This should surprise no one. It appears that the dam is causing landslides, plagues of displaced rate, collapses on the shore of the reservoir, etc.
And in a few years, as the lands that are fertilized by the silt carried in the Yangtze start to grow poor, the silt will now settle in the reservoir,it’s just going to get worse.
Bluefin Tuna stocks are seriously threatened, “The EU must keep the ban agreed today in place indefinitely until independent scientific evidence demonstrates that sustainable fishing is possible.”
Fishing grounds all over the world are under serious pressure.
A genetic study the Eastern Pacific Gray Whale population has indicated that the pre whaling population was 5x what was previously thought, indicating that the recovery is 5x as anemic as was previously though.
More significantly, it means that the Eastern Gray Whales population of 20,000, Western Gray Whale population is in the few hundred range, is still well below the carrying capacity of their habitat, and that the increasing number of malnourished whales found are an indication of another problem threating their food supply.
The most likely culprit is global warming.
The strength of this hurricane has caught forecasters by surprise, but it’s an artifact of the increasingly warm summer Caribbean.
I could not resist the pun in the title, sorry.
Well, it appears that there is company that will be converting left over animal fats from slaughter houses into jet fuel.
That’s right, planes powered by schmaltz (chicken fat).
I’m wondering when Colonel Sanders will open his own airline.
Many of you have heard of the scramble in China to catch the millions of displaced rats from the 3 Gorges Dam to serve in Gourmet Chinese eateries.
The rising water below the structure evicted the rodents from the banks of Dongting Lake, “a series of wetlands and lakes”, into neighbouring farmland, where they quickly decimated 6,000 square miles of crops.
Desperate farmers at first deployed poison, but that simply killed the cats and dogs “traditionally use to combat the menace”, while doing nothing to reduce rat numbers.
However, they soon realised there was another, money-making solution to the crisis – a “major uptake in supply and demand for rat meat”, reported by live food traders in Changde at the western edge of the lake. One dealer told local media: “People there [Guangdong] are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good.”
The economics are as follows: farmers pocket around six to ten yuan a kilogram (20 to 35 pence a pound in old money, the Telegraph helpfully adds), while Cantonese restaurants knock it out as delicious rat stew for up to four quid a pound.
But while the solution to the problem may lie in part in Guangdong’s saucepans, the reasons behind the rat plague are rather more complex than a simple rise in water level. Initially, the Three Gorges Dam held back enough water from Dongting Lake’s “marshy banks” to create an improved environment for the animals and provoke a sharp population rise.
Simultaneously, a “sudden fashion” for snake meat in Hunan – with residents of the capital Changsha working their way through ten tons of reptile flesh a day, according to local environmental groups – has done for the rats’ main predator.
The whole sorry state of affairs is, these groups claim, fulfillment of their dire predictions about the environmental effects of the Three Gorges Dam project.
While there is clearly a humorous aspect to this story, the underlying story is very troubling.
The rat infestation is simply the first of many troubling manifestations of this.
The Yellow River is so named because it is Yellow. With no lakes for sediment to settle in, the river flows quickly, carrying its nutrient laden cargo to the ocean.
The periodic floods serve to replenish the breadbasket of China. The estuary is fertile ground, and the where many fish in Asia spawn.
The dam will change all that, and other things too, in unanticipated ways, like the rats in this story.
Christina Larson, Blogging for Kevin Drum makes a very good point about hunters and other sportsmen.
Specifically, if they are allowed reasonable access in an environmentally friendly way, they are great allies in protecting critical habitats.
I don’t hunt myself. I keep Kosher at home out of respect for my wife, and anything that you would shoot would be treif, and so we could not eat them, but I’ve taken my kids fishing, and only my astonishing ineptitude has prevented us from taking fish home to cook.
Here we have roadless land where hunters can walk in to hunt, and they, who are not what one could call reflexively anti-military, are screaming bloody murder.
Hunting is essential in much of rural PA, because the deer have gotten completely out of hand, because the wolves have been eliminated.
I’d like to see wolves reintroduced, if just because they are more efficient, and tend to go after the old and infirm animals, but for the foreseeable future, hunting is an indispensable part of the ecosystem.
Land Conservationists Take on the National Guard – New York Times
By SEAN D. HAMILLFORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa., June 27 — There are few better vantage points than Hawk Watch to see both sides of the debate between the Pennsylvania National Guard and local conservationists.
Hawk Watch, a 30-yard-wide clearing named for its grand view of soaring raptors, is on the ridge of Second Mountain, about 12 miles northeast of Harrisburg and part of the Appalachian range.
“This is Stony Creek Valley,” said Larry Herr, pointing north to 44,000 acres of state-protected wilderness that is home to a nearly unaltered green carpet of hemlock, maple and oak trees going down the hillside to the valley 1,000 feet below.
Then, walking to the other side of Hawk Watch and looking south onto a 17,000-acre base operated by the Pennsylvania National Guard, Mr. Herr said with contempt: “And this is the Gap. Notice the difference.”
Amid large swaths of a similar tree canopy are pockets where the valley and hillside have been carved up for guard training areas, the trees removed and roads, buildings and ranges put in their place.
“That’s why we don’t want them over here,” said Mr. Herr, 67, a hunter who is part of the Stony Creek Valley Coalition fighting the guard’s request to use about 900 acres as a buffer for a new target range for Abrams M-1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. “We don’t trust them.”
In a series of public meetings, charges have flown back and forth about a lack of concern for the public and past environmental abuses by the Guard — charges the Guard denies — and accusations that sportsmen regularly trespass on Guard land.
……
Emphasis mine.