Wild donkeys to be taken from Hawaii to California

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Aug 6, 2011
Wild donkeys to be taken from Hawaii to California

HONOLULU – IN AN effort to control Hawaii’s wild donkey population, about 100 of them are being taken to California.

KITV reports the Humane Society of the United States is planning to remove the donkeys on a chartered plane next month.

Hawaii Humane Society state director Inga Gibson says they will go to animal sanctuaries.

Drought conditions led the donkeys from the highlands into a populated area in search of water. Donkeys were appearing near the highway and a school.

The Humane Society and a local veterinarian have been trapping and sterilising the animals. At the end of the month, a clinic is to be set up at a ranch to castrate captured male donkeys.

Ms Gibson says donors are to help with costs of the chartered flight. — AP

Wild donkeys to be taken from Hawaii to California

Severe drought in Texas could result in record losses in nation’s No. 2 agriculture state

LUBBOCK, Texas — Randy McGee spent $28,000 in one month pumping water onto about 500 acres in West Texas before he decided to give up irrigating 75 acres of corn and focus on other crops that stood a better chance in the drought.

He thought rain might come and save those 75 acres, but it didn’t and days of triple-digit heat sucked the remaining moisture from the soil. McGee walked recently through rows of sunbaked and stunted stalks, one of thousands of farmers counting his losses amid record heat and drought this year.

The drought has spread over much of the southern U.S., leaving Oklahoma the driest it has been since the 1930s and setting records from Louisiana to New Mexico. But the situation is especially severe in Texas, which trails only California in agricultural productivity.

McGee is still watering another variety of corn, cotton and sorghum but the loss of nearly one-sixth of his acres after spending so much on irrigation weighs on him.

“Kind of depressing,” the 34-year-old farmer said. “You use that much of a resource and nothing to show for it. This year, no matter what you do, it’s not quite enough.”

How El Paso is beating the worst drought in a generation

When Ed Archuleta first arrived in El Paso to manage the local water authority, the cotton barons and cattle men who run this desert city had a blunt message for him. This is Texas, they told him. We don’t do conservation.

It’s a good thing Archuleta didn’t listen. As a record drought scorched America’s south-west this spring, El Paso went 119 days without rain. The Rio Grande, which forms the border with Mexico, shrunk into its banks. An hour’s drive out of town, ranchers sold off their cattle so they wouldn’t have to watch them die.

Archuleta, in his office overlooking a long seam of strip malls, saw no reason for panic – even though, in his words, the amount of precipitation in the first rain this year was about as much as someone spitting on a water gauge.

“We’re going to be fine this summer,” he said. “We’re basically drought-proof.”

The city will be fine next year too, even if it doesn’t rain, and even if the Rio Grande stays low. “We can handle drought next year. Theoretically, even if we have no water in the river, even if there wasn’t a single drop of water coming from the river, we could make it through the summer,”

China issues alert as Yangtze River braces for more rain

China issued a “level three” alert as the medium-to-lower reaches of the Yangtze River braced for more heavy rain, the China Meteorological Administration said on its website today.

Heavy downpours, including storms and torrential rain in some areas, will affect parts of Jiangsu, Hunan, Zhejiang, Anhui and Hubei provinces as early as tomorrow, the forecaster said. Landslides, floods and mudslides may occur as the soil becomes loose after a recent drought, it said.

Flooding has killed 94 people along the medium-to-lower reaches of the Yangtze River this month, with another 78 people missing, according to a China National Radio report yesterday. The region had previously suffered from a drought.

China drought fuels food price increases

SHANGHAI – THE impacts of China’s worst drought in 50 years have been served up on the nation’s dining tables as the price of rice and vegetables from drought-hit provinces have skyrocketed.

The average price of staple foods in 50 cities has increased significantly, and the price of some leaf vegetables has jumped 16 per cent in one month, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

Decreased production because of the drought has been cited as the major reason for price increases, and the prices of rice and vegetables may not drop soon, according to a report by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Statistics from the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters show that an area of nearly 7 million hectares of arable land has been affected by the drought, with Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces most seriously affected.

‘I didn’t buy many leaf vegetables in the last week because the price is getting crazy,’ said Zhang Weirong, a 67-year-old Shanghai resident. ‘Cabbage used to be as cheap as paper, and for 5 yuan (95 cents) you would get too many cabbages to carry home,’ she said.

She has had to switch to melons and pumpkins, which are getting cheaper this year. She also changed from eating porridge for breakfast to noodles. ‘My grandson said he doesn’t like the dishes I cook these days, but what else can I do?’ she said. — CHINA DAILY/ANN

China drought fuels food price increases

Yangtze shipping halted

Drought on China’s Yangtze river has led to historically low levels that have forced authorities to halt shipping on the nation’s longest waterway.It was barely three meters near Wuhan, the Chang Jiang Waterway Bureau said yesterday.

A day earlier, the bureau closed a 228-kilometer stretch above Wuhan to sea-going vessels, fearing ships would become stuck on the bottom.

Further up the river, the massive Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest hydroelectric project, has discharged more water to alleviate the drought conditions down river.

It was not immediately clear if the measures would be effective as the drought in areas around the middle reaches has levels at the lowest point in five decades, the China Daily said.

At least two ships have just been stranded, with that part of the river cut to an average width of about 150 meters.

According to Wang Jingquan of the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee, slowing the Yangtze with the controversial Three Gorges Dam has aggravated the drought by diverting flow to the lower reaches.

The 6,300-kilometer Yangtze is indispensable to the economies of many cities along its route.

Yangtze shipping halted – The Standard

Trees provide natural record of El Niño trends

Studying treering records from the southwestern United States, University of Hawaii scientists have helped assemble a 1,100-year historical picture of the climate phenomenon known as El Niño, offering an avenue to understanding how weather patterns could change in a warming world.

El Niño, associated with warmer than usual sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific, typically produces a wide array of violent weather, including more rain and intense storms in some areas, less rain in others. The massive El Niño of 1997-98, for instance, caused flooding and landslides in Northern California, drought and famine in Bangladesh and drought and forest fires in the Philippines; 2,100 people died worldwide.

UH scientist Jinbao Li said by email that the record implies that warmer oceans will lead to more severe El Niños and the opposite phenomena, La Niñas, and more extreme climate conditions around the globe. But a final verdict awaits better climate models, he said.

Formally known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the phenomenon also brings rainy winters to the U.S. Southwest, where tree rings are wide in wet years and narrow in dry years.

UH researchers Li, Shang-Ping Xie, Fei Lui and Jian Ma analyzed the tree-ring records available in a database called the North American Drought Atlas and found that the results correlated closely with the 150-year sea surface temperature records in the tropical Pacific.

Chocolate is locally grown product

Bob and Pam Cooper acquired more than 1,800 cacao trees in Holualoa over a decade ago and established the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory. They’ve been processing 100 percent Hawaii-grown cacao into chocolate products ever since. Bob also grows and sells cacao trees, encouraging others to grow this valuable crop. West Hawaii now has many cacao growers and several budding artisanal chocolate makers.

Cacao originated in the Amazon and Orinoco River basins of Ecuador and Brazil, and has been cultivated in Central and South America for thousands of years. Theobroma, the genus of the cacao tree, translates to “food of the gods” and the resulting chocolate was once reserved solely for the pleasure of Aztec kings.

Today, cacao growing and chocolate making is a global industry, but with more local growers and those making chocolate with locally grown ingredients, localvores can satisfy their chocolate urge with a reduced carbon footprint.

Cacao is a tropical rain forest tree and thrives in areas with temperatures above 50 degrees and about 60 inches of annual rainfall or good irrigation. It is especially well-suited to areas in Kona that get a cool afternoon cloud cover. You might consider adding a few cacao trees, if your growing conditions are suitable.

Send in the Fronds

THE Archbishop John Ireland used to pray in my kitchen — or so the neighbors say. Long before it was my attic apartment, this space was reportedly his home chapel in St. Paul, Minn.

A giant of American Catholicism in the early 20th century, Archbishop Ireland gave the Twin Cities a pair of monumental churches, the Basilica of St. Mary and the Cathedral of Saint Paul. He left me something humbler: a third-floor walk-up with sloping bead board ceilings and dormer windows.

These cubbies, carved into the wainscoting, look as if they were meant to display something. But what? A domed canary cage? A bust of St. Polycarp, patron saint of earache sufferers?

The other day, I experienced something like an epiphany. What the kitchen needed was a hanging fern.

A few decades ago, the plant to buy would have been obvious: a Boston fern. Anyone would recognize Nephrolepis exaltata. It’s the ferny-looking fern — the one with the long, shaggy ruffles of greenery, cascading like a fondue fountain.

The Boston fern is not without its merits, noted Tom Stuart, proprietor of the Hardy Fern Library, an online taxonomical guide.

“There’s almost no way to kill a Boston fern,”