What can you say about the incredible conservationist and super special friend to chimpanzees, Jane Goodall? She’s done so much for the animals, but her wisdom has permeated to all areas of environmentalism and conservation. She’s a voice for compassion, not just towards the animals, but to each other. And this rescued chimpanzee seems to get that..and gives her the hug of a lifetime. It’ll take your breath away.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Related on EcoSalon

Cute Animals Alert: Because What Says Love Like a Squirrel Doing this to a Dog? [Video]

We Want Wings: A Stunning Formation of Starlings You Have to See to Believe [Video]

These Happy Cows Jumping Almost Over the Moon Will Make You Tear Up [Video]

The post It’s Like the Chimpanzee Hugged Jane Goodall for All of Us [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

The once-common monarch butterfly is MIA, and it doesn’t bode well for the health of our species.

Unable to survive the cold temperatures that blanket the U.S. during winter months, the monarch butterfly population heads to Mexico and Southern California every year to bask in the warmth. Following instructions built into their DNA, subsequent generations of monarch butterfly seek out the very same trees and bushes in which their parents were born, even though they’ve never been there before. And the happy cycle begins all over again. That is, until this year.

“This year, for the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead,” reported Jim Robbins for the New York Times. “They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.”

A world without the monarch butterfly. Think about that. Our children could grow up without ever knowing what it’s like to feel this orange-and-black fairy land on their arm, or seeing one hatch from their cocoon (my favorite science project as a child).

So what’s causing the monarch butterfly to break from thousands of years of tradition? Some say pesticides, specifically the neonicotinoids often blamed for the decline of the honey bee. But even if all pesticides had never been used on a single U.S. crop, experts say the monarch butterfly would still be in peril.

“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, told the New York Times. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”

Every time we tear raze a meadow, cluster of trees, or wetland to put up a parking lot, we’re destroying a monarch butterfly’s home. Every time we uproot native plants like the milkweed to install a sterile lawn and genetically-engineered flowers, we take food out of a monarch butterfly’s mouth. Which eventually means less food for our own families.

Like the bee, the monarch butterfly is a pollinator. Many forms of life are sustained by the seeds, fruits, nuts, berries, and foliage that result from pollination–including humans. This is what the produce section of your grocery store would look like if pollinators like the butterfly go the way of the Dodo. Scary.

So what can we do to save the monarch butterfly? Well for one thing, eat organic when you can, and never use chemical pesticides on your property. Encourage the growth of native plants, especially the milkweed, as well as nectar-producing flowers that attract butterflies. Purchase only FSC-Certified wood products, since illegal logging in Mexico is devastating monarch butterfly habitats there. Lastly, support programs working to protect the monarch butterfly. Visit MonarchWatch.org to learn more.

Related on Ecosalon:

Some Butterflies Doomed, Others Thrive With Climate Change

Bee Cause Project Saves Honeybees, One School Kid At A Time

A Guide to Foraging for Food: 20 Tasty Wild Plants

Image: usfwsnortheast

The post The Monarch Butterfly is Disappearing and that’s Bad News for Humans appeared first on EcoSalon.

Everything is not as ecologically sound as it looks.

Things were better in the old days. People were more in tune with the natural world, the air was cleaner, the land less harassed by our demands upon it. The world was, in short, greener. We’ve all heard it before – but is it true? Of course it is – except when you start looking at the details. Don’t go putting our ancestors up on a pedestal of eco-friendly excellence…

Today we start a new series looking back into human history for traces of our enduringly complicated relationship with our planet’s eco-system, good and bad.

First up? Let’s talk about trees.

Assumption

In recent decades, human beings have so lost touch with our need for healthy forests (the lungs of planet Earth) that they’ve started destroying them, squandering the long-term health of the biosphere for short-term economic gain. This didn’t happen in the old days. It’s a sign that historic and prehistoric people understood the natural world in a way modern people never could.

Reality

Since the birth of agriculture, humans have been razing forests for all sorts of reasons. It’s a great way to free up super-fertile soil for crop cultivation. It’s how land is opened up for hunting – both by encouraging fresh vegetation for game to snack on and by allowing hunters to easily get at that game. It’s a way of controlling pests. It’s ideal for creating “no-man’s land” for dividing political territory. And on and on. Think this only applies outside North America, thanks to the benign, nature-loving impact of ancient Native Americans? Think again. Large-scale landscape alterations didn’t just come with the Spanish explorers and missionaries. There is widespread environmental evidence for the use of fire as a land-management tool. It’s even been argued that the savannah or prairie was the natural state of the land with an established Native American population, and so the spread of European settlers led to the growth of forestry…

The Great American Forest may be more a product of settlement than a victim of it.

– References on the American Indian Use Of Fire in Ecosystems, Gerald W. Williams, USDA Forest Service

But if you want to really see a smoking gun for prehistoric forest clearances, go to England. The heaths and moors so beloved of Emily Brontë and Thomas Hardy are Britain’s most extensive form of natural vegetation, with soils too acidic to hold forest growth. They’re rugged and beautiful – and in most cases the work of prehistoric human beings, fire-clearing huge amounts of land for hunting or agriculture and moving on when the soil couldn’t support them. Today moors and heaths are spectacularly diverse eco-systems that are carefully maintained by organizations like The Moorland Association. They’re a national treasure – but they’re also the remnants of Britain’s first environmental disasters.

How many of our modern forests are set to end up this way?

Images: James Whitesmith and *Micky

The post Ecological Lessons From History: Where Did The Trees Go? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Water is being seen as the next great war for which we will fight for and against each other to get access.

Water, water everywhere? Maybe so, but it remains a precious resource that the modern world seems keen to squander in increasingly inventive ways. This week we suggested a single Superbowl ad could give 140,000 people water for life, so we thought a deep dive into our watery archives to resurface more about the stuff of life was in order.

Less than one percent of all the world’s fresh water is available for human use in the form of lakes, underground sources, and reservoirs. The rest is soaked into the soil, too deep underground to reach, or manifests itself in the icecaps of the world’s polar regions.

 – 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Water

 A single bottle of water generally runs about one to two dollars. In some cases, such as at concerts or amusement parks, one bottle can cost up to nearly three dollars. Even if bottled water is bought in bulk, the price still averages around .50 to .89 cents per bottle. Filtered tap water is essentially the same product and costs a fraction of the price.

 – 9 Reasons To Ditch The Bottle Once And For All

The toilet of tomorrow will not flush about on its own pot of porcelain, nor will it necessarily compost. The toilet of tomorrow will be a self-regulating and mindful machine, eminently cognizant of the water crises ahead.

 – Toilets Designed For The Water Crisis Ahead

It takes time and energy to pump the water out of the ground, bottle it, label it, market it, sell it and transport it. (Time and energy that is doubling up on what the government is already doing in supplying you with clean, safe, free tap water.) It’s bad enough when the water is from a Scottish spring and sold in London or from two states over in the United States, but when you’re selling Evian from France in Australia and Fiji water from the South Pacific in Denver, there’s something seriously wrong.

 – Stop The Bottle In 2009

Keep a few large containers under the bathroom sink and in the kitchen to fill while you’re waiting for the hot or cold to kick in. You can use this room-temperature water for your houseplants and herbs, or for rinsing delicate dishware, mopping the floor and washing dusty windows.

 – 3 Easy Water Saving Tips

Even though each person only requires 48 liters of water on a daily basis, individuals in the United States use an average of 500 liters, those in Canada an average of 300 liters and those in England an average of 200 liters.

 – 10 Amazing Facts About Water Use Worldwide

Images: laszlo-photo, FreeWine, calliope, Roca, daviddesign, Teo and Prabhu B.

The post From The Vault: The Water Chronicles appeared first on EcoSalon.

The top stories of the week at EcoSalon.

In the week of the national explosion of extravagance know as the Superbowl, we ask – are we comfortable that the funding for one advert could give water to 140,000 people – for life?

Starre Vartan wanted us to think about the words “nude” and “skin-colored.”

We looked at 20 foods to give you energy and made you feel like a real person.

Jenine Sheroes turns people into art – more specifically, their hair into leaves.

Finally, we can’t help self-mentioning our popular, bargain-packed EcoSalon Boxes, of which there’s a few left! (Sorry for the plug – but we’re only human).

The post The Friday 5: Oh-So-Human Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnFrom tuna to turtles, some cultural food traditions create such egregious ethical and environmental consequences, they can never be justified.

When is a cultural tradition a legitimate reason to continue to consume something that’s environmentally problematic? When is it just a convenient excuse to keep eating whatever we want or to keep a lucrative trade going? The examples that follow may not answer that question, but they will certainly get you thinking about the issue.

A Big Beef

At a deli referendum last year, the discussion around the sustainability and history of Jewish food traditions centered on the giant pastrami sandwiches served at Jewish delis. Panelists like Michael Pollan reflected on the fact that what people think of as a long-standing food tradition is really a relatively new tradition borne out of post-war prosperity and abundance. The panel discussed the wisdom of serving and eating smaller sandwiches made from more responsibility raised beef less often. Such a practice would not only be better for the environment and our health but would be more in line with older Jewish food traditions that treated meat as a special occasion food.

Fin Free

California legislators are in the midst of considering AB 376, a bill that would ban the sale, possession, and trade of shark fins in the state. The opposition has spent millions to convince legislators and voters that banning the trade in shark fins would be racist. Shark fin soup is a traditional dish served at Chinese banquets, but it’s only relatively recently that a wide swath of middle class population has enjoyed the dish. The popularity of shark fins today is causing the decimation of the shark population. This is not only a tragedy in itself, but the practice of ripping the fins off of sharks and tossing the live sharks back in the water to die is cruel. Whether or not you care about sharks, as top predators, they are crucial to the health of the ocean ecosystem, and by extension, our survival.

Sushi Shame

Despite the fact that the Blue Fin tuna population has declined nearly 90% since the 1970s and is considered endangered by most ocean advocacy groups, if not the US Government, it still appears on the menus of most sushi bars. Why? Because it’s one of the traditional fish used in sushi, it’s delicious, and people will pay a lot of money for it. Is that enough reason to decimate an entire population of a majestic top ocean predator?

Turtle Trade

Some questions of food traditions vs. environmental conservation are a little more complicated. Sea turtle meat and eggs are important culinary traditions in many parts of Latin America. Most species are protected, but there are some indigenous communities who have the right to hunt turtles in their territory for their own consumption. In Costa Rica, residents who have few other income opportunities, are allowed to harvest a small proportion of sea turtle eggs to sell. Unfortunately, both of the above types of arrangements often lead to illegal poaching and high black market prices, which just feeds the problem.

Are there any situations in which cultural food traditions should trump environmental concerns?

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Images: cephalopodcast, divekarma, sly06, Pink Sherbert Photography, Ingrid Taylar, istolethetv

The post Unethical Food Traditions: Stick a Fork in It appeared first on EcoSalon.

Get child, put child outside, let child run around – why is this so difficult?

Near where I live in Brighton, England, there’s a country park called Seven Sisters. It’s magnificent. Seven arching, white-chalk cliffs elegantly crumbling into the sea with no regard for their own brilliance. When you stand up close to the cliff face from the pebbly beaches below, you can see the layers of sediment laid down over millions and millions of years, the subtly changing colors and composition chronicling times when sea levels were higher or lower or filled with tiny and abundant and now non-existent creatures. Take a group of inner city school children to see it, though, and the reaction is less awe and more ick.

The Sussex Wildlife Trust, a local conservation charity, runs school trips to various spots around the Seven Sisters. Volunteers with the organization regularly report students who don’t want to sit on the grass, who are distressed by the mud, who wobble along the cliff path trying desperately to avoid the sheep scat until they realize that this is impossible. One child from London, on being asked what he thought a pole-mounted kestrel nesting box was, replied that it was a speed camera.

They are funny stories useful for eye rolling and lamenting the youth of today, and of course someone who grows up in a dense urban area will have points of reference that are predominantly urban. But the routine for how we interact with the outside seems so instinctive and simple – get child, put child outside, let child run around – that its malfunction is deeply uncomfortable.

Widely reported problems with our increasing penchant for urbanization expand well beyond the economic and environmental, and issues ranging from increasing obesity to widespread depression and stress disorders have been pinned on our proliferation of concrete. Richard Louv’s best selling book Last Child in the Woods even attempted to link attention deficit disorders to what he calls nature deficit disorder.

On top of that, it leaves us with something of a conundrum. The future is supposed to be awesome and filled with energy efficient airships and lush urban farms, yet the present is filled with kids who are scared of grass. How can we convince these young people – tomorrow’s older people – to protect something they aren’t even engaged with, to suddenly wake up one morning and construct a vertical farm on the side of their concrete high rise? The path to the future may have been asphalted for easy access, but it seems we’re not tripping enough on the weeds that are breaking through.

“It’s not just children and young people. Obviously it comes from a society that’s increasingly city based and it’s adults as well who aren’t used to the great outdoors. And it’s not all, it’s a proportion,” says Nigel Flynn, head of education at the Sussex Wildlife Trust.

He points to the work they are doing to combat this phenomenon, such as promoting the innovative Forest Schools program and says just a little bit of contact with the outside world is all it takes.

“There was one particular village where the Parish woodland had become a dumping ground and was getting trashed. Several people got together and won a grant to clean it up and start activity groups. One weekend they would run a fathers and son group, another it would be mothers and toddlers, and it made a real difference. The respect came from contact.”

With more people now living in cities than not, the problems of urbanization are not going to go away any time soon (though there are equally abundant and promising opportunities for urban innovation), and it is perhaps this rigorous segregation that’s the problem; urban versus suburban versus rural. If we want to live in that green utopian future, then at some point they all have to meet and mingle. The young people of today are, in some respects, the most environmentally aware generation there has ever been. We can’t judge them for the cities they find themselves living in and their unfamiliarity with strange green places. We can help them out though and it starts with something very simple, a walk outside.

Image: Todd Baker

Editor’s note: This is Sarah Lewis-Hammond’s first article for EcoSalon. She reports from Brighton, UK.

The post Wanted: More Urban Children to Embrace Nature appeared first on EcoSalon.

QuoteDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

“However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat.”

– Jacques Cousteau

image: Jesper Hauge

The post We’re All in the Same Boat appeared first on EcoSalon.

QuoteDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it. – Alan Watts
Image: Lucente Designs

The post This Old Thing? appeared first on EcoSalon.

They’re building national parks, protecting endangered species, revealing environmental injustice and making crucial decisions that will affect the future of our planet. Or, maybe they’re just making it cool to be vegan. But in all their varied contributions, these 20 women – from global environmental leaders to community activists – are using their power, fame or sheer will to make the world a greener place.

Vandana Shiva

Perhaps no woman alive fights harder for the rights of female farmers than Vandana Shiva, an Indian philosopher, physicist, ecofeminist and environmental activist. Shiva is an outspoken critic of industrialized globalized agriculture and proponent of traditional, sustainable farming methods, and has written about the impacts of corporate international trade agreements in books like Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit as well as Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. She founded the Navdanya movement to counter corporate seed control in 1991.

Lois Gibbs

In 1978, Lois Gibbs’s picture-perfect suburban life in Love Canal, New York turned into a nightmare when she realized that her neighborhood was built on top of a toxic dump, making residents sick and causing birth defects. Outraged, Gibbs organized a community effort against local, state and federal governments, leading to the evacuation of Love Canal and the creation of the EPA’s Superfund program, which locates and cleans up toxic sites around the nation. Gibbs later founded the Center for Health, Environment and Justice and wrote several books about the effects of toxic waste.

Daryl Hannah

No Hollywood armchair activist, Daryl Hannah isn’t afraid to get dirty – or arrested – for environmental and social causes. She was jailed for chaining herself to a walnut tree to protest the demolition of the nation’s largest urban farm in South Central Los Angeles, drank biofuel to prove its safety, got arrested again for her role in a protest against mountaintop removal mining and dipped her hands in oil-contaminated water in Ecuador. Hannah, who lives on a sustainable farm in Colorado, vlogs about sustainability weekly at her website DHlovelife.com.

Simran Sethi

Simran Sethi is a familiar face in the world of environmental journalism, appearing to give green tips and discuss sustainability on programs like The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She’s also a contributing environmental correspondent at NBC News, co-host and writer for the Sundance Channel’s The Green, creator of Sundance web series The Good Fight and co-writer of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy.

Wangari Maathai

The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots environmental organization advocating for human rights, good governance and peaceful democratic change through environmental stewardship. The Green Belt has assisted women in planting over 20 million trees on farms, school properties and church compounds and spurred a tree-planting initiative across Africa. The former Kenya Parliament member has gained much-deserved worldwide recognition for all of her hard work.

Frances Beinecke

Frances Beinecke might not be a household name, but she’s more influential than you realize: she’s the president of the National Resources Defense Council, and has been involved with the organization for three decades. Beinecke has helmed some of the NRDC’s most ambitious and successful campaigns, fighting to protect polar bears, preserve our offshore environment and safeguard the health of children.

Majora Carter

Not so long ago, Hunt’s Point Riverside Park in South Bronx was an illegal dumping ground. Now, it’s a beautiful place along the Bronx River for local residents to enjoy green space and fresh air – thanks to Majora Carter, an environmental justice advocate and writer, producer and co-host of several radio and television programs. Carter founded Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx), a non-profit organization that spearheaded a number of Bronx cleanup initiatives and started a green collar job training program. She’s now an environmental consultant.

Sylvia Earle

She’s been called “Guardian of the Sea”, and says she’s happier in a wetsuit than on land. Legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle is 74 and still actively exploring the oceans, recently getting an up-close-and-personal view of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence has led more than 400 undersea research expeditions and was named Time Magazine’s very first ‘hero for the planet’ in 1998. Author of a cornucopia of books on the sea, Earle is also executive director for a number of environmental organizations including The Conservation Fund and Ocean Conservancy.

Jane Goodall

Nobody in the world knows more about chimpanzees than Jane Goodall, who spent 45 years in the jungles of Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park observing their lives and challenging conventional notions about their diet and behavior. Goodall pioneered the belief that chimps were capable of rational thought and emotions and has since become a global leader in the effort to protect them and their habitats.

Laurie David

A longtime trustee on the Natural Resources Defense Council, Laurie David is most renowned for producing the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which played a big role in focusing America’s attention on global warming. David also produced the HBO documentary Too Hot to Handle, and regularly plays a large role in environmental projects like the Stop Global Warming Virtual March.

Mei Ng

“What kind of world will we leave to coming generations?” That was the question that led Hong-Kong born Mei Ng to enter the world of environmental activism, a path that has led to her current position as director of Friends of the Earth. Ng’s volunteer work as a housewife in the 1970s brought her into contact with victims of childhood cancer, sparking a passion to protect children from environmental toxins. Her work earned her a spot among the United Nation’s Global 500 Roll of Honor in 2000.

Julia Butterfly Hill

Can you imagine caring so much about a single tree, that you’d spend two years of your life among its branches, your feet rarely touching the earth below? Julia Butterfly Hill did just that in 1998 and ’99 for the love of “Luna,” a 200-foot redwood tree that was in danger of being felled by loggers. She didn’t come down until an agreement was reached with the logging companies to give Luna a 600-foot buffer to protect her from destruction. Hill’s dedication brought nationwide attention to the problem of deforestation.

Alicia Silverstone

The lovely Alicia Silverstone – perhaps best known for her role in iconic ’90s flick Clueless – is much more than just a model and actress. This animal lover, who lives in an eco-friendly solar-powered home in Los Angeles, is an avid animal rights activist and appeared in a memorable 2007 ad for PETA. But these days, Silverstone has been winning a lot of converts to the vegan lifestyle: her book, The Kind Diet, topped the New York Times bestseller list.

Marina Silva

She was the 2010 Green Party candidate for President of Brazil, gaining an impressive 19.4 percent of the votes cast. She was a colleague of renowned environmental activist Chico Mendes, who was assassinated for defending the Amazon Rainforest. But Marina Silva’s work for the environment is what really makes her stand out, earning her a place among the United Nations’ Champions of the Earth in 2007. Silva, a native Amazonian, fought for environmental protection of the Amazon during her time as a senator and as Brazil’s Environment Minister and remains one of the country’s top activists.

Carol Browner

Few people have more say in some of America’s most crucial decisions about the environment than Carol Browner, current Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and former head of the EPA. Her pragmatic approach to environmental issues has won both praise and criticism from environmentalists, but there’s no doubt that she has and will continue to make a big impact. As EPA administrator, Browner started the Brownfields Program which cleans up contaminated land and facilities and brings them back into productive use.

Alice Waters

Crusader for organic and local foods, chef Alice Waters pioneered the fresh style of California Cuisine and has been hailed as a ‘foodie hero’. Owner of Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, Waters successfully launched the bid to start a food garden on the White House lawn and created the Edible Schoolyard Project, a hands-on educational initiative teaching kids to raise, grow and prepare their own food using fresh ingredients. Waters is often credited as a major driving force in the current popularity of pesticide-free, fresh, healthy foods.

Habiba Sarabi

In 2005, Habiba Sarabi made history when she became Afghanistan’s first female governor, appointed by President Karzai to run the province of Bamiyan. It was a bold move, but Sarabi had no intention of meekly maintaining the status quo despite her country’s views on women in power. Knowing that Bamiyan is one of Afghanistan’s most beautiful areas, known for the massive Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Taliban, Sarabi has campaigned to turn the natural charm of her home into a money-making tourist attraction. Her work includes the establishment of the Band-e-Amir National Park.

Lisa Jackson

Fighting against the big businesses that pollute our air, waterways and communities is no easy task, especially when they’ve got billions of lobbying dollars on their side.  And whether you agree with her even-handed approach or wish she would take a bolder stance, Lisa P. Jackson, the current head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is one of our most important allies. With nearly 25 years of environmental leadership under her belt, Jackson looks for ways to compromise with corporations and is without a doubt one of the leading female influencers in our nation.

Sangduen Chailert

Known as Thailand’s Elephant Queen, Sangduen ‘Lek’ Chailert developed a deep love for endangered Asian elephants as a child when her grandfather adopted a baby elephant named Tongkum, or ‘Golden One’. So it’s no surprise that she is now one of the most prominent advocates for the animals, which are threatened by poaching and habitat encroachment. Lek’s conservation work has been highlighted in documentaries by National Geographic, Animal Planet and the BBC.

Images: wikimedia commons,  ohio citizen, dhlovelife.com,  simransethi.com,  center for neighborhood technology, treehugger, mospeaks,  noaa.gov,  wikimedia commons,  lauriedavid.com, women of china,  juliabutterfly.com, peta, wikimedia commons, wikimedia commons, david sifry, white house archives, wikimedia commons, mikka22

The post The 20 Most Influential Women in Green appeared first on EcoSalon.