Entries Tagged as 'Environment'
Resort companies like Rock Resorts are implementing green initiatives (on-mountain recycling programs, solar-powered trash compactors, composting programs etc.) at their properties to reduce their carbon footprint, save on operating costs, and hopefully attract a new demographic of eco-friendly guests.
“‘We’ve seen a natural progression of the customer experience at our properties as more travelers are willing to help and commit to eco-friendly practices,’ Paul Toner, COO of RockResorts, told Travel Agent. ‘The majority are leisure travelers who want to feel they can give something back, and we want to provide such opportunities to them,’” reports Kirk Cassels of Travel Agent Central.
Board Shaper
Entrepreneurs and surfboard shapers Joey Santley and Steve Cox of San Clemente, Ca. of start-up Green Foam Blanks and Ned McMahon of San Diego’s Malma Composites (soy-based surfboard blanks), are trying to change the toxic manufacturing history of the surfboard industry by creating blanks that are 60 to 65 percent recycled waste.
“A broken board tossed in a landfill will take generations to biodegrade; the plastic fins probably never will. Even the thin strip of wood that runs down the middle to provide strength comes at an environmental cost…” writes Mike Anton of The Los Angeles Times.
In an interview with Reuters, writer, angler, and scientist Anders Halverson talks about his new book An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World, continuing to find time to fish, and the unintended consequences of non-native species introduction:
“I’m sure there are many effects that we have no idea about right now … there are effects even on the finches and bats nearby because the rainbow vacuum up all the larvae. Then there’s no hatch of flies for the bats or the finches. So it ripples out to the terrestrial system as well.”
Stephanie Simon in The Wall Street Journal explores the recent angst between Colorado rafters and fisherman: fisher folk hoping to bar passage of local rafting companies through private stretches of river; rafting companies, on the other hand, feeling it’s their right to float public waterways (through private property) without being sued for civil trespass.
“This may sound like an obscure dispute. But it has been a thorny issue in Colorado for a century—in keeping with an aphorism, often attributed to Mark Twain, that out West, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.”
Lead by marine researcher Dr. Bryan Wallace, a recent synthesis of global oceanic “bycatch” data has indicated that three types of commercial fishing gear–long-lines, gillnets and trawls–are severely impacting populations and survival of sea turtles once they’re ensnared.
“The researchers suggest that several areas of the world account for particularly high levels of bycatch – the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean for all types of gear, together with trawling operations off the west coast of Africa,” reports Richard Black of the BBC News.
“‘Because the reports we reviewed typically covered less than 1% of all fleets, with little or no information from small-scale fisheries around the world, we conservatively estimate that the true total is probably not in tens of thousands, but in the millions of turtles taken as bycatch in the past two decades,’ said Dr. Wallace.”
Leora Broydo Vestel of Green Inc. (The New York Times) interviews U.S. Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, who recently made a stir by announcing that “bicycling and walking should be given the same consideration as motorized transport in state and local transit projects.”
LaHood responds to charges that he’s “delusional” and articulates the current American “sea change” towards “livable and sustainable communities”.
“[W]hat Americans want is to get out of their cars, and get out of congestion, and have opportunities for more transit, more light rail, more buses, and some communities are going to street cars. But many communities want the opportunity on the weekends and during the week to have the chance to bike to work, to bike to the store, to spend time with their family on a bike.
Promising it will save 176 trees and eliminate 74,826 gallons of wastewater, Patagonia just launched their first-ever “e-catalog,” the 2010 Patagonia fly fishing product guide.
Casey Sheahan, Patagonia’s angling CEO: “The fishing market is the right place to launch an e-Catalog. Anglers are online, engaged, and we’re hoping they will help us get the word out on their own Facebook and Twitter pages,” continues Sheahan. “Anglers have turned to the internet to review water conditions, hatches, plan trips, research product news, blog, and more, making them the perfect customer for an online, interactive e-Catalog that feels more like a magazine or multi-media site.”
More eco-friendly marketing speak from the The Cleanest Line: “…[W]hile folks have long been aware of the impact catalog production has on trees, it’s only recently that attention’s been turned to additional impacts in the form of energy consumption, greenhouse gases, solid wastes produced, and water consumed. Together, our only-online Surf and Fly Fishing catalogs have prevented close to 3 million gallons of waste water from entering our waterways.”
Led by stiff Japanese lobbying, last week the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species “rejected a proposal by Monaco and the United States to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, which is spiraling toward extinction.”
“Stocks of Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin dropped by more than 70 percent between 1957 and 2007, and by more than 60 percent in the last decade alone. But numbers like these are never really persuasive when commercial interests stand to lose, whether talking about tuna or sharks or salmon.” Opinion from The New York Times.
It strikes a thinking person as a bit like forecasting a ban on baseball, apple pie, and daytime naps, but a couple of days ago ESPN.com published a story that claimed the Obama administration would soon ban all fishing, commercial and recreational.
The story resulted in a variety of rants, defenses, objections and free-wheeling analyses, and in the ensuing melee, it appears to me that ESPN changed the headline on their story–written by Robert Montgomery, a Senior Writer for BASS Publications–from “Obama Will Ban Fishing” (if memory serves) to “Culled Out.”
“ESPN outdoors editor Steve Bowman issued an apology yesterday afternoon, saying the article should have been clearly identified as commentary, not news, and should have had more balance. The Web site has since altered the article and added a header identifying it as an opinion piece,” reports Allison Winter of The New York Times.
Great White Shark
Marine ecologists, like Michael Domeier of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, have been tracking the recent migrations of great white sharks near Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, and believe the creatures may be much more “migratory” than “coastal”–often tracking food sources like giant squid for great distances.
The recent research is altering many long-held beliefs about the feeding patterns and food items of the iconic, though greatly misunderstood, species: “The squid part is controversial. But Domeier’s work and that of other scientists increasingly suggests that great white sharks are not randomly roving eating machines,” writes Jill Leovy of The Las Angeles Times.
“Instead, they obey set migration patterns, have distinct populations and return to the same locales. They are not desperadoes but dutiful migrants: Nomads but not outlaws, they yearn for home.”
