Wisdom tends to her egg. Laysan albatrosses spend the vast majority of their lives in the air. Photograph: US Fish and Wildlife Service/AP
Thanks to the Guardian’s Environment section (and Reuters) for this news:
World’s oldest-known seabird lays an egg at age of 66 in Pacific refuge
Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, is also world’s oldest-known breeding bird in the wild and has had a few dozen chicks Continue reading
Ignacio Nicolas Campillo, director of a hops production facility in northern Spain, peels apart the flower of the hops plant, to reveal yellow powder inside. The powder is used to make beer. Lauren Frayer/NPR
This story from the salt over at National Public Radio (USA) adds to our hops coverage from time to time:
Only the oldest residents of Villanueva del Carrizo, a town on the fertile banks of the Órbigo River in northern Spain, remember that day just after World War II, when all the area farmers were called to a meeting in the center of town.
Spain’s tiny beer industry was in a bind: It could no longer import hops – a key ingredient in beer – from war-devastated Germany. But brewers had spotted wild hops along the Órbigo River, and they had a hunch it could grow on farms too. Continue reading
Great Rann of Kutch, Gujurat
German artist Diane Scherer creates low-relief sculptures made from plant roots. DIANA SCHERER
Thanks to Wired for this bit of intrigue:
Artist Teaches Roots To Grow In Beautiful, Alien Patterns
by MARGARET RHODES
THE HUMAN RACE has a long history of bending nature to its will. The results of this relationship can be devastating—but they can also be strikingly beautiful, as German artist Diane Scherer skillfully proves with her low-relief sculptures made from plant roots.
Scherer grows these works of art by planting oat and wheat seeds in soil, and then carefully, meticulously, warping the growth pattern. DIANA SCHERER
Scherer grows these works of art by planting oat and wheat seeds in soil, and then carefully, meticulously, warping the growth pattern. She prefers to train her roots into geometric patterns found in nature, like honeycomb structures, or foliate designs reminiscent of Middle Eastern arabesques. Continue reading
The Block Island Wind Farm’s turbines off the coast of Rhode Island in August. They began spinning on Monday and will deliver electricity to Block Island, a community nearby. Credit Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times
America’s First Offshore Wind Farm Spins to Life
By
Until this week, all of the wind power generated in the United States was landlocked. Continue reading
Tacacori, Costa Rica
Portland’s Gulf of Maine Research Institute has designed a trawl net that aims to target species that can still be profitable while avoiding cod. Courtesy of Gulf of Maine Research Institute
Thanks to the salt folks at National Public Radio (USA):
Fishermen Team Up With Scientists To Make A More Selective Net
FRED BEVER
Some New England fishermen are pinning their hopes on a new kind of trawl net being used in the Gulf of Maine, one that scoops up abundant flatfish such as flounder and sole while avoiding species such as cod, which are in severe decline.
For centuries, cod were plentiful and a prime target for the Gulf of Maine fleet. But in recent years, catch quotas have been drastically reduced as the number of cod of reproductive age have dropped perilously low. Continue reading
Camillo Sirianni, a third-generation family business that began as a mechanized carpentry company in 1909, has overcome the isolation of its hometown to become a leading manufacturer of school furniture. Credit Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
The EU, like all governance systems and especially relatively young ones, had its shortcomings; but it also had plenty of visionary good that we continue to admire:
Internet Throws Lifeline to Family Businesses in Small Town in Italy’s South
By
SOVERIA MANNELLI, Italy — Mario Caligiuri can still recall the night that may be credited with changing the fortunes of Soveria Mannelli.
It was New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium, and as mayor he dashed off an email to the authorities in Rome seeking an audience to explain his initiative to connect his struggling mountaintop town of about 3,000 inhabitants to the internet. Continue reading
Illustration by Jasu Hu
Another from the last issue of the year and part of a series that the New Yorker offers to help us reflect on the big picture (each in this series is a very short read with disproportionate impact):
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH’S EXPLORATION OF NATURE’S MARVELS AND BRUTALITY
His game-changing shows remind us that ours is an impermanent and fragile world.
By Téa Obreht
No trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York is complete without a visit to the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. It’s a blue-tinged room, booming with surf-roar and the cries of gulls and rimmed with marine dioramas: teeming kelp forests and coral reefs, a walrus lost in thought, dolphins and tuna fleeting through twilit seas. Continue reading
Great Rann of Kutch, Gujurat
Image: Daniel Parks/Flickr
We are constantly playing catch up with the terminology, let alone the science, of environmental efficiency in all its forms and considerations. Anthropocene delivers the daily goods, in the form of a summary of an environmentally-oriented scientific study, that we constantly find useful:
Solar power will cross a carbon threshold by 2018
Illustration by Tamara Shopsin; Photos by All for You, Mrnok, via shutterstock
We appreciate that the City of Lights keeps brightening our future, as well as their own:
If the Pool Is Warm in Paris, Thank the Washing Machine
By
What do washing the dishes and uploading pictures to Facebook have in common? Continue reading
Ovid, New York
Honeybees alone are responsible for boosting the production of fruits, nuts and vegetables. But bee and other pollinator populations in the US have been in decline in recent years. Photograph: Klas Stolpe/AP
Thanks to the Guardian:
Bee’s knees: a new $4m effort aims to stop the death spiral of honeybees
General Mills is co-funding a project with the federal government to restore the habitat of pollinators such as bees and butterflies on North American farms Continue reading
Galetti et al. “Reversing defaunation by trophic rewilding in empty forests.” Biotropica. 2016.
Thanks to Anthropocene:
A recipe for rewilding the Atlantic forest
Baja California Sur, Mexico
The endangered Asiatic Lion. Photo via paradisejungletrip.com
The Gir Forest National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary covers about 1,400 square kilometers in the southwestern region of Gujurat, India’s westernmost state that borders Pakistan and the Arabian Sea. Unlike many of the national parks profiled so far, Gir Forest National Park is not open to hiking on trails, mostly to protect travelers and the wildlife that the Park was founded to preserve, particularly the Asiatic lion, an endangered species found only in this protected area.
Photo via lion-gir-forest.blogspot.com
The main attraction of the Park is this large cat population, which numbers in the hundreds. But leopards, deer, the four-horned antelope, and many interesting bird species can be found here, along with the vulnerable marsh crocodile and the endangered pangolin. Since walking within the Park on foot is not allowed, jeep safaris are the only way to get around and spot wildlife with the help of a guide. With such a high number of threatened species – whether avian, mammalian, or reptilian – Gir Forest seems a place worth visiting before it is too late to spot some of these majestic and beautiful creatures in the wild. Despite only 83 checklists on eBird, the number of species recorded in the Park is 231, with many of the species only just being reported for the hotspot this year!
The endangered Indian Vulture. Photo via thepetitionsite.com
The Park closes from mid-June to September for the monsoon season, and the most comfortable temperatures for visiting are during December-March. For the purposes of wildlife sightings, however, April and May are great despite the extreme heat, since this hot and dry period makes many of the animals more predictable in their search for water. While in the region, consider visiting the Somnath Temple to the southwest or Mount Girnar to the northwest.
After reading this, we had to at least visit the website:
Our journey began with a PASSION FOR HEALTHY EATING instilled by our Eastern Mediterranean heritage. As the family grew, home cooking revolved around grilling and roasting ingredients that are full of goodness, avoiding deep frying or saturated fats.
And on closer look at Strut & Cluck, we are determined to visit the place itself, when we next get the chance:
The mum and family chef, Limor, started experimenting with turkey as a healthy alternative to chicken and a great source of lean protein. She quickly discovered the VERSATILITY AND FLAVOUR OF THIS SUPERFOOD. To achieve its distinctive flavour and fall-off-the-bone tenderness, the meat is marinated for 24 hours, then slow-cooked with our herb & spice blend. Continue reading
Rio Preto de Eva, Brazil
This excellent interactive story, Mapping Three Decades of Global Water Change, b
Organikos 