BikeTown U.S.A., Bicycling magazine's ever-growing initiative using bikes to change people's lives, now has a new home. From its inauspicious beginnings in Portland, ME, the BikeTown Project has become an international venture with the BikeTown Africa Project. This area is also a great spot for new riders to learn skills, find new gear, talk with other cyclists and watch videos about the magic one new bike can bring to a person's life.

    Environmental Writing: A Spiritual Voice of Resistance

“Everyone of us is a crossroads of thousands of relations, links, influences, and communications – physical, chemical, biological, and others of which we know nothing…None of us knows how the quiver of a shrub in California affects the mental state of a coal miner in North Bohemia or how his mental state affects the quivering of the shrub” (Havel 15).

                                  Storytelling as an Environmental and Cultural Protection Tool

    Ethnobiologists and cultural anthropologists have discovered that there is a direct correlation between indigenous peoples and biodiversity.  In areas where indigenous cultures are present there is often a high level of biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem. This also holds true for areas diverse in languages; of which the world is rapidly losing many as traditionally oral cultures give way to the Western world.  

           Basic Components of Consciousness in Non-Human and Human Mammals

    Consciousness is such a difficult concept, idea and word to define.  To date, no-one has come up with a definitive definition of what consciousness is.  When we can’t even define it’s meaning in relation to the human species, how then, can we define it in relation to non-human animal species?  This question, along with the burning question of whether or not non-human animals are even in possession of consciousness has been hotly debated in scientific and non-scientific circles for many years now.

                                             
                                                                   The Future is Hemp
              
                                                              by Zeratha Monique Young

~Part One in an Ongoing Series~
“Nexus Points--Exploring Environment and Culture”
~What is Biocultural Diversity?~

We all know that it is important to preserve biological diversity; that is the multitude of flowing, growing, rooting, shooting, squirming, jumping and swimming species of plants and animals that make up the planet Earth's ecosystem or biosphere. However, scholars, intellectuals and scientists have only recently realized that it is also equally important to preserve cultural diversity.  Cultural diversity is the amalgamation of languages, customs, food, art, dress, spiritual and religious systems, beliefs, human works, etc. that are embedded within a particular population of people and a particular geographic region.  The combination of cultural and biological diversity is what we would call biocultural diversity.