Useful links

Published in Information

Websites of interest, relating to Eco Hvar's aims.

HEALTH

Croatian Agency for Agriculture and Food (home page in English)  gives lists of foods withdrawn from sale on health grounds

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

World Health Organization (WHO)

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Croatia

QuitDay, United States organization to help smokers give up the habit / addiction

Drug dangers. Vital information about medicines and surgical materials

ENVIRONMENT

International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural resources - World Heritage Outlook

All Green PR Ltd A UK business based in London which helps 'Green' organizations to make their presence felt

Environmental Protection 

Young People's Trust for the Environment

The Nature Conservancy, organization with worldwide reach working to preserve nature and natural habitats

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Organic Agriculture

Food Tank U.S. organization working for sustainable agriculture to feed the world

Slow Europe, Slow Food

Kinookus: 'a thematic conjunction of food and film and the development of aesthetic taste for beauty and good'

International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) International organization linking volunteers to organic farms in different countries. (Croatia is not on the list yet)

International Organic Inspectors Association

United States Geological Survey (USGS), National Water-Quality Assessment Program

10 Ways to Help Save the Ocean

GM Watch

Georgina Downs - UK Pesticides Campaign

The Soil Association - UK charity which campaigns for healthy, humane and sustainable food, farming and land use

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Garden Organic - UK charity promoting organic growing methods

Plastic Banks - an innovative and far-reaching solution to the problems of plastic pollution which also helps the world's poor.

Protecting Wildlife from Trash

10 Ways to Help Wildlife

Meatless Monday: Protect the Planet, One Day Each Week

greentraveller.co.uk - Travel creating the minimum carbon footprint. Holidays include several options in Croatia.

Biotechnicon - website in Croatian

Biologija.com.hr - website in Croatian only

Cvijet.info - website in Croatian only

Ecosia - search engine which donates 80% of proceeds for tree-planting in Brazil

Pokret otoka - Island Movement

ANIMALS, BIRDS, WILDLIFE

World Wildlife Fund - International fundraising organization based in the United States supporting nature conservation efforts

World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)

Eurogroup for Animals - Croatian partner 'Animal Friends Croatia'

Croatian Ornithological Association / C.O.M. Croatia

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - UK nature conservation charity 

American Bird Conservancy

Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

World Society for the Protection of Animals

 
Eurogroup for Animals - Croatian partner 'Animal Friends Croatia'
 
 

Dogs Trust (formerly the Canine Defence League) UK charity caring for dogs

Associazione Isontina Protezione Animali - Animal protection volunteer group in Gorizia, northern Italy.

15 Ways to Help Homeless Dogs

Feral Cats and How to Help Them

BOOKSHOP ONLINE

Zelena knjižara - online Croatian bookshop for a range of subjects including ecology, natural sciences and health

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

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Eco Environment News feeds

  • John Ray, 17th-century botanist who coined words petal and pollen, was a tutor at Cambridge when he created his first garden

    He coined the terms petal and pollen, helped to lay the foundations of modern biology and is widely regarded as the greatest English naturalist of the 17th century.

    But it was while he was a young college tutor at Cambridge in the 1650s that the botanist John Ray – also known as “the father of natural history” – created his first known garden and began to systematically study plants for the first time.

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  • Nottinghamshire tree, one of Europe’s oldest and largest, fails to produce leaves after being stressed by series of hot, dry summers

    The Major oak, one of Europe’s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees, has died.

    The huge tree, which has grown in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England, for at least 1,000 years, failed to produce any leaves this year, after becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers.

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  • The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt

    Some go there to read about the wood that Victorian manufacturers used to make walking sticks. Others want to see an illustration of a Tasmanian tiger or marvel at the field diary of one of the first known botanists to explore the Antarctic.

    Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.

    Manuscript on parchment from the Circa instans. Dating from about 1190, it is the oldest book in the digital library. Photograph: LuEsther T Mertz Library/New York Botanical Garden/Biodiversity Heritage Library

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  • More than half of Ayetoro – a Christian utopia founded in the 1940s – has been lost to the ocean, and its remaining people are running out of options

    In the early hours of 15 February 2019, the Atlantic Ocean came for Arowo Victoria’s livelihood. The 60-year-old retired midwife was asleep when neighbours began banging on her door, shouting that the sea had started covering buildings along the nearby coastline.

    By the time she got to her small shop, she discovered that the Atlantic had already swept it away, destroying the business she had built with borrowed money after retirement.

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  • We are told the natural world is ‘breaking down’. But forests don’t work like aeroplanes or human hearts

    The Amazon rainforest, according to a 2021 study, is losing its capacity as a carbon sink and now emits more than it absorbs. In the tropics, marine scientists are reporting that coral reefs are in decline, threatening fish stocks. Equally concerning is research into the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents that helps regulate the climate and is at risk of collapsing this century. The entire global ecosystem appears to be losing its ability to function.

    We find this view in newspapers, magazines, technical reports and the journals of learned societies. But thinking about the environment in terms of its functions is also how many of us tend to understand the world. We may think that forests exist to produce oxygen, wetlands to filter water and bees to pollinate our crops.

    Of special interest to humanity is the relationship of biodiversity to the variety of services provided by ecosystems and, in particular, to the stability of the flow of those services, such as the maintenance of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, preservation of soils, recycling of nutrients and provision of food from the sea.

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  • Warmer winters and springs are drying out wetlands and the birds are missing out on an abundance of insects to eat

    When we think of spring migrant birds, it is easy to focus on songbirds such as warblers, flycatchers and swallows. Yet during late spring, many are waders – passing through Britain on their way north to breed in the high Arctic from their winter quarters in sub-Saharan Africa.

    According to the British Trust for Ornithology’s regular migration blog, it has been a good year for waders: including more common species such as ringed and grey plovers, bar-tailed godwit, sanderling and knot.

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  • Blackwater Estuary, Essex: Near a vast sweep of flats and creeks, one small pool has become a destination for both me and a parade of shore birds

    I saw in this summer with the brief stays of Arctic-bound birds. Waders from the south came in such number and variety to my local patch near Tollesbury that for one week in May I went down to the marsh every dawn and dusk. I went to watch and feel the motion of it all at the turn of tide and time. Everything was change.

    They kept coming, new species every day, ready to leave even as they arrived at this pool in the north-east corner of a field by the vast sweep of flats and creeks that give Essex more coastline than any other county in England.

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  • The warming caused by climate breakdown in the landlocked east Asian country is transforming its fragile ecosystem

    As the climate crisis accelerates, Mongolia is warming rapidly, transforming the country’s cryosphere, including some of the most southerly permafrost landscapes in the northern hemisphere.

    Although rarely associated with the Arctic, Mongolia has a remarkably cold climate. Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital city in the world, and a substantial portion of the country lies within the Arctic Ocean drainage basin. As a result, many of the physical and ecological processes occurring here resemble those found at much higher latitudes.

    People in Khövsgöl province say they have observed an increase in the number of arrivals of migratory birds from China in recent years, consuming large quantities of fish in the region’s lakes. In northern Mongolia, communities closely tied to fishing, herding and tourism are witnessing the visible transformation of fragile freshwater ecosystems shaped by climate breakdown and the changing cryosphere.

    Historical surveys conducted in the 1970s suggested that nearly 63% of Mongolia was underlain by permafrost. Today, estimates indicate that only 26% to 29% remains. Unlike the ice-rich permafrost of Siberia, Canada or Alaska, much of Mongolia’s permafrost is relatively warm, thin and dry, making it particularly sensitive to rising temperatures. Climate change is the primary reason for this decline, although local pressures such as overgrazing can further accelerate thaw by removing the vegetation that insulates the ground – Nikolay Shiklomanov, a professor in the department of geography and environment at George Washington University

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  • Scientists are examining how ‘blood rain’ affects soil microbiome, with Portuguese vineyards a particular focus

    Dust events, when thousands of tonnes of fine sand whipped up from the Sahara are dumped over Europe, are becoming more intense. These sometimes produce “blood rain” that leaves visible red streaks, and while generally harmless, the dust is not sterile but brings a freight of microorganisms.

    One big concern is how imported microbes may affect the soil microbiome and impact agricultural fertility and crop yield. Southern Portugal lies along one of the main deposition routes for Saharan dust, and the effect on vineyards in particular is a growing concern. A team from the University of Lisbon carried out genomic mapping of microbes in dust samples from 2022’s Storm Celia.

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  • A prospecting company’s search for gold has the town of Lone Pine and Indigenous leaders on edge, as the Trump administration greenlights new projects across the American west

    Lone Pine, population 1,882, lies along a stretch of California highway framed by the vast Inyo mountains and a sweeping desert landscape of sagebrush and dunes.

    It’s the type of small town tourists drive through en route to Death Valley; where hikers get a motel room between Pacific Crest Trail treks. But amid the quiet downtown strip of bars and shops, there are signs of a battle brewing under the town’s sleepy surface.

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