By Rhett A. Butler4 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Data released this week by Terra-i, a collaborative mapping initiative, shows that deforestation in Ecuador for the first three months of 2013 was pacing more than 300 percent ahead of last year’s rate. The report comes shortly after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa killed off a proposed plan […]
By Rhett A. Butler 26 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Video of illegal gold mining operations that have turned a portion of the Amazon rainforest into a moonscape went viral on YouTube after a popular radio and TV journalist in Peru highlighted the story. Last week Peruvian journalist and politician Güido Lombardi directed his audience to […]
By Katie Moore, Program Director-Animal Rescue 26 September 2013 (IFAW) – Four years ago I rushed to Madagascar to help stop over 100 melon-headed whales from stranding and dying along the islands’ shores. Like most cetacean species, melon-headed whales are very social animals. They rely on sound for communication and echolocation that are essential to […]
By Jeremy Hance18 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – One of the richest ecosystems on the planet may not survive a hotter climate without human help, according to a sobering new paper in the open source journal PLoS ONE. Although little-studied compared to lowland rainforests, the cloud forests of the Andes are known to harbor explosions of […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent 20 September 2013 (theguardian.com) – The Arctic is on course for an ice-free summer within the next few decades, as scientists on Friday declared that sea ice in the region had fallen to one of the lowest annual minimums on record. On 13 September, the expanse of frozen water […]
Contact: Stephen Sautner, ssautner@wcs.org, 718-220-368216 September 2013 NEW YORK (Wildlife Conservation Society) – Using data from the world’s ecosystems and predictions of how climate change will impact them, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, and Stanford University have produced a roadmap that identifies the world’s most vulnerable and least vulnerable areas […]
By Craig Welch12 September 2013 HILO, Hawaii (Seattle Times) – It appears at the end of a palm tree-lined drive, not far from piles of hardened black lava: the newest addition to the Northwest’s famed oyster industry. Half an ocean from Seattle, on a green patch of island below a tropical volcano, a Washington state […]
By Rhitu Chatterjee16 September 2013 (NPR) – How often do whales clean their ears? Well, never. And so, year after year, their ear wax builds up, layer upon layer. According to a study published Monday, these columns of ear wax contain a record of chemical pollution in the oceans. The study, published in Proceedings of […]
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ8 September 2013 CLEWISTON, Florida (The New York Times) – On wind-whipped days when rain pounds this part of South Florida, people are quickly reminded that Lake Okeechobee, with its vulnerable dike and polluted waters, has become a giant environmental problem far beyond its banks. Beginning in May, huge downpours ushered in the […]
12 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – Climate change may push canopy-dwelling plants and animals out of the tree-tops due to rising temperatures and drier conditions, argues a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The development may be akin to “flattening” the tiered vegetation structure that characterizes the rainforest ecosystem. The conclusion is […]