The first comprehensive global assessment of sea grass losses (a fancy phrase for a study on shrinking seagrass beds, or ‘meadows’) showed that 58 percent of seagrass beds are shrinking. The study also showed that, since 1990, the amount lost from each marine meadow annually has gone from 1% to a staggering 7%.

A co-author of the study, James Fourqurean (a professor at Florida International University), claims that the reason sea grass is dissapearing is that it likes the same type of water that people, especially tourists, like: shallow, sheltered areas. Sea grasses are most common in bays and around river mouths, also epicentres of human activity. Though the grass can deal with, in fact clean up, some degree of pollution, when the dredging and dumping is too much, it dies.

“Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes,” are the words of another co-author of the study, William Dennison of the University of Maryland.

The scientists also said that global warming ‘is predicted to have deleterious effects on seagrasses.’

There are ways to help seagrass recover. In Florida, USA, treated wastewater being dumped into caused sea grass to begin dissapearing until the method of treating wastewater was changed and the grass recovered.

This is an example of how we have the technologies and solutions to many of the issues we (as a global community) face, we just need some more motivation to implement them.

Spirit bears are a genetically unique sub-species of black bear. In every ten spirit bears one is white and the rest are black. White spirit bears range from creamy-white to light silvery-blue. White spirit bears have a darker patch on their back.   A spirit bear cub can be white even if both parents are black.

Spirit bears eat basically the same things as ordinary black bears: salmon, nuts, berries, and small animals. They live in only one small corner of British Columbia, which also happens to be the world’s largest unprotected area of intact temperate rainforest. The gigantic old growth trees of the spirit bears’ home are, in part, tribute to the bears themselves. The reason is their messy eating habits; the spirit bears leave little bits of the salmon they eat near the river, and when the nutrient-rich shreds decompose they fertilize the soil.

The rainforest where the spirit bears live is now threatened by logging. If the plans go through, the pristine forests will be replaced by unsustainable monoculture plantation forests, and all hope will be lost for the creature that, in the words of Simon Jackson, is the panda bear of British Columbia.

Simon Jackson, protector of the spirit bear since age 13, has started a worldwide coalition of young people who want to save the spirit bear. Check out the website at spiritbearyouth.com.