A montage of photos that were submitted to the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2019 award. “Journey by Launch” by Azim Khan Ronnie; “Polluted New Year” by Eliud Gil Samaniego, “Remains of the Forest” by J Henry Fair, “Tuvalu Beneath the Rising Tide” by Sean Gallagher, “My Climate Future” by Souray Karmakar, “Looking Beyond What is There” by Graham Earnshaw, “Where the City Ends and the Ships Begin” by Azim Khan Ronnie, and “Tuvalu Beneath the Rising Tide” by Sean Gallagher (second entry). Photo: CIWEM

Photo gallery: Striking images from the 2019 Environmental Photographer of the Year competition – “Climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the time to act”

23 September 2019 (CIWEM) – The CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year exposes the terrible impacts being wrought on our planet by humans, but also celebrates humanity’s innate ability to survive and innovate, lending hope to us all that we can overcome challenges to live sustainably. [See all of the submissions: Environmental Photographer of the […]

Conservationists from Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation hold a baby orangutan rescued along with its mother during a rescue and release operation for orangutans trapped in a swath of jungle destroyed by forest fires in Sungai Mangkutub, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo: Quartz

Global demand for palm oil drives fires in Indonesia – “Palm oil plantations make a wasteland out of paradise”

By Zoë Schlanger 18 September 2019 (Quartz) – The smoke wafting from fires in the tropical forests of Indonesia—forming plumes big enough to blot out the sky in Malaysia and Singapore—is a reminder of a global supply chain run amok. Whereas the devastating fires burning in the Amazon rainforest were set largely for cattle ranches that feed the […]

A herd of musk ox graze in an area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Photo: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge / AP

Trump administration opens huge wildlife refuge in Alaska to drilling – “This destructive, unlawful plan would sell off one of America’s last great wildlands to the highest bidder”

By Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin 13 September 2019 (The Washington Post) – The Trump administration on Thursday said it would seek to open up the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, picking the most aggressive development option for an area long closed to drilling. In filing […]

People watch sockeye salmon it the fish allder at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Seattle, on 23 June 2017 Photo: Hiram M. Chittenden Locks

Lowest sockeye salmon count on record at the Ballard Locks – “The salmon population is just not healthy anymore”

By Meghan Walker 15 August 2019 (My Ballard) – The number of sockeye salmon passing through the Ballard Locks Fish Ladder is at all-time low, according to yearly counts dating back to the 1970s. According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s daily count, just 18,000 sockeye have been counted at the fish ladder during […]

Flames consume a tree as wildfires rage in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, 1 August 2019 Photo: The Siberian Times

Massive wildlife tragedy in Siberia as bears and foxes flee taiga, while smaller animals suffocate in smoke – “The climatic situation will deteriorate in Siberia”

By Svetlana Skarbo 1 August 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Predators seek food in villages all around Siberia as climate expert warns of worse fires each year due to soaring rise in temperatures, 10°C above average. Wild animals are turning to humans as they escape gas-chamber-like woods, with wildfires continuing to rage across almost 3 […]

A bald eagle, one of the Endangered Species Act’s success stories, near Castle Dale, Utah. Photo: Brandon Thibodeaux / The New York Times

Trump Administration weakens protections for endangered species – “If we make decisions based on short-term economic costs, we’re going to have a whole lot more extinct species”

By Lisa Friedman 12 August 2019 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would change the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, significantly weakening the nation’s bedrock conservation law credited with rescuing the bald eagle, the grizzly bear and the American alligator from extinction. The changes could […]

Species richness of freshwater megafauna in the year 1500 and in the 21st Century in Europe. Graphic: Fengzhi He, 2019

88 percent decline of big freshwater animals over 40-year period – “The results are alarming and confirm the fears of scientists involved in studying and protecting freshwater biodiversity”

By Nadja Neumann 8 August 2019 (IGB) – Rivers and lakes cover just about one percent of Earth’s surface, but are home to one third of all vertebrate species worldwide. At the same time, freshwater life is highly threatened. Scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and international colleagues have now […]

A herd of wild buffalo wade through floodwaters at Kaziranga National Park in the India's northeast state of Assam, 24 July 2019. Photo: Biju BORO / AFP Photo

Rare rhinos among more than 200 animals killed by devastating India floods

GUWAHATI, 24 July 2019 (AFP) – Devastating floods have killed more than 200 wild animals—including 17 threatened one-horned rhinos—in one of India’s best-known national parks, officials said Wednesday. Forty percent of Kaziranga National Park in Assam has been left under water following 10 days of torrential rains that have also killed more than 71 people […]

Lion population in Yankari National Park, 2006-2014, model fitted to time series (black squares are data, white circles are medians of the model-inferred true population sizes μt, and gray areas between dashes lines are 95 percent credible intervals). Graphic: Bauer, et al., 2015 / PNAS

Where lions once ruled, they are now quietly disappearing – Lion population has declined by 50 percent in 25 years

By Olivia Prentzel 18 July 2019 (National Geographic) – For every lion in the wild, there are 14 African elephants, and there are 15 Western lowland gorillas. There are more rhinos than lions, too. The iconic species has disappeared from 94 percent of its historic range, which once included almost the entire African continent but […]

One of sixty-six giraffes arrives in central China’s Henan Province in the early hours of Sunday, 15 October 2017, on a chartered flight from Johannesburg, South Africa. Photo: Henan Daily

Scientists declare Masai giraffes “Endangered” – “We have to regulate the international giraffe trade or risk losing one of our planet’s most remarkable animals”

WASHINGTON, 11 July 2019 (Center for Biological Diversity) – Highlighting the need for global action to fight giraffes’ silent extinction, a body of scientific experts today declared giraffes in Kenya and Tanzania — called Masai giraffes — endangered. Masai giraffes, one of nine giraffe subspecies, had long been considered a key population for the species. But […]

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