The DKos Travel Board will be bringing you an occasional round-up of news from the intersection of travel, politics and environment. Here's our first installment!
In this week's edition:
- Tourism Brings Flu to Mountain Gorillas
- Unvaccinated Kids at Risk for Getting Measles Overseas
- Former Iron Curtain Border Becoming Ecological Green Belt
- Netherlands Sends Sea Lions to Alaska to Aid Repopulation
- Airlines Step Up Rhetoric Against EU Carbon Trading
- Scary Air travel Stories Put Focus on FAA Budget
- Americans Using Tax Refunds for Travel
Details below the fold
1. Tourism Brings Flu to Mountain Gorillas
Ecotourism has helped save the mountain gorillas of Rwanda and Uganda, which were nearly extinct due to poaching, habitat destruction and war. But now there is a new danger to the gorillas:
The world's remaining 786 mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) live in 2 parks in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An ecotourism industry for viewing human-habituated mountain gorillas in the wild is thriving in all 3 countries. Mountain gorilla tourism helps ensure the sustainability of the species by generating much-needed revenue and increasing global awareness of the precarious status of this species in the wild. Tourism, however, also poses a risk for disease transmission from humans to the gorillas.
Kirsten Gilardi, assistant director of the University of California-Davis Wildlife Health Center, elaborates:
“These animals are so closely related to us that it is not all a surprise they are susceptible to human pathogens,” she added. “There are some measures we can take to better protect mountain gorillas from incursions of human infections. For example, in an open-air environment, if people stay seven yards away or farther from a gorilla, it would be far less dangerous for that animal.”
All three countries already set limits to how many tourists can visit and how close you can get to the gorillas. The Congolese government has also started requiring visitors to wear masks.
2. Unvaccinated Kids at Risk for Getting Measles Overseas
At the opposite spectrum of medical travel news, parents who still refuse to get their children vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella due to a stubborn belief in the thoroughly discredited link to autismare putting those children at risk when they travel overseas:
Although measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, imported cases continue to occur among travelers returning from parts of the world where the disease is endemic….
[B]etween January 2001 and February 2011…there were 692 cases of measles, and 87% of which were associated with cases contracted outside the U.S., they found. Of these, 292 were directly contracted outside the U.S., and 159 of them were in U.S. residents.
Of the 159 cases, 30% were in children ages 6 months to 23 months.
Only three had been vaccinated before traveling, the researchers said.
3. Former Iron Curtain Border Becoming Ecological Green Belt
During the cold war, the border between East and West Germany was an 870 mile long no-man’s zone of patrolling guards and dogs, sensors and fences, where hundreds died trying to escape. But thanks to being off-limits for so many decades, the former border is being transformed into a unique ecological preserve:
“There is no other area in Germany that has been largely undisturbed for such a long time,” says Dieter Leupold, a biologist with the German branch of Friends of the Earth.
Now, more than two decades after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s East-West border zone, Friends of the Earth and other conservation groups, joined by the federal and state governments, are close to completing an amazing metamorphosis: They are turning the former “Death Strip” into one of the world’s most unusual nature preserves. Although it runs the length of a reunited Germany, it is only 30 to a few hundred meters wide. But despite its bizarre dimensions, this border green belt — where hundreds once perished trying to escape to the West — is uniquely valuable, according to Leupold and other scientists.
In most parts of Germany, East and West, intensive agriculture, highways, and cities put huge pressure on ecosystems and many species of plants and animals. But the border area was off limits to most humans for decades, and thus became a safe haven for rare wildlife and plants. “The European otter, which is endangered throughout Germany, really likes the ditches that were meant to stop vehicles from crossing,” Leupold said as we walked recently along the former border near the East German city of Salzwedel. “We have black storks, moor frogs, white-tailed eagles — basically you can meet the Red List of endangered species here.”
Indeed, the International Union for Conservation of Nature dreams of a greenbelt stretching the length of the old Iron Curtain.
4. Netherlands Sends Sea Lions to Alaska in Re-population Effort
A pair of sea lions took the trip of a lifetime from the Dolfinarim sea mammal park in the Netherlands to Seward, Alaska, where they will be part of a program to repopulate the endangered species.
Steller sea lions were listed as endangered in 1997 after the population in the western Aleutian Islands declined sharply from roughly a quarter-million in the early 1970s. In 2008, an estimated 45,000 sea lions survived. In eastern Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California, Steller sea lions are considered threatened.
The cause of the decline is much debated. Some believe commercial fishing limits sea lion food. Others say killer whale predation is to blame. A 2009 paper by John Maniscalco, Daniel Hennen, and Pamela Parker of the SeaLife Center found reduced rates of reproduction in females and low juvenile survival.
In a draft biological opinion released seven months ago, National Marine Fisheries Service scientists said the adult Steller sea lion population in the westernmost Aleutians plunged 45 percent from 2000 to 2009, and the birth rate of new pups dropped nearly as much. Fishing restrictions were suggested.
Here's hoping for a return to safe status for these fascinating creatures, and here's hoping Sarah Palin isn't making any inquiries about helicopter charters.
5. Airline Rhetoric Against EU Carbon Trading Heats Up
Back in 2008, the European Union announced that its carbon emissions trading system would eventually be expanded to include non-European airlines that land on the continent. Airline companies around the world began squawking immediately, and filed suit against the impending requirement that they purchase credits to offset their emissions.
There has been no ruling thus far by the European Court of Justice, but as the 2012 deadline approaches, airline captains of industry are ramping up their rhetoric. Jeff Smisek, CEO of the newly merged United and Continental airlines, had a recent hissy fit, quoted in the Financial Times, in whaich he called the measure “beyond the pale” (Subscription Required):
But extending the scheme to foreign airlines was “inappropriate” and “exceeds the legal authority of the European Union”, he said, adding that the cost to United “won’t be trivial”.
Bill Hemmings, of the International Coalition for Sustainable Aviation, in a response letter, pointed out that maybe the airlines should shut up and pay (Subscription Required):
As aviation currently pays no fuel tax, no value added tax on tickets and nothing for its climate impact (which is 5 per cent of the global total according to the latest science, not the 1-2 per cent figure the FT quoted), the sector is getting the deal of the century. But amazingly, Mr Smisek wants an even better one and is willing (along with other US, and Chinese airlines) to go to court to get it.
In an age when governments everywhere are in need of new sources of revenue, Mr Smisek might reconsider whether drawing further attention to his industry’s massive tax subsidy is such a smart plan.
6. Fuselage Tears and Sleeping Controllers Put Focus on FAA Budget
There has been a spate of alarming stories in the world of air travel. On April 1st, a five foot hole ripped open in the fuselage of a Southwest airlines flight at 36,000 feet. Meanwhile, several reports of air traffic controllers falling asleep), forcing pilots to land unassisted, has shed light on how understaffed and antiquated our entire air traffic controller system is. The Republican response is the equivalent of passing you a half-ounce bag of peanuts on a 14 hour flight: their FAA budget cuts are damaging to airline maintenance, air traffic control system upgrades, and to providing relief to overworked traffic controllers and airline pilots.
Unfortunately, in this case, the Obama administration isn’t being particularly helpful either. Despite ample scientific recommendations that allowing night shift--and even day shift--air traffic controllers to nap would be highly beneficial in reducing fatigue and increasing concentration, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made a Republicanesque statement:
"Paying controllers to sleep will not be part of what we do at the FAA," LaHood said on "The Early Show" on Monday. "We're not going to pay controllers to nap."
Almost makes you want to take the train. Oh…never mind...
7. Americans Devoting Some Tax refunds to Travel
Finally, with income tax filing weekend now in the rear-view mirror, it’s nice to note that 57% of Americans receiving tax refunds will be using at least part of the money for travel. True to my username, I owe taxes and will NOT be getting a refund. That doesn’t mean I won’t be traveling, though. Mrs. DebtorsPrison and I have a mini-getaway to Montreal planned for early June, and the following week I’ll be off to Netroots Nation in Minneapolis.