Greenvillecofamily.com loves to promote awareness about all of the issues involving our water sources.  Here are the top  videos on River pollution I found on Youtube.

Pollution Kills Dhaka’s Rivers,  people swimming in filth, health hazards, environmental carelessness, all included here.  Makes you wonder how people can be so shortsighted about a natural resource and human survival.

Closer to home in the United States, a recent coal ash spill on the Emory River in Tennessee, led to tons of ash sludge and dead wildlife.

Ganges River Pollution in India, raw sewage dumped into the river, water borne diseases, dead animals floating in the river, I was shocked to learn that for a small fee you can legally dump sewage into the river!

Northern Ireland is not immune from river pollution, even though regulations on pollution currently exist, they are rarely enforced.  Even though laws are clearly broken there is no punishment.

In Norwich, Connecticut the Yantic River is continually polluted by nearby businesses and shopping malls.

Columbia River water or poison?  I don’t know for sure but it looks like both, if one picture is worth 1,000 words this video is worth a million.

More pollution in India, we outsource everything else there, apparently we also outsource pollution, this video explains some of the water treatment programs that are being implemented to help stop the problem.  The leather industry is investigated here!

The last case of river pollution is Maryland, the Anacostra River is investigated for unsafe water.

I hope you enjoyed our countdown of the top videos of River Pollution from Youtube.  Value our natural resources.

Recently Greenvillecofamily.com made a little visit to a Scarborough, Maine restaurant to investigate the “I Love Maine Lobster Claw Game”. I have been somewhat surprised by all of the furor that has erupted in Florida about this very simple and harmless game.

we hate lobsters!!!

The Animal Rights Foundation of Florida, ARRF, calls the game both “cruel” and “inhumane”. The group was so incensed over the perceived torture of the little lobsters they organized a protest on May 22 to demand the game be shut down and removed from Florida eateries.

First of all, I think that the good people at ARFF need to do a little research. Lobsters are routinely caught in traps, where do they think they come from? They aren’t just crawling out of the ocean and jumping onto people’s plates. This is a heavily monitored industry with very high standards to protect the lobster from over fishing.

Secondly, the whiz kids at ARFF need to take a little reality break here. I know that sometimes it seems, that the life of a lobster is insignificant, but when I look around at massive job cuts, unemployment, bank failings, wall street greed, war in the Middle East, I have to take a step back and wonder, doesn’t ARFF have something better to protest?

I have seen this game up close, the claws are not harmful to lobsters, and there is very little difference between pulling a lobster out of the tank at the supermarket or “winning” one in the “I Love Maine Lobster Claw Game”. Also in the game I saw the lobsters had quite a bit of room to move around, much more than they are allowed in the supermarket tank or at any seafood restaurant on the coast of Maine.

Here's To You ARFF

So lastly, my friends at ARFF, if you really want to make a difference in the lives of lobsters, you should bring your little protest to the source, here in Maine. We have been cruelly catching, storing, boiling and eating lobsters for centuries. When you come, please bring your money and stay for awhile, one of our biggest industries is tourism, and unlike people in Florida we are really not that quick to judge, and allow both sides of an argument to be heard before we make signs with cute and uninformed slogans on them and march through the streets and infringe on a person’s right to make a living.

I hope all of the very conscientious people who belong to ARFF, find some other causes that are slipping under the radar of humanity. Hopefully they will leave this unique and harmless game alone and try to make a real difference.

Can’t we all just get along?

Lobsters are not toys! They Are Delicious!

Standing on the Kenduskeag Stream

The Crew at Greenvillecofamily.com, recently visited the Bangor, Maine area to look at the health of some of Maine’s rivers and streams first hand. We were not disappointed. We first went to the Kenduskeag Stream, which is 25 miles long.

It is a tributary of the Penobscot River. The Kenduskeag stream flows southeast through the towns of Corinth, Kenduskeag and Glenburn before entering the city of Bangor. The stream is beautiful and provides a great home for a diverse group of wildlife, as well as recreational fishing and paddling. We were a little alarmed at the easily found, human produced trash both clearly visible in and around the stream.

It seems that to possess a tremendous natural resource like this, should spark the feeling of responsibility in its admirers, to not carelessly discard their garbage in or around it.

The Kenduskeag Stream is followed by a well maintained path with multiple picnic areas that make it easy to bring the whole family to enjoy the water and wildlife it supports.

I urge you all to get out and enjoy the natural beauty that surround you every day.

American swamps cover approximately 100,000 square miles, develop in moist climates, and contain a natural filtration system that cleans water better than any man made product. There are two types, forested and inundated shrub swamps.

Inundated shrub swamps are shrub-dominated and distinguished by poor drainage, continuous water inundation or saturation. The region typically exhibits a scattered shrubby, over story, sparse cover, and occupies kettle holes in ice-contact topography and moats around bogs.  Found in wetland depressions and sandy lake plains.

Shrub swamp soil is typically shallow muck over clay with pH ranging from strongly acidic to moderately alkaline, with organic portions of the soil more acidic than mineral portions. Although soil typically remains inundated throughout the year due to the underlying impermeable clay, the upper soil layers may become dry in mid to late summer and during periods of persistent drought.

Frequent disturbances such as prolonged flooding allow inundated shrub swamp to persist rather than succeed to forest swamps. Major floods and beaver flooding kill trees, contributing to the persistence of inundated shrub swamp, extended periods of drought that lower the water table promoting tree growth changing the topography.

Buttonbush typically represents more than fifty present of the shrub cover in an inundated shrub swamp. The buttonbush survives because it adapts to fluctuating water tables, constant inundation, and a broad range of pH levels. Buttonbush is normally restricted to emergent or flooded zones and responds favorably to sunlight, but it is not critical for its establishment. A minimum water depth of twenty inches is needed for successful maintenance of buttonbush populations.

Other common species in the shrub layer of inundated shrub swamps include willows, red-osier dogwood, silky dogwood, winterberry, black chokeberry, swamp dewberry and swamp rose. Shrub cover can range from forty to ninety percent, with an average of seventy percent. Often a scattered tree canopy is also present and may include maples, yellow birch, ashes, black walnut, oaks, black willow and American elm

Although ground cover varies in an inundated shrub swamps, the plant layers are typically sparse. The ground flora may contain species such as short-awned foxtail, swamp milkweed, common beggar ticks, false nettle, sedges, water hemlock, goldthread, southern blue, rattlesnake grass, small duckweed, common water horehound, northern bugle weed, tufted loosestrife, Canada mayflower, sensitive fern, cinnamon fern, Virginia chain-fern, reed canary grass, clearweed, mad-dog skullcap, water parsnip, bur-reeds,  skunk cabbage and starflower.

Keeping our swamps healthy is vital to the survival of all species on the Earth, even humans. Shrub and forested swamps are vital to human life.

Swamp In Maine

A Visit to the Swamp in Maine

We decided to explore the swamp because so many people were visiting Greenville Eco Family to find out why Swamps are Like Kidneys. Swamps are forested wetlands that border rivers, lakes and ponds that may completely dry in the summer or remain wet throughout the year. The swamp, as we discovered is very buggy and the plants that have special adaptations that enable them to survive in this diverse biosphere.

At the edge of the swamp, as we took our last steps out off from solid ground, the not so brave Mike Martin, pulled a tick off his skin while showing off the Maine bug population feeding on his leg. Looking closer, we found ticks everywhere. For proof of this display of bravery, please see related video!

In all, between Mike and I, we pulled over 30 ticks off our clothes – most of them the white rimmed Dog Tick, but one of those blacklegged Dear Ticks, the ones that cause Lyme disease, began attaching its head to Mike’s leg as he danced with the video camera trying to shake himself free. Again see video for evidence.

Tick

On the walk home, I asked him why there were so many ticks in the swamp. “To feed that frog that I couldn’t catch, of course,” He replied. We had spent several, unsuccessful hours, trying to catch some wildlife to show on video.

Growing up in Greenville, there were no ticks in the forest around the swamp. Now, because the spread of invasive species such as honeysuckle, barberry and burning bush, ticks continue to propagate and spread north.

Maine Snapping Turtle

As for the benefits of the ticks and exotic plants of the swamp, my research indicates that most people felt they are an unwanted nuisance, but I know that diversity is good for the creatures of the swamp. Ticks enhance the biosphere and provide food that keeps the frog population up so they eat more of those Black Flies and Mosquitoes that I so despise.

The bugs of the swamp provide fuel in support of over forty animals, plants, and natural communities. Animals that depend upon the swamp include including the turtle, deer, turkey, otter, beaver, muskrats, wood duck, and pheasants and over ninety species of birds depend upon those pesky insects of the swamp including the Great Blue Heron, Red Tailed Hawk, Marsh Wren, Osprey, Wood Duck, Thrushes, Vireos, Warblers, and Scarlet Tanager.

Maine Beaver

Mike and I enjoyed our day at the swamp and we will continue to investigate the health of the world’s water supply and report our findings. There is need for qualified teachers, aquatic experts, and environmental scientist. Interactive educational exercises like exploring a swamp motivate students to learn and are a wonderful way to learn about the importance of diversity in a biosphere.  Our Visit to the swamps of Maine really made me understand more about nature.