April 22nd, 2010

Lemurs, a threatened species (Photo: Orsoman/Dreamstime)

They are slipping through our fingers. Our tenuous hold on the Earth’s threatened animals, plants and fish, rivers and oceans, forests and ice caps is not strong enough. It’s not for lack of trying — environmental and eco-conscious groups are in a constant scramble to slow the lengthening list of losses.

Every year, more than 2 million acres of Amazon rainforest – called “the lungs of our planet” for its massive daily recycling of carbon dioxide into oxygen – is lost to logging, agriculture, roads and more.

At last count, out of 44,837 known species of living creatures on Earth, nearly 40 percent are threatened and 804 are extinct.

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April 7th, 2010

Those tomatoes are looking good. Your compost is top-notch, you’ve added extra manure for a nitrogen boost and the aphids have been blasted away with a strong spray of water. The grass-clipping mulch has smothered any weeds, and there are no spotted leaves or blossom-end rot to be seen.

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