New Orleans in the forefront of a green building revolution
By Husna Haq | 11.04.09
When hurricane Katrina blew into New Orleans four years ago, Matt Petersen watched in shock as the floodwaters retreated, revealing one of the most devastating natural disasters in US history: billions of dollars in damages, 80 percent of the city flooded with filthy water, and a government response that provoked a firestorm of criticism.
“I watched everything play out in horror,” says Mr. Petersen. “And, like everyone else, I went through the process of thinking, ‘What can I do?’ ”
Petersen donated money and considered volunteering, but that wasn’t enough. “I kept feeling this well up inside me, I felt compelled to act,” he says.
As the city’s cleanup began, Petersen, the president and CEO of Global Green, an environmental nonprofit that promotes green building, saw a silver – or green – lining in Katrina’s catastrophic wake.
“I began to think, ‘Maybe I can do more.’ I run an organization with big thinking behind it; it’s a Red Cross for the environment. We have the greatest assemblage of green building expertise. How can we deploy that?” he says. “Certainly the city was going to be rebuilt. And this great city presented us with an opportunity to create the first truly green city in our nation.”
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‘No impact man’ after a year doing without — what now?
By Samantha Gross | 10.21.09
Colin Beavan sat under the light of a single bulb, freaking out.
Along with his wife and young daughter, he had just spent a year trying to reduce their net environmental impact to almost zero. With a flip of a switch, they had cut their Manhattan apartment off from the electrical grid. They had stopped using anything disposable or buying anything new.
In a city of skyscrapers, they had given up elevators. They went everywhere by bicycle, bought food directly from local farmers, had even sworn off toilet paper.
It had been a year of rules, a year in which nearly every aspect of their lives had been shaped by what they were not allowed to do.
And now it was over.
So Mr. Beavan sat at home. If he had to get up to go to the bathroom, he would walk to the other room and turn on the light there — and then run back to turn off the first light. He just couldn’t let himself light up more than one bulb at once. He walked around the apartment unplugging things.
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World Monuments 2010 list ranges from dockyards to cave art
By Judy Lowe | 10.07.09
The World Monuments Fund’s latest list of 93 endangered cultural heritage sites in 47 countries includes the unexpected: a dockyard, animal enclosures at a British zoo, rice terraces in the Philippines, five Scottish graveyards, and Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway.
The 2010 Watch List also includes Machu Picchu in Peru, Phajoding monastery in Bhutan, desert castles in Uzbekistan, traditional townhouses in Japan, the Suq al-Qaysariya in Bahrian, gingerbread houses in Haiti, petroglyphs in Pakistan, US buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and “the cultural landscape of Hadley, Mass.”
Nine of the sites are in the US. One is little known: the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School in New Orleans, seriously damaged by hurricane Katrina. More famous is Taos Pueblo in New Mexico.
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World’s first shark sanctuary set to open in Palau
By John Heilprin | 09.25.09
The tiny Pacific nation of Palau is creating the world’s first shark sanctuary, a biological hotspot to protect great hammerheads, leopard sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks, and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean. But with only one boat to patrol 240,000 square miles of Palau’s newly protected waters — including its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, that extends 200 miles from its coastline — enforcement of the new measure could be almost like swimming against the tide.
Palau’s president, who is set to announce the news to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, acknowledges the difficulty of patrolling ocean waters nearly the size of Texas or France with a single boat. But he hopes others will respect Palauan territorial waters — and that the shark haven inspires more such conservation efforts globally.
“Palau will declare its territorial waters and extended economic zone to be the first officially recognized sanctuary for sharks,” Palauan President Johnson Toribiong told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday.
Shark fishing has grown rapidly since the mid-1980s, driven by a rising demand — mainly in China — for shark fin soup, a highly prized symbol of wealth. Because of their long life spans and low fertility rates, sharks are vulnerable to overfishing.
Within its EEZ, a nation may regulate fisheries and scientific research and develop other economic efforts. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates more than half of highly migratory sharks are overexploited or depleted.
Toribiong said a recent flyover by Australian aircraft showed more than 70 vessels fishing Palau’s waters, many of them illegally.
“We’ll do the very best we can, given our resources,” he said. “The purpose of this is to call attention to the world to the killing of sharks for commercial purposes, including to get the fins to make shark fin soups, and then they throw the bodies in the water.”
Tourists go to Palau for its spectacular diving in the tropical waters, dramatic coral and rich marine life. The remote Pacific nation recently made global headlines when it agreed to President Barack Obama’s request to take a group of Uighurs — Turkic Muslims from China’s far western Xinjiang region — as part of plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Palau is one of the world’s smallest countries, with some 20,000 people scattered over 190-square mile archipelago of lush tropical landscapes in the Western Pacific.
Its shark sanctuary will shelter more than 135 Western Pacific species of sharks and rays considered endangered or vulnerable, or for which there is not enough data to determine how the species is faring.
“Palau has basically raised the bar for the rest of the world for shark conservation,” says Matt Rand, director for global shark conservation for Washington-based Pew Environment Group, an advocacy organization.
Elsewhere, Europe is trying to crack down on shark fishing in its waters.
In February, the European Commission proposed its first-ever shark conservation rules for European waters. EU countries account for a third of shark meat exports globally, and shark steaks are increasingly served in restaurants, replacing pricier swordfish steaks, and shark products are also finding their way into lotions and leather sports shoes.
Toribiong said he also will call for a global moratorium on “shark finning” — the practice of hacking off shark fins and throwing the body back into the sea — and an end to unregulated and destructive bottom trawling on the high seas.
Palau is among 20 seafaring nations that already have voluntary agreed to end bottom trawling, which involves fishing boats that drag giant nets along the sea floor.
Enormously effective at catching fish, the nets from bottom trawling also wipe out almost everything in their path, smash coral and stir clouds of sediment that smother sea life, marine experts say.
The UN has called bottom trawling a danger to unique and unexplored ecological systems and said slightly more than half the underwater mountain and coral ecosystems in the world can be found beyond the protection of national boundaries.
Editor’s note: If you’d like to read more about the environmental issues sharks are facing, check out this recent Monitor article about shark-fishing contests.
For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
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Shark-fishing contests raise controversy
By Josh Allen | 09.22.09
In the weeks before the Oak Bluffs (Mass.) Monster Shark Tournament kicks off each summer, the home of tournament organizer Steven James becomes crowded with T-shirts, other clothing, and promotional items emblazoned with the crest of the Boston Big Game Fishing Club and a rendering of a shark. The imagery illustrates a promise: For two days, the fishermen can brave the seas off Martha’s Vineyard (where the movie “Jaws” was filmed) and chase sharks.
It’s a notion that appeals to hundreds of recreational fishermen – who spend heavily on entry fees, gear, and boat fuel for a chance to catch the biggest shark in weekend contests – and crowds of spectators, who gather dockside to watch boats returning with champion fish.
But the events have also compelled animal-rights activists, led by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), to campaign against shark tournaments. The groups say that the tournaments are cruel and are an additional threat in an era of worldwide shark population decline. “These events convey to the public the message that the value of these sharks is in their death,” says John Grandy, a senior vice president of HSUS.
The campaign angers tournament organizers, who say that the criticism exaggerates the impact of the events on world shark populations. The debate has also emphasized that some of what scientists understand about sharks comes from sampling those caught in tournaments.
Since 2005, HSUS and local organizations have protested at large events such as the Ocean City (Maryland) Shark Tournament and the Star Island Yacht Club Shark Tournament in Montauk, N.Y. Their tactics have been both subtle and dramatic: They’ve asked tournament sponsors to end support of the events, and, last fall, HSUS reported allegations of illegal gambling at the Oak Bluffs contest to the Massachusetts attorney general’s office.
Fishpond USA, a fishing equipment manufacturer, joined HSUS in speaking out against the events. But HSUS did not attend the Oak Bluffs or Ocean City events this year. Dr. Grandy says that after years of campaigning, the group is leaving it up to the public to end the tournaments.
Other organizations continue to campaign against the tournaments, though. Beth Gallie of the Maine Animal Coalition, which has protested the Downeast Maine Shark Tournament in Saco, says: “We just don’t think it’s an enlightened event.”
Shark tournament organizers – mostly charter-boat captains and hobby fishermen – beg to differ. They consider themselves experts on the animals they’ve spent so much time pursuing. Mr. James serves on a federal advisory panel dedicated to management of sharks in US waters. He says he donates funds annually for the purchase of tags, used by government scientists to attach to sharks so their migration habits can be monitored.
“Animal rights groups want to make it look like we’re destroying the world’s oceans, [but] we’re the ones who have been the champions of conservation and are concerned about the fishery long-term,” he adds.
While acknowledging that sharks suffer enormous conservation challenges, fishermen note that the bulk of the pressure brought to bear on many of the approximately 400 known species comes from foreign commercial fleets. Last year, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas released a stock assessment of several sharks that live in the open ocean. It estimated the differing catch amounts of fishing nations and reported that the US landed 215 tons of shortfin mako in 2007, while Spain and Portugal combined landed more 3,000 tons.
“The US recreational and commercial fleets take between 4 and 5 percent of the total number of makos taken worldwide,” says James, who notes that the impact of his tournament on world mortality rates – 14 sharks were retained at the Oak Bluff tournament in July – is negligible.
But opponents say that many more sharks die after release because of injuries from hooks and gaffs used during capture.
Since the 1960s, scientists have learned quite a bit by studying the sharks caught at tournaments. They have assessed a number of species for size, sex, age, reproduction, and food consumption data. These opportunities provide scientists with data that would otherwise require expensive research cruises or studies to acquire.
“The list of information as yet unknown on sharks is too long to reproduce,” says Lisa Natanson, a federal biologist who has sampled animals at the Oak Bluffs event. “By opportunistically obtaining samples from shark tournaments, commercial and recreational fishermen, and strandings, scientists are able to [try to obtain] an accurate description of a species.”
While acknowledging the scientific benefits that can accrue from tournaments, Dr. Robert Hueter of the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida nevertheless believes that the pressures on sharks are too great for tournaments to continue. “I’m not saying that we aren’t gaining useful data from this sort of sampling,” he says. “But scientists have been taking these sorts of samples at tournaments for nearly 50 years. It’s questionable that the research benefits gained at this point justify the cost to shark conservation.”
The opposite view is expressed by Dr. George Benz of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro: “As a scientist, I can say that shark sport-fishing tournaments continue to facilitate a good bit of robust science, and we can’t learn everything we need to learn about sharks by studying live animals.”
Catch and release tournaments have been suggested as alternatives to kill events, despite the contention that the animals often die after they’re released.
The Are You Man Enough? Shark Challenge in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., revised its rules so that competitors weren’t required to bring a shark to the dock; they could release it at sea. Tournament director Jack Donlon says that he plans to expand the format next year.
He hopes that this change, plus educating spectators and participants about sharks, will ease the controversy surrounding shark tournaments.
But protestors have vowed that as long as sharks are still being killed, they will continue to apply pressure to end these events.
Editor’s note: For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
