protection

Bug season is upon us once again, and I felt it timely to comment on the growing number of supposedly 'natural' insect repelling products that seem to be popping up everywhere we look.

Frank Marshall, producer of the Indiana Jones movies, wants to protect the places featured in every Indy movie, including the Kathmandu Valley and the City of Petra.

By adopting a monkey you can help aid efforts to protect apes and their habitats around the world. Many apes are endangered or critically endangered, and need your help to survive.

It's the world's largest single buyer of condoms, purchasing more than a billion of the contraceptives in recent years to give away free as part of a national programme to combat Aids. Now the Brazilian government is to produce condoms using rubber collected from trees in the Amazon to help preserve the largest rainforest in the world.

In recent years bamboo has also been lauded as a source of fabric. Bamboo cloth is gaining popularity in the world market, for its softness comparable to silk and its ability to produce fabrics that breathe.

Polar bears take center stage at Senate hearing. The decision to protect Alaska's polar bears under the Endangered Species Act might not come before the government opens a major bear habitat to oil leases next week.

The number of Florida scrub-jays, the only species of bird found exclusively in Florida, is declining - even within preserves set aside for them - a new report has concluded. The birds are being squeezed out by suburban sprawl and overpopulation in the state.

The Mingyong glacier, China's lowest, is retreating at a rate that astonishes scientists. The glacier helps feed rivers that deliver water to hundreds of millions of people — and no one knows what will happen as it continues to melt.

A glacier on one of Tibetan Buddhism's eight sacred mountains is receding at an historic pace due to climate change, a new study finds. The Mingyong Glacier, considered sacred by Tibetan Buddhists, is melting due to rising temperatures that are double the average global trend.

Coming out of Bali are details on a new plan to address the largest overlooked contributor to climate change – the destruction of forests. Right now, developing countries earn more from cutting forests than from keeping them standing. This plan looks to establish a financial value for the carbon stored in standing forests.

Look at what Branch Hill Tree Farm does. As a non-profit tree farm, this is their goal: "Our mission is to purchase land, to produce quality products on the land, to share the land, and to protect the land.

To teach through these acts sound forestry and conservation and agricultural practices.

To educate others of the need for these practices by sharing the joys which the manage land's multiple uses provide."

People depend on natural systems for survival, but these systems – and the lives they support-- are threatened by the inevitable impacts of climate change. It is crucial that we begin helping nature and people adapt to climate change now. A new bill in the Senate would provide funds to do just that.

The debate of cork vs. metal screw caps takes on a new life. The question is no longer about ease of use and corked wine; it's about sustainability of trees and the livelihood of thousands.

Once thought completely eliminated from Central America’s Mayan Forest, The majestic Harpy Eagle is returning thanks to community-based conservation efforts that are restoring the bird’s natural habitat.