Where have all the insects gone? “We can cause massive damage to biodiversity — damage that harms us”

By Gretchen Vogel10 May 2017 (Science) – Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. “If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen,” says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. Today, drivers spend less time scraping and scrubbing. […]

A giant beached whale sculpture illustrates the plastic pollution problem

12 May 2017 (Plastic Pollution Coalition) – Greenpeace Philippines recently created and installed a giant whale art piece made out of plastic pollution at the Sea Side Beach Resort in Naic, Cavite. The 50-foot installation will be on display until 14 May 2017. “Listen to the dead whale’s wake-up call, look closer and see what […]

Hunting accounts for massive declines in tropical animal populations

13 April 2017 (Radboud University) – Hunting is a major threat to wildlife particularly in tropical regions, but a systematic large-scale estimate of hunting-induced declines of animal numbers was lacking so far. A study published in Science on April 14 fills this gap. An international team of ecologists and environmental scientists found that bird populations […]

Death toll rising for birds in Atlanta

By Sally Sears3 April 2017 ATLANTA (CBS46) – Someone, or something, is killing thousands of birds in Atlanta. Since spring, the death toll began rising every week. For Atlanta office workers, the dead birds are a sad sight at their doorstep. Now, Audubon Society volunteers are tracking and finding the dead or dying birds, many […]

Deforestation increased 79 percent in Amazon rainforest protected areas from 2012 to 2015

By E. Araújo, P. Barreto, S. Baima, and M. Gomes [Translation by Google.]26 March 2017 (Imazon) – Conservation Units (CUs) cover 22% of the Amazon forest and are an effective strategy to conserve animals, plants and environmental services, contain deforestation and maintain the planet’s climate balance. However, deforestation rates in PAs have been increasing – […]

Australia State of the Environment report highlights threat of coal mining, urban growth, invasive species, and global warming

By Henry Belot7 March 2017 (ABC News) – The Government has no comprehensive national plan to protect Australia’s landscape to the year 2050, according to a report, which also warns of the potentially irreversible impact of climate change and the threats of coal mining, invasive species, rubbish, urban growth and habitat destruction. The State of […]

Sand mining: the global environmental crisis you’ve probably never heard of

By Vince Beiser27 February 2017 (The Guardian) – Times are good for Fey Wei Dong. A genial, middle-aged businessman based near Shanghai, China, Fey says he is raking in the equivalent of £180,000 a year from trading in the humblest of commodities: sand. Fey often works in a fishing village on Poyang Lake, China’s biggest […]

Global warming could deliver final blow for world’s threatened species

By Alex Dale15 February 2017 (BirdLife International) – A new study suggests that half of all threatened terrestrial mammals, and a quarter of threatened birds, are already being negatively impacted by climate change. Could it prove the tipping point? Scepticism of climate change may be on the rise in some political circles, but there’s no […]

New look at rivers reveals the toll of human activity

By Jim Robbins4 January 2017 (Yale e360) – The Yellowstone River has its headwaters in the mountain streams and snowy peaks of the famous U.S. national park with the same name, and makes an unfettered downhill run all the way to the Missouri River, nearly 700 miles away. It is the longest undammed river in […]

Birds migrating earlier as global temperatures rise

29 December 2016 (BBC News) – Migrating birds are arriving at their breeding grounds earlier as global temperatures rise, a study has found. Birds have reached their summer breeding grounds on average about one day earlier per degree of increasing global temperatures, according to the research by Edinburgh University. The study looked at hundreds of […]

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