The People In The Path

E. Fudd

What **possible** reason could you still have for whaling? Really?

Iceland resumes whale hunting, endangered Fin Whale killed

Icelandic news outlets are reporting that an Icelandic whaling company, Hvalur hf, “caught its first fin whale yesterday evening,” after sailing out yesterday with two boats, both due back in port today.

Fin whales are the second-largest whale, and are classified as an Endangered species.

E. Fudd

You don’t have to convince me! Well said, and THANK YOU!

From the Seattle Times:
Guest: We must keep boat sewage out of Puget Sound

Marine vessels are still allowed to empty their sewage tanks directly into this cherished and invaluable ecosystem. This environmentally unsound and fiscally irresponsible practice must end, writes guest columnist Peter Goldmark.

By Peter Goldmark
Special to The Times

PUGET Sound is the heart of Washington. It is the center of a vast ecosystem that encompasses the Salish Sea and its shorelines, penetrating deep inland through 10,000 rivers and streams that thread through the Olympic and Cascade watersheds.

It would probably surprise most Washingtonians that while government agencies and nonprofits are investing enormous resources to clean up Puget Sound, marine vessels are still allowed to empty their sewage tanks directly into this cherished and invaluable ecosystem.

This environmentally unsound and fiscally irresponsible practice must end. That’s why I am calling on the Washington State Department of Ecology to petition the federal Environmental Protection Agency to designate Puget Sound a No-Discharge Zone, which will legally prohibit the dumping of all boat sewage into the Sound.

The sparkling waters of the Sound carry $80 billion in trade annually and sustain a fish and shellfish harvest worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Washington’s economy. Its scenic majesty brings people from around the world to vacation, recreate and establish new lives within view of its shores.

Though federal, tribal, state and local governments have appropriated over $1 billion for Puget Sound restoration and conservation projects since 2007, indications are that water quality and habitat health are still suffering.

Nitrate levels in the Sound have increased significantly over the past decade, leading to larger algae blooms, declining dissolved oxygen levels and perhaps more frequent commercial shellfish-bed closures. Acidity levels and water temperatures continue to rise. Many fish and wildlife populations, already depressed to a fraction of their historic norms, are showing little sign of rebounding.

Declaring Puget Sound a No-Discharge Zone is one of the tough decisions that we will have to make if we are serious about restoring a clean and healthy Puget Sound.

Under current law, recreational vessels can legally dump untreated sewage three miles from shore and minimally treated sewage anywhere in the Sound — over shellfish beds, salmon runs and prime hunting territory for orcas and bald eagles.

Large cruise ships and commercial vessels can discharge huge volumes of concentrated sewage into the Sound if they utilize more advanced marine-sanitation devices.

On an average summer weekend, as many as 58,000 boaters recreate on Puget Sound. They can cleanly dispose of their waste by using one of the 115 pump-out facilities, including nine mobile boat units, spread across the Sound. An estimated 3.5 million gallons of sewage were pumped from boats on Puget Sound in 2011 in this manner.

The majority of recreational boaters are responsible and vigilant stewards of the Sound. Many have invested their hard-earned money in equipment to treat their vessels’ sewage for the instances when they expel it into the aquatic environment.

Despite these good intentions, many approved marine-sanitation devices have been shown to be unreliable and ineffective, producing discharge with levels of fecal bacteria and other pollutants many times greater than even the most lenient Washington water quality standards.

That is unacceptable. We should no longer give vessel owners and operators the option of dumping treated or untreated waste into a fragile ecosystem that is already struggling for survival.

Declaring Puget Sound a No-Discharge Zone will reinforce the message being sent in Congress by U.S. Reps. Derek Kilmer and Denny Heck, both D-Wash., who recently founded the Congressional Puget Sound Recovery Caucus to make the case that the restoration of America’s second largest estuary is an issue of national significance.

More than 90 percent of respondents in a 2012 poll stated that cleaning up and protecting waters in and around Puget Sound is an urgent concern.

It is the will of the people of our state, and in the interests of our nation, that we take the next step toward a thriving Puget Sound by designating it as a No-Discharge Zone.

Peter Goldmark is the Commissioner of Public Lands, which administers the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. He has a Ph.D. in molecular biology.

E. Fudd

Fishermen Defend Increased Trinity River Flows to Protect Salmon

E. Fudd

Possible solution to protect millions of bats

earlier article on the issue:

San Antonio sprawl threatens famed bat cave

E. Fudd

Lummi Indians to feds: No coal port here

E. Fudd

Republicans’ war on the environment: Time to counterattack

Ayyyymen!

E. Fudd.

It’s patently obvious by now that the efforts made in the 70s and 80s to ban DDT and other pesticides (besides ESA listings) are paying off big time in eagle recoveries. Sadly we are doing the exact OPPOSITE with wolves and proving we do NOT learn from history when we politicize the environment!

From The Seattle Times:
Kirkland’s fledgling eagles take first flights from nest

E. Fudd

Works for me!

From National Geographic:
Africa-wide “Great Green Wall” to Halt Sahara’s Spread?

China built its famous Great Wall to keep out marauders. Now, millennia later, a “Great Green Wall” may rise in Africa to deter another, equally relentless invader: sand.

The proposed wall of trees would stretch from Senegal to Djibouti as part of a plan to thwart the southward spread of the Sahara, Senegalese officials said earlier this month at the UN’s Copenhagen climate conference.

The trees are meant “to stop the advancement of the desert,” Senegalese president and project leader Abdoulaye Wade told National Geographic News in Copenhagen.

In many central and West African countries surrounding the Sahara, climate change has slowed rainfall to a trickle, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Crops have died and soils have eroded—crippling local agriculture. If the trend continues, the UN forecasts that two-thirds of Africa’s farmland may be swallowed by Saharan sands by 2025 (explore an interactive Sahara map).

Trees are almost always formidable foes against encroaching deserts, said Patrick Gonzalez of the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Forestry.

That’s because stands of trees act as natural windbreaks against sandstorms, and their roots improve soil health—especially by preventing erosion.

But choosing the right tree species to populate the wall will be crucial to the project’s success, Gonzalez said via email.

Similar tree-planting efforts by outside agencies have failed, he said, in part because they planted foreign species that soon perished in the harsh desert.

“We Have to Do What We Have to Do”

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo first proposed the idea of a desert-blocking wall in 2005, and it was approved by the African Union in 2007.

All 11 countries that would house the Great Green Wall have pledged to help fund the project.

But the wall has been slow to break ground: Of the 4,350 miles (7,000 kilometers) it needs to cover, only about 326 miles (525 kilometers) have been planted so far, all within Senegal.

In Copenhagen, President Wade emphasized that he has made the wall a priority, and he has already asked scientists working on the project to choose species hardy enough to survive in arid conditions without maintenance.

“One thing the president has insisted is … we have to begin the work now, right now,” added Ndiawar Djeng, advisor to the Senegalese environment minister.

“If other international committees follow us, that’s OK. If not, we have to do what we have to do,” Djeng told National Geographic News.

“It’s in the interest of our local people.”

Farming Boon

The lush channel through the desert would help farmers already displaced by drought—and may even stem the exodus of “environmental refugees,” organizers say.

More than 70 percent of Africa’s poor depends on farming, according to the IPCC.

But drought, desertification, and other climate-related disasters are forcing many farmers to abandon their lands, spurring a heavier flow of immigrants out of central and North Africa.

The 9.3-mile-wide (15-kilometer-wide) wall of trees would improve the surrounding, now-degraded soils, allowing farmers to again grow crops and more easily raise livestock in the region.

Senegal also plans to dig rainwater reservoirs along its portion of the wall—virtual lifesavers in a region where rain falls only three months out of the year, supporters say.

“France is helping us by bringing its soldiers, who are working with us planting trees and building reservoirs,” President Wade added.

The gigantic tree barrier would also trap some atmospheric carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, and produce a refuge for native animals and plants.

Some of the trees themselves may become valuable crops.

The native acacia senegal tree, which is to be a staple plant in the Great Green Wall, produces gum arabic, a main ingredient in consumer products such as cosmetics and soft drinks.

Farmers could collect the sap and even sustainably harvest some of the wood to make tools or produce charcoal, Senegalese environment advisor Djeng said.

Local Know-How

But Senegal may do more for farmers by simply supporting age-old solutions to desertification, UC Berkeley’s Gonzalez noted.

For example the ethnic groups of the Sahel—a swath of semi-arid savanna on the Sahara’s southern border—have long been successful at reforesting their land using “natural regeneration.”

In this method, farmers plant small native trees from seeds found in the region and raise the trees in agricultural fields protected from nibbling livestock, Gonzalez said.

“The Great Green Wall is less feasible than supporting and reinforcing local farmers and the practice of natural regeneration,” he said.

What’s more, planting trees alone will not stop the Sahara’s spread, according to Matt Brown, senior conservation advisor for the Nature Conservancy’s Africa program.

Instead, African governments need to find ways to protect existing vegetation and water sources from overuse, Brown said by email.

Overall, though, the Great Green Wall is an “extremely bold” undertaking, he said, and “sometimes thinking big is what is needed to draw attention to a problem.”

E. Fudd

Say it LOUD, sistah Jen!

Giving Gas a Pass

E. Fudd