*BONUS Article* — Dagobah in New Guinea? New Yoda Bat Found in Remote Rainforest

A team of scientists from Conservation International, partnered with A Rocha International and Papua New Guinea's Institute for Biological Research, has revealed more than 200 new species of life that they discovered in a remote region of Papua New Guinea.  The findings include new mammals, frogs, insects, plants, and more than 100 arachnids -- some of the species are so distinct that they now belong to new genera.

Most photogenic of the discovered animals is a tube-nosed fruit bat that bears a startling resemblance to the Jedi Master Yoda of the Star Wars films -- no word yet on whether LucasFilm plans to sue the bat for copyright infringement.

"[The new species] should serve as a cautionary message about how much we still don't know about Earth's still hidden secrets and important natural resources, which we can only preserve with coordinated, long-term management," says Conservation International's Leeanne Alonso.

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African Ministers Pledge Support for Wildlife

African environment ministers pledged to set up an international research body to study and protect the continent's wildlife, aiming to reverse the loss of its biodiversity.  Africa is famed for the lions, elephants, rhinoceroses and leopards that attract millions of tourists each year, but its wildlife is threatened by population pressure, poaching and deforestation.

The declaration would draw on scientists from around Africa.  The United Nations environment program says Africa houses 1,229 species of mammals, a quarter of all mammals on earth, and about 2,000 bird species, a fifth of the world total.

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Prisoners Turn Over a New Leaf with Eyes on the Environment

One would think it is some new designer eco-hotel where the rich and environmentally conscious can be pampered free of guilt:
     -The organic vegetable travel a short distance form the well-tended garden to the
      table where they are eaten
     -Waste is carefully picked through and recycled, saving thousands of dollars
     -The close-cropped lawns are maintained by push mowers to cut down on carbon
      emissions and gas expenses.

Designer hotel -- no.  Prison -- yes.

At the Stafford Creek Corrections Center, a few yards from the garden where strawberries and cucumbers grow looms a tower where guards watch inmates, high-powered rifles at the ready.  A jungle of razor wire surrounds the facility.

Hundreds of inmates not only have a positive impact on their prison environment, but on the world beyond the walls confining them.  Washington state inmates are restoring local protected, yet disappearing grasslands by hand planting thousands of seedlings in a prison greenhouse.  Inmates at another state prison raise an endangered species of frog.

The inmates work for less than a dollar an hour and, as a result of their incarceration, are able to take on time consuming labor intensive projects.  Both ecologists and prison officials have been surprised by the passion and seriousness of the prisoners involved with the project.  The inmates raising the frogs had better results than a group of scientists conducting a similar project in a lab.

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Recycling Comes Of Age

It seems the perfect match -- the nation that consumes the most has built itself a large and growing recycling industry.  What comes in the front door, new and shiny, eventually goes out the back as trash to be thrown aside or hopefully used again in another life.

The United States now has a recycling industry with annual sales of $236 billion.  By an amazing comparison, U.S. auto sales in the recession-ravaged year of 2009 reached an estimated $250 billion.  Auto sales should eventually increase as the nation's economy recovers.  However, the recycling industry is set to grow no matter what happens to the economy.

High cost, scarcity and growing demand for raw materials as well as job creation and new recycling technologies all combined will continue to aid the growth of the entire recycling industry.  Someday the world's largest consuming nation could become the world's largest recycling nation and build an even greater recycling industry than it has now.

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Bee Mystery Solved by Scientists and Soldiers

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States have suffered 'colony collapse.'  Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.  Now, a unique partnership -- of military scientists and entomologists -- appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientist said -- a subject for the next round of research.  But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.

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Dog Poop Lights Up City Park

Environmentalists are going gaga for a street lamp in Cambridge, MA that is powered by dog poop.  The lamp, a shining example of how humans can make use of an underutilized and perpetually renewable energy source -- feces -- is the brainchild of Matthew Mazzotta, a conceptual artist who studied at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who wanted to give back to the community.

The lamp is located at a dog park and uses a device known as the methane digester.  Folks whose dogs do their business there simply collect the poop in a plastic bag, put it in the device and turn a crank to help the methane in the tank rise up to the top so it can be piped to the gas-burning lamppost that is attached.

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