By IAN JOHNSON3 June 2011 BEIJING — China’s three decades of rapid economic growth have left it with a “very grave” environmental situation even as it tries to move away from a development-at-all-costs strategy, senior government officials said on Friday. In a blunt assessment of the problems facing the world’s most populous country, officials from […]
By FELICITY BARRINGER30 May 2011 IRVINE, Calif. — Scientists have been using small variations in the Earth’s gravity to identify trouble spots around the globe where people are making unsustainable demands on groundwater, one of the planet’s main sources of fresh water. They found problems in places as disparate as North Africa, northern India, northeastern […]
By Tsuyoshi Inajima2 Jun 2011 Radioactive water accumulating in Japan’s crippled Fukushima plant may start overflowing from service trenches in five days, potentially increasing the contamination from the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. Tokyo Electric Power Co. has been manually pumping water into overheating reactors after cooling systems broke down and much of that has […]
Map showing loss of headwater streams to mountaintop mines and valley fills (MTM-VF). This diagram depicts the loss of stream miles and channel complexity that can result from extensive mountaintop mining and valley filling. Solid blue lines inside valley fill areas represent buried streams. Note that some headwaters above filled areas are disconnected from the […]
By Rob Taylor; Editing by Ed Davies2 June 2011 CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia warned on Thursday that its World Heritage-listed outback Kakadu wetland, made famous in the “Crocodile Dundee” films, was at severe risk from climate change, as the government faced a growing battle to introduce a carbon tax. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s one-seat majority […]
Reporting by Leonardo Goy, Raymond Colitt; Editing by Reese Ewing and Eric Beech1 June 2011 (Reuters) – Brazil’s environment agency gave its definitive approval on Wednesday for construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, a controversial $17 billion project in the Amazon that has drawn criticism from native Indians and conservationists. The regulator, Ibama, issued […]
By Matt Walker Editor, BBC Nature 31 May 2011 Populations of wildlife species in the world-renowned Masai Mara reserve in Kenya have crashed in the past three decades, according to research published in the Journal of Zoology. Numbers of impala, warthog, giraffe, topi, and Coke’s hartebeest have declined by over 70%, say scientists. Even fewer […]
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF28 May 2011 Early last Tuesday, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, a forest activist and tree nut harvester, and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, drove a motorcycle through Brazil’s northern Para State, in the Amazon rain forest. As they crossed a river bridge, gunmen lying in wait opened fire with a […]
By arevamirpal::laprimavera30 May 2011 Radioactive pollution is now detected in snow and freshwater fish. And Japan’s Kan administration still pushes for nuclear power, not just for the Japanese but for the up-and-coming countries in Asia and the rest of the world. From Mainichi Shinbun Japanese (5/30/2011; link, emphasis added): 山岳愛好家らで作る「高山（たかやま）の原生林を守る会」は２９日、福島市周辺の山岳地帯から採取した雪の放射線量分析結果を公表した。標高１５００メー トル以下を中心に高濃度の放射性セシウムが検出され、最高は箕輪山東斜面の１３３８メートル地点で１キロ当たり２９６８ベクレルだった。市内の阿武隈川の ヤマメなど川魚からは国の暫定規制値（１キロ当たり５００ベクレル）を上回るセシウムが検出され、雪解け水の流入が原因とみられるという。 On May 29, […]
Increasing levels of ocean acidity could spell doom for British Columbia’s already beleaguered northern abalone, according to the first study to provide direct experimental evidence that changing sea water chemistry is negatively affecting an endangered species. The northern abalone–prized as a gourmet delicacy–has a range that extents along the North American west coast from Baja […]
