Water used for the snow comes from surface streams, artificial reservoirs and increasingly from ground reserves.

Ski resort operators in the snow-deprived Alps should rethink the use of artificial snow as it saps water reserves and could leave an impact well beyond the region, scientists say, reported Reuters.
After a very mild winter, they warned lying on artificial snow to satisfy skiers and snowboarders could change seasonal water cycles, hit water supplies and affect fragile ecosystems.
“To make artificial snow all day long and during the whole season is just completely irresponsible for our climate, especially on such a large scale,“ said Carmen de Jong, professor and research manager at the Mountain Institute at the University of Savoie in France.
“That is insane, you cannot continue like this,“ de Jong told reporters during the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.
Artificial snow is used on around 23,800 hectares--the equivalent of some 35,000 soccer pitches or nearly 30 percent of all Alpine skiing slopes. Some 95 million cubic meters of water--the annual water consumption of a city of 1.5 million people--are needed to produce one season’s artificial snow for skiers and snowboarders in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia.
Water used for the snow comes from surface streams, artificial reservoirs and increasingly from ground reserves.
De Jong said by keeping water in surface reservoirs instead of in the ground and by spraying it through the air to create the snow, around one third of the water evaporated, forming clouds that often traveled to other regions. Effects were already visible in some areas, like in parts of French skiing region Les Trois Vallees where water levels of some mountain rivers had dropped by 70 percent, she said.
Some Alpine villages, which previously got most of their drinking water from mountain streams, now needed to pump water out of the ground to ensure drinking supplies. Water taken out of the Alps would be missing for people and industry down the line.
“This could also have an enormous impact on the Mediterranean Sea if river discharges continue to fall,“ she said.
“The tourism industry needs to realize that they cannot produce snow and have a skiing season at all costs,“ she said.

Prize-winning campaigner Hammerskjoeld Simwinga says his worst moment was in 1996 when the north Zambian conservation and anti-poaching project where he was working collapsed as corrupt officials seized its assets.
With American project founders Delia and Mark Owens forced to leave, deprived of contacts, finance and friends, Hammer--as he is known--felt abandoned.
“It was very difficult for me because there were no resources for me. There was no transport,“ he told Reuters. “Those were the worst times of my life.“
The aim of the project to the north east of Lusaka was to end poaching in the area by helping villagers generate alternative incomes while also driving home the message that no wildlife means no tourists and therefore no money.
Against official antagonism and with little aid at first Simwinga not only kept the North Luangwa Valley project alive but expanded it.
His efforts will be recognized when he is awarded one of the six annual Goldman Environmental Prizes for grassroots environmental action, each worth $125,000.
Previous winners of the Goldman awards which have been handed out each year since 1990 include Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai and executed Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
With the help of the Zambia Wildlife Agency, he persuaded local communities to set up cottage industries like sunflower oil, plant food crops, and keep chickens and sheep instead of poaching.
“We are looking at a much more sustainable way for the community to get money from the resource which is just next to them. We know very well that if they can keep the park alive they will continue gaining from it,“ Simwinga said.

Canada’s Environment Minister warned that if the country complies with the Kyoto Protocol gas prices will soar while thousands of jobs will disappear, said AP.
“There is only one way to make it happen, to manufacture a recession,“ John Baird told the Senate environment committee.
Baird said 275,000 Canadians would lose their jobs, gasoline prices would jump 60 percent and natural gas prices would double.
“The cost to maintain a home or business would skyrocket,“ Baird told the committee.
He said his predictions were based on studies by some of the country’s leading economists, but environmentalists said they were based on assumptions chosen to produce frightening conclusions.
Baird said his minority Conservative government remains committed to the Kyoto Protocol even though it is opposing an opposition Liberal bill which would force Canada to comply with the treaty’s emissions-cutting targets.Baird called on Canadians to support a Conservative plan to combat climate change “without pulling every last penny
from their pockets.“
Liberal Senator Dennis Dawson accused Baird of scare tactics.
“The sky is falling-we’ve seen this before,“ Dawson said.
“Every time we talk about changes that protect the environment we would have people telling us they will destroy the economy.“
The bill has already been passed by the House of Commons and would present the government with a conundrum if it is also passed by the unelected senate-which is dominated by Liberals and usually rubber stamps legislation passed by the House. The Conservatives would be faced with implementing measures they say are unattainable and dangerous to the economy. The 1997 Kyoto pact requires 35 industrialized countries to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases that act like a greenhouse trapping heat in the atmosphere.

More than 10 percent of China’s arable land is polluted, posing a threat to the country’s food production, a state-run newspaper reported, said AP.
The China Daily, citing the Ministry of Land and Resources, said the situation was getting worse, with polluted water, excessive fertilizer, heavy metals and solid wastes contaminating the land. The ministry said by the end of October, China’s arable land area had shrunk to 121.8 million hectares (300 million acres), a loss of 306,800 hectares (760,000 acres) in the first 10 months of 2006. China’s three-decade economic boom has left its waterways and coastlines severely polluted by industrial and farm chemicals and domestic sewage. Its countryside is littered with garbage and construction waste, and its cities suffocated by smog.
According to the newspaper, the ministry said that heavy metals alone contaminate 12 million tons of grain a year, causing losses of 20 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion).
Land and Resources Minister Sun Wensheng was quoted as saying China had to make sure that its arable land area did not fall below 120 million hectares.
“This is not only related to social and economic development, but is also vital to the long-term interests of the country,“ he was quoted as saying.
“China’s economy keeps growing at a rapid rate and demand for resources is also mounting,“ he said.

Qaem Forest Park in Kerman

The flock of millions--drawing thousands of tourists to Nakuru each year--was reduced to 10,000 by 1996.

Five years ago, dead flamingos littered the drying shores of Lake Nakuru in Kenya’s scenic Rift Valley. Sickly birds struggled to stand upright while stray dogs scavenged on the depleted flock.
The once world-renowned heartland of the majestic birds--with their long necks and striking pink, scarlet and black plumage--was yet another depressing symbol of deforestation, pollution and global warming in Africa.
But now, after two years fighting to reverse their role in the damage, Nakuru’s local community has set itself the task of replanting a whole forest they had razed as a measure of desperation in times of poverty.
They hope that as the flamingos return, so will the tourists.
“It was wrong to cut the trees but we had to. We burnt them all when we started farming,“ said Jane Macharia, who like so many others slashed the forest to make farmland when she came to Nakuru 10 years ago with no work or means to produce food.
“I needed land to survive,“ she explained, kneeling in the wet mud with a group committed to turning back the clock by planting saplings in the hills above the lake.
As the forests receded, the rains left too.
Erosion from farming and the effects of global warming combined in the late 1990s to leave Lake Nakuru virtually uninhabitable for its famous birds.
The flock of millions--drawing thousands of tourists to Nakuru each year--was reduced to 10,000 by 1996.
“After all the destruction of the forests, the rivers had no water and all the flamingos were dying,“ the senior warden at Lake Nakuru National Park, Charles Muthui, told Reuters, adding that some 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of forest had been degraded.
Conservationists feared the birds would be wiped out completely.
Her community knows full well the cost of their deforestation. Along with their lakes and flamingos, the numbers of American and European tourists who came each year dropped. The local economy took a battering.
Nakuru community groups have already planted some 3,000 trees since January alone, but they say it will take decades to fully reverse the harm already done by cutting the forests.

Litter on Britain’s beaches has nearly doubled in 12 years, with plastic bottles, cotton buds and cigarette stubs fuelling the blight, according to an annual survey, reported Reuters.
The Marine Conservation Society, a charity that campaigns for cleaner beaches and seas, blamed a “throwaway culture“ for the rise in seaside rubbish. Among the worst culprits are people who throw rubbish down the toilet, only for it to wash up on the beach after going through the sewage system. “The majority of these products are made of plastic which persists in the marine environment for many years,“ said Emma Snowden, the society’s litter projects coordinator. “This should be such an easy environmental issue to resolve and yet the message is still not getting across.“ ’Everyone must take responsibility to ’Bag it and Bin it-never flush it.’“
Researchers for the Beachwatch survey found that litter had increased by 90.3 percent since 1994. The average density of litter was 1,988.7 items per km, or two per meter.
The cleanest beaches were in Northern Ireland and the dirtiest in Wales and southwest England. A third of all rubbish is left by beach users. The fishing industry and sewage outlets were also identified as major sources. The rise in plastic waste threatens wildlife, spoils fishing catches and damages tourism, the society said.
Cigarette stubs were not in the trash top 20 in 1994 but are now the eighth most common item. “With the smoking regulations (on smoking indoors) coming into force, this problem is likely to increase,“ Snowden said.