5 October 2015 (AFP) – Thirty-one percent of cacti, some 500 species, face extinction due to human encroachment, according to the first global assessment of the prickly plants, published Monday. The finding places the cactus among the most threatened taxonomic groups on Earth, ahead of mammals and birds and just behind corals, according to the […]
24 September 2015 (University of California, Davis) – Roughly a quarter of the fish sampled from fish markets in California and Indonesia contained human-made debris — plastic or fibrous material — in their guts, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and Hasanuddin University in Indonesia. The study, published today in the […]
By Michael Casey 29 September 2015 (CBS News) – Federal officials are trying to understand what is behind a sharp rise in the stranding and deaths of threatened fur seals, with dozens washing up along the California coast this year. Designating it an Unusual Mortality Event, NOAA Fisheries said that as many as 80 Guadalupe […]
By Lynn Jenner23 September 2015 (NASA) – The widespread burning of lowland forests on Borneo as well as southern Sumatra, as seen in this image taken by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite, is an annual, manmade occurrence. People use fires to manage agricultural lands which in this part of the world includes large […]
[cf. Starving polar bears observed killing and eating dolphins that were forced north by global warming and Status of polar bear populations for 2014. As of the beginning of 2015, the Polar Bear Specialist Group lists the Barents Sea population as “data deficient”, so the status of this population officially is unknown. –Des] By Lorenzo […]
By Fiona Harvey15 September 2015 (The Guardian) – Tuna and mackerel populations have suffered a “catastrophic” decline of nearly three quarters in the last 40 years, according to new research. WWF and the Zoological Society of London found that numbers of the scombridae family of fish, which also includes bonito, fell by 74% between 1970 […]
16 September 2015 (Plastic Pollution Coalition) – A new international study published on 14 September 2015, led by a University of Queensland researcher, has suggested that more than half the world’s sea turtles have ingested plastic or other human rubbish. The study, led by Dr. Qamar Schuyler from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, found the […]
3 September 2015 (The Siberian Times) – At least eight black bears have been killed in terrorised Luchegorsk, as starving wild animals roam streets and go on the attack. The bear blockade in this settlement of 20,000 has been underway since early August with many locals scared to go outside. Up to 36 bears are […]
By Hilary Beaumont14 August 2015 (VICE News) – In only one week, the corpses of four humpback whales have been found along Canada’s west coast, fueling questions of whether their deaths are connected to a recent uptick of whale and other marine animal deaths in Alaskan waters. So far scientists don’t know what’s causing the […]
By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer2 September 2015 (Common Dreams) – Demanding reparations for industrial pollution and adequate compensation for use of native lands, Indigenous activists in Peru shut down 11 wells in an Amazonian oil block on Tuesday. According to the Spanish EFE news agency, native protesters led by the Federation of the Achuar and […]
