Portland, U.S.A. – More than 100 cyclists trekked 585 miles during the seven-day journey of the 2012 STIHL Tour des Trees, raising more than $520,000 to benefit the Tree Research and Education Endowment Fund (TREE Fund). The Tour, sponsored by STIHL, has raised more than $5.5 million since its inception in 1992 and continues to increase public awareness for the research necessary to keep our trees and forests thriving, including research quantifying the benefits of trees to the economy and the environment, studying ways to control diseases and pests, and increasing the survivability of new tree selections.

The TREE Fund supports environmental sustainability by funding efforts for research and education in arboriculture and urban forestry. This includes scholarships for students in the field, arboriculture education, resources for workforce development, and funding grants for scientific research. The TREE Fund has supplied more than $6 million and more than 400 research grants in the past 36 years.

This year’s STIHL Tour des Trees began on August 5 and traversed Oregon, ultimately finishing in the heart of Portland on August 11 with a Ride for Research, a recreational 25-mile in which local cyclists and tree advocates joined the Tour for the day.

During the Tour, children’s educational programs and tree plantings were led by Toronto arborist and veteran Tour rider Warren Hoselton. These programs were conducted for young audiences to learn about the importance of trees and to contribute to the growing list of trees planted by participants each year. More than 20 trees symbolizing the importance of healthy trees and tree research have been planted across Oregon as a legacy of the 2012 Tour.

“The commitment of our cyclists is astounding. They put their lives on hold for a week, and each raises a minimum of $3,500 for our research grants in the fields of arboriculture and urban forestry,” said Mary DiCarlo, fund development specialist for the TREE Fund. ”And participating in education events like tree plantings really creates an emotional bond that continues to bring cyclists back each year.”

“The STIHL Tour des Trees is one of the most important events we support each year,” said Anita Gambill of STIHL, the Tour’s title sponsor and a leading manufacturer of outdoor power equipment. “The Tour positively influences the future of our environment as well as the tree care community that we work so closely with at STIHL.”

Since the first Tour in 1992, the event has inspired more than 1,000 cyclists to participate and collectively generate more than $5.5 million for tree research and programs to educate the community. The STIHL Tour des Trees is a legacy that continues to grow and reach increasingly more supporters every year. Donations can still be made to the TREE Fund through the STIHL Tour des Trees website, http://www.stihltourdestrees.org/, and photos from each of the events are available on the media page. B-roll from the event can be downloaded at: http://www.bluecouchmedia.com/stihl_tour_media_broll1_720p60.mp4

Image Courtesy of  http://www.stihltourdestrees.org/

The article Cyclists Raise Half A Million for Tree Research appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Water.org is the charitable organization co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White in 2009. The organization has worked in many developing nations including Haiti, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Honduras, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, and India. They work to not only provide the communities they help with potable water but also better sanitation; however, the power of these projects is put in the hands of the communities themselves.

While working in Haiti, water.org tries to work with local non-profit organizations that know the local, usually rural communities and can better understand their cultural, political, and environmental needs. The local partner will also know what the best technologies to use for that region are based on the environmental needs of the community and whether or not the parts for repair are easily obtained in that region or country.

Additionally, water.org does its best to work with the Haitian government and DINEPA, the organization responsible for water regulations in Haiti. Recently DINEPA has been addressing the cholera epidemic that began in October 2010 after the earthquake, monitoring water quality throughout the country, and decentralizing water and sanitation so that there are regional representatives. This decentralization works well with the water.org system

Water.org has been in Haiti since 2009 and has helped to sustainably provide 18.000 people – mainly in the Pignon region of Saint-Raphael – with potable water; their goal is to reach 50.000 by March of 2014.

In addition to providing drinkable water, water.org does its best to encourage better sanitation practices. They will analyze what sanitation barriers are in place and what the needs of the community are. Currently in most of Haiti only fifty-one percent of individuals are using some kind of latrine as opposed to the eighty-three percent of people who have and use these sanitation measures in communities aided by water.org. However, Laura Ralston, International Programs Manager, states, “you will always find people who are not necessarily going to be on board [with sanitation measures] for whatever reason.” Unfortunately these seventeen percent of people are still affecting the health of the rest of the community.

Ralston stated that in one community she visited recently, the water sanitation committee put together by water.org was “at their wit’s end” trying to get the last few households to get latrines. The families did not have financial difficulty, but simply did not see the need. According to Ralston, some individuals do not see a need for the latrines even after they are given presentations and explanations.

Perhaps the most important aspect of water.org’s work is the community involvement. Water.org is, of course, essential for the projects, but they only get involved with communities who reach out to them through their local non-governmental organizations or charities. Then the community forms a committee to oversee the water and sanitation projects and to collect the maintenance fees for the well. The communities will also decide the rules and regulations regarding the wells and what kind of savings threshold they want to meet every month as a community. Only when these communities have trouble does water.org intervene with advice and as a facilitator of conversations. Ralston claims that “it’s [the communities] prerogative to meet those thresholds.”

As of now all of the communities in Haiti are meeting their savings goals. Some communities are even saving enough money to consider getting a solar panel for their well or another well for the purposes of irrigation. It is very important to water.org, according to Ralston, that these projects are sustainable for the community financially and technically so that when water.org leaves the community will not have to worry about the well breaking and the funds or parts not being there to fix it.

Most of the projects in Haiti use wells but there are some that capture water from springs. Before determining which type of construction needs to be done, water.org and the local partner will do hydrological and sometimes geological assessments. It is also important for them and the community to know if the spring they are using is in a delicate watershed.

The community is also responsible for the water quality treatments from the wells and springs. Most of these water supplies will require chlorine treatments before human use and the community can decide whether they want some kind of automatic dispenser or if they would prefer to do the treatments manually.

Since the devasting Haiti earthquake in 2010, over 4500 people have died from cholera. The main source of this contamination was the Artibonite River. The journal Nature published an article that claimed Haiti’s limited resources should be spent not on vaccinations but on sanitation and access to clean water. Obviously, water.org has been working towards these goals and begin their projects with surveys and assessments. After the communities have taken over the responsibilities of sanitation and clean water some have continued to do surveys and gather data on how many are sick and they are seeing improvements in fewer numbers of cholera cases.

Some projects are not always successful. Although water.org may start a project in a location, the project can be halted for several reasons such as a lack of any kind of water resource, or human interference. Human reasons are the main reason for the cancellation of projects such as social reasons, rivaling groups, or political disputes. According to Ralston the problem boils down to “money always complicates things.”

Water.org will continue its work in Haiti until it hopefully reaches its 2014 goal of 50000 people with potable water. Although water.org has other projects elsewhere around the globe Ralston claims the direst situations at this time are in Haiti so this is where they will focus.

Find out more on how to get involved and support the Water.Org project by visiting Water.Org or Facebook.

Image Courtesy of  Water.Org

The article Water.org Helps Thousands Get Sustainable Water in Haiti appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The Bureau of Reclamation has received a proposed set of common-sense solutions to solve the imbalance between supply and demand for water in the Colorado River Basin, where the Bureau projects river flow will decrease by an average of about nine percent over the next 50 years due to climate change.

The proposal by Environmental Defense Fund — which includes ideas by other conservation groups and stakeholders — was in response to the deadline for public input of “options and strategies” for a study to define and solve future imbalances in water supply and demand in the basin through 2060.

“Our proposed solutions don’t include expensive new infrastructure and diversions that threaten the health of the Colorado River and the recreation and tourism economy of the region,” said Dan Grossman, Rocky Mountain regional director for Environmental Defense Fund and a former vice chairman of the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee in the Colorado Senate.

“Instead, we are focusing on common-sense ideas — including water banks, water re-use and municipal and agricultural efficiency — to solve the imbalance between supply and demand, while protecting the healthy flows of the river.”

Water banks are institutional mechanisms that can be set up in one state, or by multiple states, to use existing storage in a more flexible manner — particularly during drought — by holding “deposits” of water leased or purchased from existing users.  For example, they hold the potential to be a cost-effective way of preventing the chaotic effects of a ”call” on the river under the Colorado River Compact.

The compact stipulates that when river flows are insufficient to satisfy the Lower Basin states’ water entitlement on the river, the lower basin can place a call on the river water, forcing upper basin states to stop diverting water until the lower basin’s water entitlement is satisfied.

“Managing the Colorado River in a hotter and drier west requires bold and innovative thinking,” added Grossman.  “We can’t continue to adhere to the dogmas of the 19th and 20th centuries and expect to solve this impending crisis.”

The Colorado River Basin is one of the most critical sources of water in the western United States and Mexico, providing water to 30 million people in seven states: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.  The Colorado River Basin Water Supply & Demand Study – due to be completed in June by the Bureau of Reclamation and agencies from the seven basin states – is focusing on the needs of basin resources that are dependent upon a healthy river system.  They include:

• Water for municipal, industrial, and agricultural use;
• Hydroelectric power generation;
• Recreation;
• Fish and wildlife and their habitats;
• Water quality including salinity;
• Flow and water-dependent ecological systems; and
• Flood control, all under a range of conditions that could occur over the next 50 years.

“As we begin forging a new path forward for managing the Colorado River in the age of limits, we need to think about the impacts of our actions on future generations in the west,” concluded Grossman. “Current demands from residential development and agriculture are overtaxing a river that is diminishing because of a changing climate.  We need flexible, market-driven solutions that will protect the river and the ecosystems and western economies it supports.”

The article Proposal to Protect Colorado River Flow, Ecosystems, Western Economy appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.