EarthScope Media Teen Reporter, Hailey Jurgens, Interviewed Noah Greenwald Endangered Species Director, of the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Center for Biological Diversity is racing to save the unique plants and animals that make up the diversity of life on this planet. Their campaigns to save species and wild places now reach beyond U.S. borders from the Antarctic to the North Pole and Asia to North Africa.
To help preserve biodiversity, the Center has:
• gained first-time protection, through scientific petitions and legal action, for more than 360 species under the Endangered Species Act, and helped hundreds more;
• secured protection for tens of thousands of river miles and more than 120 million acres of habitat for endangered species;
• defeated powerful attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act by supplying sound science and analysis to policymakers;
• reversed dozens of politically tainted decisions harming endangered plants and animals under the Bush administration;
• published groundbreaking scientific articles and comprehensive reports on subjects like species recovery and what federally protected habitat means for endangered species.


Noah Greenwald  directs the Center’s efforts to protect new species under the Endangered Species Act, to ensure that imperiled species receive effective protections and that we have the strongest Endangered Species Act possible.  He also works to educate the public about the importance of protecting biodiversity and about the multitude of threats to the survival of North American wildlife.  He holds a bachelor of science in ecology from the Evergreen State College and a master's in forest ecology and conservation from the University of Washington. Before he joined the Center in 1997, Noah worked as a field biologist, surveying northern spotted owls and marbled murrelets and banding Hawaiian songbirds.

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Worldwide, it is estimated that on a single day women can spend over 200 billion collective hours fetching water. 1 in 10 girls drop out of school or miss one week per month when they start menstruating because of the lack of toilets. Additionally, women are responsible for the health of the household often adding financial stress when a family member falls ill if she must miss out on any income-generating opportunities not to mention having to buy medicines or pay for health services.

Because they are often in charge of procuring water for their families and communities, women have a much deeper relationship to this essential resource. Yet in many places around the world their knowledge and hard work is ignored when it comes to community decision-making around the provision of clean water and sanitation strategies. Women know the locations of all the available and seasonal water sources as well as which water sources are safest. Also, because they have more interaction with water than others, making sure they have access to information about proper hygiene practices, and the ability to implement them, is crucial to promoting family health. If a mother is cooking, cleaning and providing drinking water and not practicing good hygiene, the whole family is at risk. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) recognizes that the “exclusion of women from the planning of water supply and sanitation schemes is a major cause of their high rate of failure.”

 

The Global Women’s Water Initiative was launched collaboratively in 2007 by three international organizations with shared goals and values: A Single Drop, Crabgrass and Women’s Earth Alliance. Since its launch, GWWI has facilitated 3 year-long training programs for 45 two-person teams of African women grassroots leaders, providing over $55,000 in seed funding for water and sanitation projects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Liberia, and Cameroon. The teams are selected through a rigorous application process; the selected duos are all respected leaders who have a proven track record in implementing programs in their local communities. GWWI has also built partnerships with strong regional organizations, including GROOTS Kenya, the Greenbelt Movement, ProNet Accra (Water Aid affiliate), and Women’s and Young People’s Leadership Academy (iCON) who have acted as our local hosts, coordinated local logistics and facilitated skill-building workshops. In addition to African women trainers and participants, Women and Water Trainings also include international women development practitioners and academics who participate as Fellows, providing post-training support to the African participants who are implementing water projects in their communities. 

Teen Reporters interviewed Gemma Bulous. 

Gemma Bulos is a multi award-winning Social Entrepreneur and Director of the Global Women’s Water Initiative. Prior to co-founding GWWI, Gemma was the Founding Director of A Single Drop for Safe Water in the Philippines, creating income-generating community-led water service organizations. For this innovation, Gemma received national and international social entrepreneur awards including Echoing Green, Ernst Young and Schwab Foundation. Her programs also won accolades including the Tech Museum Tech Equality Award and Warriors of the UN Millennium Goals, sponsored by Kodak Philippines. In 2011, she was recognized as one of the Most Influential Thought Leaders and Innovative Filipinas in the United States by Filipina Women's Network. She has presented alongside such dignitaries such as Jane Goodall, Vandana Shiva, Wangari Maathai at events such as the World Economic Forum, UN Water for Life Conference and others. Gemma is also the recipient of the CG Vibes Award from Queen Latifah and CoverGirl for “Women Changing the World Through Music” for building the Million Voice Choir global peace movement to raise awareness of the global water crisis.

 

For over a decade EarthScope Media and the Teen Environmental Media Training Program has been providing vocational training to high school students.
 

We provide them with hands on vocational training in journalism, communications and cutting editing technology. We offered paid internships to two graduates who served as mentors for new students and as roving reporters.

We additionally provided curriculum to enhance oral and written English for English Language Learners. We helped students gain knowledge about science, environmental and sustainability and health issues first hand directly from the leaders in these fields. All of our students completed their own radio story. Every student learned the tenants of good journalism, conducted research, wrote questions, interviewed leaders in the community, developed a media script, recorded their scripts, learned how to use sound editing software (used in film, radio and the music business), and completed radio ready stories in their own voices.  Some students also wrote press releases, articles and blogs, and learned how to use Social Media.

 In addition our program benefited:

 Our Community & The Public At Large:

Þ   By Providing News about crucial environmental and sustainability issues of the day

Þ   By Creating an Informed Public

Þ   By offering a call to action and/or follow up source

Þ   By Supporting Democracy by informing the public with news that is not compromised by commercial interests or advertisers.

The Environment:

Þ   By Promoting Environmental Stewardship

Þ   By Informing, educating and announcing environmental actions - organizations

Þ   By Plat forming Alternatives to harmful industrial practices- Bio-mimicry, Marin Clean Energy

Þ   By Educating & Informing and Connecting the Younger Generation about Environmental, Health and Sustainability Issues

Þ  By providing a Doorway to Green Careers.

We could not have done any of this without support from our long term partners including Marin County School to Career Program and KALW Radio.

We also could not have done this without the support of our funders:

The Fullerton Family Foundation

Good Earth

Susan Adams and others...:)

Many thanks for their support:)

Marin County Bicycle Coalition

Hello everyone, this is Cella Wright posting about an interview we had with Tom Boss, the membership director of the Marin County Bike Coalition (MCBC) which has been doing many notable deeds since it was formed in 1998. Along with trying to disprove the misconception that many automobile-drivers have about bicyclists and teaching people about the goodness of the biking lifestyle (the positive mental, physical, and environmental effects), MCBC also improves Marin's roads and paths for both bicyclists and pedestrians.The benefits of biking have been proven: a Danish study by scientists Andersen, Schnohr, Schroll and Hein in 2000, proved that people who cycle regularly live longer and healthier lives than those who don't. Biking can be an incredibly invigorating workout (burns calories, builds muscular endurance, and is great aerobic exercise), or a way to simply transport yourself from point A to point B without inflicting environmental damage that would otherwise occur with a motorized vehicle.

Bridge with expanded bike lanes
in Portland, Oregon.

Additionally, biking is fiscally beneficial; "Studies have said that you can actually employ more people building bicycle and pedestrian projects than you can building freeway projects, and there's a bigger bang for your buck-," Tom says,"in Oregon a few years ago, they were trying to get more traffic across a river, and one option was to widen the bridge, which would have cost tens of millions of dollars, [but] they decided to take out one of the lanes and open it up to bicycles, and it turns out that since it is such a 

Inkwells Bridge - part of East-West
Greenway Project by MCBC

bike friendly city, they were able to increase the traffic flow over that bridge for less than a million dollars by putting in a bike lane rather than expanding the bridge for another car lane." MCBC has made many great accomplishments in Marin: in May this year MCBC's Off-Road Trail Access and Education Program opened the new multi-use 680 trail that connects Loma Alta and Terra Linda-Sleepy Hollow Preserves, they have built the North-South Greenway (which includes the Alto Tunnel that connects Mill Valley and Corte Madera, the Lincoln Hill Pathway which connects Terra Linda and downtown San Rafael, and the Central Marin Ferry Connection Project that links the Larkspur ferry with towns and cities to the south), the East-West Greenway (which includes the Inkwells bridge that connects 8 miles of pathways), have educated people of all ages about the benefits of cycling, and have made roads all throughout Marin safe for both pedestrians and bicyclists.MCBC's primary goal is for 20 percent of all trips in Marin to be made by walking or biking by 2020. Tom says that the futures of both biking and MCBC are bright.

In order to learn more about Tom Boss & MCBC, please visit the MCBC Home Page. The interview with Tom Boss will be online in the near future.

Center for Biological Diversity, Endangered Species Director Noah Greenwald

"We want those who come after us to inherit a world where the wild is still alive."

Hailey Jurgens here.

Posting about an interview I had with Noah Greenwald, the Endangered Species Director for the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center for Biological Diversity believes that every species has an intrinsic right to live. Their work focuses on protecting the lands, waters, and climate that species require to survive through a combination of science, law, and creative media. The Center is the nation’s leader in preserving endangered species, having secured Endangered Species Act protection for hundreds of species and hundreds of millions of acres of land and water.  Edward Humes, renowned author has said, " The modern American environmental movement has been reinvented by the center. " in his book Eco Barons. 

 Noah Greenwald directs the centers efforts to protect new species under the Endangered Species Act. He also works to educate the public on the importance of protecting biodiversity, and the multitude of threats facing North American Wildlife. He holds a bachelors in science ecology and a master's in forest ecology and conservation.I contacted Mr. Greenwald, believing that an interview with him would help to convey the imperative state of Earths biodiversity. In hopes that out of the number of people Earthscope Media reaches, at least some will be inspired to take action. Noah likewise believes we desperately need to grasp peoples attention, the loss of these species is irreversible and will impact everything around us.  The knowledge I've gained from Noah as well as the Centers website has greatly impacted me, and it needs to be shared. What took 4 billion years to create is disappearing far more quickly than most of us realize. Currently, species are going extinct at 1,000-10,000 times the natural rate. We are experiencing the worst series of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs!

"Beyond its intrinsic value, biodiversity is necessary to human survival. Ecosystem diversity is crucial to ecosystem integrity, which in turn enables our life support, giving us a livable climate, breathable air, and drinkable water. Food-crop diversity and pollinating insects and bats allow agriculture to support our populations; when disease strikes a food crop, only diversity can save the system from collapse. Plant and animal diversity provide building blocks for medicine, both current and potential; almost half of the pharmaceuticals used in the United States today are manufactured using natural compounds, many of which cannot be synthesized. They also provide critical industrial products used to build our homes and businesses, from wood and rubber to the fuels that underpin our economies — even coal and oil are the products of ancient plant matter and preserved zooplankton remains.

Biodiversity plays a central mythic and symbolic role in our language, religion, literature, art, and music, making it a key component of human culture with benefits to society that have not been quantified but are clearly vast. From our earliest prehistory, people have never lived in a world with low biodiversity. We've always been dependent on a varied and rich natural environment for both our physical survival and our psychological and spiritual health. As extinctions multiply, and cannot be undone, we tread further and further into unexplored terrain — a journey from which there is no return."-excerpt from The Elements of Biodiversity 

Please, visit the Center for Biological Diversity's website to learn more.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/index.html

Also see the petition site, take action and make an impact simply by signing. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/

Hi - 

This is India Neville , an EarthScope Reporter and Intern with the Teen Environmental Media Program....

Last week we had the amazing opportunity of meeting Dune Lankard and hearing all about all the projects and organizations he’s involved in.  A native Athabaskan Eyak from the Copper River Delta on the Gulf of Alaska, fishing was always a huge part of his life. He would spend his summer months out with fishing with his family on Prince William Sound and Copper River Delta off of Alaska. “ I lived…out in the wild just chasing fish pretty much all my youth,” Dune recalled. “All of [my family] grew up living from the sea…I remember almost every meal we’d come in and we go ‘oh man we’re having seafood again?!’ ” It wasn’t until he tried a hamburger as a teenager that he realized just how lucky he was for having all that fresh, delicious fish.

Fishing and living off the sea was always a part of Dune’s childhood and it carried over into his job as a commercial fisherman. However on March 24, 1989 all that changed when hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound. For Dune, the Exxon Valdez oil spill not only changed his life, but the entire community; his family and friends and the environment. So many had lived off the sea, which was now saturated with oil.  All of the creatures who found the ocean their home were affected and salmon fishing, that had been the livelihoods of numerous people, was brought to a halt.

That day of the oil spill Dune decided to become an activist and leader fighting for environmental rights and making sure that people’s voices are being heard. He focuses a lot on indigenous peoples rights and emphasized the fact of protecting native rights as well as the conservation of wildlife was key to success. He started many organizations that followed these guidelines including the Native Conservancy Land Trust. “We wanted to protect endangered peoples and culture not just endangered plants and animals like the rest of the conservation community,” he said. 

Dune has had and still continues to have a lasting legacy and powerful voice in the activist movement.  He has founded numerous organizations and is on the board of many others.  He has won Supreme Court cases and is always fighting hard for what he believes in.  

If you are interested in learning more about Dune be sure to visit http://www.redzone.org.

The Redzone network name was chosen shortly after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill because local people wanted to highlight endangered wild red (sockeye) salmon, Indigenous people and sacred places in peril. Redzone is the virtual home to Chinook, Sockeye, Coho, Chum and Pink salmon that have been part of the Eyak people's way of life on the Copper River Delta and in eastern Prince William Sound for over 3,500 years, and counting. The still intact thriving ecosystem, with its wild salmon returning annually to spawn in their millions, is home to eagle, bear, beaver, wolves, moose and millions of migratory shorebirds and waterfowl.

Dune's Eyak name is Jamachakih, which means ‘the little bird that screams really loud and won’t shut up’ “.

Soon we will have the interview with him posted as well.

Women Making Waves - Global Women's Water Initiative

Hello everyone, this is Cella, one of the teen interns for Earthscope Media. On Thursday, October 25th, I had the pleasure of attending the Women Making Waves/Global Women's Water Initiative (GWWI) presentation  (by the wonderful organizations Women's Earth Alliance and Crabgrass) at the Brower Center, and interviewing the amazing and inspiring founder of  GWWI, Gemma Bulos.

GWWI was formed in order to address the need to involve women in water and sanitation efforts and decisions in their communities. Since 2008, GWWI has organized trainings in East and West Africa, and has trained 92 women; providing them with the knowledge, tools, and technologies necessary to establish sustainable water and sanitation strategies in their communities. Through the organization, women are taught to build water tanks, toilets, and water filters. GWWI's main goals (many of which have already been successfully implemented) are: reducing waterborne diseases, improving education for girls, helping communities save money, and enabling women's voices to be heard.
Gemma Bulos, the founder of GWWI, became inspired to start the organization after singing at the United Nation's Water For Life Conference: she learned that 1.2 billion people did not have access to water, and 3-5 million people were dying of waterborne diseases. Whilst developing GWWI, it was clear to Gemma that the women who would be participating in the organization (women with less luxuries than most Americans are accustomed to) are incredibly resourceful, and all she needed to do was expose them to these wonderful technologies, and allow the women to utilize them in their communities. Gemma maintains a loving and respectful attitude towards the women she works with, as opposed to the often condescending attitude of many other organizations, and believes that one of the reasons GWWI is so effective is because they approach the women they train with a mentality of serving, not saving. Due to her inspiring sense of humility and determination, Gemma was, indeed, the single drop of water (like that in the GWWI symbol pictured above) that lead to waves of change.

The interview with Gemma Bulos will be posted soon! If you'd like to learn more about GWWI & Gemma now, please visit GWWI - About Us.