Canada's Environmental Voice
THROUGHOUT THE MAJESTIC COASTAL FORESTS of the Pacific Northwest, spawning salmon and bears form one of the ecosystem’s most vital, nourishing relationships. Yet their keystone connection faces enormous threats. Wild salmon must survive overzealous fisheries and sea lice-infested farms. Brown and black bears suffer from habitat loss, sport hunting and other […]
We’ve collected a few tutorials to guide you through building your own solar can heater. In the video above, Jim Meaney, owner of CanSolAir Inc. displays how he converts pop cans into a powerful solar heating panel.
LET ME CONFESS something I did a few years back, in the company of an old friend and a complete stranger: I shot and killed a pig in Hawaii. I meant to do it then, but I’d rather not do it again.
OUR OCEANS are in deep, deep trouble. Only ten percent of the large fish are left, food webs are in tatters and pollution and invasive species threaten marine ecosystems. Coastal communities are also in trouble. From Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, to Musgamagw Tsawataineuk, British Columbia, people struggle to make a living from […]
MANY GRADUATE STUDENTS have helped conduct research at Ontario’s Experimental Lakes Area. The dozen scientists profiled below are broadly representative of at least 47 PhD recipients who completed their degrees using research they participated in at the ELA. In addition, more than 80 master’s theses have been produced from ELA […]
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO STUDENT Heather Andrachuk won the Environmental Studies Association of Canada’s annual poster competition. Her poster, Evaluating the Quality of Citizen Science Bee Observations, explores how volunteer observers can be organized to provide reliable data for ecologists.
THIS ISSUE of Alternatives Journal came with a steep learning curve. After 41 years of profiling science and sustainability with a strong Canadian perspective, this winter we decided to kick our editorial mandate into higher gear. We chose to set bolder goals, expand our storytelling and play a broader (but still grounded) role […]
JAN AZIER has always been interested in nature photography, and has been drawn to shooting underwater since he began diving in 1993. Azier considers himself privileged because of the travel and scenery he has been able to enjoy. “A beautifully shot photograph gives a great satisfaction, but preserving the reef […]
FOR CENTURIES, seahorses have held our curiosity. They appear in scrolls from ancient Greece and seaside tales from the Victorian era. The seahorse form even appears in the folds of our brains, in the shape of the hippocampus – the component of our limbic system responsible for consolidating memories and for […]
YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER heard of Fred Cottrell, and that’s a shame. The American sociologist wrote an idea-busting book in 1955, Energy and Society, in which he argued that the availability of energy set and erased the limits of what human beings can do. He revised the essay in 1972, seven years […]
