By Tom Odula30 April 2016 NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Kenya’s president set fire Saturday to 105 tons of elephant ivory and more than 1 ton of rhino horn, believed to be the largest stockpile ever destroyed, in a dramatic statement by this East African country against the trade in ivory and products from endangered species. […]
By John Upton28 April 2016 (Climate Central) – Warm ocean waters that sucked the color and vigor from sweeping stretches of the world’s greatest expanse of corals last month were driven by climate change, according to a new analysis by scientists, who are warning of worse impacts ahead. Climate change made it 175 times more […]
By Brady Dennis 26 April 2016 (Washington Post) – Six years on, scientists are continuing to tally the ecological harms caused by the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The latest glimpse at the ongoing environmental effects of the disaster came in a new report [pdf] by the conservation and […]
By Sara Malm25 April 2016 (Daily Mail) – A Swedish park manager was among five rangers shot by elephant poachers during a fatal firefight which claimed three lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Garamba wildlife park. Poachers entered the UNESCO world heritage site on Saturday, killing one ranger at the scene and injuring four, […]
By Michael Slezak21 April 2016 (The Guardian) – The global coral bleaching event devastating the Great Barrier Reef has spread to reefs in Western Australia, where the federal government halted the implementation of marine parks, which would help the reefs recover. In light of worsening bleaching, the Greens have called on the government to urgently […]
By Elaine Kurtenbach20 April 2016 TOKYO (Associated Press) – The latest scientific assessment paints a likely bleak future for the Pacific bluefin tuna, a sushi lovers’ favorite whose population has dropped by more than 97 percent from its historic levels. A draft summary of a report by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like […]
By Chris Mooney 20 April 2016 (Washington Post) – The conclusions are in from a series of scientific surveys of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching event — an environmental assault on the largest coral ecosystem on Earth — and scientists aren’t holding back about how devastating they find them. Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Task Force […]
By Mike Gaworecki 13 April 2016 (mongabay.com) – China’s demand for swim bladders from a giant Mexican fish called the totoaba is putting the species at risk. It’s also pushing a small porpoise known as the vaquita, one of the most endangered mammals in the world, to the brink of extinction. Vaquita or vaquita marina […]
By Daniel Cressey13 April 2016 (Nature) – Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is undergoing the most severe bleaching event in its history, as corals along the reef expel the symbiotic algae that provide them both with their rich colours and food. Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James […]
By Michelle Innis 9 April 2016 SYDNEY, Australia (The New York Times) – Kim Cobb, a marine scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expected the coral to be damaged when she plunged into the deep blue waters off Kiritimati Island, a remote atoll near the center of the Pacific Ocean. Still, she was stunned […]
