Earthwatch: A Diary of the PlanetFamine Warning

Lack of seasonal rain in East Africa severely threatens staple food crops in several countries, triggering an alarm of impending famine in the region. The U.S. Agency for International Development described the region’s weather as the worst in 20 years, with La Nina ocean cooling in the Pacific causing rainfall to be as much as 50% below normal in some countries. The failure of the “short rains” (October-December) in many parts of Tanzania, and a likely delay of the “long rains” (April-June), have put up to 300,000 people in the country at great risk of starvation.

Earthquakes

The strongest in a series of earthquakes to strike the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site knocked pictures off walls and tipped over files at a remote facility. The tremors also brought renewed concerns about the storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste in the area. “This is just another serious warning about instability at the Yucca Mountain site,” said Rep. Jim Gibbons of Nevada. More than 800 underground nuclear blasts were detonated beneath the Nevada desert between 1956 and 1992.

Earth movements were also felt in northeastern Colombia, southern Mexico, central Italy, northern Pakistan, Taiwan and two points in Japan.

Tropical Storms

One person was killed and another reported missing after torrential rains from tropical cyclones Olinda and Pete caused heavy flooding in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia.

Cyclone Damien formed south of Indonesia, then lost force as it moved into the central Indian Ocean.

Poaching With Mines

Villagers and soldiers in the remote forests of northeastern Cambodia are resorting to the use of land mines to catch and kill tigers for the lucrative trade in animal tonics. The governor of Ratanakiri province told reporters that businessmen who buy the dead animals for their body parts are supplying the locals with gunpowder for the mines.

Tiger parts are still used in traditional medicines throughout Asia in the belief that they have invigorating and aphrodisiac powers.

Silent Spring

England’s songbirds are forgetting how to sing, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. A society spokesman blamed the deteriorating trait on traffic noise that interferes with the birds’ ability to hear each other. The numbers of some species, including finches, warblers and orioles, have declined drastically because the birds are no longer learning their mating calls. The society said that instead of a melodious song, all that some birds could manage to emit was a pathetic tweet.

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Additional Sources: U.S. National Earthquake Information Center and the United Nations World Meteorological Organization.