I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth as part of a centuries-long war against the environment
Standing on the edge of Utah’s terminal Great Salt Lake is to witness the religion of over water-consumption in the desert. Our inland sea is disappearing in climate chaos evidenced by extreme heat and a megadrought not seen in 2,500 years. Ten million migrating birds depend on this water body for food, rest and breeding. Flocks of Wilson’s phalaropes, small and handsome shorebirds, spin in saline waters creating water columns alive with brine shrimp and flies and resulting in a feeding frenzy. American avocets and black-necked stilts stand stoically in the shallows. Thousands of ducks are sprinkled on the lake like pepper. Water and sky merge as one. There is no horizon. All appears well in this serene landscape of pastel blues animated by birds. It is not.
The health of the Great Salt Lake is only as strong as the health of the human community that surrounds it. And vice versa. If the 2 million people living within the Great Salt Lake watershed with Salt Lake City at its center do not mobilize to put more water in the lake, the death of the Great Salt Lake will be their own. This will also be the demise of millions of migrating birds.
Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist and activist
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/11/2024 - 05:00
09/11/2024 - 02:00
In the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, forests have been cleared for mines and the roads that service them. Large companies take what they can and move on, leaving abandoned ponds, toxic rivers and scraps of precious metal left in the ground
Words and photographs by Guerchom Ndebo in Moku with support from the National Geographic Society
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09/11/2024 - 00:56
Shadow minister for Indigenous Australians says Albanese government ‘turning a blind eye’ to alleged ‘weaponisation’ of identity
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Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has claimed “opportunists” are making “false claims” to membership of Indigenous groups to scuttle resource projects seeking environmental approval.
The shadow minister for Indigenous Australians made the claim on Wednesday while defending a Coalition plan to designate which Indigenous groups would need to be consulted by project proponents, as revealed by the shadow resources minister, Susan McDonald, at a Minerals Week event.
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09/10/2024 - 23:00
Conservationists and botanists express concern over plans for Qatari-funded upscale resort on Assomption Island
The habitat of the largest giant tortoise population in the world is threatened by a Qatari-funded hotel development that aims to bring luxury yachts, private jets and well-heeled tourists to a remote island in the Indian Ocean, conservationists have warned.
Plans for an upscale resort on Assomption, which is part of the Aldabra island group, are currently under discussion by the Seychelles authorities, and construction is already finished on an airport expansion that would allow bigger aircraft to land on the 11.6-sq-km (4.5-sq-mile) coral island.
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09/10/2024 - 22:07
Legislation before Australian parliament covers the way the country’s nuclear-powered submarine program will be regulated
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The Albanese government has bowed to pressure to close an Aukus loophole, insisting that the newly revealed changes will ensure Australia will not become a dumping ground for nuclear waste from US and UK submarines.
The Greens argued the government’s latest amendments did not go far enough and it was becoming increasingly clear the Aukus security pact was “sinking”.
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09/10/2024 - 16:30
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says Amazonia suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has flown into the Amazon amid growing alarm over the droughts and wildfires sweeping the rainforest region and others parts of Brazil.
Speaking during a visit to a riverside community near the city of Tefé, the Brazilian president said Amazonia was suffering its worst drought in more than 40 years. He said he had come to discover “what is going on with these mighty rivers” that in some places now resemble deserts.
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09/10/2024 - 12:34
This year, the USDA put some limits on added sugars for the first time. But changes face robust resistance
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09/10/2024 - 11:22
Rising temperatures causing largest glacier in Dolomites to lose 7-10cm of depth a day, according to scientists
The Marmolada glacier, the largest and most symbolic of the Dolomites, could melt completely by 2040 owing to rising average temperatures, experts have said.
Italian scientists who are monitoring glaciers and the impact of climate emergency, and who took part in a campaign launched by environmentalist group Legambiente, the international commission for the protection of the Alps (Cipra), with the scientific partnership of the Italian Glacier Committee, said on Monday the Marmolada was losing between 7 and 10cm of depth a day.
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09/10/2024 - 10:53
Full bag of snack left in cave occasioned National Park Service to educate public about delicate ecosystems
A full bag of Cheetos, discarded by a subterranean visitor to the Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns national park in New Mexico, has led the US National Park Service to issue a warning that discarded food could have a “huge impact” on the cave’s delicate and at-risk ecosystem.
“At the scale of human perspective, a spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing,” the park said in its post about the garbage that was recently discovered there, threatening the balance of the unique cave system environment.
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09/10/2024 - 10:00
The Project hopes competition will raise big money for underfunded organisations working to protect beloved species
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Tense competition is brewing between the greater glider and the koala in Australia’s marsupial of the year vote but there are hopes a silky tailed species that “mates themselves to death” could win over voters and maybe even save it from heading towards extinction.
Network Ten’s The Project launched the competition in collaboration with organisations and charities that work with or help preserve the habitat of marsupials, many of them endangered, in a bid to raise funds for them.
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