Lihu’e, Hawaii— Four conservation groups are suing Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative for killing rare seabirds without a permit, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The complaint, filed in Hawaii’s federal district court on March 24, says the utility’s illegal actions “bear substantial responsibility” for the crash of the Newell’s shearwater population on Kaua’i, […]
By Janet LarsenMarch 25, 2010 …With global average temperatures up 0.5 degrees Celsius since the 1970s, springtime warming is coming earlier across the earth’s temperate regions. A number of organisms have responded to the warming temperatures by altering the timing of key life-cycle events. The problem, however, is that not all species are adjusting at […]
By now, most of us are aware that there is a large patch of floating plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What you may not know is that it’s not made up of plastic bags and empty bottles. It’s made up of billions of tiny pieces of plastic, and it’s basically invisible unless […]
By John Platt Mammals, birds and fish living in the High Arctic experienced an average 26 percent drop in their populations between 1970 and 2004 due to the loss of sea ice, according to a new report from The Arctic Species Trend Index (ASTI), Tracking Trends in Arctic Wildlife [pdf]. The 2010 report, commissioned and […]
By ANDREW DARBY IN HOBARTMarch 15, 2010 – 4:52PM To save Australia’s biggest seabirds, first go to the South Atlantic. Albatrosses, which breed on Australian islands, specifically Tasmanian islands in Bass Strait and the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, face greater peril off South America than they do at “home”. The challenge of saving these birds from […]
Songbirds on the US east coast are becoming smaller, a trend thought to be driven by climate changes. By Matt WalkerEditor, Earth News Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause. A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are […]
By JAY ROOT, Associated Press Writer Jay Root, Associated Press Writer – Thu Mar 11, 6:50 pm ET AUSTIN, Texas – Global climate change poses a significant threat to migratory bird populations, which are already stressed by the loss of habitat and environmental pollution, according to a report released Thursday. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar […]
By Josh MogermanSenior Media Associate, Chicago Posted March 3, 2010 You want to know just how tone-deaf the tar sands industry and their Big Oil backers are? Yesterday, in a trial over the death of 1600+ ducks that had landed in a toxic mining runoff lake, lawyers for the Canadian tar sands company Syncrude […]
Researchers have found a high concentration of plastic debris is floating in the Atlantic Ocean north of the Caribbean, months after concerns were raised over a vast patch of rubbish floating in the Pacific Ocean. The study’s principal investigator said that the findings were based on more than 64,000 tiny bits of plastic collected over […]
By John Platt Hundreds of brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) have been found sick or dead off the coasts of California in the past month, the victims of a mysterious ailment that has scientists baffled. When found alive, the birds appear hungry and disoriented. But necropsies performed on dead pelicans found that they had been eating, […]
