Eco Hvar - home for ecology on Hvar Island in Croatia

Welcome to the Eco-Hvar website

Welcome to the Eco-Hvar website!

Hvar Island on the Dalmatian coast in Croatia is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It has the makings of a paradise on earth. Islanders have long boasted of the clean air and sea, the pristine natural environment and the healthy lifestyle based on a good diet and outdoor living.

*Clear sea in Hvar harbour, July 2014. Photo: Vivian Grisogono*

Tourism is the island’s main economic activity. Hvar Town established the first professional tourist organization in Europe when the Hvar Health Society (Higijeničko društvo Hvar) was founded way back in 1868 under the leadership of Bishop Juraj Duboković. The Society’s aim was to attract guests to Hvar Town who could benefit from the climate, especially the mild winter, and the clean air. These ‘health tourists’ were well looked after by all accounts, with good food and healthy activities. They provided the foundation for Hvar’s enduring successful tourist industry.

The style of tourism has changed over the years. The basis of Hvar Island’s attractions remains the same. Many people still come to visit or stay here in order to enjoy the clean air, sea and countryside. No-one is disappointed in the natural beauty of the place. There are also other attractions, including the island's rich and colourful history and cultural heritage, not to mention the good food and high quality wines.

However, the island is not perfect. Certain aspects could and should be changed. There is a surprisingly high incidence of smoking- and diet-related illnesses on the island, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and lung problems. The doctors also have to deal with thyroid and hormonal disturbances, especially in young girls, and cancers in all age groups. The indications are that islanders need a better understanding of healthy lifestyle habits, also a clearer knowledge of the downside of using chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

For animal-lovers, the treatment of animals also gives cause for concern. There is no animal rescue facility on the island, and refuges for dogs and cats are urgently needed so proper care can be provided for homeless animals.

The registered not-for-profit charity Eco Hvar was founded in 2013 to help improve conditions for people, animals and the environment. You can read details of the charity's aims in each category on these links: Environment, Health, Animals. The overall ideal aim is to create a true earthly paradise on the exquisite Island of Hvar.

Eco Hvar is pleased to co-operate with like-minded organizations, and is a member of PAN Europe, and LAG Škoji, and a supporter of Zemljane staze - Earth Trek (Facebook page), Održivi otok ('Sustainable Island') (Facebook page), Dignitea (Facebook page) and Pokret otoka ('Island Movement')..

For comprehensive research and strategies for environmental protection, we follow and strongly recommend The Nature-based Solutions Initiative, which operates from the UK University of Oxford Departments of Biology and Geography.

The Eco-Hvar website contains original articles, information, references and links in keeping with the aims of Eco Hvar. All the material on the website is copyright, including the illustrations and photographs, and may not be reproduced or published in any form except with the copyright holders' written permission. However, you are welcome to copy or print out any of the articles for personal use only. For day-by-day topics of interest in keeping with Eco Hvar's aims, you can follow us on Facebook.

Media

For the Good of All!

Better Ways

Nature Watch

Highlights

About Animals

Forum items

Notices

Poisons Beware!

Donations

Donations can be made in euros, pounds sterling, US and Australian dollars and Swiss francs. All donations, however small, are very welcome. We acknowledge donations by email if we have the donor's address. Please let us know if you require a formal paper receipt.

PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW BANK DETAILS:

ECO HVAR BANK DETAILS

OTP banka d.d. Split, Domovinskog rata 61, 21000 Split;

Poslovnica Jelsa, 21465 Jelsa.

IBAN HR7024070001100727245; BIC OTPVHR2X
Account name: ECO HVAR

Account address: Pitve 93, 21465 Jelsa, Croatia

If the payment slip has a box for 'further details' or 'further information' you should enter the Charity's OIB: 14009858487, and state 'donation' or 'donacija'.

About The Site

The site contains articles and information on topics related to health, the environment and animal welfare.

While the focus is on Hvar Island in Dalmatia, much of the information is relevant to the rest of Croatia, and some to Europe, the United States and the rest of the world.

The main language of the site is English, but articles in Croatian are being added as quickly as possible. Some of the Croatian articles are translations, some original. Book reviews are in the language of the publication being reviewed.

To see all the articles archived in each category, click on the category name which is given below the title of each article (Environment, Highlights, Notices etc).

For further relevant news items and bits of interesting information, please refer to our Facebook page.

Thanks

We are very grateful to Željka Horvat Kozulić for kindly and expertly designing the ECO HVAR logo, also to Jelena Bunčuga, Petra Mimica, Bartul Mimica, Ivana Župan, Dinka Barbić and Josip Vlainić for their generous help in translating articles into Croatian.

Special thanks are also owed to Mihael Magdić of Orion Informatika i Trgovina, Varaždin, for his excellent and patient efforts in designing the website.

Eco Environment News feeds

‘Extreme nausea’: Are EVs causing car sickness – and what can be done?

Phil Bellamy’s daughters refuse to ride in his electric car without travel sickness tablets. Are there other solutions?
It was a year in to driving his daughter to school in his new electric vehicle that Phil Bellamy discovered she dreaded the 10-minute daily ride – it made her feel sick in a way no other car did.
As the driver, Bellamy had no problems with the car but his teenage daughters struggled with sickness every time they entered the vehicle. Research has shown this is an issue – people who did not usually have motion sickness in a conventional car found that they did in EVs.
Continue reading...
‘Like walking through time’: as glaciers retreat, new worlds are being created in their wake

As Swiss glaciers melt at an ever-faster rate, new species move in and flourish, but entire ecosystems and an alpine culture can be lost
• Photographs by Nicholas JR White
From the slopes behind the village of Ernen, it is possible to see the gouge where the Fiesch glacier once tumbled towards the valley in the Bernese Alps. The curved finger of ice, rumpled like tissue, cuts between high buttresses of granite and gneiss. Now it has melted out of sight.
People here once feared the monstrous ice streams, describing them as devils, but now they dread their disappearance. Like other glaciers in the Alps and globally, the Fiesch is melting at ever-increasing rates. More than ice is lost when the giants disappear: cultures, societies and entire ecosystems are braided around the glaciers.
The Aletsch glacier viewed from Moosfluh, looking towards the Olmenhorn and Eggishorn peaks
Continue reading...
Trump-supporting billionaire prevented from filling lake on UK estate during drought

Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman acted legally, but residents complained to Southern Water
A Donald Trump-backing billionaire has been stopped from transporting water in tankers to fill a lake on his Wiltshire estate during a drought.
Southern Water has told tanker companies to cease delivering water to Stephen Schwarzman’s 2,500-acre estate after local residents filmed vehicles going day and night to its grounds.
Continue reading...
Country diary: Searching for sanctuary, we find something else entirely | Eben Muse

Drakes Broughton, Worcestershire: The scourge of rural litter is enough to bring anyone together, even a farmer and us, trying to camp for the night in his field
In deepest rural Worcestershire – unfamiliar country for a mountaineer and a Welshman – we need a place to sleep. Our hedged lane skirts a little copse, and tired eyes pick out a gap; a couple of big steps over the brambles and we’re in. We haul the bike trailer (heavy with cans and bottles, picked up over some 300 miles on England’s dirty roads) into the woods. Damien Gabet, with whom I’m here to wild camp, is on a 1,000-mile journey in the shape of a Lucozade bottle as part of an anti-litter campaign, all the while removing as many plastic bottles as he can fit in his small orange trailer.
Beyond the wood is a field where the corn has been cut: a perfect spot, hidden from view, disturbing no one. Stars start to blink awake as we make our home for the night. Suddenly, the rumble of an engine – a silver Range Rover turns the corner. A familiar weariness grip me: I’m already resigned to being moved on, to take some stick for our trespass.
Continue reading...
Wealth and power shape the climate emergency – the most important tool we have to defend ourselves is the facts | Naomi Klein

The corporate-financed backlash to calls for global climate progress has been greatly empowered by the Trump administration. It’s never been more critical to challenge the misinformation that could turn a crisis into a catastrophe
Support the Guardian’s independent, fact-based journalism today
A little over a decade ago I published a book, This Changes Everything, which explored the reality of the climate crisis as a confrontation between capitalism and the planet. For a few years after the book came out, it seemed like we might just win a breakthrough. A cascade of large and militant mobilisations pressed the case for keeping warming below 1.5C as global calls for a green new deal grew louder and louder. Countries across the world announced long-term plans to reduce emissions and to hit net-zero targets; so did some of the largest corporations on the planet.
And then … well, we all know what happened. A corporate-financed backlash on all fronts. In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, his administration took more than 140 actions to roll back environmental rules and push for greater use of fossil fuels. He signed executive orders to ease restrictions on their extraction and export, filled his cabinet with oil industry supporters, gutted federal agencies on the forefront of the climate crisis, and cancelled life-saving environmental justice projects.
Join George Monbiot and special guests on 16 September for a special climate assembly to discuss the growing and dramatic political and corporate threats to the planet. Book tickets – in person or livestream
Continue reading...
Thousands of tonnes of toxic landfill liquid added to sewage and spread on English farms

Exclusive: Leachate is tankered to treatment works where it mixes with sewage and industrial effluent
More than 750,000 tonnes of liquid from landfills are mixed with sewage at water treatment works and spread on farmland across England each year, it can be revealed.
Generated by hundreds of landfills across the country, leachate – the liquid that drains through landfill waste carrying a cocktail of chemicals – is regularly tankered to sewage treatment works, where it mixes with domestic sewage and industrial effluent to create sludge, also described as “biosolids”.
Continue reading...
Community groups warn against push to ‘rip up’ UK nuclear industry rules

Joint response by 25 bodies says proposals to speed up approval of new power plants weaken protection for public
A coalition of civil society groups is warning of the dangers of cutting safety regulations as the government pushes to “rip up the rules” to accelerate the construction of new nuclear power stations.
The 25 groups from communities neighbouring nuclear sites have submitted a joint response to a consultation by the nuclear regulatory taskforce, saying its proposals lack “both credibility and rigour”.
Continue reading...
Chris Bowen’s defining climate moment is nigh. And he knows what it means ‘if we get it wrong’

Australia’s soon to be announced emissions reduction target for 2035 will say a lot about how Labor will prioritise dealing with the climate crisis
- Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here
Progress on the climate crisis is often slow and frustrating. But sometimes, when people are given an opportunity, change can come in a rush.
On 1 July, the government introduced a subsidy scheme for small battery systems that reduces the cost for most households by about $4,000, or 30%. The response has been rapid. More than 1,000 batteries are being installed across the country each weekday.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
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Powering up: how Ethiopia is becoming an unlikely leader in the electric vehicle revolution

A country plagued by power cuts has become the first to ban imports of petrol and diesel cars, as a new dam brings hopes of cheap green energy
When Deghareg Bekele, an architect in his early 30s, bought an Volkswagen electric car this year, he was a little sceptical. Not only is his home town, the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, prone to persistent power cuts, he also doubted the quality of his new vehicle.
Four months on, Deghareg is pleased with his purchase since he no longer has to endure long lines at the petrol pump, caused by Ethiopia’s chronic fuel shortages.
Continue reading...
Meet the struggling saltmarsh sparrow – and the band of volunteers trying to save it

In this week’s newsletter: a new Guardian documentary tells the story of a Rhode Island bird at risk, and what it takes to save a species
When you think about the climate crisis, Rhode Island in the United States is probably not the first place that springs to mind. But surprisingly, despite its mild climate, the state is one of the places where sea levels are rising at the fastest rates in the world.
For this week’s newsletter, I’d like to transport you to a serene ribbon of salt marsh there, to join the fight to save a species on the brink of extinction: the saltmarsh sparrow. Who is leading the fight? Septuagenarian and self-proclaimed “60s person”, Deirdre.
In the most untouched, pristine parts of the Amazon, birds are dying. Scientists may finally know why
Saving the world’s fattest parrot: can we vaccinate our rarest species before bird flu gets to them?
Collapsing bird numbers in North America prompt fears of ecological crisis – research
Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Cost of children's homes doubles but care can be poor, says report

Huge sums spent on children's residential care in England do not represent value for money, says spending watchdog.
What the NHS can learn from the European country that helped more people survive cancer

Denmark's survival rates record for certain cancers were poor compared to some other wealthy countries. Then it came up with a bold plan
Doctors warn hospitals under pressure as NHS waiting lists rise

The waiting list for planned hospital treatment in England rose for the second month in a row in July to its highest level since March.
Postcode lottery for new cancer treatments, doctors warn

Experts say bureaucracy is "stifling innovation" and that applying for funding to pay for new treatments can be "cumbersome".
Fertility clinics must stop unproven treatments, watchdog warns

The draft guidance advises against many popular but unproven fertility add-ons offered by clinics.
Rise in number of people facing hunger in the UK

More than 14.1 million people experienced food insecurity last year, warns the Trussell Trust.
Alzheimer's blood test could 'revolutionise' diagnosis

Scientists leading the trial at University College London believe the blood test could improve the accuracy of diagnosis of the disease to more than 90%.
Best and worst-performing NHS Trusts in England named

Critics question the usability of new league tables meant to inform the public and let them exercise choice.
Deodorant firm sorry after 'itchy, burning armpits' claims

Mitchum said a change in the manufacturing process had affected some of its roll-on products after users complained of soreness.
Error leaves 55,000 diabetes patients needing new tests

Errors by diabetes analysis machines mean at least 55,000 people in England will need further hospital tests.

Eco Nature News feeds

5 ways the ocean keeps our climate in check

The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
Off Mexico’s coast, divers nab biggest ‘ghost’ yet

In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
Protect wildlife: Buy a print

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.
Can these fishermen save a 3,000-year tradition?

In a fishing community in Peru, a small group of fishermen carry on a tradition that dates back to the Incas. But an environmental disaster and modern fishing practices threaten this way of life.
Axolotls are on the brink. Can we bring them back?

A project from Conservation International and a Mexican university offers a glimmer of hope for the critically endangered axolotl.
Where Andes meet Amazon, a new ‘lifeline’ for wildlife

As global temperatures rise, wildlife around the world are on the move, a new protected corridor in one of the planet’s most biodiverse countries aims to help.
Is there a better way to farm shrimp? A new project says yes

The world’s appetite for shrimp has surged — and environmental destruction has followed in its wake. A new program from Conservation International has a solution.
An uprooted people, a legacy of conservation

A new Conservation International study is shedding light on an unsung group and their relationship with nature.
Can AI help protect nature?

Despite risks, AI has ‘enormous potential’ for good, a Conservation International expert says.
5 things you didn’t know about sea-level rise

It’s indisputable: Around the world, seas are rising at a faster rate than at any time in recorded history. But there’s more to this story than you might realize.

ECO HVAR: AIMS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE CHARITY

Environment

Health

Animals