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Environment

Environment

 

ECO HVAR'S AIMS:

To initiate, organize, promote and encourage projects to preserve and improve the natural environment.

HOW?:

- through projects for education in organic methods of farming

- through projects for education in the use of biodegradable substances for household washing and cleaning

- through projects to reduce the use of poisons and chemicals

- through projects for education in waste and rubbish management

- through projects for education in recycling

- through  projects to clean up the environment

- through projects to establish valid international organic certification for products

- through co-operation with organizations having similar aims in Croatia and abroad

Caring for Hvar's Environment

Published in Environment

What inspired ECO HVAR for the environment

Caring for Hvar's Environment
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Bird Names

Published in Environment

Names in English and Croatian of birds commonly seen on Hvar, together with the scientific names. 

Pied wagtail, December 2015.
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Hvar's Wildflower Treasures

Published in Environment

The wildflowers on Hvar are a year-round joy. Even in the depths of winter, there is hardly a week without colours brightening up the countryside, contrasting with the island's rocks and the variegated dark green of the woodlands. 

Hvar's Wildflower Treasures
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Perilous Pesticides

Published in Environment

Good health depends on clean air, clean water and a clean environment. Hvar Island is perfectly placed to offer all those amenities.

Perilous Pesticides
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Glyphosate - GBH

Published in Environment

GBH is the acronym for Grievous Bodily Harm, a criminal offence in UK law. It also stands for glyphosate-based herbicides...

Glyphosate - GBH
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Orchids, Dalmatia's Secret Treasures

Published in Environment

Wild orchids are a special part of our environment. Are we looking after them?

Orchids, Dalmatia's Secret Treasures
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Diocletian's Palace, A New Look

Published in Environment

The Romans knew how to build, and they knew how to choose the best sites for their building. Diocletian's Palace in Split is a prime and well-preserved example. New discoveries in and around the Palace in recent years have brought about a major revision of the history of this magnificent Late Antique building project.

The Peristyle
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The Organic Alternative

Published in Environment

Organic farming: possible? YES! worthwhile? YES! Mihovil Stipišić from Vrboska is proving the point.

Organic cultivation, Vrboska April 2017
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Plants, crops, soil: Natural Protection

Published in Environment

When soil is contaminated, what ends up on your plate and in your cup or glass is less than healthy. Chemical pesticides and artificial fertilizers are causing untold damage. The 'conventional model' of agriculture is exhausting the earth and undermining human health. There are much better methods of protecting soil and plants using natural resources.

Field horsetail (Equisetum arvense)
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Rubbish Management 2018

Published in Environment

Rubbish management is a hot topic, not to say hot potato, around the world at the moment, especially in Croatia, where the European Directives which were laid down some years ago are finally due to come into force on November 1st 2018.

Binning litter, do it right!
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Starigrad Plain: Our Survey

Published in Environment

 

The results from our survey about land usage on the Starigrad Plain (Hora, Ager). The survey was conducted on behalf of LAG Škoji (Local Action Group), Eco Hvar and the Agency for the Management of the Starigrad Plain. The aim was to gain an overview of land usage, and to gather information as to what the landowners think is needed to improve conditions in this historic field layout.

Donkeys grazing on the Plain, 2nd June 2014.
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Eco Environment News feeds

  • Deaths in France surged 30% during hottest week of record June heatwave

    Public health authority says 2,025 excess deaths probably an underestimate and that it expects toll to rise further

    The number of deaths recorded in France surged by nearly 30% during the hottest week of the record-breaking heatwave that scorched much of Europe last month, the public health authority has said, adding that it expected the toll to rise further.

    Public Health France said on Friday there had been “an increase of 29.1%, corresponding to 2,025 additional deaths compared with the previous week”. It said the figure was probably an underestimate and “mortality will rise further”.

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  • Listen to Britain’s dawn chorus of 1976: the dramatic loss of birdsong in 50 years

    Guardian recreates audio landscape of past filled by loud morning symphony before 73m wild birds were lost

    Imagine a deafening abundance of birdsong so loud it wakes your children at dawn; the chirrup of house sparrows, the chattering of starlings, the melody of the wren, and the clear high-pitched flute of blackbirds saturating the garden, reverberating around your local park, dominating your neighbourhood from early morning to evening twilight.

    So loud is the song of the thrush that the naturalist and ornithologist WH Hudson wrote in 1919 that he was grateful when observing one that it was perched on a tree at a distance from his home, “so that when I woke at half past three or four o’clock, the shrill indefatigable voice came in at the open window, softened by distance and washed by the dewy atmosphere to greater purity”.

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  • ‘I don’t just watch climate change happening’: the young Swedes being paid to make a difference

    Participant-led YPS scheme creates green projects while providing summer jobs in country with high youth unemployment

    Oona Verveld and Clara Vikberg have just secured their first paid summer jobs. While their peers are mostly limited to entry-level positions in retail or fast-food restaurants, the 18-year-olds are some of the first among their generation to have landed a new type of role: young planetary stewards.

    “Someone came up with the simple idea that, since young people clearly need jobs, why not create them?” says My Sellberg, the project manager and programme lead for regenerative development at Upplandsbygd, a non-profit based north of Stockholm. “The strongest objective was to inspire hope for the future among our young residents.”

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  • ‘Scavenger’ dolphins increasingly rely on trawlers for food in overfished Adriatic, say scientists

    In one area 76% of fishing boats were followed, with baby dolphins learning the technique from their parents

    Bottlenose dolphins in the Adriatic are increasingly following trawlers to scavenge for food, with baby dolphins learning the technique from their parents, a study has found.

    “These days the easiest way to find [bottlenose dolphins] is to look for trawlers,” said Giovanni Bearzi, a co-author of the study and the president of Dolphin Biology and Conservation in Italy. “Many of them are followed by the dolphins that go to forage and scavenge in their wake.

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  • The battle for access to Jamaica’s billion-dollar beaches

    In this week’s newsletter: Activists are accusing the government of privatising the coastline to support the country’s thriving tourism industry, at the expense of locals

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    Every year, millions of visitors from across the globevisit Jamaica to enjoy its gorgeous beaches, fuelling a multibillion dollar tourism industry. But, in recent years, its picture-perfect coastlines have become a battleground for access after successive governmentsprivatised its shorelines to support the country’s thriving all-inclusive hotel industry.

    The complex row, which has seen protesters clashing with police and campaigners tearing down barriers around privatised properties, is now playing out in the country’s courts. We take a closer look at each side’s case, and what’s at stake.

    European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say

    A sad inevitability’: after decades of climate warnings, why is Europe so unprepared for rising heat?

    ‘But we’re just 1% of emissions’: do smaller countries’ climate efforts matter?

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  • Ruined utopias: the afterlife of the Amazon’s forgotten company towns – in pictures

    For decades, foreign firms established settlements in the Brazilian Amazon to support extractive activities, only to eventually abandon the buildings and workers. The remains show human resilience as nature reclaims the land

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  • Defra breached law when it let farmers use bee-killing pesticide, watchdog says

    Office for Environmental Protection finds failures by department when it granted emergency authorisation in 2023 and 2024

    The UK government breached environmental law on several occasions when granting farmers permission to use a bee-killing pesticide, a watchdog has found.

    In 2023 and 2024, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the then Conservative government granted emergency authorisation to allow farmers to use a banned neonicotinoid pesticide on sugar beet crops.

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  • Weatherwatch: How thunder is made

    Sound of thunder varies depending on distance of listener from lightning as atmosphere muffles and absorbs sound

    A bolt of lightning heats the air almost instantly to as high as 30,000C, causing explosive expansion and a supersonic shock wave that becomes thunder. What that thunder sounds like to a listener depends largely on where they are.

    Nearby lightning produces a distinctive snap or crack, or a startling explosive boom. Large, complex lightning with multiple segments generates a peal of thunder, a series of booms of different pitches as the sound from each of the segments reaches you in turn.

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  • Trout sushi for breakfast? The surprising diets of Wimbledon stars

    With probiotic foods thought to boost performance, tournament chefs are catering with gut health in mind

    Trout sushi washed down with coffee kombucha may not be the stereotypical breakfast of champions, but it’s become the go-to for Wimbledon’s tennis stars.

    Athletes are increasingly demanding sustainable options, as well as seeking out gut-friendly foods aligned with a microbiome diet, according to the tournament’s chefs. Recent research has shown a link between gut health, which can be improved through dietary changes, and sporting performance.

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  • ‘A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks

    Critics say the Trump administration is trying to rewrite and whitewash history by removing and altering scores of signs on public lands

    Jerry Bransford, a former US National Park Service (NPS) ranger, has always had a deep connection with the land he grew up on – and the land hundreds of feet below it. His great-great-grandfather, Materson “Mat” Bransford, was one of the earliest explorers of Mammoth Cave in south-central Kentucky, the largest known cave system on the planet.

    But for decades, Mat wasn’t paid for his work. Enslavers rented him out for $100 a year to a man who wanted to turn the site into a tourist attraction – what would later become Mammoth Cave national park.

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