This just in from the New York Times: World’s Largest Marine Reserve Declared.

The tiny Pacific islands nation of Kiribati declared the world’s largest marine protected area Thursday — a California-sized ocean wilderness that includes pristine reefs and eight coral atolls teeming with fish and birds.

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, or PIPA, lies about halfway between Hawaii and Fiji and also includes undersea mountains. It will conserve one of the Earth’s last intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems.

It is a great example of long-term thinking. In the short-term, the Kiribati goverment will lose some revenue from foreign commercial fishing licenses, but in the long-term they will most likely increase their revenue overall with the increase in tourism.

”Kiribati has taken an inspirational step in increasing the size of PIPA well beyond the original eight atolls and globally important seabird, fish and coral reef communities,” Greg Stone, New England Aquarium vice president of global marine programs, said in a statement.

We agree. When can we go visit?

Visit their website: www.phoenixislands.org

Photo taken from the National Geographic feature on the Phoenix Islands.

Sounds better than having them in the sea. Check out this article on Treehugger (written by Karin of Green Prophet) and watch the video below.

Plastic Bag Nightmare by Zainub

Today the big environmental news was China’s decision to ban free plastic bags.

We’ve spoken out against plastic bags before.  And now we’re going to do it again.  Plastic bags do terrible damage to our environment and have an enormous impact on sea life in particular.  In November 2007, Israel’s Ministry of the Environment published a report under their program “Clean Beaches” stating that 80% of all beach garbage is made up of plastics. 

Now Zalul and other leading Israeli environmental NGOs are petitioning for an end to free plastic bags. 

Do your part and sign the petition today (warning, it’s in Hebrew).

We are loving the new Israeli environmental blog “The Green Prophet”.  There are some great articles on dumpster diving in Tel Aviv, greening the Old City walls, and more.

It’s so nice to see another voice for Israel’s environment in the blogosphere!

Zalul’s National Project Director, Sagit Rogenstein, was taking an afternoon stroll along Tel Aviv’s tayelet (promenade) on a rather stormy day when she couldn’t help but photograph some of the incredible (and disgusting) beach pollution littering the sand.

Winter means that the beaches are almost abandoned. Surfers still visit to catch waves, but long gone are the swimsuited tourists lounging their rented chairs, working on their tans and the lifeguards go on vacation.

Rain falling in the city washes a year’s worth of mucky car pollution build-up from the street to the sea. Some (definitely not all) areas of Tel Aviv have sewer systems that can accommodate the flash flood rains… they go directly to the sea.

Our reaction to these pictures when Sagit brought them to the office? “Ewwww.”

View more by visiting Zalul’s flickr photostream.