Researchers studying feces of wild Japanese white-eye birds had noticed a surprising number of intact snail shells, especially of Tornatellides boeningi. This 0.1-inch (0.25-centimeter) snail is common to Hahajima Island (see map), about 620 miles (a thousand kilometers) south of Tokyo.

So Shinichiro Wada, a graduate student at Tohoku University in Japan, and colleagues fed more than a hundred snails to captive white-eyes and 55 to captive brown-eared bulbuls, another bird known to eat T. boeningi.

(And then?)

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Island-dwellers have a good reason to be renewable power pioneers: The waters that lap their beaches isolate them from the pipelines and grids that deliver cheaper electricity on the mainland. As a result, islands around the globe typically rely on expensive, polluting diesel oil for electricity.

Dependence on tanker deliveries of oil for lighting and air-conditioning means that islands are uniquely vulnerable to spikes in the global price of oil. So from the Caribbean Sea to the South Pacific, islands are seeking new ways of capturing energy from the same native resources that draw so many people to their shores each year—sun, sea, breeze, and stunning (often volcanic) terrain.

A case in point: the U.S. Virgin Islands, where electricity prices jumped to 54 cents per kilowatt-hour, quadruple the national average, when oil prices spiked to $140 a barrel in 2008. “These are not rich communities,” says Adam Warren, group manager for the deployment group of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). “It really put people in a bind. I think [island leaders] know if oil goes back up to $140 a barrel and they haven’t done anything, they’ll be held responsible.”

Read the rest at National Geographic News

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Flywheels and compressed air don’t sound as sexy as wind turbines and solar cells, but the latter probably won’t go mainstream without the former.

“The growth of renewables has posed a problem,” said Imre Gyuk, program manager for energy storage research at the United States Department of Energy (DOE). “It used to be that the load [demand on the electric grid] was unpredictable, and generation would try to follow it.” As wind and solar installations proliferate, supply also has become unpredictable.

For electric grid operators, “Now it is a balancing act,” Gyuk said during the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Because wind power is generated only when the wind blows, and solar energy isn’t collected on a cloudy day, technologies that can store extra power when it’s not being used and mete it out when needed are becoming increasingly important.

“For this balancing act, storage is ideal,” Gyuk said.

Read the rest at NationalGeographic.com

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Oil company Enbridge plans to link the oil sands of Athabasca, in central Alberta, to the port town of Kitimat in British Columbia, with a new pipeline that would carry 525,000 barrels of oil to the coast per day.

There’s just one problem: the pipeline would pass through watersheds important to Canada’s commercial fishing industry and brush past Coastal First Nations lands and the Great Bear Rainforest, a protected coastal area filled with red cedars, spruce, and the elusive all-white “spirit bear.”

While the Northern Gateway pipeline itself wouldn’t pass through the 4.4-million-acre (1.8-million-hectare) Great Bear Rainforest, activists say it’s a little too close for comfort.

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Urban foraging–gathering fruit, vegetables, and other useful things from parks, lawns, and sidewalks–isn’t a new thing. But as more urbanites become aware of the free bounty surrounding them, new issues are–pardon the pun–cropping up. When a public park’s berry patch is raided, whose responsibility is it to make sure there are some left for everyone to enjoy? What about pesticides?

The Institute for Culture and Ecology has been studying urban foragers since 2008 to understand how foraging fits into a city’s ecosystem. The latest project, studying foragers in Seattle, kicked off in early 2010 with partial funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Since then, researcher Melissa Poe and her team have interviewed 35 foragers.

Read the rest at Nat Geo Green Guide to learn about Poe’s findings.

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If you live in a city, you might have a window box or a pot of tomatoes on your balcony. You might even be lucky enough to have a small backyard garden. But do you compost?

Probably not: composting in a small space is tough, not to mention smelly. You could get a worm bin or a bokashi system, but the truth is: for city dwellers, composting is more often an ideal than a reality.

Enter Compost Cab, a soon-to-launch concept for city-dwellers in Washington, D.C. For $8 a week, Compost Cab provides you with a trash bin which you fill with organic waste. Then the company picks it up each week and trucks it to a nearby urban farm, which turns your banana peels and coffee grounds into soil.
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Nearly four million gallons of oil have already spewed into the Gulf since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank last month.

Amid efforts to cap the seafloor leak, cleanup workers have been using boat-based skimmers to pick up the oil, booms to gather the slick for burning, and chemical dispersants to break the crude into smaller droplets—all parts of the oil-fighting toolkit for decades.

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MARY PFAFFKO was on her way back from the gym, walking down Connecticut Avenue, and there it was. A wood thrush, common in the East but rarely seen outside deeply wooded areas. But there it was, right on the street. The only problem was that it was dead.

In her role as president of the D.C. chapter of the National Audubon Society, Pfaffko, 30, takes field trips to more remote areas (Great Falls, Va.; Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Va.) to get her wildlife fix. If you’re a condo-dweller hoping to go beyond pointing binoculars at Rock Creek Park or on the Mall and actually attract feathered friends to your balcony, this news may come as a bit of a disappointment. But with a little work, it’s very possible to bring nature to your high-rise castle.

First, don’t buy into the stereotypes about bird-watchers. You can enjoy the pastime without it taking over your life. “I’m not one of those people who lives and breathes birding,” insists Dave Davis, 63, a former EPA water quality management employee, who lives in a townhouse-style condo in Arlington. “I have a life.” And so, too, can you, if you start small and manageable.

One feeder should be more than enough to get started, especially considering the unique challenges of a small space in an urban environment. Cramped quarters mean you don’t have room for too many gewgaws, and if you’ve never tried balcony birding, you’ll want to figure out whether your neighborhood is home to cute wrens, pretty hummingbirds or just pigeons.

Speaking of pigeons, they’re not the only feathered friends you can make in D.C. In May, for example, more than 36 species of warbler (small, perching songbirds) passed through the city on their annual migration. More than 300 species of birds make their homes in or wing through Washington and its environs.

Yet even when condos overlook Rock Creek Park or have wide, green common areas, cheepers and tweeters sometimes need a little encouragement to visit.

Enter the pros. Both the Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation are interested in nurturing nature in the city, one backyard or balcony at a time. Each organization offers a do-it-yourself program that’ll teach you how to make your space more critter-friendly. And anyone with an interest can apply for official recognition (and a nice certificate) from the groups for their efforts.

Audubon asks that hopefuls pledge to reduce pesticide use and conserve water, among other things; the NWF has a six-step plan requiring nature lovers to provide food, water, shelter, and so on. You can even play from a high-rise: “The way to [bird-watch] on a balcony is to have plants double” their function, explains Roxane Paul of the NWF. This means putting out a potted bush or a tree to provide food and act as a nesting site, for example. It might also mean planting flowers to feed shelter birds.

The programs are basically self-serve and operate on the honor system; just log on to the Web sites (Nwf.org/backyard/certify.cfm and Audobonathome.org/pledge), read the instructions, make any necessary changes to your balcony, and sign on the dotted line. Audubon’s program is free. The NWF costs $15, but you’ll get a certificate for your troubles, plus bragging rights.

The NWF program — “Certified Wildlife Habitats” — isn’t restricted to individuals, either. Jim Hurley, a resident of The Arlington, got the entire condo complex certified as a nature hot spot after he single-handedly cleaned up a “trashy area” behind his condo and planted bird-friendly shrubs. He reports seeing robins, gray catbirds and a Swainson’s thrush in the new habitat.

Hurley estimates his four-year project has cost him more than $3,000. He’s solicited help from The Arlington’s association, but they “basically don’t care,” he says. “The condo association has provided no support for the project.”

Therein lies the problem for many condo owners. Lack of attention to nature projects from an association is usually the best a bird lover can hope for. Many associations prohibit hanging anything — i.e. feeders or birdhouses — from balconies. Some go further. “We don’t have any formal rule regarding bird feeders,” says Shirlington Village’s owner’s association president, Ray Warren. But “we strongly discourage them. We are already plagued by droppings from the gulls who feast on the trash receptacles associated with the many restaurants in the village. I am sure that bird feeders would exacerbate the problem.” (Warren adds: “We [Shirlington Village] are a very nature-loving group.”)

Still, Warren has a point: Tubes of seeds hung close to the ground can attract rodents, and even if they’re higher up, you may not attractthe kinds of birds you want.

“European starlings are tough,” says Charles Studholme, owner of One Good Tern (1710 Fern St., Alexandria; 703-820-8376), a store for nature lovers in Alexandria. “They can eat everything, and will.” Starlings, a non-native breed widely considered pests, have grown to a population of 200 million in North America from a single flock released a century ago by a mad scientist of sorts in Central Park. (Rumor has it that Eugene Schieffelin, a member of the Acclimation Society of North America, wanted to bring to America every species of bird mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.)

Starlings “are adaptable and competitive and will out-compete the species you’re trying to get,” says Pfaffko. “They destroy habitat and jeopardize the food supply.”

What to do if you’ve got flocks of undesirable creatures pestering you, a la Alfred Hitchcock’s “Birds”? Simple (and free) solutions include “banging on the window,” Hurley says, but a special feeder can also deter the pesky birds. Starlings “aren’t very acrobatic,” says Studholme, “so if you have [a feeder] where they have to cling to the side” the pesky birds will vanish.

As for repelling mice and squirrels, Studholme suggests using a seed mixture of pre-shelled sunflower, peanut or cracked corn.

The rule really is to keep it simple. “Don’t go out there and put up a whole bunch of stuff,” Studholme says. “If you put up a bird feeder, you have to keep it clean. You wash your silverware once in a while, don’t you?”

Read it on Readexpress.com

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To get what you really want, log online. For only the cost of shipping, you can trade video games, books, music and even clothing with people all over the world. Instead of having to barter directly with one person — where a successful trade depends on you having exactly what they’re looking for — most online swap sites give you points which can be redeemed for other items down the road. With no fees or commissions to pay, swapping may be the most economical way to breathe new life into your old stuff. And it goes without saying that trading is earth-friendly too: let’s keep the stuff we’ve got circulating instead of investing in something new.

Read the rest at Common Ground

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