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IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Desert tortoises have lived in the deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah since the Pleistocene. The Desert Tortoise Council has been hosting a symposium to research them and help save them for 37 years — not millennia, but a pretty long time. And desert tortoises deserve the attention: Destructive grazing and urban development, along with the ever-increasing use of off-road vehicles, continue to degrade their vanishing habitat, while Army translocation projects threaten to devastate the Mojave population. The Center has been working to protect the desert tortoise since 1997, when we first defended tortoise habitat from grazing. And now, badly sited solar farms are taking more of a bite out of their habitat. At this year’s Desert Tortoise Council Symposium, the Center’s tortoise expert and biologist Ileene Anderson will address that problem in a talk called “Desert Tortoise Conservation 2012 — an NGO Perspective.” Her presentation will focus on solar developments in the California desert and their effect on desert tortoises when they’re built in the wrong place. |
• Feb 29, Mar. 1: Film Screening: Mother: Caring for 7 Billion (OR) Film Screening: Mother: Caring for 7 Billion In the past year, the world population grew to 7 billion people. Human population growth (coupled with unsustainable consumption) is a driving factor in a long list of global environmental crises, including climate change, habitat loss, species extinction, water shortages and depletion of natural resources. Ensuring access to voluntary family planning, empowering women and improving education may be our best chances to live in the world we want. Join us for either of two screenings of the award-winning film Mother: Caring for 7 Billion, followed by a discussion with organizers from the Center and the Sierra Club. The screenings are free. Details: Thursday, March 1, 5-7 p.m. RSVP to the Center's Amy Harwood. Then check out our 7 Billion and Counting campaign and the poster for the Feb. 29 film screening. Global Amphibian Bioblitz: Saving Amphibians Through Social Networking Amphibians around the world are disappearing, and nearly a third are threatened with extinction. To better understand and conserve these animals, scientists need more information on their locations. And what better way to get the right info from around the globe than through people like you? After growing up amongst Louisiana's oil refineries and watching his own family suffer from pollution-related cancers, in 1997 activist and filmmaker Josh Tickell took off in his biodiesel-powered "Veggie Van" on an epic road trip to make the film that would win the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's Audience Award for Best Documentary. FUEL, with appearances by a huge cast of notables including Jimmy Carter, Willie Nelson, Julia Roberts, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., tracks the rise of Big Oil from Rockefeller's strategy to halt Ford's first ethanol cars to Dick Cheney's petrochemical company-sponsored legislation. But FUEL not only exposes America's debilitating addiction to oil — it also describes a gamut of intriguing solutions to "repower America," offering hope for a sustainable, oil-independent future. It received 11 standing ovations at Sundance, was shortlisted for the Oscars, and earned the Writers Guild of America's nomination for best documentary writing. |
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Penguin photo by Michael Van Woert, NOAA; desert tortoise photo courtesy USFWS |
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