EcoLocalizer

Once the largest importer of illegal rhino horn for use in ceremonial dagger handles, Yemen is no longer considered a driving force in the current rhino poaching crisis.

While demand for illegal rhino horn in Asia surges and threatens to undermine decades of conservation efforts, the market for illegal rhino horn in Yemen has decreased sharply.

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About two kilometers from the Dead Sea and two from where Jesus was christened, in the country of Jordan, Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute and his crew created a near miracle turning desert into a lush permaculture garden.

In August in this location, Lawton says that temperatures could rise above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). People farming there were farming under plastic strips and using tons of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers. The idea to grow a lush forest or garden of edible plants would probably make people laugh or roll their eyes. Nonetheless, the permaculture crew had exactly this vision in mind and a little funding to help them to do it.
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Qatar’s Ministry of the Environment is working with Damascus-based Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD) to convert Qatar’s desert regions into pastoral and agricultural lands. Greening the Qatari desert is a priority for the government, attempting to undo the effects of modern rangeland management techniques.

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NATO’s Science for Peace program and the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC) have awarded a team of three universities, one Jordanian, one Israeli and one American a grant to set up two parallel water desalination plants at one site each in Jordan and Israel. This grant is meant to promote collaboration across borders and between the two neighbouring countries, in a region not known for its congenial ties between neighbours. Read the rest of this entry »

A pair of male vultures at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo who successfully reared two chicks together have split up and started new families with female vultures.

Ten years ago, two male Griffon vultures met and fell in love. They built a nest – as vultures do – but couldn’t produce an egg.

The situation prompted Israeli zoololgist Shmuel Yidov try an experiment: A newly-hatched vulture chick was carefully placed inside a swan’s egg shell and slipped into Dashik and Yehuda’s nest.

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Iraq used to export food. This year it will be importing 80% of what gets eaten in a nation that was once the breadbasket of the Middle East.

The last two years of drought are exacerbating the effects of war and mismanagement; doubling the frequency of sand storms, killing trees and crops, drying up riverbeds and marshes and turning arable land into a desert wasteland.

Recently one of the worst sandstorms in living memory lasted an entire week, choking throats, clogging eyes and afflicting asthma sufferers in particular. But electricity problems might have even more far reaching effects.
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In order to provide safe food for critically endangered vultures, Pakistan has opened a “vulture restaurant.”

After 95% of the vulture populations in India, Nepal and Pakistan were lost due to poisoning by the drug Diclofenac, the idea of “vulture restaurants” have been catching on.

Vulture restaurants serve up the carcasses of cattle that have been monitored by a veterinarian prior to death, to confirm the animals have not been treated with Diclofenac.

Following on the success of Nepal’s vulture restaurants, Dhartee Development Society, in collaboration with the UNDP Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme has opened a vulture restaurant in Pakistan.

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If you think your electricity bill is bad, you should see the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s. Having to import 95% of your energy makes for a fairly expensive monthly bill. In response to this ongoing electricity and energy challenge, Jordan has signed a 10 year agreement with Russia for the provision of four new nuclear power plants, desalination stations and related research facilities.

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You may not have heard of Ug99 yet, but, if its rapid spread continues unchecked, chances are you will not only be hearing about it, but you’ll be paying for it too. That’s because this fast-spreading strain of the fungus that causes stem rust–a seemingly unstoppable plant disease–is now spreading around the globe and threatening to devastate the world’s wheat harvest.

One hopeful remedy may in fact lay in certain native, durum wheat species (“landraces”) found only in certain African nations–in particular, Ethiopia–which are believed to possess “slow rusting” genes. These native durum wheat varieties are stronger (durum is Latin for “hard”) than other strains and originally evolved under much different environmental conditions than European and Western Hemisphere varieties. These durum landraces have most likely evolved slight gene variations as a result. Variations in gene sequences (and/or their expression in the wild), it is believed, can confer survival advantages to the plants when transplanted in a different locale.

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Here’s some lighthearted news to bring a smile to your face. A nearly 20 year old giraffe at the zoo known as Israeli Safari has given birth to her 11th baby, setting a world record. She is formally known as Denissa, but more humorously known as “super-mum.” Read the rest of this entry »