Voids under interchange concern scientists

-Goldstrean News Gazette
Excavations at the Spencer Road Interchange construction area have unveiled a network of void spaces below ground, leading a geoscientist and cave experts to be concerned that the ground will safely support the road.
In and around Langford Lake cave, metres away from where the road will pass, are a number of limestone rock cavities and fissures. Called karst caves, these limestone formations have many cracks where water can enter and form cavities through dissolving rock.

Environmentalists’ report critical of Bear Mountain

Bill Cleverley, Times Colonist
Opponents of the Bear Mountain development hope to spur debate with the release of a hefty report chronicling the Bear Mountain resort development in Langford.
“It’s to promote public dialogue,” said Zoe Blunt, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network, which produced the document.
“We noticed that when we asked people for their opinions it really opened the floodgates, and the more people who spoke out, the more people came forward.”

walk4justice update July 10-from Rose H

Subject: walk4justice update July 10-from Rose H
I would like to take this time to thank you for your on going support of
the walk4justice 2008 event. I have officially left the group as of July
2, 2008 but would like express the best of the luck and wish to all the
remaining walkers. May the creator bless you all with a safe journey.

Road bulding underway near Jordan River. Rally Thursday!

Trees are falling and rocks are being blasted for road materials, in preperation for Western Forest Products subdivisions, across from Sandcut Beach and a few kms from Jordan River.
Join us at Library Square at Noon this Thursday, July 10, and help save this land while there is still time.
While many of us are enjoying our summer vacations, Western Forest Products taking the opportunity to work quickly to get roughly 3500 acres ready for subdivision.

Dire picture of B.C. wildlife, wilderness

Catherine Rolfsen, Vancouver Sun
A “groundbreaking” report on the state of B.C. wildlife and wilderness
to be released Wednesday by the provincial government paints a dire
picture, according to a scientist with the David Suzuki Foundation.
“Sadly, it’s going to show that, despite the assumption that most of
us have that live here that we have a bounty and a richness of
biodiversity — and that’s true — in fact, much of that is at serious
risk of disappearing because of human threats,” said Faisal Moola, the
foundation’s director of science, who has seen a preview of the
report.

Al Gore Enlists Homeless as Personal Carbon Offsets

- from The Spoof.com
In a compassionate, selfless and ecologically responsible move, former Vice President and environmental leader Al Gore has invited the homeless in the United States to act as his carbon offsets.
“What can I say, we’re honored,” exclaimed an excited Trudy Watson, a homeless advocate in Queens, New York. “Anything we can do to help Mr. Gore save the planet.”
Under the agreement, Gore can continue to use his mansions, heated pools, private planes and SUVs as long as the homeless offset this usage by agreeing to not put an equal amount of carbon into the atmosphere.

Homeless Till Green Farm For Shelter

BOSTON — It seems like an unlikely spot for farming, but Boston Harbor’s Long Island farm — the city’s only certified organic farm — is producing another bumper crop.
NewsCenter 5’s David Brown reported that the 2 ½-acre farm produces 25,000 to 30,000 pounds of produce each year.

Details needed on Ellice Park shelter plan

Times Colonist
Burnside Gorge residents have sent a useful message to Victoria city council, even though their petition against a homeless shelter fell far short of the signatures required to force a referendum on the project.
The opponents collected about 3,000 signatures, about half the number required to send the project to referendum. (B.C. law requires signatures from 10 per cent of a municipality’s residents to force a vote.)

Japanese Whalers Using Humpbacks To Blackmail the International Whaling Commission

By: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
July 4, 2008 - “Let us kill the Piked and Fin whales or the Humpbacks will die,” is the message from Joji Morishita of the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research.
Once again the Japanese whalers are threatening to slaughter Humpbacks unless they get permission to slaughter a thousand Piked whales and fifty endangered Fin whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in December of 2008 and January thru March 2009.

Brucellosis focus shifts from bison to elk

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — Government agencies killed more than 6,000 wild bison leaving Yellowstone National Park over the last two decades — the grisly result of efforts to contain a serious livestock disease carried by the animals.
But the crosshairs are shifting to a new target, elk, as the disease infects cattle in parts of Wyoming and Montana where bison haven’t roamed for decades.