It’s good practice to throw garbage into your vineyard, apparently. Always has been. Don’t believe me? Read the article, watch the video.
Nibbles: Tsetse, Warty pumpkins, Cattle origins, Crop mobs
- Tripping up trypanosomiasis: “It is a poverty fly.”
- Pumpkin patent squashed: “This is like trying to patent all trees with twisted limbs.”
- Indonesian bovines fingerprinted: “…the famous ‘racing bulls‘ from Madura descended from banteng cows.”
- Cropmobbing. Sounds like fun. Via.
Happy World Fair Trade Day!
Today, May 9th is World Fair Trade Day, apparently. I had no idea until I saw this poster a few days ago. And even then there was some confusion as for some reason the date on it is the 10th.
The theme is food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture. There’s a great-looking programme being organized here in Rome. Anyway, as an old germplasm collector, I can really relate to all those seeds on the poster.
Wild pig doing just fine
Professor John Fa, director of conservation science at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, one of the partners in the Pygmy Hog Conservation Programme (PHCP), described the pigs as “enigmatic.”
Maybe they just don’t want to get swine flu. I mean, look what happened to Khanzir.
The Last
On seeing our recent post on the tahr, Carol Halberstadt contacted us saying that she had written the following poem in 2000 after reading an article in the Boston Globe about hunters killing the last Arabian wolf and the last tahr. Unfortunately, I can’t find the article in question, but clearly the demise of the tahr was exaggerated.
Imagine the loneliness
of the last wolf, her howl
unheard in the wilderness,
his place unmade.
What small tear in time remains?
They are lost with the untamed sheep,
gone from the hills.
Horns that summoned
the birthday of the world
are still, the rock
their feet wore, emptied,
the paths unfilled.
The bison walk this way,
shaggy and gentle.
(©2/29/00 Carol Snyder Halberstadt – used by permission)