Beetles to blame for Colorado fires? Blame climate change instead

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor25 June 2013 (NBC News) – Tiny, winged bark beetles have been the ecological bad guys of the West for more than a decade, and rightfully so. They’ve killed off millions of acres’ worth of trees in Colorado. Now all those dead trees are feeding the flames across tens of thousands […]

Illegal wildlife trade flourishes in Sumatra – Critically endangered orangutans sell for $200 – ‘It’s a zoo, but you can buy’

By Birchard Kellogg10 June 2013 (mongabay.com) – In a chilly rain on Sunday, in a town just a few kilometers beyond the edge of a protected Sumatran rainforest, a young orangutan sat perched on a piece of plywood and grabbed the metal wires of his tiny cage. He has sat in that cage for six […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of smoke from forest fires engulfing Singapore, 19 June 2013

By Adam Voiland19 June 2013 On 19 June 2013, NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites captured striking images of smoke billowing from illegal wildfires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The smoke blew east toward southern Malaysia and Singapore, and news media reported that thick clouds of haze had descended on Singapore, pushing pollution to record […]

Growth in crop yields inadequate to feed the world by 2050 – ‘The world faces a looming agricultural crisis, with yield increases insufficient to keep up with projected demands’

By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent 20 June 2013 (The Guardian) – If the world is to grow enough food for the projected global population in 2050, agricultural productivity will have to rise by at least 60%, and may need to more than double, according to researchers who have studied global crop yields. They say that […]

Land degradation threatens food security

By MD. ASADULLAH KHAN8 June 2013 (The Daily Star) – With two centuries of an unprecedented population boom, likely to reach 9 billion by 2050, land degradation by human activities and climatic upheavals poses a threat to food security, especially in a land-scarce country like Bangladesh. Historically known, it took the human species about 150,000 […]

Peru funded illegal Amazon rainforest road: Global Witness

By David Hill    24 May 2013 (Guardian) – The local government in one of the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon has allegedly funded the illegal clearing of rainforest at the start of the proposed route for a controversial highway that would run through the country’s biggest national park. According to a report by Global […]

170 indigenous people from the Xingu river region again occupy Belo Monte dam construction site – Forceful eviction authorized by local judge

[Petition: Peace and Respect in the Amazon] By Gabriel Elizondo30 May 2013 Sao Paulo, Brazil (Al Jazeera) – It’s another standoff in the Amazon, and it could get very ugly very fast. On Monday, 170 indigenous people armed with bows and arrows from the Xingu river region again occupied a work site at the controversial […]

Canada government increases advertising spend on tar sands from $9 million to $16.5 million

By Suzanne Goldenberg16 May 2013 (The Guardian) – The Canadian government has nearly doubled its advertising spending to promote the Alberta tar sands in an aggressive new lobbying push ahead of Thursday’s visit to New York by the prime minister, Stephen Harper. The Harper government has increased its advertising spending on the Alberta tar sands […]

Amazon rainforest on path to lose 65 percent of biomass by 2060 – study

By Alex Kirby10 May 2013 LONDON (Climate News Network) – Researchers see no winners if agriculture made possible by widespread felling in the Amazon continues to expand. Large-scale expansion of agriculture at the expense of the forest could entail the loss of almost two-thirds of the Amazon’s terrestrial biomass by later this century, with grave […]

When science goes silent: With the muzzling of scientists in Canada, Harper’s obsession with controlling the message verges on the Orwellian

By Jonathon Gatehouse3 May 2013 (Maclean’s) – As far as the government scientist was concerned, it was a bit of fluff: an early morning interview about great white sharks last summer with Canada AM, the kind of innocuous and totally apolitical media commentary the man used to deliver 30 times or more each year as […]

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