A veterinarian looks at an X-ray photo of the Bornean orangutan, showing 130 pellets in its body. The male Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) was found barely alive on 5 February 2018 by officials from Kutai National Park in East Kalimantan. It died the next day from its extensive injuries. Photo: Centre for Orangutan Protection

Four Indonesian farmers charged in killing of orangutan that was shot 130 times – “All took turns shooting at the orangutan”

JAKARTA, 18 February 2018 (Mongabay) – Police in Indonesia have arrested and charged four farmers with the killing of an orangutan found shot more than 100 times. Investigators in East Kalimantan province, in Indonesian Borneo, detained the four men on 15 February 2018 and charged them the following day. They have been identified as 36-year-old […]

Global warming has quadrupled ocean dead zones – “The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth’s environment”

4 January 2018 (SERC) – In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as […]

Photo gallery: Natural disasters and severe weather in 2017

The Eagle Creek wildfire burns as golfers play at the Beacon Rock Golf Course in North Bonneville, Washington, 4 September 2017. [more] Pictures of the year: Natural disasters Extreme heat in Indonesia: A freshly-scorched landscape in Pekanbaru, Indonesia in August 2017, after a fire caused by hot temperatures and lack of rain. [more] The impact […]

Sumatra region heats up as rainforests are razed for palm oil plantations – “The land use change does not only impact biodiversity and stored carbon, but also has a surface warming effect, adding to climate change”

By Hans Nicholas Jong 29 October 2017(Mongabay) – The wholesale destruction of rainforests across parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island to make way for cash-crop plantations has not just devastated animal and plant biodiversity in the region, but may also be driving an alarming rise in temperatures on the ground, a new study suggests. Average temperatures […]

“Decimated”: Germany’s birds disappear as insect abundance plummets 76 percent

By Morgan Erickson-Davis 27 October 2017 (Mongabay) – A new study in PLOS ONE reveals a 76 percent reduction in Germany’s flying insect biomass over the past 27 years while another reports the country’s bird abundance has declined 15 percent in just over a decade. While the causes behind the insect decline haven’t yet been […]

Temporal distribution of insect biomass at selected locations in nature protection areas in Germany, 1989-2016. (A) Daily biomass (mean ±1 se) across 26 locations sampled in multiple years (see S4 Fig for seasonal distributions). (B) Distribution of mean annual rate of decline as estimated based on plot specific log-linear models (annual trend coefficient = −0.053, sd = 0.002, i.e. 5.2% annual decline). Graphic: Hallmann, et al., 2017 / PLOS ONE

Three-quarters of the total insect population lost in protected nature reserves – “Whatever the causal factors responsible for the decline, they have a far more devastating effect on total insect biomass than has been appreciated previously”

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 […]

Tenfold increase in childhood and adolescent obesity in four decades – World will have more obese children and adolescents than underweight by 2022

LONDON, 11 October 2017 (WHO) – The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022, according to a new study led by Imperial College London […]

Raging wildfire north of downtown Los Angeles grows to one of the largest blazes in city history

By Ruben Vives, Andrea Castillo, and Alene Tchekmedyian 2 September 2017 (The Los Angeles Times) – A brush fire in the Verdugo Mountains north of downtown Los Angeles has burned more than 5,000 acres, making it one of the largest fires in the city’s history and one that officials warn could grow larger if erratic weather […]

Histograms of daily maximum wet-bulb temperature, TWmax (°C), and maps of the ensemble averaged 30-year TWmax. (A) The histograms are generated for the most populous cities in the selected regions for each scenario: HIST (blue), RCP4.5 (green), and RCP8.5 (red). Values within each panel correspond to the 2- and 25-year return period of the bias-corrected annual maxima of TWmax, and the x and y axes indicate TWmax (°C) and the number of occurrences on a logarithmic scale, respectively. The background image was obtained from NASA Visible Earth. (B to D) The spatial distributions of bias-corrected ensemble averaged 30-year TWmax for each GHG scenario: HIST (1976–2005) (B), RCP4.5 (2071–2100) (C), and RCP8.5 (2071–2100) (D). Graphic: Im, et al., 2017 / Science Advances

Climate change to cause humid heatwaves that will kill even healthy people

By Damian Carrington 2 August 2017 (The Guardian) – Extreme heatwaves that kill even healthy people within hours will strike parts of the Indian subcontinent unless global carbon emissions are cut sharply and soon, according to new research. Even outside of these hotspots, three-quarters of the 1.7 billion population – particularly those farming in the Ganges […]

Study finds there are four ways to reduce economic inequality: state collapse, pandemic, revolution, and “mass mobilization warfare”

By Ana Swanson 19 April 2017 (The Washington Post) – Rising economic inequality in the United States has been a major animating force on both the political left and the right. Whether it is Sen. Bernie Sanders promising to rebuild blue-collar communities or President Trump pledging to “make America great again,” today’s political platforms often […]

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