Browsing: Environmental News

Masses of monarch butterflies fluttering across Toronto’s waterfront. Painted ladies (often mistaken for monarchs) descending on Montreal. Combined with the hottest September ever recorded in the Great Lakes region, it’s been a strange time in Eastern Canada. We should savour the joys of these captivating critters while we can, because their future — and that of insects generally — is uncertain.

Building upon the success of Laamu’s first ever inter-island Turtle Festival in 2016, the entire community recently came together for the second Laamu Turtle Festival. The event took place on the local island of Gan, and was jointly organized by the Gan Island Council, Laamu Atoll Police Department and Six Senses Laamu. This year’s theme was once again Turtles in Laamu – Safe and Protected, aiming to raise awareness about the importance of sea turtles and providing a platform for community engagement about greater marine conservation.

I’m often introduced as an environmentalist. I prefer to be called a father, grandfather, scientist or author, as these terms provide insight into my motivation. Environmentalism isn’t a discipline or specialty like law, medicine, plumbing, music or art. It’s a way of seeing our place in the world and recognizing that our survival, health and happiness are inextricably dependent on nature. To confront today’s environmental crises, everyone — garage mechanics, construction workers, dentists, politicians and judges — has to see the world through an environmental lens.

August 2 was Earth Overshoot Day. Unlike Earth Day or Canada Day, it’s not a time to celebrate. As the Earth Overshoot Day website explains, it marks the time when “we will have used more from nature than our planet can renew in the whole year.” That is the definition of unsustainable and means we’re using up the biological capital that should be our children’s legacy. We would require 1.7 Earths to meet our current annual demands sustainably.

Environmental organisation WWF-New Zealand, today cautiously welcomed the Ministry for Primary Industries’ new draft squid fishing plan and called for precautionary action to save the New Zealand sea lion. The ‘Squid 6T Operational Plan’, released today for consultation regulates trawling for squid around the Auckland Islands, home to the most important breeding colony of this endangered species.

Governments change — along with laws, regulations and priorities. It’s the nature of democracies. In Canada, we’ve seen environmental laws implemented, then weakened or overturned, then strengthened and re-instated. But the basic necessities of health, well-being and life shouldn’t be subject to the shifting agendas of political parties. That’s why Canada should recognize the right to a healthy environment in its Constitution — something 110 countries already do.

Humans are an astonishing anomaly. As many species teeter on extinction, our populations grow in size and complexity. From exploring space to eradicating diseases and other remarkable achievements, human curiosity has pushed the outer limits of our physical universe. Yet our ability to embrace shared values has been challenging. More than a billion people live in poverty, inequality gaps are expanding, and we face unprecedented environmental challenges that threaten our survival.

Of all the plastic products we use and take for granted, plastic drinking straws are among the most unnecessary. Designed to be used once and discarded, their only real purpose is to keep your mouth from touching a glass or ice. It made more sense in the days when contaminated vessels were more of an issue.

I recently had a great time photographing the wrecks of Subic Bay on the west coast of Luzon, in the north of the Philippines. The bay used to be the location of a US naval base, and it has wrecks from the Spanish-American war, from WWII, and scuttled American ships and planes from the area afterwards. It’s quite a playground for the wreck-diving aficionado and underwater photographer.

In withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, U.S. President Donald Trump demonstrated monumental ignorance about climate change and the agreement itself. As Vox energy and climate writer David Roberts noted about Trump’s announcement, “It is a remarkable address, in its own way, in that virtually every passage contains something false or misleading.”

Do you remember Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? It turns out wizards aren’t the only ones who can vanish from sight with a special coat. Marine researchers have discovered shrimp-like crustaceans called hyperiids that can hide in the open using internal nanotechnology to cloak themselves in invisibility. That’s just one among many fascinating discoveries to celebrate on World Oceans Day, June 8.