Blogging the End of the World™
ScienceDaily (July 28, 2009) — Kathmandu, Nepal – The first ever overall nation-wide estimate of the tiger population brought a positive ray of hope among conservationists. The figures announced by the Nepal Government’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) shows the presence of 121 (100 – 194) breeding tigers in the wild within […]
ScienceDaily (July 28, 2009) — When the magnitude 8 Sichuan earthquake struck southern China in May 2008, it left more than 69,000 people dead and 4.3 million homeless. Now ecologists have added to these losses an assessment of the earthquake’s impact on biodiversity. Researchers show that more than 23 percent of the pandas’ habitat […]
Britain’s ancient trees, including Newton’s apple tree, are in danger of dying out due to pollution, development and climate change, the National Trust has warned. By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent The UK has some of the most famous ancient trees in the world around country houses, in historic parkland and castle grounds. However the National […]
By Fred Pearce Diverting water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to supply agriculture, alongside a warming climate, means the once-bountiful region is becoming desert Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq […]
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis SHAIZAR CASTLE, Syria (Reuters) – Only a few decades ago, fish were plentiful in the Orontes river which for thousands of years has provided water to the lush Syrian plains, at the crossroads of the ancient world. These days the Orontes’s 12th century norias, enormous water wheels famous for their distinctive […]
By Jasper Copping Aggressive Australian and over here – black swans are spreading across the UK and threatening to force out their native cousins conservationists have warned. The birds, which originate in Australia and have escaped from private collections in Britain, are now breeding at dozens of sites across the country. The number of locations […]
ScienceDaily (July 25, 2009) — Scientists say conditions are favorable for significant coral bleaching and infectious coral disease outbreaks in the Caribbean, especially in the Lesser Antilles. Similar conditions may develop in Gulf of Mexico and Central Pacific. The forecast is based on the July NOAA Coral Reef Watch outlook, which expects continued high […]
By Jennifer Hattam, Istanbul, Turkey “The sea back in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s was thick with fish and we were the envy of the town. My pockets were always full and I traveled a lot,” says Mustapha Shaalan, 68. Now, like other Lebanese fishermen, he is lucky to make $200 a month, as daily […]
100 Abandoned Houses: Photographs of Detroit Paul Kedrosky crunches numbers from Bloomberg and makes them far more astounding: According to the latest data, the number of vacant U.S. homes touched 18.7-million in the second quarter. That is a daunting figure, of course, but it is more fun to put it in context. Assuming four people […]
By Christine Dell’Amore, National Geographic News Attacking from nests as big as pickup-truck beds, invasive western yellowjacket wasps in Hawaii are munching their way through an “astonishing diversity” of creatures, from caterpillars to pheasants, a new study says. Adult yellowjackets consume only nectar. But they kill or scavenge prey to deliver needed protein to their […]
