Nature Conservancy lodge educates visitors

The Houston Chronicle had a recent article about Bear Mountain Lodge which is one of the seven lodges run by the environmental group Nature Conservancy. Bear Mountain is outside of Silver City, New Mexico. The lodge's staff duly educate the guests about the surrounding preserved land's wildlife, nature and enviromental problems:

"[The guide] had pointed out the impacts of cattle grazing, fire suppression and soil loss. 'It takes 1,000 years for one inch of soil to be restored in the desert Southwest.' He spoke about the fragility of the Western landscape, about the land's capacity and lack thereof, to heal itself. There are hopeful signs — the return of the variable checkerspot butterfly, hitherto not seen in these parts for 30 years; the renewed vibrancy of the clumpy pinyon rice grass underfoot; the exuberant re-emergence of cottonwood forests, marshlands and backwater wetlands at the Conservancy's Gila River Farm Preserve."

Read the full story: Blending comfort and conservation

Vatican adding another detriment to environment

If the Vatican hasn't done enough to ruin the environment with their so-called "godly" edicts such as spreading overpopulation to the extreme by saying birth control is a sin, now they are adding an airline so pilgrims can pray at holy sites that much faster.

Hey, but the carbon emissions spewn out from this "holy" plane will let these souls get to heaven so even though they add to the already polluted skies and global warming, the final goal of death can be that much more torturous. The agony of dying from cancer is noble as long as you will know you will be uplifted in the end into the arms of the Lord.

Congratulations Vatican for adding to the earth's decline, may your souls rest in peace knowing how you helped ruin the world.

Read the Reuters report: Vatican airline takes to the skies

Carbon offsetting explained

Budget Travel magazine's online article explaining the do's and don'ts of offsetting airline travel is a breath of fresh air so to speak. Carbon offsetting is a big trendy word and environmental snobs seem to always proclaim that they do this. Although it is a noble cause - to give money to a company to plant x number of trees to counter the greenhouse gas emissions spewn out from airline travel - knowing what these offsetting companies actually do with your money and if it is really worth it is always sort of mysterious.

Read the full article: On Flier's Remorse

Texas Bamboo Festival worth an eco-visit

The Houston Chronicle headlined Texas' own 15th annual Bamboo Festival in their Texas Weekender section.

As most environmentalists know, bamboo is becoming the darling of the sustainable building. It is easy and fast to grow and also extremely strong, traits that can now replace hard woods as building materials and therefore replace the cutting down of old-growth forests for lumber.

It's good to see that in an oil industry state an environmentally friendly plant can be celebrated.

Learn more about the Bamboo Festival at their official website.

Ultimate ecotrip N to S poles emissions-free

Plenty Magazine highlighted an earth-friendly travel story about two young Britons who are in the midst of journeying from North to South Poles using emissions-free vehicles in order to raise awareness about global warming. Although the two lads will trek, ski, bike and sail the entire distance, they are not entirely alone and do have support vehicles:

"Despite their best intentions, the explorers still need a little technological help while working toward their goal. Every night the pair camps and eats locally-grown food cooked on a portable camping stove using natural gas. Their support team’s trailer, which follows the determined duo, has been fitted with a solar panel.

Inevitably there will be “a moderate carbon footprint due to the logistics of such a large expedition” explains [explorer James] Hooper. But this is being calculated and offset as they go."

A much better and ecofriendlier way to make a long-scale sponsored trip than our previous post about the car-safety awareness trip overland Asia.

Go to the expedition website: 180 degrees Pole to Pole
Read the full Plenty article: Going to Extremes

Road trip across Asia, backed by U.N. under guise of promoting road safety

The Driving Home Road Safety 2007 project was the brainchild of two middle-aged Britons who wanted an excuse to travel the new interconnecting Asia Highway roads all the way from Tokyo to London. It was touted as:

"an epic journey along the newly completed Asia-Pacific Highway bringing world attention to road safety awareness and raising money to help save children from deaths and injury on the roads."

The United Nations jumped on board, eager for a way to promote their Make Roads Safe and Road Safety is no Accident campaigns whose purpose are "to help reduce the shocking toll of road-related injuries and fatalities, particularly in developing nations."

The car driven across the countries was a sponsored Aston Martin with advertising labels all over its exterior. The most profound of these stickers were from the U.N. projects in bold white type: "Make Roads Safe" and "Road Safety is no Accident." Since most of the countries they drove through were non-English speaking and - to say politely - developing , most of the people who saw the car probably had no idea what it was all about.

So promoting road safety is one thing, but doing it in a car is environmentally irresponsible. Especially since the number of vehicles in a huge polluting nation such as China are growing rapidly.

The explosion of car use in China is a major environmental concern. According to The Ecologist, just over 15 years ago there were about 1 million vehicles in use. This has risen to 12 million in 2005; and China estimates that by 2020 there will be some 140 million cars in use. Still, right now, that turns out to be about eight car users per 1,000 people; in the U.S. there are 950 cars per 1,000.

Unfortunately because of the new interconnecting road system, this explosion of vehicles can now do just what these two men did, drive around and pollute the environment. To really make the world "safe" the big picture of health and environmental protection needs to be addressed. A flashy campaign to let two thrill-seeking men drive through various developing Asian nations is just a ruse to make people feel good about themselves under the pretense of doing the good for others. These guys probably arose more interest in driving and possessing a car than anything about being so-called safe.

Read the complete diary: Driving Home Road Safety 2007

Lhasa train excites tourists, but with no mention of environmental or cultural controversies

LA Times travel writer Susan Spano recently made a trip on the new-ish train connecting Beijing and Lhasa. Unfortunately it was more about her own personal observations rather than any insight into the environmental and cultural problems that the train line created. Mostly it was "white person in China" drivel such as:

"When it was time to eat, we filed into the dining car for an unappetizing meal served on tin plates: potatoes, cabbage, greens, a slice of Spam, half a hard-boiled egg and rice."

She did mention one line about the controversy of the train exploiting the mineral riches of "Tibet," but without doing the homework of what "Tibet" really is. Tibet proper consists of the provinces Kham, Amdo and U-Tsang. What westerners call Tibet is really the Tibetan Autonomous Region, or TAR, predominantly in the U-Tsang area. Kham and Amdo lie in China. When the Chinese government "liberated" the region of Tibet in the 1950s it sliced through the middle of the historical Tibetan area and created the TAR in 1965 for "administrative purposes." The Chinese slaughtered and drove out thousands of Tibetans including the Dalai Lama for their own selfish ruling purposes. Western nations refuse to do anything about the "Tibet situation" because of their own dealings with cheap labor and manufacturing that China represents.

The train to Lhasa has brought cultural and environmental concerns. Firstly, it will bring more of the Han Chinese (the predominant chinese ethnicity) to distill the already distilled Tibetan culture. A major health concern from this is the heightened risk of HIV/AIDS which could blossom under the "frontier-like" conditions created by the railway construction and subsequent tourist industry.

Secondly, the environmental concerns of building and running a train over previously undisturbed natural areas has been addressed by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The embassy released a 2003 report criticizing the Chinese so-called environmental protection during the building process. The protection and health of the natural tundra and native species disturbed during the building of the rail line were of major concern. Another key point was the long-term effects hundreds of travelers will have on the delicate eco-system. Where will the waste and garbage be disposed of? How will the train disturb wildlife's natural migrations? And what will be built to support the tourists at proposed rest stops during the train ride?

Glad to see that for western writers the thrill of the train ride is much more important than what the full cost of the train line really represents.

Read more about the entire region of Tibet: The Government of Tibet in exile
Read the U.S. Embassy report: Environmental protection along the Qinghai-Tibet railway
Read the full LA Times article: Beijing-Lhasa Express the train ride of a lifetime

Stay tuned for more "white person in China" stories from Ms. Spano because the paper touts that luckily she: "will take us behind the scenes in Beijing, from its hutongs to its luxury hotels. She will also explore lesser-known corners of China that are made for the cultural and adventure traveler."

Climate Camp's day of "mass action"

Ultimate day for Climate Camp for Action's protest against London's Heathrow airport expansion:

"Mass action: on Sunday August 19 we will symbolically mark out the path of the proposed third runway. Then at 3pm we will converge on BAA headquarters and blockade BAA for as long as possible."

Read their website: climatecamp.org.uk

Ecotravel news' own ecotravel

Ecotravel news was away for a few days to the Washington, D.C. area, and although perhaps this doesn't strike one as an ecotravel destination, we try to be environmentally conscious when traveling even on short trips.

First of all we used public transportation to get there, one of the handy and cheap Chinatown buses. We took the NYC subway to get to the bus station in Chinatown. The bus was pretty much full and we noticed that when the driver gassed-up he used ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel.

Once in D.C. we used their subway system to meet up with our friend's private car, which when used, always had at least three people in it.

There are many other options for quick getaways, but the cheapest it turned out was also environmentally minded.

Travel without gassing up your car

Michael Martinez of the San Jose Mercury News wrote an environmentally responsible travel piece this past June about quick getaways using public transportation. For a paper produced in the Silicon Valley sprawl, where driving everywhere is the norm, this was a bold subject. Although originally written to help people not pay high gas prices, he wrote somewhat ironically:

"As it turns out, the virtuous decision to leave the car at home wasn't always an economically smart one. But we felt good about making an environmental statement, even if it cost us a bit more."

Obviously in order to get to these gas-free destinations one must live in San Jose, but there are many destinations in other cities and towns that are within easy reach of public transportation - try and seek them out.

Read the full story: Gas-free getaways

Camp protesting London’s Heathrow airport expansion

BBC online has an excellent series on the Camp for Climate Action whose week-long protest demands stopping an expansion to London’s Heathrow airport. The protestors claim the expansion and growing air travel in general generate the majority of greenhouse gases that contribute to the earth’s changing climate.

Greenpeace campaigner Emily Armistead said in a radio station interview:

"Aviation emissions aren't even part of our climate budget - they don't fall within Kyoto [Protocol, the treaty for climate change]- and for that reason the government has just given the aviation industry a green light to expand when the rest of us are being told we have to reduce our emissions."

International flights leaving the UK constitute 7% of all national carbon dioxide emissions.

Read the full story: Hundreds due at airport protest

Missing Lao ecopioneer bodes ill for Laos ecotourism industry

Laos eco-hoteler Sompawn "Pawn" Khantisouk was abducted in April and has not been seen or heard from since.

Laos' ecotourism industry was just beginning burgeon and many foreign tourists began visiting - but this could also be the problem. Several Chinese building projects were threatening protected areas and evidence of detriments from these projects were beginning to show in the local popluation. The Lao government is still suspicious of foreign travelers and is willing to subcontract its land for environmentally destructive projects only for the purpose of endowing itself. Athough touted as an eco-destination, travelers should think about visiting a country that would kidnap one of its own ecopioneers.

Melody Kemp wrote a wonderful in-depth article about this subject for Webdiary.

Read more about this:
Webdiary: Lost in Laos
Lonely Planet's travel blog: The fate of Lao ecotourism

Wash Post tells you how to ruin the environment

In this era of environmental accountability and responsibility, The Washington Post countered this trend by printing a completely backwater article today about tearing up sand dunes with all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs, for the simple pursuit of so-called fun.

It also went on to list the beaches or dune areas where one can actually "tear it up" with an ATV. That is like giving terrorists maps of prime locations of where to plant bombs and giving them instructions of exactly how to do it. But here a so-called "media giant" newspaper is helpfully informing polluters and environmental destroyers how to do more damage to the fragile environment - just so they can have a good time.

The writer of this horrible story, Cindy Loose, should definitely be ashamed of herself. Check out this excerpt:

"The section of the [Oceano] dunes [within the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Preserve] and beachfront open to ATVs and other vehicles is a point of controversy. The Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club won a lawsuit in 2005 that increased the size of the area fenced off for nesting birds. The environmental group is now pushing to make the nesting area off-limits year-round, so that the habitat on which the birds depend is kept in good shape for their annual arrival...

Hiking the dunes would certainly have been better for my health, but I confess a tendency to see an inverse relationship between what's healthy and what's the most fun. And riding the dunes definitely falls into my "most fun" category."

Congratulations Cindy on writing one of the least-environmentally responsible travel articles ever.

Read the full story: Hey, Dune

What makes a green hotel?

Last year, Travel and Leisure explored the question about what constitutes green hotels.

Surprisingly writer David Propson found that even the most eco of the ecoproperties which could claim such inspiring aspects such as solar panels, recycling rainwater etc. could never truly be "carbon-neutral." But awareness of the environment and creating efforts in greening hotels, no matter how small, was a step in the right direction.

Read the full story: The Ultimate Green Hotel

Nature lovers flock to manufactured WA isle

Jetty Island, although made by man, is an oasis of nature - and even better - is just a free two-minute ferry ride away from the Washington State town of Everett. The recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article says the island, originally built as a breakwater for ships pulling into the port in the 1980's, has become a wildlife sanctuary and a local "mini-vacation spot." Visitors can play on the sandy beaches, take hikes or go on naturalist tours.

This island shows that ecotourism can spring up from surprising places, even those originally intended for easing human purposes.

Another interesting albeit non-environmental aspect is that this article was extremely well-written by high school student Danielle Winslow who is participating in a Seattle University journalism workshop. She could put some so-called journalism professionals to shame, nice job!

Read the full story: Everett's man-made Jetty Island is all about nature

CSM reports on lobster ecotours

The Christian Science Monitor posted this story today with subheadline:

"A twist on ecotourism turns kids into sternmen, adults into foragers, a lobsterman into a floating mentor, and crustaceans into unwitting stars of the show."

It explains how tourists to Maine can go out on a lobster boat with a real lobsterman to learn about the trade and then if there is a good catch eat a lobster for dinner.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines ecotourism as: "Tourism involving travel to areas of natural or ecological interest, typically under the guidance of a naturalist, for the purpose of observing wildlife and learning about the environment."

So according to the dictionary definition, these lobster tourists are traveling to natural areas, under the guidance of the well-informed lobsterman (who doesn't exactly qualify as a naturalist, in my humble opinion), for the purpose of observing and learning about lobsters - but - then eating them for dinner...

A twist on ecotourism indeed!

Read the full story: All claws on deck for lobster tours