News & Blog

The average human ecological footprint of 21.9 hectares per person is way beyond the Earth’s biological capacity of just 15.7 hectares per person

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/sci-tech/humanity-at-risk-on-earth-due-to-unsustainable-development_1002620.html

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We have forgotten the importance of rain. Just for fun one day, take the 5-gallon jug out of the water cooler at your office and see how far you can carry it on your head. Oh, and borrow a two-year-old to carry on your back at the same time. See how you feel after the first couple of miles, and then think about how lucky we are!

For those of us living in the industrialized world, we take it for granted that when [read more...]

No, really? Seriously??? Apparently Hummer owners are holding the line for American ideals and values. Whew. Sure glad those Prius owners aren't getting in there and breaking down everything we stand for - high consumption, energy dependence, frivolous spending...

A recent study by Marius Luedicke, Craig Thompson and Markus Giesler called "Consumer Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand-Mediated Moral Conflict," to be published next year in the Journal of Consumer Research claims that Hummer owners see themselves as upholding American ideals by purchasing and driving these vehicles.

Granted, it's not [read more...]

You can really tell that the Cold War is over. We almost never hear about the influence China is beginning to have in Africa. If Russia had this much reach during the Reagan era, we might have already experienced World War III.

Since the 1960's, the West's relationship to Africa has been primarily built around foreign aid. Billions of dollars have been given in food aid, medical supplies and other direct assistance. It would be difficult to make the claim that these efforts have been wildly successful. Most of the problems that the money has been [read more...]

There has recently been a big blow to the climate movement, weeks before the opening of the Copenhagen gathering.  Over 1,000 e-mails between leading climate scientists and 2,000 documents have been released that seem to reveal the actions of a climate-change mafia.  They appear to show that influential researchers have colluded to keep climate skeptics out of the peer-reviewed debate, and that they also, knowingly, distorted the results of their research to make the climate situation appear more severe than it actually might be (http://blog.american.com/?p=7445).

This should be of great concern to all of us who care [read more...]

This myth may really rattle your brain. Lots of well-meaning people believe foreign aid will cure poverty. Courtsey of ABC news May 12, 2006.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=1955664&page=1

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Every time we fill up our tanks at the pump, we are putting wildlife and democracy at risk in Uganda. I'm not talking about the effects of climate change - that argument barely needs to be made at this point. It turns out that there is an actual geopolitical link at work between the price of oil and the survival of democracy in oil-exporting countries, and the effects will be felt much more quickly and directly than those caused by climate change.

Freedom and Oil
According to Larry Diamond, author of The Spirit of Democracy, there is not a [read more...]

Ironic, isn't it? Just as scientists are predicting the complete demise of the lion population in Kenya within the next 10 - 20 years, South Africa has 3,000 "extra" lions that it just doesn't know what to do with.

The circumstances, of course, are quite different in these two places. In Kenya, the lions are disappearing primarily because local people are killing them. These are people living on an incredibly thin margin for survival in the best of times, and devastating droughts in recent years have pushed them even [read more...]

A few years ago, and even today, some conservationists give lions 20yrs, others say they have less than 10 years. WildiZe's  research so far proves out the 10 yrs or less theory. This is supported by recent reports from our grantees in the field. The decline in lion populations is presently a very hot debate among the African Lion Working Group, and in conservation biology circles there are strong efforts to uplist the lion (panthera leo) to appendix one at the next CITES meeting.

So, considering many of the recent articles in the media and our blog [read more...]

It is clear that there will be no restrictions on oil drilling in Uganda. Four of the ten National Parks and 8 of the 12 Wildlife Refuges are slated for oil exploration and drilling in the next few years. In Murchison Falls National Park, two exploratory wells were drilled in a RAMSAR site, an international designation for wetlands of global significance, at the delta where the Nile River enters Lake Albert. This delta area also contains the highest concentrations of other wildlife such as elephants and buffalo, breeding habitat for the rare shoebill stork, and important spawning [read more...]