Posted onJuly 6, 2016|Comments Off on Bear-Proof Trash Cans
After bashing the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, I must give kudos for the new plan to offer bear-proof garbage cans to residents where a high number of bear-human interactions, rarely happy events, are occurring. FWC is not actually gifting the containers, but providing a $20,000 grant which will help buy 163 special, secure cans for residents in a high interaction neighborhood in Marion County, Florida.
At first glance, only 163 cans for $20,000 seems like a lot, but when I did the math, it didn’t seem so bad at $122.70 each. Online shopping for bear-proof cans revealed a variety of cans up to $951.60! Further searches offer instructions on how to make your own can secure from bears. Roanoke County Solid Waste Department’s tutorial offers a cheap fix involving double hinge rasps and clips on three sides of the lid. Check it out on YouTube. But be mindful: Unless all your neighbors are on the same page, you will still have visitors from the family Ursidae on your street.
Posted onApril 22, 2016|Comments Off on Celebrate Earth Day: Be a Butterfly!
When I was growing up, the three Rs meant reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Today they signify ways to be socially responsible: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Environmental justice has become a new catchphrase. Just what does it mean to live justly? Is it a faith issue? A moral obligation? Is it even doable?
As a Christian, I am called to love God and love others. I know people of other faiths are, too. Living justly seems to me, a practical outgrowth of that. Is what I choose to eat or wear when I get up an ethical decision? What kind of chemicals were used on the farm where my bacon was raised? Is my coffee served in Styrofoam that doesn’t break down? Under what conditions did the seamstress who made my jeans work and was she paid slave wages? Is my car polluting, my sprinkler system sapping the aquifer, my fertilizer running into springs and ponds?
It seems overwhelming, doesn’t it? How could I make a difference in the system? I cannot overhaul it, but I can effect small change. The Butterfly Effect, another name for the Chaos Theory, states that a single occurrence, no matter how small, can effect great change. Let’s all celebrate our beautiful Earth by committing to one small act. Let’s find a way to be butterflies!
Comments Off on Celebrate Earth Day: Be a Butterfly!
Posted onApril 2, 2016|Comments Off on Adopt an Elephant
Seen any mammoths lately? Like modern elephants, they were contemporaries of Homo sapiens, and therein lies the problem. Threats to the largest land mammal on earth include the loss and degradation of habitat and poaching for ivory. In 1989 international trade in ivory was banned, but underground markets still thrive in some countries, with a growing demand from Asians, who consider car ownership and ivory decorations the ultimate signs of affluence.
Surprisingly, the greatest threat to the beasts is conflict with human farmers. Voracious elephant appetites conflict with humans trying to feed their own families. The World Wildlife Federation attemps to eliminate conflict between people and elephants, mobilizing and educating communities. Protecting crops requires proper land use, allowing for seasonal movement of herds. WWF educates populations in proper land management and techniques for protecting crops. Additionally, they instill an appreciation for wildlife tourism as an economic resource. Efforts include training park guards, monitoring elephant movement and developing techniques to protect crops.
You and I can participate in the effort to preserve these magnificent creatures through World Wildlife Federation’s Adopt an Elephant Program. Eighty-four percent of the program’s spending goes directly to conservation efforts. Charity Navigator gives a high rating to the 501C3 charity. Gift options range from $25 to $250. An adoption certificate is included with each gift package. Next time you’re shopping for a birthday present, consider adopting an elephant. http://www.gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/gifts/species-adoptions/African-Elephant
A second, fun way to help elephants is through The Nature Conservancy’s #elegram Project. Doodle, draw, sculpt, paint, or sew an elephant and post it on social media, matching your #elegram with a donation. Learn more about the plight of elephants at The Nature Conservancy site or make a pledge to support elephants world wide: http://www.nature.org For written elegram instructions: http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/africa/elegram-steps.pdf.
There are no floating garbage patches in the Pacific, not as we think of them, i.e., floating landfills. There are small aggregates of trash, but the gigantic gyres we’ve been told variously are the size of Texas, or twice the size of Texas, or sometimes even the size of the continent, are not composed of large objects like refrigerators, toys and wreckage from storm-battered buildings. They are, basically, microbits of plastic, the size of salt and pepper. Plastic, which breaks down, but never goes away.
The smaller rafts of plastic debris, more recent intentional or unintentional human castoffs, which haven’t had time to break down, have revealed a surprise to researchers from the University of Florida, traveling with Sea Eduation Foundation. Debris which hasn’t had time to break down, is serving as a micro habitat to several species of Asian crabs, mussels and other small sea creatures. They cannot attach to the plastic, but they can use goose-neck barnacles which are able to attach themselves to the smooth surface of plastic.
My first reaction to this news was, great! At least our garbage in the sea is serving some useful purpose. Silly me. Turns out non-native species are hitching rides on castoffs from both sides of the ocean, traveling to new destinations, becoming invasive. This unexpected consequence of allowing our garbage to reach the sea, has the potential to destroy native species’ habitat.
A recent study estimated that around eight million metric tons of our plastic waste enters the oceans from land each year. How far-reaching are the consequences of our failure to properly dispose of the plastic items we use! If you don’t have recycle bins at your house, apartment complex or business, contact your solid waste department and ask how you can best recycle. If you do recycle, good for you! Be sure to rinse the items, as failure to do so contaminates other items and lowers the value of the recyclable. The plastics that cannot go into the recycle bins should be placed in cans with secure lids, not loosly tossed, but ideally, bagged.
Recently the Florida House proposed $1.8 million, the Senate, $900,000 for new technologies to complement the hand removal of tires from a tire reef off Ft. Lauderdale. Removal? The announcement piqued my curiosity. I remember back in the seventies, creating artificial reefs from tires was a new, promising idea, endorsed by the Army Corp of Engineers.
It seemed like a win/win. On land, tires were ubiquitous pollutants. Creation of artificial reefs would attract game fish and be a boon to tourist-minded South Florida. It was such an easy, promising project, tire reefs were created off the northeastern United States, in the Gulf of Mexico, and along Asian and African coastlines.
Forward thirty years. Little marine life attached to the tires. When dropped, the two million tires off the Florida coast had been latched together with corrosive nylon restraints which ultimately failed. Storms tossed single tires on a collision course with natural reefs, doing great harm. Hurricanes Opal and Bonnie (1995 and 1998) strew tires across Florida’s beautiful panhandle beaches and popular North Carolina beaches.
Thus began efforts to rid the sea of tires. An experiment by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection would have allowed companies who had damaged sea beds and reefs to mitigate reef destruction by removing tires from Osborne Reef. The state did not follow through on the plan. In 2001 Nova Southeastern University received a grant from NOAA to manually extract tires. 1600 were removed at a cost of $17 per tire.
As part of a training program, DiveExEast07, U S Navy, Army and Coast Guard divers recovered 43,900 at a cost to the state of $140,000. This cost included transportation to a shredding facility in Georgia where the tires were burned as fuel. 2009 saw Army and Navy divers again working to relocate tires caught against a natural reef.
Does burning tires for fuel strike anyone else as foolhardy? The majority of tires placed in our oceans are still there, albeit not in their original locations. The recent pledge by the Florida House and Senate will also fund a study on the environmental benefits of the tire removal program. Really? Don’t we already know what the benefits are? In my mind, the money would be better spent studying ways to remove the tires and do so without creating another environmental disaster, this one in the air we breathe.
Posted onFebruary 5, 2016|Comments Off on Protecting our Water —Ostensibly
Don’t you love it when the legislators you elected to represent your best interests pass a law that ostensibly protects, but actually undermines your public resource? Water, everybody’s most basic need. Just ask the people of Flint, Michigan.
Here in Florida, The Water Resources Protection Act passed in 1973, purportedly to protect surface and groundwater. It has, unfortunately, been inconsistently enforced. It is, after all, purposely vague and full of loopholes. No problem. This week, the Florida legislature passed the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act. Or is it a problem?
The law was written by lobbyists working for Associated Industries of Florida. Who are these industries? You can bet they are the dairy and poultry farmers, as well as urban developers, the biggest users, abusers, and contributors to deteriorating water quality. Are they really interested in protecting water quality? Would they have supported or written a law that cost them in user fees, taxes on fertilizer use, or better management of both human and animal wastewater?
Of course not. Instead they wrote and lobbied for a law with no teeth for enforcement, a law that ostensibly protects. I looked up synonyms for ostensibly: alleged, supposedly, apparently, pretended, purported, seemingly, outwardly appearing, superficial.
I enjoy a good steak or chicken dinner and I live in a housing development. I don’t enact laws. But I vote. Do you? There are numerous online sites to help you find your representatives who voted for the law. You can’t eliminate the lobbyists, but you can do something about the legislators who voted the bill into law. Tell them you care about water. Tell them by voting them out of office.
Silenced Springs by Robert L. Knight is available at Florida Springs Institute.org or Amazon.com. The book addresses degradation of Florida waters and its causes.
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