Today is...

[IceWizard]

Thursday 07 April 2016

World Health Day



World Health Day 2016: Action needed to halt rise in diabetes 6 April 2016 --

The number of people living with diabetes has nearly quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million adults, with most living in developing countries.

WHO is marking World Health Day, 7 April, by calling for action on diabetes. In its first “Global report on diabetes”, WHO highlights the need to step up prevention and treatment of the disease.

And

International Beaver Day



Help people learn about these amazing animals on International Beaver Day, April 7th.

International Beaver Day is a fine time to hike to a beaver pond, arrange a display of books in your library, show a beaver video, and/or otherwise spread the word about nature’s engineer.

It’s all about the dams

Remember beavers are more than fascinating watchable wildlife; learning to coexist with this species can help solve major environmental problems. By building dams beavers restore the land’s most valuable ecosystem, wetlands.

Not only are wetlands havens of life with biodiversity comparable to tropical rain forests, they also provide essential services, such as water cleansing, climate regulation, and moderating the flow of streams.

We now have 10% or less, of North America’s beaver population prior to Euro-American colonization. (A much smaller percentage of the original Eurasian beaver population remains.) As beavers were eradicated in past centuries, their dams no longer filtered silt from streams, and kept water on the land longer. As beavers were wiped out, the majority of wetlands were drained, and waterways became disconnected from their floodplains. Rivers became more like canals or sewers, leading to today’s problems with water pollution, erosion, and escalating damage from regional floods and droughts.