By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comJuly 19, 2010 Kakadu National Park, one of the Australia’s “largest and best-resourced” protected areas, is experiencing a staggering decline in its small mammal population, according to a new study published in Wildlife Research. Spanning nearly 2 million hectares—larger than Fiji—the park lies in tropical northern Australia. “This decline is catastrophic,” John […]
Contact: Victoria Picknellvictoria.picknell@zsl.org020-744-96361 AFRICAN national parks like Masai Mara and the Serengeti have seen populations of large mammals decline by up to 59 per cent, according to a study published in Biological Conservation. The parks are each visited by thousands of tourists each year hoping to spot Africa’s ‘Big Five’ – lion, elephant, buffalo, […]
The polar bear has long been a symbol of the damage wrought by global warming, but now biologist Andrew Derocher and his colleagues have calculated how long one southerly population can hold out. Their answer? No more than a few decades, as the bears’ decline closely tracks that of the Arctic’s disappearing sea ice. No […]
ScienceDaily (July 7, 2010) — Faced with threats such as habitat loss and climate change, thousands of rare flowering plant species worldwide may become extinct before scientists can even discover them, according to a paper published today by a trio of American and British researchers in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “Scientists […]
By NPR StaffJuly 3, 2010 As the oil spill coats Gulf Coast beaches, rescuers are hatching a daring plan to save as many as 70,000 sea turtle eggs from the disaster. Each year, thousands of newly hatched sea turtles scramble from their nests in the Florida Panhandle’s sandy beaches and Alabama coasts into the water. […]
By Juliet EilperinWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, July 2, 2010; 6:58 PM The Coast Guard and BP reached a settlement Friday with environmental groups over the issue of how best to guard against accidentally killing endangered sea turtles during controlled burns in the Gulf of Mexico aimed at curbing the oil spill’s spread. Four environmental groups […]
After more than a decade of monitoring the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, scientists have released the first count of one of the world’s most endangered group of whales. Approximately thirty right whales inhabit the eastern Pacific Ocean, they reported on Tuesday — slightly more than previously thought. Whether enough remain to prevent […]
About 5 minutes into the video above, a film crew dives in the South Pacific waters and films for what is probably the first time ever (that’s what they claim, anyway) the inside of a gigantic purse seine tuna net. You really have to see it to believe the scale of this kind of commercial […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com June 29, 2010 The Selmunett lizard (Podarcis filfolensis ssp. Kieselbachi) is very likely extinct, according to Maltese naturalist Arnold Sciberras. One of four subspecies of the Maltese wall lizard, the Selmunett lizard was last seen in 2005. Although the lizard’s home—Selmunett Island—has long been uninhabited by people, that fact did […]
The Times-PicayunePublished: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 3:07 PM Two animal conservation groups on Tuesday said they will sue BP and the U.S. Coast Guard to stop what they say are the deaths of turtles that are trapped in the controlled burns of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle […]
