Tuesday 21st of May 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

protecting nature and the environment is a full time job....

Global Family of the Wilderness Societies!

The European Wilderness Society is part of a global family of the Wilderness Societies. Each society has a specific history but what links them all is the objective to protect global Wilderness! Let’s have a closer look at them.

The Wilderness Society (U.S.)

The American Wilderness Society is an non-profit organization that is dedicated to protecting America’s last remaining Wilderness and inspiring Americans to care for wild places. They focus primarily on public lands by advocating for the creation of federally designated Wilderness areas. The organization was instrumental in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. This bedrock conservation act created the National Wilderness Preservation System that protects nearly 50 million ha of unspoiled U.S. wildlands from Alaska to Florida.

The Australian Wilderness Society (Australia)

The Australian Wilderness Society is a community-based, not-for-profit non-governmental environmental advocacy organisation. Its purpose is to protect, promote and restore Wilderness and natural processes across Australia for the survival and ongoing evolution of life on Earth. The Wilderness Society was formed initially as a protest group called The Tasmanian Wilderness Society and later on became known as The Wilderness Society.

The European Wilderness Society

The European Wilderness Society (EWS) was founded in 2014 to help protect Europe’s Wilderness.  The mission of the Society is to identify, designate, assist in the management and promote Europe’s Wilderness, the continent’s most undisturbed areas of nature.  European Wilderness Society vision is to achieve the ultimate goal of 5% Wilderness in Europe. European Wilderness Society is a membership based organisation with a focus on Wilderness areas, tourism businesses and Wilderness advocates.

Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) was founded in 1963 to help protect Canada‘s Wilderness. CPAWS has a membership of nearly 15,000, and 13 local chapters across Canada. CPAWS vision is to keep at least half of Canada’s public land and water wild  — forever focusing on protecting many important areas of Canada’s Wilderness with a focus on the Boreal forest, the Eastern Woodlands, Yellowstone to Yukon corridor, Marine and Ocean, etc.

https://wilderness-society.org/global-family-wilderness-societies/

 

MEANWHILE:

Climate action groups are vehemently rejecting the Biden administration’s claim that the approval of a new offshore oil terminal — planned to be the largest in the U.S. — is in the “national interest,” after the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the project had met several federal requirements and could begin operations by 2027.

The agency’s Maritime Administration said last week that Enterprise Product Partners, a Houston-based pipeline company, had been granted a deepwater port license to build the Sea Port Oil Terminal (SPOT) near Freeport, Texas following a five-year federal review process.

The federal government determined the $1.8 billion terminal project had undergone sufficient environmental impact reviews and would overall benefit the country — even as it was projected by the Sierra Club, which has fought SPOT for several years, to emit greenhouse gases equivalent to those of nearly 90 coal-fired power plants.

“The evidence is clear that SPOT would be catastrophic to the climate, wildlife, and frontline communities of the Gulf,” saidDevorah Ancel, senior attorney with the Sierra Club. “It threatens the future existence of the endangered Rice’s whale with a population of less than fifty, and its ozone pollution would compromise the health of thousands of Gulf residents who have endured decades of fossil fuel industry pollution. Make no mistake, SPOT is not in the national interest.”

The project is expected to include two pipelines that would carry crude oil to the deepwater port each day, enabling the export of 2 million barrels of crude oil, loaded onto two supertankers at once, daily.

https://truthout.org/articles/activists-slam-biden-admins-approval-of-largest-offshore-oil-export-terminal/

 

MEANWHILE, DEFENDING THE ENVIRONMENT NEEDS MORE GUTS AND INFORMATION TO FIGHT THE SENATORS:

'So You're Not In Charge?!': Josh Hawley Goes Absolutely Nuclear On Deb Haaland Over 'Corruption'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTgTKdh62Q0

 

NO "CORRUPTION" HERE... YOU ARE DEFENDING THE PLANET AGAINST HUMAN DESTRUCTION... BE AWARE... AND MAKE SURE YOUR BOSS, BIDEN, GETS THE MESSAGE AS WELL... HE WON'T — HE'S BRAIN DEAD...

 

free assange today, mr biden...

a rich environmentalist....

 Bernese billionaire works to keep West wild  Marie-Christine Bonzom, swissinfo.ch 

 

The Bern-born entrepreneur has been recognised by the Wilderness Society for his long-term environmental philanthropy in the United States. His work on land conservation in the West has earned him this year’s prestigious Robert Marshall Award.

Wyss, president and majority shareholder of Synthes, a multinational medical device manufacturer based in canton Solothurn and Pennsylvania, is not an easy man to track down.

He spends two-thirds of his time in the US, “the rest in Switzerland and elsewhere around the world”.

Wyss is ranked 121st on the 2010 Forbes list of richest people in the world and has a fortune estimated at $6 billion (SFr5.25 billion)

He owns several houses dotted around the world but changed his main residence from Pennsylvania to Wyoming to be nearer his daughter and granddaughter.

Changing times

South of Grand Teton National Park, Wyss also gets closer to the countryside which made such an impression on him as a young man and which he now helps preserve.

“I first came to the United States in 1958. I was 22 and on a four-month-summer professional exchange programme,” he told swissinfo.ch.

“Among the things I did was be part of a crew who surveyed roads west of Denver. I fell in love with the beauty of the West; it was a kind of landscape I had never seen before.”

At the time, the region was still part of the “Far West”. “The West was mentally far, far away from Europe, even from Washington, yet people were extremely friendly and open,” he said.

“The Grand Canyon was still unspoiled territory – there was only one bus a day into the canyon with 30 people aboard.”

Since then, pressure has increased on the majestic landscapes of Arizona and Montana.

“Today, you have five million visitors who go to see the Canyon every year. There’s terrific growth in Western communities due to huge population growth – you see a lot of huge suburbs that don’t have much of a soul and people live in much more isolation than before,” Wyss said.

Exploitation

With pressure comes danger. In July, an ExxonMobil pipeline under the Yellowstone River in south-central Montana ruptured and dumped up to 1,000 barrels of oil, fouling the riverbank and forcing water intakes downstream to close.

Across the region, the natural spaces – even public spaces – are being attacked by forestry companies, mining companies and oil and nuclear companies who want to exploit the area’s resources or to store waste.

The Wyss Foundation focuses exclusively on protecting natural spaces in the West.

“Land owned by the federal government is managed for various interests, including hydraulic power, coal and gas, forestry etc. So it needs some kind of counterbalance so it doesn’t get ruined everywhere,” he said.

His foundation does this by making the federal authorities aware of the issue and by creating partnerships between the US government and conservation groups which work to preserve natural zones.

However, the political climate is against them and the Wyss Foundation, like other ecological organisations, faces a pro-industry Republican majority in Congress and a president who has disappointed the Greens.

While deploring “the agenda of the Republican party [which] is against nature protection”, he said he would rather not comment on President Barack Obama’s attitude towards the environment. “I’d rather not go there, it’s a very thorny issue right now.”

Swiss influence

Why does Wyss not get involved in protecting nature in Switzerland?

“Switzerland was already very developed when we started. There were dams, ski resorts so it was hard to do things. The fact is that in Switzerland there’s no chance to preserve anything anymore – yes, the mountains will stay there, but you can’t create parks in the valleys.”

Nevertheless, he stresses that his love of nature developed in Switzerland.

“Bern was half the size it is today so it was even more easy than today to walk and be very quickly in nature.”

Modest upbringing

Wyss grew up in modest surroundings. His father was a salesman, “my mother a housewife who hated housework”.

Along with his parents and two sisters, he lived in a “very small” apartment, “but my parents were extremely interested in what happened in the world so we all had very lively discussions”.

“We had very little money but my family was mentally rich, I had the most exciting youth and it made me think very independently,” he said.

What does it mean to him to be worth an estimated $6 billion? “It’s unimportant, actually it doesn’t feel like anything. I have the same friends I had before, I still take local transportation in Bern. Yes, I have a couple of nice houses, but I could not afford them before.”

He adds that he feels equally at home in the US and in Switzerland. “I feel at home wherever I have friends.”

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/bernese-billionaire-works-to-keep-west-wild/31446480

 

 

READ FROM TOP

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

metamorphosis....

Dainty Swallowtail Butterfly (caterpillar pic at top).....

 

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....