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.
Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influential
In the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a restaurant and did not come home.
Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had gone to eat with friends in Málaga on Saturday 27 December. But as the pair drove back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually tranquil Fahala River into what the mayor would later call an “uncontrollable torrent”. Police found their van overturned the next day. Their bodies followed after an agonising search.
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Subspecies driven to extinction by hungry whalers returns after ‘back breeding’ programme using partial descendants
Giant tortoises, the life-giving engineers of remote small island ecosystems, are plodding over the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years.
The Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger niger), a subspecies of the giant tortoise once found across the Galápagos, was driven to extinction in the 1840s by whalers who removed thousands from the volcanic island to provide a living larder during their hunting voyages.
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Romney Marsh, Kent: It’s a family outing, raking the wet sand looking for plump shellfish. Out of everyone, though, I’m the most enthusiastic
The vast tidal flats are empty save for the hunched figures of three black-backed gulls considering a decomposed dogfish, and four humans (one rather small) trudging through the endless silt. A light mist obscures the coast with its string of motley houses and, on the breeze, there is only the distant soughing of shallow waves chasing foam over the sand. There is the piquancy of seclusion and its attendant danger here, perhaps the closest thing Kent has to wilderness.
I’m relishing the long walk in this lonely place, but my children are less enthusiastic about our annual pilgrimage to the cockle beds, a typically cold affair as the quality of shellfish diminishes in spring and summer. We’re travelling well armed, brandishing handmade rakes with formidable tines of six-inch nails, while the youngest carries a hopeful white bucket. About half a mile offshore, our labour begins.
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Government announces tougher measures to tackle unlicensed sites as ‘prolific waste criminal’ is ordered to pay £1.4m
A new 33-strong drone unit is being deployed to investigate the scourge of illegal waste dumping across England, the government has announced.
The improvements to the investigation of illegal waste dumping – which costs the UK economy £1bn a year – come as the ringleader of a major waste crime gang was ordered to pay £1.4m after being convicted at Birmingham crown court.
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This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels plus subsidies for cleaner heating has led to clearer air and better health
As a child, Marcel Mazur had to hold his breath in parts of Kraków thick with “so much smoke you could see and smell it”. Now, as an allergy specialist at Jagiellonian University Medical College who treats patients struggling to breathe, he knows all too well the damage those toxic gases do inside the human body.
“It’s not that we have this feeling that nothing can be done. But it’s difficult,” Mazur said.
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Government plans legislation giving landowners and tenants rights to cull deer to protect crops and property
It will be much easier to shoot deer in England under government plans that aim to curb the damage the animals are doing to the country’s woodlands.
Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, plans to bring forward new legislation to give landowners and tenants legal rights to shoot deer to protect crops and property.
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Australian collections of the endangered and notoriously unpredictable flowers have popped off in recent years, as ‘personas’ like Putricia, Stinkerella and Smellanie prove a hit with nosy spectators
From little things glorious fetid things grow. Corpse flower blooms, once vanishingly rare, are becoming more commonplace in Australia.
More than a dozen bloomed across the country in 2025, including the infamous Putricia in Sydney, Morpheus in Canberra, Big Betty in Cooktown, and Spud and co in Cairns. But with plants kept in gardens across the country, and blooming more frequently after their first flower, you could catch a whiff of one soon.
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A staple in African and Arab communities for millennia, camel milk is now being marketed as a ‘superfood’
Caroline’s sultry and soulful eyes are hooded and heavy-lashed.
“She’s straight out of central,” Paul Martin whispers, gazing at his star performer with admiration.
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Families are navigating the tough choice between unimaginable riches and the identity that comes with land
When two men knocked on Ida Huddleston’s door last May, they carried a contract worth more than $33m in exchange for the Kentucky farm that had fed her family for centuries.
According to Huddleston, the men’s client, an unnamed “Fortune 100 company”, sought her 650 acres (260 hectares) in Mason county for an unspecified industrial development. Finding out any more would require signing a non-disclosure agreement.
Continue reading...A Stanford University team have tested their nasal spray vaccine in animals but still need to do human clinical trials.
The household cat could hold the key to understanding certain types of cancer, such as breast cancer.
Manjit Sangha, from Penn, near Wolverhampton, says her life drastically change in one weekend.
The decision from the Supreme Court, on the case of a child who sustained a brain injury at birth in 2015, could have significant cost implications for the NHS.
Around 1,000 operations a week rely on the product as patients are warned delays are inevitable.
The figure paid to Crawford & Company Adjusters is eight times the original estimate for the work.
A committee of MPs warns tighter restrictions on high-risk cosmetic procedures are needed immediately.
The patient was the victim of a "life-changing error" when a drill slipped during surgery.
Some health boards have told people using the painkiller to begin reducing their tablets by one a week.
Can boosting testosterone improve libido, or is much of the attention solely hype, profit, and placebo?
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.
