By Matt WalkerEditor, Earth News Noise pollution is becoming a major threat to the welfare of wildlife, according to a scientific review. Sounds produced by vehicles, oil and gas fields and urban sprawl interfere with the way animals communicate, mate and prey on one another. The sounds are becoming so ubiquitous that they may threaten […]
Botanists at Britain’s Kew Gardens have collected seeds from 10 percent of the world’s wild plants, their first goal in a long-term project to protect all endangered species, they said Thursday. … With it the project reaches its target to collect, bank and conserve seeds from 10 percent of the world’s most under-threat wild plant […]
Food production will have to increase by 70% over the next 40 years to feed the world’s growing population, the United Nations food agency predicts. The Food and Agricultural Organisation says if more land is not used for food production now, 370 million people could be facing famine by 2050. The world population is expected […]
Antananarivo (AFP) Oct 9, 2009 – Environmental groups are protesting the resumption of exports of precious woods from Madagascar, arguing that the wood is logged illegally and that the island’s forests are being destroyed. On September 21 a government decree “temporarily” legalised the export of “certain stocks” of precious woods, citing the need to “evacuate […]
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) – Creatures and plants living in rivers and lakes are the most threatened on Earth because their ecosystems are collapsing, scientists said on Sunday. They urged the creation of a new partnership between governments and scientists to help stem extinctions caused by humans via pollution, a spread of […]
By Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News How towns and cities cause the extinction of local plants has been revealed for the first time. An international team of botanists has compared extinction rates of plants within 22 cities around the world. Both Singapore and New York City in the US now contain less than one-tenth of […]
Destroyed by rising carbon levels, acidity, pollution, algae, bleaching and El Niño, coral reefs require a dramatic change in our carbon policy to have any chance of survival, report warns By David Adam Animal, vegetable and mineral, a pristine tropical coral reef is one of the natural wonders of the world. Bathed in clear, warm […]
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 […]
ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2009) — The world’s last remaining “pristine” forest — the boreal forest across large stretches of Russia, Canada and other northern countries — is under increasing threat, a team of international researchers has found. The researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada and the National […]
Trends in marine fishery catches as a function of fish diversity. (A) Trajectories of fish and invertebrate collapses (i.e., falling below 10% of maximum historical harvest) over the last 50 yr (♦=collapses by year, ▲=cumulative collapses). Data are shown for all (black), species-poor (<500 species, blue) and species-rich (>500 species, red) Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs). […]
