The leaves of Aspilia africana, a plant used in African traditional medicine, can stop bleeding, block infection and speed wound healing, a new study from Nigeria confirms.

The leaves and flowers of A. Africana, a bristle-covered herb known as the “hemorrhage plant,” have been used to stanch bleeding, remove foreign bodies from the eyes, treat scorpion stings, and for several other purposes across the African continent.

I’m comforted, quite often, by science (you know, when people aren’t cloning goats, building a better thermonuclear bomb, or using their massive minds to concoct a tastier McBurger). The aforementioned information made my morning, quite frankly, and made me realize, yet again, how central to our lives the rest of the ecosystem is. We’re all part of one larger organism, and we’ve been given–by chance or by Divinity, depending on our beliefs–tools and cures, techniques and creations that we’ve barely tapped.

All this is to say, there’s more hope out there than the mainstream media will let us see with ease, and there’s more hope. And hope, my friends, might be the most progressive of emotions. Let’s not forget that, and let’s not lose it, despite the desires of the powerful few.

So let’s raise our collective mugs to Aspilia africana and to the scientists bringing it to the masses.

According to a recent article The Economist, the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Congo is 4,200 square kilometers and has 14 park rangers. In the past year, they’ve caught no poachers. This isn’t because there’s no poaching. For example:

Last year poachers are estimated to have killed more than 23,000 African elephants. According to a study by the University of Washington, that is about one in 17 of the continent’s total.

So the good folks running the park are going to place special metal detectors and smoke detectors (poachers often smoke the meat) along trails and in trees. When a poacher trips a detector, a signal goes right to the rangers with exact coordinates. Many people in the Congo believe, quite strongly, in magic, and “local people will receive no explanation for the rangers’ new powers.” The hope is that this will both stop poachers in their tracks (or rather, the apes’, jaguars’ and elephants’ tracks) and discourage poaching in the first place.

So what can you do from the comfort of your computer? We’ll give you three:

1. Sign the pledge from Wild Aid and the Active Conservation Awareness Program, urging world leaders to do their part in putting an end to poaching. The ACAP is hoping to get 25 million signatures by 2008. Let’s be part of this effort.
2. Consider donating a measly five smackers to Wild Aid. All you’ve got to do is click this sentence. Just so you know they’re as legit as it gets, you can click right here to go to a National Geographic article on the organization. And you can listen to the executive director of Wild Aid on NPR by clicking here.
3. Tell a pal about Wild Aid. You can do this by clicking this sentence, or by clicking the “Share This” button at the bottom-left of this post. This is a very important action because Wild Aid “guarantee[s] that 100% of donations from the public go straight to the field,” so free marketing is the best marketing.
   

Picture clicked by this friend of pachyderms.

The populations of nearly two dozen common American birds – ” the fence-sitting meadowlark, the frenetic Rufous hummingbird and the whippoorwill with its haunting call – ” are half what they were 40 years ago, a new analysis found.

Twenty different common bird species – ” those with populations more than half a million and covering a wide range – ” have seen populations fall at least in half since 1967, according to a study by the National Audubon Society.

And why is this happening? The disapparance of ”grassy habitats” It probaby won’t come as a shock:

Many of the species in decline depend on open grassy habitats that are disappearing because of suburban sprawl. Climate change and invasive species are to blame, too.

But why is this so significant? Birds are central to the homeostasis of our ecosystems. They do all of the following and more:

• Spread the seeds of trees and grasses.
• Pollinate flowers.
• Eat dead animals, essentially cleaning the land.
• Gobble insects.
• Keep down the populations of mice, rabbits, and squirrels.

But aren’t they even more than that? They sing — what better way to wake in the morning? They’re gorgeous in flight, defying the laws of the landlocked, increasing the overall beauty of our already beautiful world. So we owe it to the birds, to the rest of the natural world, and to ourselves, to do something about this problem.

On three previous Wednesdays, we shared ways in which we can all be better stewards of the environment and help reduce our carbon footprints on the earth (see “Saving the Planet from the Comfort of Our Homes,”The Grandeur of Earth Day,” and “I See Trees of Green“). But here are three simple actions we can all take:

1. Plant vegetation native to your area that help common birds. The National Audubon Society has specific suggestions depending on where you live (just click right here).
2. Change your light bulbs. You read that right. Since global climate change is hurting common birds, just change your regular incandescent light bulbs and replace each of them with a compact florescent light bulb. They use 75% less energy than regular bulbs, which therefore reduces carbon emissions released when converting fossil fuels into electricity.
3. Sign this electronic letter to your Senators and Representatives to restore the protections of the Clean Water Act to include wetlands (just click right here). Please consider personalizing the letter a bit as these tend to work a bit better.

Let’s end a bit of interesting wisdom from aviator Charles Lindbergh, shortly before his death: “I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.”

The first years of my memory are of Niagara Falls. We lived on Orchard Parkway in a tiny second-floor house apartment. And as I grew up in the surrounding area, I learned to think of my hometown as the honeymoon and suicide capital of the world.

I grew up with daredevils risking life, limb, and the lives and limbs of their rescuers, by plummeting in various contraptions over the Horseshoe Falls. I saw news reports of poor fools who fell and drown to their deaths on kayaks and jet-skis as they tried to conquer the cataracts. I watched national television coverage of the lawsuits connected to Love Canal, a neighborhood that was the site of one of the worst toxic-waste-dumping scandals in American history.

My first job, as a bakery assistant, was in Niagara Falls at the headquarters of Di Camillo Bakery, a family business still thriving in this city. And I watched as department stores and jewelry stores and restaurants evaporated from Main Street, turning the road into an assortment of seedy bars, adult novelty stores, and boarded up buildings, each empty as the pockets of the homeless wandering the city. And I watched as the factories closed their doors, and added good, hard-working souls to the unemployment lines– ¦.

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Make Progress:

But I also grew up next to a place where people teem to see one the natural wonders of the world. And I grew up in an area where my relatives worked the bluest-collar of jobs, but managed to put lasagna on the table (we're good Italian-Americans, after all). And I grew up where my grandfather landed after traveling the Atlantic to move to America, the same city where my father was raised and remained, the same city where my sister got married. And I grew up next to one of the marvels of electrical science, the Niagara Power Project.

And so I believe in this place. And I love this place. And it's time we all helped this treasure of not just New York, but of America, and not just of America, but of the world. We're ready, if you are, to make progress in Niagara Falls.

• Buy
• Sign
• Give
• E-mail
• Eat

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Editor’s Note: Below you’ll find photos of some of our favorite locations in the city of Niagara Falls.

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The Little Italy neighborhood and business district.

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The genius that is the Niagara Power Project. To learn more about it, click here.

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Di Camillo Bakery, where they make the best Italian bread you’ll ever eat.

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The Niagara River in autumn (if it wasn’t obvious from, you know, the leaves).

Polar bears live in the Arctic, mainly in Alaska and the northern parts of Canada. These marine mammals feed primarily on ringed seals. They use ice floats to feed, mate, and rest. Ice floats that are increasingly farther away. Global Warming has raised the temperature of the Canadian Arctic water by 4 degrees Celsius in the last 50 years, and as a result, polar bears have been drowning, unable to reach a large enough piece of ice.

Here are some other causes of polar bear die-off, in bullet point, for irony’s sake:

• Toxic chemicals such as DDT and PCB have been found in many polar bears, which cause birth defects and lower reproduction rates.
• Drilling for oil greatly affects polar bear habitats and the operation is expected to expand.
• Warmer temperatures have led to the collapse of birthing dens, killing the bears inside.
• Loss of hunting ground from global warming has led to the first observance of cannibalism among polar bears.
• In many countries there are high quotas for how many polar bears are allowed to be hunted.

This last one had me a bit miffed. It seems to me that with a threatened species the quota for hunting them should hover somewhere around zero. American laws prevent the hunting of these animals in Alaska. But, in a break from the norm, Canadian laws are a bit less progressive. So American trophy hunters cross the border into Canada, make their kill and bring it back home. And because of a major legal loophole, they can do this without breaking a single law.

According to the Defenders of Wildlife:

From 2002-2005, a total of 298 requests were made by US citizens to import sport hunted polar bear trophies from Canada. Of these, 252 – a staggering 85 percent – were issued.

So they’ve started to petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make it illegal to import polar bear trophies. Please take 30 seconds to add your signature. We can’t stop Canada from allowing this hunting, but we can stop Americans from bringing them home.

We can debate the ethical and constitutional aspects of hunting and gun control, but I think most of us can come to an agreement when it comes to killing an endangered animal for the purpose of decoration, can’t we?