Choking the oceans with plastic

By Charles J. Moore25 August 2014 LOS ANGELES (The New York Times) – The world is awash in plastic. It’s in our cars and our carpets, we wrap it around the food we eat and virtually every other product we consume; it has become a key lubricant of globalization — but it’s choking our future […]

After 90 percent decline, Federal protection sought for monarch butterfly – ‘The widespread decline of monarchs is driven by the massive spraying of herbicides on genetically engineered crops’

Contact:  Tierra Curry, Center for Biological Diversity, (928) 522-3681Abigail Seiler, Center for Food Safety, (443) 854-4368 Lincoln Brower, Sweet Briar College, (434) 277-5065Sarina Jepsen, Xerces Society, (971) 244-3727 26 August 2014 WASHINGTON (CBD) – The Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety as co-lead petitioners joined by the Xerces Society and renowned monarch […]

Beautiful and sad GIFs show the ongoing destruction of the oceans

By Laura McClure     15 August 2014 (TED) – Scientist Sylvia Earle (TED Talk: My wish: Protect our oceans) has spent the past five decades exploring the seas. During that time, she’s witnessed a steep decline in ocean wildlife numbers — and a sharp incline in the number of ocean deadzones and oil drilling sites. An […]

16-foot waves measured in Arctic Ocean where once there was only ice

By Jane J. Lee30 July 2014 (National Geographic) – Sixteen-foot waves are buffeting an area of the Arctic Ocean that until recently was permanently covered in sea ice—another sign of a warming climate, scientists say. Because wave action breaks up sea ice, allowing more sunlight to warm the ocean, it can trigger a cycle that […]

A brave call from the ‘Dalai Lama of the Amazon’ – ‘Large-scale mining seems like a big monster that wants to destroy the earth, to destroy nature

By Leila Salazar-Lopez11 August 2014 (Amazon Watch) – Recently I had the great honor of meeting Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, a shaman and internationally renowned spokesman for the Yanomami people of Brazil, while he was on a global speaking tour with our friends at Survival International. It was disturbing to learn that Davi had been receiving […]

Derelict fishing nets have turned the bottom of the sea into a death trap

By Gwynn Guilford13 August 2014 (Quartz) – Each year, at least 640,000 tonnes of nets and other fishing gear goes overboard and never comes back. But just because it’s lost to the sea doesn’t mean that derelict gear stops doing its jobs. The lobster pots, crab traps and dense thickets of nets that litter the […]

Humans have tripled mercury levels in upper ocean – Pollution may soon overwhelm deep seas’ ability to sequester mercury

By Anne Casselman6 August 2014 (Nature) – Mercury levels in the upper ocean have tripled since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and human activities are to blame, researchers report today in Nature. Although several computer models have estimated the amount of marine mercury, the new analysis provides the first global measurements. It fills in […]

Walmart planned for endangered forest lands in South Florida – ‘You wonder how things end up being endangered? This is how.’

By Jenny Staletovich13 July 2014 (Miami Herald) – One of the world’s rarest forests, a section of Miami-Dade County’s last intact tracts of endangered pine rockland, is getting a new resident: a Walmart. About 88 acres of rockland, a globally imperiled habitat containing a menagerie of plants, animals and insects found no place else, was […]

Graph of the Day: Global fishing fleet capacity and productivity, 1975-2005

24 June 2014 (Global Oceans Commission) – The main drivers leading to overfishing on the high seas are vessel overcapacity and mismanagement. However, measures to improve management alone will not succeed without solving the problem of overcapacity caused by subsidies, particularly fuel subsidies. Overcapacity is often described as “too many boats trying to catch too […]

Sri Lanka still losing forests at rapid rate, on track to ‘go beyond the critical point’

By Janaki Lenin15 July 2014 (mongabay.com) – In 1983, Sri Lanka became embroiled in a 26-year-long civil war in which a rebel militant organization fought to establish an independent state called Tamil Eelam. The war took an enormous human toll; unknown numbers disappeared and millions more were displaced. Economic development stagnated in the rebel-held north […]

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