Blogging the End of the World™
By Jeremy Hance The Madagascar pochard, the world’s rarest duck, was already thought to be extinct once. After a last sighting in 1991 the species was thought to have vanished until nine adults and four hatchlings were discovered in 2006. However, conservationists have begun to fear that the species will never recover after a survey […]
Bhattegaun, Nepal (AFP) Aug 28, 2009 – Three years ago Naina Shahi’s husband left their small village in rural Nepal to seek work in neighbouring India, leaving her to bring up their three children alone. The dry winters and unpredictable monsoons Nepal has experienced in recent years had hit crop production on the couple’s land […]
By John Letzing, MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Japan issued sobering July economic data on Friday, including a record unemployment rate and the biggest decline in consumer prices in roughly 38 years. Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said the country’s unemployment rate rose to 5.7% in July from 5.4% in the previous month. […]
ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2009) — Scientists have just completed an unprecedented journey into the vast and little-explored “Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.” On the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), researchers got the first detailed view of plastic debris floating in a remote ocean region. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The Scripps research vessel […]
By Michael Reilly, Discovery News Aug. 27, 2009 — Ocean “deserts” — where tiny amounts of life subsist on a scant trickle of nutrients — have gotten more extreme in the last 10 years, according to a new study. Despite widespread uncertainty among scientists, these vast stretches of barren sea could affect the marine food […]
A peak wildlife body has blamed stormwater pollution for the deaths of three bottlenose dolphins in three days in southeast Queensland’s Moreton Bay. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week, an adult carcass washed up at Victoria Point, a small adult was found at Ormiston and a calf at the Port of Brisbane. The cause […]
If it doesn’t rain in the next fortnight many NSW farmers could lose crops, leading to higher food prices over Christmas, Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald says. Mr Macdonald on Sunday released the state’s latest drought figures showing 63.9 per cent of NSW is still in drought, a slight improvement on 64.6 per cent this […]
IF YOU thought it has been unseasonably warm lately, you are correct – the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that this is almost certainly going to be the hottest August on record by a big margin. Temperature records across NSW and Queensland were smashed by three degrees or more this week. The winter heatwave is […]
RICHMOND, Vt.- Mounting evidence that several species of bats have been all but eliminated from the Northeast due to a new disease known as white-nose syndrome prompted a conservation group to send a letter today to Sam Hamilton, the new director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, urging that action on the bat […]
By Crystal Gammon and Environmental Health News Thirty years ago, a Canadian marine biologist noticed something mysterious was happening to beluga whales in the St. Lawrence Estuary. Decades of over-hunting had decimated the population, but several years after the government put a stop to the practice, the belugas still hadn’t recovered. Two decades and hundreds […]
