*BONUS Article* — New Way to Help Chickens Cross to the Other Side

Shoppers in the supermarket today can buy chicken free of nearly everything but adjectives.  It comes free-range, cage-free, antibiotic-free, raised on vegetarian feed, organic, even air-chilled.

Coming soon: stress-free?

Two premium chicken producers, Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania and Mary's Chickens in California, are preparing to switch to a system of killing their birds that they consider more humane.  The new system uses carbon dioxide gas to gently render the birds unconscious before they are hung by their feet to have their throats slit, sparing them the potential suffering associated with conventional slaughter methods.

"Our system is designed so that we put them to sleep without stress and we kill them without stress," says Scott Sechler, the owner of Bell & Evans.  This is sure to appeal to a segment of the chicken-buying public -- but telling them about it presents a marketing challenge.

"Most of the time, people don't want to think about how the animal was killed," said David Pitman, whose family owns Mary's Chickens.

The trick, he said, is to communicate the goal of the new system, which is to ensure that the birds "[...] not have any extra pain or discomfort in the last few moments of their lives."

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Ads Urge Wineries to Stick a Cork in It

The 100PercentCork.org website features a section that explains why consumers should insist on "100% cork," offering reasons like the fossil fuels consumed to produce "artificial plastic stoppers and aluminum screw caps."

The website also offers factoids about the Portuguese cork forests -- the second largest bio-gem after the Amazon rainforest -- the harvesting process ("Cork oak trees are not harmed or cut down to produce corks; the bark of the tree is sustainable harvested") and other advantages to cork ("Cork preserves the local Portuguese tradition and provides jobs for thousands of skilled workers").

The website also asks visitors to sign the "100 percent cork petition" and "tell wineries you won't purchase wines with artificial stoppers."

"Cork is not only a better closure for wine," the site declares, "it is the only organic, biodegradable and renewable choice."

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Microbes Rapidly Consume Methane from Gulf Oil Disaster

The Deepwater Horizon spill was a horrible environmental disaster which caused the release of massive amounts of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  Methane, a natural greenhouse gas, was also released during the catastrophe.  However, researchers have found that the methane is being consumed by microbes at a rate 10 to 100 times faster than previously believed.  These microbes are essential in bringing the Gulf back to a healthier state.

Special microbes have evolved to digest and thrive off the methane, a carbon-based organic compound.  During normal conditions, most of the methane that permeates the sea floor is consumed before it can reach the surface.  The explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig caused a massive outflow of methane, creating a sort of feeding frenzy for the deep sea microbes.  The new methane caused a population explosion, as they constantly ate and multiplied.

Other bacterial microbes have been discovered that rapidly degrade oil anaerobically in the Gulf, but some researchers have found that the microbes only degrade gases like methane and propane, and not the oil.  Either way, it will take some time for the Gulf to return to its state pre-Deepwater Horizon incident.  Man-made solutions like dispersant are not nearly as efficient as deep sea microbes, Earth's natural water filtration.

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Island Nation Announces Mongolia-sized Sanctuary for Whales & Dolphins

Dolphins, whales, and dugongs will be safe from hunting in the waters surrounding the Pacific nation of Palau.  The establishment of a marine mammal sanctuary covering over 230,000 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) of the nation's waters, an area the size of Mongolia, was announced at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan.

"Palau's dugongs are the most isolated and endangered population in the world. [...] This sanctuary will promote sustainable whale-watching tourism, already a growing multi-million dollar global industry [...]," says Palau's Minister of the Environment, Natural Resources and Tourism Harry Fritz.

Although many populations of whales are rebounding after centuries of commercial whaling, some are still threatened by whaling by Iceland, Japan, and Norway, as well as the pollution.  Dolphins are often killed as by-catch and suffer from widespread marine pollution.

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Fuzzy Critters' Crystallized Pee Changes Climate Record?

A guinea-pig-like mammal's prehistoric urine may be one of the best tools for understanding climate change in arid regions, scientists announced Tuesday.  Already analysis of crystallized rock hyrax pee appears to contradict some results of current climate models.

Looking like a rodent, but more closely related to elephants and manatees, the roughly rabbit-size rock hyrax has, for tens of thousands of years, lived in colonies of up to about 50 individuals in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

The animals use communal 'toilets' called middens, where rock hyrax waste slowly crystallizes into a layered, amber-esque, smelly substance.  Like amber, the middens can contain valuable evidence -- in this case, traces of how much grass the animals were eating and isotopes indicating how dry the grass was.

The ancient waste is especially prized because the evidence of ancient climate change is hard to come by in arid regions.  For example, current climate models suggest that, as the Northern Hemisphere became drier about 5,500 years ago, the Southern Hemisphere got wetter.  But traces in the hyrax-urine samples suggest that the southern part of Africa also dried out during this period.

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New Facebook App Helps Promote Timberland's Commitment to Plant Five Million Trees in Five Years

The Timberland Company believes it can help alleviate hunger, create jobs, protect wildlife and preserve the environment, all through the simple act of planting a tree -- make that five million trees, in five years.

It's a bold pledge in support of a bold vision.  And although the notion is pretty simple -- plant some trees, do some good in the world -- Timberland's global reforestation program recognizes that success doesn't come quite as easily as that.

In China, where desertification is a critical issue, Timberland has partnered with GreenNet (a Japan-based NGO) since 2001 to restore the barren land of the Horqin Desert by planting shrubs and trees, while educating local residents so that they can maintain and continue the planting efforts.  In Haiti, Timberland is partnering with nonprofits Trees for the Future and the Yéle Haiti Foundation on Yéle Vert, a community-based agroforestry and environmental education program.

To engage a broader audience in its reforestation efforts, Timberland is launching a new 'Timberland Earthkeepers Virtual Forest' Facebook application.  Consumers can help Timberland plant additional trees in Haiti by creating a virtual forest on Facebook -- the larger the virtual forest, the more real trees planted.  Virtual foresters can name their forest, add messages to friend's trees, and see how they rank against other users.

The application also features videos that introduce the farmers participating in Yéle Vert and provides in-depth information about Timberland's reforestation efforts -- helping users to get better educated about and connected to how their online actions are contributing to the company's programs.

The real-world tree planting component of the virtual forest program is capped at one million trees or the end date of October 31, 2001, whichever comes first.

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To start growing your own virtual forest, visit www.Facebook.com/Timberland.