Humans don’t exactly have a stellar record when it comes to environmental stewardship, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t trying. Numerous projects around the world are working to rebuild lost habitats, protect vital wildlife highways, and regenerate lost populations. Here are a few man-made structures built on behalf of our four-footed brethren.
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Planet Earth is falling apart. It sounds a bit dramatic when you put it in such stark terms, but, in many ways, it’s true. The list of endangered species grows every year as humans bulldoze more habitats and belch more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. What’s an environmentalist to do?
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The world is vast and travel budgets finite, so looking for deforestation as it’s happening all over the world is nigh impossible. That is, of course, unless you have an all seeing eye in the sky—and, hey, you know what, there are satellites orbiting over all of our heads right now. Global Forest Watch is a new, near real-time forest monitoring system from World Resources Institute, Google, and another 40-odd partner organizations.
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Robots have a hard time walking. They’re getting better
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When we think of invasive species, we tend to think of the exotic: Burmese pythons, Asian carp, or any of the bizarre creatures terrorizing Florida
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Have you ever heard of a copulation hat? Well, perhaps we should talk about human-assisted bird reproduction for a minute.
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Giorgio Vasari’s "Last Supper," catastrophically damaged by the 1966 flooding of the Arno River in Florence, has finally been pieced together again—with the help of glue made from sturgeons. That’s right: fish.
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The Belkin Conserve Insight gives you solid data about how many watts a device is burning, how it’s affecting your carbon footprint, and how much it’s hitting your wallet.
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In most American cities, it’s hard to walk through a park without spotting a gray squirrel. Those bushy-tailed little buggers are everywhere, chomping on nuts and climbing up trees—but not thanks to nature. No sir. They’re there because we put them there to entertain us—among other things.
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Remote cameras are useful to wildlife conservationists, but their closed (or non-existent) networking limits the opportunities for tracking animals around the clock. The Instant Wild project’s cameras, however, are designed to rely on the internet for help. Whenever they detect movement, they deliver imagery to the public through Iridium’s satellite network. Anyone watching the cameras through the Instant Wild iOS app or website becomes an impromptu zoologist; viewers can identify both animals and poachers that dedicated staff might miss. Maintenance also isn’t much of an issue, as each unit is based on a Raspberry Pi computer that can run for long periods on a single battery. The Zoological Society of London currently operates these satellite cameras in Kenya, but there are plans underway to expand their use to the Antarctica, the Himalayas, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Filed under: Cameras, Internet
Source: Cambridge Consultants, Edge of Existence
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