Trekking up crowded Mount Sinai

The Miami Herald reports on the crowded trek up Mount Sinai.

In the bible this is the mountain that Moses climbed and received the 10 Commandments. Now it is an overrun tourist spectacle.

Reporter Charmaine Noronha recounts her trip:

I would retrace Moses' footsteps on a hike to witness the sunrise from the summit. If Moses could do it, why couldn't I?

We followed in step with our guide as he led us through the darkness, up the winding trail, over granite crags and slippery rocks. I'm not religious, but the irony of the moment hit me: I'd literally put all my faith in this man I'd just met.

For others on the hike, the expedition had deep religious significance. The Bible says this is where God gave Moses two stone tablets inscribed with the commandments. Moses received these laws after leading the Jews out of slavery in Egypt, a story that is retold during the Jewish holiday of Passover. But Sinai is an important site for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, and every night, hundreds of pilgrims make the climb.

Read the full story: Climb to the top of Mount Sinai

Photo from Bible Probe

Hiking Florida

The Miami Herald reports on hiking the Florida Trail.

Reporter Dave Griswold recounts his winter trip:

I had decided a couple months earlier to start exploring more of South Florida's wilderness. The Florida Trail, started in 1969 by volunteers, winds up from Big Cypress National Preserve to the Panhandle. In South Florida, it's just about the only trail for overnight hiking.

Winter and spring in Big Cypress are when the wildlife is most concentrated around shrinking water sources, with ranks swelled by migrating birds. You avoid the hazards of the summer and fall seasons, which include myriad biting insects, water in places to your waist, torrential downpours, heat and humidity.

Read the full story: Away from the beaches

Photo Florida Trail Association Big Cypress Chapter

75 years of Florida parks

The Miami Herald reports on 75 years of Florida state parks.

[The] park service runs a remarkably varied collection of preserves. In one Florida park (Paynes Prairie), bisons run free along with descendants of horses brought to Florida by the Conquistadors. Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park is completely underwater. Human "mermaids'' frolic in Weeki Wachee Springs. Koreshan State Historic Site in Estero preserves a complex settled in the late 1800s by people who believed they and the rest of the universe existed in a giant sphere inside the earth.

And then there's Torreya, on the un-Florida-like 150-foot-high banks of the Apalachicola River and home to the parks' only rentable yurt, a tent-like abode more common in Mongolia.

Read the full story: Mermaids & manatees: Florida state parks celebrate 75 years

Migratory birdwatching in Florida Nat. Park

The Miami Herald reports on the winter migratory birdwatching paradise in Florida's Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park near Gainesville.

The rattling karr-roo-oo sounds came from every direction. From the sky. From clumps of grasses and bushes. The calls of sandhill cranes filled the air above the expansive wetlands of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park.

Some 8,000 red-crowned, pewter-gray sandhills had commandeered the marshes. Mixed with the sandhills were a dozen similarly red-crowned whooping cranes, but taller and marked with black and white feathers. Whoopers, an endangered species, are one of the rarest birds in the United States.

Read the full story: Birdwatchers are in store for a rare treat

Photo from Florida State Park Service website

Florida coral reef revived with scientific help

The Miami Herald reports on the success of "farm-raised" coral helping to revive decimated reefs.

For the first time, stands of "farm-raised'" staghorn transplanted to Molasses Reef off Key Largo were caught in the act, providing critical proof that corals cultivated in underwater nurseries can not only survive but do the wild thing.

For researchers, it has raised optimism that they might actually have a shot at slowing, maybe even reversing, decades of staggering loss. Staghorn and elkhorn -- large and spectacular branching corals that once grew in sprawling forests -- have declined by as much as 97 percent along a reef tract stretching from Palm Beach to the Dry Tortugas.

Read the full story: In the Florida Keys, staghorn, elkhorn coral making a comeback

Photo by Timothy O'Hara/The Citizen

Florida's Everglades restoration in question

The Miami Herald reports on the $7 billion restoration of Florida's Everglades that hasn't made any progress according to a new study.

The National Resource Council report released on Monday claims that government bureaucracy has tied up the progression of many of the restoration projects in the Everglades and finds the wildlife and vegetation has continued to decline:

'''We've invested in all this science and this engineering development and we still don't have one completed project. Well, how can that be?,'' said William Graf, chairman of the 13-member committee that wrote the report. 'I think the conclusion is we don't have the political and public will to do it.'"

Read the full story: Report blasts slow progress on Everglades restoration

Florida judge claims EPA violated laws over Everglades cleanup

The Miami Herald reports on a federal judge's ruling over the controversial Everglades cleanup.

U.S. District Judge Alan Gold says that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Clean Water Act when it "ignored the law and its own recommendations when [they] approved the state's revised schedule for cleaning up farm-tainted water flowing into the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee -- avoiding a December 2006 deadline to reduce pollutants in the Glades."

Judge Gold went on to say the state Legislature led by then Governor Jeb Bush "'violated its fundamental commitment and promise to protect the Everglades' by relaxing rules limiting the amount of damaging phosphorus in the Everglades ecosystem."

The lawsuit was brought on by the Miccosukee Tribe and the environmental group Friends of the Everglades. In an earlier post this month, Ecotravel News reported on the demise of an Everglades bird that the Miccosukee Tribe blamed on failed federal wildlife protection programs.

Read the full story: Judge: Glades cleanup ignored

Everglades-named bird wiped out

The Miami Herald reports on the disappearing Everglades Snail Kite.

Writer Curtis Morgan sets the somber tone for the story in the first sentence: "It's never a good sign when an animal disappears from the place that gave it its name."

The kite's numbers have dropped dramatically and the recent droughts and water management projects haven't helped.

Local Indian tribes say federal wildlife protection schemes have failed in the Everglades and are to blame for the kite's demise. The Miccosukee Tribe points to the protection of another bird - the Cape Sable seaside sparrow - that indirectly helped kill-off the kite. Planned flooding to help protect the sparrow in certain areas in the Everglades drowned one of the kite's main food sources, the apple snail.

Read the full story: A rare bird all but vanishes from Everglades

Florida without a car

Today is Earth Day; but since we at Ecotravel News make everyday Earth Day, we will as usual just inform eco-interested readers on the latest environmentally-friendly related travel story that caught our eye.

Miami Herald reporter Marjie Lambert was given the task of traveling through Florida sans car.

For her five-day trip she actually had to take the train to three cities and - gasp - walk to all her sightseeing destinations. American cities are not made for walking especially when lugging a suitcase, I'll give her that, so her car-free trip was actually a real challenge that even Ecotravel News would not enjoy undertaking.

Ms. Lambert had a healthy attitude however and by the end of her trip relished in her brush with slow travel, especially since it was cheaper than driving:

"Each leg has taken at least an hour longer than the same trip by car, and cost some convenience. But this journey is part of the growing trend of slower travel with its own pleasant compensations -- the leisure of the train ride, the scenery not visible from I-95, the absence of traffic jams and metal detectors -- and I know I've gotten a real deal."

Read the full story: Florida by train, cities by foot

Peak year for western desert wildflowers

Because of intense and wet storms throughout the west this past winter, desert wildflowers should be in abundance this spring. Normally dry desert areas in such states as Nevada, California, Utah and Arizona will proliferate with colors for a short viewing season in April. The Wall Street Journal via the Miami Herald says that the popularity of viewing desert wildflowers is a growing trend and many websites on the topic have -ahem- sprung up.

Read the full story: This could be a great year

Hiking among glaciers in Canada's Jasper NP

Bob Downing of the Akron Beacon Journal via the Miami Herald writes about two worthwhile and picturesque hikes through Jasper National Park in Canada. There are icy-white glaciers, snowy mountain peaks and flower-filled meadows to be seen there.

Read the full story: Jasper National Park in Canadian Rockies offers trails aplenty

Miami Herald's mislabeled story

The Miami Herald posted an article with the word ecotourism in its headline but this doesn't seem to be the correct term in describing the subject. Basically the piece was about the writer's family's adventure in Queensland Australia while they drove around in their rented car and marvelled at all the Australian animals. There was nothing about conservation nor preservation nor anything about how animal agriculture has ruined the world's smallest continent and steps taken to counter this. No, only a diary about "white people encountering a new land" and how old can that be? How does this writer Tim Johnson have the audacity of claiming his article has anything to do with ecotourism?

Read the full story: Ecotourism adventures abound in northern Australia's Queensland

Miami Herald's Earth & Man section

The Miami Herald's travel section dedicated to appreciating natural beauty is aptly named Earth & Man / Travel to Sensitive Destinations. Although not all articles published on this section have to do with getting to destinations the most ecofriendly way possible, they do highlight natural areas that can inspire travelers to become more environmentally friendly.

Their latest story about cruising Greenland's icecap shows firsthand reactions to the obvious melting:

"Nearly every [Greenlander] local has a story of warming temps: a noticeably shrinking icecap, shifting fish populations, a dog-sledding season cut short by three months. This much seems certain: As ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica warm and glaciers worldwide thin, the sea will rise significantly. Coasts will shift. Though it won't happen quickly -- not in this lifetime, or perhaps the next -- that scenario seems all the more reason to trade in the gas guzzler, change to energy saver light bulbs."

Read the full story: Greenland: Cruise explores harsh universe - in comfort