Month: December 2016

GR:  National Monuments provide imperfect protection to water and wildlife, but they are better than leaving lands entirely under standard Bureau of Land Misuse policies. The new administration members are already talking about privatizing Indian reservations. They will probably try to open the monuments to their corporate friends too. Preserving monuments will be one more battle we face in 2017. But there are only thousands of them–we are millions.

Photo:  Browns Canyon National Monument, Colorado (Bob Wick, BLM)

“President Obama has accomplished a lot in eight years. Beyond reviving the economy and cutting unemployment, his legacy includes major environmental feats such as reducing air pollution, boosting clean energy and making the U.S. a global leader in fighting climate change.

“It also includes many smaller moves that add up to something pretty big: the creation and expansion of national monuments. These are federally protected areas that feature “objects of historic…

The New York Times reported

China announced on Friday that it was banning all commerce in ivory by the end of 2017, a move that would shut down the world’s largest ivory market and could deal a critical blow to the practice of elephant poaching in Africa.

Read full story at  Bans Its Ivory Trade, Moving Against Elephant Poaching – The New York Times

This video from the USA says about itself:

Meet Gold Butte: Nevada‘s Piece of The Grand Canyon

21 January 2015

Get to know a treasure of the Mojave Desert, and how you can help preserve it.

From the New York Times in the USA:

Obama Designates Two New National Monuments, Protecting 1.65 Million Acres

By CORAL DAVENPORT

DEC. 28, 2016

WASHINGTON — President Obama designated two new national monuments on Wednesday, protecting 1.35 million acres of federal land surrounding the Bears Ears Buttes in southeastern Utah and about 300,000 acres around Gold Butte in Nevada, northeast of Las Vegas.

In Gold Butte, there is ancient Native American rock art.

There are also fossils from the Palaeozoic and later fossil dinosaur tracks.

The monuments are Mr. Obama’s latest effort to protect public lands and waters from development and to nail down as much of his environmental legacy…

NPR reported

President Obama has designated two areas in the deserts of southern Nevada and Utah as national monuments, after years of fighting and debate over the management of both areas.

The newly created Bears Ears National Monument will protect roughly 1.35 million acres of land in southeast Utah from future development. Gold Butte National Monument will give federal protections to roughly 300,000 acres in southwest Nevada, not far from the site where local ranchers and law enforcement had an armed standoff just two years ago.

Read full story at Obama Designates Two New National Monuments In Nevada And Utah : The Two-Way : NPR

This is a red-necked grebe video from the Netherlands.

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Intently listening
to river music
my heart overflows.

This video from the USA says about itself:

22 December 2016

Killdeer running and hunting insects (Charadrius vociferus). They remind me of little roadrunners and although they are technically shorebirds in the Plover family they really like to spend their time running in open grassy and dirt areas. …

Fall migrants swell the Florida population July through November, and spring migration occurs primarily in March and April. The Killdeer is the most common and widely distributed shorebird in Florida. The absence of the species from most of mainland Monroe County is to be expected, as mangroves and saw grass are not preferred breeding habitats.

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When we think of Normandy, apples and oysters come to mind. Calvados, too. We are happy those traditions endure but even happier to see the roads there as a hotbed of innovation: World’s first solar panel road opens in Normandy village Route in Tourouvre-au-Perche cost €5m to construct and will be used by about 2,000 […]

via Solar Road In Normandy Breaks New Ground — La Paz Group