Want to visit the backwater Yunnan town of Jinding, which sits in the shadow of Asia's largest lead mine? Of course you don't. Luckily, Greenpeace has done it for you, and come away with this 360-degree, interactive video shot from a drone.
Oklahoma and Texas play an annual football game called the Red River Rivalry. When it comes to actually red rivers though, none compare to the one found in Boluo County near Huizhou, Guangdong province earlier this week. It's like the jungle's menstruating.
2014 has been an auspicious year so far for elephants. In January, the Chinese government crushed -- the technical term for destroying -- a whopping 6.15 tons of tusks, equivalent to one-sixth of the illegal ivory seized worldwide in 2012. The following week, Chinese officials worked with Kenyan authorities to apprehend the Chinese kingpin of a Kenya-based ivory ring.
This week, shocking photos and videos emerged of the slaughter of endangered whale sharks on a massive, industrial scale. According to an investigation by the marine conservation group WildLifeRisk, more than 600 of the endangered sharks are processed in a single factory under investigation every year.
A 700-year-old tree in Shifang, Sichuan province withstood the efforts of a crane trying to secretly knock it down. Check it out. That's what happens when an immovable object is actually immovable: 30 meters tall, 2.4 meters in diameter, apparently.
Hundreds of residents staged a not-in-my-backyard protest in Jiangmen, Guangdong province on Friday to oppose plans to build a uranium processing plant. SCMP reports that the protest, a restrained and civil affair, was largely organized via social media. The uranium complex, featuring three 30-hectare plants, would have been the nation's biggest, reports NY Times.
Someone doesn't enjoy his job. Reports The Telegraph, Zhou Shengxian, who is China's environment minister, was "quoted by state media as saying: 'I've heard that there are four major embarrassing departments in the world and that China's ministry of environmental protection is one of them.'"
Thousands of fish have been dredged out of a reservoir near Sinan River Power Station, a hydroelectric dam in Yunnan province. How many thousands? Whatever 1,177 tons comes out to -- about half a million, give or take many thousand.
The deaths began on May 20, according to Yunnan Net. Five days later, 1,177 tons of fish, mostly tilapia, were dead, including 3.6 million fry. The economic losses are estimated at 13 million yuan.
You know you have an environmental problem when… A) You have to import 5 million tons of freshwater B) Your source of tap water is “dark as soy sauce” Both of the above for Luohe, Henan province. Via Global Times:
This is alarming. According to Nandu.com, 238 dead pigs and 89 dead dogs were found in Dongtun village in Luoyang, Henan province yesterday. By all accounts, they died suddenly and at the same time. Initial tests have ruled out the H7N9 virus as a cause. Thank goodness for that and all, to know the zombie apocalypse... Read more »
