Tour of the toxic chemical soup in the North Pacific Gyre

By Thomas Morton, Online Editor, Vice Magazine February 17, 2010 4:16 p.m. EST Brooklyn, New York (VBS.TV) — Back in the mid-zeroes, I remember reading a lot of stories about a buildup of trash in the Pacific Ocean so massive that it had formed a floating island of waste the size of Texas. Its colorful […]

Lost ‘ghost' traps keep catching lobsters; Maine lobstermen lose 100,000 to 200,000 traps per year

Associated PressUpdated: 11/27/2009 07:27:52 AM EST, Friday, Nov. 27 PORTLAND (AP) — Beneath the cold ocean waters off the coast of Maine, the nation’s lobster breadbasket, lie hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of old wire lobster “ghost traps.” Lost over the years to storms, boats — even the knives of fishermen who’ve cut them from […]

German government report: global ocean protection measures have failed

By Axel Bojanowski Thousands of tons of trash are thrown into the sea each year, endangering humans and wildlife. A classified German government report obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE indicates that efforts by the United Nations and the European Union to clean up our oceans have failed entirely. Since the world’s oceans are so massive, few […]

Climate change, pollution are suspects in rusty blackbirds' plummeting numbers

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning Newsrloftis@dallasnews.com, 12:00 AM CST on Sunday, February 7, 2010   From North Texas to Florida, a high-pitched voice is strangely missing from the chatter of wintering birds. The rusty blackbird, a winter visitor to Dallas-Fort Worth, has suffered one of North America’s steepest and least understood declines. Since […]

Officials fear another whooping crane die-off

Associated PressJan. 27, 2010, 5:58AM The world’s last remaining natural flock of endangered whooping cranes, which suffered a record number of deaths last year, will probably see another die-off because of scarce food supplies at its Texas nesting grounds this winter, wildlife managers said. The flock lost 23 birds in the 2008-2009 winter season, in […]

Brown pelican migration disrupted, birds starving

By STEVEN DUBOIS Associated Press WriterPosted: 01/26/2010 05:51:24 PM PSTUpdated: 01/26/2010 05:51:25 PM PST PORTLAND, Ore.—California brown pelicans are begging for food on the Oregon coast rather than migrating south to breeding grounds. An estimated 1,000 brown pelicans have remained on the state’s coast, an unheard of number at a time of year when they […]

With climate change, birds are taking off for migration sooner, but not reaching destinations earlier

  Migrating birds can and do keep their travel dates flexible, a new study published online on January 28th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveals. But in the case of pied flycatchers, at least, an earlier takeoff hasn’t necessarily translated into an earlier arrival at their destination. It appears the problem is travel […]

Graph of the Day: Mammal, Bird, and Amphibian Declines by Cause

Red List Index (RLI) for (a) birds, (b) mammals and (c) amphibians showing trends driven by the impacts of invasive alien species (IAS)  compared with trends driven by other factors, for the proportion of species expected to remain extant in the near future without additional conservation action; n = 9,785 nondata deficient extant bird, 4,555 […]

Little owl in decline across Britain and Europe

Nature Notebook: Unlike similar introductions, the little owl has been an attractive addition to Britain’s avifauna By Michael McCarthyTuesday, 26 January 2010 Here’s some sad news for birdwatchers and classicists alike: the wise old owl is in decline. Across Europe, the bird which began the association between owls and intelligence is dropping in numbers – […]

Drastic decline in British migratory birds

By Michael McCarthy, Environment EditorSaturday, 23 January 2010 One of Britain’s most attractive songbirds has vanished from most of southern England in a dramatic population decline, new research shows. The whinchat is a summer visitor from Africa with an orange breast and a prominent white eyestripe. It was widely scattered across the country 20 years […]

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