Wildflower Stew

On February 26, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault officially opened. Seeds from all over the world will be placed in three caverns carved 130 meters into the permafrost outside the town of Longyearbyen on the island of Svalbard just 500 miles from the North Pole. Norway has provided the funding for the project and developed it in collaboration with the Global Crop Diversity Trust

Ola Westengen, operation manager, said the seeds include several thousand potato seeds from Peru, 30,000 samples of different beans from Columbia, 47,000 seed samples of wheat and 10,000 types of maize from Mexico, 30,000 seeds of mostly barley and wheat from the Middle East and 70,000 varieties of rice from the seed bank in the Philippines. The seed vault can hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all the known varieties of the world’s main food crops.

Twenty-three hundred people live on this Norwegian archipelago which was selected not only for it’s remote location far away from conflicts but also because of its climate. Even if the freezer system in the vault fails the permafrost will keep the seeds frozen and the fortified walls, recently tested by the biggest earthquake in Norway’s history, have been built to withstand nuclear missile attacks. The vault is also built 130 meters above current sea level, high enough that it would not flood if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt entirely due to global warming, and is protected by high walls of fortified concrete, an armoured door, a sensor alarm and the native polar bears that roam the region.

The thought that polar bears are the security guards for a doomsday vault containing the seeds of what might be the future of the human race, given a worst case scenario, and the fact that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct because of the actions of the human race, gives one pause. Or it did me anyway.

So, maybe we should go here and find out how we can help the bears stick around.

See previous stories on the Global Seed Vault in Wildflower Stew at: http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com/2007/06/04/saving-the-seeds/ and http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com/2007/03/20/we-need-this//

See more photos of the Seed Vault here.

Used with permission.
Copyright Michael G. Shepard

The timber industry, the Bush administration and a disgraced former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official have failed to remove the threatened Marbled Murrelet from the endangered species list. While the Government Accountability Office and the Department of the Interior’s Inspector General continue investigating wrong-doing on the part of the government, Judge John Bates of the D.C. district court on February 5, rejected the industry suit, partly because of the actions of Julie McDonald, the former Interior Department official who is accused of bullying agency scientists and influencing them to change their report.

The marbled murrelet is a small seabird that nests in old-growth forests along the Pacific Coast of North America. In 1992, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed murrelet populations in Washington, Oregon, and California as threatened due to logging of their habitat. Despite undisputed scientific evidence that murrelets are disappearing from the Pacific Coast, the timber industry continues to set its sights on the small seabird in order to permit the logging of trees over 100 years old. See previous article in Wildflower Stew at: http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com/2008/01/01/miracle-of-the-marbled-murrelet/

Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups who intervened through the Earthjustice law firm predicted the Bush administration would next seek to remove as much of the bird’s “critical habitat” designation as they can. The fight goes on.

The Buffalo Field Campaign is a non-profit grassroots coalition of Native American and non-Native environmentalists formed under the leadership of Michael Mease and Lakota activist Rosalie Little Thunder to stop the slaughter of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo herd, protect the natural habitat of wild free-roaming buffalo and native wildlife, and to work with people of all Nations to honor the sacredness of the wild buffalo.

Buffalo in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are not protected on their year-round habitat. Yellowstone Park does not provide sufficient winter range for the resident herds of wildlife. Due to the deep snow, animals are forced to leave the park in order to find adequate forage for winter survival. When the buffalo follow their instincts and migrate to lower elevations, they enter a conflict zone where the politics of Montana directly clash with their survival needs.

During the winter of 1996-97, the Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) slaughtered almost 1,100 Yellowstone buffalo when they crossed the arbitrary park boundary into the state. Ever since that winter the BFC volunteers have stood with the buffalo who are outside the park, every day from sunrise to sunset. Their daily patrols, their witness and their grassroots advocacy have made it clear to the DOL that they will be held accountable for their actions.

Over 3000 people from all over the country and around the world have volunteered to help stop the buffalo slaughter. Volunteers patrol for buffalo by skis, snowshoes, or cars. Everyone communicates by a network of hand-held radios, and also carries a video camera.

You can watch the video below and then you can go to http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/index.html to find out more about how you can help stop the slaughter of the Yellowstone Buffalo.