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!" 

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"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.

"You ain't seen nothing yet!" Environmentalists fear Hurricane Florence will again flood Carolinas' many livestock operations, bringing catastrophic pollution.

by Larry Powell

Almost 750 thousand turkeys (shown here) and some 100 thousand hogs,
were lost in catastrophic flooding in North Carolina during Hurricane Floyd in 1999. 
Dave Gatley FEMA

It's an all-too-familiar story.

Given past history, chances are good that Florence will once again turn waterways in the Carolinas - home to hundreds of huge swine and poultry barns and waste lagoons, into a toxic mess of feces, urine and animal remains. It happened when Hurricane Floyd struck in 1999 and Mathew stormed in in 2016.  Even tho they were smaller storms than Florence is now, Mathew and Floyd left their marks, too. According to "The New Food Economy," 14 lagoons flooded and millions of animals died during Mathew. Environmental groups such as The Waterkeeper Alliance, documented what they called "fields of filth" left behind, as seen here. Floyd's toll was also devastating. (See photo, above.)

North Carolina's livestock produce more than 90 billion kilograms of "wet waste" annually.

Despite these seemingly catastrophic scenarios, the hog industry is still putting on a brave, if not contradictory face. The North Carolina Pork Council maintains that waste lagoons are rarely "overtopped" in floods because they are intentionally built on high ground, with berms protecting them. And, it adds, many people just "don't understand this."

This picture, posted on the Council's own website, seems to show
neither berms nor high ground!
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Please also read:

"In Hogs We Trust," a critique of Manitoba's runaway pork industry.

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

New report: over half the world's raptors have declining populations

BirdLife

International

A ferruginous? hawk in Manitoba, Canada.
A PinP photo.

We interview our Chief Scientist, Stuart Butchart, about a newly published paper: State of the World’s Raptors: What threats this iconic group of birds face, and what we can do to help. More here.

Another hurricane is about to batter our coast. Trump is complicit.

The Washington Post

Hurricane Florence. A NASA photo.

With depressingly ironic timing, the Trump administration has recently announced a plan to roll back federal rules on methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the main component in natural gas. When it comes to extreme weather, Mr. Trump is complicit. More here.