Earth Blog

The traditional pairing of white wine with a fish dinner has another relationship aside from your plate and palate.

Biologists at the University of California, Berkeley have found that fish and viticulturists in wine country may be unknowingly competing for one of the state’s most limited resources: water. Take a guess as to who is losing the struggle? There is a fifty/fifty chance you guess correctly. If you guessed the fish and are clutching a bottle of wine you are correct and win that bottle you are holding.

Today may be the dreaded beginning of the week but as you slog through your Monday it’s never too soon to start thinking about the weekend.

Saturday is “National Kids to Parks Day” (KTP Day) and the official mascot, Buddy Bison of the National Park Trust (NPT), wants kids and their families to visit a green space. Parks -city, state, and national- across the country are hosting events to encourage people to experience and explore nature.

Earlier this month thanks to the efforts of the USDA Forest Service, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and the Memphis Zoo officials were able to take seven Louisiana pine snakes, all six months old and about three feet long, into the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana for immediate release.

The snakes hadn’t slithered into homes via the plumbing or weren’t hanging around residential backyards terrorizing small dogs to have earned a one-way ticket back to the forest. Officials are hoping reintroduction will help restore the population to its natural range in the center of The Bayou State. Last year officials released twenty snakes as part of the initiative which hatches and raises the snakes in captivity from wild-caught snakes.

This week Mike Lee, an environmental reporter with the San Diego Union- Tribune, wrote an article that discussed the recent findings of a study about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” conducted by UCLA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

A rapid increase in the amount of plastic trash floating at sea has impacted the marine environment but not in the way you are thinking.

Yesterday Cinco De Mayo parades marched merrily through cities from Seattle to Kansas City (their celebration featured a Chihuahua parade) and Mexican heritage was celebrated with traditional dancing and music. The Battle of Puebla was fought and won on a May 5th a long time ago but the climate change battle is ongoing and 350.org staged events of their own over the weekend to raise more awareness.

The idea was simply to “connect the dots” between global warming and extreme weather through a series of images featuring dots, and the people and creatures in areas that had been affected or are continuing to be affected by the issue.

"We just celebrated Earth Day. May 5 is more like Broken Earth Day, a worldwide witness to the destruction global warming is already causing," said Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, a global climate campaign. "People everywhere are saying the same thing: our tragedy is not some isolated trauma, it's part of a pattern."

This week Greenpeace released their sixth seafood sustainability scorecard for grocery retailers. They have had their eye on the industry since 2008 and have released a report ranking twenty popular stores since then but Greenpeace has always had their eyes on marine life since its birth in 1971.

The scorecard is part of an ongoing project known as Carting Away the Oceans (CATO) where they not only rank retailers but examine conservation efforts,discuss better practices or habits retailers and consumers can do to protect marine ecosystems.

Sunday was Earth Day, yesterday was National Arbor Day, and today is Keep America Beautiful’s (KAB) first “National Day of Action” the perfect ending to a week of reflection and awareness.

KAB is best known for their Great American Cleanup events which will be held today as part of a larger movement to encourage people to become active in their communities through volunteer work. You might remember them from such blogs as: “Cigarettes are #1 Piece of Litter Found Nationwide” (their research provided the troubling cigarette butt statistic) and “Schools Compete with a Different Set of the Three R's” -KAB is one of the tournament’s sponsors.

Today is National Arbor Day and Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) tweeted a link to their "Right Tree, Right Place" tips to remind their 4.6 million customers to make “informed landscaping choices” before planting trees and shrubs.

FPL has been designated a "Tree Line USA" utility for ten years in a row by The National Arbor Day Foundation. The non-profit is known for their “Tree City USA” and “Tree Campus USA”  but they also recognize utilities that are mindful of trees by their implementation of excellent tree care practices and teach their workers proper tree stewardship.

According to the latest results from the Harris Poll, consumers are getting off the sustainable bandwagon as “green behaviors” are on the decline. They are doing this even though could be saving money and the poll also found “considerably fewer U.S. adults now express concern for, and awareness of, environmental issues.”

How bad is it? 2012’s poll says that about 1 in 3 adults or about 34% “say they are concerned about the planet we are leaving behind for future generations.” The percentage in 2009 was 43% so there was a ten percentage point decrease. Perhaps the people polled don’t have future generations to worry about or could we be seeing the opinions of the post-emotional millennials? Either way, that is still less than half.  

Significantly less than half of adults surveyed describe themselves as "environmentally-conscious" (27% 2012 vs. 30% 2009) and they also don’t “personally care a great deal about the current state, and future, of the environment” (31% 2012 vs. 36% 2009 and 34% 2010).

Well, that is depressing news to take into this Earth Day weekend.

On Friday when the winners of the 12th annual RecycleMania competition were announced: it came as no surprise that Ohio University’s main campus in Athens, Ohio, placed first in the Mid-American Conference. They took home one of the “Grand Champion” titles by placing 43rd with a recycling rate of 43.79 percent.

Ohio University is where the competition began back in January of 2001 when their campus recycling coordinator challenged Miami University’s to extend their rivalry beyond sports and see who could recycle the most. That year Miami University was the victor in the one-on-one match-up by collecting 41.2 pounds of recyclables per person, compared to Ohio’s 32.6 pounds per person collected during the ten week period.

"We've been working on this for a long time and are looking at many genes. One particular gene has become my favorite," said Dr. William Powell,"And over the years it has convinced me that this gene is going to do the trick."

What trick is this gene set to perform? It’s going to detoxify the oxalic acid produced by the pathogen that causes blight in chestnut trees.

Powell is a plant biotechnology expert from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, New York, and with assistance from The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) they have been working on bringing chestnut trees back to the eastern United States.

Considering all the advancements in science and technology it is amazing that there are some mysteries left in the world.

Biologists from the award-winning Point Reyes Bird Observatory (PRBO) Conservation Science have unraveled the exact route the Golden-crowned Sparrows that winter in California take to their Alaskan breeding grounds in the spring. A better understanding of their exact route will help protect and conserve the ecosystems where the sparrows live.  The entire study is available online at PLoS ONE.

Frank Lloyd Wright died 53 years ago today. That news is certainly not “breaking” but Wright was a groundbreaker and is widely recognized for his contributions in the field of architecture and interior design.

According to The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, founded by the architect himself in 1940,  409 out of 532 of his works are still standing which includes libraries, churches, museums and houses. His two personal homes Taliesin in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona are maintained by the Foundation and open for tours.  Twenty Wright houses are now open to the public and more than one-third of the buildings he designed are designated as historical landmarks or preserved in historical districts.

Wright was inspired by nature and this is evident in his designs. The “Prairie houses” and the highly-recognizable Fallingwater House in Pennsylvania are examples of Wright’s dedication to the school of thought he passed on to his students: "Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.  It will never fail you."

Over the weekend Whole Foods Market announced that they would be making a major change to their seafood departments. They are going to stop selling certain species of fish because they are unsustainable. This new policy comes a whole year before Whole Foods’ original deadline to begin the practice.

The change will start on April 22nd or Earth Day and it means there will no longer be red-rated, wild caught fish sold in their stores. Examples are: Atlantic halibut, grey sole, and skate. Instead customers will be directed to purchase fish that are similar but sustainable like Pacific halibut which is a Marine Steward Council (MSC)-certified fish. The MSC-certification is on any wild caught, sustainable fish that doesn’t have the color-coded label the store also uses.

The seafood departments stoplight colored rating system, which works well at a glance for quick decision making, was set forth in 2010 by Whole Foods and two non-profit organizations: Blue Ocean Institute and Monterrey Bay Aquarium.

Are you looking for something to do tomorrow to change up your Saturday night routine? Are you tired of the same activities you always do: dinner-movie-drinks or catching up on your favorite TV shows you missed during the week?  Do you have a date tomorrow and don’t know what to do or where to go? Why don’t you participate in Earth Hour and turn off all the unnecessary lights in your house and sit in the dark contemplating your commitment and the global effort to sustainability.

Once upon a time a team of marine researchers from Nova Southern University Oceanographic Center (NSU-OC) found what appeared to be an endangered scalloped hammerhead shark living off the coast of the Eastern United States. Upon closer inspection they realized they were looking at a shark remarkably similar to the scalloped hammerhead but not the same species- a rarity!

When another shark, identical to the one previously found, was noticed off the coast of Southern Brazil over 4,300 miles away from the first one it was exciting but troubling news. This shark wasn’t as rare as previously thought and now instead of one species of endangered hammerhead shark hunted for their fins researchers were afraid they might be looking at two.

One hundred years ago the Japanese capital of Tokyo gifted the United States capital with over 3,000 cherry blossom trees. That initial set of trees would be one of many sets exchanged over the years and across the Pacific ocean to symbolize friendship between the two countries. 

Sadly, the relationship between Japan and the United States would become tumultuous in the 1940’s as the countries fought bitterly against each other in World War II.  In 1941, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, four cherry trees in Washington DC were chopped down in what law enforcement believed to be an attack of “retaliation.”  The vandals responsible for the crime were never found. During WWII the annual Cherry Blossom Festival was suspended and there wouldn’t be another festival until 1948.

Yesterday, the United States Postal Service unveiled the commemorative 45 cent forever stamps known as “Cherry Blossom Centennial” that will mark the anniversary of the donated trees and celebrate their legacy.

Stop for a minute and think of all the ways you used water today: cooking, cleaning and for hygiene. Now think of all the ways you use water at work. Depending on your place of employment those ways could vary, so think of how much water a farmer uses or a chef in a restaurant. Now go one step further and think of all the food and non-food products that contain water. Water is even used in the manufacturing of a car (not to mention maintenance) and estimates put a car’s waterfootprint at about 39,000 gallons.

Though water may sometimes fall from the sky in buckets, it doesn’t always and it is not a renewable resource unless we can control our usage.

The Halaco site in Oxnard, California, is one of many superfund sites in Southern California currently being cleaned up and studied by the EPA. Some residents of the area are old enough to recall the metal smelter’s havoc on the air and most all have a passing knowledge if not curiosity about the abandoned and fenced-off plant situated so close to the ocean.

A global research study conducted by an international team has found that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are functioning as intended- they are protecting marine life such as sea turtles.

An MPA is a designated no fishing zones which is excellent news for turtles. Fishing nets and lines, active or abandoned, are considered two of the most common ways turtles can die before their time. If a turtle gets caught in a net and can’t escape they will eventually drown because they are unable to surface for air. The fishing industry also inadvertently kills sea grass which is a turtle’s primary source of food.