By Frank Pope, Ocean Correspondent Scientists say man-made noise equipment, including anti-seal sonar devices used in fish farms, is driving deep-water animals such as whales to shore, where they die. A northern bottlenose whale was washed up dead on a beach in Prestatyn, North Wales, on Saturday morning, the tenth of the species to become […]
Food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years to feed the world’s growing population, the United Nations food agency predicts. The Food and Agricultural Organisation says if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050. The world population is expected […]
Alpine glaciers are now releasing nasty chemicals that settled on them decades ago and have since been banned By Jessica Hamzelou Bad hair and shoulder pads are not the only things from the 1980s that we’d rather not see again. Nasty chemicals banned in that decade are also on the list. Unfortunately, melting Alpine glaciers […]
The salinity in Lake Alexandrina at Milang increased to 6,000 EC in April 2009 and is currently about 5,500 EC, which is significantly higher than the long term average (see Figure 7). Upstream of the Goolwa Barrage, the salinity increased to 32,000 EC in March 2009 and is now about 20,000 EC (compared with seawater […]
Hope for frog conservation got bleaker with a recent study showing that fungus-associated extinction is reducing amphibian biodiversity in Central America By Carina Storrs Threats to wildlife survival, such as habitat loss and climate change, tend to strike some species harder than others, and the threat of chytrid, a deadly amphibian fungus, appears to be […]
By Bob Janiskee Scientists working in Denali National Park suspect that permafrost melting that’s caused by climate warming might be an important reason why many of Alaska’s shallow lakes and wetlands have shrunk or disappeared. If the trend continues, wetland-dependent wildlife might be severely impacted. … Bush pilots and others familiar with the black spruce […]
By Christophe Parayre OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) – A world away from the heated negotiations for a critical deal on stopping climate change at the UN summit in Copenhagen, Burkina Faso inhabitants are suffering the direct consequences of global warming. Jacqueline, Noroudine and Guy-Prosper are among the 150,000 made homeless by floods after the heaviest rainfall in […]
Rome (UPI) Oct 9, 2009 – Global rice stockpiles have plummeted because of poor crop yields, raising fears of upheaval in international grain markets ahead of the World Food Summit in the Italian capital next month. Sharp increases in rice prices since last year have hit consumers across the world, especially in Asia and the […]
Antananarivo (AFP) Oct 9, 2009 – Environmental groups are protesting the resumption of exports of precious woods from Madagascar, arguing that the wood is logged illegally and that the island’s forests are being destroyed. On September 21 a government decree “temporarily” legalised the export of “certain stocks” of precious woods, citing the need to “evacuate […]
PARIS (Reuters) – Waste from French power stations was being deposited in the open air in Russia, French newspaper Liberation said on Monday. The paper said 13 percent of French radioactive waste produced by power group EDF could be found in the open air in a town in Siberia to which access is forbidden. The […]
