An effort is back in the Senate to permanently set up a statewide office to consider climate change impacts, as environmentalists wait for a new chief resiliency officer to be appointed.
An effort is back in the Senate to permanently set up a statewide office to consider climate change impacts, as environmentalists wait for a new chief resiliency officer to be appointed.
Recovery driven by DDT ban, rigorous regulation and volunteer monitoring of nest sites
New Jersey’s population of bald eagles rose to a record high and spread to all 21 counties last year, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. Their revival is thanks to a federal ban on the toxic chemical DDT, long-term protections by state biologists and a network of volunteers who monitor the nests of the iconic birds.
There are now 220 nesting pairs that raised 307 young in 2020, including a record increase of 36 new nests, the DEP said last week.
Those stats represent a strong comeback after the number of eagles dropped to a single nesting pair in the late 1970s because of the toxic insecticide DDT, which made shells so thin they could not be incubated or failed to hatch for other reasons. The chemical was banned by the federal government in 1972 because of its harmful effects on wildlife, including bald eagles.
Food waste is a fact of life. Also a fact is that it’s smelly, wet and heavy. It makes a mess out of the rest of the trash and is generally nasty.
Getting food waste out of the trash may also provide the key to how Connecticut repairs the dated, expensive, fragmented and environmentally fraught waste systems in the state. But the question is whether it makes more sense to get the food out of the waste stream first or whether other parts of the system get fixed first so the food part follows.
It’s a chicken-egg problem, and which comes first isn’t clear. What is clear, officials say, is that food waste cannot be ignored any longer.