For the Common Good

For the Common Good

Dogs: how to help when needed

Published in For the Common Good

Lots of dogs have a tough time on Hvar and in other parts of Croatia. Helping dogs in need can be tricky. These are basic guidelines to help show you what can and can't be done.

Poisoning Paradise - A Wake-Up Call

Published in For the Common Good

Croatia's unsustainable insect suppression programme​: TIME IS RUNNING OUT! 

Cats: How to help when needed

Published in For the Common Good

If you want to help cats in need on Hvar, here's how!

Scrumping on Hvar? We advise against it.

Published in For the Common Good

As July progresses, the grapes ripen on the vines, ready to reach their full luscious ripeness later on in August. However, foraging is not recommended.     

ANIMAL WELFARE: What We Do

Published in For the Common Good

We do our best to help animals in need. This is an overview of what we do, despite our limited resources. We aim to do more!

Insects Wanted!

Published in For the Common Good

Poisons, definitely not! Eco Hvar's campaign against the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides to kill off unwanted insects and other 'pests' began many years ago.

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Eco Environment News feeds

  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • A group of hospitals serve up a menu rich in plants – and say they have had few complaints

    Patrick Burrichter did not think about saving lives or protecting the planet when he trained as a chef in a hotel kitchen. But 25 years later he has focused his culinary skills on doing exactly that.

    From an industrial park on the outskirts of Berlin, Burrichter and his team cook for a dozen hospitals that offer patients a “planetary health” diet – one that is rich in plants and light in animals. Compared with the typical diet in Germany, known for its bratwurst sausage and doner kebab, the 13,000 meals they rustle up each day are better for the health of people and the planet.

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  • Experts say the hybrids risk ‘polluting’ the genetic stock, but scientists disagree on how to deal with them. In Piedmont, Italy, the sight of a blond wolfdog signals the risk of another new litter

    • Photographs by Alberto Olivero

    From the moment the rangers first saw him on their trail cameras, the problem was apparent. The wolf, spotted deep in the woods of Italy’s Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park, was not grey like his companion, but an unusual blond. His colouring indicated this was not a wolf at all, but a hybrid wolfdog – the first to be seen so far into Piedmont’s alpine region. And where one hybrid is found, more are sure to follow.

    “We thought he would go away,” says Elisa Ramassa, a park ranger in Gran Bosco who has tracked the local wolves for 25 years. “Unfortunately, he found a female who loves blonds.”

    Elisa Ramassa and fellow ranger Massimo Rosso search for wolf tracks in Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park; and a wolfdog in the mountains (photographed by Massimo Rosso)

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  • Subsidence linked to extraction of groundwater and natural gas, and weight of buildings pressing into soft ground

    A number of cities on the US east coast are sinking, increasing the risk of flooding from rising sea levels.

    Between 2007 and 2020 the ground under New York, Baltimore and Norfolk in Virginia sank between 1mm and 2mm a year, other places sank at double or triple that rate, and Charleston, South Carolina, sank fastest, at 4mm a year, in a city less than 3 metres above sea level.

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