DAILY QUICK READ - SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

Water is Life

The study pertains to groundwater which is important to the region, but monsoon fed rivers continue to be a major source of agricultural water.  Still, with the recent conclusions regarding glacier melt in the Himalayas, the availability of clean, safe water is going to be compromised for nearly two billion people.

Sixty per cent of the groundwater in a river basin supporting more than 750 million people in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh is not drinkable or usable for irrigation, researchers have said.

The biggest threat to groundwater in the Indo-Gangetic Basin, named after the Indus and Ganges rivers, is not depletion but contamination, they reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“The two main concerns are salinity and arsenic,” the authors of the study wrote.

Up to a depth of 200m (650ft), some 23% of the groundwater stored in the basin is too salty, and about 37% “is affected by arsenic at toxic concentrations”, they said.

Sign The Petition

Then share it with your on-line communities.  Will it do any good?  Who knows, but every little bit can help.

Hello, my name is Jane Goodall, and I’m here to ask for your support to end wildlife trafficking. I spend about 300 days every year traveling and talking to people about how we can help animals, but I know the power of social media can connect far more people much more quickly than anyone could do on their own. Please help me end wildlife trafficking.

Greed and the desire for increasingly rare “trophies” have resulted in a boom in illegal wildlife trafficking. This is a gruesome trade that is rapidly pushing the earth’s endangered species toward extinction. I’m meeting with some of the top conservation leaders in the world this year, and urgently need your support to tell them you want wildlife trafficking to be a priority for the international community to focus on.

Here’s Something Else You Can Do

This is an app that allows you to report on any suspected illegal activity regarding wildlife.  Join in.

It's estimated that 100 elephants are poached every day for their tusks and more than 1,000 rhinos are killed every year for their horns, meaning both could be extinct within the next decade or two. Other animals like tigers, snakes, pangolins and turtles have suffered major population loss thanks to poaching for their skins, hides, bile and more.

While there are wonderful organizations doing what they can to crack down on the poaching and selling of these animals, there are many people like you and me who want to contribute to the fight, too. Australia’s Taronga Zoo and TRAFFIC, the international wildlife trade monitoring network have created an app that lets us do our part.

Called Wildlife Witness, the app lets users submit information and photos of any suspected hunting, trapping or selling of endangered animals by pinning the incident to a virtual map. The submission then gets forwarded to wildlife authorities who will investigate it.

I’m Really Going to Miss This Guy

President Obama has set aside more land for wildlife conservation than any previous president.  Just think what could have been accomplished if Republicans put our national interests ahead of politics.

President Obama gave the keynote address at the 20th annual Lake Tahoe Summit, 20 years after President Bill Clinton spoke at the inaugural summit that led to a massive investment of public and private funds in the interest of reversing the decline in clarity of the pristine waters of the famed Sierra lake.

"The conservation mission is more urgent than ever," he said. "We made it a priority from day one, setting aside more acres than any administration in history."

In the last week alone, the president created two national monuments on opposite ends of the nation, protecting a swath of land in the Maine North Woods, while carving out more than half million square miles to expand the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the waters north of Hawaii.

But Obama argued that conservation of acres alone is not sufficient with the daunting threat of climate change looming.

"Conservation is more than just sticking a plaque on a sign and calling it a park," he said. "We need to embrace the conservation of diverse lands and waters because it will help us build resilience to climate change."