June 2010

iPhone innovation enables citizens who care about wildlife to contribute vital information on the oil spill.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst developed a new iPhone app to involve the public and build a network of “citizen scientists.”

The app, called MoGO, short for Mobile Gulf Observatory, is free to download and allows area residents to take photos of injured, oiled and dead wildlife, use GPS to identify the location and submit the information to a comprehensive database that will help rescue workers and scientists gauge the number of affected wildlife and overall impact of the spill.

MoGO users are also encouraged to use the “Call Wildlife Hotline” option, which is included, to report their findings so wildlife experts can be sent to the area. Users are also encouraged to report tar balls on the beach, oiled habitats and oil slicks in the water. Get MoGo for your iPhone from savegulfwildlife.org

 

(Agadir, Morocco) – The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) announced today that a controversial proposal to legalize whaling has failed at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Agadir, Morocco.

The proposal, three years in the making, proposed a compromise between whaling and non-whaling nations which regularly clash at annual IWC meetings. Among the most hotly debated components of the proposal was a plan to overturn the worldwide ban on whaling, in place since 1986, by allowing legalized hunting of whales by Iceland, Norway, and Japan – the last three countries still hunting whales commercially. Japan, Norway, and Iceland have illegally killed nearly 35,000 whales since the inception of the moratorium.

Click here to support the war against whaling!