Pacific sea otters’ failure to thrive confounds wildlife sleuths

By INGFEI CHEN27 February 2012 MONTEREY, California – On a fog-shrouded morning in Monterey Bay, wildlife researchers are out to capture a southern sea otter named Blanca — part of a three-year project to learn why her species, hunted to near extinction a century ago, is still in trouble here despite decades of efforts to […]

Nigeria president visits village near Chevron gas rig fire that has raged for weeks

By Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press27 February 2012 KOLUAMA 2, Nigeria – Nigeria’s president attempted to calm anger in villages Monday near a Chevron Corp. offshore natural gas rig that has been engulfed in a raging fire for weeks, though no official could say when the inferno will be extinguished. President Goodluck Jonathan offered few […]

Global warming feeds bark beetles: Are they unstoppable?

By Dean Kuipers27 February 2012 Hear the sound of chewing out in our vast forests of lodgepole pine, spruce and fir, the chewing that’s already destroyed half the commercial timber in important regions like British Columbia? That’s the sound of climate change, says biologist Reese Halter. Global warming in the form of a bark beetle. […]

On eve of Deepwater Horizon trial, Transocean says BP ignored well-test warning

By Jef Feeley and Laurel Brubaker Calkins25 February 2012 BP Plc (BP) officials overseeing the Macondo well that spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico ignored questions about whether safety tests done hours before a fatal blast on the drilling rig were flawed, lawyers for Transocean Ltd. (RIG) said in a […]

First pictures from sealed-off Bakun dam zone reveal social and environmental disaster

BASEL, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) has today disclosed a series of shocking pictures from the Bakun dam exclusion zone showing disturbing poverty and environmental destruction in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo. A BMF research team has managed to overcome the tight security measures preventing journalists or NGOs to travel […]

U.S. urban forests losing four million trees per year

WASHINGTON, DC, 23 February 2012 (ENS) – New Orleans, Houston, and Albuquerque are losing trees faster than any other U.S. cities, and across the country tree cover is declining at a rate of about four million trees per year, finds new U.S. Forest Service research published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. Researchers […]

Drought toll on urban forests in Texas: 5.6 million trees and counting

2010   2011 By Matt Dietrichson16 February 2012 About 5.6 million trees in cities and towns across Texas were killed by last year’s record-setting drought, the Texas Forest Service has estimated after studying before-and-after satellite imagery. This “dramatic” toll on the state’s urban forest is “a slow-moving disaster, not like a hurricane or ice storm,” […]

Graph of the Day: Life Expectancy Changes Near Mountaintop Removal Sites in Appalachia, 1997 – 2007

There’s a common saying in Appalachia: what we do to the land, we do to the people. Recently, 21 peer-reviewed scientific studies have confirmed the truth of those words. Not only has mountaintop removal permanently destroyed more than 500 Appalachian mountains, but people living near the destruction are 50% more likely to die of cancer […]

Chevron Nigeria gas well fire ‘may burn for months’ – ‘Like watching a volcano erupting, fire spewing in every direction’

By Mark Lobel, BBC News22 February 2012 A gas-fuelled fire, with flames as high as 5m, may burn for months in waters off the Niger Delta in south-east Nigeria, Chevron has told the BBC. Two workers died after January’s explosion at the KS Endeavour exploration rig, owned by the US firm. Friends of the Earth […]

Human population the primary factor in exotic plant invasions in the United States

Contact: Qinfeng Guo, qguo@fs.fed.us, 828-257-4246, Pensoft Publishers23 February 2012(Pensoft Publishers) – Extensive ongoing research on biotic invasions around the world constantly increases data availability and improves data quality. New research in the United States shows how using improved data from previous studies on the establishment of exotic plant species changes the understanding of patterns of […]

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