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Archive for January, 2011
World Bank offers to save Serengeti from bisecting road
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
Mongabay: World Bank offers to save Serengeti from bisecting road
The World Bank has offered to help fund an alternative route for a planned road project that would otherwise cut through Tanzania's world famous Serengeti National Park, according to the German-based NGO Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU). When announced last year, the road project raised protests from environmentalists, scientists, and Tanzanian tour companies, but the Tanzanian government refused to shift plans to an alternative...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on World Bank offers to save Serengeti from bisecting roadChevron case keeps Ecuador judge up late
Posted by Reuters: Hugh Bronstein on January 31st, 2011
Reuters: * Farmers sue Chevron for $27 bln in environmental damages
* Wall Street expects Chevron faces much smaller exposure
* Plaintiffs say company polluted jungle in 1970s, '80s
* Judge stops answering phone to avoid threats, insults (Adds analysts' view of risk to Chevron paragraphs 21-22)
Judge Nicolas Zambrano often leaves work so late he has to wake up the security guard to let him out of the courthouse and onto the dark and dangerous streets of this Ecuadorean jungle town.
Zambrano...
Chevron case keeps Ecuador judge up late
Posted by Reuters: Hugh Bronstein on January 31st, 2011
Reuters: Judge Nicolas Zambrano often leaves work so late he has to wake up the security guard to let him out of the courthouse and onto the dark and dangerous streets of this Ecuadorean jungle town.
Zambrano -- a solidly built former air force officer with a shaved head and penetrating brown eyes -- is hearing the $27 billion suit brought against Chevron Corp (CVX.N) by local farmers who say the U.S. energy giant polluted the rain forest with faulty drilling practices in the 1970s and 1980s.
It is...
Incredible new photos of uncontacted tribe in the Amazon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
Mongabay: Incredible new photos of uncontacted tribe in the Amazon
Detail of uncontacted native family from flyover. Photo courtesy of Survival International. Taken by Brazil's Indian Affairs Department and released by indigenous-rights group, Survival International, new aerial photos show an uncontacted tribe on the border of Brazil and Peru in detail.
According to a press release by Survival International, the photos "reveal a thriving, healthy community with baskets full of manioc and papaya fresh...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Incredible new photos of uncontacted tribe in the AmazonNew images of remote Brazil tribe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
BBC: New images of remote Brazil tribe
The group appears to be healthy and thriving
New pictures have been released of an isolated tribe living in rainforest on the Brazil-Peru border.
Brazil monitors many such tribes from the air, and they are known as "uncontacted" because they have only limited contact dealings with the outside world.
Photographs of the same tribe were released to the world two years ago.
Campaigners say the Panoan Indians are threatened by a rise in illegal logging...
Photos released in campaign to save uncontacted Amazonian tribe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
Guardian: Some of the most detailed pictures ever taken of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe have been released by the Brazilian government. They show a thriving, healthy community with machetes, baskets full of manioc and papaya from their gardens.
The tribe, which lives near the Peruvian border, is said to be in grave danger from illegal loggers known to be close to its territory. If contact is made, it is likely to result in deaths and the possible extinction of the group.
Indian leaders and forest protection...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Photos released in campaign to save uncontacted Amazonian tribeAct now or suffer later
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
Sydney Morning Herald: Hitting home ... councils must prepare for, and try to alleviate, the impacts of climate change. Photo: Nic Walker
WITH much of Queensland still under water, most NSW councils have developed plans and strategies to deal with climate change but have not allocated any money to take action.
The Local Government and Shires Associations surveyed councils in November about the actions they were taking to cope with the impacts of climate change. They received 106 responses, representing 70 per cent...
Urbanisation, climate change and globalisation are leading to more and bigger …
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
Sydney Morning Herald: Urbanisation, climate change and globalisation are leading to more and bigger catastrophes.
THE floods that ravaged Queensland and Victoria are a warning for businesses to overhaul their risk-management strategies. They are events that tell us we are now in a very different world.
How different? Erwann Michel-Kerjan, managing director of the Wharton Business School's Risk Centre in the US and chairman of the OECD secretary-general's advisory board on financial management of catastrophes, says...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Urbanisation, climate change and globalisation are leading to more and bigger …Frogs re-evolved lost lower teeth
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
BBC: Frogs re-evolved "lost" bottom teeth after more than 200 million years, according to new research.
Tree-dwelling Gastrotheca guentheri are the only frogs with teeth on both their upper and lower jaw.
The reappearance of these lower teeth after such a long time fuels debate about whether complex traits are lost in evolution or if they can resurface.
Scientists suggest this new evidence identifies a "loophole" in previous theories.
Commonly known as "marsupial frogs", the Gastrotheca genus...
Pakistani children haunted by images of flood waters
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 31st, 2011
Reuters: Raja Hussain, 10, still sees flood waters roaring toward his farming village most nights. They sound like a high-speed train.
Monsoon floods hit Pakistan six months ago. Yet, those vivid images still haunt the Pakistani child's nightmares.
"In the dreams I see myself praying to Allah for help," said Hussain.
One of the worst natural disasters in Pakistan's history left about 11 million people homeless, killed nearly 2,000, destroyed millions of acres of crops and hammered the economy.
They...