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Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
Genaro C. Armas, Associate Press via ABC News
A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.
Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.
Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers who often keep thousands of colonies have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.
“We have seen a lot of things happen in 40 years, but this is the epitome of it all,” Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg-based Hackenberg Apiaries, said by phone from Fort Meade, Fla., where he was working with his bees.
(11 Feb 2007)
Discussion at The Oil Drum.
Dangerous fungus thrives on Canada’s West Coast
Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail
A tropical and potentially lethal fungus that has mysteriously made a home on Canada’s temperate West Coast has prompted foreign medical experts to issue a worldwide alert to doctors and tourists.
The warning comes after a 51-year-old Danish visitor contracted the rare and life-threatening fungal infection on Vancouver Island. In the January issue of the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, published monthly by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors in Denmark – who eventually found clumps of the fungus growing in the man’s chest – have cited the island as a potential health risk to travellers.
Cryptococcus gattii, a microscopic pathogen normally found in tropical or subtropical locales in Australia, Africa, India or South America – was first identified on Vancouver Island in 2001. Many suspect that global warming has recently enabled the one-celled organism to thrive in the trees, soil, water and air along the island’s east coast.
(10 Feb 2007)
Sidebar story from the Globe and Mail (“An island of natural airborne killers”):
Still, no one can say exactly where the Vancouver Island fungus came from, or how. But what they do say is that climate change likely plays a lead role in the C. gattii story – that a string of mild, wet winters and warm, dry summers set the stage for its disturbing debut.
“People talk about climate change issues in regard to air quality, but we are seeing the emergence of fatal diseases in places we didn’t see them before,” said Pamela Kibsey, medical director of microbiology at the Vancouver Island Health Authority. “It’s the best explanation we have as to why this fungus has suddenly become endemic on the island.”
The Reality Report: The Importance of Water (Audio)
Jason Bradford, Global Public Media
This week’s guest on the Reality Report is Dr. Peter Gleick, President and co-founder of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, based in Oakland, CA. The show discusses how water is intricately connected to energy, climate and social systems, how changes in one part ripple through others.
(15 Jan 2007)
Plan Colombia Aerial Herbicide Spraying Not Proven Safe for the Environment
Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense
In December, the Colombian government violated a bilateral accord with Ecuador by spraying a mixture of herbicides intended to destroy coca crops within 10 kilometers of the Ecuadorian border. To justify the spraying, Colombia relied on studies by a team from the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) of the Organization of American States (OAS), claiming that the spray mixture is safe. However, an independent review of CICAD’s recent studies, released to members of the U.S. Congress today, shows that the pesticide mixture being sprayed has not, in fact, been proven safe for the environment, and that Ecuador has substantial cause to oppose the spraying. ..
Preliminary results from the follow-up studies, released in August 2006, show that the mixture is indeed potentially harmful to the environment, and particularly to amphibians — the spray mixture killed 50 percent of the amphibians exposed in less than 96 hours.
(14 Feb 2007)
Given the duration and scale of herbicide spraying under the US funded Plan Columbia (1,365 sq km in 2004), and rumours that Afghanistan will soon receive the same treatment, its incredible that such toxicity can be ignored. Start here or here if thinking this is just another ‘duck-squeezer’ panic attack.-LJ
