Tag archives for wetlands
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By Mark J. Spalding, President, The Ocean Foundation One recent Monday, I got to spend the day doing something outside, not in a conference room, not in my office, just out in one of North America’s great natural wonders. My day began at 7, when the executive director of the Mobile Botanical Gardens, Bill…
Once a Smelly Nuisance, Mexicali’s Wastewater Now Brings Life to the Colorado Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 9, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. If there is one place that transforms wastewater from trouble-maker to life-saver it’s the site of Las Arenitas sewage treatment plant in the Mexican state of Baja California. There, nasty urban wastewater that once made a smelly health hazard of the New River near…
The Accidental Wetland in the Colorado Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 2, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Traveling south from the Mexican border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, we stop about 20 miles (32.2 km) from the Upper Gulf of California. It feels like the middle of nowhere. We’re surrounded by vast stretches of cracked, dried-out mudflats layered with…
The Treasures of Tursujuq: one of North America’s largest national parks
Posted by Jeff Wells on February 22, 2013 With little fanfare, the Inuit people of Nunavik in northern Quebec, the Grand Council of the Cree, and the Government of Quebec announced the creation of Tursujuq National Park—a 6.5 million acre protected area along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. Not only is this remarkable for its size—it’s the largest protected area in eastern North America and one of the top 10 largest parks on the continent—but perhaps even more incredible is that the park is several million acres larger than it had been expected to be a few years ago.
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In case you weren’t aware, every February 2 is not just Groundhog Day. It is also World Wetlands Day. From the official website of World Wetlands Day: This day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the…
Third Day in the Field, First Crash
Posted by Octavio Aburto of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Explorers Journal on February 1, 2013 Third day, first crash from Octavio Aburto on Vimeo.
Third day into the expedition, the team took their quadcopter for an unintentional bumpy ride-and caught it all on tap.
The Last Untamed Mexican River
Posted by Octavio Aburto of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Explorers Journal on January 25, 2013 San Pedro Mezquital from Jaime Rojo on Vimeo.
An incredible journey to preserve the last untamed Mexican River: the San Pedro Mezquital.
Posted by I had an opportunity to visit Cuba in May 2012 under a licensed program with the Vermont Caribbean Institute. This article is a follow-up effort to learn and engage with other environmental researchers yearning for more cooperation between the United States and Cuba. I have not dealt with the political aspects of the conflict between…
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Your celebration this season is, in part, brought to you by southern Florida, where almost 50 percent of the nation’s sugarcane crop comes from.
Mississippi Floods Can Be Restrained With Natural Defenses
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 3, 2011 
As the Mississippi River threatens to deliver devastating floods (again), it’s time to enlist wetlands to reduce future flood risks.
Posted by By Jordan Schaul Bree Barney loves her job, she really does! The small mammal keeper, like many, has a few miscellaneous reptiles and amphibians on her string. She boasts about getting to hold sloths and feeding Galapagos tortoises, but is most proud of the Como Park Zoo and Conservancy‘s participation in their first-ever conservation project…
Alaotra grebe (Tachybaptus rufolavatus) is extinct, BirdLife International has announced in the 2010 IUCN Red List update for birds. “Restricted to a tiny area of east Madagascar, this species declined rapidly after carnivorous fish were introduced to the lakes in which it lived. This, along with the use of nylon gill-nets by fisherman which caught…
Cameroon is about to recognize its portion of Lake Chad as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, the Switzerland-based conservation charity WWF said today. WWF, which partnered with the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the Ramsar Convention and the Global Environment Facility on projects in Lake Chad and with the governments on achieving…
Iraq’s southern marshlands, home of the Marsh Arab people, were once famous for their quiet waterways, wooden boats, reed homes, diversity of fish and flocks of migratory birds. Many biblical scholars believe the marshlands could be the site of the Garden of Eden. “In 1991, shortly after the first Persian Gulf war ended, Saddam Hussein’s government, angered by Marsh Arab…
