Endangered Biodiversity Photo Album

In the lead-up to the 2010 Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, the UK's Guardian newspaper solicited suggestions from its readers for actions to prompt governments into action. The meeting
ultimately produced the Nagoya protocol whose goals are to increase protected land from 12.5% to 17%, increase protected oceans from less than 1% to 10% and to cut the species loss rate by 50% by the year 2020. Formidable goals.

One of the ways to achieve these goals is simply by raising awareness. I'm pleased to say that Eco-Now is now listed by the content aggregator Alltop in its Biodiversity section, which we hope will help us reach a wider audience. If you're using Alltop, you can add us to your feed like so: Feed: http://econowblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss Tell your friends.

Anyway, to celebrate, I present the Guardian's photo album that illustrates the various species on whose behalf actions need to be taken.

Environmental cartoons III: Capitalism, growth and environmentalism

The comics say it all. 

Find more of Polyp's cartoons here.

Find more of Stephanie McMillan's comics here. She also has an excellent weekly editorial cartoon focussed on environmental topics, Code Green.  

Find more of Seppo's comics here.

If you know of cool editorial cartoonists who often do environmental topics, please let me know in the comments. 

Photo albums: plastic, trees and wildlife

What was everyone talking about at Rio this week? Work to do, work to do, no doubt, but with a lack of heavyweights there, there was talk, but what about action...? Yet to be determined. Good to see the artists getting in on the act and giving everyone something to talk about. Many more pictures of this great plastic bottle fish sculpture are here and here. But I first saw someone share the above photo from Cool Hunter on Facebook, who has an excellent exhibit on modern eco tree houses. Nice to see trees getting such respect.
Lots of other cool stuff on Cool Hunter's site.

I can't resist this other photo album from the Guardian's Week in Wildlife Pictures. These species only exist on Earth and nowhere else. Pretty incredible...

Korean paradise flycatcher

The Beauty of Pollination

Bee mid-pollination

Beauty and seduction are nature's tools for survival, says, Louie Schwartzberg, who has been filming pollinators like bees, bats, hummingbirds and butterflies using close-up time-lapse photography for 35 years. Flowers and pollinators co-evolved over fifty million of years and this is the same seduction that goes on between mates of any species. We depend on pollinators for over one third of the vegetables we eat. So the plight of bees and colony collapse disorder (recently tied to certain pesticides) becomes our plight as well.

Here, Schwartzberg gives a great intro to one of nature's most fascinating stories before presenting some fantastic time-lapse images. Stirring stuff! (Thanks to @NaturConsCDA for posting the pollination version on Twitter... you can pick up the cool film bits at 3:20 or so)

 

A new look at animal behavior

Two years ago, for the International Year of Biodiversity, the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) produced a bold new video that we've featured here before, "Love, not Loss." You can see it here:

When raising awareness about such a significant problem as biodiversity loss, it's hard not to fall into the "doom and gloom" trap. But as the video points out, it's easy to tune out the doom and gloom, the litany of statistics and facts. So what moves us to act? Direct experiences of nature that remind us of its awe, beauty and wonder. I'm still thinking of the Robinson Jeffers poem Carmel Point, "we must uncenter our minds" -- it's not all about us. With that, I introduce you to this terrific TED video by Frans de Waal, who is doing research on morality in primates. It's difficult to study this sort of behavior in the wild, so de Waal recounts, and shows footage of, ingenious experiments that show reciprocity, fairness, cooperation and consolation in primates. There are some great clips, particularly at the very end, that show how similar primate behavior is to human behavior (he also has an example of cooperation with elephants). While de Waals is ultimately studying it for the evolutionary basis for morality, I think it shows the respect that these species deserve in their own right.

 

A mini Eco-Film Festival

Here's a brief eco-film festival to get you through the weekend.

First up are some flash animations created by Jimmy Egeland
with a terrific series called Eco-bunnies. So far, there are just
three episodes: Eco-bunnies1, The Eco-bunnies in Earth Day
Escapade and The Eco-bunnies in Hare Do's and Don'ts. I love
the idea of a visible carbon footprint -- I wonder how that would
change our actions. Watch and share, this guy definitely needs
more exposure.

Second up is this nice little short by Andrea Dorfman: Thoughts
on my Bike. As an urban cyclist, I share the sentiment
of trying to figure out what's wrong with our cities and our
lifestyles as I'm riding about.




And the main feature, as it were, is this fine episode of Extinction
Sucks, featuring the dynamic duo of Ashley and Aleisha. Here they
venture off to Nepal and Chitwan National Park to do their part
to protect the Indian Rhino from poachers. Not only do we first
worlders have to reduce our consumption, the show makes the point
reducing global poverty is a key to protecting biodiversity.
I've only watched the one episode so far, but based on that,
I think Extinction Sucks is radical and imaginative. Let's hope
they can inspire some radical and imaginative conservation ideas
among the rest of us.

As always, comments welcome.