Eco Hvar's aims for protecting animals and improving animal welfare, plus related articles
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Photo: Vivian Grisogono
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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.
As a child, Dominique Bikaba, was displaced by a new national park in the DRC. Now he is helping to secure land for wildlife and Indigenous groups against the backdrop of ongoing fighting
Mist hangs low over the forested slopes of Kahuzi-Biega national park, where the canopy still shelters one of the last strongholds of the eastern lowland, or Grauer’s, gorilla. It is a landscape of immense biological wealth and equally immense political fragility. For 54-year-old Dominique Bikaba, it was once home.
His family was among those displaced when their ancestral land was incorporated into the park in the 1970s. The protected area, in the lowlands of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), harbours elephants and a remarkable range of wildlife, but it is best known as the principal home of the Grauer’s gorilla, the largest subspecies of primates, known to grow up to 250kg (39st) in weight. It is one of five great ape species found in the DRC’s vast forests, including mountain gorillas, which are also found in other parts of the Great Lakes region, such as Rwanda and Uganda.
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Leaders say automated mowers’ blades threaten nocturnal animals as studies highlight risks to wildlife
German mayors have called for a nationwide ban on night-time use of robot lawnmowers to protect hedgehogs and other small nocturnal animals from being killed or maimed in the dark.
Recent studies have highlighted the threat lawnmower blades pose to wildlife active between dusk and dawn, prompting growing calls for regulation. Hedgehogs also tend to curl into a ball when threatened rather than running away, making them harder for a robot mower’s sensors to detect.
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Concerns about coming wildfire risk, and temperatures also remain high on other side of Pacific where rare tropical cyclone has formed
After a historically warm winter across nine states in the US, the first month of meteorological spring again brought exceptionally high temperatures, with numerous states recording new all-time high temperatures in March. The remarkable intensity and longevity of the warmth have left much of the mountain snowpack, a crucial source of water for millions in the American west, at critically low levels.
Though precipitation totals tend to increase in spring, the low snowpack has raised concerns about a potentially severe wildfire season if conditions do not improve soon. And with further spells of abnormally warm, dry weather expected this week, the outlook is becoming increasingly worrying heading into the late spring and summer months.
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Under Anne Hidalgo – mayor for 12 years until last week – the French capital added bike lanes, cut traffic and reclaimed public space, but not without resistance
When Corentin Roudaut moved to Paris 10 years ago, he was too scared to cycle. The IT developer had biked everywhere as a student in Rennes but felt overwhelmed by the bustling French capital. Cars were everywhere. Cyclists had almost no protection.
But once authorities carved out space for a segregated bike lane on Boulevard Voltaire near his home in the 11th arrondissement, Roudaut returned to the two-wheel commute and did not look back.
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Tebay, Cumbria: A planned reintroduction of these apex predators has got us upland farmers worried. We’re still not convinced they won’t harm our flocks
The years seem to be coming around very quickly – this will be my ninth spring at this farm. As the days get longer and the grass begins to grow, my mind turns to lambing. We have a short growing season here, so we plan for lambing to start mid-April, hoping the grass will have started growing by then. The tiny Ouessant sheep, which have to lamb indoors due to predation, started lambing on April Fools’ Day.
Last year I put a large group of Ouessants outside to graze on the Roman fort when they were four days old, and they disappeared without a trace – 13 lambs lost. It wasn’t a fox or a badger, as we know what a predated carcass looks like, and it wasn’t the mink that had been killing hens, as that was leaving dead bodies.
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Exclusive: research finds Jackdaw field would provide only about 2% of current demand, and Rosebank only 1%
Opening major new fields in the North Sea would make almost no difference to the UK’s reliance on gas imports, research has shown.
The Jackdaw field, one of the largest unexploited gasfields in the North Sea, would displace only 2% of the UK’s current imports of gas, which would leave the UK still almost entirely dependent on supplies from Norway and a few other sources.
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The US has invoked national security to remove protections for the endangered cetacean, of which only about 50 are left
Since before modern humans existed Rice’s whales have been diving to the depths of the ocean to gorge on fat-rich fish while growing to leviathan proportions, their bodies spanning the length of a bus and weighing as much as as six elephants.
Unfortunately for these grand creatures, their only home became a patch of the Gulf of Mexico that the oil and gas industry, much later, became highly interested in for drilling. Only about 50 of these baleen whales still exist on Earth, surrounded by clanging aquatic highways of boats and shifting drilling infrastructure.
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The shock of the oil crisis is playing out on Australian streets, where bike shop sales are up and cycle lanes are busier
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Before the 1970s global oil crisis, city planners in Copenhagen were considering removing bike lanes. Bicycles were considered outdated now car was king, and just 10% of locals were cycling regularly.
But as economic shock waves reverberated around the world, Denmark, which almost entirely relied on imported oil, took a dramatic U-turn, with citizens staging mass protests in the middle of highways demanding better cycling infrastructure.
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Harsh weather is nothing new in Kenya but the country’s climate is showing clear signs of getting hotter and drier
The day is hot and dry but the soil underfoot is soft. “After four months of drought, we received the first rains yesterday,” says Maasai elder Abraham Kampalei. “All we can do now is pray that they continue.”
Kampalei has lived for more than 50 of his 70 years with his family and animals in Oldonyonyokie, a hamlet in southern Kenya’s Kajiado county. He has witnessed the slow decline of the pastures. “I came here because of the abundance of grass for my livestock to graze. Today, there is almost nothing left of it,” he says.
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Stock runs low as oil crunch increases enthusiasm for electric vehicles
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When a used vehicle rolls into a car yard, the usual trajectory for its price tag is down if it lingers too long.
That is the (almost) iron law of the secondhand market – until the oil crisis hit and dealers started raising asking prices for used electric vehicles.
Continue reading...Northern Ireland becomes first part of UK to bring in legal entitlement for parents affected by miscarriage at any stage of a pregnancy to have paid leave.
The strike comes at the end of the bank holiday weekend and NHS managers fear demand could be "challenging".
Summer 2025 was the warmest UK summer on record, with four heatwaves, a top temperature of nearly 38C and a mean temperature of 16.1C
The Bowelbabe fund, set up by Dame Deborah James in 2022, helps to support Cancer Research UK.
More than a million people in England will start being offered the anti-obesity jab for better heart health and to avoid strokes.
The offer of 1,000 more training posts has been withdrawn after the union refused to scrap the planned six-day strike.
Review finds care for some patients was "below the level that would have been expected".
Diagnosed just before her fourth birthday, Sophia, now 15, can no longer speak and cannot walk unaided.
The Welsh Ambulance Service said newly qualified paramedics would not be offered roles this year due to "financial and operational issues".
Families of seven children believe the wrong sperm or egg donors were used in their IVF treatment.
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.
