It’s a scary world that mega corporations are creating! Frankenfoods are already on the supermarket shelves and not many are labeled GMO free. Monsanto and the other companies genetically engineering our food, are on a mission to control our food supply – not only vegetables and fruit but also meat and fish! Continue reading
A Storm Gathers for North American Birds | The Audubon Birds & Climate Change Report
25 SepI love to watch and photograph birds – the more I watch and photograph the more fascinated I become. Last summer a family of five kestrels (2 adults and three babies) spent a few weeks in my backyard. I watched the adults teach the youngsters how to fly and forage for food. They grew accustomed to me with my camera as the days went by. ( see Kestrels Came to visit here)
Not all the photos were beautiful photographs but still the ones I did not publish taught me more about them. I watched the fledglings climb up the shed walls to reach the rooftop to eat the insects (mostly spiders) that they found. Watching the youngsters play and practice quick turns and dives, was fascinating!
One day I heard the parents chattering in the cottonwood tree. They were hard to see even with my long lens since the tree was leafed out wand, leaves and branches were in the way. I had no idea what they were doing until I was previewing images on my computer. They were mating and were interrupted by another kestrel that they shooed away!
After reading this article by Audubon (link to full article below) I was upset and depressed at the same time. Why is this happening? Why has our government turned a blind eye to the devastation by the oil industry? They are partially to blame but we, as consumers of petroleum products, are also at fault. Please tread lightly on mother earth, share rides, ride a bike to the store, stop buying throw away plastic products, and recycle everything are just a few of the things we can do.
It’s also very important to tell our elected officials how we feel. The two best actions we can take is write a handwritten letter and call their offices. These days handwritten letters stand out amongst the typed letters and emails and add a personal touch while emails and typed letters could be produced in mass and may be difficult to ascertain if they are sent by the signers or not, while handwriting is unique to all of us.
You can find contact information for federal, state, local, or tribal governments and elected officials at:
Government Agencies and Elected Officials. You can contact federal government agencies here (ie., Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Council of Environmental Quality, Environmental Management (Energy Department), Environmental Protection Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service, etc.)
If you want to contact a Member of Congress Who Does Not Represent You, you can:
- Send a message to the Representative or Senator that represents you, and ask his or her office to forward it for you.
- Go to the website for the member of Congress you wish to contact to find a postal address and mail a letter.
- Call the United States Capitol switchboard at 1-202-224-3121. The switchboard operator will connect you with the office you request.
This is an excerpt of the article A Storm Gathers for North American Birds by Audubon:
“Western North Dakota is famous for its birds. The land here is checkered with neat squares of farm fields and native prairie overlying a scatter of pothole lakes, their curving shorelines shaped tens of thousands of years ago by chunks of melting glaciers. This rich landscape provides critical breeding grounds for millions of birds, from the that pour out of the so-called “duck factory” to the Bobolinks of the tallgrass prairie.
But the region is changing fast. Even as birds continue to flock here every summer, expanding agriculture has eaten away at their habitat, and since 2008 the area has witnessed an energy boom of global proportions. Today the fields, prairies, and badlands are punctuated with hundreds of rectangles of raw, orange dirt, each studded with its own set of trailers, storage tanks, and nodding pumpjacks. Every day, companies use hydraulic fracturing to extract nearly a million barrels of oil from the Bakken formation, a layer of shale that lies about two miles beneath the prairie. Roughly 8,000 wells are operating already, and an additional 40,000 could be drilled and fracked in the next 20 to 30 years. In line at one brand-new convenience store, a woman carrying a hardhat sums up the prevailing attitude: “Patience are for doctors.” In the Bakken, the time is now, and the future is a long way off.
Yet the Audubon Report, a groundbreaking new study by Audubon scientists, suggests that this place will become even more important for birds as the planet warms. For the 26 grassland bird species whose breeding ranges are projected to decrease dramatically by 2050, North Dakota will become an increasingly rare island of viable habitat and suitable climate conditions, one of their few remaining refuges. Protecting a portion of the region for birds could mean the difference between survival and extinction for some species.
That’s just one of the critical findings from Audubon’s seven-year investigation into the expected effects of climate change on North American bird populations. And taken together, the news is grim indeed. By 2080, the climate model projects, dozens of avian species across the country could be hurtling toward extinction—and not just birds that are already in trouble. Both the American Avocet and the Yellow-headed Blackbird, familiar sights in western North America, may be under threat before the end of the century. In the Great Plains, the Chestnut-collared Longspurs range could shrink by 70 percent, while suitable breeding grounds for the Baird’s Sparrow could disappear entirely. The Piping Plover, an icon of the Atlantic Flyway, may vanish from many eastern shores.”
Read the entire article here: A Storm Gathers for North American Birds | The Audubon Birds & Climate Change Report.
Related articles
- American Kestrel in flight (torreypinesreflections.wordpress.com)
Know Your Rights: Demonstrations and Protests | American Civil Liberties Union
17 AugIf you are going to take to the streets to protest, read this article first. All you need to know about your civil rights when attending a protest: Know Your Rights: Demonstrations and Protests | American Civil Liberties Union.
Since 1920, the ACLU has been protecting the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The resources below were created by ACLU staff as handy guidelines to your rights in various situations. read more at Know Your Rights – Essential Resources From the ACLU
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Jane Kleeb vs. the Keystone Pipeline via NYTimes
17 May
17- Nelson and Kleeb (Photo credit: Fighting For Our Health)
Activists and advocates — take a lesson from Jane Kleeb! Her activities in building awareness and motivating people to take action against TransCanada pipelines are working! This article by Saul Elbeinmay reads like a ‘how-to guide’ for successful campaigning to protect the environment.
Read about Jane Kleeb (aka Jane Fleming) and her efforts to motivate and educate ordinary folks into protecting their way of life and how she fights against TarSands pipeline in this article by Jane Kleeb vs. the Keystone Pipeline – NYTimes.com
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Seismic Airgun Testing: Overview
9 Feb.
Everywhere we look, our oceans and land are under attack by big oil companies that want to drill or explore. Their proposed method using airguns are not healthy for the oceans nor for the marine mammals that live there. The seismic airgun testing on the Atlantic was defeated but unfortunately the Pacific is still under consideration. We can’t let them do this on the west coast! Big oil’s business interests should not be considered more important than destruction of habitat!
“Seismic airguns are used to find oil and gas deep underneath the ocean floor. Airguns are so loud that they disturb, injure or kill marine life, harm commercial fisheries, and disrupt coastal economies. These dynamite-like blasts—which are repeated every ten seconds, 24 hours a day, for days and weeks at a time—are 100,000 times more intense than a jet engine. Seismic airgun testing currently being proposed in the Atlantic will injure 138,500 whales and dolphins and disturb millions more, according to government estimates.”
Read the rest of the story at: Oceana: Seismic Airgun Testing: Overview
Take action and send your comments on Draft Guidance for Assessing the Effects of Anthropogenic Sound on Marine Mammals to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) BEFORE March 13, 2014.
Draft Guidance for Assessing the Effects of Anthropogenic Sound on Marine Mammals click HERE
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Social Media Tools great for Activism and Advocacy
7 FebThese tools are relatively new social media sites that are easy to use and are great activism or advocacy tools. We must learn how to use more social media tools if we hope to change what is wrong with our environment and governments. Step up to the plate with these great tools:
Thunderclap.it
Thunderclap Amplifies your message with the power of the crowd
WHAT IS THUNDERCLAP?
Thunderclap is the first crowd-speaking platform that helps people be heard by saying something together.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
If enough people support it, Thunderclap will blast out a timed Facebook Post or Tweet from all your supporters, creating a wave of attention.
WHO’S USING IT?
From passionate individuals with a message to share, to organizations such as The White House, Levis and the United Nations.
Read more about it HERE
Join Thunderclap.it HERE
AskThem
AskThem, from the Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF), is a free & open-source website for questions and answers with public figures. Launching on 2/10/14
AskThem is a project of the Participatory Politics Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, with support from the Knight Foundation’s Tech For Engagement initiative. AskThem is free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan, with open data for civic engagement.
Ask questions and get answers – Every elected official nationwide and any verified Twitter account.
Here’s how AskThem works for online public dialogue:
- For the first time in an open-source website, visitors enter their street address to see all their elected officials, from federal down to the city levels, or search for a verified Twitter account.
- Individuals & organizations submit a question to their elected officials – for example, asking a city council member about a proposed ban on plastic bags.
- People then sign on to the questions and petitions they support, voting them up on AskThem and sharing them over social media, as with online petitions.
- When a question passes a certain threshold of signatures, AskThem delivers it to the recipient over email & social media and encourages a public response – creating a continual, structured dialogue with elected officials at every level of government.
Learn What it’s about and How It Works HERE
Join AskThem HERE
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Withering Whales
2 FebWake up people! Humans are poisoning the world! Animals are dying and species are going extinct because of the greed manifested in many people (er I mean corporations) that continue to exploit all the natural resources to fill their bank accounts with something that can not be taken to their graves! Oceans should not be a dumping ground – directly or indirectly! Keep in mind that the pollution we put into the air will come back down into the oceans. Oceans cover 71% of the world and is the largest habitat!
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A Long-finned pilot whale spyhopping
Picture credit: Barney Moss
An update to this story
The news is worse yet today, even more Whales have been found dead and again their stomachs were empty, but the thing that is most disturbing is the fact that these whales normally live in very deep waters and that they are probably coming into shallower waters now because something is terribly wrong where they live in the Gulf. Once again my suspicions are toxins from either the BP oil spill or the chemicals used to clean it up. These family oriented mammals will all follow even one sick member to their own deaths. It is tragic. Regardless of what is the cause this time, we are killing our sea life and poisoning the sea. God help us all.
About 25 pilot whales found dead in southwest Florida
Each day as I watch our local news, I keep hoping that this will all end…
View original post 363 more words
TWEETSTORMS for Orcas in Captivity
4 Dec
Type C killer whales in the Ross Sea. The eye patch slants forward. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
Orca, also referred to as orca whale, killer whale and less commonly blackfish belong to the oceanic dolphin family and are found in all of the world’s oceans and most seas. Orcas are a highly social, emotional and intelligent species with some of their populations composed of matrilineal family groups, or in other words a system by which all descendants’ can be traced through the mother and maternal ancestors. Orcas have unique hunting techniques directly related to their diet, unique vocal behaviours, such as different dialects in different populations and wild orcas are not considered a threat to humans.
Many orca (killer whales or blackfish), have been taken from the wild, ripped from their families, to live in conditions not true to their nature.
In the wild, orca females can live an average of 50 years but can live as long as 80-90 years while male orcas live and average of 30 years but can live as long as 50-60 years. Captive orcas have a much shorter life span, in spite of what SeaWorld claims, living an average of 20 years. In the wild, orcas natural behaviours include foraging for food, travelling up to 160kms a day, acrobatics such as breaching, spy-hopping and tail slapping. Captivity for orcas on the other hand is a vast change to their natural environment with force-feeding to learn ‘tricks’ and ‘performances’ to entertain loud, noisy audiences, an assault on their intelligence, their natural born ways and their senses., not to mention forced family groupings with different populations.
These highly intelligent animals soon become bored and frustrated at their lessened quality of life. They attack their trainers’ which has resulted in three recorded deaths and numerous injuries. SeaWorld denies the intent of the orcas to cause injury and routinely blames the incidents on the trainers. The trainers themselves (via blackfish) have told you that orca are not happy in captivity and as a result, horrific injuries to both the cetaceans themselves and humans that interact with them have occurred and will continue to occur until we can end their captivity.
TAKE ACTION: We will be holding/sharing various tweet storms relating to various orca in captivity with a vision to encourage future trainers, the general public and cetacean advocates to shed light on the TRUE facts about orca in captivity and the heartache it brings. It is vital that people DO NOT go to see a show, so the more people aware the better. EDUCATION IS KEY.
….until all orca are released from their life prison sentence.
JOIN THIS FACEBOOK EVENT: TWEETSTORMS for Orcas in Captivity.
Related articles
- ‘Blackfish’: How will it affect SeaWorld? (myorlandofix.wordpress.com)
- blackfish (bioventures.wordpress.com)
- Killer Whales Don’t Belong in Captivity – – Here’s Why (onegreenplanet.org)
- Review: Blackfish (fightingthebiocrisis.wordpress.com)
- Blackfish: Orca in captivity blamed for three deaths (outfront.blogs.cnn.com)
- TWEETSTORM! Kshamenk, The Forgotten Orca! (championsforcetaceans.com)
- New Documentary Reveals SeaWorld Forced Orca Whales To Perform Nude (theonion.com)