Romanian Nationalists Weave Xenophobic Parable From Poaching Death Of Arthur The Bear
May 10, 2021 17:04 GMT
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BUCHAREST Ascendant right-wing populists in Romania have seized on the illegal trophy killing of a brown bear ascribed to Liechtenstein s royal family to blame foreigners as the driving factor in the country s social and economic woes.
Romanians and outside ecological groups were outraged by reports last week that Prince Emanuel a nephew of Liechtenstein s reigning Prince Hans-Adam II who lives in Austria had killed the massive male bear, nicknamed Arthur by researchers, in the Carpathian Mountains in March.
But George Simion, head of the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR, which means gold in Romanian) party whose meteoric appearance shook up last year s national elections, skipped the environmental implications to invoke a carefully crafted appeal to patriotism, nationalism, religion, and Romanian gangsta rap.
Ecuadoran water fund transforms consumers into conservationists
by Dimitri Selibas on 4 May 2021
The Regional Water Fund of Southern Ecuador (FORAGUA) operates in 14 municipalities, serving 500,000 residents, and has restored 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of land and put an additional 337,000 hectares (833,000 acres) under conservation.
By 2030, the fund aims to work in 39 municipalities, serving 1 million people and conserving 600,000 hectares (1.48 million acres) of land.
A pilot project to incentivize landowners to rewild their properties and take up alternative livelihoods shows that where landowners could earn 50 times more per hectare cultivating guanabana, a local fruit, than raising cattle.
Municipal residents pay on average $1 per month to FORAGUA for their water consumption, with 90% of funds raised going to conservation projects.
Apr 30, 2021
Metro photo
Today is Arbor Day, a day when trees are traditionally planted across the United States, but thereâs more to growing trees than planting them.
Editor’s note: The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Today’s piece is by Karen D. Holl, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Pedro Brancalion, Universidade de Sao Paulo.
(THE CONVERSATION) For 149 years, Americans have marked Arbor Day on the last Friday in April by planting trees. Now business leaders, politicians, YouTubers and celebrities are calling for the planting of millions, billions or even trillions of trees to slow climate change.
Arbor Day should be about growing trees, not just planting them timesunion.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from timesunion.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Maya Forest is the second-largest continuous rainforest in Latin America after the Amazon. And like so many other tropical forests around the world, it’s disappearing.
Since 2000, the forest has shrunk by 15%. The good news is that there’s still a lot of forest left: the Maya Forest spans 35 million hectares of land sprawling across Belize, Guatemala, and southeastern Mexico. However, the size of the forest also makes it difficult for any one government agency or NGO to protect.
It’s hard to overstate how important forests are. They’re a critical part of mitigating climate change, developing new medicines, and protecting biodiversity and a vital source of employment for millions of people. We lost 4.2 million hectares of primary rainforest tree cover in 2020 according to data from the University of Maryland about the landmass of The Netherlands and 12% more than we lost in 2019. These staggering losses make protecting the vast amounts of forest that remain so important.