Deforestation of Brazil

According to May figures, deforestation in the Amazon of Brazil has seen a slight decrease over the month of April.  The government places the slow down on the boom of other agribusiness such as soybeans, beef and sugar.  Brazil desires to position itself as an agriculture powerhouse capable of solving not only the food crisis but the energy crisis as well through the production of different crops.  So much so that he has made no qualms about the crops being more important to the government then the deforestation of the Amazon.

However, the point here is that the deforestation did decrease in May.  So what are the figures, you may ask?  In May, roughly 420 miles of the forest disappeared due to logging…for perspective, that is slightly smaller then the city of Los Angeles.  That is only slightly less then  in April which saw roughly 433 miles deforested.

I find this rate of deforestation extremely alarming.  The Amazon happens to be the world’s most diverse biospere with 1 in 10 known species can be found in this tract.  That is 1 in 10 known species of plants, animals and reptiles.

Wikipedia reports that: The region is home to about 2.5 million insect species, tens of thousands of plants, and some 2000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 3,000 fish, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 invertebrate species in Brazil alone.

Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415,000 to 587,000 km², an area more than six times the size of Portugal, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle. In February, 2008, the Brazilian government announced that the rate at which the Amazon rainforest is being cut down has increased significantly over the past few months. During the last five months of 2007, more than 3,200 sq. kilometers (an area equivalent to the size of the state of Rhode Island) was deforested during a time when deforestation would normally drop.

People, I could go on for quite awhile about how important the rainforest’s around the world are and how, once again, we are hell bent on destroying our environment but if you are reading my blog it means you have access to the information for yourself.  It is just so disheartening to me how we abuse our environment and our Mother Earth.

Assisted Colonization

Well, we knew it would all come down to this eventually. Afterall, we humans are the smartest of all God’s creatures and thus, colonizing the animal world in our own way should be how it was meant to be right?

Not only should we colonize the creatures how we see fit, we should also decide in an animal kingdom triage sort of way, what species we should let become extinct in favor of keeping other species around in this world of shortening animal habitats. Doesn’t that seem normal to everyone?

Scientists have advised that the species of Sky Island in Arizona is basically “toast” because they don’t know where they would move them so might as well let them go extinct. Who needs them anyway?

“When deciding which species to save and which to watch die, Root said one key is uniqueness. That’s why she said she’d save the odd-looking Tuatara of New Zealand, a lizard-like creature with almost no living relatives, over the common sparrow.”

“The risk of extinction has to be balanced by the potential hazard to the community where a species is relocated as well as the time and cost of making the move, Parmesan says.”

“Ultimately, the decision about whether to actively assist the movement of a species into new territories will rest on ethical and aesthetic grounds as much as on hard science,” she said in a statement.

“Passively assisting coral reef migration may be acceptable, but transplanting polar bears to Antarctica, where they would likely drive native penguins to extinction, would not be acceptable,” she said.

“Conservation has never been an exact science, but preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change is likely to require a fundamental rethinking of what it means to preserve biodiversity,” Parmesan said.

Wow, doesn’t it just make you proud to be a human? And, by the way, whose to say penguins are more unique then the polar bears? I think that is subjective and totally unfair. Let’s relocate the penguins to Alaska or Canada - let the bears have the Antarctica.

Somewhere I’m sure someone has a nice little chart with nice little diagrams of how every thing would benefit if we took over nature. Let’s make the world one big zoo. Does it irk anyone else as much as it does me??

I understand that some species are endanger of becoming extinct but is moving species around a good idea? Shouldn’t we let Mother Nature handle, well, Mother Nature? Have we done much good when we have “accidentally” relocated things in the past? Fire ants spring to mind - they came over from Africa or some such place - now look at how they’ve become an epidemic in the south.

Pretty soon I won’t have to watch the Sci-Fi channel to get my “b” movie horror fix - the reality of what we’ve done to our world will far out due what they can come up with on TV.

Snakes

I am watching the History channel’s “monsterquest” episode of huge pythons that have become a nuisance in Florida by the Everglades.  They believe the snakes were pets that someone released into the wild.  Snakes can have a lot of babies each year so the population is growing too quickly.  Some of the snakes are moving into residential areas that back up to the Everglades which is a hazard to domestic pets and small children.

A 15 foot snake can open it’s mouth 2 feet wide which is about the width of an adult male.  They are concerned, therefore, that the snakes in the Everglades could easily swallow an average person whole.  Some of the snakes are growing in excess of 25 feet - they fear some may grow as large as 40 feet which means they could be more then a formidable force to mere humans.

A firefighter in Florida who found a nine foot snake tried to catch it by coming up behind it to grab it around its head.  Well, he misjudged the distance and got the snake too far back behind it’s head.  The snake came around and bit him in the wrist.  Helpers managed, eventually, to pull the snake’s head back enough to release the man but not before it punctured his wrist in several places.  Snakes have teeth that slant back so that the more their prey struggles, the more it gets stuck in the teeth - sounds gruesome to me.

Pythons, according to the show, have a very nasty disposition.  They catch a 6 footer crossing the street going into someones yard so it is obviously a possibility that even larger snakes could be coming out of the Everglades.  My question is why would they come out when the Everglades is so ripe with food sources? According to the show, and this makes me shiver, neighborhoods offer more docile prey - they don’t have to work as hard to catch our dogs, cats and kids as they do an alligator. 

It did show a snake that swallowed an alligator whole but then burst open.  They believe it burst open not because the alligator was too big but more that the gator probably clawed the snake’s insides as it went down.  Gross, huh? 

Even though I find this all very interesting, you could not pay me to be a snake expert.  Working with them would be terrifying and not a way I’d want to spend my life.  I admire people who can take on this kind of stuff to study and catch.  They just found another one - 12 ft long - in a neighborhood by the Everglades.  I don’t think I’m going to go to the Glades anytime soon.  Actually, they said that so many people are letting loose their pet snakes when they get too big for their aquariums that pythons and other poisonous snakes are being found in all the lower, hotter states.  Sounds like a good reason to move to the mountains. 

Wastewater Dumping In Atlantic

This story showed up on the internet today. Apparently three counties in Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties) have been dumping 300 million gallons of wastewater into the Atlantic DAILY since the 1940’s. Their pipes go out several miles before the dump occurs because, experts say, the ocean dissipates the waste so there is no environmental impact.

Let me quote: “State officials have argued for years that the waste dissipates at sea and causes little or no near-shore pollution because it is quickly carried north in the Gulfstream current. “The human health risks are low because of the dilution involved, and the outfall discharges are disinfected,” said Llewellyn.”

Um, how would you like to live North of Florida along that Gulfstream current? What’s that you say? “To be sure, waste-water sewage outfall pipes are not unique to Florida. Southern California, which also relies on them, is among areas where officials have been accused of treating the ocean like a giant toilet.” OHMYGOD, California does it too?

What the hell is wrong with people? We’d rather ruin our oceans then pay the money it takes to update, and keep updated, our wastewater plants? Give me a break already! We spend fistfulls of money on shit (pardon the pun) that we don’t need but just have to have - yet we are too constipated to spend it on saving our environment?

I’m sorry, this whole thing outrages me. I wrote letters back a few years ago when Florida decided to dump shiploads of nitrates into the Gulf…did it do any good? Probably not but collectively, many citizens working together, got the EPA to not approve new permits requesting to do the same thing. Who knew it was just a drop in the bucket compared to what these counties are dumping EVERY DAY. Ugh, makes me sick. I think we should make the people who agree to doing this kind of thing, drink the polluted water for a year…see if it really doesn’t harm people. Where are the scientific research results on how this practice of dumping raw sewage doesn’t hurt anyone or anything? They don’t have any because they are just blindly saying it doesn’t and hope that no one will call them on the mat about it.

“Marine scientists, however, say the minimally treated effluent is potentially harmful to humans, especially small children, the elderly and anyone with a weakened immune system. They also argue that it is hurting coastal ecosystems since it contains high levels of nitrogen, ammonia and other contaminants associated with the algae blooms that periodically suffocate coral reefs.

“The state has been reluctant to admit that these discharges are affecting the reefs,” said Peter Barile, a scientist at Marine Research and Consulting of Melbourne, Florida. “We’ve had very, very strong evidence but, amazingly, a reluctance by the state to admit this,” he said.”

What do you say we all send Janet Llewellyn, head of water resource management at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, some hate mail??

Hammerheads…revisited

I got an email from someone called “bgmhntr” who pretty much said that my view on sharks was ridiculous. They said big game like sharks, lions, elephants, etc., were dangerous animals and therefore, hunting them was a sport. People, the person said, hunt the little game like rabbits and deer for food but the big game was for mounting on their mantle. It is saying that they went up against a dangerous animal and lived to tell the tale. It is, they said, the height of our primal instincts to want to kill rather then be killed.

Please tell me that there aren’t a lot of people out there who feel this way. Those “dangerous” animals are only dangerous if we corner them or put ourselves in harms way. These animals do not get together in packs to discuss which human they are going to hunt down. They don’t look at humans as “sport” game. When a human goes on safari to kill one of these animals - they are the deliberately seeking them out. Most of the time they use such high powered rifles that they don’t have to ever be in harm’s way.

This point of view pisses me off. What is wrong with people? This guy went so far as to say that sharks didn’t do anything for humans so, therefore, losing them was not that big of a deal. I think he needs to read Peter Benchley’s “Shark Trouble” because there is a chapter on exactly how sharks do stuff for humans by keeping nature in balance.

I’m sorry but this person’s email really, really riled me up. Maybe that was his intention, I don’t know but he sounded like a dumb ass, redneck who has little empathy or common sense. I’m glad I have a “block” option on my email - I don’t mind people having different points of view if they can actually substantiate their view on some facts or at least an informed opinion.

In Defense of Sharks

I would like to weigh in on something that I just read on Yahoo. It seems a shark adventure dive in Riviera Beach, FL went badly and one of the divers was bitten by one of the apex predators. The man survived the bite but died the next day.

First of all – the dive company chummed the water before allowing the diver’s in. They, of course, do this to attract the bigger, more aggressive, albeit more elusive, species of shark such as the great white, bulls, lemons and tigers. Of course coming up from a dive saying you had seen one of these great sharks would be a mind-blowing high for anyone who loves sharks. However, chumming invokes feeding frenzies which alter the shark’s perception of what is in the water with it.

The diver’s also were not sent down in a cage or with a protective metal suit. Ok, I can understand that because if I were to dive with the sharks – something on my “to do” list – I wouldn’t want to be hindered by any of that either. I think a wetsuit should suffice – but that is me.

George Burgess – director of the International Shark Attack File – said “Ecotourism for animals is a great concept, but it is most successful in situations where people watch their natural behaviors from afar and not intrude,” but I also disagree with this statement. If people are present – even behind glass – the behavior of the shark is altered and therefore no longer “natural”. Sharks in aquariums give us a good look at the beasts close up, but to say that we could learn about their natural behavior there is, in my opinion, wrong. That isn’t to say such a visit isn’t educational, it is, but as a true shark lover – I would like to see one out in the wild, in the water.

The fact that there are so many companies that do so many of these trips and no one has been bitten for years is a tribute to the companies’ safety procedures. Once a bite does occur, the media beefs it up and makes the shark out to be a monster when, in fact, it was behaving as normally as can be expected in that situation. People who go on these dives know there are risks – while it goes without saying that it does – I’m sure the company the diver dived with also discussed this with the customer’s in depth.

Now, if I went diving with the sharks this is what I would want – I would want to dive in less then 50 feet of water, in my wetsuit, in waters that were not chummed, with a company that had an excellent track record and very knowledgeable dive master supervising the dive.

Sharks are very important to the marine ecosystem. I have loved reading and learning about them since I was a child. When one is needlessly killed, it not only makes me sad – it enrages me. People who fish & attack these beautiful creatures are morons. An occasional bite, though I feel sorry for the man’s family, seems like a small slice of justice to me.

Library Books

It seems I have checked out 17 library books with only 3 weeks to read 16 of them (1 is due in 7 days).

Sometimes I get carried away in my quest for knowledge as twelve of these books are non-fiction books full of things that I want to know. The last one I read, I took six pages of notes from. How am I ever going to read them all? Guess I’ll have to employ the “skim” technique or read the chapters that interest me the most. Hmm…this is going to be tough.

I have to take the notes because my memory is like a colonder - full of holes. LOL.

Well, the precious library is closing so it is time to put my blog to bed. I so look forward to returning to Iowa so I can hang out at the IC Library where I have so many fond memories.

Be safe people, and remember it is a jungle out there!

Earth Stewards

Over the work week, I spent time reading a few short books on how to be better stewards of the environment. It truly is amazing how one person can make a difference in the environment! I’m not going to give statistics but I will share here a few things I was surprised to find out about:

Use steel belted radial tires - they are the longest last tire that is also the most fuel efficient.

25% of a home’s energy costs are from the refrigerators

Toaster ovens are more energy efficient then microwaves or ovens - microwaves are more efficient then ovens.

Don’t use permanent press clothes or no-iron bed linens - they are treated with formaldehyde (yuck!)

If you add brewer’s yeast or garlic to your pets food, they aren’t as likely to be bothered with fleas.

Avoid “squeezable” plastic containers (such as soda bottles) - they are the worst type of plastic when it comes to biodegrading.

Buy faucet aerators for your faucets - you get the same water pressure but use less water. Aerators are cheap and screw in to the end of the faucet.

Turn off your water heater if you are leaving for more then a few hours - it takes less energy to reheat it then it does to keep it heating. Also, you can buy a “hot water on demand” system that heats water as you need it from the faucet so you never run out of hot water and never have to heat a tank. If you live in northern states, you should also insulate your water heater with a water heater blanket to help the tank keep hot. I have seen these demand systems and am impressed with them! If my water heater ever needs replaced, I will change to that system.

Places you can get more information about being a better steward of the planet are:

Center for Marine Conservation - 1725 DeSales St NW, Washington, D.C. 20036

Earth Island Institute - 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133

National Audubon Society - 645 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington, D.C. 20003

Oceanic Society - 218 D Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20036

Rainforest Action Network - 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133

Rocky Mountain Institute - 1739 Snowmass Creek Rd, Snowmass, CO 81654

Wilderness Society - 1400 I St NW, Washington, D.C. 20005

World Wildlife Fund - 1250 24th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20037

Books you can read are:

“Making the Switch: Alternatives to using Toxic Chemicals in the Home” - cost is $6 - order from: Publications Dept., Local Government Commission; 909 12th St. Suite 205; Sacramento, CA 95814

“The Nontoxic Home” by Debra Lynn Dadd - cost is $11.95 - can order from any bookstore or get straight from author at: P.O. Box 1506, Mill Valley, CA 94942

“Household Hazardous Waste Project” - order from: 901 South National Ave, Box 87; Springfield, MO 65804

Spelunking

Spelunking - what is the attraction? I’m watching the movie “Descent” for about the 20th time. It is about a group of British women who love dangerous adventures. They decide to go spelunking in an un-surveyed cave which, of course, happens to house very yucky huworms. Yes, that is human and worm put together.

As I watch them slither through holes so small they can’t even sit up, it makes me want to throw up because it brings back the sensations I felt when I was stupidly doing the same thing.

I was a teenager and my science class decided to take a field trip to a cave there in Iowa. Having never been spelunking, I was excited over the prospect. The cave was very well known and each of us was given a handwritten diagram on how it laid out. Each of us was also given a flashlight.

Once inside the cave, our teachers split us up into two groups. I went with the non-whiners because they would probably have more fun. My teacher decided we were going to explore the tunnel off to our left while the other teacher, laughing, said they were going through the right tunnel.

It didn’t take me long to figure out two things. One, a cave is a pitch dark place when everyone turns out their flashlights; and two, I obviously was with the wrong group because this teacher was psychotic. He liked small spaces and soon had us on our bellies worming through a very small opening.

This space was so tiny that the only thing you could see were the tennis shoes of the kid ahead of you. We wormed around for quite awhile before the tennis shoes in front of me suddenly stopped.

So there I laid, unable to sit up or even roll over onto my back, not knowing what was going on. As there was nothing else to do, I started thinking about all that rock above me and thus my claustrophobia was born.

After what seemed forever - I was starting to hyperventilate - I heard someone ahead of me yell “backup!” which I then yelled to the person behind me and on down the line it went. We slowly wormed our way out backwards until we reached the main caravan again. The moment I could stand, I tried to run outside - I banged my head into a low hanging rock I forgot was there. Almost in hysterics, I ran through the mouth of the cave to the fresh air.

My teacher chided me for going on the trip if I was so claustrophobic - I told him I hadn’t been till then. I found the other group’s smallest tunnel was one they crawled through on all fours and then only for a few feet.

I have never been spelunking again - would never go no matter how much money someone offered. I’m still terribly claustrophobic and have occasional nightmares about being buried alive.

Brain-eating Amoeba

Was reading the “science” news today on the internet and found that lakes now have an amoeba in them that swims up the nose into the brain. There it feeds on your brain tissue until you die. The whole process, from first contact to death, is about two weeks. A 14 yr old boy just died from this in Phoenix.

There is no cure for this amoeba even if a doctor did manage to diagnose it correctly. Once it is in your body, you die. Of course, there have only been 6 deaths from this little parasite this year - three here in Florida, two in Texas and now the one in Arizona. From 1995-2004 there were a total of 23 cases nationwide.

The pest thrive in warm, standing water - something easily found in every state at some point of the year. You can become infected if you are swimming and water goes up your nose. In Florida, they recommend you use nose clips if you are going to swim in fresh water.

You know…being bit by a shark sounds a lot better then having your brain eaten by a bug. Think I’ll stick with the saltwater, thank you very much.