Eco Hvar

ECO HVAR: AIMS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE CHARITY

Environment

Eco Hvar's aims for environmental protection, and related articles.

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Health

Eco Hvar's ideas for encouraging positive health, plus related articles

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Animals

Eco Hvar's aims for protecting animals and improving animal welfare, plus related articles

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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.

 

 

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Eco Environment News feeds

  • UK records hottest day of year as forecasters warn of more extreme heat

    Temperature reaches 30.5C in Kent as amber health alerts issued before bank holiday temperatures rise

    The UK has recorded its hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures reaching 30.5C in Kent as forecasters warned more extreme heat could follow over the bank holiday weekend.

    The temperature in Frittenden also marked the first time since 2012 the UK has reached 30C in May, according to the Met Office.

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  • Could nature itself hold the solution to climate change?

    Technological interventions face huge financial or practical challenges, but there is another way

    In 2019, my scientific research was nearly brought to an early end when my team and I published the bombastic statement that natural forest restoration was the “best climate change solution” available in a paper for the peer-reviewed journal Science.

    I remember a colleague from the World Wildlife Fund advising me that this message represented career suicide. He argued that people would be furious because reducing greenhouse gas emissions was the most urgent priority. The revival of nature might help with 30% of our carbon drawdown needs, but you cannot stop rising temperatures without cutting emissions.

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  • Squeals of horror over price caps – but how are we going to fix our broken food system?

    Global events and the climate crisis have left Britain’s food system dangerously exposed and in desperate need of an overhaul

    The news that the Treasury was asking UK supermarkets to cap price rises on essential foods was greeted with predictable squeals of horror this week. Supermarkets were reportedly “furious”, while luminaries from the former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies to the former chair of M&S could be found harrumphing about the evils of price controls.

    But this caterwauling is a distraction from two unpleasant facts. Firstly, the food price surge over the summer and beyond is likely to be significant – and will come on top of a near-40% rise in the price of food since 2020 – due to a devastating combination of the Iran war and a forecast record-breaking El Niño, which will hammer global food production. And secondly, Britain’s food system is painfully exposed to such shocks. The long-held assumption that a global food system can be relied on to meet the nation’s needs, at a reasonable price, no longer applies.

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  • Treasury rejected ministers’ plan to cut VAT on public EV charging to 5%

    Department for Transport is understood to back reducing levy, which critics have called a ‘pavement tax’

    Government officials considered cutting the VAT charged on electricity used at public EV chargers from 20% to 5% at the last budget, but the Treasury under chancellor Rachel Reeves rejected the proposal amid disagreement between departments.

    Officials in the Department for Transport encouraged electric car charge point operators to write to the Treasury explaining how they would respond to a VAT cut, according to three industry sources. The charger companies said that they would pass the tax cut on to consumers.

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  • ‘Turn off the juice of the rulers!’ Who are the Volcano Group, mystery saboteurs behind a five-day Berlin blackout?

    Earlier this year, the city was hit by its longest power cut since the second world war. But were those responsible eco-terrorists, agents of the far-right, or even Russian proxies?

    Sebastian Brandt, chief technician of the Immanuel hospital in the leafy, affluent Wannsee district of Berlin, guessed something was wrong as soon as he opened the window of his home and smelled diesel. It was 3 January, a freezing Saturday morning, and luckily the hospital opposite had relatively few patients on this post-holiday weekend. As he looked out, the diesel fumes told him that the emergency generator – a huge, deafening, decades-old machine in the basement – had kicked in. That meant the hospital was no longer getting power from the grid. And that meant Brandt was not going to have a quiet weekend.

    Although an emergency generator keeps a hospital running, it has its limitations. Surgical procedures have to be cancelled, and though generators are tested regularly, no one can be certain what will happen when they are kept running for days on end. The generator tank in the Immanuel hospital contained about 3,000 litres of diesel, and Brandt had calculated it would burn about 550 litres a day; when the grid operator informed the hospital that the outage might last until the end of the following week, Brandt was quickly dispatched to fetch more diesel from the nearest petrol station that was still on the grid. Meanwhile, he’d heard that a neighbouring hospice was going to move its patients to the hospital, too.

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  • ‘There is no great master plan’: anxiety as UK homes, roads and railways sink into the sea

    Increasing coastal erosion has hit communities’ livelihoods and put lifestyles under threat

    The remains of the road linking two towns in south Devon lie crumbled on the foreshore in a mess of tarmac, steel and concrete.

    The dramatic coastal road, known as the Slapton Line, has an environmentally protected freshwater lake on one side and the sea on the other, and links the towns of Kingsbridge and Dartmouth. But this year, winter storms demolished a section of the A road between Torcross and Slapton, which is at the frontline of rising sea levels and coastal erosion, fulfilling a destiny that was predicted more than 30 years ago, but that has not been prepared for.

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  • Young country diary: Helping a butterfly into its new phase of life | Ottoline

    Cambridgeshire: It was nearly ready to fly but it was partly out of its chrysalis and partly still in it

    On Sunday morning, I was pottering in the garden wondering what to do. I saw a flapping coming from my wildflower patch, so I went to my clump of clover. I pushed it away, only to reveal a large white butterfly fresh out of its chrysalis. It had been drying its damp wings in the sun.

    Then I realised that part of the butterfly’s chrysalis was still on its wing, and the other wing was already dry and ready to fly. I watched the butterfly for a while. The butterfly tried to get the chrysalis off, but it had used up all its energy. I realised that it needed some help, so I tugged the chrysalis as gently as I could. The butterfly didn’t move but the chrysalis did, so I tugged a little bit harder and off it came.

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  • Endangered sawfish at risk from plan to double water extraction from WA’s Fitzroy River, advocates say

    The Martuwarra Fitzroy catchment is home to four of the world’s five sawfish species, which rely on large groundwater-fed pools to survive the dry season

    Conservationists fear a government plan to double groundwater extraction from the Martuwarra Fitzroy River catchment in Western Australia could jeopardise threatened sawfish populations.

    The untamed river, which flows 700km through the Kimberley to King Sound, is considered the last stronghold for sawfish globally and is home to four of the world’s five species.

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  • This US island is home to flora found nowhere else. Now, a wildfire threatens extinction

    Firefighters are racing to douse flames on California’s Santa Rosa Island as experts express concern for unique habitat

    On the south-eastern corner of Santa Rosa Island lies a grove of a few thousand Torrey pine trees, some of them more than 250 years old. The only other place on earth where these gnarled pines exist is in San Diego county, but biologists classify the two groves as different subspecies. So when a rare wildfire broke out on Santa Rosa Island late last week, firefighters raced to keep it from spreading into the grove, where it threatened to consign the island’s Torrey pines to extinction.

    So far, they appear to be succeeding – even as the 18,000-acre fire has torched nearly one-third of the island’s surface. But biologists who have studied Santa Rosa Island’s unique ecology are watching anxiously as the fire continues to burn a part of the island that is home to six plants found nowhere else on the planet.

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  • ‘We will not survive’: jailing of Daria Egereva highlights plight of Russia’s Indigenous people

    Authorities are cracking down on rights activists fighting for Indigenous people threatened by authoritarianism, extractivism and climate breakdown

    The operation began at 9am Moscow time, but took place across all of Russia’s 11 time zones. Almost simultaneously, agents of the federal security service (FSB) raided the homes and workplaces of 17 Indigenous rights activists.

    Officers carried out searches, confiscated laptops and phones, and arrested and interrogated activists about participation in international forums. Most were let go; many have since left the country. Others remain in Russia, but will no longer speak up.

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