Oil sands country: Remote region at the heart of the Keystone controversy

By Anne Thompson, chief environmental correspondent26 April 2013 (NBC News) – While the possible construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has made for contentious disagreements from the halls of Congress to ranches in Nebraska, the real environmental debate begins in a place most Americans have never heard of. Nearly 700 miles north of the U.S.-Canada […]

Federal court backs EPA regulation of mountaintop removal

By Neela Banerjee23 April 2013 WASHINGTON (Los Angeles Times) – A federal appeals court unanimously backed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate a controversial form of coal mining called mountaintop removal, overturning a lower court decision that barred the agency from stopping a large coal mine in West Virginia. The ruling by the D.C. […]

Borneo elephants poisoned by unidentified toxin

Jeremy Hance18  April 2013 (mongabay.com) – After three months, officials still don’t know for certain what killed at least 14 Bornean elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis) in the Malaysian state of Sabah. However tests do indicate that the herd perished from a “caustic intoxicant,” possibly ingested accidentally or just as easily intentionally poisoned. A distinct subspecies, […]

Video: J. Michael Fay talks about massive gold mining operations in British Columbia that will devastate the region

  21 April 2013 (Talking Stick TV) – Interview with J. Michael Fay, Wildlife Conservation Society scientist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, about his recent investigation of mining impacts in British Columbia. For more info: http://unukriverpost.org/ Technorati Tags: Canada,North America,pollution,deforestation,habitat loss,ecosystem disruption,fish decline

Coal and cattle are most damaging businesses to nature

15 April 2013 (Reuters) – Coal-fired power generation in Asia and cattle ranching in South America are the most damaging businesses for nature with hidden costs that exceed the value of their production, a U.N.-backed report said on Monday. Global output of basic goods from cement to wheat caused damage totalling $7.3 trillion a year […]

Rural Brazil lets another environmental murderer walk free – ‘The man was a monster’

By Paulo Padilha and Felipe Milanez 15 April 2013 (VICE) – The city of Marabá was founded on 6 April 1913, in the southeastern edge of the Amazon rainforest on a narrow strip of land where the rivers Tocantins and Itacaiunas meet. For the first several decades of its existence, the city’s economy was dependent […]

New Zealand deforestation intentions soar with low carbon prices

By Brian Fallow  15 AprIL 2013 (New Zealand) – Deforestation intentions have soared as the emissions trading scheme, at least at current rock-bottom prices, is no longer seen as a barrier to switching to other land uses. A survey of large forest owners (with over 10,000 hectares) by Professor Bruce Manley of Canterbury University has […]

Believing in clean oilsands like believing in ‘magic fairies’, top scientist says

By Tom Spears13 April 2013 OTTAWA (The Ottawa Citizen) – Claims that Alberta’s oilsands are environmentally harmless are “lies” and won’t convince anyone in Washington, one of this country’s most famous ecologists said Friday. Political leaders in Alberta and Ottawa “seem to think that Americans believe in magic fairies — just shut your eyes and […]

Sumatran rhino population plunges, down to 100 animals – ‘Serious steps must be taken to roll back the tide of extinction of the Sumatran rhino’

By Jeremy Hance8 April 2013 (mongabay.com) – Less than 100 Sumatran rhinos survive in the world today, according to a bleak new population estimate by experts. The last survey in 2008 estimated that around 250 Sumatran rhinos survived, but that estimate now appears optimistic and has been slashed by 60 percent. However conservationists are responding […]

Amazon faces renewed risk from cattle – ‘Trade is emerging as a key driver of deforestation in Brazil’

5 April 2013 (Reuters) – Rising foreign demand for beef and soybeans will tempt Brazil to clear more of the Amazon rainforest, in a reversal of recent success in slowing forest losses, a study said on Thursday. About 30 per cent of deforestation in Brazil in the decade to 2010 was due to farmers and […]

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