Nature - Page 6

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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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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Nature’s High-Tech Flying Mammals

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*Bats are extraordinary pollinators and insect-eating creatures. These admirable masterpieces are the unsung heroes of the night sky. The last week of October is known as Bat Week. It’s a time to celebrate these beauties and to recognize their plight.

Bats have inhabited the planet for 50 million years. There are approximately 1,300 bat species worldwide, including 47 in the U.S. and 18 kinds in Canada.

Bats - long-nosed bat
The diminutive Mexican lesser long-nosed bat is a vital pollinator of the giant saguaro cacti and the agaves (used to make tequila). Each year, they migrate from Mexico to the U.S. following the “nectar trail.” Image credit: National Parks Service

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Ancient Forests Key to Bees’ Survival

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Ancient Forests Key to Bees' Survival

*The world’s remaining ancient forests are breathtaking “flying rivers.” They move water on almost inconceivably large scales. The ancient forests are also vital medicine chests for the bees.

The oceans are the main drivers of climate, yet new information reveals just how critical ancient forests are at creating climate and influencing it across a continent and around the globe. When ancient forests are razed, all hell breaks loose halfway around the world.

Bees - Amazon rainforest clouds
The Amazon rainforest clouds are vital for reflecting incoming solar radiation to space and keeping the jungle habitable. Image credit: Quanta Magazine

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Nature’s 2018 Vivid Canvas

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*As 2018 draws to a close our hot, overcrowded ravaged planet is bellowing a lucid S.O.S. distress code. It’s painfully obvious yet conveniently dismissed by the world leaders and the international bankers.

The latest United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report forewarns of pending extreme heat, drought, firestorms, floods, loss of coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest as well as food insecurity unless immediate actions are undertaken. Keep Reading

Bloodthirsty Annihilation of Wolves

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*Wolves are doctors of the land. Today, in America these doctors are being decimated at an accelerated rate.

This is a heartbreaking bloodbath.  What man does to the wolves, he does to himself.

No wolves. No forests. No life.

Wolves - Howl of the wolf
The howl of the wolf is the call of Nature. Image credit: Jeff Vanuga

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Losing Your Mind, Fossil Fuel Smog

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*Today, most of civilization exists within congested smoggy cities. Fossil fuel air pollution, including filthy diesel fumes loaded with fine particles of nitric oxide and nitrogen oxide, are quickly crippling, dogs, bees and man.

About two decades ago in Mexico City, my colleagues began investigating an increasing number of howling frightened dogs that grew disoriented and incapable of recognizing their owners.

They examined the dog’s brains and found them coated with the protein amyloid beta, or, plaque, linked with Alzheimer’s disease. The dogs, they concluded after further experiments, had lost their minds from breathing the exhaust fumes of fossil fuel combustion.

Fossil Fuel Pollution - Bees
Bees pollinate most of the 80,000 species of trees on Earth. Image credit: Reese Halter

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Fossil Fuels Poisoning Children

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*In 2018, we learned the ubiquitous extent of fossil fuel poisons. It is now so egregious that before a human fetus is even born, it’s toxic from fossil fuel pollution.

In April, the Health Effects Institute yearly State of the Global Air revealed that 95 percent of all humans, or, 7.2 billion people, are non-stop inhaling putrid fossil fuel air above the World Health Organization’s “safe level.”

Fossil Fuels - New Delhi pollution
Half of New Delhi’s 4.4 million schoolchildren have permanently stunted lung development from breathing fossil fuel pollution. Image credit: VOA News

Also in April, a research team led by the University of Montana found that 99.5 percent of 203 autopsies from Mexico City, ages ranging from 11 months to 40 years old, possessed the telltales of Alzheimer’s disease in their brainstems from breathing poisonous fossil fuel air. The scientists concluded that those children and young adults also faced an elevated risk of suicide.

Children in cities are at risk of losing their minds from breathing air, their birthright. Hideous.

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Salish Sea Orcas SOS

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Salish Sea Orcas

*Another dead wolf, J50, of the Salish Sea, the third one in 2018. The Pacific Northwest’s picturesque sea is being lambasted by a man-made accelerated climate crisis, hideous poisons and the man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction, which has shifted into overdrive.

Salish Sea Map
foo Photo credit: Crag Law Center

The Salish Sea is a global hotspot for acidification, a glaring symptom of burning more subsidized climate-destroying fossil fuels. As the sea absorbs more carbon dioxide from fossil fuels it’s rapidly deforming shellfish and coral reefs because acid melts calcium carbonate the backbone of both shells and reefs. The Salish Sea web of life is quickly unravelling.

At the top of the Salish Sea food chain, the critically endangered pods (J,K,L) of Southern Resident orcas are wasting away. The past 18 months have been horrendous.”

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Great Barrier Reef Sharks SOS

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*The Great Barrier Reef is not only the largest network of coral reefs on the globe, but also it’s a glorious cornucopia of biological diversity, or, life.

An exquisite loggerhead female returning to the sea after laying her eggs on a remote beach in Far North Queensland, Australia. Photo credit: AAP

The Reef is under siege. It’s coming undone at an unprecedented rate from accelerated man-made heatwaves, super coal tanker incessant noise, the Sixth Mass Extinction and a horrendous onslaught of man-made long-lasting toxic chemicals. Keep Reading

Fisheries Massacring Sea Turtles, Near-Term Extinction

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*Sea turtles have swum the seas for a couple hundred million years. Today all seven species are in dire shape, especially in Mexico and Australia.

According to University of British Columbia’s renowned fisheries biologist, Professor Daniel Pauley, “between 10 and 100 trillion oceanic creatures a year are being destroyed by man.” Incomprehensible.

Shark caught in fishing net. [Extinction of Sea Turtles]
55 million sharks are indiscriminately caught by fisheries, another 45 million are poached — 100 million sharks are looted each year from our oceans. Photo credit: Smithsonian

Fisheries are annihilating everything in the seas. There are 13 million miles of longlines, or, enough line for 27 return trips to the moon, with almost 2 billion legal and illegal hooks. In 2000 alone, University of Duke scientists reported that longlines mutilated 200,000 loggerhead and 50,000 leatherback sea turtles. Horrendous.

It’s not just these deadly hooked lines that are the culprits. The conservation group World Animal Protection estimates that each year fisheries disdainfully discard and/or abandon 640,000 metric tons of nets, which become ghost nets. Not only do these ghastly entanglements suffocate 308,000 cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises), but also many thousands of sea turtles.

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