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The City of Harrisburg is going to benefit from more urban renewal when Harsco Corporation turns a 21-acre site near the Pennsylvania State Capitol into a regional warehouse and distribution center.

The number of jobs created is relatively small at 20; however the site gets cleaned up and given a purpose.  Considering its proximity to our State Capitol Complex, this is good news as it will enhance the appearance the area surrounding the capitol.  Harsco is spending $2 million to renovate the site which is a significant investment in the City of Harrisburg.  The improvements should be completed by April.

More good news is that Harsco will be relocating 35 senior-level positions to a new site near its Camp Hill headquarters.  This move will help Harsco’s leadership function as a more unified team.

To learn more about this company, you may click on their website:

http://www.harsco.com/

Image via Wikipedia

The City of Harrisburg is going to benefit from more urban renewal when Harsco Corporation turns a 21-acre site near the Pennsylvania State Capitol into a regional warehouse and distribution center.

The number of jobs created is relatively small at 20; however the site gets cleaned up and given a purpose.  Considering its proximity to our State Capitol Complex, this is good news as it will enhance the appearance the area surrounding the capitol.  Harsco is spending $2 million to renovate the site which is a significant investment in the City of Harrisburg.  The improvements should be completed by April.

More good news is that Harsco will be relocating 35 senior-level positions to a new site near its Camp Hill headquarters.  This move will help Harsco’s leadership function as a more unified team.

To learn more about this company, you may click on their website:

http://www.harsco.com/

I especially like this quote from my friend Jerry Feaser, the Game Commission’s press secretary:

“Whole farms turned into housing developments or shopping malls,” he said. “Once that land is lost, you can’t get it back.” Right on Jerry.

Nothing is worse for sensitive wildlife than a road. Over the last few decades, studies in a variety of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems have demonstrated that many of the most pervasive threats to biological diversity – habitat destruction and fragmentation, edge effects, exotic species invasions, pollution, and overhunting – are aggravated by roads.

Roads have been implicated as mortality sinks for animals ranging from snakes to wolves; as displacement factors affecting animal distribution and movement patterns; as population fragmenting factors; as sources of sediments that clog streams and destroy fisheries; as sources of deleterious edge effects; and as access corridors that encourage development, logging and poaching of rare plants and animals. Road-building in national and state forests and other public lands threatens the existence of de facto wilderness and the species that depend on wildness.
Despite heightened recognition (by informed people) of the harmful effects of roads, road density continues to increase in the US and other countries. Federal, state, and local transportation departments devote huge budgets to construction and upgrading of roads.

Multinational lending institutions, such as the World Bank, finance roads into pristine rainforest, which usher in a flood of settlers who destroy both the rainforest and the indigenous cultures. Public land-managing agencies build thousands of miles of roads each year to support their resource extraction activities, at a net cost to the taxpayer. The U.S. Forest Service alone plans to build or reconstruct almost 600,000 miles of roads in the next 50 years.

Most public agencies disregard the ecological impacts of roads and attempt to justify timber roads as benefiting recreation and wildlife management. Even when a land manager recognizes the desirability of closing roads, he or she usually contends that such closures would be unacceptable to the public.

Here’s a brief review of some ecological effects of roads, with emphasis on impacts to wildlife.

From primitive logging roads to four-lane highways, the effects of different types of roads vary, but virtually all are bad, and the net effect of all roads is nothing short of catastrophic for our natural heritage.

Direct effects, such as flattened fauna, are easy to see. I witness this daily during long exercise walks (more like treks). In contrast, many indirect effects of roads are cumulative and involve changes in natural community structure and ecological processes that are not well understood. Yet, these long-term effects signal a deterioration in ecosystems that far surpasses in importance the visual and olfactory insult to us of a bloated deer by the roadside.

Roadkill can have a significant impact on wildlife populations. The Humane Society of the U.S. and the Urban Wildlife Research Center have arrived at a conservative figure of one million animals killed each day on highways in the United States. When Interstate 75 was completed through a major deer wintering area in northern Michigan, deer road mortality increased by 500 percent.

In Pennsylvania, 26,180 deer and 90 bears were killed by vehicles in 1985 alone. These statistics do not account for animals that crawl off the road to die after being hit. Also, roadkill statistics are invariably biased toward mammals, against reptiles, amphibians, and probably birds, and do not include invertebrates at all (who wants to count the insects smashed on windshields and grills?).

Vehicles on high-speed highways pose the greatest threat to wildlife. Unpaved roads, particularly when “unimproved,” are less dangerous. Roadkill usually increases with volume of traffic. In one Texas study, however, mortality was greatest on roads with intermediate volumes, presumably because higher-volume roads had wider rights-of-way that allowed better visibility for animals and drivers alike. Increases in traffic volume do result in more collisions on any given road, and in our profligate society more people means more cars on virtually every road.

It is no surprise that roadkills are the leading known cause of death for all large mammals except white-tailed deer. Roadkills of Florida black bear, a subspecies listed as threatened by that state, have been rising sharply in recent years, from 2-3 per year in the 1970s to 44 in 1989. Many of the bears are killed on roads through public lands, in particular the Ocala National Forest.

Seventeen Florida panthers, one of the most endangered subspecies of mammals in the world, are known to have been killed on roads since 1972. Since 1981, 65 percetntof documented Florida panther deaths have been roadkills, and the population of only about 20 individuals is unlikely to be able to sustain this pressure.

An average of 41 Key deer, a species listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, were killed on roads yearly from 1980 through 1986, and 57 were killed in 1987. Roadkill is also the leading cause of mortality for the American crocodile, also an endangered species, in south Florida. The Florida scrub jay, a threatened species, has been found to suffer considerable mortality from collision with vehicles, and researchers have concluded that these birds cannot maintain stable populations along roads with considerable high-speed traffic.

Snakes are particularly vulnerable to roadkill, as the warm asphalt attracts them; yet their carcasses are seldom tallied. I recall shaking my head in disappointment after discovering the carcass of a timer rattlesnake along one well-traveled two-lane highway not far from Hazleton.

At Complesso del Vittoriano

• I grandi veneti – The great Venetian painters

Tiziano, Tintoretto, Tiepolo

At Chiostro del Bramante

• La Dolce Vita 1950 – 1960. Stars and celebrities in the Italian fifties

At Mercati di Traiano until Sunday, the 14th

• 100 years of industrial development in Italy.  A photo exposition showing how Italy’s changed in the last century

At Museo dell’Ara Pacis  until Sunday, the 14th

• The Risorgimento of the Romans. Experience Rome 150 years ago through original photos taken between 1848 and 1870

At Museo di Trastevere

The expected dignitaries likely to attend the VGGIS

And above all it is their sheer ingenuity that in addition to focusing upon the Industrial Sector, they have given due prominence to the knowledge sector. The previous Vibrant Gujarat Summits were focused on attracting industrial investment in the state. That will continue this time too, but we are also focusing on the knowledge sector,” an official in the state industries department said.

Good governance, emerging geographies, green energy & environmental technology, inclusive growth, balanced urbanisation, industry responsive manpower creation and skill development are some of the areas which will be focused on during the Vibrant Gujarat Summit.

“With fast industrial development, we need to act, and act fast, in these areas. These issues will be discussed at length during the Summit with the participants, and we will see how we can take them forward,” said state industries commissioner BB Swain.

Officials said that availability of manpower for industries is not a problem in the state, but finding skilled and trained workforce is tough. ( HOW TRUE)

But the most appreciative thing is that Gujarat this time has invited other states also to give their presentation for attracting investments in their respective states. Officials said that while previous editions of the event were Gujarat- centric, with the focus only on attracting investments to the state, this time, the event was “Going beyond Gujarat”.

States such as Karnataka, Goa and Rajasthan have already confirmed their participation in the event, while Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, MP, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Orissa and Haryana are among the other states likely to take part.

The participating states will be able to make presentations to prospective investors, and also sign Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) during the Summit.

(WHAT A MAGNANIMOSITY)