We must keep single-use plastics out of our oceans.

Greenpeace - More here.

Poster by Jessica - NOAA marine debris program.

Thawing permafrost may release more CO2 than previously thought, study suggests

folio
New research from University of Alberta ecologists show "mineral weathering" can be a significant contributor to Arctic climate change. More here.

Melting permafrost in Alaska. Photo by the US Geological Survey.

Orca 'apocalypse': half of killer whales doomed to die from pollution

The Guardian

Banned PCB chemicals are still severely harming the animals - but the Arctic could be a refuge. More here.

An orca breaches. Photo by H. Zell.

Busted! A citizens' group exposes an illegal hog operation in southwestern Manitoba. (An illustrated text version.)

By Larry Powell

Hogwatch Manitoba says a large pig barn in the RM of Yellowhead in the southwest, has been operating illegally  since last year.

This is the barn in question, 5k east of the village of Strathclair.
Photo by Larry Powell.

Ruth Pryzer presented Hogwatch’s case to the Yellowhead council 
this week. She claimed the barn owner, Wim Verbruggen, misled 
the local government when he applied for a building permit early 

last year.

She says the barn he built was three thousand square feet bigger than he said it would be. And it houses many more animals than 
the fewer than 300 he claimed it would. The Planning Act which existed at the time, required that a barn such as the one now up 
and running, have both a “conditional use” hearing and a technical review. 

Neither of these actually took place. 

The lack of a hearing meant there was no chance for anyone in the area to express concerns or perhaps of even finding out about it, beforehand! No technical review meant a group of experts had no chance of examining the project, in detail.

The Hogwatch submission states, “The applicant (Verbruggen) 
had given the RM verbal assurances that the expansion would not require an application for a conditional use permit. Ms. Gapka 
(the RM’s CAO)  said, because the Municipality operates on ‘the honour system and did not have the staffing resources and 
expertise to verify the accuracy of the information supplied by the applicant, the applicant was taken at his word.”

Pryzner believes that honour system is, therefore, “Obviously not working.” And that the violations have been “so egregious, the 
barn should be shut down.”

She also worries that, because the owner has not applied to expand the barn’s manure storage capacity, either, the only way he’ll be able to get rid of the excess is to spread it on fields in the winter. That practice was illegal at the time and remains illegal today (although the Pallister government has since made it easier to, at 
the stroke of the Minister's pen, make it legal.  

Liquid hog waste (slurry) spread on frozen fields has a greater chance of running off  and polluting waterways than it does when spread on unfrozen soil. 

The Mayor of the RM, Don Yanick, told Planet in Peril, he could find no mistakes in the Hogwatch submission. He said it had probably been an “oversight” that no hearing had been held. This was possibly due, he said, to the RM’s lack of experience when dealing with such large building projects. He promised the council would review the information and decide what to do.

But he is obviously not keen on Pryzner's suggestion that the barn be shut down. “Any business in the community," he explained, 
"we like to work with them to solve the issues that they have. And, if they can’t be solved, then we have a decision to make.”

Verbruggen was not at the council meeting. And I have not been able to reach him for comment. However, he told the Brandon Sun, he had done nothing wrong.

He is now in the process of building another barn in a nearby municipality.

Hogwatch Manitoba is made up of farmers, environmentalists and animal rights activists. It promotes an industry that is "ethically, environmentally and economically sustainable."

                            

                            -30-
Watch the video version of this story here.  

The above story, all too often represents the reality of mega-hog production. 

Ads like this, however, are how the industry "spins" its message 
into one of sweetness and love. 

For the First Time, Scientists Prove Human Activity Is the Top Cause of Warming Antarctic Waters...

Mother Jones
...and not regular temperature variations or responses to natural climate change. More here.

Mt. Herschel, Antarctica, with a penguin colony in the foreground, 2006.

Photo by Andrew Mandemaker.

Busted! Citizens' group exposes Illegal hog operation in Manitoba. Few consequences likely for barn owner.(Video)

Read an alternative version here. Also....

"In Hogs We Trust."  

A critique of Manitoba’s “runaway” hog industry.

Part 1 - Antibiotic Overuse.

Part 11 - The price we pay for corporate pig$. 

Part 111 - From Malaysia to Manitoba - the global magnitude of livestock diseases.

Part 1V - The health and environmental costs of an expanded hog industry.

Part V - What’s behind Manitoba’s drive to expand? 

For years, the main culprit in bee decline has been the "neonics," a family of insecticides. Now, another suspect has been added to the list - an herbicide - Roundup!

More here.
Science X

A honeybee colony in Manitoba. A PinP photo.

Florence Flooding Kills 5,500 Pigs, 3.4 Million Chickens in the Carolinas

EcoWatch
The North Carolina Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that the historic flooding from Florence has killed about 3.4 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs. More here.

World's Largest River Floods Five Times More Often Than It Used to

EcoWatch

Extreme floods have become more frequent in the Amazon Basin in just the last two to three decades, according to a new study. More here.

Amazon River, Western Para Province, Brazil June 1996. This image shows the flooded condition of a small section of the Amazon River,including the jungle towns of Obidos and Oriximina. The sun’s reflection off of the muddy looking river water, called sun glint or sunglitter, helps to identify land-water boundaries in this section of the Amazon River which is roughly midway between Manaus and the Amazon River Delta. By comparing this image to a detailed map of the area it is obvious that the river is flooding in the low lying areas that are adjacent to the floodplain of the main channel of the river. Large areas south of the main channel of the Amazon River are covered by standing water. Patches of cleared land can be identified within the densely vegetated terrain along the northeast side of the Amazon River. The main channel of the Rio Trombetas can be traced southeastward from the right edge of the picture until the river merges with the Amazon just west of the small jungle town of Obidos. Satellite image by NASA.

Million$ more in government help for Manitoba's high-maintenance hog sector.

by Larry Powell

Manitoba's Premier, Brian Pallister has announced another assistance package to Hylife Foods of more than $11 m over the next several year. (HyLife is now Canada's biggest pork processor.) Some $9.5m will come from the province, the rest from Ottawa. It will help the company pay for a pricey expansion of its killing plant in Neepawa and a new feed mill in the southwest.

Last November, I warned in a blog-post here, that Manitoba taxpayers had better be prepared to "dig deeper." Why? Because Pallister's Conservatives had just begun to deregulate this province's corporate hog sector, so it could expand. And, expand, it has! Countless new barns are going up, so that millions more animals can be raised and slaughtered here: And all with fewer regulations than ever to control pollution, disease or catastrophic barn fires. 

Given past history, my article reasoned, more "corporate welfare" was surely in the wind.

It documented at least half-a-billion dollars in aid that had already gone to the industry, nationwide, from federal and provincial treasuries over the previous decade. These included a so-called "loan" of $10 m to HyLife Foods. Turns out, it may not have been a "loan" after all! The agreement allows the Minister, at the stroke of a pen, to release HyLife from its obligation to pay that money back. (No one really knows if that is what will happen. At least, not yet.)

 Part of HyLife's executive team, whose corporation you 

                                      and I continue to"prop up" with our tax dollars.                                           A HyLife photo.

In the ensuing ten months, there have been several more announcements of aid totalling millions, possibly billions, to the agriculture sector, overall. While breakdowns are not always announced, the hog industry has received public funding for such things as "research" as has the "meat processing" sector (usually code for the two big swine killing plants in the province, operated by HyLife and Maple Leaf Foods)

Despite all of this, the hog sector's demands on our public treasuries are becoming even more shrill and frequent of late. It has even issued a formal call for more public assistanc to bail it out of its economic squeeze posed by the threat of a trade war with the States. Apparently, Canadian hog prices have already tanked in the midst of the dispute. 

The industry is also sounding more alarms recently over the apparently real possibility that more virulent and deadly hog disease, now spreading elsewhere around the world, may invade North America. How long do you think it will be before a similar calls goes out for public dollars to counter this threat? 

It's been said that, without the kind of public "largesse" that now flows regularly to the industry, and the fact it does not pay for any of the "external costs" it inflicts on public health and the environment, it would probably go broke in short order!

Before I pat myself on the back too much for being "prophetic," boy, was I was wrong about one thing! In my November story, I said the next rollout of "corporate welfare" would possibly be in about a year. 

If I had been writing with a quill pen, it pretty much happened (allowing for a bit of poetic license) "before the ink was dry!" 

-30-

"In Hogs We Trust."  

A critique of Manitoba’s “runaway” hog industry.

Part 1 - Antibiotic Overuse.

Part 11 - The price we pay for corporate pig$. 

Part 111 - From Malaysia to Manitoba - the global magnitude of livestock diseases.

Part 1V - The health and environmental costs of an expanded hog industry.

Part V - What’s behind Manitoba’s drive to expand? 

A call to protect much more land and sea from human encroachment

Science X 

Riding Mtn. Nat'l. Park - Manitoba, Canada. A PinP photo.

A new paper in the journal Science strongly supports establishment of many more land and sea areas as protected sites. Failure to do so, the editorial warns, chillingly, could spell doom for many species, including our own! More here.