Month: Jul 2023

from thefreeonline on 25/07/2023 by Dr Bob Rich at Bobbing Around

Never mind brain size and complexity, insects are people, too. They feel pain, learn from experience, can demonstrate purpose…You may have read my essay about Killing Animals. If not, now is your chance to catch up.

Comment: Insects are vanishing worldwide due to toxic pollution, urbanization, etc. Flies try to escape coz those that do continue the genes of ability to escape.. not because they are darling little people. Compassion YES, but better find out which insects are endangered, and not just throw out some rare pollinator moth or spider on the city street! Restoring a rare habitat to protect an unlikely ecological hero: moths ..

Rare Moth Numbers Tumble –

While I lived at Moora Moora, with cows in the paddocks, I encountered blowflies every summer, though they are far more rare than they were 20 years ago. I used to kill them, then at a certain stage, I couldn’t anymore, because of observing their response to attacks. The little person sits there, looking, waiting for you to commit to a strike with the rolled-up newspaper.

At just the right time, the fly skitters sideways, so the strike misses. It buzzes around then settles back, giving you a challenging look. Or it will choose a location where an angle in the profile of the windowsill protects it. You strike, and the fly is still there, safe. Then it takes off to make a victory circuit around your head.

If you don’t believe me, read this article about an encounter with a cockroach by Ingrid Newkirk.

Even if they were insensate six-legged things, insects are essential for the survival of all complex life on Earth. E. O. Wilson said that if humans disappeared, every species except the domesticated ones would do better. In contrast, if ants disappeared, every ecosystem would collapse.

And yet, we are murdering them by the billions. Poison planet, night lights, climate change and urban encroachment on nature are some of the causes of the great insect decline. So, when one stumbles into your home, be kind to the little person.

Here is a list of non-fatal things you can do keep your house reasonably insect-free.

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR): Press Release | July 22, 2023 The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) unjustified commission of two separate murders yesterday that left two Palestinian civilians dead, including a child, in Nablus and Ramallah in the West Bank, as part of IOF’s extrajudicial […]

PCHR: «Extrajudicial Execution Crimes: Two Palestinian Civilians, Including Child, Shot Dead by Israeli Occupation Forces in Nablus and Ramallah»

Israeli soldiers abducted, on Sunday, six Palestinians, including a woman from the occupied Jerusalem and Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank, according to local sources. In the occupied city of Jerusalem, soldiers stormed and searched the home of a former prisoner, identified as Mamdouh Amira before abducting him. In the Jabal al-Mokabber neighborhood of […]

Israeli Forces Abduct Six Palestinians, Including a Woman, in Jerusalem, Hebron

A large army force invaded, on Monday at dawn, the Nour Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarem in the northwestern part of the occupied West Bank, local sources reported. Dozens of military vehicles, including an armored D-9 military bulldozer, stormed the camp, and cordoned off the entire area, while operating UAV reconnaissance planes overhead. The […]

Israeli Army Shoots, Injures Four Palestinians, Abducts Two, in a Brutal Attack Near Tulkarem

from thefreeonline on July 22, 2023 By Fred Pearce at YaleEnvironmen about E360.

As Africa Loses Forest, Its Small Farmers Are Bringing Back Trees

The loss of forests across Africa has long been documented. But recent studies show that small farmers from Senegal to Ethiopia to Malawi are allowing trees to regenerate on their lands, resulting in improved crop yields, productive fruit harvests, and a boost for carbon storage.

For decades, there have been reports of the deforestation of Africa. And they are true — the continent’s forests are disappearing, lost mainly to expanding agriculture, logging, and charcoal-making.

‘Africa is still colonized. All they do is invent a lot of money and lend it to doubtful ‘leaders’ in artificial ex colonies – Then cash in for ever from the CASH COW interest of the odious impossible debt. Sure your pension fund isn’t still sucking Africa dry?‘ TheFree

But the trees? Maybe not, according to new satellite data analyzed by artificial intelligence and a growing body of on-the-ground studies. This new research is finding ever more trees outside forests, many of them nurtured by farmers and sprouting on their previously treeless fields..

Across the continent — from Senegal and Niger in the west, to Ethiopia in the east, and Malawi in the south — smallholder farmers are rejecting government advice that trees should be expunged from fields because they get in the way of growing crops. Instead, they are allowing previously suppressed trees to regenerate on their land — to improve soils and crop yields; to provide harvests of fruit, fuelwood, and fodder for their livestock; and ultimately to achieve a better life for their families.

As large areas of farmland across Africa turn from brown to green, the results are also good for local economies, offering an easy and cheap way to intensify their farming and increase output, as well as benefiting biodiversity and the global climate. An acre of growing trees on farmland captures and stores up to 4 tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year, researchers say.

A study published last month found at least 29 percent of tree cover in Africa is “outside areas previously classified as forest.”

The latest published evidence of Africa’s resurgent farmland trees comes in the first ever detailed analysis of satellite images of the continent carried out at a scale that can identify individual large trees outside forests. Florian Reiner, a remote-sensing analyst at the University of Copenhagen, working with an international team of colleagues, reported in Nature Communications last month that at least 29 percent of tree cover in Africa is “outside areas previously classified as forest.” continues below…

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Vandana Shiva’s Who Really Feeds the World

‘Farmers are plant breeders and seed savers, soil conservators and soil builders, water preservers and water keepers. Farmers are food producers. While using only 30 percent of the world’s resources, small-scale farmers provide 70 percent of the planet’s food. Small-scale famers, farming families, and gardeners feed us.‘

Continue reading “Africans Planting Revolution – Small Farmers still FEED the World –”