When Zarathustra started preaching around 1200 BCE in ancient Persia, which is known today as Iran, he wasn’t just founding a religion—he was creating the world’s first environmental protection movement. Good thoughts, good words, good deeds. But there was a mantra and words to live by: don’t pollute the earth, water, or fire. Ever.

Take Zoroastrian burial practices. We’ve covered the Towers of Silence here at Green Prophet before—those circular stone structures where bodies were placed on top for vultures to consume. Why did they do this? Because Zoroastrians believed dead bodies were contaminated with evil (druj) and could not touch the sacred elements: earth, water, or fire.

No burial (pollutes earth). No cremation (pollutes fire). No river disposal (pollutes water). Sky burial was the only option that honored nature. The body became food for birds, a final act of charity. Today most Zoroastrians use cement-lined coffins to prevent earth contamination, or they’ve moved to other methods as vulture populations crashed from human causes such as electrical shocks and poisoning. But the principle remains: respect the elements that sustain life.

Celebrating Nature’s Turning Points

Nowruz, the Persian New Year celebrated on the spring equinox, is perhaps Zoroastrianism’s most visible environmental legacy. As we’ve written about on Green Prophet, this isn’t just a cultural festival—it’s a celebration of nature reawakening. Families grow sabzeh (wheat or lentil sprouts) weeks before Nowruz, watching green life emerge from seeds.

Goldfish are a traditional symbol of life, renewal, and fortune on the Haft-Seen table for Nowruz, the Persian New Year, representing vitality and a prosperous year ahead, though animal welfare concerns have risen due to millions dying after being released into ponds, leading some to use edible alternatives like marzipan goldfish or sugar fish instead.

The holiday marks when day and night are equal, when light spreads evenly across hemispheres. Fire is lit. People jump over flames during Chaharshanbe Suri, singing “my yellowness is yours, your redness is mine”—asking fire to take weakness and give strength.  The whole celebration is about alignment with natural cycles. Spring cleaning before the new year. Visiting graves on the last Friday. Placing hyacinths and tulips in homes. Everything synchronized with the earth’s rhythm around the sun.

Engineering in Harmony with Nature

Ancient Persians didn’t just philosophize about respecting the elements—they engineered around them. As we’ve explored in previous Green Prophet articles, their architecture shows remarkable environmental sophistication.

Wind catchers (badgir) in Yazd and other desert cities are essentially ancient air conditioning. These tall towers catch breezes and channel them down through buildings, sometimes over underground water channels called qanats. The Dolat Abad windcatcher in Yazd stands 34 meters tall—still the highest in Iran—and can drop indoor temperatures by 10 degrees without electricity.

Qanats themselves are engineering marvels: underground channels that move water from mountain aquifers to desert cities without pumping. Some are still functioning after a thousand years. UNESCO recognizes them as world heritage because they represent “creative genius” in sustainable water management.

These weren’t just practical solutions to live by. They were Zorastrian expressions of a worldview that said: work with the elements, don’t violate them. Here’s what makes Zoroastrianism ecologically radical even today: it treats environmental degradation as moral corruption.

The world is a battlefield between truth (asha) and lies (druj). When you pollute water, you’re choosing druj. When you contaminate earth, you’re siding with evil. Every small choice—where you put your waste, how you use fire, whether you honor or desecrate water is a moral decision that tilts the cosmic balance.

You can’t separate ethics from ecology in this system because they are the same thing.

Modern environmentalism often frames nature protection as enlightened self-interest or future-oriented planning. Zoroastrianism says: the earth itself is holy. Polluting it is sacrilege. You don’t need utilitarian arguments. You need to not be an asshole to creation.

There are maybe 100,000 to 200,000 Zoroastrians left worldwide, mostly in Iran and India (where they’re called Parsis).

Zoroastrianism introduced a radical idea for its time: that humans stand inside a moral universe. That our choices matter. Long before monotheism found its later forms, Zoroastrianism articulated heaven and hell, angels and judgment, free will and ethical responsibility. Judaism absorbed these ideas during the Persian period. Christianity and Islam carried them forward.

Today, Zoroastrians are not fighting for dominance. They are fighting for continuity. Intermarriage, migration, shrinking birth rates, and cultural dilution place constant pressure on a faith that does not proselytize and does not adapt easily. They don’t have a leader or a “Pope” figure making it difficult to create leadership.

Yet the ecological principles remain stubbornly relevant. In a world drowning in plastic, choking on emissions, and treating the planet like an expendable resource, Zoroastrianism’s insistence that nature is sacred, not because it’s useful to humans, but because it is sacred.

If Iran becomes free, consider visiting the eternal flame: The Yazd Atash Behram in Iran shelters one of the world’s oldest living flames — a sacred fire burning continuously since 470 AD. Though the temple itself was built in 1934, the “Victorious Fire” has survived centuries of exile, invasion, and careful guardianship, standing as a quiet, stubborn symbol of Zoroastrian endurance and divine purity.

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Robert Redford — Oscar-winning director, founder of the Sundance Institute, and one of America’s most loved actors and influential environmental advocates — died on September 16, 2025, at his home in Utah. He was 89. News of his death was confirmed by multiple outlets.  Redford leveraged his worldwide fame to protect wild lands, accelerate climate action, and fund storytelling that moves people to care about the planet. In short, a true Green Prophet.

Below are five of his biggest environmental causes and achievements—each documented by reliable sources.

Longtime NRDC trustee and voice for climate action

Redford served for decades as a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), using that platform to press for clean energy, clean air, and conservation. He opened NRDC’s groundbreaking “green” headquarters in 2003 and addressed UN climate ministers in 2015, urging faster action. He received multiple conservation honors, including the Audubon Medal (1989). The film above was produced and screened for the UN event.

Co-founding The Redford Center to fund impact storytelling

In 2005, Redford and his son James co-founded The Redford Center, a nonprofit that produces and funds films and campaigns to drive environmental progress. The Center’s short “Robert Redford’s Environmental Legacy” premiered during the Paris COP21 events, highlighting his belief that art and nature together can change the world.

Good film has the power to change the world. See Woody Harrelson on regenerative agriculture.

Protecting Utah’s public lands and sacred places (Bears Ears)

Redford was a fierce defender of the American West, partnering with Tribes and local communities to safeguard Bears Ears and other landscapes. He publicly urged federal leaders to designate and then protect Bears Ears National Monument.

Early, effective opposition to a Utah coal plant

In the 1970s to 80s, Redford helped lead opposition to a coal-fired power plant proposal near his Sundance home and in the Kaiparowits region. The fight became a defining early win for conservationists—so prominent that some locals burned him in effigy.

Elevating independent voices through Sundance

By founding the Sundance Institute and Festival (1981), Redford created the world’s most influential incubator for independent film—amplifying environmental narratives and careers that changed culture. His broader public service was recognized with the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

Across five decades, Redford fused art, advocacy, and institution-building: NRDC trustee and national climate voice; co-founder of an environmental media nonprofit; steadfast defender of public lands; an early, successful opponent of local coal development; and creator of Sundance, which gave countless environmental stories a stage. These contributions sit alongside his film achievements (Ordinary People, A River Runs Through It, All the President’s Men) and national honors. May more people be inspired by legends like Redford and may his family be comforted in this difficult time.

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Back in 2008, we reported about an Israeli research company Beeologics that believed it had discovered what might be a cure for a serious bee syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Agricultural experts say that CCD is responsible for a serious decrease in the number of bee colonies or apiaries all over the world, including Israel and Lebanon.

Besides CCD, many other factors have also been said to contribute to bee colony demise, including climate change that destroys the pollen or food the bees feed on, overuse of pesticides and herbicides, and even microwave transmissions from cell phone towers that many say “confuse” bees and make them lose their homing ability to return to their hives.

A bee pollinates almond blossoms; via Yosi Slavetsky, Israel Min. of Agriculture

Now, more than 4 years later, not much improvement has occurred since Beeologic’s discovery of the drug they refer to as remembee. Mr. Hertzel Avidor, head of the Israel Honey Council, says that Beeologics is conducting tests on bee hives using this drug to determine if it can help solve the problem of CCD.

Says Mr. Avidor:

We don’t really know what the real cause of CCD is, except that it may be caused by a virus or other problem. The exact cause has not been discovered yet. The virus called IAPV and also referred as the “Israeli One,” due to being discovered by researchers here in Israel, could also be connected to a problem with the bee’s DNA that has been affected by use of pesticides and various forms of  pollution.

The decline in bee colonies and honey production is a complex one and cannot be pinned to a single cause. Nitzan Paldi, a technical researcher for Beeologics, says that many factors are involved including parasitic mites such as the varroa mite, a growing human population and possibly climate-change.

Paldi believes that climatic  factors have great effect on bee populations in Israel and neighboring countries. He says that in general, the long, hot and dry summers found in this region do not bode well for honey production and that places like Europe, US, Canada, New-Zealand etc. have wet summers with a long period of flowering throughout summer.”

Due to this, these countries have yields of honey that Israeli and other eastern Mediterranean beekeepers can only dream of.”

Notwithstanding, he believes that Israeli beekeepers are very proficient at taking full advantage of the resources and maximizing their yield. He adds that Palestinian farmers in the West Bank often keep bees as well and that some of the traditional beekeeping methods in their villages are akin to methods that have been uncovered in archaeological digs from 3000 years ago.

Due to all of these issues, annual honey production in Israel, where great effort is being made to save bee populations, has nevertheless fallen from around 40 kg per hive to only 20 kg – a decrease of 50%. In general, Beeologic’s Nitzan Paldi believes that more needs to be done by humans to save the world’s bees.

“In various geographies, any one of several factors, including overuse of pesticides and herbicides, climate change, and loss of bee habitats due to over-development by humans can be the main contributing factor; with others being minor,” he said. “Moreover, this can change over time for the same given location. In general, we can say that the growing human population and its impact on the planet are such that we need to be very cautious in our husbandry of the planet.”

::Beeologics

Read more on regional bee issues and beekeeping:

Lebanon’s Bees Are Freezing to Death
Balyou: Turkey’s First Honey Tasting Tour
Green Prophet Visits Beehives Going Back to Ancient Roots
Israeli Company Discovers Cure for Bee Colony Collapse

The post Beeologics Tests Its Antivirals on Collapsing Bee Populations appeared first on Green Prophet.

Conservationists in Egypt are worried about the environmental impact of large-scale solar projects in the desert

It seems renewables are taking a little bit of a bashing at the moment. First research emerges that wind turbines may be contributing to a temperature rise in the area, and now environmental campaigners in Egypt are calling for more careful deployment of solar panels in deserts. Speaking to Egypt Independent, Mindy Baha El Din (a conservationist who we profiled here) says that “There’s a misconception that the desert is a wasteland. It’s got an ecosystem of lifeforms, unique geological landscapes with fossils as well as cultural heritage sites.” And of all of this needs to be protected from various development schemes which includes large solar projects.

The hot and arid deserts of Egypt has been earmarked as perfect locations for large solar projects. There’s plenty of sun, not much around and there’s plenty of space. However, campaigners and nature experts insist that greater care needs to be taken to ensure that the location limits environmental harm and that the impact of constructing the large solar fields i minimized.

A150-megawatt hybrid power plant that will use both solar energy and natural gas to generate electricity, is under construction 90 kilometers south of Cairo in Kuryamatt. Plans for a second large solar plant in Upper Egypt’s Kom Ombo, are also underway. According to Baha El Din, such side by side expansion of solar plants could have a large impact on the desert’s ecosystem.

“We know from experience that any added complexity to the environment will attract birds to the land,” explains Baha El Din. “So solar panels will attract birds, but we don’t know if that will create more nature, or if there would be no vegetation [due to overuse].” Baha El Din estimates that around six million birds migrate annually through Egypt. The disruptive construction process which consists of vehicle traffic and noise will also adversely affect natural habitats.

In the US, various large solar projects have been put on hold due to their environmental implications. For example, a project worth USS2.2 billion, was halted when the site in the Mojave desert was found to home desert tortoises, which are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. BrightSource Energy, now cannot restart construction until it has safely relocated the turtles.

Green Prophet writer Maurice Picow has explored the ‘not so sunny side of solar‘ in the past. He has highlighted the fact that solar is costly, takes up large areas of land and consequently disrupts existing natural ecosystems. These are downsides that we have to tackle head on, he argues, especially as solar power is only going to become more widespread in the sunny MENA region.

:: Image via Green Prophet1/flickr.

For more on solar power in Egypt see:

Egypt to Build Two 100MW Solar Energy Plants

Find Green Prophet at the 2^nd Annual DII Conference in Cairo

Exclusive Pics: Kuraymat – Egypt’s First Solar Thermal Plant

Cairo’s Zabaleen Scavenge for Renewables to make Solar Cities

The post Egypt: Conservationists Concerned About Impact of Large Solar Projects appeared first on Green Prophet.

Authorities in Jordan are stepping up the monitoring of forests to stop illegal logging over the winter months

The onset of winter can only mean one thing- the weather is going to get colder and in Jordan, that means a rise in illegal logging. According to the government, illegal logging for heating purposes and for trade increases in the cold months and so to prevent this, they are stepping up their monitoring. The number of patrols and rangers from the Ministry of Agriculture will be doubled and individuals caught cutting down trees could face a three-month prison sentence and a fine for each tree cut down.

Jordan has very limited amounts of green spaces including forests and so it’s understandable that they are taking such steps to protect them. According to the UN FOA only 1.1% of Jordan is forested which amounts to a tiny 98,000 hectares of land. Under Jordan’s environmental regulations, individuals who cut down trees without a license could face a prison sentence and are fined JD100 for each state-owned tree cut down and JD50 for each tree cut from private land.

However, it’s not just the government that is concerned with protecting Jordan’s trees and forests. This year we reported on the effort by locals to stop the government from cutting down 2,200 trees in the Ajloun forest to make way for a military school. The campaigners invoked the strict laws on cutting down trees to ask for the military school to be relocated and reduce the number of trees for the chop.

Logging is a huge environmental problem as trees have various advantages such as improving air quality and cutting them also release tonnes of carbon. Activists have been killed for tackling the issue in places like Indonesia and a Moroccan activist was threatened with arrest for exposing illegal practices run by local authorities.

: Jordan Times

: Image via Guillaume Paumier/flickr.

For more on illegal logging across the Middle East see:

Jordan Reconsiders Deforestation Plans

Making Majestic Cedars of Lebanon Sustainable In Our Time

Moroccan Activist Faces Prison Sentence For Exposing Illegal Logging

The post Jordan Steps Up Anti-Logging Efforts Over Winter appeared first on Green Prophet.

Strange mass bird and fish kill-offs. Then 152 dolphins get “zapped” in the Straits of Hormuz and 200 cows die suddenly in the American State of  Wisconsin. News reports some 7000 buffalo dying  in Vietnam seem to indicate that something unnatural may be causing all of these apocalyptic animal catastrophes. And the fact that a number of these occurrences have happened since the beginning of this year, make the events seem even odder. These topics were discussed during my resent interview with James Donald, a film producer for the nature film production company John Rubin Productions. He thinks that US experimentation HAARP is to blame.

James Donald

John Rubin Productions has produced and filmed natural documentary programs for the Natural Geographic Society, NATURE, and other prominent nature organizations.

Following my article about 152 dolphins being literally burned to death in the water by what is being attributed to some kind of mysterious “death ray” Donald contacted me with the request to conduct an interview for a program his company is working on. To be published on  National Geographic, his film will be dealing with what could be causing a number of weird mass bird and other animal “die-offs”, which many are now saying could be connected with the HAARP or High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program being conducted in Gakona Alaska by the US Navy, Air Force and University  of Alaska.

The documentary that Donald is producing deals with the possible connection of the HAARP experiments with the Earth’s electromagnetic radio waves present in the ionosphere with these strange animal deaths. He became extremely interested  in the Green Prophet article that I wrote, dealing with the circumstances of the mass killing of the dolphins in the Persian Gulf in late November 2007, which was documented by Iranian fishermen and made into a You Tube video clip, included in my article.

During our half hour conversation, we covered a number of these strange animal death occurrences, including the more than 5,000 red-winged blackbirds that literally fell from the sky in the town of Beebe Arkansas as well as a large number of fresh water drum fish (a fish that communicates with it’s kind by making a series of croaking sounds) found dead on the banks of the Arkansas River.

“Aflockalypse” bird and fish deaths

Although I am not a physicist or biologist my answer to the cause of these occurrences is that they cannot be attributed to something like the HAARP ionosphere experiments without more tangible proof.

The Arkansas bird killing incident was explained by people like Carol Meteyer, a veterinary pathologist for the National Wildlife Health Center, a division of the US Geological Service who said about the blackbirds, who were thought to have been disturbed by “a loud noise” while they were roosting:

“They fly disoriented and crash. Bird reactions are endemic. One bird reacts, and the others freak out. And on it goes. I wouldn’t say it happens all the time. I’ve been here  (at the Center) for 20 years. You see them occur once in 10 years, but they happen.”

James Donald and his production crew want to obtain more evidence that something unnatural, such as the HARRP project, may be causing these occurrences. Reading overviews about the HAARP project itself, on its posted website is not possible now as the site has apparently been removed.

When it was available, it did not give any clues about its involvement in events that include everything from earthquakes and volcanoes; including the recent 9 magnitude  earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan . The Project is also being linked to  severe hurricanes and typhoons, and even “washing machine thunderstorms that suck birds into them and then spit them out.”

The interview concluded with both of us agreeing to stay in touch with each other and report any new animal death phenomena that could be attributed to disturbances of the electromagnetic waves in the ionosphere.

Regarding any finger pointing in the direction of the HAARP projects, the jury is still out. What do you think?

Read more on HAARP and death ray experimentation:
Death Ray Dolphin Killing in Persian Gulf May be Worse Than Shark Slaughter
Were Nikola Tesla’s Solar Innovations Buried by Big Oil?
Experts Say Military Testing Behind Mass Bird and Fish Deaths

Photo: Salem News:

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Bald Eagles, longtime American symbols of strength and independence, are now fighting for their very survival in Canada due to their main food source, chum salmon, being scarce due to pollution and over fishing. Chum salmon are salmon which after fighting the river currents to return to the streams when where they were born, are now left to die after spawning. The eagles, which feed on these dead or dying fish that are rich in nutrients, have become some weak and emaciated from lack of food they some of them have literally fallen from the sky. Some of the birds, due to not being able to find food in the natural habitats, have had no alternative other than foraging for food in municipal  dumps and landfills, often resulting in being poisoned by chemicals thrown into the dumps or by poisons used to kill rats and other vermin.
“If they can’t find the carrion (meat), they go to the dump, and the problem with the dump … is you get a lot of poisoning,” said Robin Campbell from the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre in Errington, in an interview with The Province, a prominent British Colombian news source.

The sad tale of starving eagles is just one of other not so pleasant accounts of how birds of prey, and scavengers like vultures are falling into hard times due to current environmental realities. In the Middle East this is becoming increasingly so, due to poisoning of the birds’ natural prey  by pesticides, destruction of natural habitats, and even by hunting.

In Turkey alone, it was reported recently that up to 70% of that country’s bird population is threatened with extinction, including several species of raptors.

Imperial eagle. A regal bird in its own right.

One of these species, the Imperial Eagle is every bit as regal as it’s North American counterpart, but is also threatened from loss of natural habitat and food sources.

Israeli research into finding ways to improve the lot of its declining population of  vultures even resulted in one of them, which had strayed off its usual migratory path, being caught in Saudi Arabia and accused of being part of a “Zionest spy plot”, due to the tracking device attached to it.

Although there are projects to try to restore populations of raptors, such as a joint one being carried between Iran and Qatar, it appears that even these efforts are aimed primarily in insuring that there will be adequate populations of raptors for use in hunting sports.

Whether it’s loss of salmon for bald eagles, or rodents and pigeons for falcons and hawks in Middle Eastern countries, the overall outlook does not look good, and is probably going to get even worse.

::The Province

Read more on issues affecting raptors and other Middle Eastern birds:

Sheikh Abdul Aziz: a Green Sheikh Who Cares About Our Planet

70% of Turkeys Birds Face Extinction

Owls Unite Farmers in Israel, Palestine and Jordan

The post Why Starving Bald Eagles Are Dropping From the Sky appeared first on Green Prophet.

Further to my article in the Jerusalem Post about open places in Netanya being squeezed out by mega housing projects, this writer decided to pay a return visit to one of the nature reserves, the Argaman Iris Reserve, located in southern Netanya next to the ongoing Ir Yamim development project. The iris reserve contains a variety of indigenous wild flowers, most notably the wild purple or Argaman iris.

Found in only a few parts of Israel, including small areas in southern Netanya, this perennial plant blossoms only during a 2 to 3 week period from mid February to early March. The iris reserve is confined to a site of around 100 acres, and bordered on the east by the construction projects and on the west by what used to be the city’s garbage dump, until it was relocated elsewhere. 

“Neither the Argaman Iris site nor the Winter Pond (about 3/4 of a kilometer north of the iris reserve)  are protected nature sites,” says Alon Rothschild, in charge of Environmental Protection and Natural Sites in the Central Region for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI).

Entrance to iris preserve: note construction in background

Rothschild, who was interviewed for the JPost article, says that a hotel project was originally planned  to be built on part of the area now allocated for the Argaman iris reserve, but it was moved elsewhere due to lobbying efforts from the SPNI and other “green” organizations.

The entrance to the reserve is off the main coastal road heading out of Netanya, and  parking lots are located on either side of the reserve. Signs at the reserve’s entrance tells visitors the various kinds of plant and animal life located in the reserve, much of which covered the entire area now being developed by the Ir Yamim project, which also will include a galleria-type shopping mall.

Trails with rope barriers are designed to allow visitors to the reserve to observe the irises and other plant life without causing any damage to fragile flowers like the irises. This doesn’t always work out according to plan however, as people often want to touch or be photographed by these lovely flowers.

Another problem is “invading” plant life that competes with the irises and other native species for space. “We have to remove these invasive plants from the site so the natural species can thrive,” says Rothschild. Fortunately, on my visit to the site on a particularly lovely Friday morning in mid February, the irises were “cooperating” and were starting to bloom. Other native flowers and flowering plants were blooming too, and the buzzing of pollen gathering bees could be heard everywhere.

Not just irises, but other beauty too

There may be hope yet for the iris reserve and other nature sites in this city of 208,000, as the Netanya Municipality is becoming more aware of the need to preserve these “green spaces” for future generations.

According to Sara Gazit, Parks and Infrastructure Architect for the Municipality, and who was also interviewed for the Jpost article: “Until 10 years ago, we at the municipality did not have ecologists to advise us on what needs to be done to maintain these natural sites. Since then, we have conducted surveys and made a lot of changes to area building plans in order to take the ecological situation into consideration in these natural sites.”

Read more on environmental issues affecting nature sites in Israel:

Is Jerusalem Stone Under Threat?

Ancient Ceasarea Needs Every Grain of Sand

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