Eco Hvar's aims for protecting animals and improving animal welfare, plus related articles
increase font size
Draft Motion for a Resolution prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, March 2016
Draft Motion prepared by Rapporteurs Pavel Poc (Socialists and Democrats Group), Kateřina Konečná on behalf of the European United Left and Nordic Green Left group, Bas Eickhout of the Greens / European Free Alliance Group, Piernicola Pedicini of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group, Mark Demesmaeker, Sirpa Pietikäinen and Frédérique Ries. This draft Motion was carried forward for the vote in a Parliamentary Plenary Session in April 2016.
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.
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.
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.
Towering above Delhi’s skyline, emitting an inescapable stench of rotting flesh, are giant mountains of rubbish. Several miles wide and more than 200ft (60 metres) high, they are visible from across the city and stand as symbols of Delhi’s inability to deal with its trash.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen visited communities living in the shadow of Bhalswa’s overfilled landfill heaps, to see how they have become reliant on the mountain that is simultaneously poisoning them
Continue reading...
Only 14% of farmers surveyed for Farmdex report had 10% or more profit margin amid drop in subsidies since Brexit
A third of British farmers are making a loss or breaking even as they struggle with the loss of subsidies and looming inheritance tax changes, a report on post-Brexit farming has found.
Only 14% of farmers surveyed for McCain Foods’ inaugural Farmdex report said they made 10% or more profit in the past year. In fact, many are making no profit at all, with 35% of the farmers reporting making a loss or breaking even.
Continue reading...
Scientists are only beginning to grasp the scale of the issue and understand what impact the tree frogs may have on the islands’ rare wildlife
On the way to her office at the Charles Darwin research station, biologist Miriam San José crouches down near a shallow pond shrouded by vegetation and reaches deep into the foliage, pulling out a small green plastic box recorder.
She left it there overnight to capture the infamous croaks of a Fowler’s snouted treefrog (Scinax quinquefasciatus), known to Galápagos scientists as an invasive threat, with repercussions researchers are only beginning to grasp.
Continue reading...
From sharks to rays, from island cliffs to the tribes of Africa’s Omo Valley, Cristina Mittermeier’s show A Greater Wisdom celebrates the beauty of our planet – and highlights the biggest threats it faces
Continue reading...
River Action bringing legal action against water regulator over who should foot bill for firms’ past failures to invest
Ofwat is unlawfully allowing water companies to charge customers twice to fund more than £100bn of investment to reduce sewage pollution, campaigners will allege in court on Tuesday.
Lawyers for River Action say the bill increases being allowed by Ofwat – which amount to an average of £123 a year per household – mean customers will be paying again for improvements to achieve environmental compliance that should have been funded from their previous bills.
Continue reading...
As global leaders and environmental activists descend on Brazil for next week’s Cop30 climate summit, Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s global environment editor, Jon Watts, who recently sat down for an exclusive interview with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. As he approaches his penultimate summit as the UN chief, Guterres reflected on humanity’s progress in attempting to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, why Indigenous voices must be listened to and how he remains positive in the face of the climate crisis
‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head
Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod
Continue reading...
Holkham, Norfolk: A local company is attempting to revive not just European flat oysters, but a whole wealth of species on a nearby seabed
It sits on my desk as I write, a memento from our Norfolk visit, where I found it at the tide’s edge. This blue-and-ochre shell comprises 30 or more fine layers of wavy calcium, rising to a swollen weathered apex. You could imagine the original bivalve sitting in your palm as an intact and living whole. But for that thought experiment to be true, I’d have to be more than 100 years old. Because this European flat oyster is a relic of a lost Victorian ecosystem.
The colony that gave rise to my shell had probably existed here for thousands of years, until the dredgers got to work, as they have on 90% of wild oyster reefs worldwide, and smashed it apart, then took the lot. Native oysters are functionally extinct here, as they are around most British coastlines.
Continue reading...
Indigenous leaders, environmental activists and forest defenders are determined to make this a summit like no other
A day into a river voyage between Santarém and Belém, a dozen or so passengers on the Karolina do Norte move excitedly to the port side of the boat to see the cafe au lait-coloured waters of the Amazon river mix with the darker, clearer currents of the Xingu.
“That confluence is like the people on this boat,” said Thais Santi. “All from different river basins, but coming together for this journey.”
Continue reading...
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.
This week, from 2022: Kenya’s great lakes are flooding, in a devastating and long-ignored environmental disaster that is displacing hundreds of thousands of people
By Carey Baraka. Read by Reice Weathers
Continue reading...
In The White House Effect, now available on Netflix, archival footage is used to show how the US right moved from believing to disputing the climate crisis
In 1988, the United States entered into its worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Crops withered in fields nationwide, part of an estimated $60bn in damage ($160bn in 2025). Dust storms swept the midwest and northern Great Plains. Cities instituted water restrictions. That summer, unrelentingly hot temperatures killed between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and Yellowstone national park suffered the worst wildfire in its history.
Amid the disaster, George HW Bush, then Ronald Reagan’s vice-president, met with farmers in Michigan reeling from crop losses. Bush, the Republican candidate for president, consoled them: if elected, he would be the environmental president. He acknowledged the reality of intensifying heatwaves – the “greenhouse effect”, to use the scientific parlance of the day – with blunt clarity: the burning of fossil fuels contributed excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, leading to global warming. But though the scale of the problem could seem “impossible”, he assured the farmers that “those who think we’re powerless to do anything about this greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House Effect” – the impact of sound environmental policy for the leading consumer of fossil fuels. Curbing emissions, he said, was “the common agenda of the future”.
Continue reading...Some 5.4 million adults use vapes daily or occasionally compared with 4.9 million using cigarettes, figures show.
Campaigners say IVF treatment should be less stigmatised in the workplace and come with legal entitlements to time off
Some high-street clinics are risking lives by letting untrained staff do baby scans, warn experts.
Anyone born on or after 1 January 2007 will be banned from using, buying or selling tobacco products in the archipelago.
The persistent pollutants which build up in the environment have been linked to serious illnesses.
Up to 5,000 people in Scotland will take the injections as part of a multi-million pound study being led by Glasgow University.
Patients are dying in corridors and others left for hours in soiled clothes, says Age UK.
The test detects compounds in the breath which are detectable in cancer patients, say scientists.
Walking for at least 15 minutes without stopping is ideal, according to new research.
A mum says she was not warned of the potentially life-threatening risks of a uterine rupture.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
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.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
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.
