By Maria Ionova
Marghanita Hughes can still clearly remember the day that started it all.
She was resting in the backyard of her suburban home in British Columbia, observing her three children weaving around a group of tall-standing pine trees. She couldn’t help but notice the vibrant butterflies and enormous dragonflies circling the heads of her little ones.
Hughes wondered to herself, ‘what would happen if her children were to magically merge with the surrounding insects?’ She imagined they would take on the form of butterfly girls and dragonfly boys. She picked up her pencil and sketched an image of a girl with butterfly wings. These were to become the main characters of [...]
Little Humbugs educates kids about the environment
Disappearing Bees
By Colin Schultz
Blueberries. Cherries. Raspberries.
It sounds like a perfect summertime snack, but it’s also a list of what might be off the shelves if the honeybee isn’t saved.
All across Canada, western honeybees (apis mellifera) have been dying out steadily over the last few years. Even with some promising research, local beekeepers are having problems saving their hives.
Dave Gale, 51, has been working as a beekeeper for the last 27 years, 25 of which have been spent at his home-based ‘Dave’s Apiaries’ in London, Ontario.
“We’ve had losses as high as 30%. This year was good, but the last few years have all been around 30%,” said Gale.
When beekeepers open their hives [...]
London’s Birds and Birdwatchers Unite
By Angelique Veerman
With brightly coloured dried leaves crunching underfoot, thirteen Londoners went for an autumn walk through the Fanshawe conservation area on Sunday.
The walk was organized by The McIlwraith Field Naturalists of London and was led by bird expert Cathy McCrae, the club’s field trip coordinator.
For Janet Stevenson, it was her first time out with MFN, a club devoted to the preservation and enjoyment of nature, but it won’t be her last, she said.
She joined the group out of a desire to learn about birds and as an excuse to spend time outdoors. Living half the year at her cottage on Georgian Bay, she said she spends all of her [...]
Enjoying London’s outdoors
By Marika Motiwalla
On a cold Autumn afternoon a group of nature enthusiasts, including members of Nature London and McIlwraith Field Naturalists of London were led through one of London’s parks to enjoy the outdoors.
Each person had their own reasons for being there ranging from loving the outdoors to wanting to learn about birds but all wanted to support London’s environment.
Marika Motiwalla reports.
(Audio link)
Port Hope poised for cleanup
After More than 70 Years of Nuclear Contamination, Port Hope is Poised for a Cleanup
By: James Jackson
“Those people should be moved, (all) sixteen-thousand of them,
from Port Hope and another town built for them.”
– Helen Caldicott, Speaking at The University of Western Ontario
October 16th, 2009
The nuclear accidents of the past are well documented, and are headlined by the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl and the 1979 near-meltdown of the reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The coverage of nuclear accidents in Canada is sparse, but that does not mean they haven’t happened.
Port Hope’s nuclear legacy goes back almost eighty years. Radium was extracted from uranium ore in Port Hope starting [...]
Turning out the lights for Earth Hour
By James Jackson
(Jackson.Earth.Hour – pdf)
The night sky has become a bright, empty space. Humans have long feared the darkness that night brings, partially due to genetics and our poor night vision, and culturally through our collective conscious of fairy tales and horror stories about the dangers of the night.
So, what have we done?
We’ve engineered the night to be almost completely devoid of darkness.
Streetlights and fully illuminated buildings guide our way home. The effects of this light obsession is most visible from outer space.
As night passes over the Earth, the various continents are awash in the glow of each major city.
As the number of cities with over a million inhabitants grows, [...]
One Tree at a Time
By Maria Ionova
Londoners and university students from Western Serves threw on their rubber boots, grabbed their shovels and prepared to be covered in dirt from head-to-toe in the spirit of ReForest London’s fifth annual Plant a Tree event. Even the final and gloomy September weekend was no match for these volunteers. They were determined to plant 400 trees – come hell or high water.
“In an urban setting I think it very important that people are involved in physically planting trees, because what we hope happens here then will be taken home. Attribute after 1st sentence We want this experience to be empowering so that it raises people’s awareness about their [...]