Reese Halter

Secrets of Bees and Flowers

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*People and honeybees share many similarities including some of the same genes and brain neurons. It’s one of the many reasons why I am awed by these masterpiece creatures.

For my entire professional life, I have followed Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum’s dictum: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”

honeybees
Honeybees can add, subtract and count. Image credit: Nat Geo

The more we discover about the incomparable honeybees, the more respect they rightfully garner. Keep Reading

The Peaceful Rebellion

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*Millennials and Generation Zs are terrified. The accelerating combustion of fossil fuels, the Man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction and the annual 250 billion metric tons of Man-made long-lasting poisons have compromised all life.

save the earth
Greta Thunberg addresses the largest ever climate demonstration in Finland. Image credit: Common Dreams

The youth of the planet are not sitting back quietly. They are forming peaceful movements. For example, Greta Thunberg, a teenaged Swede, began striking against school to bring attention to the climate crisis. Her actions have spawned a global outcry. Hundreds of thousands of school children from around the globe are striking for the climate. Keep Reading

Death, Starving Animals, Soaring Bank Profits

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*While the U.S. banks celebrate a record windfall from the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion tax cuts, our planetary life support systems are blinking code red emergency. The accelerating Man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction is smashing head on into the Man-made climate crisis.

Starving Animals
10 days after the rainfall some cows are still stranded in three feet of water. Image credit: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Accelerating fossil fuel emissions, along with the annual 250 billion metric tons of Man-made pernicious endocrine-disrupting chemicals, are laying waste to our brethren, the animals, around the globe. Keep Reading

Fossil Fuel Ocean Heat, Pacific Kelp Collapsed

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*Accelerating fossil fuel combustion has caused atmospheric and oceanic oxygen levels to plummet. Why is Man knowingly asphyxiating Mankinds only home?

Many of the luxuriant kelp forests surrounding all continents have collapsed. It’s a catastrophe for kelp-dwelling marine life. No home. No animals.

fossil fuel combustion
A 2011 marine heatwave cooked a 600-mile stretch of Western Australia’s kelp forests. Image credit: Dr Hamish Malcolm

Welcome to the insane Man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction occurring as fast as 10,000 times the previous five others as it collides with the Man-made climate in crisis from burning subsidized fossil fuels. Hideous biological annihilation.

93 percent of all fossil fuel heat has been stored in the oceans. The oceans drive Earth’s climate. The oceans heat is in lockstep with accelerating fossil fuel emissions. Every year in the last decade was among the 10 warmest ever measured in the oceans. In fact, 2018 was the hottest global ocean temperature ever recorded.

Everything in Nature is interconnected and interdependent. Keep Reading

Western Monarchs 99.4% Vanished

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*A couple weeks ago, a majestic western monarch butterfly fluttered by me en route to feed upon the nectar of pretty purple lantana flowers. It whispered, “Don’t forget to tell the world of our plight, too!”

The iconic monarchs are mysterious pollinators, which intrigue children and adults alike.

Monarch Butterflies
Monarch butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is below 86 degrees. They will bask in the sun or shiver their wings to warm up. Image credit: Texas A&M
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Millions of Aussie Animals Choking, Boiling to Death

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*For more than a month, higher temperatures, longer lasting heatwaves and prolonged droughts have smothered much of the Australian continent. The Man-made climate crisis is smashing into the Man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction. Hideous biological annihilation.

2018 was the hottest year ever recorded in the oceans. Every year in the last decade was among the 10warmest ever measured. The oceans drive Earth’s climate. 93 percent of all fossil fuel heat has been stored in the oceans. The ocean heat is in lockstep with accelerating fossil fuel emissions. In 2018 alone, the oceans absorbed the equivalent fossil fuel heat of detonating 100 million Hiroshima-style bombs.

Terrifying.

Global Warming in Australia
Each year, U.S. fracking contaminates a minimum of 280 billion gallons of fresh water. Insane. Image credit: KCET

Since 1850 and the inception of continuous record keeping, the hottest four years ever recorded were the previous four years. 2019 is predicted to be warmer than 2018. Russia’s oil and gas sales to China are booming. U.S. fracking in west Texas and Alaska are roaring ahead. Australia, too, continues togreenlight new coalmines. The business of planet killing has never been more subsidized nor lucrative for the biggest, wealthiest polluters.

In the meantime, our brethren, the animals, are disappearing 10,000 times faster than the previous five other mass extinctions. Accelerating fossil fuel emissions is cooking the planet alive. Keep Reading

Sonic Cannons Shatter Famed Aussie Whale Nursery

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*It’s incomprehensible that Norway’s Equinor is allowed to destroy a magnificent and vital slice of a renowned southern hemisphere marine nursery for more climate destroying fossil fuels.

On Monday, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety & Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) gave the green light for an oil and gas contractor to sonically bombard the seabed for petroleum reserves across almost 12,000 square miles of the Great Australian Bight.

Marine Nurseries - Pygmy blue whale
Pygmy blue whales are a smaller and darker subspecies of the Southern Ocean blue whales with a different shaped blowhole. Image credit: Plos One

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Starving Orcas, Humans Next

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*Oceans occupy more than 95 percent of all living space on Earth. Oceans drive Earth’s climate. Oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of all fossil fuel combustion heat. The oceanic heat is now equivalent to detonating three Hiroshima-style bombs every second for 75 straight years. That heat is wreaking death upon all life on Earth.

This week, scientists announced that worst-case scenario climate model predictions underestimated oceanic heat by a whopping 40 percent.

Houston, we have a problem. Keep Reading

Empty the Tanks – 16 Months, 3 Deaths

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*On December 30, 2018, the third imprisoned Atlantic bottlenose dolphin died in just over one year since Dolphinaris Arizona filled its tanks.

Empty the Tanks - Dolphin Dies in Arizona
10-year-old Kloe died last week at Dolphinaris from a painful long-term chronic illness caused by the Sarcocystis parasite. Image credit: ABC

Now there are just five remaining inmates housed at this wretched facility located near Scottsdale. 400 miles from the Pacific Ocean in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, these masterpiece bottlenose dolphins are forced to swim in bathtubs, performing asinine tricks until they perish. It’s cruel and inhumane.

What horrible crimes did these exquisite mammals commit to merit such a heinous lifetime of punishment? Keep Reading

Japan Joins Pirate Whaling Nations

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*Japan has given its six months’ notice to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and resume barbaric and inhumane commercial whaling.

Since 1987, Japan has hidden behind a thin veil of “lethal scientific whale research.” Not only has Japan produced no meaningful scientific discoveries in 31 years, but also, they have been selling whale body parts in the commercial marketplace.

By renouncing research and declaring commercial whaling as their primary objective, Japan now joins Norway and Iceland in their open defiance of international conservation law. All three countries are pirate whaling nations. Keep Reading

Fighting For the Last Vaquitas, Sea Shepherd

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Vaquita and Mexico Sanctions

*In the midst of a horrid Man made accelerating Sixth Mass Extinction, the direct action conservation movement, Sea Shepherd, is leading the charge to save the most critically endangered marine mammal on the globe – a porpoise call the vaquita.

This gorgeous 4-foot, 100-pound member of the cetacean clan (whales, dolphins, porpoises) is teetering on extinction.

Image credit: HuffPo

These secretive marine mammals reside in the upper Sea of Cortez near the mouth of the mighty Colorado River.

The vaquitas have been sideswiped by Man at every possible turn. For more than a century, Man made long lasting toxicity has poured into this United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage marine wonder. All life therein contains horrid poisons.

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Teen Climate Activist Rallies The Children

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*What happens when the world’s leaders fail to act as empathetic reasonable adults? The children of the Earth are rising to the occasion as sentinels for Nature and their future.

In August, a 15-year-old Swede named Greta Thunberg began a solo climate protest by striking from school. That strike, Strike 4 Climate, has gone global. More than 20,000 students from 272 towns and cities in Australia, Belgium, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. have walked out of class. Keep Reading

Big Oil’s Deadly Atlantic Surveys

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*Last week, the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) approved five permits, or, Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHC) for oil and gas seismic surveys along much of the Atlantic Seaboard.

It’s the first oil and gas exploration in the U.S. Atlantic in 30 years.  The approval, which requires a final consent from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has hideous consequences for millions of sea creatures.

seismic surveys
Sonic explosions demolish cetacean eardrums, which result in internal bleeding that leads to a slow and very painful death. Image credit: Alan Walter/Reuters

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Sneering at Climate Catastrophe

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*According to famed conservationist E.O. Wilson, we have entered the Age of Eremocene, or, the age of loneliness. The whales have gone quiet. The mammals, the birds and the insects have vanished. 138 acres of ancient forests are felled every minute. The Man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction is occurring as much as 10,000 times the rate of the previous five others.   Hideous.

Image credit: Jose Nino Heredia/Gulf News

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Science Fair: Next Generation Scientists

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Science Fair

*National Geographic’s Science Fair, directed by Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, is an uplifting and inspirational film on the world’s future scientists.

Today, science is everywhere and within everything in our Man-made culture. In fact each month, the average child in the industrialized developed world sends 3,000 texts.

Who amongst us (that are old enough) wasn’t intrigued by the science that enabled Man’s first step on the moon?”

When you enter a dark room and flip the light switch, or flush the toilet many times each day, that’s science and engineering at a rudimentary level. Yet, most of us could not exist without these old technologies. Never mind how inextricably attached everyone is to the internet.
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Best Friends Forever Animals, Camp Fire

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*With 150,000 acres scorched and almost 12,000 homes in ruins, the touching animal stories from the Camp Fire in northern California, remind us of gratitude especially for the many intrepid animal rescuers.

Our pets are remarkable friends. Their unconditional love is indeed a treasure trove. Animals are unstinting companions. For some people, pets are their closest family members.

Hundreds of animal rescuers in both the north and the south of the state (which simultaneously experienced the Woolsey Fire) worked ceaselessly to help both domesticated and wild animals affected by the hellacious firestorms.

There are many heartwarming stories arising from California’s most devastating conflagration, the Camp Fire. Allow me to share just a few of them with you.

The incredible rescue of a masterpiece horse. Image credit: Facebook

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Every Minute 138 Acres Looted

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*Nature is irrefutably exhibiting the unavoidable effects from extracting and combusting fossil fuels: Death. The latest shocking reminder is the record number of fatalities from last week’s northern California firestorms.

Extinction - California's Camp Fire
California’s Camp Fire was the deadliest firestorm in state history. As of November 16, 2018, there are 63 fatalities and 631 unaccounted people. Image credit: The Weather Channel

In the meantime, the Paris-based International Energy Agency recently projected that by 2025 the U.S. will produce half the global oil and gas from its water-poisoning fracking bonanza.

Here’s what we know: Burning fossil fuels has caused atmospheric oxygen to plummet. Keep Reading

Climate Crisis: California Burning Again

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*250,000 Californians from the north and the south are currently evacuated from their communities. At least 48 people are dead with more than 7,000 structures in ruins. It’s five weeks before Christmas and once again firestorms are raging across the Golden State.

Six years of unrelenting drought in tandem with elevated (ocean and air) temperatures are most certainly a deadly combination.

Climate Crisis - California Tree Graveyards
Massive California tree graveyards are spread across 9 million acres. Image credit: readyforwildfire.org

Since 2010, more than 130 million mature trees have perished across the state. Water-starved coniferous trees communicate their plight to bark beetles. The insects deliver the coup de grâce.

In fact, across western North America this is a pattern that’s all too familiar: 30 billion mature dead trees. Instead of removing CO2 and giving off oxygen, gigantic tree graveyards are decomposing and contributing to the overburdened and overheated atmosphere.

No trees. No life.

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Ransacking Russia’s Ancient Forests

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*Each year, Man steals $400 billion of wild animals and ancient forests from Nature. In fact, 15 percent, or, 1.14 billion people, rise each morning to kill the planet. Much of this rapacious looting is controlled by organized crime.

Since 1970, 60% of wildlife on land is gone and it’s far worse under the sea, according to the 2018 Living Planet Report from the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF). Insect populations, too, have crashed. 250 billion metric tons annually of deadly Man-made chemicals along with the accelerated ocean heat from combustion of fossil fuels have taken a hideous toll on all earth-bound life.

Beyond toxic chemicals and unrelenting heat, destruction of habitat is also accelerating globally. For example, 104 football fields a minute of ancient forests are razed, 24/7/365.

The most perfect flying rivers and CO2 warehouses, the planet’s terrestrial climate stabilizers, are under siege like never before.

No ancient forests. No animals. No insects. No freshwater. No life.

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Chinese Dolphinariums Fattening Organized Crime

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*Since 2014, more than 872 of our brethren, the cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises) have been captured and enslaved in Chinese dolphinariums, or, amusement aquariums. It’s a horrid industry that pays millions in cash to Japanese and Russian mafia to supply live cetaceans.

Already there are 244 Chinese dolphinariums with Haichang Ocean Park, Guangzhou R & F Properties, Dalian Shengya and Chimelong Group driving rapid expansion of this inhumane industry. 36 new Chinese cetacean prisons are scheduled to open between 2019-2021.

This insatiable lust for more dolphins is stoking the monstrous drive-hunts that are taking place at this very moment off the shores of Taiji, Japan. Every morning, my colleagues at Sea Shepherd, the Dolphin Project and others awaken to bear witness to the cold-blooded and diabolical slaying and capturing of dolphins and porpoises.

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