Nature Conservancy Canada Matches Volunteers to Projects in Canada

Are you interested in volunteering your time to conserve nature in Canada? If so there is a new portal that helps interested volunteers to find conservation projects near you. The Nature Conservancy Canada (NCC) matches people with volunteer opportunities that are organized by province. These projects support the health and well being of a wide range of Canada’s natural places.

Projects cover things like animal surveys, building homes for wild birds, making trails, and wildlife counts.

To go to the site click here.

Sound Recording - Malaysian Frogs Considered to be the Most Beautiful Sound in the World

A competition to find the most beautiful sound in the world was won by Malaysian frogs. The competition was organized by sound expert Julian Treasure. "It was a sound of a swamp with a frogs singing. The most amazing, rich recording of just life — teeming life," Treasure said. "And listening to it you really get the sense of nature at its fullest, and most abundant and most exciting."

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Our Place in the Natural World

This event will take place on Thursday Nov 28, 2013, at Southminster United Church, 15 Aylmer Avenue (at Bank Street), Ottawa, Ontario at 7 PM.
 
What IS the natural world trying to tell us ? Are we listening? What can be learned from trees? Are we ready ? Is it time to start rewilding the planet?

The speakers will be J.B. Mackinnon and Diana Beresford-Kroeger - Ottawa International Writers Festival.

These are two of Canada's most exciting writers and ecological thinkers. They will explore our relationship with nature and the ways we can meaningully re-connect with the world around us.

Event - The 24th annual National Bioneers Conference

The 24th annual National Bioneers Conference, is an annual three-day event that will take place on October 18-20, 2013 at the Marin Center in San Rafael. Established in 1990, this event is the original whole-systems forum of innovation and collaboration for social, cultural and environmental resilience. Serving the sustainability, environmentalism and social justice communities, BioCon speakers and presenters have included Bill McKibben, Jane Goodall, Gloria Steinem, Philippe Cousteau, Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva and Paul Hawken, among many other luminaries. The conference also prides itself on introducing audiences to some of the most innovative voices yet to be discovered.

Engineering Outside the Box: Natural Building in the 21st Century (Event)

This technical seminar will take place on Friday July 27 in Toronto, Ontario at Ryerson University, The Pit, 235 Church St. The three-part seminar covers everything a building design professional would want to know about working with traditional and emerging natural building materials. The seminar is eligible for OAA credits.

The seminar will be conducted by innovative engineers and researchers Bruce King (Ecological Building Network) and John Straube (BuildingScience.com). They will present a technical seminar in three parts:

Biomimicry in Action: Janine Benyus on Design (Video)

Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results. A self-proclaimed nature nerd, Janine Benyus' concept of biomimicry has galvanized scientists, architects, designers and engineers into exploring new ways in which nature's successes can inspire humanity.

Banana Peels and Water Purification

Banana peels can be used to purify drinking water contaminated with toxic heavy metals such as copper and lead. According to a February 2011 study published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, researchers from the Bioscience Institute at Botucatu, Brazil, indicates that banana skins are better than conventional purification agents. Traditionally water purifiers like aluminium oxide, cellulose and silica are used but these are expensive and have potentially toxic side effects.

The team's method follows previous work that showed that plant parts, such as cane husks, coconut fibres and peanut shells, can also remove toxins from water. All of these natural materials contain chemicals that attract and collect heavy metals.

In a laboratory experiment, Gustavo Rocha de Castro, a researcher at the institute and co-author of this study, along with his colleagues, dried banana peels in the sun for a week, ground them and added them to river water containing known concentrations of copper and lead. They found that the peels absorbed 97 per cent of the metals after just one hour.

The metals can then be removed from the skins so that they can be safely disposed of. According to Castro the material could also work on cadmium, nickel and zinc.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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