• Greener cooking methods have been quite the craze lately, but the search for the perfect solution will (hopefully) continue until there is one. In Senegal, “green charcoal” is now being produced from agricultural waste materials to replace the black kind that has caused the destruction of so many trees.
• “Bell-bottoms and gas masks”: Check out National Geographic‘s slideshow of the first Earth Day, back in 1970. (And learn here about its history—why is it April 22, anyway?)
• Gotta pay some respect to history’s Earth Day heroes, whether they be from comic books or real life.
• Here’s the bad news first: Dow Chemical is sponsoring a fish festival near a polluted Michigan river where the (toxic) fish that are caught will be donated to the poor. But the good news: If you like SunChips, you can soon rest assured about their packaging—by 2010, it will be fully compostable.
Image: Flickr / kimberlyfaye
1. Every year during the summer and fall, ocean currents move penguins from southern Argentina to the beaches of Brazil. But this summer, almost four hundred penguins were swept away and ended up stranded hundreds of miles from their normal feeding home. The lost penguins were picked up and flown 1,500 miles on a C-130 Hercules military plane to the southern beaches and, upon landing, flopped into the sea. But the penguins didn’t get a free ride; Scientists tagged their flippers so they could track their future migration patterns. Hopefully they stick to the Mapquest route a little better next year.
2. Hundreds of adorable pandas (which may or may not be an evolutionary mistake) needed help after the Chinese Earthquake in May of 2008. The earthquake hit in a terrible spot, just 20 miles from the famous Wolong Giant Panda Reserve holding 86 pandas (all safe now). Some of the 1,200 pandas living in the wild, however, are still missing. The State Forest Administration sent in shipments of bamboo to help the reserve pandas survive.
3. Bermuda petrels were thought to be extinct for centuries. But in the 1950s, 18 nesting pairs were found. When a hurricane in 2003 destroyed the birds’ habitat, scientists moved the birds to higher ground at Nonsuch Island. (Despite the name, it does exist, we swear.) By removing the nestlings to artificial burrows on the new island, the scientists were able to build a new colony. There are now 85 pairs happily nesting there.
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