Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 24 2008 | By: Martin

Hi all,

We are now struggling with pushing on with the implimentation of the outcomes of the just convened meeting of the Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force at Wildlife Direct, Nairobi, Kenya . We still hope Richard Leakey’s call for ban of carbofuran will yield a reasonable response from the government. Meanwhile we are trying to make headways with a review of all that concerns carbofuran which is essentially our mission. Hopefully, we will garner enough of more of the necessary evidence (of course in addition to what we already have) against carbofuran to get everybody’s attention and only justifiably lay to rest the chemical that clearly is dangerously outliving its time. I say enough of more necessary evidence because we hope it will not be deemed insufficient. I just do not know when the evidence will be sufficient to the local and international custodians of this chemical and many others. What it means is that the chemical continues to act out there both in its good ways (limited since even proper use is harmful; EPA will agree with me) and limitless lethal toxic ways. I hope when the information is enough, our wildlife populations will still stand at handsome figures though. I hope this will not be when almost, if not every organism, including humans, when tested they will positively have carbofuran in their systems (A sad case for Alaska where pollutants are just in almost every living thing which is what I have stumbled on, thinking that I would read something far from toxic chemicals).

The wild supply and haphazard distribution of the pesticide Carbofuran will therefore continue facilitating poisoning of wildlife, birds, fish and who knows even of human poisoning whose facts lie locked in the confines of lack of data and documentation. Such is the desperate need of heed at which we stand.

After ‘a break’ from head aching matters of carbofuran, today I ventured into the current affairs of the fate of our planet and read of the goings on in the U.S.

Based on a conference held in July 17-20 the15th Protecting Mother Earth conference - organized by Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) where there were more than 600 attendants, mostly from indigenous nations of the United States and Canada, but also from as far as Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, and Europe Came together. Generally, they talked of global problems, challenges and solutions. They discussed energy and climate change as it affects indigenous peoples. Stories were told of health damage and ecological destruction brought about by oil refineries, coal power plants, gold mining, and nuclear military activity.

I think the whole issue of energy and climate change just infers global warming. Indeed this is documented of the conference of Minnesota’s new proposed 1600-mile oil pipeline extension which opponents say would contribute significantly to global warming for the way oil is extracted from the tar sands, which is extremely energy intensive. Tar sand oil extraction requires stripping all the trees and vegetation, scooping up and steaming the sands. Potential oil spills on Minnesota’s wetlands is also a concern. IEN states that very few of these projects are assessed for their social and cultural costs or their cumulative environmental and health impacts, which would cause fragmentation of the boreal forest, disruption to indigenous cultural life-ways and production of greenhouse gases.

Here we go again, global warming directly linked to a toxin-highly acknowledged energetic fluid-oil- which will intoxicate wildlife, fish, birds and humans during its extraction, distribution and use for man’s energy requirements.

Shawna Larson, Ahtna Athabascan and Supiaq, Aleut/Eskimo from Alaska, working with the Alaska Community Action on Toxics said that heavy metals and highly toxic persistent organic pollutants, such as DDT, PCBs, and dioxins, some already banned and rarely used in the Arctic are found in very high levels in native people and wildlife in Alaska. These pollutants used somewhere else are transported by wind, water currents and migratory species and concentrate in large quantities in the Artic. Alaskan indigenous people according to their cultural traditions feed on local fish and wildlife, which are considered to be the most contaminated in the world.

At this point, I think we should refresh our minds on the contaminants of Alaska.

For the whole story, read Talking about the future of Mother Earth.

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Tags: Alaska, Canada, carbofuran, DDT, EPA, global warming, Indigenous Environmental Network, Kenya, PCB, Protecting Mother Earth, Richard Leakey, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force, United States, Widlife Direct

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