The Caribbean monk seal has gone “the way of the dodo” and been officially listed as extinct by the US Government. The Caribbean monk seal is, so far, the only seal species to go extinct due to human causes.

“Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them, Unfortunately, this led to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes.”

The last time anyone sighted the Caribbean monk seal was in 1952, over 50 years ago, at Seranilla Bank, between Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula. In 1967 the USA listed the species as endangered due to human activities.

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Tropical rainforests have the largest biodiversity of all ecosystems on Earth. The soil is rather poor, but it sustains a great variety of plants. It is estimated that 65% of the known plant species are found in rainforests.

During the past three decades, rainforests have been decreasing in size for various reasons, though all of them are connected with human activities. Human populations living near rainforests had the impression that the soil must have been really fertile, as it could sustain such a variety of plants. So, when human started to need more fields for cultivation, they choose rainforests’ earth, and thus they set big fires to get rid of big trees and to obtain space. By the time it was understood that the soil wasn’t suitable for agriculture, many square kilometres of rainforests had already gone.

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During a nighttime robbery, the horn of a 120-year-old stuffed rhinoceros was stolen, from the museum where it was displayed. Museum authorities warned that using this horn as a traditional medicine on the Asian black market could have lethal consequences because it was preserved by the use of the deadly arsenic and DDT.

But causing immidiate death should not be the only concern. The fact that DDT is still in use is really alarming, since it is a substance that causes accumulation. As an environmental term, accumulation is the gradual increase of pollutants in living organisms by direct adsorption or through food chains. The pollutants that cause accumulation cannot be metabolized or aborted by any means, so accumulation of the substance increases while going up a food chain.

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We travel to Oahu for our second episode where we attend the 2008 Kokua Festival. In supporting an amazing cause, our host Maria has the opportunity to talk with various green vendors and listens to some great musicians.

The Kokua Festival is a show that raises money and awareness for The Kokua Foundation. The foundation supports environmental education in the schools and communities of Hawai’i. This is the fifth annual festival and it brings with it five incredible musicians and sixty green vendors and non-profits. We take you around the festival to showcase this zero waste concert and show you organizations that you can volunteer with when visiting Hawaii.

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Today the U.S. Department of Interior formally listed the polar bear as a “threatened” species.

Environmental organisations have called for the polar bears to be listed on the “endangered” species list hoping it could lead to actions to combat climate change.

Unfortunately interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne wouldn’t want to label the polar bears as “endangered” but rather as a “threatened” species. That means they’ve successfully downplayed the threat to polar bears from climate change and won’t need to take any serious actions to protect the polar bears from the constantly increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Hi everyone!

Maria and I just got back from Hawaii and it was amazing!!! We are two very lucky girls to have gone to such a beautiful place and talk to so many inspiring people. First off I want to thank Stacey Angeles, our camera woman extreme. She flew out there from NYC to film episode two and she did an amazing job capturing Hawaii at it’s best.

So I am just starting to go through all of our footage and the first segment that I am working on is The Kokua Festival. If you ever have a chance to go to Hawaii and attend this concert please do! The Kokua Festival is sponsored by “The Kokua Foundation which is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that supports environmental education in the schools and communities of Hawai’i. Their mission is to provide students with exciting and interactive encounters that will enhance their appreciation for and understanding of their environment so that they will be lifelong stewards of the earth,” kokuahawaiifoundation.org.

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Hi!

My name is Kim Rowe and I am the Co-Creator and Producer of golivegive.com, a green volunteer travel show.

We want to show people how they can vacation green and volunteer while traveling. We shot our first episode in Los Angeles and provided viewers with a green hotel, organic restaurant, eco-friendly fashion and a volunteer option they can do in a day.

We will, from now on, be publishing our episodes right here on Green Blog for you to enjoy. You can check out the first episode below or on golivegive.com.

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This image shows the corpse of an albatross that has had his gut filled with different plastic objects. Many birds and animals often mistake plastics with food and then, as you might imagine, starve to death.

I’ve seen this picture being published on a numerous of websites. But I don’t actually know who should be credited for it. It seems it comes from Algalita - the marine research foundation.

Older entries:
- A Picture is Worth… Car, bus or bicycle?

The Guardian shows some rather striking images from photographs and computer models that shows the ‘before and after’ of how both nature and humans are making an impact on the planet.

The images show the effect of deforestation in Bolivia and Madagascar, how dams change the surrounding landscapes in Turkey and how rising sea levels will affect Florida. But one of the most powerful images is probably the one that shows how Lake Chad, once one of the largest lakes in Africa, has shrink to 5% its former size due to a warmer climate.

The images comes from a newly released book called “Fragile Earth: Views of a Changing World“.

Some other pictures worth checking out are “Our destructive impact on the planet” and “How Spain will be affected by climate change“.

It is a fact that more than 1000 whales and dolphins are killed every year by whalehunters, who make some endangered species head torwards extinction.

Mainly Japan, with support from Norway and Iceland, refuses to obey the rules of the moratorium set in 1986, from the Worldwide Whalehunting Commitee, which had as a goal to let the whale population increase, after it’s dramatic drop between the years 1925-1975.

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