Daily Quick Read - July 31, 2019

The Ground is Melting Under Our Feet

Permafrost is a defining feature of the Arctic and it is melting as the region warms.  When it melts instability follows.

Margaret and Edward Kelly's home is coming apart at the seams.

The joints holding their walls, floors and ceilings together expand and contract as the ground underneath moves, a few centimetres at a time.

The Kellys are one of at least a dozen families in Fort Good Hope who feel threatened as the ground literally shifts beneath their feet. They blame the thawing permafrost, which is shifting the land and the houses that sit on top of it.

The permafrost has strengthened the land underneath the community for centuries. But as climate change warms the permafrost, it leaves the land vulnerable to heavy rain and landslides that carve away huge chunks of earth.

Finally Someone Who Wants to See Your Instagram

Kasim Rafiq is a wildlife biologist working in Botswana. At the end of a very difficult day when he was tried and failed to track down an elusive leopard, he ran into a load of tourists with their guide. The tourist had seen Rafiq’s leopard and several more wild animals and had the photos to prove it.  Rafiq realized that maybe his teams pain staking and labor intensive efforts might be being duplicated by truckloads of tourists. 

So he and his team worked with a safari lodge in Botswana to analyze 25,000 tourist photographs of wildlife. They used those as sightings of lions, spotted hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and wild dogs. They then compared those data to the estimates they made with traditional wildlife biology tactics: camera traps, track surveys, and “call-in stations”—where they play sounds of distressed animals in the middle of the night and see who pops by.

Turned out that the estimates from tourist photos were just as good as those gleaned from traditional methods. And the tourists were actually the only ones to see elusive cheetahs—the researchers would have missed the cats without the citizen science data. The results are in the journal Current Biology.

My Account Can't Be Empty, I Still Have Checks

The world’s resources are finite. Yes, they are replenished, but we are consuming those resources faster than nature can replenish them.

It’s taken us only 209 days to burn through a year’s worth of resources — everything from food and timber to land and carbon. We are using up nature 1.75 times faster than it can be replenished. To do this sustainably, we would need the resources of 1.75 Earths.

These latest figures come from Global Footprint Network, an international nonprofit that calculates our annual ecological budget and the date at which we exceed it. Once we bust through this budget, we start devouring resources at an unsustainable rate. 

It’s a pyramid scheme,” said Mathis Wackernagel, CEO and founder of Global Footprint Network. “It depends on using more and more from the future to pay for the present.”

Don't Need It, But We're Going to Build It

The Canadian government (federal and provincial) a recommending the approval of a massive tar sands oil mine. A mine that may not be financially viable and that when in operation will force Canada to miss it’s greenhouse gas commitments for decades.

On Thursday, a joint review panel — representing the federal and Alberta governments — released its recommendations on whether a massive new open-pit mine in the oilsands should proceed.

It recommended Teck’s Frontier Mine get the green light, despite finding it will have significant and permanent impacts on the environment.

The decision now moves to Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine Mckenna, who has until February to issue a decision.

Environmental concerns flagged by the panel include the removal of old-growth forests, the destruction or permanent alteration of fish habitat, the release of a large amount of carbon pollution and the loss of wetlands and areas of “high species diversity potential.

”But, overall, the panel found these impacts were outweighed by economic benefits, saying “the project is in the public interest.”

Bicycle Friendly Cities 

One way to reduce greenhouse gases in our cities is by making them more bicycle friendly. Canada is claiming it has the busiest bike lane in North America. The Netherlands say, “hold our beer.”

It was very controversial when it was put in, called "Gregor's Gridlock" after the progressive then-mayor Gregor Robertson. According to the CBC, everybody hated it. The CBC titles its post 'They were saying no one would ride it': 10 years on, Burrard bike lane is N. America's busiest, officials say.

Now of course, it is totally accepted and unremarkable. I never even took a photo of it, and I take a lot of bike lane photos. As one former opponent admits, "None of us had a crystal ball back then," he said. "We couldn't have predicted how popular cycling would become if you made it safer for people.

"But is it the busiest bike lane in North America? I do not believe it for a second. It turns out that it is the busiest bike lane in North America with an Eco-counter, one company's device that is put on significant routes, where it clocked an average of 3,100 per day or 1.3 million per year in 2017. The #2 was Tikkum Crossing in Portland, Oregon, with an average 2,783 counts a day, and #3: Fremont Bridge in Seattle with an average of 2,639 counts a day.

Stop Taking My Picture

Yaron Schmid

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania 

South Pacific Plastic Garbage Dump

3,500 Pieces of Plastic Trash Wash Up Daily                   IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF

The Pitcairn Islands are among the most remote places on earth. Four tiny dots raising above the South Pacific, roughly 3500 miles from South America to the east and New Zealand to the West. Pitcairn Island is inhabited mostly by descendants of the famous Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions, who settled on the island in 1790. By far largest of the islands is Henderson, which is also the most interesting from a scientific standpoint.

Thirty years ago it was designated a Unesco World Heritage site, one of the best remaining examples of an elevated coral atoll ecosystem. As well as an important site for breeding seabirds, the island is home to four endemic land birds: a fruit dove, lorikeet, reed warbler and the plucky flightless crake.

In 2012 supported by the United Kingdom government and with financial assistance from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pitcairn Islanders worked to create a massive marine sanctuary. While supporting that effort a closer look at Henderson Island revealed an ugly truth in the age of plastic.

… filmmaker Jon Slayer visited the island as part of an expedition to support efforts to create an enormous marine sanctuary in the island group. The images he captured - of fishing nets and buoys, plastic water bottles, helmets, and crates scattered over more than two kilometres of beach - were uploaded to Google Earth.

Five years later:

An analysis, published in 2017, estimated 18 tonnes of plastic lay on the faraway shores. The island was said to have "the highest density of plastic debris" recorded anywhere, with 3500 new items washing up each day.

And this year:

Henderson Island lies in the world's third-largest marine protected area - an 830,000 square kilometre "no-take zone". Fishing, aside from some traditional, and non-commercial catch, is illegal, as is seafloor mining.

Yet of the six tonnes of garbage collected on a June science and conservation expedition, an estimated 60 per cent appeared to be associated with industrial fishing.

It’s believed that most of the plastic that ends up on Henderson Island is from South America or lost from passing ships. But the clean-up team on the island in June found items from all corners of the globe. Spirits bottled in Japan, Scotland and Puerto Rico; a rubber boot manufactured in the Netherlands; and a hard hat from a building yard in the United States.

Everyday household items covered the beach: laundry baskets, toilet seats, razors, toothbrushes and dozens of shoelaces.

Aside from the fishing gear, most of the items washing up here are garbage. The bits and pieces of a world filled with plastic stuff that gets tossed out thousands of miles away from Henderson Island. But, here is where the bill gets paid for our plastic laden lifestyle.

As well as being unsightly, the litter can be deadly to wildlife. Trinkets and single-use plastics are often found in the stomachs of dead sea birds and whales. Other marine creatures - such as sharks, turtles and dolphins - become ensnared, disfigured and sometimes drown.

Plastics break down and end up as microplastics, defined as less than 5mm in diameter, and nanoplastics (less than 0.001 mm). These are ingested by tiny organisms like plankton, sending the particles up through the food chain.

It is hard to underestimate the damage being done to life on earth by our garbage.

Daily Quick Read - July 30, 2019

Honoré and the Green Army

Lt Gen Russel Honoré led the recover efforts in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.  Honoré’s actions saved lives and restored not just order to the chaos that followed the hurricane, but humanity and decency.  He’s taken on a new role and it’s a much bigger fight than any he faced in his military career.

Honoré retired in 2008 and while he’s traded in his fatigues, he’s still applying his trademark straightforward approach in a battle to save American lives. Today he commands what he’s named the “Green Army” against toxic pollution, “one of our nation’s deadliest enemies”, in communities up and down Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” corridor – the area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge littered with pollution from petrochemical plants.

“When I came home,” said Honoré, “I saw multinational corporations doing things that were clearly making people sick – poisoning the water, poisoning in the air, and acting with impunity.” It was another bad plan, and Honoré wasn’t going to stand for it.

Honoré sees his Green Army as a legislative and public relations arm of the work that environmentalists like Orr do on the ground here every day. Often it’s about him using his considerable name recognition to bring attention to communities who are being ignored.

“When people call, we physically go see what the problem is, and then we try to get them to organize – because nobody’s gonna do nothing unless you’re moving your feet.”

Waste That Could Feed Billions

From a health standpoint growth in the worldwide consumption of fish is good news.  To support that consumption , we are fishing the sea empty and yet, the industry wastes 30% of its catch before the food even gets to consumers.

Waste is an issue throughout the global food chain. Roughly one-third of our food supply—about 1.3 billion tonnes—gets wasted every year. A European or North American consumer may waste up to 115 kilograms per year, 10 times more than their counterpart in sub-Saharan Africa or south and Southeast Asia. But the problem is especially egregious in the seafood category, where nearly a third of global stocks are overfished. Wasting food—especially fish—appears to be an inefficiency our species cannot afford to keep up.

And yet. As we busily agree with each other, our discards continue to pile up.

Stockholm  Syndrome in the Oil Patch

A River of Oil                                                     KGET

When your livelihood depends on fossil fuels are you going to take a stand against them?  The Cymric oil spill in Kern County,California has grown to one million gallons and is still flowing.  Our world runs on oil and so what if the oil companies are destroying the environment?  That seems to be the attitude of many of those whose health is endangered by environment in this oil dependent community.

"People are anti-oil, anti-oil companies,” Whitteker said. “I think it’s ridiculous because our world runs on oil. All the plastic in your car. The baggies you put your lunch in. Your shoes.” 

Some of the men having lunch said they had not heard about an oil spill. Sabrina Ballou, who works at the diner, toasted bread and poured gravy over biscuits in the kitchen. When asked if she had heard about the oil spill, Ballou replied over the sizzle of hamburger meat on the grill: “I’ve heard about it, haven’t seen it. They’ve got it handled. It’s what they do around here.

Nothing new for us.” “They take it pretty serious around here,” said Ballou, whose husband drives a vacuum truck. “They try not to mess up the environment.”

I challenge you to name one oil company that has succeeded in not messing up the environment. 

That’s a Lot of Trees

350,000,000 planted in one day.  It’s going to take a while before they make a difference, but if Ethiopian can plant 350  million trees in a day, why can’t we?  And, we could help other countries do the same.

About 350m trees have been planted in a single day in Ethiopia, according to a government minister. The planting is part of a national “green legacy” initiative to grow 4bn trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices have reportedly been shut down in order for civil servants to take part. The project aims to tackle the effects of deforestation and climate change in the drought-prone country. According to the UN, Ethiopia’s forest coverage was just 4% in the 2000s, down from 35% a century earlier. 

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright
This is good news - a 30% increase in the wild tiger population in India in the last four years. India has set aside 50 sanctuaries distributed across the country to provide protected habitats that will provide some safety for the tigers.

India’s wild tiger population has increased by more than 30 percent in just four years, according to a new census released Monday, raising hopes for the survival of the endangered species.The census found 2,967 tigers in the wild across the country, up from 2,226 four years ago in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed as a “historic achievement”.Population numbers in the nation have risen steadily since falling to its lowest-recorded figure of 1,411 in 2006.But they are yet to return to the figures recorded in 2002 when some 3,700 tigers were estimated to be alive in the country.It is believed some 40,000 tigers lived in India at the time of independence from Britain in 1947.

Swimming With Sharks

African penguin swims with spotted leopard shark - San Diego Zoo 

Daily Quick Read - July 29, 2019

Big Underestimate of Glacier Ice Loss

Glaciers all over the world are melting.  Scientists have concluded that large land bases glaciers that meet the sea in places like Alaska and Greenland are melting significantly faster (10 to 100 time faster) than originally suspected. 

Until now, scientists had a limited understanding of what happens under the water at the point where land-based glaciers meet the sea. Using a combination of radar, sonar and time-lapse photography, a team of researchers has now provided the first detailed measurements of the underwater changes over time. Their findings suggest that the theories currently used to gauge glacier change are underestimating glaciers' ice loss.

Chemical Soup - Really It Is

BPA is a chemical that has been extensively used to line almost all canned food and drink. BPA has been linked to reproductive problems for women. BPA is derived from phenol, which is derived from benzene, which is a major component of crude oil and gasoline. The use of BPA is being phased out, but the two chemical that are replacing BPA: BPF and BPS appear to cause health problems in children.

Two chemicals used as substitutes for bisphenol A (BPA) may contribute to childhood weight gain and obesity, according to a study published today in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
Bisphenol S (BPS) and bisphenol F (BPF) are chemicals similar to BPA, which has been used for decades in plastic and metal food packaging, receipts, and electronics.

While BPA use in products has declined due to increased awareness about its role as an endocrine disrupting chemical, BPS and BPF are increasingly used as replacements but, as structurally similar chemicals to BPA, they seem to have similar health effects — a phenomenon researchers refer to as "regrettable substitutions."

The study adds to mounting evidence that bisphenol chemicals are associated with an increased body mass index in children and teens. It will continue to be an issue "given that human exposure to these compounds is likely to continue to increase in the future," said the study's authors.

The Boys From Brazil

                                                                                                      Nacho Doce/Reuters

Brazilian president Bolsonaro has already declared that Brazil owns the Amazon and will do with the vast area called the “lungs of the planet” as he (Bolsonaro) pleases. After years of dedicated conservation efforts and routine battles with farming and mining interests, the Amazon rain forest has been turning over to industrial development by an administration that believes that they are doing God’s work. Every minutes an area of rain forest equal to three football fields is being destroyed.

A transition on that scale could have significant implications for global warming since the rain forest absorbs vast amounts of atmospheric carbon. Recent research has shown the potential for massive tree plantings to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere.

"It's very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away," said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research, as the Guardian reported. "We can't see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem."

After years of conservation, Brazil's environmental track record has nose-dived in the first seven months of Bolsonaro's administration. He has given environmental oversight to the agriculture minister, who is the leader of a farming lobby. His foreign minister called climate science a part of a global Marxist plot.

The boys from Brazil are using the Trump environmental template.

100 Year Droughts 
Global ocean temperature extremes cause weather extremes thousands of miles away. Centuries ago these extremes caused prolonged droughts in the southwest. Climate change is likely to bring them back.

In medieval times, the US Southwest was routinely struck by decades-long droughts. Those megadroughts stopped around 1600, but climate change could bring them back.

In a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances, researchers from Columbia’s Earth Institute used climate models to study what caused the megadroughts. Using historical climate data, they determined that two things were to blame: changing ocean temperatures and excess energy trapped inside the Earth’s atmosphere (called radiative forcing).

Now, with similar trends on the rise again thanks to climate change, the researchers say that the US Southwest (which includes California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and parts of other states) is likely to experience medieval megadroughts again—and soon.

Mountaineering Mice

                                                                                wikipedia

While climbing the world second highest volcano, Llullaillaco, in 2013 an American climber thought he might be suffering from lack of oxygen when, at an altitude of 20,340 feet, he thought he saw a mouse scurrying along in the frozen landscape. 

A later expedition revealed the animal to be a yellow-rumped leaf-eared mouse (Phyllotis xanthopygus), a known species that lives in the foothills and mountains of the Andes, but can be found as low as sea level. 

That means the mouse has an unprecedented elevation range of more than 20,000 feet. “That wide of a range,” says Scott Steppan, a mouse expert and biology professor at Florida State University, “is extraordinary.”

“No other species does that,” says Steppan, who presented the unpublished finding in late June at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists in Washington D.C.

The discovery raises many questions. Why do the mice live at such a high elevation, where there is half the oxygen found at sea level? How do they survive in such conditions, where it also dips down to temperatures of minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter? And what do they eat?

Thanks for the Drink

Glamping in Africa can lead to some close encounters

Great White

Great White Shark - Shark Alley, Gansbaai, South Africa

Check out the Dyer Island Conservation Trust.

Iron Ship Floats!

SS Great Britain - Dockside Museum, Bristol, United Kingdom

SS Great Britain is a museum ship and former passenger steamship, which was advanced for her time. She was the longest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York. While other ships had been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, the Great Britain was the first to combine these features in a large ocean-going ship. She was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, which she did in 1845, in the time of 14 days.

The ship is 322 ft (98 m) in length and has a 3,400-ton displacement. She was powered by two inclined 2 cylinder engines of the direct-acting type, with twin 88 in (220 cm) bore, 6-foot (1.8 m) stroke cylinders. She was also provided with secondary masts for sail power. The four decks provided accommodation for a crew of 120, plus 360 passengers who were provided with cabins, and dining and promenade saloons.         

- wikipedia

The Arctic is on Fire

Following the hottest June on record, the Arctic  continues suffering through unprecedented July temperatures.  Lightning strikes close to the Arctic Circle have sparked multiple massive fires.

"The magnitude is unprecedented in the 16-year satellite record," said Thomas Smith, an assistant professor in environmental geography at the London School of Economics, to USA Today. "The fires appear to be further north than usual, and some appear to have ignited peat soils." 

 "These are some of the biggest fires on the planet, with a few appearing to be larger than 100,000 hectares (380 square miles)," he told USA Today. "The amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted from Arctic Circle fires in June 2019 is larger than all of the CO2 released from Arctic Circle fires in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together." 

Peat soil is compressed organic material that, when dried has historically been used as fuel.  Climate change is heating the Arctic twice as fast as the rest of the planet, allowing massive areas of peat to dry out and burn.  Unlike a forest or grass fire, that move quickly over the land consuming fuel quickly, peat fires can burn for weeks or months.

Smoke from these fires is visible from space.  The smoke for the largest three of the fires, all in Siberia, has blanketed 1.7 million miles in north central Asia.  Researchers have calculated that these fires generated 110 million tons of CO2 between June 1 and July 21 and  they are still burning.

Daily Quick Read - July 26, 2019

If They Can Do This, Why Can’t the US? 

Panama bans plastic bags made of polyethylene effective 2020.

Supermarkets, pharmacies and retailers in Panama must stop using traditional polyethylene plastic bags immediately, while wholesale stores will have until 2020 to conform to the policy approved in 2018. Fines can be applied for non-compliance but there are exceptions for the use of plastic bags for sanitary reasons, such as with raw food.

Costa Rica bans the import or sale of polystyrene effective 2021.

Signed into law earlier this week, it will come into effect in 2021, the same year the government has said the country will become the first plastic-free and carbon-free country in the world.

Polystyrene, commonly known as “styrofoam” in the US, is widely used for packaging and transporting food due to its lightness, low production costs and because it is hygienic.

However, it is not biodegradable and instead the crumbly material quickly breaks down into damaging microplastics which easily enter waterways and the ocean where they are consumed by marine creatures.

Berkeley Turns Off the Gas
Berkeley, California will be the first US city to ban natural gas hook-ups in new buildings. The ordinance goes into effect next year.  It is mostly symbolic as it will not impact existing natural gas installations,  only applying to about 1% of buildings in the city. Still….it is a first step.

Berkeley this week became the first city in the United States to ban natural, fossil gas hook-ups in new buildings.

The landmark ordinance was passed into law on Tuesday, after being approved unanimously by the city council the previous week amid resounding public support.

Although Berkeley may be pushing the vanguard, the city is hardly alone. Governments across the US and Europe are looking at strategies to phase out gas. In California alone, dozens of cities and counties are considering eliminating fossil fuel hook-ups to power stoves and heat homes in new buildings, while California state agencies pencil out new rules and regulations that would slash emissions.

Running Out of Water
Water from the Colorado River basin supports 40 million people and what, as a stand-alone, would be the world’s fifth largest economy. A new plan for the use of the basin’s water needs to be hammered out over the next 18 months. The 1922 compact that has been the governing agreement for the use of the water is based on two fatal flaws. Flaws that will be exacerbated by climate change.

From the beginning, Fleck and Kuhn argue in their new book, “Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained The Colorado River,” scientists warned about promising water to too many people in the Southwest, but were sidelined by politicians looking to grow crops and cities. That led to inflated figures in the compact that plague water managers today. The original sin was putting more water on paper than existed in the real world.

A 1922 compact split the Colorado River into two legal and geographic entities: an Upper and Lower Basin. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico make the Upper Basin. California, Arizona and Nevada make the Lower Basin. The document promised each basin 7.5 million acre feet of water each year. That water is then split among the states that make up the basins. A later agreement promised Mexico 1.5 million acre feet of water from the river, without specifying which basin was responsible for delivering it.

In order to get the compact signed, Upper Basin and Lower Basin leaders agreed to measure the river’s flows at a place just downstream of modern day Glen Canyon Dam and use it as a point of reference. If the amount of water measured at that specific point ever dipped below the contracted amount in subsequent years, the Lower Basin could call for its water, shutting off users in the Upper Basin if need be.

Do Elephants Belong in Zoos?
African countries are effectively selling young, primarily breeding age female, elephants to zoos. In part because captive breeding of elephants is problematic. These are some of the best zoos in the world and according to this article they are failing elephants.

Wild herds can roam up to 50 miles a day, the seemingly disparate members bound to one another not only by intense lifelong familial and social bonds but also by keenly honed senses and communicative skills. In proximity, herd members speak through a variety of vocalizations, everything from low-frequency rumbles to higher-pitched trumpeting, and through gestures: slight anglings of the head, body and feet, or the subtle waving of their trunks. Over greater distances, they rely on ground vibrations felt through finely tuned sensors in the padding of their feet. If harm comes to a herd member, all the others react, like the tentacles of a just-brushed anemone. A herd as far away as a hundred miles from a cull — the brutal practice of gunning down elephants in those areas where their numbers interfere with human settlements — can both emit and hear alarm calls outside our ears’ register about the unfolding cataclysm. In the aftermath of such slaughters, when the body parts are locked away in sheds for later sale, other elephants have been known to return to break in and retrieve the remains for proper burials.

Two Condor Chicks Hatched in Utah
The births of the 1000th and 1001st California condor chicks have been confirmed. Biologists rappelled off a cliff in Utah to confirm the events.

                                                                Zion National Park

Biologists estimate that the 1,000th and 1,001st chicks hatched in May this year, but they were only able to confirm their existence over the past several days, because the raptors build their nests inside caves carved into steep, sometimes inaccessible cliffs.

“You know, condors can be secretive,” said Janice After noticing that one condor couple seemed to be taking shifts scavenging for food, “we suspected that they’d hatched a new chick”, Stroud-Settles said. Field researchers eventually captured a photo of the 1,000th chick after rappelling off a cliff across from the birds’ nest cave. “When we confirmed it … it was just this feeling of overwhelming joy,” she said.Stroud-Settles, a wildlife biologist at Zion National Park in Utah.

Dogs Take On Aquatic Menace

Quagga Mussels                    UCR   

Quagga and zebra mussels are small invasive fresh-water mussels originally found in the Ukraine and Russia, including both the Black and Caspian Seas. The two species are fast breeders who quickly crowd out native mussels. They very small and attach to both hard and soft surfaces. These two characteristics result in build-ups of both species on intake/outlet pipes, boat docks, buoys, boat hulls and beaches.

These two species first appeared in the US in the late 1980s in the Great Lakes having travelled as in commercial ship ballast water. They may be tiny, but there are incredible prolific and mitigating the damage they cause is costly.

Zebra and quagga mussel invasions create an immense financial burden because of the need to continuously and actively manage these pests. It has been estimated that it costs over $500 million (US) per year to manage mussels at power plants, water systems, and industrial complexes, and on boats and docks in the Great Lakes. In addition to the property damage these mussels cause, they can also have a profound impact on native species and humans.

The encrusting of lake and river bottoms can displace native aquatic arthropods that need soft sediments for burrowing. In the Great Lakes this had lead to the collapse of amphipod populations that fish rely on for food and the health of fish populations has been severely affected.

These mussels have been associated with avian botulism outbreaks in the Great Lakes which have caused the mortality of tens of thousands of birds. Because of their filter feeding habit, it has been estimated that these mussels can bioaccumlate organic pollutants in their tissues by as much as 300,000 times when compared to concentrations in the water in which they are living. Consequently, these pollutants can biomagnify as they are passed up the food chain when contaminated mussels are eaten by predators (e.g., fish and crayfish), who in turn are eaten by other organisms (e.g., recreational fishermen who eat contaminated fish.)

The quagga and zebra mussel invasion has spread from the Great Lakes, primarily through the movement of recreational watercraft. Both species can live for several days outside of water. They showed up as far away as Nevada and California in the mid-2000s. In Wyoming and Montana state and federal fish and game officials have implemented a multi-part strategy to keep these invasive mussels out of lakes and streams. Part of the strategy is education, but an additional important component are Tobais and Jax – mussel sniffing dogs.

                                                             WDC

Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks are using specially trained dogs to check boats for aquatic invasive species. In partnership with Working Dogs for Conservation, the parks will put dogs Tobias and Jax to work sniffing out zebra and quagga mussels and participating in public events.

The parks, as well as the state of Wyoming, seek to keep them from being inadvertently introduced to lakes, creeks and rivers and have extensive programs, now including Tobias and Jax, to keep area waters uninfested.

These high energy dogs are sent to work checking watercraft and trailers for any scent evidence of the invading mussels. In the days around the 4th of July, state inspector checked 850 boats, 129 of which came from areas with known infestations. The dogs make finding even trace evidence of these invasive mussels easier and quicker than other forms of scrutiny.

Both Tobias and Jax are from Working Dogs for Conservation (WDC).  Many of WDCs dogs are rescue pups.  Tobias was found wandering the streets and Jax wasn't cut out for the military.   Check out Tobias here and Jax here.  Here’s a link to the New York Times who reported on a little clean-up job Tobias did in California a couple of years ago.

Daily Quick Read - July 25, 2019

Our Estimates Were 100% to Low

A study of five northeastern urban areas by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has discovered that these cities are leaking methane gas, a major source of CO2, at twice the rate originally estimated.  The sources are leakage from both the natural gas delivery infrastructure and inefficient appliances.

Based on their findings, the researchers estimated that these five large cities—which include about 12 percent of the US population—emit over 900,000 tons of methane each year. Recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates placed methane emissions at a little over 400,000 tons, the study said, or half this new estimate.

The researchers attribute about 820,000 tons of those emissions to natural gas leaking, which isn't properly factored into EPA estimates, according to the study authors. To separate methane emissions from natural gas from other sources such as landfills, the researchers tracked ethane, which is found in natural gas but not other methane sources.

The studied cities have old infrastructure, complete with leaky pipes and inefficient appliances, the study authors say. As natural gas (which contains methane) pumps through cities, some is inevitably lost to the atmosphere. Even without decrepit infrastructure, natural gas can leak methane into the atmosphere—for example, when you turn your stove on and it clicks for a few seconds before a flame appears.

Young and Old Agree - The World is Worth Saving

A 95 year old veteran of D-day met with climate activist Greta Thunberg near Normandy’s Omaha Beach.  Charles Norman Shay fought against totalitarians in WWII to help free Europe from Nazi.  Thunberg is fighting to save world from the greed and corruption of multi-national corporations and right-wing governments.  Two days after the Normandy event, Thunberg’s speech to the French National Assembly was boycotted by right-wing members of the Assembly.  Some wars never end.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg on Sunday urged people to recognize "the link between climate and ecological emergency and mass migration, famine, and war" as she was given the first Freedom Prize from France's Normandy region for her ongoing school strikes for climate and role in catalyzing the "Fridays for Future" climate movement.

The 16-year-old from Sweden received the award before a crowd of roughly 2,000 people in the city of Caen. She shared the stage with D-Day veterans and prize sponsors Léon Gautier of France, who is 96, and Charles Norman Shay of the United States, who is 95."I think the least we can do to honor them," said Thunberg, "is to stop destroying that same world that Charles, Léon, and their friends and colleagues fought so hard to save."

"All these many damages on Mother Nature make me sad," said Shay. "As a soldier I fought for freedom to liberate Europe [and the] world [from] Nazism 75 yeas ago, but this is no sense if Mother Nature is deeply wounded, and if our civilization collapses due to inappropriate human behaviors."

None Dare To Speak It

That which will not be named by the Trump administration.  It’s almost as if “climate” change can be reversed if government agencies stop saying the “c” word.

It's no secret that the Trump administration has championed fossil fuels and scoffed at renewable energy. But the Trump administration is trying to keep something secret: the climate crisis. That's according to a new analysis from the watchdog group Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) who found that more than a quarter of the references to climate change on .gov websites vanished.

The watchdog group found some disturbing trends since Trump took office in January of 2017. In his first two years in office, the terms "climate change," "clean energy" and "adaptation" dropped by 26 percent on .gov websites, as VICE reported. EDGI analyzed over 5,300 webpages across 23 federal agencies and concluded that the Trump administration has severely weakened public access to information about the climate crisis and distorted language around it.

One of the more conspicuous and troubling removals of references to climate change happened across the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website, which garners more traffic than whitehouse.gov. The report found that over half the pages (73/136) where climate change was completely removed from public view belonged to the EPA.

Just Can't Wait to be Extinct

                                                                 Walt Disney Pictures

Disney’s most recent version of The Lion King (following the 1994 animated film and the long running Broadway play) may become the only way people will be able to see lions in the foreseeable future.  Constrained to less than 6% of their original multi-continent range, there are fewer than 25,000 wild lions in Africa and only 600 Asiatic lions in India.  

FOR EVERY LION in the wild, there are 14 African elephants, and there are 15 Western lowland gorillas. There are more rhinos than lions, too.

With fewer than an estimated 25,000 in Africa, lions are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which determines the conservation status of species.

To put things in perspective, the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) notes that lion numbers have dropped by half since The Lion King premiered in theaters in 1994.

Disney has pledged up to $3 million to lion conservation organizations.  Considering that in its first 10 days of release, the latest version of The Lion King has earned $531 million worldwide, it seems Disney is just another organization exploiting wildlife for profit.

Rhino Impact Bonds 

This is an interesting concept.  The “rhino bond” will provide“up front” money for conservation projects in South Africa and Kenya.  Those governments will be obligated to pay the bond holders both their original investment and a modest rate of return ONLY if a specific set of conservation objectives are met.  This concept puts money in the field immediately instead of forcing conservation projects to compete with other social and security programs .

Black rhino numbers have fallen from 65,000 in the 1970s to about 5,500 presently. The species is said to be extremely vulnerable to extinction in the wild.

According to the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the most critical threat to rhino populations is poaching for the illegal trade in rhino horn products.

The $50 million bond is based on an “outcome payments” model — a concept where investors receive financial returns only on the successful and measurable completion of the objective.Investors will pay an upfront cost for buying the bond and they will be paid back their capital and a coupon if the population of African black rhinos increases in five years. The yield on the bond will be subject to the growth of the rhino population.

“On completion of the five-year term, an independent evaluator verifies whether the RIB [Rhino Impact Bond] target has been achieved: the performance relative to the RIB target determines the investors’ return,” according to a statement from Conservation Capital.