ECO HVAR: AIMS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE CHARITY

Environment

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

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maria lidija

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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Eco Hvar - home for ecology on Hvar Island in Croatia
Nature Watch

Nature Watch

Birdwatching, April 2023.

Published in Nature Watch

We are delighted to share Steve Jones's report from a fruitful week's birdwatching in April 2023.

'Gulls in the harbour - storm at sea'

Published in Nature Watch

Birds as weather forecasters

"BEE HAPPY" 2022.

Published in Nature Watch

Hvar's first observation beehive, celebrating World Bee Day, May 20th 2022.

Brief Nature Watch, Spring 2022

Published in Nature Watch

Nature watcher Steve Jones paid a short visit to Hvar in April.

Beware: caterpillars processing!

Published in Nature Watch

The caterpillars of the pine processionary moth (thaumetopoea pityocampa) come out any time between February and April each year.

Luki finds the first Orchids!

Published in Nature Watch

Luki is one of Hvar's happiest dogs, and one of Hvar's greatest nature-lovers. On March 15th, he sniffed out early orchids not far from Vrboska. 

Hvar's Springtime Treats

Published in Nature Watch

Sunshine, mild weather and some occasional outbursts of rain are bringing Hvar's spring on at great speed.

Saving Wildlife and Biodiversity: Looking to the Future

Published in Nature Watch

November 2019 saw the launch of the European Citizens' Initiative petition under the title 'Save Bees and Farmers'.

Dragonflies and Damselflies

Published in Nature Watch

These delicate-looking, exquisite creatures play an important part in the natural chain. They are especially useful to humans because of their voracious appetite for mosquitoes and other biting insects such as midges.

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Eco Environment News feeds

  • Vivien Sansour, founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, believes biodiversity will save the planet in the climate crisis

    The first year that the Hudson Valley Seed Company tried growing yakteen at their farm in upstate New York, the heirloom variety of Palestinian gourd quickly spread until its vines were sending their tendrils across a full acre of land. Born of a partnership with the artist, researcher and conservationist Vivien Sansour, that pilot plot was just one of many pieces of evidence supporting Sansour’s thesis: that saving Palestinian heirloom seeds could benefit not just Palestinians, but could help feed an entire planet in crisis.

    Sansour is the founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, a project that began in 2016 to conserve Palestinian heritage and culture by saving heirloom seed varieties and telling the stories and history from which they emerged.

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  • Exclusive: Satellite analysis revealed to the Guardian shows farms devastated and nearly half of the territory’s trees razed. Alongside mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israel’s onslaught on Gaza’s ecosystems has made the area unlivable

    In a dilapidated warehouse in Rafah, Soha Abu Diab is living with her three young daughters and more than 20 other family members. They have no running water, no fuel and are surrounded by running sewage and waste piling up.

    Like the rest of Gaza’s residents, they fear the air they breathe is heavy with pollutants and that the water carries disease. Beyond the city streets lie razed orchards and olive groves, and farmland destroyed by bombs and bulldozers.

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  • Lower Pertwood in Wiltshire aims to restore declining plants, insects and endangered species

    The rolling hills south of Salisbury Plain are a bleak scene of vast arable fields and tightly grazed pasture dotted with scores of sheep.

    In recent decades, Lower Pertwood farm has embraced organic growing, producing oats, barley and other crops, while boosting numbers of rare corn buntings and other wildlife with wildflower banks and newly planted trees.

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  • When the research team at Vernadsky base are not defending their homeland, they are on the frontline of the climate crisis

    When Ukraine’s Antarctic research and supply vessel Noosfera left Odesa on its maiden voyage on 28 January 2022, it passed Russian warships in the Black Sea. A month later, Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour. Noosfera has not been back since.

    “A few weeks later, and Noosfera would have been an important symbolic target for Russia,” said Vadym Tkachenko, a biologist who recently completed his second Antarctic winter at Ukraine’s Vernadsky base. The ship now supplies both Ukrainian and Polish Antarctic bases from Chile and South Africa twice a year, at the start and end of the winter.

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  • At least 11 dead on African island, while another deadly storm racks Indonesian island of Sumatra

    Madagascar was unexpectedly hit by Cyclone Gamane as it veered into the island country’s northern district of Vohemar during the early hours of Wednesday, resulting in at least 11 deaths.

    The storm was expected to skim the coast, but it changed course and went into the island causing disruption to 7,000 people with hundreds of homes destroyed. The slow-moving nature of the storm exacerbated its impact, with persistent rainfall and prolonged strong winds causing devastation to infrastructure and significant flooding. The cyclone moved across the island with an average wind speed of 93mph (150km/h) while gusts of up to 130mph were recorded, making it a category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Cyclone Gamane has since weakened to a tropical storm and is expected to clear the island on Friday.

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  • Looking at the mass of information, there is only one conclusion: we are running out of time

    There is so much information on the newly launched Copernicus Climate Change Service atlas that my laptop started to overheat trying to process it all. As well as all the past data, it predicts where the climate is going and how soon we will breach the 1.5C “limit”, and then 2C. You can call up the region where you live, so it is specific to what is happening to you and your family – and all the more disturbing for that.

    A separate part called Climate Pulse intended particularly for journalists is easier to operate. The refreshing bit is that the maps, charts and timelines from 1850 to the present day on the main atlas are entirely factual measurements, so there can be no argument on the trends. It then follows those trends into the likely scenarios for the next few years. Examining current temperature increases, it seemed to this observer that scientists have been underestimating for some time how quickly the situation is deteriorating.

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  • Poor harvests in extreme weather conditions have led to a tripling of cocoa prices – but farmers have seen no benefit

    Around the world this holiday weekend, people will consume hundreds of millions of Easter eggs and bunnies, as part of an annual chocolate intake that can exceed 8kg (18lb) for every person in the UK, or 5kg in the US and Europe. But a global shortage of cacao – the seed from which chocolate is made – has brought warnings of a “chocolate meltdown” that could see prices increase and bars shrink further.

    This week, cocoa prices rose to all-time highs on commodity exchanges in London and New York, reaching more than $10,000 a tonne for the first time, after the third consecutive poor harvest in west Africa. Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together produce more than half of the global cacao crop, have been hit by extreme weather supercharged by the climate crisis and the El Niño weather phenomenon. This has been exacerbated by disease and underinvestment in ageing plantations.

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  • West Dartmoor, Devon: They must have got into my house last autumn, and now they’re emerging in a wonderful variety of markings and spot numbers

    Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home… Only, it seems they have all flown into mine. Every morning I come across several on the inside of the windows, like droplets of nail varnish motoring around on tiny legs.

    These spotty beetles could drive me dotty. Some days I release half a dozen outside, making numerous trips to the back door, cupping them in my palm like dice. And while their joyful polka dot patterns have a nursery school simplicity about them, identifying ladybirds is far from straightforward. The variety of colouring and markings, even among the same species, means that one cannot always rely on simply counting the spots.

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  • A process called biofortification puts nutrients directly into seeds and could reduce global hunger, but it’s not a magic bullet

    In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists at the University of Texas made an alarming discovery: 43 foods, mostly vegetables, showed a marked decrease in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century.

    According to that research, the calcium in green beans dropped from 65 to 37mg. Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half in asparagus. Broccoli stalks had less iron.

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  • Experts are trying everything from drums to whale calls to lure kʷiisaḥiʔis – or Brave Little Hunter – out of the Canadian lagoon she has been trapped in since the stranding death of her mother

    As a two-year-old orca calf circled a lagoon off the west coast of Canada on Monday, she heard a comforting sound resonating through the unfamiliar place in which she found herself: the clicks and chirps of her great-aunt.

    But the calf, named kʷiisaḥiʔis (pronounced kwee-sahay-is, which roughly translates as Brave Little Hunter) by local First Nations people, could not locate another whale in the shallow waters. The calls, broadcast from speakers placed underwater, were part of a complex and desperate operation still under way to try to save the stranded calf.

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