Eco Hvar's aims for protecting animals and improving animal welfare, plus related articles
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The site contains articles and information on topics related to health, the environment and animal welfare.
While the focus is on Hvar Island in Dalmatia, much of the information is relevant to the rest of Croatia, and some to Europe, the United States and the rest of the world.
The main language of the site is English, but articles in Croatian are being added as quickly as possible. Some of the Croatian articles are translations, some original. Book reviews are in the language of the publication being reviewed.
To see all the articles archived in each category, click on the category name which is given below the title of each article (Environment, Highlights, Notices etc).
For further relevant news items and bits of interesting information, please refer to our Facebook page.
We are very grateful to Željka Horvat Kozulić for kindly and expertly designing the ECO HVAR logo, also to Jelena Bunčuga, Petra Mimica, Bartul Mimica, Ivana Župan, Dinka Barbić and Josip Vlainić for their generous help in translating articles into Croatian.
Special thanks are also owed to Mihael Magdić of Orion Informatika i Trgovina, Varaždin, for his excellent and patient efforts in designing the website.
Exclusive: Schemes worth hundreds of millions of pounds to protect biodiversity and oceans likely to be substantially reduced
UK programmes to protect nature and the climate in developing countries are suffering swingeing budget cuts despite ministers’ promises, the Guardian has learned.
The cuts belie the government’s claims to be fulfilling international obligations on climate finance and are veiled behind a system that experts have criticised as opaque.
The cutting and partial closure of the £100m Biodiverse Landscapes Fund, intended to protect nature in vital ecosystems in poor regions overseas. Six regions were originally targeted, in Africa, South America and Asia, but this has been reduced to two.
Coast – a project for Climate and Ocean Adaptation and Sustainable Transition – and Pact (Prepare and Accelerate Climate Transitions) are having substantial cuts.
The future of the £500m Blue Planet Fund has been thrown into doubt despite its successful operation.
Other schemes have been reduced in scope, for instance by allowing only one year’s funding where years were expected.
Requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed spending has been slashed among the departments responsible for international climate finance (ICF).
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Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered
Once Art Borkent starts speaking about biting midges, he rarely pauses for breath. Holding up a picture of a gnat trapped in amber from the time of the dinosaurs, the 72-year-old taxonomist explains that there are more than 6,000 ceratopogonidae species known to science. He has described and named more than 300 midges, mostly from his favourite family of flies. Some specialise in sucking blood from mammals, reptiles, other insects and even fish, often using the CO2 from their host’s breath to locate their target, he says. Tens of thousands remain a mystery to science, waiting to be discovered.
But to Borkent’s knowledge, nobody will continue his life’s work of identifying and studying this group of flies once he has gone.
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Warmth was result of high pressure developing across central Europe, which brought southerly winds
The end of winter brought unseasonably high temperatures across much of Europe but particularly so in northern Spain and south-west France as numerous February temperatures records were broken.
Cities across Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the Basque Country, including Bordeaux, Bilbao and San Sebastián, matched or exceeded their long-term February records, with temperatures of 27.1C and 27.6C recorded in Bilbao and San Sebastián on Wednesday, more than 13C above average for the time of year.
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Tebay, Cumbria: At this in-between moment where it’s both winter and spring, I’m reminded that nothing is permanent in farming
To make our new hedgerows as diverse as possible, we are planting a fruit tree every 200 metres in them, and last winter we planted a new apple and damson orchard at Low Park, our abandoned farm. This morning, I am popping some additional fruit trees into the hedges and checking on the orchard. The trees have been sourced from damson growers in the Lyth Valley and the apple trees from a local orchard group.
When I arrive at Low Park, which is nearby in the Lune gorge, I am cheered to see that some primroses are already flowering in the orchard as it is so sheltered. Elsewhere, winter still has us in its grip, with snow earlier in the week on the fells. As well as the primroses, my eye is drawn to some almost fluorescent orange fungi on some deadwood, which I believe is witches’ butter.
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Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demand
Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand.
Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a “serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid”.
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The juvenile freshwater crocodile was first spotted by a group of teenagers in Ironbark Creek in the Australian city on Saturday
An Australian freshwater crocodile has been captured in a city creek thousands of kilometres south of its normal range, after sightings shocked onlookers at a suburban park.
The crocodile was first spotted in Ironbark Creek in Newcastle – about 100km north of Sydney – around midday on Saturday, by a group of teenagers.
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Exclusive: Whistleblower figures show large rise in ‘serious’ to ‘minor’ downgrades based on water company evidence
Environment Agency (EA) staff have downgraded thousands of serious pollution incidents by water companies in England without visiting to investigate, data unearthed by freedom of information (FoI) requests suggests.
The figures were obtained by Robert Forrester, a whistleblower who left the agency in January and has spent nine years shining a light on the state of the water industry. His identity was revealed in the Channel 4 docudrama Dirty Business this week, and he has vowed to carry on fighting to expose the truth.
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A new survey shows 80% of gen Zs believe strong environmental values are as important as physical attraction when it comes to finding a partner (so you might want to start reusing your coffee cups)
Name: Green flags.
Age: This is a thing for younger people, so listen up, boomers.
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For months it has been adding to my mother’s distress when all she wanted was feed-in tariff payments go into her account
When my father died last year, nearly all thecompanies we had to notify were kind and empathetic, but notScottishPower.
It had been paying feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for electricity produced from my parents’ solar panels into his account. My parents hadbought the panels jointly in 2011, and my mother is named on the certification and was ScottishPower’s main point of contact, so she thought it would be a simple matter for the payments to be switched to her bank account. It was not.
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There is no end in sight to the pollution caused by a ‘broken’ system. Experts say it could even be getting worse
Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water.
A wheelchair user herself, Lambert’s regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability.
Continue reading...Known as "corridor care", patients are lining up on trolleys or sitting on chairs due to a lack of beds.
Women with endometriosis say doctors failed to listen to them or take their pain seriously.
The new review brings together the strongest evidence to date on collagen supplementation, say experts.
Bills to let terminally ill people end their life are being considered at Westminster and in Scotland.
Birmingham Children's Trust refused respite help and suggested training grandparents to help.
The interim report has identified problems "at every stage" of the maternity journey in England.
There were 4,793 people sleeping on the streets on a single night last autumn.
New contract will require patients in England to be given immediate appointment if needed.
Emma Dyer says she collapsed on her bathroom floor and began vomiting blood after buying jabs online.
Understanding the seasonal patterns of sperm could improve fertility treatments, by optimising the timing of treatment, the reasearchers say.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.
