By Geena Reed 27 January 2020 (UCS) – Last week, the Trump administration finalized its rollback of the expanded definition of the waters of the United States. Now fewer water bodies, including wetlands and ephemeral streams, will be protected under the Clean Water Act. The quality of more than half of the country’s wetlands and 18 percent of its […]
By Ricardo Moraes 18 January 2020 XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK, Brazil (Reuters) – Leaders of native tribes in Brazil issued a rallying call to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from what they called the “genocide, ethnocide and ecocide” planned by the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. A manifesto signed on Friday at the […]
8 January 2020 (University of Sydney) – Professor Chris Dickman has revised his estimate of the number of animals killed in bushfires in NSW to more than 800 million animals, with a national impact of more than one billion animals. Several weeks ago Professor Dickman, from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Science, estimated that 480 […]
By Marnie O’Neill 1 January 2020 (News.com.au) – There are concerns that entire species of plants and animals may have been wiped out by bushfires following estimations that 480 million animals may die as a result of the crisis. Ecologists from the University of Sydney estimate almost half a billion mammals, birds and reptiles may […]
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 Tzeporah Berman 10 December 2019 (The Guardian) – This week, the Canadian government is in Madrid telling the world that climate action is its Number 1 priority. When they get home, Justin Trudeau’s newly re-elected government will decide whether to throw more fuel on the fires of climate change by giving the go-ahead to […]
ByThomas Nilsen 30 November 2019 (The Barents Observer) – “Allowing this to happen with a protected national salmon fjord doesn’t make sense at all,” said Silje Lundberg, head of Naturvernforbundet. The organisation is the Norwegian branch of Friends of the Earth. Lundberg said the planned dumping of tailings from the copper mine to the fjord […]
By Eric Todisco 20 November 2019 (People) – Amid the raging bushfires in South Wales, Australia, a hero emerged to save the life of a young koala. [Warning: Desdemona has a pretty thick skin when it comes to doom, but this video made me weep like a child. –Des] The dramatic rescue was caught on […]
By Jackson Ryan 24 November 2019 (CNET) – The koala is one of the most iconic Australian marsupials. The grey fuzzballs spend nearly all their time in the trees, surviving on a diet of toxic gum leaves and a healthy routine of extended naps. As Australia suffered through unprecedented bushfires in the past two weeks, […]
By Colin Dwyer 18 November 2019 (NPR) – Picture, for a second, just how vast New York City is. All told, including Staten Island, the Bronx and every block in between, the massive metropolis takes up more than 300 square miles. Now, try to picture a hunk of land more than 12 times that size. That’s […]