So which sport will be next

to support the endangered cheetah or another endangered animal?

Threatened or endangered species and the forests, oceans and natural habitats around our world

can use all the help they can get. The world needs all the Usain Bolts, soccer teams or local school and individual or families we can get to help save our world. You can and are making a difference.

Soccer teams embrace the cheetah

The school’s decision to change the boys’ team name to the Cubs and rename the girls team the “Cheetahs” was part of the school’s effort to support the Otjiwarongo-based organization whose Bush project has been chosen as one of the finalists in the BBC’s World Challenge 2009, a global competition aimed at projects showing enterprise and innovation at grassroots levels.
The name changes were announced as part of a ceremony at the school on November 10, 2009 by Dr. Laurie Marker, Founder and Director of Cheetah Conservation Fund and supported by Dr. Anne Schmidt-Kuentzel, CCF geneticists.

The school’s decision to christen the boys’ team the Cubs and the girls team the Cheetahs was part of its effort to support the Otjiwarongo-based organization whose Bush project has been chosen as one of the finalists in the BBC’s World Challenge 2009, a global competition aimed at projects showing enterprise and innovation at grassroots levels.

Cheetahs may run free in India

The NGO has been in existence since 1990 under the leadership of Dr Laurie Marker and the patronage of His Excellency Dr. Sam Nujoma. Its mission is to be an internationally recognized center of excellence in research and education on cheetahs and their eco-systems the largest and healthiest population of which can be found in Namibia. For more information on the CCF Bush Project and the integrated community model of success click here.

Resources

Excerpts and Image 1. courtesy of http://www.economist.com.na/cheetahs-and-cubs-to-play-soccer

Image 2. Files of Natures Crusaders

More information on CCF Bush project ccf-save-a-cheetah-time-is-running-out

Carbofuran is a toxic poison made by a U.S. company that is lethal to a wide range of animals from crustations to fresh water fish to mammals and man. Simple inhalation of the fumes can

Deadly toxin carbofuran

be lethal. The US Environmental Protection Agency says is too toxic to be used in America, but it is still being sold from store fronts in Kenya. It threatens the extinction of the regal endangered African lion, the cheetah and humans.

It only takes 1/4 of a teaspoon of Carbofuran can kill an individual lion.

Less will paralyze this mighty beast for up to a week, leaving a lion or lioness to starve to death or be killed by other predators Just a handful of carbofuran can kill an entire pride of lions.

Keep lions away from Carbofuran

At least seventy-six lions have been confirmed killed by Carbofuran. Many more deaths go undocumented and unreported. There is no enforcement much less punishment if someone uses Carbofuran to kill lions in Kenya.

We must act now to save these great cats from extinction in one of their last remaining homes in the wild. few as 16,000 remain a staggering decline of more than 95% in 50 years.

Take action now.

Please Sign Defenders of Wildlife petition

Encourage Kenya’s Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, to enact a ban on the sale and use of Carbofuran in Kenya and support new protections for the country’s endangered lions.

Click here now.

“Thank you” - Mother Nature and NC

Resources

Excerpts courtesy of https://defenders.org

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.pesticideinfo.org

Image courtesy of http://answers.com/wikipedia/Carbofuran-from-xtal-3D-balls.png

Image courtesy of http://fineartamerica.com/thirsty-lions-michele-burgess.jpg

Let us focus on the beauty of the creature turtle

Our focus empowers

Let us show the turtle in its natural environment

where the turtle so enjoys

Let’s put up huge screens showing the turtles swim and thus celebrating life in their way

lets combine this lively exhibition with traditional worshipping of the divine

as in the island of Bali

Let us invite all kinds of fantastic people to create art

paintings, movies, poems, writings, dances, drawings, storytelling, theater

all about the turtle

turtle, mother earth, I love you!

Saving endangered Hawksbill turtles

I adore you!

And as I set myself free

(for the benefit of integrity, clarity, true abundance and beauty)

Newly hatched loggerheads go seaward

I set you free

Together we dance, you (the) four legged creature of ocean, tides and earth

Me, (the) two legged creature of earth and imagination

submitted by Jeike 2009

“Thanks so much for your for sharing your poem with us.” – Nature’s Crusaders and Mother Nature

Resources

Image 1 files Nature’s Crusaders

Image 2 courtesy of https://mariner-horseshoe-crab-research.wikispaces.com/file/view/Babies.jpg/77281413/Babies.jpg

Reprinted with permission Nature’s Crusaders 2009.

Nature’s Crusaders encourages all artists to submit their workks about nature to NC for possible inclusion in future articles.

Thanks Jeike.

It is a healthier holiday season this 2009 with less CO2 for us to breathe and more carbon sequestering

Evergrow Christmas Trees and Carbonsync Christmas are helping ‘green’ Christmas this year.

Thanks to the green thinking of the two Canadian Christmas trees rental companies, we will all breathe easier this year. This blessing of less CO2 in the air will continue for many years to come. Instead of selling cut trees, they sell live potted trees decorated for the holidays. The after the festivities are over these tow firms will pick up the trees and take care of them until next year.

Live Christmas trees clean air

This eco-friendly Christmas tree rental service for the holiday period costs 100 dollars, Evergrow Christmas Trees and Carbonsync Christmas will drop off a potted tree at your home or business and pick it up three weeks later after all the presents have been opened and Santa has parked his sleigh. Carbonsync plans to donate its trees to habitat restoration groups for replanting after Christmas, while Evergrow says it will return them to a nursery to be cared for until next Christmas when they may be rented out again.

Christmas trees grow from six to 12 years before being harvested and used for one Christmas. Then if the trees are not recycled they end up in the landfill. Wasted time, transportation costs, fuel, human resources and creating fire hazards in many homes as they dry oout.

These young healthy Canadian trees will also continue to draw CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the the carbon helping slow global warming instead of ending up as waste. If a family gets attached to their holiday tree, they may even rent the same tree year after year from Evergrow, as long as it has not grown too large to fit in their living room.

Resources

Excerpts and Image courtesy of http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Canadian_firms_tout_green_Christmas_trees_999.html

The Inquisition, the Crusaders or Muslim fanatic destruction have nothing on the actions of Paraguay today. The slaughter of the innocents on the last reserve historically by special interest groups, in the Chaco region in Paraguay is taking place under our noses. Chaco is home to the only remaining uncontacted tribe in South America outside of the Amazon, the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode on the Chaco Biosphere Reserve and the home of the South American Jaguar (Panthera onca) or el tigre as the natives call him.

Driving off Chaco people and the jaguar

This “legal” take over is a greedy land grab in the Chaco Biosphere Reserve area. Seems for years the government in Paraguay has been selling/ turning a blind eye to interests groups advancing and taking over and killing off the inhabitants that resisted their farming or ranching on the lands in this area. Now, supposedly the lands have been designated as private international biosphere lands, but a ranching company is bulldozing the reserve at a devastating rate as you read this!

So much for Paraguay living up to its namesake the “heart of America”.

If this is our heart we are in deep dark trouble.

bulldozing jaguar home

The government seems or chooses to be helpless to stop them and protect the quiet natives and the near threatened jaguar that live there for centuries. A government representative and two relatives of the tribe have tried to enter the region, but personnel from the ranchers company, Yaguarete Pora S.A, barred them. Barred the government!! Is there something wrong with this picture? Satellite photos show that thousands of hectares of the reserve have been destroyed, despite Yaguarete Pora having its license to work there withdrawn by the government.

NESCO a United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural and sustainable development organization that runs the preserve created in 2005 seems helpless to stop this genocide for the last of the indigenous peoples not yet run off their valuable land and the home of the iconic jaguar. Seems they need lots of help from people of all ages and positions in life.

Act now to help the Ayoreo survive.

Feedback encouraged.

Resources

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.survivalinternational.org/actnow/walkyourtalk

Excerpts courtesy of http://ow.ly/HteA

Image 1 courtesy of http://www.survivalinternational.org

Image 2 courtesy of http://www.travelsouth-america.com/Jaguar.jpg

Turtle Restoration Project, an environmental group, blames the WTO ruling for the death of 13,000 sea turtles in India last year.

Sea turtle conservationists in California and family shrimp fishers from Florida filed a federal lawsuit today against the U. S. State Department for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for allowing shrimp caught in ways that are deadly to sea turtles to be sold in the United States.

These two groups may seem like odd bedfellows, but both groups have the health of the ocean creatures at the forefront of their interests. How did this happen? Well when American shrimpers complied with the WTO ruling and changed their nets and adjusted their fishing practices to help save the turtles the foreign shrimp fishermen did not comply. By continuing to use the old nets that have no TED (Turtle Extruder Devices) they are accelerating the demise of the endangered sea turtles.

Shrimp fisheries are the largest known mortality factor for adult turtles. Because turtles breathe air, they frequently drown when they become entangled in fishing gear and are unable to surface.

sea turtle drowning in shrimp net

This problem needs to be solved quickly, because thousands of sea turtles are drowning in these nets in our Caribbean waters and overseas as well. Just recently Bangladesh environmentalists have been demanding that shrimp fisherman the poorest of the poor and the shrimp fisheries work together to avoid the total destruction of the seas around Bangladesh due to the use of these old style nets and the repeated over fishing of the same coastline areas.

Please adopt a sea turtle this year and help keep our turtles from drowning in these nests.

Resources

Excerpts courtesy of http://seaturtles.org/article.php?id=1468

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.seattlepi.com/business/case1.shtml

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29926&Cr=fao&Cr1=fish

Image courtesy of http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/turtle.pri__0.jpg

Hairless, pink skinned, big toothed, wonder of the rodent world may hold the secret to longevity and some forms of cancer. Who is this wonder of the animal world? None other then the mole rat of the African desert.

Blind and spending its life underground this animal who’s family social structure more resembles the queen bee and her hive than a mammal family lives the longest of any rodent in the world.

Naked mole rat longevity

Does the key to longevity reside in the animals ability to produce quality proteins that do not degrade as quickly  or does keeping the proteins in top shape longer so the proteasomes (the cell’s protein trash recycling system) do not have as much work to do to recombine amino acids that made up the degraded proteins into new ones.

Scientists do not know yet if other animals that live a long and healthy life like soem birds like the parrot also havs the same recycling system, but will be researching these kindred long lived animals next.

Resources

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.uthscsa.edu/hscnews

Image from Natures Crusaders library

A very underrated substance and for many the last body substance to be talked about is poop. Historically bird droppings have been used and sold by many peoples. There is one very unusual ancient use for nightingale wastes.

Guano or excrement (feces and urine) from seabirds, bats and seals is big business. Guano consists of ammonia, along with uric, phosphoric, oxalic, and carbonic acids, as well as some earth salts and impurities. Guano also has a high concentration of nitrate is that make it popular for making an effective fertilizer and gunpowder ingredient due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen and also its lack of odor. Super phosphate made from guano is used for aerial topdressing. Soil that is deficient in organic matter can be made more productive by addition of this manure.

How does bird poop differ from animal dung?

Mammals urinate or pee, but birds’ kidneys remove the nitrogenous wastes from the bloodstream, but instead of excreting it as urea dissolved in urine as mammals do, they excrete it in the form of uric acid. Uric acid has a very low solubility in water, so it emerges as a white paste. All waste products the uric acid and the wastes from the intestines leave the bird’s body through the same opening called the cloaca.

Guarney Cormorant

The best producers of guano that is high in nitrogen is the Guarney Cormorant.

Its guano is richer in nitrogen than guano from other seabirds.

Guano is still used by organic gardeners and farmers.

In ancient Japan, the Geisha women found that the bird poop facial made from powdered nightingale droppings is the best.

Nightingale droppings are the best for beauty treatment

This ancient use of bird guano combines traditional and natural Japanese ingredients to soften, brighten and nourish the complexion. Geisha were known for their iconic porcelain complexion-clear, unblemished and pale as a camellia blossom. However, their beautiful appearance came at a price as the lead and zinc in their face powder caused chronic skin care problems until the discovery of a unique remedy -nightengale droppings
Resources

Excerpts courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.shizukany.com/geisha-facial.html

Image G. Cormorant courtesy of http://www.heptune.com/poop.html

Image courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Nachtigall_%28Luscinia_megarhynchos%29-2.jpg

Poisonous snake serves up new species at the feet of a jungle researcher

How convenient. If only finding new unidentified species was so easy all the time.

Seems that a monkey researcher rounded the other side of a tree in the forest looking for his beloved monkeys and startled a twig snake that had just eaten. The snake to get away spit up his latest catch a live whole juicy new chameleon species at the feet of the scientist.

The scientist Dr Andrew Marshall, a conservationist from York University thought this might be a new species so he snapped a picture and sent it to his colleagues who confirmed his suspicions were correct. This new Magombera chameleon species, name Kinyongia magomberae discovered in Tanzania may help to save this forest biome as well.

New chameleon found in Tanzania

The Magombera forest near the Udzungwa Mountains National Park in Tanzania is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth. Marshall and the team there have discovered many new species of frogs, a shrew, mollusks and millipedes  recently here. This forest needs to be protected to preserve its biodiversity from further destructive development.

Resources

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/23/new-chameleon-species-magombera-tanzania

Excerpts courtesy of http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/cute-new-chameleon

Image courtesy of Andrew Marshall/African Journal/PA

Good News!

The Nigerien giraffe lived in pockets across the Sahel and Savanna regions of West Africa. Intensive farming and hunting practices, human encroachment, a series of dramatic droughts since the late 1800s, and environment destruction (both natural and human made) have all contributed to their dramatic decline.

Niger giraffe rebounding

The droughts have created wide spread suffering, but one subspecies Niger giraffes almost became extinct . The seven subspecies of giraffe range throughout Senegal, Niger, eastern Mali, northern Benin, northern Nigeria, southwest Chad and northern Cameroon. However, the Populations from northern Cameroon and Southern Chad.

The Endangered Niger giraffes (camelopardalis peralta), are the most imperiled. They have cream colored legs almost devoid of spots and tannish colored body and face spots. The Niger, also called the Nigerian giraffe does have the long, 18 inch black tongue, which is used to pluck leaves from trees and bushes. They can live for 25 years and go without water longer than a camel.

The Nigerien giraffe population relies upon seasonal migration between the relatively drought-resistant lowlands of the Niger River valley and the drier highlands near Kouré. In this area, Tiger bush habitat allows for bands of trees to thrive in climates which might otherwise become more typical desert. These giraffe survive primarily on a diet of leaves from the following  plants the Acacia albida, Hypaene thebaica, the Annona senegalensis, Parinari macrophylla, Piliostigma reticulatum, and Balanites aegyptiaca.

In the late 1990s, a government sponsored wood cutting project around Niamey nearly destroyed the Tiger bush and giraffe habitat within the region. Now the Nigerien government has limited woodcutting in the area Conservation efforts and a sizable growth in populationfrom 50 individuals, in 2007 to 175 wild individuals today.Intensive efforts have been made within Niger, especially in the area just north of the Dosso Partial Faunal Reserve. From there, the largest existing herd migrate seasonally to the drier highlands along the Dallol Bosso valley, as far north as Kouré, some 80km southeast of Niamey. Governmental and international efforts are  spear headed by Association pour la Sauvegarde des Girafes du Niger who maintains the habitat, smooth relations between the herd and area farmers, and provide opportunities for tourism,

Resources

Excerpts courtesy of  allvoices.com/niger-giraffes-majestic-gentle-giants-back-from-the-brink-of-extinction

Excerpts and Image courtesy of   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_Giraffe

Image courtesy of