wildlife – Desdemona Despair

The global Living Planet Index, 1970-2020. The LPI is based on 34,836 monitored populations of 5,495 vertebrate species. The white line represents the index value, and the shaded areas represent the statistical uncertainty surrounding the value. Graphic: WWF / ZSL

October 19, 2024

Global biodiversity report shows “catastrophic decline” in wildlife populations – “In just my lifetime, 50 years, we’ve seen a decline of 73 percent in the average size of these wildlife populations”

By Molly McCrea 18 October 2024 (CBS News) – A shocking new report on global biodiversity is detailing what it calls “a catastrophic decline” in wildlife populations ahead of a major international conference on biodiversity. On Monday, 21 October 2024, the United Nations will convene a two-week conference in Cali, Colombia called COP16. On the agenda […]

Research into Southern California’s history of ocean dumping was spurred by the discovery of mysterious and corroded barrels dumped off the coast of Los Angeles. Photo: David Valentine / ROV Jason

May 27, 2024

DDT found in deep-sea fish raises troubling concerns for food web – “Nothing is untouched”

By Rosanna Xia 6 May 2024 (Los Angeles Times) – For several years now, one question has held the key to understanding just how much we should worry about the hundreds of tons of DDT that had been dumped off the coast of Los Angeles: How, exactly, has this decades-old pesticide — a toxic chemical spread across […]

A canoe rests on the bank of a dried-out creek in the Amazon rainforest. Transport by canoe became impossible in some places at the height of the 2023 drought. Photo: Lucas Amorelli / Sea Shepherd

December 28, 2023

Amazon rainforest experienced worst drought on record in 2023 – “We’ve never seen anything like this”

By Stephanie Hegarty 25 December 2023 (BBC World Service) – The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged, and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return. As […]

Aerial view of boats stranded in the mud of the parched Rio Negro amid a drought in the Amazonas state of Brazil on 29 September 2023. Photo: Michael Dantas / AFP

October 29, 2023

Drought drains Brazilian Amazon residents reliant on waterways – “It’s every man for himself”

By Orlando Junior 3 October 2023 (AFP) – Not far from the emblematic site where the black waters of the Rio Negro join the brown currents of the Solimoes, two chief tributaries of the Amazon, what once was a lake has given way to a vast stretch of cracked mud. Now, the only water remaining […]

Number of generic extinctions per century among in different classes of vertebrates. The low number of reptiles and amphibia, which underestimate the magnitude of extinction pattern, is probably the result of the lack of information in earlier centuries, where very few species had been described. The dotted line represents the background extinction rate. Graphic: Ceballos and Ehrlich, 2023 / PNAS

September 30, 2023

Study finds human-driven mass extinction is eliminating entire branches of the tree of life – “We’re losing our only known living companions in the entire universe”

By Sean Cummings 18 September 2023 (Stanford News) – The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as human actions are wiping out vertebrate animal species hundreds of times faster than they would otherwise […]

A sick sea lion and her pup are shown recovering from domoic acid poisoning at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, California, on 6 July 2023. During the summer of 2023, the center cared for sea lions that were sickened by a historically bad algal bloom along California’s Coast. Photo: Yannick Peterhans / USA TODAY

July 9, 2023

“Death coming out of the ocean”: Red tide killing California sea lions, dolphins – “I have been a marine mammal veterinarian for 35 years, and this is definitely the worst in my professional lifetime”

By Amanda Lee Myers 8 July 2023 (USA TODAY) – Jalapeño the sea lion turned up on a crowded California beach in a daze, experiencing seizures and heavily pregnant. Instead of giving birth in a remote location like sea lions prefer, Jalapeño had her pup on Southern California’s Hermosa Beach on a busy Saturday, surrounded by throngs […]

Network map showing followers for key amplifiers of climate disinformation during COP27, grouped by common traits or identifying factors. Network mapping around COP26 showed that, among accounts following key climate misinformers on Twitter, 7.5 percent were primarily focused on climate - for COP27 the cluster constitutes a mere 0.33 percent. The shift reveals how right-wing ‘culture war’ influencers are becoming the most prominent voices in spreading climate misinformation. Such content drives an ecosystem in which environmental issues, including COP summits, can more easily be framed and amplified as a polarising topic - a trend covered in depth by a recent peer-reviewed paper in Nature Climate Change. Overall, the audience for key misinformation influencers has a similar composition to last year’s COP26 network. Accounts in the ‘U.S. Conservative’ cluster comprise the largest portion of the map, including highly influential pundits like Dinesh D’Souza (2.9m followers) and Tom Fitton (1.9m followers) alongside elected officials like House Rep. Lauren Boebert (2m followers) who focus on broadly right-wing “culture war” issues. Taken together, the US, UK, and Canada Conservative clusters make up 72.25 percent of the overall network. While climate issues do not dominate their content strategy, these accounts do share related misinformation during key climate-related events, including COP, or as part of wider outputs. Climate content regularly features alongside other misleading, disproven and/or unsubstantiated claims on an array of topics, including around electoral fraud, vaccinations, the COVID-19 pandemic, migration, and child trafficking rings run by so-called ‘elites’ Graphic: Climate Action Against Disinformation / Graphika

January 22, 2023

Climate crisis misinformation is thriving on Elon Musk’s Twitter, research shows

By Beatrice Nolan 20 January 2023 (Insider) – Misinformation about the climate crisis is flourishing on Elon Musk’s Twitter, according to a study: Deny, Deceive, Delay Vol. 2: Exposing New Trends in Climate Mis- and Disinformation at COP27.[pdf]. The study, published on 19 January 2023 by Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), said Twitter was recommending the […]

Children from a Maasai community look at the remains of an elephant that died in the drought on community land near the outskirts of Amboseli National Park on 18 December 2022 in Amboseli, Kenya. Photo: Ed Ram / Getty Images Europe / AFP

December 31, 2022

Latest Horn of Africa climate outlook looks dry – “I have tried my best to save the plants using fertiliser and spraying pesticides, but they are now dying due to lack of rain”

By Jeff Otieno 28 December 2022 (The Africa Report) – The latest climate forecast showing that the greater horn of Africa will experience its fifth consecutive failed rainy season could not have come at a worse time for its drought-stricken residents who are now forced to brace for another bout of extreme hunger. 50-year-old Jeremiah […]

The carcass of an elephant that died during the drought is seen in the Shaba National Reserve, Isiolo county, Kenya, 22 September 2022. Photo: Baz Ratner / REUTERS

December 31, 2022

Reuters pictures of the year: Extreme weather in 2022

30 December 2022 (Reuters) – From historic droughts to floods, climate change worsened weather extremes in 2022. See more 2022 extreme weather and environment photos from Reuters here and here. Pictures of the year: Extreme weather in 2022

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

December 19, 2022

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 […]