From Green Right Now Reports
For decades, relief work in Africa has fought a deadly disease with an environmentally deadly chemical, spraying with DDT to quell malarial outbreaks, even though world health agencies know that DDT has a devastating effect on the environment, killing wildlife and contaminating water supplies.
Today, the UN Agencies announced they will try to move 40 countries in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia, away from reliance on the persistent, toxic chemical by using other methods to fight mosquito-born malaria, which infects more than 250 million people a year, claiming 880,000 lives annually.
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Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count in full flight
By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now
Geoff LeBaron gets paid to count birds, among other things. And this is an especially busy time of year for him and all bird watchers. From Dec. 14 through Jan. 5 the National Audubon Society conducts its annual Christmas Bird Count. LeBaron has served as its director since 1987.
“It’s neat to be able to work for the National Audubon Society in this [endeavor] that brings birding and ornithology together,” LeBaron says, explaining that ornithologists like himself are trained scientists who study what birds do, while birders are folks, also like himself, who are captivated by watching birds. Not all ornithologists, he points out, enjoy birdwatching as a pastime.
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Tags: · Audubon Society, Christmas Bird Count, DDT, endangered wildlife, pesticides