Graph of the Day: Total area occupied by Monarch butterfly colonies at overwintering sites in Mexico, 1994-2013

By Chip Taylor 14 March 2013 (Monarch Watch) – The World Wildlife Fund-Mexico / Telcel Alliance, in collaboration with Mexico’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP), held a press conference late on the 13th of March 2013 to announce the results of the status of the monarch populations that overwinter in the oyamel forests […]

Murder of turtle conservationist highlights perils of protecting Costa Rica’s environmental wealth – ‘The same people who want to sell drugs are the same people who come to the beach and kill turtles’

By Lindsay Fendt 9 July 2013 (Tico Times) – The murder of 26-year-old Jairo Mora in late May exposed cracks in the country’s international environmental image, and proved that protecting nature sometimes has a terrible cost. Costa Rican park rangers switched out their muck boots for loafers and converged on San José two weeks ago […]

Yangtze finless porpoise declared critically endangered – ‘Future generations will undoubtedly wonder if we were ignorant, incompetent or both’

By Jeremy Hance7 July 2013 (mongabay.com) – The newest update to the IUCN Red List has downgraded the status of the Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) from Endangered to Critically Endangered, reflecting the deteriorating state of arguably the world’s most degraded river system. The downgrade follows a survey last year that counted only 1,000 […]

Sumatran orangutan beaten to death, reports conservation group

Jakarta, 2 July 2013 (AFP) – Indonesian villagers have beaten a Sumatran orangutan to death, an animal protection group said Tuesday, the latest case of one of the critically-endangered primates being killed by humans. The adult female died Thursday after being rescued from a village in Aceh province with numerous injuries by the Sumatran Orangutan […]

President Obama launches initiative to curb wildlife trafficking – ‘Poaching operations have expanded beyond small-scale, opportunistic actions to coordinated slaughter commissioned by armed and organized criminal syndicates’

By Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent 1 July 2013 (The Guardian) – Barack Obama launched a new initiative against wildlife trafficking on Monday, using his executive authority to take action against an illegal trade that is fuelling rebel wars and now threatens the survival of elephants and rhinoceroses. The initiative, announced as the president visited […]

A green venture: Tuna in a tank

By Dave Cohen1 July 2013 (Decline of Empire) – Few stories better capture the human relationship with the natural world than Science Daily’s Developing Techniques for Tuna Aquaculture (12 June 2013). Swimming around and around in a 20,000 gallon tank at the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus are several large yellowfin tuna captured last […]

Illegal wildlife trade flourishes in Sumatra – Critically endangered orangutans sell for $200 – ‘It’s a zoo, but you can buy’

By Birchard Kellogg10 June 2013 (mongabay.com) – In a chilly rain on Sunday, in a town just a few kilometers beyond the edge of a protected Sumatran rainforest, a young orangutan sat perched on a piece of plywood and grabbed the metal wires of his tiny cage. He has sat in that cage for six […]

Hong Kong’s pink dolphins dwindle to just dozens as calves die from ‘toxins in the mother’s milk, accumulated from polluted seawater’

By SASHA HAN21 June 2013 BEIJING (ABC News) – The Chinese white dolphin, treasured by the people of Hong Kong people for its pink color and friendly nature,  is endanger of being exterminated by pollution and a traffic jam of boats. The dolphin, once the official mascot of the 1997 sovereignty changing ceremonies, draws tourists […]

Blind, starving cheetahs: the new symbol of climate change?

By Adam Welz    21 June 2013 (The Guardian) – The world’s fastest land animal is in trouble. The cheetah, formerly found across much of Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, has been extirpated from at least 27 countries and is now on the Red List of threatened species. Namibia holds by far the […]

Up to half of all birds threatened by climate change – ‘The magnitude of the conservation program we need to put in place is mind-boggling’

By Michael Marshall 13 June 2013 (New Scientist) – Between a quarter and a half of all birds, along with around a third of amphibians and a quarter of corals, are highly vulnerable to climate change. These findings have emerged from the most comprehensive assessment to date of the impact of global warming on life. […]

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