August 2021 Factfile - some news, animals and a plant

Welcome to our August factfile,

News

Bad news :(

Fires in and around Athens

Athens has been under siege this month, but not by any army. The forests all around the capital and in other parts of Greece and Turkey have gone up in flames. Houses have been destroyed and thousands have been evacuated. The reason is, of course, climate change.

“It’s been crazy over here. Between the extreme heat and the wildfires, it feels apocalyptic,” Eleni Myrivili wrote in an email on Thursday as the army was deployed to assist firefighters. “Ash is raining down on us here in Athens.”

England's lake district in peril

Lake District, a popular holiday resort in the north of England, is now eroding faster as a result of climate change and an increased amount of walkers due to the pandemic. Paths that were once two meters wide are now at least 12 meters wide on some walks. Also visitors tend to walk off the path, endangering local wildlife.

With no support from the government, charities are struggling to maintain the lakes natural beauty. The severe and often irregular weather due to climate change is not making matters any easier.

Rain on the peak of Greenland's ice cap for the first time on record

The summit of Greenland's huge ice cap experienced rain for the first time on human records. This is a strong sign of climate change. With the earth warming up at an alarming rate, things like this are only going to become more common. As sea levels rise, more and more islands and coastal regions are experiencing devastating floods. Study's show the over half the world's children are at risk because of climate change, with more being added everyday.

Animals

Land - White rhino

There are two types of white rhino: the northern white rhino and the southern white rhino. However, I am afraid to say that the northern white rhino is functionally extinct. For an animal to be functionally extinct, their population must be so small, that it is virtually impossible for them to thrive. In the case of the northern white rhino, all hope was lost in 2018 when the only known male died. The two remaining females are protected round the clock by armed guards. However, there may be hope of fertilising a northern rhino egg with frozen sperm from deceased males and thus creating more male rhinos. For the southern white rhino, things look a better: with 19 600 - 21 000 known individuals the southern white rhino is the only rhino species that isn't endangered (they're considered Near Threatened).

Like with many endangered animals, the reason for the past struggles with rhino populations is due to human influence. But this time, it isn't climate change. (Well actually, rhinos are also effected by climate change, but that isn't the main factor.) The main factor is hunting. For centuries, rhinos, along with elephants, have been hunted for their ivory horns/tusks. In many countries, ivory trade is now illegal and both elephants and rhinos are protected by the law.

A southern white rhino

A northern white rhino

Air - Peregrine falcon

Peregrine falcons are arguably the fastest animals in the world. They can reach speeds of over 320 km per hour ( 300 miles per hour) when diving for prey. However seeing as they use the force of gravity to reach these speeds, there are debates about weather that cheetahs are actually the fastest animals in the world. But whether, you believe the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world or not, they are still very fast.

The peregrine falcon is found almost everywhere in the world. In fact they are one of the most widely spread bird species in the world.

Due to their wide distribution and stabile populations, peregrine falcons are considered Least Concern.

Water - Humpback whale

The Humpback whale lives in oceans all around the world. They have one of the longest migrations of any mammal! Some groups can swim 5,000 miles from tropical climates to colder more productive feeding areas. They feed on krill and small fish. NOAA Fisheries website says that they do this by 'straining huge volumes of ocean water through their baleen plates, which act like a sieve'. They get their name by the hump on their back. For centuries, humpback whales were hunted to the brink of extinction. But now, after forty years of conservation work to protect them from whalers, they are classified as Least Concern. Their populations are now rising and so are not at risk of extinction, though with plastic pollution and the acidification of the oceans, I wouldn't be surprised if one day they did move back up the categories. There is a quite old article from National Geographic which is very good at stating the risks still faced by Humpbak whales. Click here to view it!

Plant - Aloe Vera

The Aloe Vera is as I'm sure you'll know, a plant known for it's medicinal qualities (my grandma puts it on everything: sunburn, mosquito bites...anything!). But beyond that, it is a succulent that is native to North Africa, Southern Europe, and the Canary Islands. However, today it is grown by many people at home all around the world (including me!). If you have it as a houseplant, you need to be water it deeply, but infrequently. To avoid rot, it is recommended to allow the soil to dry between watering about every 3 weeks. They need about 6 hours of direct sunlight a day. They are in my opinion a great plant to have!

My Aloe Vera Plant🌱
(called Vera, I know it's so unique 🤣)

Eco tip

Be careful when shopping. When out shopping, it can be tempting to see an item and want to buy it straight away. Next time you go shopping, think before you buy.

Do you really need this product?

Has it had a negative impact on the environment?

This will hopefully reduce how much you buy and will also save you money!

Film recommendation

I recently watched an amazing film called, my octopus teacher. It's about a filmmaker who befriends a common octopus living in a kelp forest off the coast of South Africa and I'm not going to tell you any more! It's currently available on Netflix.

Here's the online vote for next month's animals and plant. A massive thanks to all those who suggested an animal or plant - it was incredibly helpful and made my least favourite part of writing this blog post a lot easier. It will also mean, that we write about the animals you want to read about. I hope I got all of the suggestions into the vote. If yours isn't there, then it will either come in the next vote or we have already written a post about it.

If you have any questions or problems with this post, then feel free the write us an email at contact.greenworldblog@gmail.com.

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/07/apocalyptic-scenes-hit-greece-as-athens-besieged-by-fire
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/18/lake-district-climate-emergency-pandemic-walkers
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/rain-falls-peak-greenland-ice-cap-first-time-on-record-climate-crisis
https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/white-rhino
https://rhinos.org/about-rhinos/rhino-species/white-rhino/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/peregrine-falcon
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/humpback-whale

Images:
Title image: This image is owned by a blog editor.
Wildfires in Athens: This image, owned by European Space Agency (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Lake District: This image, owned by barnyz (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Iceberg: This image, owned by James Petts (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Southern white rhino: This image, owned by Marie Hale (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Northern white rhino: This image, owned by Eliya (on flickr.com), is licensed by CC BY-NC 2.0.
Peregrine falcon: This image, owned by Hari K Patibanda (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Humpback whale: This image, owned by ashala Tylor (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Aloe Vera: This image is owned by a blog editor.

Comments

December Top Tips | 10 ways to re-purpose a plastic bottle

Welcome to December! We thought it would be cool to find 10 ways you can use a plastic bottle even after you have refilled it gazillion times, so you don't waste all the plastic . Because, even if you try to avoid plastic bottles at all costs, you will inevitably end up using hundreds of them throughout your life. The impact on the environment is undisputed, from the land animals to the creatures of our seas, plastic bottles can have a detrimental impact. But we can reuse them in lots of fun ways, here are our ten favourites. Have a good December and a great new year, you'll hear from us! 1. Bird Feeder At one of our blog meet-ups, we actually made a bird feeder out of an old plastic bottle, so this is definitely one we can vouch for. It's super simple, as long as you have some good scissors to cut the bottle and a suitable place to hang it. Below is a photograph of ours for some inspiration, and there are plenty of resources online to ...

The environmental impact of the paper industry - is paper really the solution?

Hello everyone, First of all: Merry Christmas or Hannukah! I hope you are all enjoying your holidays and this special time of year. Today we'll be looking into the paper industry because lots of people are arguing about whether paper bags are better than plastic ones. We looked into it for you, enjoy! Acid rain In the production of pulp and paper, nitrogen oxides (NO X ) and sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) are produced. Both of these are contributors to acid rain, which is not quite as terrible as it sounds but still quite bad. Acid rain is rain, fog, snow or hail that is acidic. It's formed by NO X & SO 2 reacting with water and oxygen which will turn them into nitrous acid (HNO 2 ), nitric acid (HNO 3 ) & sulfuric acid (H 2 SO 4 ), meaning that instead of rain being formed from just water, it is instead also mixed with acid. While acid rain won't harm you, it can harm aquatic ecosystems and forests. When the rain falls on water, it w...

Rachel Carson 1907-1964

Hi everybody, Today I am going to tell you about a really inspirational environmentalist. Her name is Rachel Carson. I hope her story inspires you to be more careful about pesticides. As a girl, Rachel adored writing stories about animals. She got a degree in zoology but had to go home to care for her ageing mother. She wrote a series of radio shows about fish for a living. Rachel's program, called 'Romance Under Waters', was a big hit. Her ways of writing were different to anyone else and no one had made that sound so interesting before. It proved that she was talented in not only science but also writing. She wrote two books called 'The Sea Around Us' and 'The Edge Of The Sea'. When Rachel moved to the countryside, she realized the impact of pesticides. At that time farmers sprayed chemicals on their fields a lot to protect them from animals that may want to eat them. Rachel worked out that they were killing pla...

Turning waste into valuables

Hi, So this post was requested on Twitter after our September Top Tips about recycling . Today we will be talking about how to turn complete waste into something reasonably valuable. This is basically a form of upcycling but to a more extreme level. 1. Ecobricks So, almost a year ago we did a post about ecobricks , but they are such a good example of turning waste into valuables that we decided to put it here anyway. Ecobricks are a building material made from plastic. The waste plastic is washed and then compacted into a clean plastic bottle (also waste). The bottle becomes very hard and durable. Multiple bottles can then be used as bricks and cemented together. The 'bricks' are strong and do not decompose. For more info, read our post where we go into more detail. 2. Metals Although this may seem like something not worth the time. When you separate the metals in waste (for example an old car), you can get usable metal out ...

2021: How Our Year Went, Favourite Posts and Some Goals For 2022 | a wrap up

Hi Everyone! Today we wanted to share some thoughts on how our blogging year went in 2021 and some goals for 2022. We are now at the end of January, which is very scary, but we hope you will still enjoy this slightly belated wrap-up. In 2021, we published 36 posts in total. This is pretty good, we posted on average roughly every 10 days. However, there was a lot of time when we didn't post at all and our posts became increasingly just the monthly fact file. Many of you enjoyed the fact file, and for the most part, we enjoyed writing it but it became a bit of a chore by the end, hence the change we have made over to top tips. We think it would be nice to change our monthly post every year, and we will of course involve you in that just as we did this year. Our best posting months were by far August and September, which is understandable because we were on holiday for August and could schedule a lot of posts for September! Something we want to wor...

Ecosia

We all need to do something to save our planet: it is no use just leaving it to Greta Thunberg! She is very inspirational, yes, but she can only do so much. She isn't superhuman! The climate crisis is up to us; up to you. We all have to get stuck in. Research, learn, discover and most importantly: never give up! The world's animals need us. The world's trees need us and a simple way to do this is to switch to Ecosia. Ecosia is a search engine but it plants trees while you search the web. Okay, it doesn't have as many websites as google so you may want to have google as a backup but it plants trees: this is your opportunity to make a simple change. Just google Ecosia and search to plant trees. Make a difference. Image: This image is owned by Binyamin Mellish on pexels.com .

10 Animals on the Edge of Extinction No. 10- The Javan Rhino

The Javan rhino is listed as the 1st animal on WWF’s list of the 10 world’s most endangered animals, and I for my part, had never heard of it! If you hadn’t either, we’re changing that now. A bit about the rhino’s lifestyle The Javan rhinos are now exclusively found on the island of Java in Indonesia, but were once found in vast regions of northeast india and Southeast Asia. They have a dark grey colour which looks almost black when wet, and their (often pink) skin folds look a bit like plated armor. Both males and females have lower incisors which resemble tusks that they use to fight. Males have one relatively short horn of about 25 cm (10 inches). Javan Rhinos live in tropical forests, marshy areas and in the thick bush. They are mainly browsers and eat over 100 plants species they find in the forest, weigh between 900 and 2300 kg (1984-5071 pounds) and are between 3 and 3.2 meters (10- 10.5 feet) long. How endangered are we talking? Javan rhinos are the most ...

Announcement: Factfile

This image is owned by a blog editor.

April Top Tips: ten tips for environmentally friendly travel

Hi Everyone! We haven't been very present on the blog again recently but we are back today with ten top tips for environmentally friendly travel. Most forms of travel over long distances (unless you are willing to put in a lot of physical effort) use fossil fuels and are generally not good for our planet. So today we will be giving you a few tips which although won't mean that your travel is 100% planet friendly, will be a good start to doing as much as you can. Your Green World Blog Team💚 1. Use trains and boats rather than planes where possible Planes are awful for the environment. They are, however, extremely practical and so easy to use, cheap...It's hard to avoid them! They are so quick too so you don't have to spend as much time travelling. However, they are really bad for the environment. For example, you could fly once to Edinburgh from Heathrow for the same carbon dioxide levels as driving to Edinburgh 336 times! 2. Fly...

Pollination

Hello everyone, Today we're talking about pollination and its importance in the world's ecosystems. First a bit of basic plant biology. To reproduce most plants do have a differentiation into male and female, but not in the same way that we see in mammals. Both male and female reproductive organs can be found on the same plant, although not in the same place. Male gametes are produced in the stamens and are then found in pollen. On the other hand, female reproductive organs are called pistils and egg cells are found in the ovule (normally in the flower heads). Pollination describes the process of transporting the pollen to the egg cells, making it an essential part of the reproduction of plants. Nearly all seed plants worldwide require pollination to reproduce. Cone bearing trees also need pollination. Pollination is almost always assisted by other organisms such as insects, birds and mammals to transport the pollen. In some species wind ...

Green World

Search This Blog