The casting call went out last January, not to big Hollywood agents but to animal shelters and rescue groups across the country.

Looking for four-legged crooners, black and white, who can get along with others on tour, do the old soft paw on stage, and won’t leap off into the audience when they hear the sound of applause.

Dozens of shelter dogs got the parts for the The 101 Dalmatians Musical including Rascal, a puppy with a broken leg found on the side of the road. Like the others, he has been given a new leash on life by getting to reside on a Florida ranch and travel in a celebrity tour bus while the show begins a national tour this month, starting in Minneapolis.

Animal trainer, Joel Slaven, told the Associated Press it was tough finding dogs to cast for the show.

Apparently, following the release of the popular live-action Disney “101 Dalmatians” in 1996 there was a rush on Dalmatians as  family pets, a role not suited to the breed. After the cute puppy stage, many new owners abandoned the dogs which flooded  shelters. Since then, canine rescuers are protective of the animals being exploited.

“When the movies came out, they were over-bred and that made the breed, which already has some health problems, even worse. People got the dogs, couldn’t afford the vet bills, found the dogs untrainable, or that they didn’t get along with kids. Shelters, Humane Societies and rescue groups don’t want anyone to use these dogs for entertainment, and they don’t want to help someone who’s going to do this again,” Slavin said.

I guess they came around when Slavin convinced them the animals would be treated like divas and dapper, leading men. Training the newbies like Rascal (above) involved helping the choreographer stage a three-minute finale of all dogs performing a dance routine to a tune by composer Dennis De Young of Styx fame. I hear it’s “jaw dropping.”

But instead of using the Dalmatians throughout the show, their parts are primarily played by actors, as in the musical Cats.

Images: Bree Bailey, The 101 Dalmatians Musical

Their good friends, the fuzzy white polar bears, are losing their icy homes. Rising sea levels will wash away those nice pastel houses along the beach. Some day, every moving thing that relies on gas -  cars, trains, ships and planes – will come to a screeching halt and the world will be in shock because people won’t know how to live, work, feed themselves or get around.

These are real fears being shared with children – and not just around my own dinner table.

Adults who are well informed, card-carrying conservationists often articulate these concerns with the greatest of intentions. They believe we are deep in the trenches in the war against global warming and the over-consumption of resources, and the time to act is now. We are amiss if we don’t warn the next generation.

But should we be drawing better boundaries when it comes to coloring the picture for the under-18 crowd?

Children who already lack the freedom we enjoyed to jump on bikes and go exploring until dark might be further impaired by negative messages that often accompany environmental concerns -  messages that convey their future looks frighteningly grim.

“When I have children, I worry that the world will be ruined and we won’t have a good life if people keep littering and polluting,” says my own 10-year-old, Lauren Bradley. “That might happen.”

Clearly, there’s a right way and a wrong way to prepare our youth to become the stewards of the planet without robbing them of the short-lived innocence of childhood.

For guidance, I went to Daniel Meyer, renowned Bay Area Environmental Educator and classroom science professor. He has spent the past 20 years teaching children about their relationship with nature, including outdoor adventures in the Yosemite Valley.

“Kids don’t have the perspective to understand some issues and tend to  internalize them,” observes Meyer. “You can have informative discussions with them about doing their part without making it a doomsday discussion.”

Here are some of Meyer’s do’s and don’ts for preparing, rather than scaring, the next generation of conservationists.

Image: Earthfirst

Do: Put the big picture in perspective. Geologically speaking, we are insignificant in terms of the earth’s existence. Many things have come and gone before us and will after us. And the only true thing we can do is live responsibly and respect and embrace the environment and everything in it and on it.

Don’t: Dump problems on children they cannot solve. Children can’t prevent an animal from going extinct. That’s the job of scientists, governments and big business.

Image: Brzegowiec

Do: Keep it simple. Responsible stewardship starts with light bulbs, composting and recycling. Give kids issues they can tackle so that they feel connected to repairing the earth: They can re-plant. They can fix the trail systems at the Golden Gate Park. They can make posters at school about composting. They can learn to become smart consumers. Child-geared, educational tools, such as The Story of Stuff video by Annie Leonard can help.

Don’t: Take away their innocence by focusing on the negative. The downside is kids can become fixated when they aren’t fully educated about global warming and pollution. Kids who are innocent can still come up with solutions.

Image: Incase Designs

Do: Investigate how they can do their part in responsible philanthropic giving by researching various causes and how money is directed. Let them select the cause. This empowers them in doing their part.

Don’t: Miss the opportunity to spend time with your children outdoors. It’s one things to talk trash around the dinner table and another to experience with them the beauty of the nature you strive to protect. Check out the Nature Rocks Campaign for tips.

Image: National Geographic

Main image: Zanastardust

Tsk tsk! This has nothing to do with Hustler or hardcore! Get your mind out of the gutter and more into the art of…oh, bug sex.

The fabulous Isabella Rossellini hosts her second series of delightfully wacky short films about the sex lives of different insects and animals. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of sexy nature – welcome to Green Porno. It sounds racy, but the clips are tame and respectful enough to educate children. Seriously.

And what exactly will you find in an episode of Green Porno? A whale with a 6-foot penis, an asexual starfish and a sadomasochistic, hermaphroditic snail. But the weird part is that Rossellini dresses up in kooky costumes and portrays the animals themselves. C’mon, you know you want to watch. And bring your sense of humor with you.

Find Green Porno on the Sundance Channel or watch the clips online.

I can think of no better way to wake up in the morning than to the music of birds. Granted, they wake up a lot earlier than I prefer, but their song and poetry makes it easy to drift back into a sweet morning sleep. I’m incredibly grateful for the presence of birds. I have lived where they are silent and rare and it truly makes for a dismal day.

So how are our avian companions doing these days? Due to contaminants in the environment and habitat loss (i.e., tearing down stands of trees to build shopping malls), our fine feathered friends are not doing so well in the United States. That’s the bad news. The first ever State of U.S. Birds Report makes this clear.

But the good news is that with appropriate land management, habitat restoration and and wetland conservation, we can make a great impact towards population comeback, to keep our valuable and beloved bird populations not just surviving, but thriving. Check out the State of the U.S. Birds Report for more information and see how you can help birds where you live.

Image: tibchris

Got goats? If not, there’s a family-owned and operated grazing service in Orinda, California that will deliver to you a South American shepherd, Border Collie and trained herd to graze your ranch or yard. Used primarily for fuel mitigation, star thistle eradication and reducing pesky hillside brush, the livestock comes in a variety of breeds to munch sites as expansive as 30,000 acre ranches.

The Goats R Us business was bred by Terri (above) and Egon Oyarzun, who operate the ranch with the help of their animal-loving 13-year-old son, Zephyr.

Egon was born and raised in rural Southern Chile, where he got his training by helping his father break oxen to pull carts.

The family recruits shepherds from South America who live with the animals on the grazing property in a self-contained travel trailer and pens. The hired hands often work on horseback to reduce the use of motor vehicles on the range.

Portable electric fencing helps contain Billy and his friends – agricultural workers who, unlike much of the American workforce, don’t suffer from age discrimination and are given super retirement benefits.

The old goats are never sold and are invited to picnic and roam the hills of the company’s own ranch. The seniors are vaccinated and wormed three times a year. Hey, where do I sign up?

There’s also a training program for the new recruits. Every winter when a pre-selected group of nannies gives birth, the babies are raised with the herd where they learn to work with the doggies. Angora goats are the primary stock because of their thick mohair and hardiness which fair well in the chilly northern California winters.

Perhaps the smartest in the pack are the keen-eyed Border Collies, raised and trained by the Goats R US team to respond to calls, whistles and hand signals. The company says each shepherd and his dog team develop their own unique communication style and create a bond that helps them do get that job done, whether “moving goats through a wide grassland or the busy, narrow streets of San Francisco.”

Our planet is in peril and it seems there’s more grim environmental news every day. Of course, it’s important we recognize the gravity of the situation so we can change rather than continuing blithely in our old, polluting habits. But the relentless delivery of bad news makes it easy to succumb to despair and the natural human reaction to despair is inaction.

We need hope. Not blind optimism that it’ll be all right in the end, even if we don’t change our ways. But genuine hope that if we all pull together and make a sustained, dedicated effort, then we can turn the ship around.

We’re not praying for a magic wand (though that would be nice), but we want to believe that our efforts will not be in vain. Together we hope to achieve our realistic goals of preventing the worst effects of climate change and species loss and eventually to start healing the planet.

We also know that living a sustainable life is the right thing to do regardless of the outcome. It brings its own rewards in terms of personal happiness and fulfillment but it’s not without sacrifices and frustrations. You need inspiration and friendly advice rather than hectoring.

It’s about kaizen – the Japanese term meaning ‘continuous improvement’ rather than black or white (or should that be green?). It’s not do or fail – we’re all on a journey and hopefully it can be fun, too.

The truth is, there is plenty of good news out there but it often gets lost among all the doom and gloom. The environmental movement achieves victories, big and small, all the time. The environmental agenda is becoming more mainstream among policymakers and the business community.

Years of hard work to rehabilitate formerly polluted eco-systems can pay off and species on the brink of extinction can return. People can change their lifestyle habits, companies can reformulate their products and packaging, and green technology can solve problems overnight – all of this can have a huge aggregate impact.

Good news shouldn’t close our eyes to the enormity of the problems, but it’s important to cherish the victories as a powerful antidote to despair and to provide inspiration for and motivation for our efforts.

With that in mind, we plan to bring you a monthly round-up of good environmental news stories. Enjoy!
Despite the global economic downturn, the market for recycled materials is proving resilient, according to the Waste Resources & Action Program in the UK. In fact, greater demand from China is pushing up prices for recycled materials. That means less trash going to landfill waste sites and fewer raw materials being used to make glass, paper, plastic, tin and aluminum.

The Fair Trade movement is going mainstream. Chocolate giant Cadbury has announced it’s using fair trade cocoa in its popular Dairy Milk bar in the UK and Ireland and will take its other products fair trade as soon as it can. Fair trade guarantees fair prices – a surplus above the cost of production – for farmers in developing countries. As well as the obvious social benefits, fair trade also helps the environmental agenda by protecting the viability of small, family-owned farms with mixed crops. It helps keep people on the land growing their own food, instead of swelling the world’s slums, and growing mixed crops rather than industrialised monoculture farming generally means fewer chemicals.

The City of San Francisco has submitted a proposal to U.S. federal authorities to build a wave power project about eight miles off the Pacific coast. Mayor Gavin Newsom writes a guest post on CleanTechnica where he says that the power plant could create significant amounts of electricity and around 100 jobs.

EcoGeek reports that Mexico City is trying to improve the quality of its air by integrating vegetation into the urban environment with a new project called Sustainable Housing Units. The project will place vertical gardens, rain water filters and solar panels in newly constructed housing towers.

In related news, Taiwan is building skyscrapers with rooftop gardens, according to InHabitat. While the Mexico City project was focused on air quality, the intent here is to insulate the interiors, reduce rainwater runoff, and mitigate the urban heat island effect.

A sustainable village in Nepal – including super adobe domes, solar panels and a bio-gas plant – is housing former street children. EarthFirst has the details.

The economy might be tanking but the solar energy industry is expanding thanks to the extension of tax credits. If you’re looking for a new job or career, you could do worse – the sector is set to create 440,000 new jobs by 2016, according to TriplePundit.

TriplePundit also brings news of how the economic downturn is improving air quality in industrialised parts of China such as Taiyuan province.

Sales of the Toyota Prius hybrid car in Europe are expected to rise 15% this year, according to the Guardian. Great news, assuming they replace ordinary cars, rather than adding to the vehicles already on the road.

President Obama has been busy rolling back the anti-green laws of the Bush years – most recently removing laws weakening protection for endangered species.

And finally…Nuns are going green in the  name of God. Treehugger reports that the Episcopal Sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit in West Harlem, New York are building their very own eco-convent. (Catch our report here.)

Image: Darwin Bell

Biodiversity, while healthy for the earth, is a real boon for human health, too. Take the West Nile virus, spread to humans by mosquitoes. It turns out that that the greater diversity of bird species in a region, the lower the amount of human West Nile virus cases.

You’d think the greater number of birds in a region will ensure that more mosquitoes get eaten, but that’s not what’s affecting the statistics. Some species of birds are particularly good hosts for the virus and that’s how the mosquitoes get infected. And it just turns out that the best avian hosts for West Nile virus are crows, jays, thrushes, sparrow and robins – the very same birds that move into an area after natural habitat is destroyed and a region’s native, diverse bird population is displaced and destroyed.

Information like this calls for changes in land management, and even small alterations can attract more diverse bird species. Biodiversity, more than just a catch phrase, is actually a public health service for humans. Clearly, the planet’s intertwined systems for maintaining balance and health are more complex than we ever imagined.

Image: Bill & Mavis

Birds twitter. Cats meow. Dogs bark. And elephants…rumble.

It’s one of the most curious corners of the biophony – the low-frequency noise (on the lower edge of our own hearing) that elephants send into the ground to attract a mate. The vibration is picked up by potential partners through their forelegs, and from there it’s transmitted to a bone in their middle ear (here’s the science of it – pdf). Amazingly, this may work over distances of up to 6 miles. It’s only one aspect of the diverse, sophisticated language that elephants employ, but it’s one that environmentalists are using to save elephant lives.

In Namibia, elephants are only protected within the boundaries of the Etosha National Parks. When bull elephants stray outside, they trample on crops, destroy property and threaten livelihoods – and enraged farmers respond with hails of bullets. If the elephants can be encouraged to respect borders, they will remain safe.

And that’s where rumblings come in. By sending similar vibrations into the ground using speakers, park rangers could lure elephants deeper into the park where they’re safest. (Since the rangers will be attracting bull elephants on heat, it’s safe to assume Jeep maintenance will become an even higher priority).

So are elephants unique in using this seismic chatline? And with all the noise we make from mining and construction, how many of the natural world’s conversations are we butting in on?

Image: lillarkie

There’s a saying, “animals make us human.” It’s because the way we treat the creatures in our care shows what kind of people we are. If you care about your own health, what you eat and what kind of home you live in, it’s important that you care about the health and happiness of the animals that share your home. Love is important for your pet, but so is proper care and mental stimulation. Here are the essential basics of providing a good life for your pet:

Spay or neuter your pet. With an overabundance of animals in shelters who already need loving homes, there’s no need for you to supply your neighborhood with more puppies or kittens. Why take the risk of filling the world with more unwanted animals? Feral animals breed like wildfire and usually end up hungry, sick and diseased. Besides, your local bird population will thank you, as a few feral cats is all it takes to hunt them into neighborhood extinction.

Feed them what they really need. If you care about the kind of food you put into your own body, you’ve got to care about your animal’s diet too. You don’t have to buy the most expensive stuff, but take a few minutes to look at the ingredients. Dogs and cats eat meat, and although it’s perfectly fine to include vegetarian items in their food, the first few ingredients need to be real meat. Not “chicken by-product meal” (which means ground up bones, beaks and feathers), but actual chicken. Your pet’s long term health is worth it. Avoid grains and fillers.

Appreciate what they bring to you. You take care of your pet, but your pet takes care of you, too! The unconditional adoration from your dog is pretty hard to find anywhere in the human world, and a cat’s satisfied purr as it naps on your belly has got to be one of the most wonderful things in the world. Take time to appreciate their personalities and companionship – being a good human requires more than just feeding them and taking them to the vet.

Exercise with your dog. Part of the responsibility you chose when you decided to keep a dog is to make sure they get plenty of daily exercise. Unless your dog is blessed with a huge yard and a few other doggy companions, you need to make sure you schedule in trips to the dog park, a vigorous game of fetch, some rough and tumble wrestling or a brisk jog through the neighborhood. The active lifestyle will do both of you a lot of good. Consider your dog your best workout partner!

Play with your cat. If you share your life with a cat, you know they like to sleep for hours, but cats get bored too. They need playtime and stimulation, and it’s easy to create simple, inexpensive toys (a feather on a string, a ball with a bell inside) to keep them active and entertained. Most cats go nuts chasing the light from a laser pointer!

Adopt from animal shelters. If you’re looking for a new animals to expand your pet-family, I urge you to adopt from a shelter. The reasons not to buy from a pet store are numerous, and you’ll really be saving an adopted critter’s life by letting them into your heart and home.

As much as you can, go green. From carpet cleaners to flea control, it’s always best to reduce the amount of chemicals in your personal environment. Guest writer Kathryn Hawkins has a whole list of ways to green your pet’s life (which is part of greening yours).

Regular check-ups. I know, I know, it’s not easy getting your animal friends to the vet. They always seem to know what you’re up to and hide out in the hardest to reach corners of the house. But it’s important they get checked out regularly, because a condition caught early on is much easier to treat than something full blown. Remember the adage: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” (this goes for you too!). Don’t be afraid to explore alternative treatments like animal acupuncture and pet massage.

Teach kids respect for animals. If you have children or kids that visit your home often, it’s important you teach them how to care for and respect your pets. Take the time to show them how to gently pet, and not pester, these critters who are trying to relax in their own home. Kids always learn best by example.

Images: greefus groinks/cloneofsnake/fazen/ElBosco/left-hand/Dr.Hemmert/BigTallGuy/Claudio Matsuoka/masochismtango/annia316/Maschinenraum

This is a healthy pelican – quite beautiful. Unfortunately, very sick pelicans are falling out of the sky these days. It’s one of many recent alarming indicators from our fellow creatures that things are seriously wrong.

Hundreds of sick pelicans have fallen to the ground from Mexico to Oregon, smashing into cars, boats and beaches, and experts are baffled. Authorities have ruled out domoic acid poisoning, which has affected wildlife before. It’s nothing short of a mystery. Surviving pelicans have been found in yards and on roads, disoriented and weak. So far, experts think the cause could be anything from unknown poison contamination to exposure to the toxic run-off from the recent Southern California fires to malnutrition due to evaporating fish stocks.

Though the exact cause is a mystery, it’s almost certainly due to human impact. And, it’s only the most recent case in a slew of disturbing mass animal deaths around the world.

In the last two years, California’s crops were affected by a mysterious disappearance of bee hives. Known as Colony Collapse Disorder, the worker bees simply fly away and never return. Since October 2006, over 35% of the honey bee population in the United States has vanished. In some states, as many as 90% of bees have disappeared. Scientists don’t know what causes CCD, but theories range from stress due to travel (bees are trucked across thousands of miles, in some cases, to pollinate), or pesticide exposure. A case for local, organic food?

Dolphins off the beaches of Cornwall, thought to be stressed by Royal Navy operations, apparently committed a mass suicide last summer. 26 dolphins consumed and inhaled debris and mud. Though dolphins have been found dead en masse before, this is the most baffling incident. The only other possibility, experts say, is that the dolphins may have been scared by a whale. Scared enough to willingly fill their lungs and bellies with mud?

Cases of seals and sea birds washing ashore have been common in recent years. For example, over 1000 Shearwater sea birds were found dead in the Bahamas and parts of Florida in 2007. The cause wasn’t bird flu, as experts had suspected when shearwaters turned up dead in 2005. There is still no explanation, but every year sees an increase in sea bird deaths, with toxicity the most common culprit.

Also last year, at least 40 endangered gharials in the Chambal river in India died of cirrhosis of the liver, due to apparent poisoning (a flood in 2007 is thought to have increased metal levels in the river). What was particularly odd about the incident was that only wild gharials, of breeding age, died – the captive bred animals were fine.

And here’s a case for organic textiles in addition to food: in 2006, a controversy erupted over the plight of sheep and goats who became ill and died after eating genetically modified cotton. People working with the animals said they simply became “dull and lifeless and died”. They were found dead with swollen stomachs, mouth lesions and black stools. Bacterial and viral infections were ruled out; and no sheep grazing on non-modified cotton died. In 2007 the same thing happened, also in India, to cattle.

Hundreds, and possibly thousands, of sea turtles were found floating dead or washed ashore in El Salvador in 2006. At first thought to be caused by fishing activities, experts quickly ruled this out and the case remains a mystery.

Image: sir mervs