Veronika Wild

Wouldn’t you know it. The day I finally got around to writing about bees was actually World Turtle Day. Survivors since the age of the dinosaurs, turtles are gentle, amazing and long lived creatures with some species able to live up to two hundred years. Some can swim 35 MPH and swim very long distances [see more turtle facts here] , yet like so many other creatures, they are also facing extinction as a result of human activity. Seventy per cent of the world's 350 species are endangered, including the Hawksbill, the Loggerhead and the Green. For example, with respect to the Australian Sea Turtle, aka the Green Turtle, beaches are now getting so hot as a result of climate change , that many of their eggs no longer hatch and those that do turn into females . That gender imbalance may further limit their capacity to breed in future. As with so many other species habitat destruction is another factor - polluted water, waterfront development, people and their dogs trampl...

World Bee Day was on May 20. th As usual I am a bit late with this. These commemorative days are coming so thick and fast it’s hard to keep up and I haven’t even finished writing about water yet . Still while special days might be great for drawing attention to an issue, that doesn’t mean we should forget about it when the day is over, so let’s pause for a moment to appreciate what bees do for us and the rest of the world and what we can do for them. Bee worried Bees don't just make honey. According to the UN they pollinate three quarters of the things we eat and 90% of the world’s flowering plants upon which we and many other species depend. Click here to find out what would happen in a world without bees. Despite this, the world has lost around 40% of its bees over the last 15 years, with the USA losing 40% of its managed hives in a single year. The main reasons are habitat loss, the use of pesticides – many countries are still using a group of agricultural ch...

Turning sea water into drinking water -interior of a Reverse Osmosis desalination plant  Image byJames Grellier / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) With water demand tipped to exceed supply by 40% by 2050, many countries have been availing themselves of new technology to avert this possibility, particularly when prompted by climate change in the form of more frequent and more severe droughts, drying rivers and higher temperatures. Broadly speaking there are two major ways     – not counting conservation, in which water supplies can be scaled up. The first is desalination – that is, taking sea water or brackish water and turning it into fresh water.   The second involves making better use of waste water.   Desalination - Costly Magic Currently there are 137 countries using desalination in one form or another. Already known to the ancient Greeks, the first modern distillation plants appeared in landlocked Kuwait in 1951 ...