By Craig Welch, The Seattle Times14 November 2011 SAWTOOTH RIDGE, Wash. — The bug lady scoots through stick-straight lodgepole and ponderosa, and marches uphill toward the gnarled trunk of a troubled species: the whitebark pine. The ghostly conifers found on chilly, wind-swept peaks like this may well be among the earliest victims of a warming […]
October 27 (AAP) – The NSW government is failing to protect koalas by allowing logging in remaining habitats, the opposition says. Environment spokesman Luke Foley accused Environment Minister Robyn Parker of breaking an election promise to protect koalas after logging went ahead at the Bermagui State Forest on the south coast. Logging also started last […]
By Tom Levitt30 September 2011 The popularity of tropical shrimp – often marketed as scampi, giant shrimp, gambas or tiger prawns – is having a devastating impact on local communities in Bangladesh, reveals a new investigation produced in conjunction with the Ecologist’s film partner. Sales of frozen prawns have soared in recent years, eaten deep-fried, […]
Caption by William L. Stefanov, Jacobs/ESCG at NASA-JSC10 October 2011 The rainforest of South America, also known as Amazonia, has been undergoing a continual and accelerated conversion process into farmlands (including pasture for livestock) since the early 1960s. This process has typically been achieved by clearing the forest using fire—“slash and burn”—followed by planting of […]
October 9 (mongabay.com) – The 2010 drought that affected much of the Amazon rainforest triggered the release of nearly 500 million tons of carbon (1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere, or more than the total emissions from deforestation in the region over the period, estimates a new study published in the journal […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS7 October 2011 In an article last weekend about rising stress in the world’s forests, I briefly mentioned that computer projections regarding the future of forests are still in a primitive state. Scientists cannot really say whether trees will continue to take up a big proportion of our carbon emissions through the rest […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS 1 October 2011 WISE RIVER, Mont. — The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn. But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in […]
By Neal H. Cruz, Philippine Daily Inquirer3 October 2011 Global warming is upon us almost full blast. The series of unusually strong typhoons, heavy rains, storm surges and, in summer, very hot droughts are proof of that. And weather disturbances will get worse as more greenhouse gases trap more of the sun’s heat and melt […]
September 19 (www.mongabay.com) – Converting West African rainforests into cropland reduces rainforest in adjacent forest areas, reports research published in Geophysical Research Letters. The study, based on a computer model used to simulate rainfall under different land-use conditions, found that cutting down tropical forests in West Africa reduces precipitation over neighboring forest areas by about […]
Bodo, Nigeria, August 16 (AFP) – The air smells like poison, the creek water carpeted with crude, and the boat operator covers his nose as he steps on a jetty in a region hit by what may be the world’s worst oil contamination. “We have been living with this mess for years,” says 31-year-old Friday […]
