Don J. Melnick

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de septiembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Make Forests Pay

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

In the last 40 years, more than one billion acres of tropical forests have vanished, equivalent in size to over half of the continental United States. The rate of cutting, burning and clearing shows no signs of abating.

Tropical forests store huge amounts of carbon. When their trees are cut or burned, the carbon is eventually released into the atmosphere, mixing with oxygen to form the long-lasting greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. The pace of deforestation is so great today that it accounts for an estimated 12 to 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Economic forces drive this destruction — for timber, rangeland, mining and development.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protect Our Bats

ReflexionesNaturaleza

Disease and heedless management of wind turbines are killing North America’s bats, with potentially devastating consequences for agriculture and human health.

We have yet to find a cure for the disease known as white-nose syndrome, which has decimated populations of hibernating, cave-dwelling bats in the Northeast. But we can reduce the turbine threat significantly without dismantling them or shutting them down.

White-nose syndrome (also known as W.N.S.) was first documented in February 2006 in upstate New York, where it may have been carried from Europe to a bat cave on an explorer’s hiking boot. In Europe, bats appear to be immune, likely the outcome of a long evolutionary process.…  Seguir leyendo »