Village in India plants 111 trees every time a girl is born

Stephen Messenger, Tree Hugger, April 12, 2013

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-agriculture/village-india-plants-111-trees-every-time-baby-girl-born.html

All too often, it seems that an increase in human population must come at a cost to the environment, like in straining resources and encroachment on once wild habitats. But one quaint village in India has adopted a wonderfully eco-conscious tradition that is actually helping to ensure a greener future with each new generation.

While in some parts of India, many expectant parents still say they’d prefer bearing sons, members of the Piplantri village, in the western state of Rajasthan, are breaking this trend by celebrating the birth of each baby girl in way that benefits everyone. For every female child that’s born, the community gathers to plant 111 fruit trees in her honor in the village common.

This unique tradition was first suggested by the village’s former leader, Shyam Sundar Paliwal, in honor of his daughter who had passed away at a young age.

But planting trees is only one way that the community is ensuring a brighter future for their daughters. According to a report in The Hindu, villagers also pool together around $380 dollars for every new baby girl and deposited in an account for her. The girl’s parents are required to contribute $180, and to make a pledge to be considerate guardians.

“We make these parents sign an affidavit promising that they would not marry her off before the legal age, send her to school regularly and take care of the trees planted in her name,” says Paliwal.

Over the last six years alone, as population there has increased, villagers in Piplantri have planted nearly a quarter million trees — a welcoming forest for the community’s youngest members, offering a bit of shade for their brighter future.

Supreme Court Rules for Cheap Cancer Drug

By Subodh Varma, TNN  – April 1, 2013

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Supreme-Court-rules-for-cheap-cancer-drug/articleshow/19331267.cms

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court

Monday rejected pharma giant Novartis AG’s plea to preserve its patent over a life-saving cancer drug, Glivec, drawing a huge sigh of relief from thousands of patients in India and in dozens of developing countries as the fear of an almost 15-fold escalation of drug costs receded. It is the biggest setback for multinational pharma companies, which have been denied patent protection for a series of life-saving drugs in recent years.

Invented in 1991, Glivec is a miracle cure for a type of blood cancer called chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). In this form of cancer, certain bone marrow cells go rogue and produce excessive white blood cells, causing mild fatigue and hip pain initially, but slipping into an out-of-control crisis of zooming platelet and white cell counts. It used to be fatal, but with Glivec, the survival rate is over 95%. Imanitib, the active component, is on the National Essential Drugs List in India.

India has an estimated 3 lakh CML patients, with 20,000 added every year. Glivec is sold by Novartis for about Rs 1.2 lakh per month. Indian manufacturers sell the same drug at a monthly cost of Rs 8,000. This was the reason why Novartis launched a seven-year-long legal battle to protect its patent on the drug.

Novartis, which reported a net profit of $9.6 billion in 2012 on sales of $57 billion, criticized the judgment. In a statement Ranjit Shahani, vice chairman and managing director, Novartis India said, “This ruling is a setback for patients that will hinder medical progress for diseases without effective treatment options.”

When the drug was first commercially sold in 2001, India was moving over from the old patent regime to a new one after signing the international trade and patent related agreements in 1995. The new patent law came into force in 2005. Novartis could not get a patent on Glivec as it dated from an earlier time when a different patent law prevailed. It tried but the patent tribunal rejected the claim in 2006.

After going through various appeals, Novartis ended up in the apex court pleading that a crucial section 3 (d) of the new patent law was not applicable to Glivec. This section says that just discovering a new form of a substance is not enough to grant a patent, if it does not enhance its “known efficacy”.

Novartis was arguing that a new “beta crystalline” form of Glivec is more effective and hence qualifies as a new invention, and hence should get patent protection.

The Supreme Court, in a 112-page analysis of all the claims and counter- arguments disagreed. It said that the beta crystalline form was nothing new. It has always existed in the original amorphous form.

The landmark judgement means that Indian companies like Natco and Cipla can continue making and selling Glivec, not only for India but to most third world countries.

Monday’s Supreme Court judgment dims hopes for some other pharma giants fighting legal battles on patents. Pfizer’s cancer drug Sutent and Roche’s hepatitis C treatment Pegasys and Merck & Co’s asthma treatment aerosol suspension formulation lost their patented status in India last year, decisions the companies are fighting to have reversed.

Many pharma giants are concentrating their legal fire-power on India because it is an $11 billion a year market growing at 13-14 percent annually. Equally important is that India has emerged as the ‘pharmacy of the world” selling over $26 billion worth of cheap generic (non-patent) drugs to most of the poor and still developing countries. It is estimated that about 80% of the HIV/AIDS patients in the developing world are surviving because of cheap Indian drugs.

Published on 25 Mar 2013

 

 

I got this from American Kabuki and he got it from "Nola" in Australia:

ONE LOVE~, SiNeh~
             
A mother chimpanzee who lived in a zoo died recently and one of the zoo employees took her baby chimp home to care for it. It never crossed his mind that his dog, who had recently given birth would adopt the chimp and raise it with her pups. Judging by the look on her face at times, she is not quite sure why this particular offspring has hands to grab her with, but all the same, this strange little “pup” which has joined her litter has brought out in her - AND her real family - for all the world to see - a portrait of exactly what unconditional love is all about.
 

Monday was not an especially busy day for these police officers

BBC News, Nov. 28, 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20536201#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

New York City celebrates day without violent crime

For the first time in living memory, New York has spent a day entirely without violent crime.

The city police department’s chief spokesman said that Monday was the most bloodshed-free 24-hour period in recent history.

Not a single murder, shooting, stabbing or other incident of violent crime was reported for a whole day.

Despite a July spike in homicides, the city’s murder rate is on target to hit its lowest point since 1960.

Just a few months ago, residents were living through what one tabloid newspaper called the “summer of blood”.

Despite the fall in homicides, statistics point to a 3% overall rise in crime.

Aggressive prevention tactics

There has also been a 9% increase in larceny, which police blame on a surge in smartphone thefts.

But killings are now down 23% compared with last year, which represents a 50-year-low.

There have been 366 murders so far this year in New York City, compared with 472 at this time last year.

Experts say such a low number of homicides is highly unusual for a US city of eight million people.

Gang-plagued Chicago, Illinois, has chalked up 462 murders this year, despite having a population of about 2.7 million people.

There have been 301 murders in 2012 in the city of Philadelphia, which has 1.5 million people.

Some experts are praising the New York police department’s aggressive crime-prevention tactics, notably the so-called Stop And Frisk policy, which has rooted out dozens of illegal guns.

But critics argue that it has led to hundreds of thousands of young blacks and Latinos being stopped without cause.

Source: http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/116404/2_Shocking/

Published on Nov 25, 2012 by TheGodVineOfficial

Heartwarming story of a man who has reunited with his friend- the gorilla whom he raised!

By Sui-Lee Wee, Reuters – October 26, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/9duhdw3

(Reuters) – China adopted a law on Friday to protect for the first time the rights of the mentally ill after years of accusations that psychiatric hospitals are used to lock up people against their will and silence dissidents.

Human rights advocates called the hard-fought for law, which has been debated for more than two decades, significant, even though they say it still falls short of international standards as it allows for involuntary commitment without judicial review.

The law will “curb abuses regarding compulsory mental health treatment and protect citizens from undergoing unnecessary treatment or illegal hospitalization”, the Xinhua state news agency said.

“We welcome it because having a law is better than not having one,” Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, told Reuters.

“The most important thing that this law does is it will allow civil society to step in to monitor and press for improvement in the management of mental health in China, including … pushing for greater transparency and progressive curtailment of police rights.”

Activists have long argued that authorities force people they consider troublemakers into psychiatric hospitals without providing any evidence of their supposed crimes.

The tactic has been used to silence dissidents, whistle-blowers and petitioners. More recently, it has been used by people against relatives during family disputes.

State media has reported on people being locked up in psychiatric hospitals against their will.

Chen Guoming, a former gold store owner, was forced into an asylum in 2011 by his wife and locked up for 56 days after refusing to lend money to his wife’s family, Xinhua said.

The new law bans mental health examinations of a citizen against his or her own will, Xinhua said.

But Bequelin said he was still concerned about China’s police-run psychiatric hospitals, which confine people the authorities consider troublemakers.

China had long been criticized for its lack of a mental health law, which did not give people the right to an independent review of their mental health status.

The lack of a law contravened the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a U.N. treaty ratified by China in 2008, rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in an August report.

 

China has about 16 million people suffering from severe mental disorders, Xinhua said, citing the Health Ministry.

ONE LOVE~, ONE VIBRATION

SiNeh~

Elderly woman in China gives 30 abandoned babies a chance to live after being left in the trash

 

      October 19, 2012

An elderly woman in China has saved 30 abandoned babies since 1972. Making her living collecting rubbish and recycling her findings, 88 year-old Lou Xiaoying also managed to come across many babies left for dead.

She kept 4 of the children she found and passed the rest on to family members and friends. She gave these children an opportunity to live a meaningful life.

Her youngest son of the four she kept is now 7, whom she found when she was 82 years-old. Even though she felt she was too old to raise a young child, she knew taking him home was better than leaving him to die.

"Even though I was already getting old I could not simply ignore the baby and leave him to die in the trash...I took him back to our home, which is a very small modest house in the countryside and nursed him to health. He is now a thriving little boy, who is happy and healthy."

It all started in 1972 when she found the first little girl in the trash. Lying there with no hope to survive, she took her home and raised her as one of her own.

"Watching her grow and become stronger gave us such happiness and I realised I had a real love of caring for children," said Xiaoying.

Even though she could not afford it, she managed to find a way to save these children's lives, one by one. She gave them a chance to live, when others did not. She is a true hero.

http://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/185/Elderly-woman-in-China-gives-30-abandoned-babies-a-chance-to-live-after-being-left-in-the-trash/

    

     One of the many little boys saved by Lou Xiaoying.

By Kauilapele

Of course, we all know it has been going on for awhile… The Decrapification of our skies, that is. But when I saw this one by nikiquik (found here, and here), I knew it had to spread around. This one is quite fabulous (and I say that as flamboyantly as possible).

Of course, one could say that this is the work of “The Galactics”, but whoever/whatever is doing this, many thanks!

Watch at around 3:15 to start seeing the real action (some of the videography is a bit challenging, but what nikiquik captures here is, as I said, “flamboyantly fabulous”).

Also, here is a newer one from IndianintheMachine.

And don’t forget Wes Annac’s two recent videos…

~~~~~~

Uploaded by AmerAcadOrthoSurg on Feb 8, 2012

 

http://worldtruth.tv/new-zealand-grants-a-river-the-rights-of-personhood/

From the dawn of history, and in cultures throughout the world, humans have been prone to imbue Earth’s life-giving rivers with qualities of life itself — a fitting tribute, no doubt, to the wellsprings upon which our past (and present) civilizations so heavily rely. But while modern thought has come to regard these essential waterways more clinically over the centuries, that might all be changing once again.

Meet the Whanganui. You might call it a river, but in the eyes of the law, it has the standings of a person.

In a landmark case for the Rights of Nature, officials in New Zealand recently granted the Whanganui, the nation’s third-longest river, with legal personhood “in the same way a company is, which will give it rights and interests”. The decision follows a long court battle for the river’s personhood initiated by the Whanganui River iwi, an indigenous community with strong cultural ties to the waterway.

Under the settlement, the river is regarded as a protected entity, under an arrangement in which representatives from both the iwi and the national government will serve as legal custodians towards the Whanganui’s best interests.

“Today’s agreement which recognises the status of the river as Te Awa Tupua (an integrated, living whole) and the inextricable relationship of iwi with the river is a major step towards the resolution of the historical grievances of Whanganui iwi and is important nationally,” says New Zealand’s Minister for Treaty for Waitangi Negotiations, Christopher Finlayson.

“Whanganui Iwi also recognise the value others place on the river and wanted to ensure that all stakeholders and the river community as a whole are actively engaged in developing the long-term future of the river and ensuring its wellbeing,” says Finlayson.

Although this is likely the first time a single river has been granted such a distinction under the law, chances are it’s not the last. In 2008, Ecuador passed similar ruling giving its forests, lakes, and waterways rights on par with humans in order to ensure their protection from harmful practices.

And, while it may seem an odd extension of rights, in many ways it harkens back to a time when mankind’s fate was more readily acknowledged as being intertwined with that of the rivers, lakes, and streams that sustained us — a time in which our purer instincts towards preserving nature needn’t be dictated by legislation.

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/

Greetings from Galactic Heart . . .

Amazing news! Bolivia is to become the first country in the world to give nature comprehensive legal rights in an effort to halt                      climate change and the exploitation of the natural world, and to improve quality of life for the Bolivian people. Developed by grassroots social groups and agreed by politicians, the Law of Mother Earth recognizes the rights of all living things, giving the natural world equal status to human beings.

Once fully approved, the legislation will provide the Earth with rights to: life and regeneration; biodiversity and freedom from genetic modification; pure water; clean air; naturally balanced systems; restoration from the effects of human activity; and freedom from contamination.

During Sheldan's webinar last month, he told us about many of the                      grassroot movements sprouting up around our world~~and yet we don't hear anything about them.

This is an important stance against industries that pillage Earth's natural resources with no regard for the consequences. We are the stewards of Mother Earth. It is our responsibility to bring her back to permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos.

After the announcements commence, one of our main priorities will                      be cleaning up Earth's air, water and land. Many technologies will be released that will assist us in this monumental job. This is a step in the right direction. I honor the people who are making a stand and following their passion to make a difference re-establishing their role as stewards of Mother Earth.

Selamat Ja! 
Colleen

PS If you are interested in more information on the technologies that will be released after the announcements and after disclosure, Sheldan's webinar archive: Technologies That Will Change Our World is a great resource.

Evo Morales, Indigenous Bolivian President

Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth Law of Mother Earth expected to prompt radical new conservation and social measures in South American nation

Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".

"It makes world history. Earth is the mother of all", said Vice-President Alvaro García Linera. "It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration."

The law, which is part of a complete restructuring of the Bolivian legal system following a change of constitution in 2009, has been heavily influenced by a resurgent indigenous Andean spiritual world view which places the environment and the earth deity known as the Pachamama at the centre of all life. Humans are considered equal to all other entities.

But the abstract new laws are not expected to stop industry in its tracks. While it is not clear yet what actual protection the new rights will give in court to bugs, insects and ecosystems, the government is expected to establish a ministry of mother earth and to appoint an ombudsman. It is also committed to giving communities new legal powers to monitor and control polluting industries.

Bolivia has long suffered from serious environmental problems from the mining of tin, silver, gold and other raw materials. "Existing laws are not strong enough," said Undarico Pinto, leader of the 3.5m-strong Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, the biggest social movement, who helped draft the law. "It will make industry more transparent. It will allow people to regulate industry at national, regional and local levels."

Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said Bolivia's traditional indigenous respect for the Pachamama was vital to prevent climate change. "Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values," he said.

Little opposition is expected to the law being passed because President Evo Morales's ruling party, the Movement Towards Socialism, enjoys a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament.

However, the government must tread a fine line between increased                      regulation of companies and giving way to the powerful social movements who have pressed for the law. Bolivia earns $500m (£305m) a year from mining companies which provides nearly one third of the country's foreign currency.

In the indigenous philosophy, the Pachamama is a living being.

The draft of the new law states: "She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation."

Ecuador, which also has powerful indigenous groups, has changed its constitution to give nature "the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution". However, the abstract rights have not led to new laws or stopped oil companies from destroying some of the most biologically rich areas of the Amazon.

For complete article from The Guardian 4/2011

At this link is also a Video

SiNeh~

 

To Help Restore Your Faith in Humanity

With thanks to Penny

Andrew: This series of touching and inspiring photos was sent to Steve Beckow and is copied below, appropriately in view of the imminent announcement of NESARA

(From a friend—)

BE NICE….NICE IS GOOD

If you never learn the language of gratitude, you will never be on speaking terms with happiness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A father and mother kissing their dying little girl goodbye. If you are wondering why all the medic people are bowing: in less than an hour, two small children in the next room are able to live thanks to the little girl’s kidney and liver.

Brazilian Federal court finds Belo Monte hydro-electric dam licenses invalid, indigenous peoples were not consulted

 

‘I want to restart the golden age of conservation’ – ex Valley entrepreneur

By Hillary Rosner, guardian.co.uk  – August 2, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/buzkhvz

Former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Gerrity is trying to turn a swath of northeastern Montana into a prairie reserve teeming with herds of bison

Sean Gerrity dreams of a Serengeti, a vast landscape of rolling grasslands where large mammals roam. But instead of elephants and hyenas, Gerrity’s savannah would contain bison, elk, bighorn sheep, and wolves. They would graze, hunt, and rear their young on 5,000 square miles of northeastern Montana prairie.

For more than a decade, Gerrity has been working to turn his dream into reality. He is president of the American Prairie Reserve, which has been plugging away since 1999 at what he calls a “habitat assembly project,” piecing together a vast grassland ecosystem in which 25,000 bison and multiple packs of wolves may one day live. Gerrity’s organization hopes ultimately to own 500,000 acres of private land and through that to influence what happens on the adjacent 3 million acres of public land, much of it now home to grazing livestock. “I want to restart the golden age of conservation,” says Gerrity, who estimates his project will cost $450 to $500 million.

But the Montana native and former Silicon Valley entrepreneur — Gerrity co-founded Catalyst Consulting, which has worked with firms such as eBay, Cisco Systems, and Netflix — faces a daunting challenge persuading skeptical ranchers and farmers that bison and wolves roaming in their backyard is a good thing. To date, American Prairie Reserve has assembled 250 genetically pure bison on about 60,000 acres of land.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributor Hillary Rosner, Gerrity discusses his vision, the future of large-scale conservation in the U.S., and the rationale for restoring part of the prairie to a Lewis-and-Clark incarnation.

Yale Environment 360: How did you come up with this crazy idea, and how did you get it started?

Sean Gerrity: The idea to create a big, iconic reserve on the grasslands of North America has been around since the 1830s. But the grasslands were not seen as sexy at the time we were doing our really big ecological-scale conservation in this country, from 1870 to 1950.

So it’s not an original idea — it has been reiterated lots of times by authors, conservation groups, an endless parade of people. The trick was, who the heck is going to do it? And you can’t do it by government fiat anymore, so how is it going to get done? That’s what was going on in 1999 when I first showed up, and there was a big discussion about it, led by WWF.

The big question was, somebody is going to have to quit their day job and do nothing but this for a very long time. That became appealing to me, not because I’m a martyr but because the idea was extraordinarily exciting. The pieces started to fall together for it to look like it could be done. It wasn’t that expensive — half the price of a new NFL football stadium. There’s a tremendous amount of public land, meaning you didn’t have to buy it all, you only had to buy the glue and pull it together. Anybody coming from business, which I had been, coming from 20 years in Silicon Valley, is always looking for a way to finesse things rather than muscle things. And the idea of wildlife was something in my bones because I grew up in Montana and both my parents were naturalists.

e360: You say you only had to piece it together because so much is public land. How does that work? You just have to buy the private parcels and stitch it together?

Gerrity: Yes, and then change the use of the [public] lands. What’s really great about the public lands is they’re really malleable in terms of what they’re used for. You can use them for commercial purposes like forestry, for livestock grazing. You can also, if you have a lot of public leases, use them for wildlife value as the number one priority. That was very exciting, that we could co-opt a lot of public land and change the use from livestock production to wildlife emphasis, for essentially no cost. That means putting together millions of acres of public land and converting it to our vision.

e360: What agency owns all that land?

Gerrity: There are four big players. The biggest is BLM [the U.S. Bureau of Land Management], with 2.5 million potential acres. Currently 99 percent of that is under cattle and sheep grazing. The second piece is about 700,000 acres of Montana state school trust land. These are also leased for agriculture. The third piece is the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, which is about 370,000 acres, still primarily used for cattle grazing, but it does have monument status and as you buy property along that you can affect what’s happening at the monument. The last big chunk is the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge, at 1.1 million acres. It also has tens of thousands of head of cattle. But we can also affect it by how we interact with it when we become border neighbors and help the [U.S.] Fish and Wildlife Service [convert it to] all wildlife.

e360: So it sounds like there’s a big political piece to this that involves convincing all these agencies to buy in?

Gerrity: Absolutely. But the interesting thing is that was one of the things that doubters, back around 2001 and 2002, were saying would be our toughest challenge. We’re delighted to report it’s been one of the easiest things. The reason why is that as we sat down and looked at the long-term strategic plans of the Fish & Wildlife Service, BLM, etc., and buried in their plans is a strong desire to be more wildlife habitat oriented. So we found that in fact many of their goals are very similar to where we want to end up. So instead of having to cajole people, our presence coming onto the landscape as a catalyst enables them to accelerate their own plans.

e360: How far along are you in your grand plan?

Gerrity: I’d say we’re coming up to the end of our first trimester. That is because we have about 270,000 acres, between private property, BLM, and the state. But also the land in the [Russell reserve] is about 500,000 acres that’s not grazed. So we’re at about 800,000 of our end goal of 3 million acres. We don’t own and ultimately control that, but again we’re trying to be a catalyst. We own and control about 60,000 deeded acres. But those leverage about 210,000 acres of public land. And that ratio will stay about the same as we go along.

e360: Let’s talk a bit about the wildlife you’re hoping to reintroduce or to see move in on its own.

Gerrity: There are three aspects to our plan. It takes a great amount of sustainable grassland habitat to create a biome that was there. Scientists have modeled it in different ways, and they keep coming up with 5,000 square miles, or around 3.2 million acres. The reason for that is if you have catastrophic things that happen on grasslands, huge fires or icing over, wildlife needs to be able to move to new areas.

The second thing is that the public is able to access the land in a way that doesn’t damage habitat or interfere with nature. We think of it as what it’s like to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Lots of people can visit it, but they don’t necessarily impact it because of its size and the way it’s managed.

The third thing is wildlife. This is a very long-haul project. Getting the wildlife and the right species and populations will take some time, probably beyond my lifetime. Grassland birds, bighorn sheep, elk, cougars, and on and on — each one used to be there in populations that are nowhere close to that today. So there’s a slow process of changing the neighborhood for the enjoyment and desire for wildlife, as opposed to seeing it as a threat to livestock operations. That’s the biggest piece. The actual physical biology of bringing the animals back is very easy.

e360: Recently you did move a bunch of bison to this landscape, and there were some surprises with that. Where did the bison come from, and what happened?

Gerrity: Bison were one of those animals, like swift fox and a few others, that were [nearly] eradicated around 1870 and had not been reinstated. Elk and bighorn sheep had been reinstated. But we brought in 16 bison originally from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. Three years in a row we continued to supplement from Wind Cave, 20 to 25 animals at a time. And of course they had babies. The trick with the genetics was that from 2005 to 2008 Wind Cave was thought of as the gold standard for bison sourcing in all of North America. They had what was thought of as Yellowstone genetics — no cattle DNA — but better than Yellowstone because they had no brucellosis [disease].

About four years ago a relatively well-known test that had never been used on bison, called SNPs, single nucleotide polymorhphisms, became the order of the day. We went back and retested all of our bison, and found that between 35 to 40 percent of our bison had cattle genes. So we took those animals and shipped them out to people who were more interested in the bison for different reasons, the Bronx Zoo and different places, and we switched over to a new source, Elk Island Provincial Park in Canada. Now we test the animals on their way out of Elk Island and don’t put them in the truck until they are tested. Every animal has tested 100 percent fine.

At this point, the American Prairie herd, which numbers about 250 animals, is to our knowledge the only conservation herd anywhere in North America where every single animal has been tested using the latest technology for cattle introgression and has come up clean. That includes Yellowstone park. Yellowstone animals have never been tested with SNPs.

e360: Why does the genetic purity matter for your purposes?

Gerrity: One answer is science, and one is politics. The science is simply being a little over-careful, a hedge. Even though these are very small trace amounts of introgression, bison and cattle are different metabolically. In the winter, bison metabolism slows by as much as 25 to 30 percent. That’s why they can handle being out at 35 below zero for weeks on end and survive on little scraps of grass. Cows, their metabolism doesn’t slow at all. They have an extraordinarily tough time being out where we are. The amount of introgression is enough to affect things like metabolism.

The politics is that our long-term hope is that at some point bison will eventually be classified as free-roaming wildlife in Montana. Now, when they come out of Yellowstone, they’re rounded up for slaughter or shot or hazed back into the park. They can’t roam where they want, but we believe it’s a historic inevitability. Bison is the only species not allowed to roam, and we think it will happen. When that occurs, we will go to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and say, “We would like to give you our herd, let them join the wildlife of the people of Montana.” That’s the end result we’re hoping for. That might happen in 30 years, 50 years, 100 years. For that handoff to occur and not hit any politics, these bison need to be as good as or better than any bison on the planet. They can’t be seen as substandard. That reason is probably more important than the science.

e360: Who exactly are the project’s opponents? Is it individual ranchers or organized groups? And what are they opposed to — fear of brucellosis, depletion of grasslands, the prospect of wolves at some future date?

Gerrity: Opposition comes from individuals, not organized groups, and I believe is generally a reaction to sociological change. APR gets lumped in with actions by the federal government to change aspects of the Farm Bill, state government wanting to increase wildlife numbers in the region, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service making it more difficult to graze cattle in the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge. Some local individuals see all of this and the goals of APR as unwelcome changes to the lifestyle they once knew.

e360: Is this opposition impinging on the grand plan at all?

Gerrity: The opposition is not hindering our progress toward our vision in any way. Over the past 10 years, people have become desensitized to the newness of our plans and some see it as a potential benefit, economically and otherwise. The concerns from the earlier days — that we would lock up all APR lands to outsiders, that bison would cause damage to neighboring property, that we would not contribute economically or act as good neighbors — have largely subsided for most people. Generally, as people learn more about our project and our organization, they become much more at ease with having us be a part of society out there. Most people now know that we pay the same taxes as anyone else, we contribute a great deal to the local economy, our bison in fact have created no problems for neighbors in the past seven years, and we welcome the public on our lands for hiking, bird watching, and camping.

e360: We can’t turn back the clock on human influence. You can take down fences, bring back bison as they were, link landscapes together — but climate change marches on. Do you have a strategy for coping with that? Is the idea simply to make the landscape resilient enough that it can cope on its own?

Gerrity: We’re looking at nearly 10,000 years of [human-animal co-existence] that was completely wiped out in 40 years, from 1860 to 1900. It’s not about people, because people coexisted with those animals for 10,000 years, but this group of people came with barbed wire, set it up, said this land is going to be surface agriculture with farming and livestock. And all the wildlife was completely gone in 40 years — we wrecked 10,000 years of history in 40 years. That can easily be put back. It’s not turning back the clock, it’s continuing on with something that’s very capable of being there.

About 5,800 to 3,800 years ago, there was an extreme drought, far hotter and drier than there is now. That area survived far beyond what any projections for climate change are now. And then it started to cool again and it also got more moist, about 2,800 years ago, and the animals came back in bigger numbers, and there were more people on the landscape. So I don’t have any concerns about any temperature rise like what we’re talking about now.

There’s still a place for [large-scale conservation]. We quit about 60 years ago with Grand Teton National Park in 1950, and we should get it going again. There’s plenty of money out there to do it, and there is plenty of land. It just takes looking at it and saying, “How do we make it happen?” Someone just has to go after it for about 20 years.

e360: What’s the next step for the American Prairie Reserve?

Gerrity: The next phase is simply to keep going. We have numerous properties in the pipeline right now, so it’s simply raise funds, buy properties, go on to the next one. Ever-increasing effort to get people out there to enjoy it. We have a campground where you can stay for $10, and we’ll open more of those, and we’re opening a high-end safari lodge like they have in Africa. We want to make it a world-class reserve like people have never seen in North America.

Doug Eaton Gives Out Money On His 65th Birthday

The Huffington Post -  July 13, 2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/doug-eaton-gives-money-on-birthday_n_1671302.html

Birthdays are usually spent unwrapping presents, but for one Oklahoma City man, it meant giving presents to others.

Doug Eaton spent 65 minutes on his 65th birthday giving out $5 bills to strangers on a busy street corner in Oklahoma City. Eaton attracted the attention of news crews and passersby with his sign that read “I have a home… and a car… and a job. Do you need a few bucks for some coffee?”

While there’s no final tally on how much Doug Eaton handed out, we think his birthday good deed is pretty priceless.

 

 

Indian child labourer Ram Singh (C) waits at the children's Development Khazana (treasure chest) counter to deposit his money at a children's bank after he finished his work at a tea shop in the old quarters of New Delhi (AFP Photo / Sajjad Hussain)

A group of kids in a shelter for homeless children in New Delhi have a few lessons for the world's international bankers. They have invented a financial system of their own to save for a brighter future.

­In a shelter for homeless runaway teens in New Delhi, a tiny, self-starting democracy has sprung up.

The residents have created an unlikely society where everything from healthcare to banking has been initiated, implemented and executed by the kids themselves.

“There are children who have a job and they deposit their money in our bank and even the children who go to school save their money,” explained bank manager Satish Kumar.

Satish Kumar’s peers elected him to be bank manager of this branch of the children’s development 'khazana' (Indian for 'treasure') that serves around 9,000 street children across South Asia and has 77 branches in the region.

Many of the runaway teens now have a place to safely keep their money, save for the future and take out development or welfare advances to invest in starting businesses or buying books for school.

Mohammad Shah, a 12-year-old bank client, told RT that he has taken an advance three times.

“The first time I took 500 rupees to buy the school uniform and other things, the second time I took the advance because my mother was sick. I took 1000 rupees and got the necessary check up done for my mother. The third time I took the advance was because I had to repay some money I had borrowed to help my father open a shop,” he said.

The kids have a monthly meeting where they review applications for those who wish an advance and then, based on their track record of saving and earning, they decide who to grant the advances to and how quickly they need to pay it back.

In a time when many people would argue that the global financial system is on the brink of collapse and that the system itself might be fundamentally flawed, it seems like these teenagers from the streets of New Delhi have the whole thing figured out. They hold everyone from the account managers to the clients accountable for their financial decisions.

Through meetings and discussions over lunch the children have taught each other how to save and invest in their future:

“I think that if we don't put the money in the bank then we tend to spend it on unnecessary things and waste the money. So when we save the money it can be used to do important things that may come up in the future like buying new clothes,” Sameer, a bank client, shared.

It’s a sense of responsibility and survival that has shocked the supervisors of the shelters themselves and one that they say leaders around the world might want to take a look at.

“They can be the super models in this whole thing because they know how to save money. They know how to utilize money for the best because they learn how to prioritize their needs, which we as adults actually don’t know,” Sharon Jacob from “Butterflies” child rights non-profit organization said.

Mohammad Shah is hoping that he can save the money he makes selling bottles of water at night to put towards his education so he can one day accomplish his goal of becoming a policeman.

“I am thinking for the future as I want to save the money and do some thing useful with it when the time comes,” he says.

Source: http://www.rt.com/news/indian-children-banking-system-637/