ecobriefs
News and resources to inspire concerned citizens to work together in building a healthier, stronger society that benefits all.
75th Anniversary The Wilderness Society
Celebrates Nationwide Successes
Fresh from a major achievement in 2009, The Wilderness Society has not been resting on its laurels in this, its 75th year of striving to protect our na- tion’s public lands. Following last year’s passage of the largest land conservation bill in decades, permanently protect- ing 4 million acres in 11 states, it’s had more than a dozen wilderness bills in the works this year.
Current campaigns tackle global
warming, fossil fuel drilling in public lands and re-vegetating unused forest roads, as well as wilderness protection. They’re also initiating job programs to restore forests, rivers and grasslands that native species need to adapt to climate change.
Take action at
Wilderness.org.
Garbage Blight Second Patch of Plastic
Assaults Halted Wolves Receive Endangered
Species Protection
Massive wolf hunts have been stopped in their tracks, thanks to a federal court ruling that has restored endangered species protection for these animals in Montana and Idaho. More than 500 wolves have been gunned down since the U.S. govern- ment stripped them of federal protec- tion. “The ruling effectively returns all wolves in the Northern Rockies to the endangered species list,” con- firms Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Soup Spotted in Atlantic
A rising tide of consumer plastics, jettisoned into the oceans via rivers, storm drains, sewage overflows and windstorms, is devastating the environ- ment across the world, says Charles Moore, the ocean researcher credited with discovering a vast, plastics-infested area in the Pacific Ocean in 1997. Now, his Algalita Marine Research Foundation researchers have defined a second vortex of garbage in the Atlantic Ocean. The soup of confetti-like bits of plastics stretches over thousands of square miles of the western North Atlantic, with the densest concentrations between the latitudes of Virginia and Cuba, including the unique Sargasso Sea ecosystem. Sea Education Association (SEA) oceanography faculty member Kara Lavender
Law, Ph.D., clarifies: “There’s no large patch, no solid mass of material. If it were an island, we could go get it. But we can’t; it’s a thin soup of plastic fragments.” SEA, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which has monitored the North Atlantic for 22 years, expects that several such areas exist in the world’s oceans. The plastic soup has essentially become a permanent part of the ecosystem, posing harm to the entire marine food chain. The only remedy is to halt the influx of consumer plastics by producing less of them and recycling them all. Public education is key.
10 Hartford County Edition
www.NaturallyHealthyCT.com
Rainforest Rescue Daily Computer Use Helps
the Cause
Using a green search engine for holiday shopping and other online searches can turn daily Internet use into a give-back to nature.
Forestle.org is an indepen- dent nonprofit that donates all profits from sponsored links to The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre program (more at
Adopt.Nature.org). Together, Forestle home page visitors rescue thousands of square meters of rainforest every day. It has even partnered with Google.
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