At Home: Waste Not
Frequently, cash-strapped towns will offer space for landfills, holding onto other communities? trash in the hopes of staying afloat. A new, unique government proposition has failing towns jumping to take part?but not everyone’s sure It’s a wise move.
As The Globe and Mail reports, at least nine towns in Saskatchewan and Ontario are bidding for a chance to become ?the final resting spot for Canada’s nuclear garbage.?
The federal government is seeking a location to permanently store its nuclear waste. While many environmentalists are concerned with the long-term effects of ?burying an eternity of nuclear waste,? the communities trying for the dubious honour ?say they’d be crazy not to ponder the nuclear option.?
These communities are home to shrinking labour forces and many are close to ?bottoming out,? one community leader told reporters. Leaders, who say the ?risks involved are outweighed by potential benefits,? see the economic boost from the multi-billion-dollar program as the community’s only salvation.
The selection process has nine steps and ?could take years.? A similar selection process was completed in Sweden in 2010.
Around the World: Birds Are Prey
Sharks: they roam the high seas in search of prey, whether water-dwelling sea creatures or airborne marine birds. How, then, did the remains of land-dwelling songbirds end up inside a tiger shark?
As National Geographic‘s Daily News site reports, research suggests that light from offshore oil rigs is disturbing the flight patterns of land birds, ?making them crash into the rigs or fall into the water from exhaustion.? The avian victims include woodpeckers, tanagers, and meadowlarks.
The study took place over two years, and the statistics are worrisome: ?[more] birds are killed each year by colliding with rigs than were killed by the 2010 Gulf oil spill.?
And the unnatural state could disturb the ecosystem still further. Researchers suspect that sharks may be becoming conditioned to deliberately seek out prey in areas where the rigs shed their light. In fact, American Bird Conservancy representative Christine Sheppard told reporters that ?the sharks may actually be learning there are places where there are birds available to them.?