Harry Potter in the Forest of Sustainability: The New Book is "Green"

Are Harry, Hermione and Ron earth-friendly?

The Rainforest Alliance says they are. Most of the 12 million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are printed on paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as coming from sustainably managed forests. This means that the paper originated in forests that are managed using socially and environmentally responsible methods. Most paper throughout the world is produced using practices that destroy habitat and exploit workers and communities. For example, paper companies often use trees from endangered old-growth forests that are disappearing. Other conventional sources of wood pulp include "tree-farms" that are chemically managed and almost devoid of wildlife.

The first printing of the new book, the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter story, used 16,700 tons of paper. Sixty-five percent of that was FSC-certified, making it the largest single purchase of FSC-certifed paper ever.

In addition, about 30 percent of the paper was post-consumer waste fiber, another eco-friendly choice.

"This is a major milestone for environmental and social responsibility in the publishing industry," said the executive director of the Rainforest Alliance, Tensie Whelan. "Using wood products from well-managed forests has a great global impact in conserving biodiversity and improving livelihoods in local communities.

Read more about the Rainforest Alliance and FSC certification.

Keywords:: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows J.K. Rowling Rainforest Alliance FSC certified paper

Reject flawed energy bill: Readers please call Governor Easley

The North Carolina legislature is on the verge of passing a "Clean Energy Bill" that started out green but is now an environmental travesty.

The bill has had so many modifications tacked onto it that it now favors coal and nuclear energy far more than it does renewable sources. Duke Energy is clamoring for passage, because the bill has been retooled to heavily favor Duke Energy's financial profits. Legislators who are heavily invested in Duke Energy stocks are also strongly supportive of the bill (S3). Meanwhile, citizens who care about the future of the planet and about human health are desperately trying to put the skids on this bill before it is too late. The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News and Observer have both firmly stated their objections to bill S3.. State leaders must fix it or nix it.

Here's what you can do:

Call Governor Easley or House Speaker Joe Hackney (contact info below) to ask them to reject this bill; ask everyone you know to call. It's easy - you will most likely get a recording that will allow you to leave a message. Or you may get a secretary who will take a message.

Here's why we must reject this bill:

The power companies and hog industry have loaded what began as a renewable energy bill with measures that are very likely to:

· raise your power bills and threaten our state economy

· squander our chances to slow global warming

· allow 2,000 hog waste “lagoons” to continue harming our communities and rivers

· undermine our growing industry for renewable/efficient energy

· shift the risks for multi-billion dollar coal and nuclear plants onto ratepayers

This bill would create a “cost-plus” gravy train for coal and nuclear power plant contractors, NOT the much needed transition to clean energy and lower greenhouse gases.

EVEN WORSE, this bill leaves a gaping loophole that would allow the hog industry to undermine the years of work that have gone toward converting hog cesspools into cleaner technologies. The hog corps want the cheaper way out – capturing methane directly from the lagoons, selling it for energy, BUT LEAVING THE LAGOONS AND SPRAY FIELDS IN PLACE. This would relegate neighboring communities and our rivers to continued suffering from their horrible pollution.

How can ANYONE reconcile leaving such an abuse in place in the name of “clean energy?”

Scores of organizations are coming out against this huge corporate giveaway – advocates for health, social justice, the environment, seniors, consumers, low-income residents, river protection and conservative think tanks.

Power companies and the hog industry are used to getting their way in the legislature because of their well-funded lobby squads and hefty campaign contributions. This time, the stakes are far too high to allow more “business as usual.”

Make a short call or email to House Speaker Hackney and Governor Easley TODAY. Urge them to STOP bill S-3 UNLESS:

· Provisions promoting new coal and nuclear plants are removed.

· Full environmental protections at hog and poultry waste-to-energy plants are added.

· Provisions allowing utilities to grossly overcharge for energy efficiency are removed.

HOUSE SPEAKER JOE HACKNEY: He must use his clout to overhaul this bill:

919-733-3451 or joeh@ncleg.net

Governor Easley 1-800-662-7952

NC WARN: Waste Awareness & Reduction Network www.ncwarn.org or

919-416-5077 PO Box 61051, Durham, 27715

The Luminous, Magical Continent

I went to South Africa hungry to learn about the conflicts between humans and wildlife on a continent with shrinking resources. Africa is a place of vast struggles, but it is also our most magnificent and diverse continent - with more cultures, more languages, more human history, and more varied and extreme habitats and wild animal creatures than any other continent on Earth.

It is "the luminous continent," says Bob Geldof. And I might add, "the magical continent." It feels that way. It feels like an altogether different planet; a place that casts spells on people like me. If I drive 50 miles from my home here in NC, I will see squirrels and robins, I might see a chipmunk or an Eastern Cottontail. If I drove 50 miles from any point where I was in South Africa, I might see a giraffe, or a zebra. Or an elephant. I would hear more than one language I didn't understand, see clothing or everyday human inventions or customs that were completely new to me. Bedsprings used as a garden gate; a vendor selling air for tires or calls from a cell phone; marula nuts on my plate, which I had never heard of before. I marveled every time I saw a woman walking along the road with a parcel of fuel wood balanced on her head; when I saw a young child with a baby tied to her back. I was astounded at every single new thing; sometimes I was troubled as well, sometimes thrilled, but always astounded.

But in addition to that, I was also on a mission. One of my self-imposed assignments was to talk to everyone I could find about the challenges to wildlife survival in Africa, and about the challenges that rural villagers face in a world of dwindling natural resources.

On the subject of wildlife, I heard ten times more comments about elephants than about any other animal. We had the good fortune to talk to a number of rural villagers, particularly villagers in the area of Kruger National Park.

"Elephants eat and trample our crops. They can tear up a whole field of corn in a few hours" said one of the villagers we talked to, a comment that was echoed by many other farming communities. Rural villagers in South Africa rely heavily on their corn crops for survival.

Almost every lunch and dinner for rural indigenous people in northeastern South Africa consists primarily of "pap," a corn-meal dish that looks and tastes like thick corn grits. The pap might be eaten with a garnish of vitamin-rich herbs, or a bit of pumpkin, but pap from corn is the essential staple. It's good! We enjoyed pap on a couple of occasions, with a few mopani worms on the side for protein. The mopani worms we ate were boiled caterpillars, which were surprisingly tasty.

These villagers work hard 24/7, raising all of their food and grinding their own corn into mealie-meal for the pap. Every family has chickens; some have a few goats and a couple of pigs as well. They build their own houses out of wood from the village commons, or increasingly, from bricks made of sand from the nearby river. They waste nothing. In the villages and all over South Africa we saw everyday items fashioned from things that could have been trash. Newspaper becomes wallpaper. A 2-liter pop bottle is the body of a toy truck; its wheels made of pop cans. Cast-off plastic bottles now tote water from the river, or hold liquid fuels for sale.

In this world of resources stretched thin, an elephant foraging in village crop fields is bad, bad news. A ruined corn field is devastating to a village living on the edge of subsistence.

But what is an elephant to do? All over sub-Saharan Africa, more and more land is converted to agriculture or other human endeavors. In South Africa, this may mean fields of staple crops, or it may mean huge tracks of sugar-cane owned by international corporations. Or tree farms of non-native tree species for the timber industry. We saw sugar cane and tree farms everywhere. A "tree farm" may sound "green" but it isn't. These huge chemically managed monocultures are useless to wildlife; they are deserts in terms of biodiversity. In Kenya, increasing amounts of land are converted to quarries, to produce stone for housing the increasing human population. Or farms that grow flowers to be sold in the U.S. and Europe. Farmers in both South Africa and Kenya increasingly fence their property to keep animals out, but the fences keep the animals confined to smaller and smaller pockets of land, unable to travel from one pocket to another as they forage or search for mates.

How will the human-elephant conflict be resolved? I don't know. I do know that conservation efforts must include local people; everyone knows that now. Villagers must have some real incentive to protect wildlife, some incentive that improves their income or their livelihoods.
The ecotourism industry is employing more and more rural people who actually live next to the parks and preserves - that is a strong and positive step forward. When elephants from preserves and national parks destroy crops, villagers must be compensated for their losses immediately. We heard villagers' complaints that they are not compensated, although they have been told that they will be.

People living in villages next to national parks must also be included in government meetings that formulate wildlife policies; their opinions must be listened to. We were told by villagers that they do attend meetings, but their input is ignored.

Elephants are not the only animals that have conflicts with human settlements. After elephants, lions drew more comments and complaints than any other we heard about on our trip. Lions sometimes kill livestock, just as wolves in parts of the western United States do. But more lions in a later post.

Keywords:: South Africa elephants human elephant conflict conservation ecotourism compensation

Back from South Africa; elephants may be culled

I'm trying to pick up the threads of everyday life at home after a June trip to South Africa. Nothing seems quite the same.

My husband and I went with another teacher; our purpose was to plan a student trip for the future. I knew the impact of Africa on my own psyche would be huge - I knew the continent would spin me around and spit me out a different person. It did. So much so that it's taken me two weeks to find some way to even start writing about it, to find a point of entry - some little angle that will allow me to begin to describe it.

Elephants are a good place to start. Elephants are a source of heated controversy in South Africa. We met a lot of people who are either very angry about elephants, or very defensive of them.

Much of this controversy is related to Kruger National Park, the flagship park of South Africa, a park almost twice as big as the state of Connecticut. Kruger is home to 12,000 to 14,000 elephants right now. It was easy for us to spot elephants there, even from the roads. We saw lone bulls, as well as small groups of mothers and babies. A male in musth (a hormonal state) almost ran me down (just outside the park) when I wandered off behind a clump of small acacias by myself one evening. I couldn't see him coming because of the bushes. My companions yelled to me - I stepped around the bushes and saw the bull with his long tusks trotting briskly right at me. I ran, and my companions yanked me back in the jeep with seconds to spare. That was definitely my own fault. Wandering through the bush on foot is not recommended, in or out of the park. It's strictly prohibited within the park. In fact, even sticking your head out of your car window can draw a stiff fine within the park.

Although the thousands of elephants in and around the park make them easy to spot, many scientists believe that in the long run the park can support only about 7500 elephants.

The problem with overpopulation, if the elephants in the park are indeed too numerous, is that these huge herbivores can be very destructive of habitat. They eat tree bark, among other things, and can easily rip a tree to shreds to get at the bark. In Swaziland (a tiny country surrounded by South Africa) we visited a park where almost all the trees were dead due to elephants' foraging. This Swazi park is fenced though - its elephants are unable to move outside the park, unable to cover the range of territory they would normally forage over. In the past, this roaming would have given damaged trees time to recover.

But Kruger is much bigger than the Swaziland park, and most of Kruger has no fences around the perimeter. Most of the different areas and habitats we visited in Kruger showed no obvious evidence of elephant damage. The exception was near Shingwedze in the northern part of Kruger Park, where we saw big areas of torn up and dead trees.

Tree damage at Shingwedze

Besides habitat destruction, another problem with large numbers of elephants is that they leave Kruger (and other wildlife preserves) to forage on crops outside the park, which is a serious issue for rural villages that rely heavily on their crops for day-to-day subsistence. We spent a day in a rural village next to Kruger, hearing about their frustrations with elephants in their crops, something I'll write about in a later post.

At the moment, SANParks (South Africa National Parks) is undecided what to do about the elephant issue. There's a lot of clamoring for them to cull the elephants of Kruger National Park in order to protect habitat for the other herbivores in the park. I think the cheapest and most likely method of culling is to shoot entire herds all at one go, from helicopters and the ground. Elephants live in protective family groups and are highly intelligent, so this would obviously be a traumatic and not very humane death for them, because it would take some time to kill one entire herd. This has been done in the past, and I've read that it's a very disturbing scene, not only for the elephants targeted, and for nearby elephants, but also for the shooters.

Others have proposed darting the elephants with birth-control drugs, an option that would be extremely expensive. Many object to spending millions of dollars to deal with the elephant issue in this more humane way, when millions of people in South Africa are living in extreme poverty.

Still others argue that the elephant population in Kruger National Park may very well regulate itself if we just wait. Some of the most knowledgeable scientists support this perspective, including Laurence Kruger, a biologist who conducts research in the park, whom we hired to help us design our student trip.

I tend to believe Laurence, simply because he is a scientist who specializes in studying the impacts of elephants on habitat in Kruger, and he's a recognized expert on the subject. In July he attended a conference in Johannesburg on the issue of elephant management (to cull or not to cull), and is co-authoring a book based on the conference proceedings and current research.

But....time will tell what the government and the SANParks officials decide to do. We'll stay tuned.

The fact that elephants are numerous in Kruger National Park does not mean that elephants are flourishing everywhere. The number of African elephants crashed during the 1970s and 1980s due to uncontrolled slaughter and poaching for ivory. Then in 1989, the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) banned the international commercial ivory trade. This led to a reduction in poaching in some African countries, including South Africa. But the UN has no enforcement of the CITES treaty - the adoption and enforcement of the CITES agreement is up to each country's government. So poaching has continued unabated in many African countries, often due to nonexistent enforcement of the ban. Many countries lack the money to hire patrols to capture poachers - work which is highly dangerous.

In June of 2007, African countries attended a meeting of CITES again and agreed (at least on paper) to a further 9-year suspension of ivory trading. But the meeting of the convention also agreed to allow four southern African countries to sell some of their stocked ivory through a permit system, including South Africa. This could give South Africa an incentive to cull the herds in Kruger National Park.

Keywords:: elephants poaching cull Kruger South Africa ivory

Food aid, improving the matrix

Implementing best-practice standards for emergency international food aid will improve the quality, timeliness and appropriateness of food aid, says Daniel Maxwell, PhD at the Feinstein International Center, part of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.

“Analyzing food security in a more holistic way will allow us to broaden responses beyond just food,” he says. “An integrated information system that incorporates analysis of baseline vulnerabilities of households, monitors household trends, and considers alternative responses will provide for improved decision making when planning humanitarian relief efforts.

“Since the famine in Sahel over 30 years ago, information systems have emphasized early warning before a crisis. This is important, but even if well-documented, early warning alone has proven inadequate to plan a response.” Maxwell stresses the importance of continual contextual monitoring and periodic program evaluation. He also highlights the need to separate information systems from operational budgets in order to maintain objectivity and impartiality about information gathered.

In addition to improving information systems, better tools and methods are needed to plan aid responses that may include not only food, but may also include the provision of complementary resources, such as water or cash. New analytical tools not only track trends in food security, but also help to predict the consequences of interventions. “One of the potential negative consequences of poorly managed food aid is the impact of food aid on local markets,” says Maxwell.

One way to preserve the integrity of existing markets: “As food aid is a scarce resource, targeting allows for maximum impact by ensuring that proper quantities of food aid reach appropriate beneficiaries at appropriate times,” says Maxwell, and “By not providing food aid for those who don’t need it.”

Maxwell acknowledges,”… It is often anything but a straightforward exercise to improve programming on the ground.” Despite the challenges, Maxwell maintains that adopting best-practice standards will help the humanitarian community to link food aid programs to broader interventions and policy changes, thus increasing the likelihood they will benefit individuals and communities in crisis, including over the longer term.

Research explores link between pesticides and colony collapse disorder

Honey bees' colony collapse disorder might be related to pesticide exposure. For the past decade, beekeepers have treated their hives with pesticides to combat two kinds of mites that parasitize the bees and entomologist Walter (Steve) Sheppard said that the pesticides can accumulate in the wax and reach a concentration that over time harms the bees.

The sudden disappearance of honey bees in many parts of the country might be related to pesticide exposure, according to Washington State University entomologist Walter (Steve) Sheppard.

Beekeepers have struggled as hives have failed soon after the bees embark on their pollen-gathering season. In what has become known as “colony collapse disorder,” honey bees leave the hive and don’t return.

“I don’t think we really know what we’re up against with colony collapse disorder,” said Sheppard. This summer, his research team is exploring the possibility that exposure to pesticides in the hives is contributing to colony collapse.

For the past decade, beekeepers have treated their hives with pesticides to combat two kinds of mites that parasitize the bees.

“To keep bees, especially on a commercial level, beekeepers have needed to use some sort of chemical control of these mites,” said Sheppard. “Normally, Varroa mites will kill a colony within two years, if they’re not treated and the use of these pesticides brings with them a risk of accumulation in the wax.”

Honey bees rear their young in waxy honeycomb which is re-used for several years. If pesticides used to control mites build up in the wax, over time they could reach a concentration at which they harm the bees as well. Sheppard is testing whether something in the honeycomb of a failed colony will carry over and affect the health of a new brood of honey bees.

“We’ve gotten some combs that were from colonies that suffered from colony collapse disorder, and we’ll be doing some experiments to compare them with combs from healthy colonies. We’ll have our [healthy] queens laying eggs on both the collapsed colony combs and the control combs at the same time.”

Sheppard said the study should yield information about the potential role of pesticides in causing colony collapse by the end of the year.

Sheppard said honey bees could also be exposed to pesticides during their foraging flights, if they visit fields and gardens that were recently treated with the chemicals. That source of exposure has been a concern for beekeepers since pesticides came into wide use in the 1950s, he said.

Honey bee health is crucial to the nation’s farmers and fruit growers, who rely on honey bees to pollinate crops such as apples, cranberries and watermelons. Together, honey bee pollinated crops are worth more than nine billion dollars a year to the American economy.

Sheppard directs the Apis Molecular Systematics Laboratory at WSU. He was a member of the Honey Bee Genome Project, an international consortium of scientists that earlier this year published the complete DNA sequence of the honey bee, Apis mellifera.

Walter S. (Steve) Sheppard, WSU Department of Entomology, 509/335-5180, shepp@wsu.edu

Farmers can use less nitrogen while sustaining their lands

Ongoing field trials since 2002 by a team that includes 16 farmers, Cornell researchers and Cornell Cooperative Extension field crops educators in 10 counties are showing the value of on-farm research. Their results are successfully quantifying and predicting the nitrogen needs for growing corn, saving farmers money and reducing environmental impact.

"With this program, we focus on determining under what situations extra nitrogen would be good to add and when a farmer can save money by reducing fertilizer applications without impacting yield and quality," says Quirine Ketterings, associate professor of crop and soil sciences, who co-leads the research team. "This is the best way to minimize the potential negative environmental and economic impacts of excess nitrogen fertilizer use."

The project evaluated five treatments when growing corn: no starter fertilizer and no additional nitrogen; a starter of 30 lbs nitrogen only; and starter of 30 lbs nitrogen plus 50, 100 of 150 lbs of added nitrogen on corn newly planted in fields that grew alfalfa (a legume), grass or an alfalfa/grass mix the year before.

None of the 16 first-year corn trials evaluated in 2005-06 responded to additional nitrogen after the starter fertilizer, said Cornell graduate student Joseph Lawrence. This indicates that the forage grass and/or legume gave enough nitrogen back to the soil to feed the following year's corn crop, he said. Forage quality was not negatively impacted either.

For example, after farmer Mike Kiechle of Garden of Eden Farm in Philadelphia, N.Y., cut the excess nitrogen in his applications in the 2005 research trial that evaluated all treatments at his farm. With excess nitrogen, the corn grew taller but the ears were smaller and produced less grain.

"The corn that received less nitrogen was shorter, sturdier and produced more corn in the silage," Kiechle said. "I had been happy to harvest 18 tons of corn silage on my clay soils, so when we harvested 20 tons in 2006, I was excited." This year, Kiechle is applying half the nitrogen he used last year. "This on-farm research trial showed I was just wasting money to apply more. I cut back, and that has saved me about $10-$12 per acre."

And when farmer Dan Mulvaney used only 30 lbs of starter nitrogen on second-year corn at his farm in Conesus, N.Y., his corn silage yields increased 4 to 5 tons per acre, and his shelled corn increased from 100 to 140 bushels per acre.

In Freeville, N.Y., Beck Farm crop manager Jerry Coller manages 2,000 acres of crops and does not have enough manure to meet the nitrogen needs of those crops. He says the precision nitrogen project showed him that his grass crops provide more nitrogen than he thought, so less manure is required to fertilize those lands to grow corn. Coller has reconfigured applications to better distribute the farm's manure resources to other fields.

In New York state, some 460,000 acres produced 8.28 million tons of silage in 2006. Nitrogen fertilizer is growing increasingly expensive (about 40 cents per pound last year), so any reduction in nitrogen use improves farmers' bottom line and prevents nutrient losses into the environment.

This project, in its final year, is funded with grants from the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program and New York Farm Viability Institute and the Cornell Agricultural Research Station. The project team will also provide conclusions about use of soil nitrogen tests to determine when corn grown in New York needs nitrogen.

Dentists improve oral health for sub-Saharan Africans

NEW YORK, June 15, 2007 – A new initiative from Columbia University Medical Center will be the first to target chronic oral health problems in sub-Saharan Africa, where the vast majority of chronic diseases are left undetected and untreated. The initiative is the result of an anonymous $1.5 million gift to support the Millennium Villages, which aims to fight extreme poverty and related challenges such as disease, hunger and lack of access to water and sanitation though scientifically sound and sustainable interventions. A third of the gift will be devoted to supporting the oral health program.

Chronic diseases will soon become the leading cause of health problems in the developing world, and oral health conditions are one of the most common chronic disorders, according to the World Health Organization. Initial Columbia research in the village of Koraro, Ethiopia, found that more than half of the population complained of oral pain. The generous donation will fund the first extensive initiative, led by Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine, to directly target oral health problems in sub-Saharan Africa with a sustainable prevention and treatment program.

“Oral health is important to total health, so it’s essential that efforts to improve the lives of impoverished communities include a dental component,” said Ira Lamster, DDS, dean of the College of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. “The faculty and students of Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine are committed to addressing the global epidemic of chronic oral health problems through treatment and prevention programs.”

“There is currently no access to dental care whatsoever in the remote villages of the world,” said Steven Syrop, DDS, associate clinical professor of dentistry at the College of Dental Medicine, who is leading the dental component of the Millennium Villages. “There are only 48 dentists in the entire country of Ethiopia, and most are in the capital, Addis Ababa. We’re going to bring dental care to villages where there are no dentists.”

The health component of the Millennium Villages grew out of the United Nations Millennium Project and the World Health Organization Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, both of which showed the direct link between improving public health and economic growth. Those reports explained that health improvements can only happen through a broad range of inter-related public health reforms.

The Millennium Villages project, supported by The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Millennium Promise, the United Nations Development Programme, and the UN Millennium Project, currently includes 12 sites in 10 sub-Saharan countries. It reaches more than 400,000 people with plans to increase its reach over time. The project empowers the local health care sector by supporting basic health interventions, building or upgrading clinics, and expanding the pool of community or village health workers. The participating villages are integral partners in the project and take responsibility for the interventions.

In addition to the oral health initiative, the new funding will support Columbia-led interventions to address chronic cardiovascular and mental health disorders in the region.

The dental component of the project is the result of research by Dr. Syrop and his team, who traveled to Koraro, Ethiopia, in the fall of 2006 to assess the oral health situation in the village of 5,100 people. In addition to the common complaint of oral pain, the team found a high incidence of hardened plaque (calculus) and gingival bleeding. Ninety-five percent of the people they examined had significant dental erosion because of the presence of sand in their food as a result of the arid environment and lack of water for rinsing crops.

“We were surprised by the extent of the oral health crisis in Ethiopia,” said Dr. Syrop. “In an area where the population has little access to sugary food and fermentable carbohydrates, we didn’t expect the problem to be as bad as it is. Developing a sustainable oral health program is an essential ingredient to improving the lives of these people.”

Teams of five or so Columbia faculty, staff and students will travel this fall to sub-Saharan countries, including Tanzania, Rwanda and Senegal, to collect data and assess the population’s oral health needs. They will use the data to develop a program for three or four villages initially, and then ultimately incorporate oral health as an integral component of improving health care at all of the Millennium Village sites.

The Columbia teams will train local health care workers to provide basic essential dental care, including extractions and control of infections. Additionally, the teams will introduce a comprehensive prevention program in the schools and the overall community by working with local teachers to develop a curriculum that is appropriate and sustainable for the individual village. They also will develop a prevention program to educate mothers about caring for the oral health of their young children.

“Treating and preventing oral health problems is one spoke in the wheel of improving conditions in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Dr. Syrop. “By improving their health, we enable this population to be more productive, helping them to improve their economic situation and lift themselves out of poverty.”


Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in pre-clinical and clinical research, in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, nurses, dentists, and public health professionals at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the Mailman School of Public Health, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. http://www.cumc.columbia.edu

Freedom? I don't think so.

When I stepped onto my front porch this morning, I thought I was in Costa Rica.

At 7 AM on most June mornings in Greensboro, North Carolina, it is already unsettlingly warm, a harbinger of the choking, sweltering afternoon to come.

But this morning, the air was different. Cool, gray, moist. So humid it wasn’t even mist, really, so much as tiny droplets of rain suspended in midair.

I breathed in the sickeningly sweet perfume of our privet’s tiny white blossoms, not unlike the cloying scent of the pink guavas that flavor Costa Rican air. I breathed, again, closing my eyes until the waves of nostalgia slackened enough for me to climb upon my bike and pedal down the sidewalk.

As I crested the hill on Spring Garden Street, I was astonished to see the buildings of downtown completely obscured by an impenetrable curtain of gray. No number racing today. I usually like to use the clock atop the JP Morgan tower to time myself as I creep up the final ascent toward downtown, but this morning I couldn’t even tell the tower existed. I’d just have to pedal hard and hope for the best.

As I circled the roundabout onto McGee, I caught a whiff of sizzling sausage in the air. Instantly, the Costa Rican neblina became a familiar English fog. I thought of the little sausage rolls my brother ate at a Tesco’s deli in York, eleven years ago. I breathed in deeply and now I was riding, not through Costa Rican jungle pathways, but down English high streets, the alleys behind our village’s bakery. Longing stirred again deep in my chest.

**

But now was no time to dream. Elm Street, the main artery of downtown, means dodging streams of commuter cars, buses, trucks, pedestrians, and the occasional fellow biker. As I flew past a line of vehicles waiting impatiently at a light, I set my sights on a dump truck some four blocks ahead. “Prepare to meet your match, dumpy,” I whispered, and started pedaling like crazy.

The dump truck got stuck at the next light, while I whizzed past a coffee shop, a bakery, a theater, a club. I zoomed over a cross walk, circumventing another motionless lane of traffic. Now I could hear the rumble of the dump truck’s engine. Perfect – now it had gotten stuck at the Smith Street intersection. I rode as hard as I could.

As the light changed, as the dump truck shifted into gear, I shot through the intersection, surging into the lead. Grinning from ear to ear, I gloated as I screeched to a stop in the parking deck. The truck rumbled past.

As I chained up my bike and pounded downstairs to the office, my face was glowing with heat, despite that cool, unearthly mist. My heart was pounding, my leg muscles were alive and awake. As my sleepy co-workers shuffled into their cubicles, yawning and clutching cups of coffee, I tucked my bike helmet under my desk and smiled.

Waiting for my boss to arrive, I sipped my tea and read the morning paper. “Drivers go it alone on way to workplace,” proclaimed a headline on page A3. Despite gas prices over $3 a gallon, the article told me, the percentage of commuters driving to work alone has reached an all-time high of 77%.

“It’s very hard to find someone to ride with, and it’s very hard to find public transportation,” explains Alan Pisarski, author of Commuting in America. “There aren’t a lot of options for people.” Part of the problem, the article clarifies, is the housing and work patterns of most suburban commuters, and the few alternative options available in most areas.

However, other transportation experts attribute the trend to an American need for freedom and independence. “The freedom of mobility that comes with the use of a personal automobile is something we are very, very reluctant to give up as individuals,” says Geoff Sundstrom of AAA. “Commuters,” he says, “are willing to drive more fuel-efficient autos but are loath to give up the keys entirely, regardless of gas prices… many people equate carpooling and mass transit with ‘a decline in their personal standard of living.’”

I set the paper down. Freedom? What had I experienced this morning, if not freedom? I’d been to two continents. I’d daydreamed, raced, dawdled, soared. Standard of living? This morning I’d gotten a jolt of free exercise, a boost of confidence and excitement; meanwhile the drivers I whizzed were stuck at stoplights, trapped in machines that greedily guzzle their gasoline, money, and time.

It’s true that in some ways, relinquishing your car is losing the ultimate convenience: total mobility, at your whim, all the time. When I carpool out to our construction yard, it’s true that I am not free to leave the instant my work is done. I do have to wait until my co-workers are done, too, and I have to endure a longer ride home as we go by Catherine’s house and Jeremy’s apartment before mine.

But in another light, I am more free: free from dependence on foreign oil, free from the burden of caring for a car, of earning money to upkeep its needs and feed its hungry gas tank. Free from the guilt of contributing to our nation’s insatiable, war-mongering need for more, more, more. Free from the responsibility of the realization that, in order to avert the energy crisis that we are on the brink of, some things have to change. Our definition of freedom, for instance. Our definition of what it means to live well.

by Sadie Kneidel

Should insurance companies have access to your genetic Information

There is no good reason to deny insurers access to genetic information, argues a Professor of Ethics in a debate published in this week’s British Medical Journal.

Take the online poll at BMJ and express your opinion

Only if we refuse to give insurers access to all health information can we reasonably stop them seeking genetic test results, says Professor Soren Holm from Cardiff Law School.

If insurers were denied access to any health information they would only be able to differentiate premiums according to very general risk markers, for example, age, gender or occupation. This would mean in effect that the healthy subsidise the unhealthy – but there would be equality.

However, if we allow insurers to have some kinds of health information, such as a person’s BMI or cholesterol level we no longer have any principled reason for excluding genetic information:

“Genetic information is not special. It is not inherently more specific, predictive, sensitive or private than other kinds of health information.”

Professor Holm concedes there are worries about sharing genetic information - allowing insurers to see genetic information could deter people from getting tested or insurers may use the information inappropriately. This may be the case, he says, but the same is true for other health information – for example whether someone is HIV positive.

He argues a better solution to this problem would be to make challengeable a decision to deny coverage for life or health insurance, thereby forcing insurers to make their reasoning transparent.

On the other side of the argument Professor Richard Ashcroft from the University of London says access to genetic information should not be allowed as it could lead to irrational discrimination. This arises, he says, from false beliefs about genetic information. It can be misunderstood or its significance over-estimated.

He says if insurers had access to complete health information, including genetic test results, it could lead to a situation which was “actuarially fair” but “socially unfair”:

“If the point of insurance is to cover the costs of ill luck, the only sort of ill luck you could not insure against would be the misfortune to have a late onset serious genetic disorder. Arguably such people would need insurance more than most yet would be less able than most to get it.”

In the face of uncertainty surrounding the interpretation of genetic information, occasional discriminatory practice by individual insurers and a lack of solutions to the problem of social justice, he says, it is preferable to maintain the status quo, at least in the medium term.

Alternative fuel vehicles will be tough sell

Imagine a vehicle that runs on hydrogen or biofuels
and offers the same features, performance and price as today's
gasoline vehicle.

Will it capture half the market? Not likely,
concludes a new MIT analysis of the challenges behind introducing
alternative-fuel vehicles to the marketplace. Not even if it's three
times more fuel-efficient.

Among the barriers: Until many alternative fuel (AF) vehicles are on
the road, people won't consider buying one-so there won't be many on
the road. Catch-22.

The researchers' conclusions are not all gloomy, though. If policy
incentives are kept in place long enough, adoption will reach a level
at which the market will begin to grow on its own. But "long enough"
may be a surprisingly long time.

Given today's environmental pressures and energy security concerns,
we need to move away from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. But repeated
attempts to introduce other technologies during the past century have
nearly all failed. Dethroning the gasoline-consuming internal
combustion engine (ICE) has proved difficult.

"The challenge is not just introducing an AF vehicle," said
postdoctoral associate Jeroen Struben of the Sloan School of
Management, who has been examining the mechanisms behind such market
transitions. "Consumer acceptance, the fueling infrastructure and
manufacturing capability all have to evolve at the same time."

Thus, consumer exposure to AF vehicles is just one feedback loop that
can slow adoption. Similarly, fuel suppliers won't build AF stations
until they're certain of future demand; but until the fuel is widely
available, consumers won't buy the vehicles. And manufacturers won't
be able to make AF vehicles cheaper and better until their production
volume is high; but high-volume production won't happen until such
improvements are in place to attract buyers.

And then of course there's the status quo to be overcome-the
well-established and highly attractive gasoline-ICE vehicle and the
fueling infrastructure, energy supply chain and other industries that
support it.

Cats are Invasive Species

I too find kittens charming.

But the bald truth is that housecats in the U.S. are an invasive species, in the same sense that kudzu, Gypsy moths, and the Chestnut blight fungus are invasive species.

What is an invasive species? According to the U.S. government, an invasive species is "an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health." Ecologists would add that an invasive species is a non-native introduced species that spreads rapidly on its own and displaces native species.

Housecats easily meet all of these criteria. The domestic housecat is not native to the US. These cats originated from the European and African Wild Cat, Felis sylvestris. The European colonists brought them to the U.S. and their numbers have been increasing ever since - from 30 million in 1970 to 60 million in 1990, to an estimated 90 million now. That rate of increase is far greater than any native animal on the continent. Unaided populations of native wild animals just don't multiply like that.

So they're introduced from elsewhere, their numbers are increasing at a rapid rate, and they are most definitely doing environmental harm. Housecats are a major source of wildlife mortality in the US, according the the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the American Bird Conservancy, and numerous university studies. Nationwide, cats kill more than a billion small mammals and hundreds of millions of birds each year. Many of these are native songbirds and mammals whose populations are already stressed by other threats, such as habitat destruction, development, and pollution.

Domestic cats worldwide have been involved in the extinction of more bird species than any other cause except habitat destruction, according to research from the University of Maine.

Some of the best-documented examples: housecats are endangering populations of least terns, piping plovers and loggerhead shrikes. In Florida, marsh rabbits in Key West have been threatened by predation from domestic cats. Cats introduced by people living on the barrier islands of Florida’s coast have depleted several unique and native species of mice and woodrats to near extinction.

But I hardly need to look at research journals to find documentation. I need only to look out my front door, my back door, my side door. Every day I find my neighbors' cats stalking animals in my yard. Nearly every day I find at least one of them trotting home with an animal in its mouth. We've taken down all of our bird feeders, because they were only luring prey in for the neighbors' cats.

Occasionally I see a Red-shouldered Hawk or a Cooper's Hawk or a Barred Owl in my yard with a small mammal or a bird. These are native predators. Their numbers are modest; they do no harm to prey populations. In fact, these native predators are essential to the healthy functioning of the ecosystem and the prey populations.

If it weren't for the cats, I think we'd have more of the hawks and owls, which we would enjoy. But the well-fed cats take the best of the prey.

If you have a cat, please keep it indoors at all times. The Humane Society asks you to, and they like cats. They point out that free-roaming cats have a life expectancy of less than 3 years, while indoor cats live an average of 15-18 years. Two-thirds of vets recommend keeping housecats indoors at all times, for the cats' protection from cars and disease, as well as for the sake of wildlife populations.

A 2006 paper by ecologists in Wisconsin lists a number of resources and other papers that will be useful to anyone researching this topic.

Eastern Chipmunk photo by Alan Kneidel

Keyboards:: house cats housecats domestic cats feral cates predation birds small mammals invasive species declining species habitat loss population declines threatened endangered

A Trampled State Fights Back

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Camping and veggies, a perfect match

If you are looking for a way to encourage your children eat their fruits and vegetables, search no further than your backyard. A new study by researchers at Saint Louis University recently revealed that involving children in the planting and harvesting of backyard gardens encourages interest in both nature and nutrition.

Preschool children in rural areas eat more fruits and vegetables when the produce is homegrown. “When children are involved with growing and cooking food, it improves their diet,” says Debra Haire-Joshu, Ph.D., director of Saint Louis University’s Obesity Prevention Center and a study author.

So, along with your "Great American Backyard Campout" on June 23rd, perhaps make a stop in your own garden or a local farmer's market - if you don't already have a garden - and do a little "Local" foraging for your campfire fair.

A few campfire recipes to get you started:: http://camping.about.com/cs/campingrecipelinks/l/blrecsub.htm

Backyard campout June 23rd

High gas prices putting a crimp in your summer vacation plans? Head out the back door to experience a night with Mother Nature. You don't need to go to Yosemite to experience the great outdoors and the National Wildlife Federation can help. So put down the remote and mouse, grab the family, friends and neighbors and enjoy a noctural backyard adventure.

Sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation to encourage parents and kids alike to turn in their tv remotes, ipods, Playstations, computers, MP3 players, cell phones and all things high tech, and experience a night with Mother Nature including listening for nocturnal wildlife (maybe even see a few), star-gazing, cooking over an open fire, telling stories about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and exploring a whole other world right in their own backyard.

Last year over 60,000 families from around the country participated in the Backyard Campout. You don’t need to go to Yosemite to experience the great outdoors and the wonders it has to offer. Just open up your backdoor.

Where: Backyards across America
When: Saturday night, June 23, 2007
Who: Families, friends, neighbors

Why: This initiative is part of a National Wildlife Federation campaign to rescue our nation’s kids from what famed author Richard Louv calls “nature deficit disorder.” Research now shows that kids spend an average of 44 hours per week staring at electronic screens, tv, video games and computers -- for the first time in our country’s history, we have an entire generation that is growing up disconnected from nature.

This can lead to a weaker immune system, greater dependency on ADHD drugs, lost creativity, less self-sufficiency, lack of interest in maintaining the wildlife legacy they have inherited. To say nothing of the good old-fashioned fun they are missing.

Get Started::

The National Wildlife Federation is provding everything you need to head out into the great outdoors called your backyard. The web site has packing lists, recipes, nocturnal wildlife guides, exploration activities, nature guides. Check it out at www.backyardcampout.org. People can even sign up on the site to share their campout plans and experiences.


Keywords:: SUMMER, FAMILIES, CAMPING, KIDS, CHILDREN

Will speak at Sierra Fest this weekend

Sara Kate and I will be the key-note speakers at this weekend's Sierra Fest, the convention of the NC Sierra Club. Our topic will be "Food Activism: Eating for Environmental Change." We'll talk about the environmental impact of the United States food industry, and steps that consumers can take to reduce that impact. Our talk will be at 11:00 a.m. Saturday May 12.

For more about the 2007 Sierra Fest, click on the link, or just google "Sierra Fest 2007."

Or go to this website http://nc.sierraclub.org/highlights/sierrafest2007.html

Sally Kneidel

More on visit with Wendell Berry

I mentioned in my post of April 28 that a couple of friends of mine visited Wendell Berry back in February. Wendell told them you have to find ways to experience delight, even "glee." As my friends were leaving he pointed to an oriole nest and told them that his main way of finding glee is through birds, butterflies, flowers, and the like. You can tell that from his poetry.

For example, "The Peace of Wild Things" is one of my friend's favorites:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Keywords:: Wendell Berry poem The Peace of Wild Things

The contaminated pet food scandal: 5 things you can do

You've probably read about the "contaminated pet food" debacle that's been in the news for a couple of weeks. It began with the death of some family pets who had eaten pet food accidentally laced with an industrial chemical, melamine.

Then the plot began to thicken. Late last week it was discovered that 6,000 hogs across the country ate the chemically-contaminated pet food too. And some consumers in California consumed the toxified hogs. Although, the FDA rushed to say, the hogs' flesh probably did not contain enough melamine to be harmful to the humans who ate the hogs. Of course.

Yesterday, there were more developments in the widening scandal. Now, says the FDA, we know that at least 2.5 million broiler chickens ate the melamine-laden pet food as well and were subsequently sold at fresh meat counters across the country. The FDA's chief medical officer, David Acheson, maintained yesterday that there is no "significant threat of human illness from this." Well.

I am very sorry for any families who have recently lost pets due to melamine in the pet's food. I am sorry too for any families who may be fearful for their own health after eating contaminated chicken and pork.

I might say that I'm sorry for the tainted livestock that will be killed and not eaten, rather than killed and eaten. But from the livestock's perspective, what's the difference?

I could say that I'm sorry for the farmers who have raised the contaminated hogs or chickens that will now be destroyed and not sold for meat. But.... farmers do not own the hogs or chickens they raise. In the U.S. 99% of poultry and 80% of hogs are raised in warehouses on factory farms. The company that packages the meat owns the animals throughout their life cycle, e.g. Tyson owns all the 24,000 chickens in a single broiler shed. Tyson also provides all the feed. The farmer owns the land and the warehouse-like buildings on his property. So I presume that Tyson (or Perdue or whatever corporation owned the tainted broiler farms) will take the hit for the loss of the animals. I'm glad for that much of the story. Tyson deserves it. Likewise, Smithfield or some other giant meat corporation owns all the hogs on any factory farm. Smithfield will take the hit if their hogs must be destroyed. I'm glad for that too. For that reason, I hope the scandal grows and grows. I hope every factory-farmed animal in the country turns out to be laden with melamine, and Tyson and Smithfield and their cronies go belly-up.

That's unlikely.

But what might really happen is this: we might start a national dialogue about what's in the feed that our livestock eat. As environmentalist- rancher Nicolette Niman said so aptly in her essay for our book "We are what they eat."

We researched the topic of livestock diets thoroughly for Veggie Revolution, and even more thoroughly for our next book (Going Green: A Wise Consumer's Guide to a Shrinking Planet, 2008). We interviewed feedlot specialists at midwestern universities, scientists with the National Chicken Council, food scientists at NCSU, a Tyson plant manager, dairymen, etc.

Here's what we discovered. There is almost no regulation on what can be fed to livestock. That's because the meat industry is extremely rich and powerful, and their lobbyists get what they want in Washington. And what they want is license to feed their animals the cheapest possible substance that will enhance their growth in the short term. It's all about shaving pennies off production costs.

Because transport adds to the cost, livestock are fed whatever is cheapest locally. For example, cattle in Texas are fed chicken feathers, chicken feces, and chicken-slaughterhouse scraps - because Texas has a lot of cattle feedlots and a lot of factory farms that raise chickens. Feedlot cattle used to be fed cattle-slaughterhouse scraps too, but that has been stopped due to the threat of mad-cow disease which is transmitted when cows eat other cows. But...oddly....cattle feedlots are still allowed to feed bovine-blood products to other cattle.

And (this was told to me by a PhD who advises feedlots on their feeding regimen) , the chicken feces that is fed to cattle in feedlots almost certainly contains cattle tissue. That's because the chickens have been eating cattle slaughterhouse waste! And some of the beef scraps pass through the chickens unaltered, in addition to the spillage from the chicken-feeding tray which mixes in with the chicken feces on the floor. It's all scooped up together and added to the chow at cattle feedlots.

See? It's ugly. I believe the public would be appalled if livestock diets were posted in grocery stores. Or if pictures of the conditions the animals are raised in were posted. I've been there, and I was stunned. The photos we took are in Veggie Revolution.

What can you do?
1. Write your legislators and supermarket managers and ask for labeling on all animal products stating what the animals were fed. Demand transparency and accountability in farming, especially livestock farming. Ask your legislators and supermarket managers to stop the deceptive marketing that pervades our meat industry. (Take a look at the bucolic meadow of happy animals over the meat counter at Harris Teeter.)

2. If you consume animal products, look at farmers markets or natural food stores for products from grass-fed animals, or look for certified organic products.

3. Eat fewer animal products. Even one or two meatless meals a week helps. Americans consume on the average 248 lbs of meat per year per person, way more than citizens of any other country, including Western Europe and Australia and other industrialized nations. The average amount of meat in developing nations is 66 lbs per person per year. If we as Americans didn't eat so much meat, we could come closer to meeting the demand with grass-fed and pastured animals .

4. Ask around at a local farmers market and locate a small farm near you that uses sustainable, healthful, and humane methods to raise livestock and produce animal products. In NC, you can find dozens of such farms in the annual "Food Guide" available for free from the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (google for contact info). Visit one of these sustainable farms, and talk to the farmer about how his or her methods differ from the standard corporate methods on factory farms. You'll be moved - I guarantee it.

5. Support and get involved with activist groups such as the Grace Factory Farming Project or the Waterkeeper Alliance that are working hard to hold meat corporations accountable for their abuses to our environment, non-unionized laborers, and captive animals. Or better yet, find a group that's active in your own community.

Keywords:: melamine contaminated pet food tainted pet food feedlots mad cow slaugherhouse waste scraps livestock feed sustainable farming

Beware the justice of nature, says Wendell Berry

The words below from Wendell Berry inspire me. Wendell is the author of The Unsettling of America and many other books, and a guru of local food, ethical farming, and community. This passage was printed in the bulletin of a Charlotte church as part of their Earth Day celebration. A group of about 10 from the church flew out to Kentucky last month and met with Wendell for a couple of hours in his home, to hear his thoughts on environmental activism and local food. I wasn't in the group, but a couple of my friends were and they told me about the conversation. Wendell observed that environmental activism might be best practiced as a half-time job, to keep some sense of balance and well-being. He advised the visitors to spend some time every day doing something that brings "glee." To him, that might mean watching a nesting bird feed its young, or lying in the grass beside a pond enjoying the sights and sounds of the pond wildlife.

Here's what the church bulletin reprinted:

"And so, graduates, my advice to you is simply my hope for us all:
Beware the justice of Nature.
Understand that no amount of education can overcome the innate limits of human intelligence and responsibility. We are not smart enough or conscious enough or alert enough to work responsibly on a gigantic scale....
Learn, therefore, to prefer small-scale elegance and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and glamour.
Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made.
Put the interest of the community first.
Love your neighbors - not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have.
As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighborhood, and household - which thrive by care and generosity - and independent of the inudstrial economy, which thrives by damage.
Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well."

Wendell Berry, "The Futility of Global Thinking"

Keywords:: Wendell Berry community neighbors local food right living

Dolphins learn tool use from their moms

Dolphin with sponge to protect sensitive snoot while foraging

Not too long ago, scientists used to believe that "tool use" was one of the characteristics that set humans apart from all other animals.

We now know that animals do use tools. The list of species observed not only using tools, but making tools, continues to grow.

Chimpanzees were the first species observed with tools - Jane Goodall saw chimps using sticks to extract edible termites from underground tunnels. More recently, chimps have been observed making and using spears on other prey.

Bird species also make tools to forage. A warbler species on the Galapagos uses thorns to probe under bark, and scrub jays make and use hooks to retrieve edible items - to name a couple of examples.

Marine biologists have also documented bottlenose dolphins using tools. Scientists say that dolphins in Australia's Shark Bay wear marine sponges on their beaks like a glove, to protect their sensitive beaks when foraging along rugged ocean bottoms. Poking around in deep water carries the risk of stings from bottom dwellers.

(Sponges are animals on the ocean floor whose skeletons are flexible and absorbent.)

The boater who first saw a sponge on a dolphin thought it was a tumor. But the tumor turned out to be a sponge.

As marine biologists have studied the tool use, they've discovered something even more interesting. Only the dolphins in the Shark Bay location use the sponges, and only a fraction of the dolphins in that bay use them. The scientists have studied the family relationships of the dolphins in the bay and have now determined that the spongers belong almost exclusively to a single maternal lineage. The sponge behavior is being transmitted from mothers to offspring.

But... the sponging doesn't follow any of the patterns that would be expected if it were genetically based.

The scientists have concluded that the spongers are learning the behavior from their mothers - the only interpretation that fits the observed family relationships of the spongers. Whether the spongers are learning from observing their mothers, or are being intentionally instructed by their mother remains to be seen.

This is not the first example of what is known as "cultural transmission" of behaviors in animals - behaviors transmitted to other individuals by way of observation or instruction. At least one population of macaque monkeys regularly wash their grains in pools of water, and that behavior is known to be culturally transmitted, for these particular monkeys.

Macaque washing food
photo courtesy of www.animalplanet.com.au

What more will we learn in future years about the traits we share with our animal relatives?

These discoveries are, for me, all the more reason to do whatever we can to stop the environmental degradation that threatens wildlife species worldwide.

See my previous post for three things you can do to slow habitat loss from global warming.

Source:
Susan Milius. "Sponge moms: dolphins learn tool use from their mothers." Science News, June 11, 2005

Keywords :: bottlenose dolphins marine biology tool use cultural inheritance cultural transmission animal intelligence animal behavior macaques