Local

Wolf makes big tracks in California

The NY Times reports:
SAN FRANCISCO — On the Chinese calendar, this week ushers in the year of the dragon. But here, it feels a lot more like the year of the wolf.

Richard Cockle/The Oregonian, via Associated Press
John Stephenson, a biologist, measured the stride of the gray wolf known as OR7 in Crater Lake [...]

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Recent Posts

Environmental goals are job creators

The East Bay Express figures out the jobs picture:
During a Republican presidential primary debate last June, Michele Bachmann lit into the Environmental Protection Agency, recommending it be renamed the “job-killing organization of America.” Her fellow contenders nodded in agreement, each explaining how shutting down the EPA, or at least instituting a moratorium on regulations, would [...]

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Green Drinks Feb. 1!

Greetings, Green Drinkers and Cinema Verde Fans!

We had a great January candidates forum at Blue Water Bay – thanks to Shawn Sheppard and Jason Fults, as well to all of you who joined us! And now it’s time for some more fun next week…

Green Drinks (www.gogreennation.org/category/green-drinks/) will be held 6 – [...]

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California steps up on air quality

Air quality California AP

JASON DEAREN  reports for the Associated Press

Auto dealers say California’s proposed rules to require carmakers to build more electric and other less-polluting hybrid cars and trucks by 2025 will cost consumers more money and will stifle the industry’s growth.
Consumer groups say customers might pay more for the vehicles but will save in lower fuel and [...]

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Rehabbed seals dive back into the sea

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The release is on the front page of the San Luis Obispo Tribune: I posted my own photos on my blog.
Rascal, a rare Guadalupe fur seal yearling, and Beige, a California sea lion juvenile, headed for the sea Wednesday at Leffingwell Landing in Cambria after being treated at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.
Beige had [...]

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Turtles get critical protection

leatherback-turtle

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Federal regulators designated nearly 42,000 square miles of ocean along the West Coast as critical habitat for the Pacific leatherback turtle Friday, far less than originally proposed but still the largest protected area ever established in American waters.
The protected area is the first permanent safe haven in the waters of the [...]

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Building The Midnight’s New Edible Wall Garden | Gainesville Compost

midnight-garden-lights

By Chris Cano
Check out the Midnight garden, a canvas of “living art” powered by compost produced from the food waste of the Gainesville local restaurant community, including The Midnight’s fruit and vegetable scraps which we collect each week via bicycle.
via Building The Midnight’s New Edible Wall Garden [Photo Story] | Gainesville Compost.

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San Luis Obispo joins plastic bag ban

Plastic bag ban

Bob Cuddy reports in the SLO Tribune:
After a four-hour hearing that capped months of debate, the county’s little-known waste management board voted Wednesday evening to ban plastic shopping bags at most stores in San Luis Obispo County.
Unless blocked by litigation, which has already been threatened, or a referendum, retailers will not be permitted to distribute [...]

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SoCal Edison blocks renewable energy projects

Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times reports:
January 9, 2012
Millions of dollars in renewable energy projects intended to provide power to facilities in California’s national parks and forests are sitting idle because of a years-long squabble with Southern California Edison.
A new $800,000 solar project at Death Valley National Park, photovoltaic panels at the state-of-the art [...]

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Florida bill would work against water conservation

Bruce Ritchie reports:
A bill filed by a Senate budget subcommittee chairman would prohibit the Public Service Commission from allowing private utilities to charge customers higher rates for using large amounts of  water.
SB 1244 appears aimed at Aqua Utilities Florida, the largest private water utility in Florida. But the bill is raising broader concerns among some [...]

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Local residents protect the environment from their elected officials

Catherine Ryan Hyde summarizes the struggle Cambria has had with its own governing body, the Community Services District, to protect the local environment. The area is legally protected by state and federal law, but the CSD board of directors has pursued invading it to build a desalination plant. The full text of her summary includes [...]

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An issue of tissue | Evolution Magazine

RTI Biologics

Here’s another interesting story I wrote this year..what a cool biz: Recycling humans and animals!-tr
RTI Biologics employs 700 people worldwide, 500 of these at the Alachua headquarters. The spotlessly clean facility operates 24/7, with receiving facilities always ready for gifts of human donated tissue, which are quarantined in freezers on first arrival, while testing and [...]

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Barnett aims for a ‘water ethic’

Bruce Ritchie
Floridaenvironments.com
Author Cynthia Barnett of Gainesville says she traces the start of her focus on water issues to a St. Petersburg Timespage 1A story written in 2003 that she says made her “insane.”
Barnett is author of “Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis.” It’s an important new book that challenges Americans to transform their views of [...]

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Michael Pollan’s food classes

Joe Fassler  writes in The Atlantic about Edible Education 101.  Joe Fassler, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. In 2011, his work for TheAtlantic.com was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism. He hosts The Lit Show on KRUI radio and litshow.com.
This fall [...]

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Ag Gag bill introduced in Florida

Earlier this year a bill was introduced in Florida by Senator Jim Norman that would have made it a felony to take photos or video of a farm or agriculture operation.
The “Ag Gag” bill was openly supported by Big Ag and directed at both whistle-blowers who go undercover to document the cruelty that animals on [...]

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Permaculture embraces sustainable practices

Additional information about permaculture posted online:

Permaculture is a design system based on ethics and design principles which can be used to establish, design, manage and improve all efforts made by individuals, households and communities towards a sustainable future. The permaculture flower uses the evolutionary spiral path to link together the key domains required for this [...]

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Local food makes news in SLO

Chew on this
Locals are finding ways to move away from food created by corporations
BY KATHY JOHNSTON
A quiet revolution is stirring in local kitchens. All over San Luis Obispo County, people are claiming their right to decide what goes in their mouths and their power to choose where it comes from.

CRUNCHY CHOICE

Dan Melton picks out [...]

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California steps in to protect rare woodpecker

California_black_back_woodpecker_1_S

(12-26) 02:44 PST South Lake Tahoe, Calif. (AP) –
Over the objections of the U.S. Forest Service, wildlife officials in California are taking steps at the state level to protect a rare woodpecker partly because the federal agency won’t stop logging the bird’s ever-shrinking habitat in burned stands of national forests in the Sierra Nevada.
The California [...]

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Uncharted Territory

haiti7

Amidst the obstacles presented by poverty and deforestation, dedicated travelers are sowing the seeds of ecotourism in Haiti’s rugged terrain.

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