 volunteers gather under the restaurant in the industrial sized kitchen where they package the food and weigh it before sending it off to homeless shelters in San Francisco.
Marc is originally from Los Angeles and in his free time likes to skateboard and challenge friends to arcade games in the lower Cesar Chavez building between classes and Eco Life events.
Recent activities that the Eco Life club have hosted have been a habitat restoration along Ocean Beach on May 6, 2017, and before Earth Day weekend on Thursday, Apr. 20, 2017, they planted flowers along Holloway Avenue behind the humanities building. Marc said the club is always looking for new members to join and get involved with their events.Few days after Nollywood actress Iyabo Ojo bought a mansion in the heart of Lekki, her bestie, Toyin has just acquired another big mansion.
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Serengeti: Home of the Great Migration
Serengeti National Park is a unique environment best known for its large herds of plains animals, especially wildebeests, gazelles and zebras. The park is at the heart of the larger Serengeti ecosystem, which is the area covered by the famous Great Migration. At 5,700 square miles, the park is one of the closest places you can get to untouched African wilderness. In 1981, Serengeti National Park was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Though other famous wildlife parks are fenced, the Serengeti is protected but unfenced. It is the only place in Africa where vast land-animal migrations still take place. This mass trek is cyclical, as ungulates (hoofed mammals) move around the ecosystem in a seasonal pattern based on rainfall and grass nutrients.
Serengeti National Park is located on the Serengeti Plain in north-central Tanzania, Africa. It is adjacent to the Kenya border and just east of Lake Victoria. It covers 5,700 square miles and has elevations from 3,020 to 6,070 feet.
Serengeti ecosystem and wildlife
The Serengeti is one of the most productive ecocsytems on Earth, sustaining the largest number of ungulates and the highest concentration of large predators in the world.
The ecosystem is unique because it is a transition area. There is a distinct changeover from the rich, flat soils in the southern plains to the poor hilly soils in the north. Rainfall, temperature, topography and geology also vary greatly within the Serengeti. This wide range of habitats results in diverse vegetation and animals throughout the area.
The Serengeti is home to more than 35 species of plains animals. The dominant herds are wildebeests, gazelles and zebras. Other herbivores include giraffes, warthogs and antelopes. The area also supports the “Big Five” — lions, rhinos, leopards, elephants and buffalo. This term was coined by big game hunters and refers to the animals that were the most difficult to hunt, mostly due to their ferocity when cornered.
The buffalo is one of Africa’s most dangerous animals with very few predators and herds with more than 1,000 individuals. Other predators in the Serengeti include cheetahs and spotted hyenas.
Crocodiles and hippopotamuses inhabit the riverine forests in Serengeti National Park.
There are more than 500 species of birds that are perennially or seasonally present in the park, of which five species are endemic to Tanzania. The park has the highest ostrich population in Tanzania and most likely Africa. Vultures and flamingos have also been recorded in the area.
The number of stinging and biting insects are low in the Serengeti compared to North America and Europe. However, the diversity of other insects is phenomenally higher. Many of them, such as dung beetles, grasshoppers and ants, play a critical role in the ecosystem of the entire area.
Wildlife estimates
wildebeests
The Great Migration
The Serengeti is home to the largest remaining unaltered animal migration in the world. More than one million wildebeests along with hundreds of thousands of other ungulates travel in a 500-mile circular trek spanning the two adjacent countries of Tanzania and Kenya.
The Great Migration occurs annually, and the movement pattern is fairly predictable, though it is dependant on rainfall patterns each year. The animals migrate throughout the year, constantly seeking fresh grazing and water.
The migration, however, is not without risk. This mass movement of animals is accompanied by one of the largest and most diverse large predator-prey interactions worldwide.
The journey begins in the southeastern plains of the Serengeti. During the wet season, from November to May, the herds graze here. But when the plains dry, they must move on in search of greener grass.
The herds then migrate in a clockwise pattern from the south, to the west, and then north. The herds then return to the southeast in November at the end of the dry season.
Monthly breakdown
December-April
The herds are in the southeastern plains of the Serengeti, as there are short rains in the area in November and December. For wildebeests, calving season is usually between January and March. The wildebeests remain around this area until the end of the long rains, which is usually around the end of April to early May.
May-July
During this period, the herds start getting ready for their 500-mile trek. The actual starting date may be anytime between late April and early June. During the migration, the herd will move toward the western corridor, where they will face the first major obstacle: crossing the Grumeti River. Many animals don’t survive the crossing, as crocodiles are waiting. The herd may congregate on the southern bank of the river and stay there for up to two weeks before crossing the river.
August-September
The herd then moves farther north and starts crossing the Mara River in July or August. This crossing is also dangerous because of the strong currents and attacks by crocodiles. After this crossing, the herd flocks to the northwest plains and Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The northern part of the ecosystem has the highest rainfall, but the grasses are least nutritious.
The herd then must cross the Mara River again in order to start the trek back in a southerly direction. This usually happens in October, but sometimes earlier. In this period, the herd will cross the northern plains and Lobo area. The wildebeests and other animals then return to the short-grass plains and calving ground in the southeast in late November. And from here, the Great Migration starts all over again.The S.C. Department of Commerce says it didn’t formally offer any taxpayer-backed incentives to lure Amazon’s second national headquarters to the Palmetto State, but instead provided general incentives information to counties if any of them wanted to compete for the project.
Commerce spokeswoman Adrienne Fairwell told The Nerve on Tuesday she didn’t know if any counties directly pitched Seattle-based Amazon for its second headquarters. And she declined to release the “general summary of state and local incentives” provided by Commerce to counties for the project, contending the record is exempt under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.
After The Nerve pointed out that general information about incentives already is available on Commerce’s website and asked what specifically in the summary could be considered legally exempt, Fairwell replied in an email that the document can be withheld from the public because it is a “working paper,” adding, “We prefer consistency in this regard with regard to all project-related requests.”
Amazon recently announced it would split its second national headquarters between New York City and northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., creating a collective 50,000 jobs – after reportedly receiving promises of incentives totaling more than $2 billion.
The Upstate SC Alliance, a nonprofit economic-development organization that represents 10 counties in the state’s northwest corner, submitted a proposal after Amazon put out a national call last year for potential sites. The Charlotte Regional Partnership, which represents 16 counties in the Carolinas, including Chester, Chesterfield, Lancaster and York counties; and the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce also submitted a joint proposal.
But no details were publicly released then by those organizations about available incentives for the Amazon headquarters project. Contacted Wednesday, Jacob Hickman, director of business recruitment for the Upstate SC Alliance, told The Nerve that his organization presented no specifics on incentives, noting, “We never got that far, so it was nothing more than a pitch of the region.”
Commerce’s budget request for next fiscal year includes a collective $5 million for regional economic development organizations, including $750,000 for the Upstate SC Alliance – the same amount budgeted for this fiscal year, which started July 1.
Amazon, which has distribution centers in Lexington and Spartanburg counties, already is benefiting from S.C. taxpayers. The Nerve in 2013 reported, based on Commerce records received under the Freedom of Information Act, that the total estimated 10-year public cost of the Spartanburg project was $12.16 million.
Commerce typically maintains secrecy about projects – even in finalized incentives agreements, often blacking out basic information it contends is “confidential proprietary information” under the state’s open-records law.
The Nerve in September revealed, citing Commerce records, that since 2015, 14 companies that committed to locating or expanding in South Carolina collectively repaid nearly $7 million in