Borneo tribes: 30-year regime ‘has destroyed everything’

24 March 2011 (Survival International) – Tribespeople in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo, say the 30-year rule of Chief Minister Taib Mahmud has ‘raped’ their land, destroyed their rainforests and brought ‘hardship and suffering’. This Saturday, March 26, will mark Taib Mahmud’s 30th anniversary as head of the rainforest state. Malaysia’s longest-serving Chief […]

Russian boreal forests undergoing vegetation change, study shows

Contact: Fariss Samarrai, fls4f@virginia.edu28 March 2011 (University of Virginia) Russia’s boreal forest – the largest continuous expanse of forest in the world, found in the country’s cold northern regions – is undergoing an accelerating large-scale shift in vegetation types as a result of globally and regionally warming climate. That in turn is creating an even […]

Trees cocooned in spiders webs, an unexpected side effect of the flooding in Sindh, Pakistan

An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan has been that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, many trees have become cocooned in spiders webs. People […]

Great Lakes barrier may be too weak to stop carp

By Andrew Stern; editing by Vicki AllenFri Mar 25, 2011 CHICAGO (Reuters) – Voltage coursing through electrical barriers designed to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes may need to be raised to keep out juvenile fish, U.S. officials said on Friday. The Army Corps of Engineers has mounted a multimillion-dollar effort to […]

Hundreds of US coal ash dumps lack regulation

By SHAILA DEWAN6 January 2009 The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee in December 2008 was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States — most of them unregulated and unmonitored — that contain billions more gallons of […]

Graph of the Day: Global Percentage of Watershed Covered by Water, 2011

At 197 million acres, the surface area of Canada’s boreal lakes and rivers alone are larger than all but 36 countries. According to a new report by the Pew Environment Group, Canada’s boreal forest contains the world’s largest and most pristine freshwater ecosystem on Earth. A Forest of Blue: Canada’s Boreal Forest, the World’s Waterkeeper […]

Extinction threat for 45 Australia species – ‘We’re in the midst of a massive extinction event in Australia’

By KELLY DOHERTY, Associated Press23 March 2011 Up to 45 rare species of wallaby, bandicoot and other Australian animals could become extinct within 20 years unless urgent action is taken to control introduced predators and other threats, scientists warned Wednesday. Dozens of mammals, birds, lizards and other vertebrates in the remote northwestern Kimberley region are […]

Annual maximum Arctic sea ice extent reached – Ties lowest on record

Arctic sea ice extent appeared to reach its maximum extent for the year on March 7, marking the beginning of the melt season. This year’s maximum tied for the lowest in the satellite record. NSIDC will release a detailed analysis of 2010 to 2011 winter sea ice conditions during the second week of April. Overview […]

Image of the Day: The plastic found in a single turtle’s stomach

Hundreds of shards reveal the threat to wildlife from debris floating in our seas By Adam Sherwin24 March 2011 This collection of hundreds of coloured, jagged shards could be a work of abstract art. But the objects in the photograph to the right are the contents of the stomach of a sea turtle that lost […]

Graph of the Day: World Capture Fisheries Production, 1950-2008

Global capture fisheries production in 2008 was about 90 million tonnes, with an estimated first-sale value of US$93.9 billion, comprising about 80 million tonnes from marine waters and a record 10 million tonnes from inland waters. World capture fisheries production has been relatively stable in the past decade, with the exception of marked fluctuations driven […]

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