By Tom Knudson, tknudson@sacbee.com17 April 2011 Outside Palm Desert, a young bobcat dies mysteriously at a nature preserve. South of Nevada City, a farmer finds an owl dead near his decoy shed. In San Rafael, a red-shouldered hawk bleeds heavily from its mouth and nose before succumbing at an animal care center. Each of those […]
By Jessica Marshall11 Apr 2011 Numbers of Chinstrap and Adélie penguins in the Antarctic Peninsula region have dropped by more than 50 percent in the last 30 years, driven mainly by dramatic declines in supplies of tiny, shrimp-like krill, their main prey, says a new study. Krill, meanwhile, have declined by 40 to 80 percent, […]
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent 09 Apr 2011 Researchers have been left puzzled by the appearance of “naked” penguins on both sides of the South Atlantic. The condition, which is known as feather-loss disorder, has been found to afflict penguin chicks in colonies in both South Africa and on the coast of Argentina. Dee Boersma, […]
By Lewis SmithMonday, 28 March 2011 Catherton Common reverberates with the distinctive song of skylarks. It boasts stunning views over the Shropshire countryside and is one of the most valuable spots for plants anywhere in Britain. Just two years ago, its huge botanical diversity and nationally important populations of adders and other struggling native reptiles […]
By KELLY DOHERTY, Associated Press23 March 2011 Up to 45 rare species of wallaby, bandicoot and other Australian animals could become extinct within 20 years unless urgent action is taken to control introduced predators and other threats, scientists warned Wednesday. Dozens of mammals, birds, lizards and other vertebrates in the remote northwestern Kimberley region are […]
By Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil20 March 2011 Little Penguins are the smallest species of their kind, but that undeniable cuteness has been a detriment to their very existence lately. On Granite Island in Southern Australia, thieves have been abducting the Little Penguins from their protected reserves under cover of night, presumably to make them […]
By Jason G. Goldman 22 March 2011 On Friday, March 11, Japan was rocked by an earthquake. People were displaced, a nuclear reactor was in trouble, and the world watched as a tsunami flooded Japan, threatened the islands of the Pacific, and ultimately hit the western coasts of North and South America. Chris Rowan pointed […]
Eradication programme aims to save millions of seabirds from invasive rats on South Georgia By Lewis Smith, guardian.co.uk24 February 2011 14.57 GMT Testing for the biggest rat eradication programme in history is beginning on a remote UK island in the south Atlantic. Scientists are preparing to drop poison in a limited area of South Georgia […]
By MARK HUME, Globe and MailWednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 9:11PM EST VANCOUVER — When David Hancock saw the bald-eagle count on the Chehalis River drop from more than 7,000 to fewer than 400 over a few days in December, he knew a crisis was coming. Earlier this week, news reports that starving eagles were “falling […]
By Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News 5 February 2011 Birds living around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident have 5% smaller brains, an effect directly linked to lingering background radiation. The finding comes from a study of 550 birds belonging to 48 different species living in the region, published in the journal PLoS One. […]
