Environmental
Reports for OKALOOSA COUNTY 
Earth
View - A fascinating, real-time look at our
home from above...
November 20, 2000 -
Wave
Power Stations - As the climate change
conference continues in The Hague, it is perhaps fitting
that the world's first commercial wave power station is
going into action in Scotland. The power station, on the
island of Islay, is the product of years of research into
how to effectively harvest energy from the world's oceans...
November 15, 2000 - Change comes to Yosemite Park -
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) - On most summer
days, the Yosemite Valley is cluttered with traffic as
passengers gaze at climbers on the granite walls of El
Capitan or park along the road so they can slip into the
cool, green pools of the Merced River. If the National
Park Service gets its way, that traffic will be cut in
half over the next decade. Some 180 acres will be
restored and roads, parking spaces, campsites and
employee housing will be removed. The park service's
preferred plan for the valley - there are several
options, all subject to revision before implementation -
will be unveiled Tuesday by Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt. It is a watershed plan for a park that
developers and environmentalists have battled over for
decades. Carrying a $343 million price tag, it calls for
some construction, but largely proposes to return much
of the valley to a more natural state.
November 01, 2000
- Reaping
What You Sow - Mapping the Urbanization
of Farmland using Satellites and City Lights.
"When most animals in the wild multiply to the point
where they require more food than is available in their
habitat, they eat what they can and then starve in droves.
From dinosaurs to present-day deer populations, this basic
rule of nature has held fast for nearly every animal
species with one notable exception—us..."
November 15, 2000
- Lighting
Up the Ecosphere - "Using satellite images of city
lights at night, NASA scientists are mapping the
spread of urban areas around the globe and monitoring
their impact on our planet's ecosystem.."
November
17, 2000 - Gov't
unleashes cannibal flies - WASHINGTON (AP) - The South's
newest weapon against the dreaded fire ant sounds like
something out of a sci-fi thriller: An insect whose larvae
eat the heads off their prey. The Agriculture Department
plans to release hundreds of thousands of tiny ant-eating
flies in the South and possibly in California, where the
fire ants have now spread. USDA says the gnat-like phorid
flies, imported from Brazil, pose no harm to anybody or
anything other than fire ants. "It is a self-sustaining
biocontrol," said Richard Brenner, who leads a USDA
research team in Florida. Releasing flies at 12 sites per
state could blanket the region within five years, he said.
The flies don't kill enough of the ants to destroy colonies,
but they cause enough panic to keep the ants in check,
Brenner said. The ants, which have an innate fear of the
flies, stop foraging and flee when they spot them, giving
native ants a chance to move back into the territory. Fire
ants can make life miserable for homeowners and gardeners
and cause billions of dollars in damage every year to air
conditioners, electrical equipment and farms, experts say.
The ants can blind and even kill livestock and wildlife, and
their sting is occasionally fatal to humans. The project
will cost USDA about $100,000.
November
17, 2000 - Update: Inuit say
world getting warmer - WASHINGTON (AP) - While
governments and scientists still debate climate change,
Inuit tribal members on Banks Island in the far northern
Canadian Arctic are already convinced the world is getting
warmer. The evidence is in the land and ice that surrounds
them, they say: The permafrost is thawing, there are fewer
seals and polar bears to hunt because of thinning sea-ice,
and warmer weather has brought more mosquitoes that stay
longer. In the fall, it's freezing up later and later every
year. "We can't read the weather like we used to,"
said Rosemarie Kuptana, an activist among the 130 Inuit
people who live in Sachs Harbor, the only community on the
island that covers 28,000 square miles in northwestern
Canada. It is a land where temperatures can occasionally
plummet to 50 degrees below zero on winter nights, but
Kuptana and her neighbors - trappers, hunters and
subsistence fishermen - are convinced a warming trend is
changing their lives. The Inuits' experiences - recorded in
interviews by researchers during four visits to the island
last year - are the focus of a study being presented this
week at a climate conference in the Netherlands.
Archive
of Environmental News - November
2000