By Ryan F. Mandelbaum 16 December 19 (Gizmodo) – Lonesome George, the last of the Pinta Island tortoises, died in 2012. George’s story is the perfect extinction story. It features a charismatic character with a recognizable face, an obvious villain, and the tireless efforts of naturalists. The population of the Pinta Island tortoise species was […]
By Claire Wordley 1 October 2019 (Mongabay) – Despite over six weeks of firefighting, the infernos destroying Bolivia’s forests continue to spread. 5.3 million hectares (about 13.1 million acres) — an area larger than the whole of Costa Rica — have been destroyed, and about 40 percent of that area was forest. A perfect storm of factors — from […]
By Zoë Schlanger 18 September 2019 (Quartz) – The smoke wafting from fires in the tropical forests of Indonesia—forming plumes big enough to blot out the sky in Malaysia and Singapore—is a reminder of a global supply chain run amok. Whereas the devastating fires burning in the Amazon rainforest were set largely for cattle ranches that feed the […]
By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Monica Machicao 25 August 2019 LA PAZ, Bolivia (The New York Times) – Amid growing international alarm over fires in Brazil’s Amazon region, neighboring Bolivia is facing devastating fires of its own, with flames devouring farmland and environmentally sensitive forests alike. In midst of the calamity, the country’s president, Evo Morales, suspended his […]
By Jenny Gonzales 18 August 2019 (Mongabay) – The combined impact of ongoing deforestation and escalating climate change on the Amazon rainforest could radically transform its configuration by 2050, with the biome divided into two distinct blocks — one occupied by still significant but very seriously diminished rainforest, the other dominated by agribusiness and scattered […]
By Siobhán O’Grady 9 August 2019 (The Washington Post) – Pope Francis called for a united Europe in an interview published by Italian daily La Stampa on Friday, saying recent political rhetoric has echoed that of Nazi Germany. “I am concerned because we hear speeches that resemble those of Hitler in 1934,” he said. “ ‘Us […]
By Nadja Neumann 8 August 2019 (IGB) – Rivers and lakes cover just about one percent of Earth’s surface, but are home to one third of all vertebrate species worldwide. At the same time, freshwater life is highly threatened. Scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and international colleagues have now […]
OAKLAND, California, 23 July 2019 – On 29 July 2019, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint. It is Earth Overshoot Day. Its date has moved up two months over the past 20 years to the […]
WASHINGTON, 11 July 2019 (Center for Biological Diversity) – Highlighting the need for global action to fight giraffes’ silent extinction, a body of scientific experts today declared giraffes in Kenya and Tanzania — called Masai giraffes — endangered. Masai giraffes, one of nine giraffe subspecies, had long been considered a key population for the species. But […]
18 October 2017 (IWWR) – Since 1989, in 63 nature reserves in Germany the total biomass of flying insects has decreased by more than 75 percent. This decrease has long been suspected but has turned out to be more severe than previously thought. Ecologists from Radboud University together with German and English colleagues published these […]
