complicated causes for their demise. Carles Carboneras, an RSPB research scientist who specialises in migratory birds, says that global heating is causing quail, another migratory “farmland” bird, to move further northwards. But the turtle dove is showing no sign of expanding its range. “Everybody agrees the main cause for the decline is the transformation of landscape,” says Carboneras. “The increase in monocultures is very, very bad for the species. In this country, you either have very intense agriculture or very dense woodlands – and neither of these is good for turtle doves.”  But Carboneras points out that this shift to a “simplified” landscape in Britain occurred 50 years ago. So why have turtle dove populations fallen so dramatically more recently? Carboneras fears that the rapid accumulation of nitrogen from farm fertilisers and traffic pollution in the soil is causing vegetation to grow too quickly for turtle doves. “If the grass is too high, they can’t access the food. In the south-east, we’re probably seeing the effect of nutrients, but it’s a hunch. We don’t have the evidence for that yet.”  It will be difficult to save the turtle dove without understanding the reasons for its decline but, some conservationists warn, endangered species have been “studied to extinction” in the past. We cannot always afford to wait. At Pensthorpe, Kelley and her team have successfully demonstrated how to breed turtle doves in captivity. Here, turtle dove eggs are fostered by Barbary doves, because these common birds are less sensitive and happy to be kept inside smaller cages. Releasing captive-bred turtle doves into the wild, says Kelley, could be “an insurance policy for British wild birds before they go extinct”.  The RSPB is opposed to breeding turtle doves in captivity, saying captive-bred birds are unlikely to possess a migratory instinct; they would not depart every autumn and return each spring.  “This is like the British solving their own problem – and so what? You still have a declining population internationally. You cannot have millions of captive-bred turtle doves being released across Europe and expect them to behave naturally and link breeding and wintering areas as they have done since they evolved. It might solve the problem for this island, but not for the species,” Carboneras says.  Other conservation scientists disagree. Carl Jones has used captive breeding to save the pink pigeon and other critically endangered birds from extinction on Mauritius. Now, as chief scientist for Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, an international charity, he is looking at whether he can help save British turtle doves with a similarly intensive rescue plan. The RSPB is, he thinks, being “narrow-minded” and cites other examples of the successful release of captive-bred migratory birds, from the white stork across Europe to the orange-bellied parrot in Tasmania.  “There’s no better way of understanding these animals than breeding them in captivity and really getting hands on with them, rather than just standing back and observing decline or putting fences around things,” says Jones. He argues that a captive-breeding programme, alongside the management of wild populations through supplementary feeding, is the best way of saving endangered species and quickly understanding their needs.  Back at Knepp, the pilgrims arrive, wet and exhausted, at their journey’s end. At 4am, they rise from their bell tents and head to great green pillows of sallow and blackthorn scrub in the rewilded landscape. Here they finally hear the tur-turring of the turtle dove and softly sing Vaughan Williams’ folk song.  “There’s something immensely calming about the turtle dove’s song,” says Lee. “It has this low frequency that suddenly appears and disappears. It’s almost the flicker of a film – and such a metaphor for its own situation. The silence around it is as powerful as its presence.” Singing about this bird, he says, makes it “become more powerful and significant. Suddenly the bird is fuller and you realise every creature has that potential – we’ve just stopped listening”.  Most of us will never notice if this one small bird with its soft song disappears from Britain. How would we lose if it does? “There are so many ways,” says Lee. “The disappearance of its song is part of a greater silencing of the natural world. Losing the turtle dove is to lose the intelligence of that creature, which understands the landscape around it and plays a part in it.” He pauses. “It’s the burning down of a library. To take these books off the shelves and lose them would be to weaken us as human beings.”  • If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).


thenewyorktimes--2019-05-06--Civilization Is Accelerating Extinction and Altering the Natural World at a Pace Unprecedented in H

Civilization Is Accelerating Extinction and Altering the Natural World at a Pace ‘Unprecedented in Human History’

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.    WASHINGTON — Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.  The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization. A summary of its findings, which was approved by representatives from the United States and 131 other countries, was released Monday in Paris. The full report is set to be published this year.  Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in human history.”  At the same time, a new threat has emerged: Global warming has become a major driver of wildlife decline, the assessment found , by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many mammals, birds, insects, fish and plants evolved to survive in.


yahoonews--2019-07-31--Ethiopia plants 353 million trees in one day to restore forests and fight climate change

The government of Ethiopia announced Monday that its citizens had planted 353 million trees in a single day as part of an effort to reverse decades of deforestation and help fight climate change.  It is believed to be the largest one-day mass planting in history, exceeding an effort in 2017 in India in which 1.5 million volunteers planted 66 million trees in just over 12 hours.  Ethiopia has joined 20 other African nations in a pledge to restore almost 400,000 square miles of forest on the continent. According to the United Nations, forest cover in Ethiopia has declined from 35 percent in the last century to just 4 percent today. The 426,000-square-mile country in the Horn of Africa plans to plant a total of 4 billion trees by the beginning of the rainy season in October. With a population of about 100 million people (including children), that goal would require every person in the country to plant at least 40 seedlings.  Government workers and students were given the day off to participate.  Earlier this month, a study published in the journal Science calculated that planting a forest nearly double the size of the United States could save the planet from the worst consequences of global warming. Those new forests would be capable of storing about 205 metric tons of carbon, which is roughly two-thirds of the excess carbon human beings have added to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.  Reforestation has increasingly come to be seen as a means for addressing what scientists have begun calling a climate crisis caused by human carbon emissions.  In the United Kingdom, for example, government officials have estimated that the country will need to plant 1.5 billion trees if it hopes to reach its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.  But setbacks to reforestation goals abound. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has reversed government protections of the Amazon rainforest, opening the region to development. Since Bolsonaro took office seven months ago, 1,330 square miles of forest cover have been lost, the New York Times reported.  Fifty years ago, the Amazon forest was itself as big in area as the lower 48 U.S. states. Since that time, it has been reduced by 16 percent, largely due to logging, PRI reported. Excess carbon in the atmosphere has also made equatorial forests less viable.  Whether tree planting can stay ahead of deforestation will help determine whether people can avert the worst consequences of global warming.  Download the Yahoo News app to customize your experience.


anonnews--2019-04-23--Brazilian Couple Plants Over 2 Million Trees To Restore A Destroyed Forest

When the rain forest around their home was destroyed, a Brazilian photographer and his wife took matters into their own hands and slowly reforested the area, planting over two million trees throughout the course of many years. When Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado went off to travel the world and pursue a career in journalism several years ago, his home was deep in a tropical forest, and a habitat for many exotic plants and animals.  Sadly, when he returned, he found that his home had been destroyed. The rainforest that he lived in had been entirely cut down, and the lush tropical forest that he once knew and loved had become a barren wasteland. Seeing his homeland in this state sent him spiraling into a deep depression.  Then one day, his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, got an amazing idea. She suggested that they try to replant the forest all on their own, and she truly believed that it could be done. The couple quickly got to work on replanting the forest that they once knew and loved.  The job wasn’t easy, but eventually, they were able to reforest the area around their home. Miraculously not long after the plants begin to bloom again, the animals started to come back also, giving new life to the region.  “The land was as sick as I was – everything was destroyed. Only about 0.5% of the land was covered in trees. Then my wife had a fabulous idea to replant this forest. And when we began to do that, then all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of the trees I, too, was reborn – this was the most important moment,” Salgado told The Guardian back in 2015.  “Perhaps we have a solution. There is a single being which can transform CO2 to oxygen, which is the tree. We need to replant the forest. You need forest with native trees, and you need to gather the seeds in the same region you plant them or the serpents and the termites won’t come. And if you plant forests that don’t belong, the animals don’t come there and the forest is silent,” he added.  20 years later, the area is nearly unrecognizable because there are so many trees and so much wildlife.  Once the project really started to pick up steam and show promise, the couple founded Instituto Terra, an organization through which they hired other members who care about the environment just as much as they do.  “We need to listen to the words of the people on the land. Nature is the earth and it is other beings and if we don’t have some kind of spiritual return to our planet, I fear that we will be compromised,” Salgado explained.  The feats that have been achieved by this couple show that individuals really can make a difference if they put in the effort. The average person today feels very disempowered and they don’t believe that they can do anything to make a difference in this world.  However, the people who actually try to make a difference, oftentimes end up with some incredible results. The couple responsible for this incredible restoration worked very hard to make it happen, but all of that hard work is only necessary because very few others are doing their part. With so many people not paying attention to the state of the environment, it requires a great deal of effort from dedicated people to actually make a change. It doesn’t have to be like this though, because the more people that chip in, the less work we all have to do.  If every single person in the world planted just one tree, we would have billions of new trees. Sadly it doesn’t seem like the global population is up to the task yet, so the job rests on a few dedicated people, who will try to show the rest of the world that change is possible.


eveningstandard--2019-04-12--Tree-planting drones could help restore the worldaposs forests

Tree-planting drones could help restore the world's forests

British engineers have created a seed-planting drone which could help restore the world’s forests.  Biocarbon Engineering, a start-up based in Oxford, designed the drones to fire seed missiles across fields, planting hundreds of potential trees in a matter of minutes.  In September 2018, the drones were deployed in a field just south of Yangon, Myanmar.  The seeds they sowed have since grown into tiny mangrove saplings, about 20-inches tall.  Irnia Fedorenko, co-founder of Biocarbon Engineering, told Fast Company: “We now have a case confirmed of what species we can plant and in what conditions.  “We are now ready to scale up our planting and replicate this success.”  Around half of the world’s mangrove forests have been lost. The trees, which grow along coastlines, can store more carbon than trees on land.  Mangrove deforestation is responsible for 24 million tons of CO2 emissions each year, according to a 2018 study.  Biocarbon Engineering is collaborating on the project with Myanmar non-profit the Worldview International Foundation, which has been planting trees by hand across the country since 2012.  The Foundation works with local villagers, who have helped plant more than six million trees in the past seven years. But human-only methods are time-consuming, and the non-profit has turned to the Oxford engineers for help.  “Obviously, planting a billion trees will take a long time without the help of drones,” Bremley Lyngdoh, a partner on the project, told Fast Company.  Roughly 350,000 hectares of coastal forest need to be restored, which translates to more than a billion trees.  Ten drones, operated by two operators, can plant 400,000 trees a day.  The drones work by flying across a specified area, collecting data about soil conditions and determining the prime locations for planting.  They then fire biodegradable pods, filled with a germinated seed and nutrients, into the ground.  Organisers say the project benefits both the environment and local communities, by helping provide new economic opportunities.  “It’s all about creating livelihoods,” said Mr Lyngdoh.  “We have to create jobs that are long-term that can sustain the family, then they see the benefit of the project, and they get engaged in the long term.”


prepareforchange--2019-02-21--A Brazilian Photographer Restored An Entire Forest With 27 million Trees In 20 Years

A Brazilian Photographer Restored An Entire Forest With 2.7 million Trees In 20 Years

A Brazilian photojournalist was utterly stunned on his return home, to a town of the inland state of southeastern Brazil, Minas Gerais. What was once a paradise of tropical forests, filled with birds and wildlife, no longer existed. Can you imagine going away from your home town and on your return, you see all the trees have disappeared?  In the 1990s, Salgado’s parents gave the land to Sebastião and Lélia. Which they don’t own anymore. Today it is recognized as a nature preserve and a nonprofit organization which trains young ecologists and raises millions of tree seedling.  Salgado and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, recruited partners and teams to collect funds, and in 1998, Salgado founded Instituto Terra. This institute was formed to recover 1,502 acres of rainforest in the Bulcão Farm in Aimorés, Minas Gerais. After the deforestation, the ranch was dubbed as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve. The Instituto Terra also created the Center for Environmental Education and Restoration (CERA), a place for research and education which focuses on environmental restoration  In December of 1999 Salgado planted his first seed. He clearly stated that the trees be native to the land so that the wildlife would return. Over two million seedlings of 290 species of trees were planted. The results were incredible!  Due to the replanting process, the eight natural springs that were hosted by the forest had started flowing and the fauna returned.  With close to 700 educational projects, 170 municipalities and 65,000 people who work in the Valley of the River Doce by December 2012. The River Doce covered both states of Minas Gerais & Espírito Santo, extending to the states of Rio de Janeiro & Bahia.  Salgado stated that climate change occurs due to carbon dioxide and planting trees would be the solution.  We as individuals need to make a change to our planet, plant a tree today!  Disclaimer: We at Prepare for Change (PFC) bring you information that is not offered by the mainstream news, and therefore may seem controversial. The opinions, views, statements, and/or information we present are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, espoused, or agreed to by Prepare for Change, its leadership Council, members, those who work with PFC, or those who read its content. However, they are hopefully provocative. Please use discernment! Use logical thinking, your own intuition and your own connection with Source, Spirit and Natural Laws to help you determine what is true and what is not. By sharing information and seeding dialogue, it is our goal to raise consciousness and awareness of higher truths to free us from enslavement of the matrix in this material realm.


anonnews--2019-06-24--Horrifying Video Shows Nestle Wiping Out A Rainforest

Activists with the environmentalist group Greenpeace, have accused the corporations, Pepsico, Unilever, and Nestlé of destroying Sumatra’s last remaining rainforest region. This means that numerous species of elephants, orangutans, rhinos, and tigers have lost their habitat and many of them are facing extinction.  Experts say that the reason behind this deforestation is large corporations in search of palm oil. It is estimated that an area roughly half the size of Paris, or 5000 hectares, has been destroyed in this ongoing deforestation. According to a study by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), if action is not taken soon, there will be no more rainforest in the area, and the animals that live there will disappear with it.  “If more immediate action is not taken to enforce ‘no deforestation’ policies, these brands will be remembered as the corporate giants responsible for the destruction of the last place on earth where Sumatran elephants, orangutans, rhinos and tigers roamed side by side,” the study said.  To collect the data, researchers used photos and GPS coordinates from satellites to determine how quickly the forest was shrinking.  Gemma Tillack, RAN’s agribusiness campaigns director, pointed out that the crimes of these corporations are well known, but it is just not currently possible to hold them accountable.  “Relying on NGOs to uncover the truth is simply not good enough. If RAN, with our relatively limited budget, can figure it out, then multibillion dollar, multinational corporations certainly can. The fact that they haven’t demonstrates that it is not a lack of ability holding them back, but a lack of will,” she told the Guardian.  “We believe that there was a rush to clear land because the [logging] companies knew that there would be government intervention to stop forest clearances. Global brands like Pepsico can no longer hide behind paper promises and simply blame their international partners for forest crimes. The Leuser ecosystem will die a death of a thousand cuts if brands don’t start taking urgent action to address the root cause of this crisis,” she added.  In 2004, a group called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was formed to work with palm oil companies to address these concerns, but very little progress has been made in the years since.  In fact, the Roundtable organization ended up becoming a lobby group that worked with the government to defend the extraction of palm oil.  Palm oil plantations produce 38 percent of the world’s total vegetable oil supply. A 2018 study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) concluded that palm oil is “here to stay” because its cultivation is nine times more productive per unit of land when compared with other vegetable oils.  In 2016, the global production of palm oil was estimated at 62.6 million tonnes, which is 2.7 million tonnes more than in 2015, according to Wikipedia.  In the year of 2016, palm oil production earned an estimated $39.3 billion in revenue, which is an increase of $2.4 billion (or +7%) from the year before. Indonesia and Malaysia are the largest producers of palm oil in the world.


freedombunker--2019-04-22--If You Love Forests Let Them Burn

If You Love Forests, Let Them Burn

[This post was co-authored by Brian Isom.]    Today marks 49 years since Earth Day was first established by Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI). Since then, the United States has made great strides towards improving the nation’s collective impact on the environment. Air pollution has fallen drastically. Efforts to clean up Superfund sites have removed toxic contaminants from hundreds of lands and rivers.  One place where we are failing, however, is healthy management of our forests. Nearly a century of anti-wildfire sentiments has damaged forest ecosystems and driven up the cost of preventing and controlling wildfires. It’s time to embrace fire as a natural part of the American landscape and a crucial means of preventing devastating blazes.  Following the Great Fire of 1910, which devastated large swathes of timberland in Northern Idaho and Western Montana, fire management policy began to focus largely on fire prevention and suppression. The US Forest Service (USFS), the main public agency charged with managing wildfires, established a policy to put out all fires before they consumed 10 acres.  About a decade later, USFS updated that policy to have all fires out by 10 am the morning following the discovery of a new blaze. That policy endured for decades before its repeal in 1978, when fire managers began to realize that not all forest fires needed to be doused immediately. That recognition was progress in the right direction, but a suppression-heavy focus on fire management has continued to drive policy even today.  Fire suppression, however, is an expensive answer to stopping wildfires and it has taken a major toll on the budgets of US fire management agencies like the USFS. Twenty years ago, in 1998, US spending on wildfire suppression totaled a little more than $400 million. By 2008, those costs had risen to nearly $1.6 billion. Just last year, fire managers spent a combined $3.1 billion on suppression efforts. That spending also failed to stop states like California from suffering the most destructive wildfire season in recent history.  Suppression efforts not only increase the cost of fighting fires, but they deprive ecosystems that have adapted to the considerable benefits of wildfires. Fire confers a number of important positive ecological advantages on forests, like clearing out dead brush, preventing overgrowth, and eliminating disease and invasive pests.  Fast forward to today and it is easy to see the negative effects of the fire-suppression mindset. Side-by-side comparisons of forests from a century ago and today show that forests have become much denser since we began to aggressively suppress fires. In some parts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, more than 90 percent of the trees are dead. The lack of fire as a cleansing mechanism has turned many western forests into veritable tinderboxes ready to go up in flames at the first spark.  So how do we fix a century of bad forest management? We get back to what worked. We let forests burn.  That isn’t to say we need to start letting fires burn out of control. Tens of millions of Americans currently live in at-risk fire areas, and ways must be found to protect those communities. But one of our best options for doing so—from an ecological and economic standpoint—lies in preventative, controlled burning.  Controlled burning is a method of preventative management by which managers actually set up, start, and actively monitor fires to reduce dead brush buildup and overgrowth in forests. This method of prevention provides two key benefits over suppression—it reintroduces fire to fire-adapted landscapes, and it reduces wildfire risk at a fraction of the cost of suppression. Controlled burning, after all, is how Native Americans managed western lands for centuries  Public perceptions of wildfire danger and environmental regulation, however, have created barriers to implementing controlled burns in western landscapes. The Clean Air Act, for example, regulates emissions from controlled burns but does nothing to regulate emissions from wildfires, even though wildfire smoke contains three times as much particulate matter as smoke from controlled burns.  Policymakers need to re-evaluate the effectiveness of controlled burning for managing future forest fires. Removing barriers to managed burns in western forests not only will reduce the cost and scope of wildfire disasters, but will restore an ecologically important practice to western landscapes.  Brian Isom is a research manager at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University and a policy fellow at the Independent Institute.


globalresearch--2019-05-27--Where the Forest Has No Name

Where the Forest Has No Name

Driving up the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco, you approach the world’s largest contiguous temperate rainforest. But don’t look for any markers or directions. There aren’t any. In fact, the rainforest, which stretches 2,500 miles from Northern California all the way to Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska – almost as far as the distance as from New York to Los Angeles – doesn’t even have an official name.  But what should we call it? We asked James Meacham, a professor of geology at the University of Oregon and an author of the Oregon Atlas.  “Great question,” he said. “I don’t have definitive answer for you.”  Only parts of this anonymous rainforest have any legal protection from logging and other development, including Redwood and Olympic National Parks in California and Washington, the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia and 5 million roadless acres in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.  One of the largest, most protected areas of North American temperate rainforest is found in Washington’s Olympic National Park.  But outside these protected areas, most of the rainforest was cut down over the last century and replaced with industrial tree farms, which possess none of the diversity of a natural forest. The rainforest’s scant remaining unprotected old growth is rapidly disappearing from ongoing logging on Vancouver Island. The losses will likely accelerate if the Trump administration allows logging in roadless areas on the Tongass, which would require eliminating a policy on the books since 2000, as it plans to do.  About two hours north of the Golden Gate Bridge you cross the Russian River, which the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center, an arm of the University of Alaska, defines as the coastal rainforest’s southern perimeter. Ecotrust, a conservation group based in Portland dedicated to protecting the rainforest, draws a similar boundary.  Massive ancient redwoods, some soaring 350 feet above the ground, tower overhead. Redwoods are the world’s tallest trees, but as you drive further up the coast, you encounter Douglas fir, cedar, hemlock and spruce trees almost as grand.  This mammoth of a rainforest, however, is much more than just a place where majestic trees grow. It helps cool global temperatures, a service the planet desperately needs as the climate spins out of control. Forests remove about a quarter of the carbon dioxide (CO ) humans add to the atmosphere, keeping climate change from getting even worse.  For decades, forest advocacy groups like Oregon Wild and the Sierra Club demanded protection for rainforest-dependent species like wild salmon, the marbled murrelet and the northern spotted owl. Now they are refocusing their advocacy through the lens of climate change.  Building public support behind strategies to protect the rainforest might be easier if it shed its anonymity. There are plenty of suggestions for a name.  The Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center calls it the “Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest.”  Ecotrust also calls it the “Rainforest of Home,” the title of an atlas it published in 1995.  Others call it the “Cascadia” rainforest after the bioregion of the same name.  None of these names, however, appear to have caught on.  Last summer, for example, an article in High Country News called it “an ecosystem that runs from Northern California to the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.”  That’s like calling the Amazon Rainforest “an ecosystem that runs between the Andes Mountains of Peru and the east coast of Brazil.”  Since 2004, deforestation in the tropical rainforest has slowed down dramatically, as Mongabay reports, thanks in part to worldwide pressure to “save the Amazon.”  Meanwhile, we are still waiting for someone to launch a campaign to “save the coastal ecosystem running from Northern California to Alaska.” It seems a grassroots campaign to save the entire rainforest might have a better chance at success if it had a globally recognized name.  The future of the planet might depend on it.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate are editors of Cascadia Times, an environmental journal based in Portland, Oregon.  All images in this article are from Mongabay


globalresearch--2019-07-27--Addressing the Climate Crisis Worldwide Reforestation and Industrial Hemp

Addressing the Climate Crisis, Worldwide Reforestation and Industrial Hemp

Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. So states a July 4 article in The Guardian, citing a new analysis published in the journal Science. The author explains:  For skeptics who reject the global warming thesis, reforestation also addresses the critical problems of mass species extinction and environmental pollution, which are well documented. A 2012 study from the University of Michigan found that loss of biodiversity impacts ecosystems as much as climate change and pollution. Forests shelter plant and animal life in their diverse forms, and trees remove air pollution by the interception of particulate matter on plant surfaces and the absorption of gaseous pollutants through the leaves.  The July analytical review in Science calculated how many additional trees could be planted globally without encroaching on crop land or urban areas. It found that there are 1.7 billion hectares (4.2 billion acres) of treeless land on which 1.2 trillion native tree saplings would naturally grow. Using the most efficient methods, 1 trillion trees could be restored for as little as $300 billion – less than 2 percent of the lower range of estimates for the Green New Deal introduced by progressive Democrats in February 2019.  The Guardian quoted Prof. Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who said,  He said it was also by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed. The chief drawback of reforestation as a solution to the climate crisis, per The Guardian, is that trees grow slowly. The projected restoration could take 50 to 100 years to reach its full carbon sequestering potential.  Fortunately, as of December 2018 there is now a cheaper, faster and more efficient alternative – one that was suppressed for nearly a century but was legalized on a national scale when President Trump signed the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. This is the widespread cultivation of industrial hemp, the non-intoxicating form of cannabis grown for fiber, cloth, oil, food and other purposes. Hemp grows to 13 feet in 100 days, making it one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available. Industrial hemp has been proven to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop, making it the ideal carbon sink. It can be grown on a wide scale on nutrient poor soils with very small amounts of water and no fertilizers.  Hemp products can promote biodiversity and reverse environmental pollution by replacing petrochemical-based plastics, which are now being dumped into the ocean at the rate of one garbage truck per minute. One million seabirds die each year from ingesting plastic, and up to 90 percent have plastic in their guts. Microplastic (resulting from the breakdown of larger pieces by sunlight and waves) and microbeads (used in body washes and facial cleansers) have been called the ocean’s smog. They absorb toxins in the water, enter the food chain, and ultimately wind up in humans. To avoid all that, we can use plastic made from hemp, which is biodegradable and non-toxic.  Other environmental toxins come from the textile industry, which is second only to agriculture in the amount of pollution it creates and the voluminous amounts of water it uses. Hemp can be grown with minimal water, and hemp fabrics can be made without the use of toxic chemicals.  Environmental pollution from the burning of fossil fuels can also be reversed with hemp, which is more efficient and environmentally friendly even than wheat and corn as a clean-burning biofuel.  Hemp cultivation also encourages biodiversity in the soil, by regenerating farmland that has long been depleted from the use of toxic chemicals. It is a “weed” and grows like one, ubiquitously, beating out other plants without pesticides or herbicides; and its long tap root holds the soil, channeling moisture deeper into it. Unlike most forestry projects, hemp can be grown on existing agricultural land and included as part of a farm’s crop rotation, with positive effects on the yields and the profits from subsequent crops.  Hemp cultivation is profitable in many other ways – so profitable that it is effectively a self-funding solution to the environmental crisis. According to an April 2019 article in Forbes titled “Industrial Hemp Is the Answer to Petrochemical Dependency,” crop yields from hemp can range from $20,000 to $50,000 per acre. Its widespread cultivation can happen without government subsidies. Investment in research, development and incentives would speed the process, but market forces will propel these transformations even if Congress fails to act. All farmers need for incentive is a market for the products, which hemp legalization has provided. Due to the crop’s century-long suppression, the infrastructure to capitalize on its diverse uses still needs to be developed, but the infrastructure should come with the newly opened markets.  Hemp can break our dependency on petrochemicals not only for fuel but for plastics, textiles, construction materials and much more. It has actually been grown for industrial and medicinal purposes for millennia, and today it is legally grown for industrial use in hundreds of countries outside the US. Before the US ban, a 1938 article in Popular Mechanics claimed it was a billion-dollar crop (the equivalent of about $16 billion today), useful in 25,000 products ranging from dynamite to cellophane. New uses continue to be found, including eliminating smog from fuels, creating a cleaner energy source that can replace nuclear power, removing radioactive water from the soil, and providing a very nutritious food source for humans and animals. Cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive derivative of hemp, has recently been shown to help curb opioid addiction, now a national epidemic.  Hemp can also help save our shrinking forests by eliminating the need to clear-cut them for paper pulp. According to the USDA, one acre planted in hemp produces as much pulp is 4.1 acres of trees; and unlike trees, hemp can be harvested two or three times a year. Hemp paper is also finer, stronger and lasts longer than wood-based paper. Benjamin Franklin’s paper mill used hemp. Until 1883, it was one of the largest agricultural crops (some say the largest), and 80 to 90% of all paper in the world was made from it.  It was also the material from which most fabric, soap, fuel and fiber were made; and it was an essential resource for any country with a shipping industry, since sails were made from it. In early America, growing hemp was considered so important that it was illegal for farmers not to grow it. Hemp was legal tender from 1631 until the early 1800s, and taxes could even be paid with it.  The competitive threat to other industries of this supremely useful plant may have been a chief driver of its apparently groundless criminalization in the 1930s. Hemp is not marijuana and is so low in psychoactive components that it cannot produce a marijuana “high.” It was banned for nearly a century simply because it was in the same plant species as marijuana. Cannabis came under attack in the 1930s in all its forms. Why? Hemp competed not only with the lumber industry but with the oil industry, the cotton industry, the petrochemical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. Many have speculated that it was suppressed by these powerful competitors.  William Randolf Hearst, the newspaper mogul, owned vast tracts of forest land, which he intended to use for making wood-pulp paper. Cheap hemp-based paper would make his forest investments a major money loser. Hearst was a master of “yellow journalism,” and a favorite target of his editorials was “reefer madness.” He was allied with the DuPont Corporation, which provided the chemicals to bleach and process the wood pulp used in the paper-making process. DuPont was also ready to introduce petroleum-based fibers such as nylon, and hemp fabrics competed with that new market.  In fact hemp products threatened the whole petroleum industry. Henry Ford first designed his cars to run on alcohol from biofuels, but the criminalization of both alcohol and hemp forced him to switch to the dirtier, less efficient fossil fuels that dominate the industry today. A biofuel-based infrastructure would create a completely decentralized power grid, eliminating the giant monopolistic power companies. Communities could provide their own energy using easily renewable plants.  None of this is new news. Hemp historians have been writing about hemp’s myriad uses and its senseless prohibition for decades. (See e.g. The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer, 1992; Hemp for Victory: A Global Warming Solution by Richard Davis, 2009.) What is news is that hemp cultivation is finally legal across the country. The time is short to save the planet and its vanishing diversity of species. Rather than engaging in endless debates over carbon taxes and Silicon Valley-style technological fixes, we need to be regenerating our soils, our forests and our oceans with nature’s own plant solutions.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books, including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.