Estimated ocean parasite populations in the Puget Sound, 1880-2019. The count per host of ocean parasites that obligately require three or more hosts declined through time, while that of two- and one-host parasites remained stable. Shown are model predictions between the years 1880 and 2019 from phase 1 analysis. Predictions are for the “average” parasite species within each group (i.e., within 1-host parasites, 2-host parasites, and 3+-host parasites) where average is defined as “the parasite species with the abundance that is closest to the average abundance of all parasite species.” Graphic: Wood, et al., 2023 / PNAS

Warming oceans have decimated marine parasites, and that’s not a good thing – “If this can happen unnoticed in an ecosystem as well studied as this one, where else might it be happening?”

By Hannah Hickey 9 January 2023 (UW News) – More than a century of preserved fish specimens offer a rare glimpse into long-term trends in parasite populations. New research from the University of Washington shows that fish parasites plummeted from 1880 to 2019, a 140-year stretch when Puget Sound — their habitat and the second […]

Ducks swim through an algae bloom in Santuit Pond in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in July 2018. Photo: Steve Heaslip / The Cape Cod Times / Associated Press

A toxic stew on cape cod: Human waste and warming water

By Christopher Flavelle 1 January 2023 MASHPEE, Massachusetts (The New York Times) – Ashley K. Fisher walked to the edge of the boat, pulled on a pair of thick black waders, and jumped into the river to search for the dead. She soon found them: the encrusted remains of ribbed mussels, choked in gray-black goo […]

The leadership of the U.N.-backed COP15 biodiversity conference applaud after passing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 19 December 2022. Photo: Julian Haber / UN Biodiversity / REUTERS

COP15 reaches deal to halt decline in nature by 2030 – Countries to allocate $200 billion per year for biodiversity initiatives but funds to biodiversity are miniscule – “We know the global economy and every company in it is negatively impacting biodiversity”

By Isla Binnie and Gloria Dickie 19 December 2022 MONTREAL (Reuters) – A United Nations summit approved on Monday a landmark global deal to protect nature and direct billions of dollars toward conservation but objections from key African nations, home to large tracts of tropical rainforest, held up its final passage. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity […]

An aerial view shows deforestation near a forest on the border between Amazonia and Cerrado in Nova Xavantina, Mato Grosso state, Brazil 28 July 2021. Picture taken 28 July 2021 with a drone. Photo: Amanda Perobelli / REUTERS

Deforestation of Brazilian savanna surged 25 percent in one year – “More than 10,000 square km is a scary number”

By Jake Spring 13 December 2022 SAO PAULO, Dec 13 (Reuters) – Deforestation in the world’s most biologically diverse savanna, the Brazilian Cerrado, rose by around 25 percent in the 12 months through July from the previous period, two people familiar with the still unreleased government data told Reuters. Brazil has yet to publish its […]

Members of the Wampis Nation Peru listen as Indigenous representatives of Latin American countries hold a press conference during the United the Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Canada in December 2022. Photo: Andrej Ivanov / Getty Images

Business is using COP15 to show it’s serious about saving nature, but environmentalists aren’t so sure – “If you come here and your objectives actually are against the objectives of the convention, then we have a problem”

By Marisa Coulton 17 December 2022 (Financial Post) – The UN biodiversity conference in Montreal might go down in history as the moment that business engaged in the fight to preserve nature, but the presence of a thousand corporate representatives is making some the environmentalists who have been attending these meetings for years uneasy. Some […]

A person wearing a carved wooden mask takes part with other people in a march during COP15, the two-week U.N. Biodiversity summit in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 10 December 2022. Photo: Christinne Muschi / REUTERS

Activists dressed as birds and trees rally for nature at COP15 in Montreal – “We see what is happening and it is clearly not sufficient compared to our ambitions and our priorities”

By Gloria Dickie 10 December 2022 MONTREAL (Reuters) – Hundreds of people on Saturday braved sub-zero temperatures to march the streets of Montreal, the host city of this year’s U.N. biodiversity summit, demanding a strong new deal to protect nature worldwide. Wearing costumes to look like birds, trees, and caribou, activists said the COP15 summit could fail […]

Number of Western Monarch butterflies (left) and butterfly surveys (right), 1997-2021. In the western United States, the number of individual butterflies has been steadily decreasing over the past four decades, at a rate of around 1.6% every year, according to a March 2021 study in the journal Science. The iconic Monarch butterfly is one of the species in trouble. Warmer autumn temperatures, an effect of climate change, may be interfering with the butterflies’ hibernation-like period known as diapause. So rather than slowing down ahead of winter, the insects are staying awake longer, expending more energy, and eventually starving to death. In July 2022, the migratory monarch was added to the IUCN’s global endangered species list. Graphic: Catherine Tai / Reuters

The collapse of insects – “They’re the fabric tethering together every freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem across the planet”

By Julia Janicki, Gloria Dickie, Simon Scarr and Jitesh Chowdhury 6 December 2022 (Reuters) – As a boy in the 1960s, David Wagner would run around his family’s Missouri farm with a glass jar clutched in his hand, scooping flickering fireflies out of the sky. “We could fill it up and put it by our […]

Police monitor a protest opposing COP15, the UN Biodiversity Conference, in Montreal, on Wednesday, 7 December 2022. Photo: Graham Hughes / The Canadian Press

Monbiot: The US is a rogue state leading the world toward ecological collapse – “It’s a cliff edge”

By George Monbiot 9 December 2022 (The Guardian) – There are two extraordinary facts about the convention on biological diversity, whose members are meeting in Montreal now to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it. The second is the identity of those that aren’t. Take a […]

Smoke rises from a forest fire in the Transamazonica highway region, in the municipality of Labrea, Amazonas state, Brazil, 17 September 2022. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon slowed slightly last year, a year after a 15-year high, according to closely watched numbers published Wednesday, 30 November 2022. Photo: Edmar Barros / AP Photo

Amazon deforestation in Brazil remains near 15-year high in 2022 – “If da Silva wants to decrease forest destruction by 2023, he must have zero tolerance for environmental crime from Day One of his administration”

By Fabiano Maisonnave 30 November 2022 RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon slowed slightly last year, a year after a 15-year high, according to closely watched numbers published Wednesday. The data was released by the National Institute for Space Research. The agency’s Prodes monitoring system shows the rainforest lost an area […]

This undated photo provided by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources shows a northern long-eared bat. On Tuesday, 29 November 2022, the Biden administration declared the northern long-eared bat endangered, a last-ditch effort to save a species driven to the brink of extinction by a deadly fungus. This is the third species of bat recommended for the designation in 2022 due to white-nose syndrome. Photo: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources / AP

U.S. bat species devastated by fungus now listed as endangered – “This species is in dire straits, but we never want to give up hope”

By John Flesher 29 November 2022 TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan (AP) – The Biden administration declared the northern long-eared bat endangered on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to save a species driven to the brink of extinction by white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease. “White-nose syndrome is decimating cave-dwelling bat species like the northern long-eared bat at […]

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