Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Demand for reef fish causes drastic population declines

…The fierce appetite for live reef fish across Southeast Asia — and increasingly in mainland China — is devastating populations in the Coral Triangle, a protected marine region home to the world’s richest ocean diversity, according to a recent report in the scientific journal Conservation Biology. Spawning of reef fish in this area, which supports […]

Antarctic ice shelf set to collapse due to warming

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent WILKINS ICE SHELF, Antarctica (Reuters) – A huge Antarctic ice shelf is on the brink of collapse with just a sliver of ice holding it in place, the latest victim of global warming that is altering maps of the frozen continent. "We’ve come to the Wilkins Ice Shelf to see […]

Declining male fertility linked to water pollution

New research strengthens the link between water pollution and rising male fertility problems. The study shows for the first time how a group of testosterone-blocking chemicals is finding its way into UK rivers, affecting wildlife and potentially humans. The study identified a new group of chemicals that act as ‘anti-androgens’. This means that they inhibit […]

Orangutans near extinction from palm oil plantations

Leakey’s ‘angel’ says world’s frenzy to ‘go green’ pushing orangutans to brink of extinction By ROBIN MCDOWELL Associated Press Writer TANJUNG PUTING NATIONAL PARK, Indonesia January 18, 2009 (AP) Hoping to unravel the mysteries of human origin, anthropologist Louis Leakey sent three young women to Africa and Asia to study our closest relatives: It was […]

Rising sea levels threaten East Coast

By Jasmin Melvin WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sea levels on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast are rising faster than the global average because of global warming, threatening the future of coastal communities, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday. Coastal waters from New York to North Carolina have crept up by an average of 2.4 to […]

Arctic warming pattern 'highly unusual'; Greenland ice sheet likely to melt

By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service   A major U.S. government report on Arctic climate, prepared with input from eight Canadian scientists, has concluded that the recent rapid warming of polar temperatures and shrinking of multi-year Arctic sea ice are "highly unusual compared to events from previous thousands of years." The findings, released on Friday, […]

'Happy Feet' penguins near extinction

Study estimates a million birds were lost on two key islands   Lovelace, the rockhopper penguin that answers life’s questions in the animated film Happy Feet, probably would be just as stumped as the researchers who reported Friday that the population of his northern relatives has declined by 90 percent over the last 50 years. […]

Worst drought in 50 years devastates Argentine agriculture

Argentina’s beef industry and wheat and corn production have been devastated by the country’s most severe drought since 1961- a drought which has also affected agriculture in neighbouring Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. REUTERS – Argentine rancher Gustavo Giailevra has seen 425 of his cattle, a quarter of his herd, die of thirst in the […]

More than 80 pct of China's coastal waters polluted: report

Raw sewage and pollution from agricultural run-off polluted 83 percent of China’s coastal waters in 2008, state media said Saturday. China’s coastal waters last year witnessed 68 red tides, or algae blooms, which feed off nutrients found in excess pollution and sap water of oxygen, killing off large amounts of sea life, Xinhua news agency […]

Northern fur seal pup decline: lowest birth rate since 1916

  Researchers have marked another decline in northern fur seal pup births in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, where most of the world’s population of northern fur seals gather in the summer to rest and breed. “We started seeing an over-all decline in the abundance of fur seals on the Pribilof Islands around […]

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