Aboroginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) – Damage to nature affects Aboriginal Peoples who live closely with the land. As part of our commitment to bring you the stories that affect your community, APTN News presents Perspectives on the Environment, a week of news stories dedicated to environmental issues affecting Aboriginal Peoples across Canada. The stories, which will be featured during APTN National News March 8 to March 11 and will culminate in an hour-long edition of APTN InFocus March 12, will focus on major ecological issues in every region of Canada: North, South/Central, East and West.
Watch Episodes On-line:
- North – Peel Watershed
- East – Boat Harbour, Nova Scotia (Pictou Landing)
- South/Central – Mercury Pollution (Grassy Narrows)
- West – Deep Water Port for Super Tankers (Hartley Bay)
- One-Hour Season Finale
Indigenous people retain majority of intellectual property rights over research findings stemming from their traditional knowledge of local medicinal plants.
University Affairs – Stanley George, newly elected Chief of Whapmagoostui, a small Cree community of 850 souls in northern Quebec, did not hesitate when he put his signature at the bottom of a 40-page research agreement last September. “I remembered a phone call our community received a few years ago from a guy who said he worked with a pharmaceutical company. He was trying to get the names of the plants our healers use to treat diabetes and other ailments,” he recalls, his tone tinged with anger. “Now, with this agreement, our knowledge stands a better chance of being respected.” The agreement ensures his community and three other Cree bands retain intellectual property rights over any findings from a team of Quebec university researchers who are investigating medicinal plants used to treat diabetes. Under the pact, the indigenous people retain 51 percent of the rights to the research, which in effect gives them veto power over scientific publications.
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The Canadian Press – Two teams of Danish army pooches will mush alongside a large Canadian military operation in the Arctic next month, marking a thaw in relations between two countries often seen as rivals in the rush for Arctic spoils. About 180 Canadian Forces members will participate in Operation Nunalivut (and backgrounder), the latest exercise in a continuing campaign to assert the country’s political and military presence in the High Arctic – an effort that falls short of what’s needed to ward off territorial claims from other countries, some Arctic experts say. While the barren territory will be new for them, they’ll be joined by a four-legged Danish military unit known as [Slædepatruljen] SIRIUS (Danish), the world’s only military dog-sled patrol, which has been roaming the area since the dawn of the Cold War.
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Alaska Public Radio Network (APRN) – Eight Canadians, including early leader Sebastian Schnuelle of Whitehorse, Yukon and Karen Ramstead of Perryvale, Alberta, are driving dog teams in the iconic race to Nome. Some say that’s a little less than ten to one odds that it could be Canada’s year to win the coveted first place finish. Click on link for audio podcast, or listen below.
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The Globe and Mail – One of the most detailed investigations ever conducted in Canada into the fate of road salt has found that it is polluting groundwater and causing some streams during winter thaws to have salinity levels just under those found in the ocean. The elevated salt readings were detected in Pickering, where researchers from the University of Toronto have been studying how the salt spread on highways, such as the 401, and other roadways through suburban sprawl affects water quality. They found that so much salty water from the community is ending up in Frenchman’s Bay, a scenic lagoon on the shores of Lake Ontario, that the small water body is being poisoned.
View abstract: “Road-impacted sediment and water in a Lake Ontario watershed and lagoon, City of Pickering, Ontario, Canada: An example of urban basin analysis” (Sedimentary Geology, Volume 224, Issues 1-4, 1 March 2010, Pages 15-28).
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Alaska Public Radio Network (APRN) – Opening ceremonies for the 21st Arctic Winter Games were held over the weekend in Grande Prairie, Alberta. The international competition pits young people from Alaska, Greenland, and three northern Canadian regions against each other in sports such as skiing, snowboarding, figure skating, and hockey, as well as Native games and cultural events.
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New York Times – Climate scientists have long warned that global warming could unlock vast stores of the greenhouse gas methane that are frozen into the Arctic permafrost, setting off potentially significant increases in global warming. Now researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and elsewhere say this change is under way in a little-studied area under the sea, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, west of the Bering Strait. Natalia Shakhova, a scientist at the university and a leader of the study, said it was too soon to say whether the findings suggest that a dangerous release of methane looms. In a telephone news conference, she said researchers were only beginning to track the movement of this methane into the atmosphere as the undersea permafrost that traps it degrades.
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Vancouver Sun – One of Canada’s top archeologists argues in a new book that the prehistoric ancestors of this country’s 55,000 Inuit probably migrated rapidly from Alaska clear across the Canadian North in just a few years — not gradually over centuries as traditionally assumed — after they learned about a rich supply of iron from a massive meteorite strike on Greenland’s west coast. The startling theory, tentatively floated two decades ago by Canadian Museum of Civilization curator emeritus Robert McGhee, has been bolstered by recent research indicating a later and faster migration of the ancient Thule Inuit across North America’s polar frontier than previously believed. Now, in a just-published volume of essays by some of the world’s leading Arctic archeologists, McGhee advances his theory — a 4,000-kilometre beeline quest for iron from Greenland’s famous Cape York meteorite deposit — as the likeliest explanation for the sudden spread of the Thule culture across Canada around 1250 AD.
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The next 10 to 20 years could be extremely significant for restoring wild populations of American bison to their original roaming grounds. But for this to happen, more land must be made available for herds to roam free, government policies must be updated and the public must change its attitude towards bison.
International Union for Conservation of Nature – A new publication by IUCN, American Bison: Status Survey and Conservation Guidelines 2010 (PDF), reports on the current status of American bison, in the wild and in conservation herds, and makes recommendations on how to ensure that the species is conserved for the future. “Although the effort to restore bison to the plains of North America is considered to be one of the most ambitious and complex undertakings in species conservation efforts in North America, it will only succeed if legislation is introduced at a local and national level, with significant funding and a shift in attitude towards the animal,” says Dr Simon Stuart, Chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.
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YouTube – Journey deep inside the Canadian Shield as we visit Slave Craton, an ancient crustal remnant from the Eoarchean erathem. Our journey starts in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada as we head 450km north by ski-plane to the shores of the Acasts River, home of the worlds oldest rocks, the Acasta Gneiss (pronounced “nice”). Features interview with NWT artist, author, prospector, and municipal dump curator Walt Humphries.
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