Adventurous trio running across the Kalahari Desert

by Kraig Becker on

The Kalahari Desert is a wild and untamed place stretching across 350,000 square miles of southern Africa. The arid expanse of land crosses through parts of Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, and while it is an incredibly dry place, it is still home to a diverse amount of plant and animal life, including giraffes, elephants, hyenas, lions and more. It is a challenging place for any human being to survive in, but that isn’t stopping three adventurous endurance athletes from attempting to cross it on foot none the less.

Dubbed the Trans-Kalahari Run, this expedition will send three friends, Jukka Viljanen and Kirsi Montonen, both from Finland, along with Greg Maud, of South Africa, along a 1000km (620 mile) route that stretches west to east across some of the most wild parts of Botswana. The trio hopes to cover approximately 50km (31 miles) per day, for 20 straight days, in hopes of completing their quest. That’s the equivalent of running more than a marathon, plus five miles, every day for nearly three weeks, through some of the most demanding terrain on the planet.

While this will be an amazing adventure, and a great test of endurance for these long distance runners, they aren’t doing it just for the experience. This adventurous threesome is also hoping to raise awareness and funds for Cheetah Conservation Botswana, an organization that works tirelessly to preserve the population of those speedy felines in Africa, and obviously most specifically in Botswana. Cheetahs have a difficult time competing against other predators in the game preserves, so they are often forced to live in the more marginal border regions where they are hunted and killed by the indigenous people there who see them as a threat to their livestock. CCB is hoping to protect these big cats through community outreach and education with those rural communities, teaching them how to coexist with the Cheetahs.

Jukka, Kirsi, and Greg began their run yesterday, and they are promising daily updates to their blog, so we can all follow along with their progress. They got off to a good start, with a warm-up run of 26km (16 miles), but the real challenges, and adventure lie ahead.

[Photo credit: Elmar Thiel via WikiMedia]

From the Shores of Louisiana — Protesting to lift the drilling ban

by Jon Bowermaster on

Lafayette, Louisiana — Last month’s Rally for the Economy in Lafayette, Louisiana, went largely unnoticed outside the state, though 11,000 vociferous oil workers, their supporters and the elected political elite of the state showed up and shouted to the rooftop about their concerns over the continuing moratorium on deepwater oil drilling.

The Cajundome next to the campus of Louisiana University was packed with those who see the greatest crime created yet by the BP mess is the federal moratorium which its opponents say has already cost thousands of jobs and taken tens of millions of dollars out of the local economy.

The overarching sentiment at the event, sponsored by the state’s gas and oil lobbying group, was that, yes, the environmental mess may be bad … but the economic hit to the oil industry caused by the moratorium is far worse. The first 3,000 attendees got free t-shirts, others wore their own emblazoned with oil company logos or slogans like “Drill Baby Drill” and “No Moratorium.”

Twin themes emerged as more than a dozen politicians took to the stage. “You’re playing politics with our livelihood!” and “The moratorium is an attack on a way of life!” were the rallying cries, messages that were rowdily applauded here in the heart of Lafayette Parish, where 40 percent of all jobs are tied to oil and gas.

A majority in the crowd — many angry and frightened about the future, many of them unemployed — blame President Obama. Whenever the President’s name came up, it was followed by a chorus of boos (not too surprising in a state where John McCain captured 60 percent of the vote).

The folks at the Cajundome regard the BP accident as a fluke, a one-of-a-kind incident. Their most cited critique of the moratorium is that if an airplane falls out of the sky accidentally, the federal government doesn’t step in and shut down the entire airline industry.

One pastor was quoted saying simply: “The greatest risk to our economy is the moratorium. Our greatest obstacle to our recovery is man-made.”

It’s true that it’s not only the fishermen whose jobs are at great risk. With 33 deepwater rigs (and their $165 million in wages) frozen by the moratorium the concerns of the Cajundome crowd were legitimate. Many of those frozen rigs and jobs have already moved on to other sites in Brazil, Africa and Venezuela. In Louisiana, where one out of four jobs is tied to the oil industry – some 320,000 in all, creating a $70 billion a year business – BP has set up a $100 million fund for unemployed oil workers that may yet prove insufficient.

The three-hour rally was ready-made theater for local politicians, including Governor Bobby Jindal, who led cheers of “Lift the Ban, Lift the Ban, Lift the Ban” and joined in the Obama-bashing by suggesting, “Our people don’t want a BP check or an unemployment check. We want to go back to work.”

Outside the Cajundome protestors with signs supporting more careful drilling, concerns for the environment, the wildlife and the fisheries were kept to the fringes, behind police tape. This was a day for the oil industry workers to have their complaints heard.

From the Shores of Louisiana — Turtle rescue!

by Jon Bowermaster on

Along the beaches of the Florida panhandle and Alabama there is a massive rescue effort underway involving butter knives and forks, tricked-out Styrofoam coolers and specially-rigged FedEx trucks.

The job is to scoop 70,000 mostly loggerhead sea turtle eggs out of the sand (very carefully, using kitchen utensils among other tools) before the hatchlings can swim out into the Gulf where they will either suffocate or be poisoned when they start floating with the current and munching on oil-soaked seaweed.

It is an unusual example of across-the-board cooperation among the federal government (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and local environmentalists, who are usually loudly against any such intervention. No matter the threat, relocating turtles nests is rarely done. Here it’s being regarded as essential.

Early this morning I talked with J. Nichols, a research associate with the California Academy of Sciences who was just leaving the dock in Grand Isle for a day observing the impact of the oil gusher on local wildlife. His Grupo Tortuga has for years been dedicated to restoring Pacific Ocean sea turtles. His response to the unorthodox rescue plan? “I wouldn’t want to put any turtle into that oil if there’s another option.”

The turtle rescue echoes a theme I heard in voiced across the Gulf as the gushing continued – 2.5 million gallons a day, or roughly 200 million gallons – like those defending the unorthodox building of berms and dikes to try and stem the oil tide, that doing something is better than doing nothing, even if the efforts may seem Quixotic.

%Gallery-98231%Carl Safina is the president of the Blue Ocean Institute. Among his many books on ocean wildlife he’s written “Voyage of the Turtle.” Regarding the nest relocating he says, “For the hatchlings it’s a tiny sliver of a gain. It helps draw attention and that’s good.” He adds that of course it is already too late for the juveniles and adults already aswim in the Gulf.

One reason sea turtles lay so many eggs – about 100 per nest – is because the chance of surviving is so low. The probability that a sea turtle hatchling will survive ranges from one in 1,000 to one in 10,000. Even in the best of times tracking them is tricky, including statistics like how many eggs are laid, how many turtles are successfully hatched and how many survive the first month.

The process of trying to save the 700 nests is painstaking: 1,500 Styrofoam coolers have been turned into surrogate nests, each holding just half a nest. Once the coolers are filled with sand and the eggs carefully laid inside they are loaded into specially padded FedEx 18-wheelers and driven to the NASA-controlled Kennedy Space Center where an air-conditioned warehouse has been readied. Within seven to eight weeks the eggs should hatch and the tiny turtles will be carted to the eastern side of Florida to be released into the Atlantic.

Everyone involved has fingers, toes, etc., firmly crossed.

Like most wildlife in the Gulf, sea turtles have not fared very well. To-date a little more than 600 have been found washed ashore or floating injured near the site of the gushing oil well, 447 dead and 116 with visible oil on them. Others have been accidentally burned to death in some of the “controlled” fires aimed at reducing oil gathered on the sea’s surface.

BP is concerned about those numbers because ultimately it will have to pay damages for every dead creature counted, just as it will have to pay a penalty for each gallon spilled.

Beat the heat at the Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center

by Kraig Becker on

Sitting at the southernmost tip of Florida, the Keys are a chain of islands that mark the border between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The waters that surround the more than 1700 islands are famous for their warm temperatures, stunningly blue colors, and diversity of wildlife. It is because of all those things, and more, that the waters are protected, making up the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Last week we told you how you could explore that sanctuary aboard a personal watercraft, but for those looking for a less adventurous, not to mention less expensive, option, you can simply drop by the Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center, located in Key West.

The Discovery Center is operated by NOAA and offers up three things that are often in short supply in Key West, namely free parking, free admission, and plenty of air conditioning. The Center has plenty of other things to offer beyond that however, giving visitors a chance to see what life is like in the Keys both above and below the water. The numerous displays on hand show the diversity of both the flora and fauna throughout the region and describe in detail how those natural elements co-exist to create such an amazing environment.

One of the most prominent of these displays is the Mote Marine Laboratory’s 2400 gallon “Living Reef” aquarium, which gives us a glimpse of the brightly colored and energetic marine life that thrives in the waters just off the coast of the Keys islands. These fish go about their lives just as they would in the open ocean, while we get to watch on from the other side of glass.
Not far from the Living Reef display is a much smaller, but more sobering one that comes in the form of a tiny aquarium that contains the beautiful, yet destructive lionfish. Native to the Pacific, the lionfish has become an increasingly troublesome invasive species in the Keys and throughout the Caribbean, as it eats everything it encounters and has no natural predators to quell its advance. Marine biologists at the Sanctuary have been studying the fish for some time and are formulating plans on how to manage these invaders, but they fear that it could become a major threat to the Keys ecosystem in the years ahead.

Another popular display at the Eco-Discovery Center is its mock-up of the Aquarius underwater ocean laboratory. The real Aquarius Lab is one of the few underwater research stations in the world and is located in the Keys as well, but the Center’s simulated one is as close as most people will ever get. Looking through the lab’s portholes makes it seem that you really are far beneath the surface of the ocean, complete with divers drifting by the windows as they go about their work.

If you drop by the Discovery Center, be sure to check out their 17 minute long film entitled Reflections. The movie, which was shot completely in High Definition, chronicles life in the Keys through the eyes of a young girl who grows up with a unique appreciation for the place she lives in. The underwater scenes are breathtaking and will delight and captivate visitors of all ages.

Located at the end of Southard Street in the Truman Waterfront, in Key West, the Eco-Discovery Center is easy to find and a great way to beat the tropical heat. It also happens to be very close to Fort Zachery Taylor, a popular Florida State Park. While you’re in the area, it may be worth swinging by that historic site as well.

UNESCO adds Everglades, Madagascar rain forests to endangered list

by Kraig Becker on

Yesterday we told you how the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, aka UNESCO, had granted several new sites “World Heritage” status at their recent meeting held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. That same group also moved two other sites to their endangered list in a move that typically serves as a warning about the future health of those locations.

Returning to the endangered list this year is the Florida Everglades, which were first cited back in 1993 and remained on the list until 1997 due to damage sustained during Hurricane Andrew. The sub-tropical wilderness is the largest of its kind in the United States, but is degrading rapidly, thanks to the loss of more than 60% of its water inflow. The committee also noted that increased levels of pollution is causing the water in the Everglades to become toxic, killing, or driving off, large numbers of marine life that once lived in the area as well.

Also added to the endangered list this year are the rain forests of Atsinanana, located in Madagascar. In this case, the World Heritage Committee cited the illegal logging operations that continue to go on there, as well as the hunting of an endangered species of lemurs, as causes for concern for the future of that natural environment.

Being put on the endangered list is not necessarily a bad thing for these World Heritage Sites. In the past, such a designation has brought a great deal of attention and focus to the problems at those locations, allowing governments to clean them up and keep them better protected for future generations to enjoy as well. Hopefully that will be the case in both of these cases as well.

[Photo credit: Moni3 via WikiMedia Commons]