Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Radioactive boars on the rise in Germany

By VERENA SCHMITT-ROSCHMANN, Associated Press WriterAugust 20, 2010 (AP) — It was a big shot. A big hog. And a big disappointment. When Georg van Bebber hauled back his wild boar from Ebersberg forest near Munich after a day of hunting, he was exhilarated about his impressive prey. But before he could take it home, […]

California irrigators lose court battle against wild steelhead protection

SAN FRANCISCO, California, August 20, 2010 (ENS) – An attempt by irrigation districts to strip federal protected status from wild steelhead trout in California’s Central Valley was rejected in a ruling today from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This Endangered Species Act case is a challenge to the decision of the National Marine Fisheries […]

Mauritania plants trees to hold back desert

Reporting by Laura Martel; writing by David Lewis; Editing by Alison WilliamsSat Aug 21, 2010 11:11am EDT NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) – Mauritania has launched a tree-planting program aimed at protecting its capital from the advancing desert and coastal erosion, a project that could eventually extend thousands of kilometers across Africa. President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz on […]

Study measures Atlantic Ocean plastic accumulation

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News 20 August 2010 A study has measured the amount of plastic debris found in a region of the Atlantic Ocean over a 22-year period. US researchers, writing in Science, suggest the volume of plastic appeared to have peaked in recent years. One reason could be tighter […]

Lion populations plummet in Uganda parks

www.mongabay.comAugust 19, 2010 Lion populations across Uganda’s park system have declined 40 percent in less than a decade, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). “Conserving Uganda’s last remaining lions is a global responsibility,” WCS Senior Carnivore researcher Tutilo Mudumba said in a statement. “If we outlive this iconic African species, we will have to […]

Drought drives decade-long decline in plant growth

By Steve Cole, NASA Headquarters, WashingtonAug. 19, 2010 WASHINGTON — Global plant productivity that once was on the rise with warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline because of regional drought according to a new study of NASA satellite data. Plant productivity is a measure of the rate of the […]

Plight of Pakistan’s flood-devastated areas comes into focus

It has taken weeks for the trail of destruction in mountain villages to be starkly revealed, writes By MARY FITZGERALD Foreign Affairs Correspondent, The Irish Times Friday, August 20, 2010 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan — NESTLED AMID the fabled Karakoram range of the greater Himalaya, Kohistan has long been home to one of the most remote […]

Graph of the Day: Areas of the Lower 48 States With Hot Daily Low Temperatures, 1910–2008

This chart shows the percentage of the land area of the lower 48 states with summer daily low temperatures well above normal. The bars represent individual years, while the line is a smoothed nine-year moving average. Heat waves occurred with high frequency in the 1930s, and these remain the most severe heat waves in the […]

Underwater Gulf oil plume 22 miles long, likely to threaten marine life for months – ‘Detectable in the marine environment for the rest of my life’

The Associated Press Published: Thursday, August 19, 2010, 1:00 PM     WASHINGTON — A 22-mile-long invisible mist of oil is meandering far below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, where it will probably loiter for months or more, scientists reported Thursday in the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill. The […]

Shelled organisms in Gulf of Maine threatened by ocean acidification

By Kelsey Abbott and Justin Ries 8/8/10 07:42 pm  The Gulf of Maine is and always has been an essential part of the coastal New England economy. Throughout history, the bounty of the Gulf of Maine has fluctuated due to fishing pressures, technology and species’ popularity. As these changes have affected some parts of the […]

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