ENN Weekly: May 28th - June 1st

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ENN rounds up the most important and compelling environmental news stories of the week. In the news May 28th - June 1st: Carbon offsets, a temporary reprieve for bison, lab-grown meat, manual mowers, and much more.











Top Ten Articles of the Week
In the news May 28th - June 1st: Carbon offsets, a temporary reprieve for bison, lab-grown meat, manual mowers, and much more.


1. Do Trees Make It OK to Drive an SUV?
If you plant some trees, is it OK to drive an Escalade? The question isn't as silly as it sounds. People worried about global warming increasingly are trying to "offset" the carbon dioxide _ the leading greenhouse gas _ they spew into the atmosphere when they drive, fly or flick on a light. One idea popular with the eco-conscious is to have trees planted for them. You get to keep driving and flying, but those trees are supposed to suck in your trail of carbon.


2. Montana Delays Slaughter of 300 Bison Amid Uproar
Public outrage prompted a temporary stay of execution Wednesday for 300 bison, including an estimated 100 calves, roaming in Montana outside the confines of Yellowstone National Park. The Montana Board of Livestock on Tuesday announced plans to capture and kill the bison, or buffalo, in the wake of news earlier this month that seven Montana cows had tested positive for brucellosis, a disease that can cause stillbirths in cows and infects some of the Yellowstone bison herd.


3. WHO Urges Ban on Smoking in Public Buildings
The U.N. health agency on Tuesday issued its strongest policy recommendations yet for controlling tobacco use, urging all countries to ban smoking at indoor workplaces and in public buildings. "The evidence is clear. There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke," said Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization. Governments should immediately pass laws "requiring all indoor workplaces and public places to be 100 percent smoke-free," she said.


4. Dutch Try To Grow Environment-Friendly Meat in Lab
Dutch researchers are trying to grow pork meat in a laboratory with the goal of feeding millions without the need to raise and slaughter animals. "We're trying to make meat without having to kill animals," Bernard Roelen, a veterinary science professor at Utrecht University, said in an interview.


5. Lucrative Fish and Timber Face U.N. Trade Limits
Fish and chips, coral jewellery and wooden musical instruments will take centre stage at a U.N. wildlife forum next week which seeks to curb the billion-dollar trade in endangered marine and tree species. Commercially valuable species like the spiny dogfish and the porbeagle shark, the European eel, pink coral and rosewood and cedar trees -- all threatened by over-use -- feature high on the agenda of the June 3-15 meeting in The Hague.


6. CITES to Study Species Over-Exploitation
If you think the problem of endangered species is all about tigers, elephants and orangutans, ask a violinist where he gets his bow. The best violin bows are made from pau brasil, a tree from the Brazilian rain forest that has been exploited for 500 years, and was once so economically vital for the red dye it produced that it gave its name to the only country where it grows.


7. Food Scares Help China's Nascent Organic Market
Fish could give you cancer, snails meningitis and baby milk may kill your children -- barely a day goes by without some new food horror story in China. This is helping drive sales in another, though still tiny, food sector in China -- organic produce. But a loose regulatory framework and sometimes just plain confusion about what exactly constitutes organic food has proved a stumbling block, experts say.


8. Ethiopian Elephants, Lions at Risk as Forest Cut
A thousand rare black-mane lions -- an Ethiopian national symbol -- and some 300 elephants are in danger after a swathe of forest in their sanctuary was cut down, a wildlife expert said on Thursday. The land was cleared from a conservation area at Midiga Tola, adjacent to the Babile Elephant Sanctuary located 560 km (350 miles) east of Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Wildlife Association President Yirmed Demeke said.


9. As Insurgency Ebbs, Kashmir Looks To Save Dal Lake
For Dal Lake, an ebb in Kashmir's separatist insurgency and tentative peace moves between India and Pakistan has come none to soon. Raw sewage, land encroachment and years of neglect have been threatening the survival of a lake where visitors from Mughal emperors to George Harrison once enjoyed the idyllic stillness of its waters surrounded by Himalayan mountains.


10. Manual Lawn Mowers Are Making a Comeback
Powerful, loud mowers have been showing lawns who's boss for decades. But now contraptions that couldn't cut butter without a good shove are quietly -- really quietly -- making a comeback. Manual lawn mowers, long the 98-pound weaklings of the tool shed, are pushing their way, or, more accurately, being pushed around more yards all over the country.


Photo: A lone Weddell seal pup lies on the sea ice in McMurdo Sound. Scientists who study seal populations have noticed a decline in the number of pups in recent years. Credit: Steven Profaizer/National Science Foundation/Antarctic Photo Library.


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