More than 800 totoaba swim bladders confiscated by Mexican authorities in smuggling busts

This May Day, get outside and celebrate spring.

For some, May 1 is International Workers Day; In the USA it has been Loyalty Day since 1958; this year, it is apparently particularly contentious in the USA. According to one source, "In Seattle, where unions, socialists, anarchists and workers organizations plan to hold demonstrations on Tuesday, the far-right Washington State Patriot Response will hold a counter-rally dubbed "May Day Seattle - Stand Against Rioters"."

Perhaps we should all just relax, go outside and hug a tree, and get May Day back to its roots. Here is a reprise of our earlier coverage:

Happy May Day, which used to be green instead of red

The first of May used to be a happy celebration of spring. According to The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of MAY DAY, everybody was into it.

The Greeks had their sacred groves, the Druids their oak worship, the Romans their games in honor of Floralia. In Scotland the herdsman formed circles and danced around fires. The Celts lit bonfires in hilltops to honor their god, Beltane. In the Tyrol people let their dogs bark and made music with pots and pans. In Scandinavia fires were lit and the witches came out.

Everywhere people "went a-Maying" by going into the woods and bringing back leaf, bough, and blossom to decorate their persons, homes, and loved ones with green garlands. Outside theater was performed with characters like "Jack-in-the-Green" and the "Queen of the May." Trees were planted. Maypoles were erected. Dances were danced. Music was played. Drinks were drunk, and love was made. Winter was over, spring had sprung.

Harpers Magazine coverage of Haymarket Massacre/Public Domain

Really, everyone was having such a good time, until the industrial revolution and the long hours that made a thing such as May Day impossible for most workers. In 1886 there was a nationwide call to limit working hours to 8 hours a day; On May 1, in Chicago's Haymarket Square, it turned into a debacle. Dynamite was thrown; Police reacted by shooting into the crowd, killing four; a trial was held and four workers were hanged, who came to be considered martyrs for the labor movement. From that day on, it became a day of protest about workers' rights. In 1889 the Second International declared it to be International Workers Day. The Russian revolution started on it, which really turned the day from green to red in the minds of Americans, many of whom do not think much of the labor movement. Everybody has been trying to kill it ever since.

In 1921, in response to the Bolshevik revolution, May 1 was observed as Americanization day. In 1958, President Eisenhower declared it to be Loyalty Day, " a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom." That's where it remains today in America.

Village Scene with Dance around the May Pole, Bruegel./Public Domain

It was so much more fun before it got political. In honor of how it used to be, get outside today and admire a tree.

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Audio: Seabird secrets revealed by bioacoustics in New Zealand

On today’s episode: the sounds of Buller’s shearwaters in New Zealand’s Poor Knights Islands. Listen here: Our guest today is Megan Friesen, a behavioral ecologist who is currently working with the Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust to examine the breeding behavior of a Pacific seabird species called Buller’s shearwater. Also known as the New Zealand shearwater, the seabird breeds predominantly on Tawhiti Rahi and Aorangi, the main islands of the Poor Knights Islands, which lie off of northern New Zealand. In this Field Notes segment, Friesen (who is also Conservation Manager for Seattle Audubon) explains why bioacoustics is so important to the research she is doing with the Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust, and plays recordings of the birds from both of the islands where it breeds. Here’s this episode’s top news: Scientists stumble upon hundreds of octopus moms in the deep sea Suspected poisoning takes down 11 lions in Uganda park ‘Boom and bust’ cycle of deep-sea trawling unsustainable, study finds Half a ton of pangolin scales seized on the way to Asia from Benin New species of ‘exploding ant’ discovered in Borneo You can subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast on Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or RSS. If you enjoy the Mongabay Newscast, we ask that you please consider becoming a monthly sponsor via our Patreon page, at patreon.com/mongabay. Just a dollar per month will really help us offset the production costs and hosting fees, so if you’re a fan of our audio reports from nature’s frontline,…

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First record of ultrasound communication in the mysterious Sunda colugo

In October last year, a team of scientists were out on a night hike surveying bats in the forests of the Penang Hill in the Malaysian state of Penang when their microphone picked up some unusual ultrasound calls — calls that were very different from the ultrasound calls of bats that the scientists were out to record. To the surprise of the researchers, the calls seemed to be coming from the Sunda colugo or the Sunda flying lemur (Galeopterus variegatus), a nocturnal mammal that’s not a lemur and does not fly. Instead, this tree-dwelling mammal glides from tree to tree using a gliding membrane that extends across its body. Until recently, the Sunda colugo was only known to produce calls in the audible range. But the calls recorded in the Penang Hill forests are the first record of ultrasound communication in these animals, researchers report in a new study published in Bioacoustics. “At first, when we recorded the calls, we could not see which animal it was from,” lead author Priscilla Miard of the University of Science, Malaysia, who was part of a 117-member team that surveyed Penang Hill’s biodiversity last year, said in an email. “One recording was really close to us and when I looked up I saw a colugo just a few meters in front of us on the tree trunk. After few seconds looking at it I understood the ultrasound was coming from this individual. I was amazed! It made a lot of sense but we needed more…

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This Is What That 'Salmon-Safe' Label Says About Your Wine Or Eggs

Ask me about plalking

My husband and I enjoy an outing together, almost every day. But nowadays, we are not walking anymore. We're plalking. It's great for health and the conscience. Plus it's the new sexy.

What is plalking?

As the Swedish fad called "

plogging

" - a portmanteau of the Swedish word plogga for "pick" and the international term "jogging" - spreads around the globe, we don't want people who aren't into running to get left out of the fun. So let's talk plalking. Since we'll be going slower anyhow, we can say the word stems from

P

icking

L

itter while w

ALKING

.

Why are you plalking?

Well, it's good of you to ask. I am sure you didn't leave this litter here. But as we walk through the green spaces in Berlin, it is astounding to find that people come out to spend time in nature and then leave litter behind.

And you might expect the streets of the city to be pristine, since there is a public trash can on every corner in Berlin. You would be disappointed. Hopefully cleaning up will discourage copy-cats and clean will stay clean. And at least what we collect won't make it into the rivers and out to the seas.

Some say we need to stop litter at the top of the supply chain, by reducing the disposables. But that may take a while, so come on: don't drop that stuff on the ground in the meantime.

Cleaning up is nice, are there other benefits to plalking?

Especially if you are getting along a bit in years, plalking will really help keep you fit. Stretching down or squatting to pick up litter moves the body through a range of motions that help muscles stay flexible and train balance. Try picking each piece of litter up with a slightly different stretch.

Sure, if there were no litter we could be recommending yoga-walking or some other cross-training to blend the active movement with the meditative stretching. We'll keep hoping for that day to arrive.

What do you find when plalking?

Somehow it seems easier to forgive those who abandon their beer bottles - most of those have a deposit and will get picked up by people collecting the change. And you kind of expect that the people who enjoyed that champagne picnic might "forget" to pack their bottles out. Maybe people reckon the glass is "natural" so leaving it behind is OK, somehow ignoring the embodied energy that can be saved by recycling glass as well as the eye-sore effect for those coming out after them.

The litter that breaks ones faith in humankind is the energy gel tubes, sold in stores designed for people who are supposed to appreciate the great outdoors. And those little drink bags you poke a straw into should be illegal - or maybe have a stern pair of eyes printed on every bag, because research shows that the subconscious sense of being watched prevents litter.

Are there drawbacks to plalking?

You might want a thick pair of gloves or a picker-upper tool, because some of the litter can be a bit nasty. We don't tidy up the areas that clearly served as ersatz toilets. I surely hope people at least have the sense to bring biodegradable paper with them into the woods.

One champagne bottle we collected emanated a skunk-like smell. There are no skunks in Germany though. We decided the strange artifact might have attracted the attention of a male boar, which decided to mark it as part of his territory to make it less of a foreign object.

Let me ask back: Are you plalking too?

If you are plalking, share your experiences in the comments. Or if you don't mind living out your every minute on the internet, you can enter your pick-ups in the app

litterati

, which allows ploggers and plalkers to feed a huge database of what kinds of litter are found and where.

Perhaps some day, enough people will be picking up that no one will be so bold as to litter any more, and tracking apps will pin down the sources of litter so the problem can be tackled top-down as well as bottom up. Until then, hope to see you plalking! We should all get a button that says "Ask me about plalking" to spread the trend.

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Major Islamic financier singled out for deforestation in Indonesia

New research into the activities of a major Malaysian financial institution has raised questions over the efficacy of major brands’ policies against buying from firms engaged in deforestation. In a recent report by climate coalition Chain Reaction Research, Lembaga Tabung Haji, whose publicly traded palm oil firm TH Plantations controls 32 estates in Indonesia and Malaysia spanning 1,600 square kilometers (620 square miles), was accused of actively clearing forest and peatland. The report’s authors amassed evidence that THP had cleared hundreds of hectares of forest at its PT Persada Kencana Prima and Hydroflow Sdn Bhd plantations in 2017 in violation of some of its buyers’ No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) policies. The logging had already led to a suspension by palm oil giant IOI and engagement by Wilmar, it notes; moves that have managed to halt new deforestation at the sites. THP also supplies other major brands, including AAK, ADM, Musim Mas, Olam, Nestlé and Unilever. But the report suggests that Lembaga Tabung Haji’s PT Synergy Oil Nusantara (PT SON) is also an active “replacement” buyer for two firms that were suspended by other traders for NDPE violations, raising the prospect that companies could still suffer reputational risk if they buy palm oil from the Malaysian company. The Chain Reaction Research report singles out Felda Global Ventures (FGV), an agri-commodities company and joint-venture partner with THP, as being particularly at risk. FGV did not respond to a request for comment from Mongabay. A Wilmar spokesperson said that many…

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How to recognize drowning

It is much more silent and subtle than the movies make it out to be.

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Tetra Pak to launch paper juice-pack straws

Those pointy little plastic things are a menace. Soon, they may be a relic.

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So, what does White Castle's plant-based 'Impossible Slider' taste like?

It's hard for me to think of a more divisive topic of late than the plant-based Impossible Burger. While many readers were enthusiastic when a meat-centric restaurateur starts serving it, others dive in with health concerns and criticisms when White Castle launched their slider version.

To be fair, I am torn on the topic myself. On the one hand, I'd love to see a broader, societal shift away from intensive animal agriculture—and I think truly realistic meat analogs offer the potential to reach beyond the usual healthy eating converts. On the other hand, processed food is processed food. And I suspect a diet heavy in Impossible Burgers is not going to be much better for you than a diet heavy on McDonalds.

But my feelings are irrelevant. There's clearly a market for these things. But is it based on hype, or actual enjoyment? A recent video from Vlogger Casey Neistat and film maker Oscar Boyson aims to find out. The results, I should say, are decidedly mixed. While Casey and Oscar both end up preferring the Impossible Slider—arguing that it's decidedly more meat like than the original—their dining companions were much less impressed. ("Can I have a bucket?", pleads the poor lady on the left.)

For me, personally, the close ups alone confirmed one thing: I'm probably not the target market for White Castle sliders. That said, as I argued before in my post about the launch of the Impossible Slider, it's encouraging to see plant-based alternatives being deployed where they can do the most good—replacing intensively raised, fast food meat.

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BP profits leap by 71% as oil prices rebound