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Sage Newsletter for March 2014 is here!
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MORE THAN HONEY
Over the past 15 years, numerous colonies of bees have been decimated throughout the world, but the causes of this disaster remain unknown. Depending on the world region, 50% to 90% of all local bees have disappeared, and this epidemic is still spreading from beehive to beehive – all over the planet. Everywhere, the same scenario is repeated: billions of bees leave their hives, never to return. No bodies are found in the immediate surroundings, and no visible predators can be located.
Scientists have found a name for the phenomenon that matches its scale, “colony collapse disorder,” and they have good reason to be worried: 80% of plant species require bees to be pollinated. Without bees, there is no pollinization, and fruits and vegetables could disappear from the face of the Earth. Apis mellifera (the honey bee), which appeared on Earth 60 million years before man and is as indispensable to the economy as it is to man’s survival.
Fifty years ago, Einstein had already insisted on the symbiotic relationship binding these pollen gatherers to mankind: “If bees were to disappear from the globe,” he predicted, “mankind would only have four years left to live.”
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An open letter to all the wild creatures of the Earth
It is 65 years ago, you’re 10 years old and sitting on an old, half-blind, grey horse. All you have is a saddle blanket and a rope for reins as you watch a pack of dogs rage at the foot of a Ponderosa pine.
High up on a branch, a cougar lies supine, one paw lazily swatting at the air. He knows the dogs will tire. They will slink away and then the cougar will climb down and go on with its life in the Blue Bush country south of Kamloops. It is a hot summer day. There is the smell of pine needles and Oregon grape and dust. It seems to you that the sun carves the dust from the face of the broken rocks, carves and lifts it into the air where it mixes with the sun. Just beyond you are three men on horses.
The men have saddles and boots and rifles and their horses shy at the clamour of the dogs. The man with the Winchester rifle is the one who owns the dog pack and he is the one who has led you out of the valley, following the dogs through the hills to the big tree where the cougar is trapped. You watch as the man with the rifle climbs down from the saddle and sets his boots among the slippery pine needles. When the man is sure of his footing he lifts the rifle, takes aim, and then … and then you shrink inside a cowl of silence as the cougar falls.
Read the rest from Victoria Poet, Patrick Lane at the Times Colonist.
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Wildlife in the Wind
The Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society will provide the sixth of this season's
Wildlife in the Wind Talks on:
Tuesday 4 March 2014, 12 noon
Lethbridge Public Library Community Meeting Room (downstairs at north end of library).
Hummingbirds:
Small Brains and Big Memories
Dr. Andy Hurly
Dr. Andy Hurly, a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, studies animal behaviour, cognition and ecology. His conceptual work concerns the ways in which ecological circumstances shape how an animal perceives the world and acquires information, and the ways in which this information is processed, stored and recalled in order to perform everyday behaviours such as how to efficiently find food within a territory.
More information and pdf poster @ Lethbridge and Area Events.
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The Milk River Ridge is under threat from Oil and Gas Exploration.
Animals like pronghorns, water birds, fescue grasslands and wetlands are
potentially threatened in the Milk River Ridge.
Read our letter to the Alberta Minister of Energy @ Letters to Government
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Changes to the Alberta Wetland Policy
are opposed by many environmental groups, including SAGE.
Read our letter to Minister of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development,
Government of Alberta @ Letters to Government.
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Sacred Spirit of Water
Free Documentary Film of Idle No More's continuing fight
against the Harper Government's omnibus Bills C-45 & C-38
For more information & water related activism, go to Lethbridge and Area Events
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SAGE endorses
Environment Lethbridge Strategic Plan.
Read more on our Lethbridge & Area Events Page.
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The last Annual General Meeting was held:
Profile
The Southern Alberta Group for Environment (SAGE) was established in 1984 by a small group of citizens in the greater Lethbridge community concerned about the state of the environment. Founding members identified the need for an organization which, through collective action, would work to protect and restore the health of our environment – water, air, and land – in southern Alberta. In 2012, the goals of SAGE are similar to those over twenty years earlier. SAGE is a leading voice for a healthy and environmentally sustainable community through informing citizens, participating in public processes and supporting sound environmental initiatives and actions.
