Poet, writer, and advocate for wildlife, wild lands, and the earth. President, Forest Voices of India - a U.S.-based group which aids charities in India that further education, culture, the well-being of women, children, and animals, and the restoration of sacred groves.
websites:
https://wordpress.com/view/forestvoicesofindia.com
https://wordpress.com/view/echoesinthemist.com
https://wordpress.com/view/wildvoices.world
book: Glimpses of Kanchi
https://www.amazon.com/Glimpses-Kanchi-Sharon-St-Joan/dp/1982901179/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Glimpses+of+Kanchi&qid=1581769003&sr=8-1
The Earth’s sixth mass extinction is already underway — and humans are the driving force behind it, according to a new study.
“Recent extinction rates are unprecedented in human history and highly unusual in Earth’s history,” according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. “Our global society has started to destroy species of other organisms at an accelerating rate, initiating a mass extinction episode unparalleled for 65 million years.”
Researchers used “extremely conservative assumptions” to determine extinction rates that prevailed in the past five annihilation events. Still, they found the average rate of vertebrate species lost over the past century was up to 114 times higher than normal.
These beautiful photos were taken by Kirk Robinson, who writes this about them –
The pecked images, such as the Rochester panel, are called petroglyphs; and the painted ones, such as the Sego Canyon panel, are called pictographs. Originally, many of the petroglyphs were also painted. They may have also been decorated with feathers and other natural materials.
There is obviously a lot of meaning in these interesting figures, but it is hard to know what they mean. Sometimes you can tell what individual images represent – desert bighorn sheep being the most common of the petroglyph figures in most of the West, but also deer, bears and birds, etc. – but other times they are mythical creatures or spirits that combine body parts from more than one animal. Some look like images of prehistoric animals. Others…
Logging Industry Lawsuit Demanding Aggressive Cutting Thrown Out By Federal Court
Washington, D.C. — A logging industry lawsuit that sought to force the Bureau of Land Management to increase logging on public lands in southwest Oregon was thrown out today by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling vacates a 2013 decision that would have forced the Bureau of Land Management to sell timber even when those sales would have harmed salmon and had detrimental impacts on water quality and recreation.
The Olifants River is a tributary of the “Great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo river.” *
The river runs through the center of Kruger National Park, dividing the northern and southern regions.
Olifants rest camp has arguably the best view in Kruger, lying hundreds of feet about the river and offering panoramic views of the African veld from the comfort of your rondavel porch. All of these photos were taken from our porch, with the exception of a few of the following ones, taken in the bush near the river.
If you look you can see blurring near the elephants feet. This is when my camera started to break down after three harsh weeks in the bush. A huge variety of animals come to the river to drink, including of course the elephants that often walk single file to the water. In South Africa winter is the dry season, and the…
SEATTLE – A massive oil-drilling rig pulled out of Seattle on Monday and headed for the environmentally sensitive Arctic Ocean despite a last-ditch effort by protesters to block it from leaving by forming a waterborne blockade of the harbor.
The Coast Guard says 24 people were detained while taking part in the blockade of the Polar Pioneer.
Many of those detained were in kayaks – including Seattle City Councilman Mike O’Brien, said a Greenpeace spokesman. Around 50 other protesters on the water were not arrested, Greenpeace said.
The Polar Pioneer’s owner, Royal Dutch Shell, plans to tow the rig to the Arctic Ocean off Alaska to drill for undersea oil deposits during relatively calm summer weather conditions.
The first wave of “kayaktivists” headed out in the predawn darkness, as soon as they got word the Polar Pioneer would be on the move…
One of many thousands of community cats spayed or neutered by Lega Pro Animale
By Dorothea Friz, DVM, Lega Pro Animale
The Foundation Mondo Animale offered again during the school year 2014/2015 a free-of-charge project to all lower high schools of the Region of Campania. On the morning of June 3, the project “Animali come Noi” (“Animals and Humans”) ended with awards presented to the students who found the right answer to our quiz at the end of the meetings.
In September 2014, the Foundation – that has been working for years to promote respect for domestic animals, in order to improve their welfare – sent a letter to all lower high schools in the Region of Campania offering interactive meetings with students.
The project was a great success and 15 schools (200 classes, about 4,000 students) from the entire Region of Campania (provinces of Naples, Caserta, Avellino, Salerno, Benevento) took part. Compared with the last school year, the number of schools participating in the Foundation’s new project has doubled. In 100 meetings during 50 school days, the students discussed with the staff of the Foundation the daily needs of dogs. Starting from subjects like appropriate nutrition and care (physiological, psychological and behavioral issues), the students came to nearly professional conclusions, e.g. prevention of diseases, identification/registration of dogs and cats and birth control.
Photos: Castel Volturno (Caserta) – Left to right: Antonio Mileo (Foundation Mondo Animale), Carmen’s mother, Carmen’s teacher, the bright Carmen, Dorothea Friz, the Headmistress Mrs Fabozzi and Carmen’s father.
The Foundation was particularly surprised by the knowledge of the students concerning spaying/neutering as the only method of answering a stray problem. Five students from different schools managed to find the correct answer to our question how many millions of puppies will be born from a couple of dogs in ten years. For this calculation, we assume that: they have litters twice a year with five puppies each, all females will be pregnant again at the age of five months and none of those puppies are going to die.
During the celebration, the Foundation honored the winning students with two books: “Un cane in famiglia” (“The family dog”) of Maria Luisa Cocozza and “Il cane intelligente” (“The intelligent dog”) of Juliane Kaminski.
Everybody was enthusiastic about the project: students, teachers, headmasters and naturally the Foundation. All of them are happily waiting for the beginning of the new school year and the meetings planned in autumn.
Land near the roost is now being grazed organically by Ruby Red Cattle, hopefully leading to an increased population of dung beetles an important food source for some species of bat.
If the High Court allows the building of 230 houses the future of a population of one of northern Europe’s most threatened bats, the greater horseshoe bat, will be in jeopardy, says the Devon Wildlife Trust.
The Trust is bringing the Judicial Review against a planning decision made by Teignbridge District Council to grant permission for up to 230 houses to be built on land which lies just 170 metres from an internationally important site where female greater…
Art, animals, and the earth 