ENN rounds up the most important and compelling environmental news stories of the week. In the news February 26th - March 2nd: Elephant culling, dung power, carbon regulations, exotic ringtones, and much more.
Top Ten Articles of the Week
In the news February 26th - March 2nd: Elephant culling, dung power, carbon regulations, exotic ringtones, and much more.
1. South African Official Proposes Culling, Contraception to Curb Elephant Population
South Africa's environment minister on Wednesday proposed contraception and some culling -- but no mass slaughter -- as part of a package of measures to slow rampant elephant population growth. Although the population explosion is good news for the tourists who flock to the parks in the hope of spotting the Big Five -- elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, buffalo -- it is inflicting a heavy toll on vegetation and other animal species.
2. Dung Power at U.S. Ethanol Plant
The frosty-breathed cattle jostling for position at a feeding trough in rural Nebraska are not quite as typical as they appear: their manure is being captured in a new bid to quench America's thirst for ethanol. Like other cows in the Midwestern landscape, the animals at the Mead plant, part of an experimental scheme dubbed "Genesis", churn out a steady supply of energy-rich excrement each day.
3. Group Says Ocean Harm Should Force U.S. Carbon Regulation
The Center for Biological Diversity, a national environmental group, on Wednesday petitioned California to regulate CO2 under the Clean Water Act. Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney for the group in San Francisco, said it would soon petition Oregon and Washington state as well as states on the East Coast to do the same.
4. Environmental Activists Use Cell Phone Ringtones to Make Nature Statement
Amid the cacophony of cell phone ringtones these days, add these: the clickety-click-click of a rare Central American poison arrow dart frog, the howl of a Mexican gray wolf and the bellows of an Arctic beluga whale. A U.S. environmental group is hoping that if people hear these sounds from threatened animals on cell phones, they will wonder where they came from -- and question the fate of the animals and birds that make them.
5. European Lighting Industry Agrees to Push Energy-Saving Bulbs
The world's three largest light bulb makers said Thursday they will push European consumers to switch to energy-saving bulbs in a bid to cut carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming.
6. Researchers Take Poles' Temperature
More than 50,000 scientists from 63 nations turned their attention to the world's poles Monday to measure the effects of climate change, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines to study everything from the effect of solar radiation on the polar atmosphere to the exotic marine life swimming beneath the Antarctic ice.
7. Arctic Inuit Argue U.S. Pollution Devastates Centuries-Old Hunting Traditions
Nattaq and other Inuit, the Arctic people of the United States, Canada, Russia, and Greenland -- in Alaska where they're known as Eskimos -- have been warning the world for more than a decade about the shifting winds and thinning ice. Hunting patterns thousands of years old are in jeopardy.
8. Oscars for Gore Film Could Spur Action on Climate
The double Oscar win for "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's expanded slide-show on global warming, could spur grassroots support for the fight against climate change, environmental advocates said Monday.
9. TXU Buyers Moved to Soften Potential Opposition to Huge Takeover
The investors buying TXU Corp. say they can finance the biggest private-takeover ever, cut electricity rates, cancel new power plants -- and still make money. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group believe they can do this, most obviously, because TXU is the largest electricity producer in a big state that is expected to keep growing at a fast clip.
10. Twenty New Ocean Species Found in Indonesia
Twenty new species of sharks and rays have been discovered in Indonesia in a five-year survey of catches at local fish markets, Australian researchers said Wednesday. The survey was part of a broader project working toward improved management of sharks and rays in Indonesia and Australia, researchers said.
Photo: Caribou Antlers in the Snow at the Selawik National Wildlife Refuge. Photo credit: Jo Goldmann/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Contact Info:
