By Michael Greshko 28 March 2019 (National Geographic) – For decades, a silent killer has slaughtered frogs and salamanders around the world by eating their skins alive. Now, a global team of 41 scientists has announced that the pathogen—which humans unwittingly spread around the world—has damaged global biodiversity more than any other disease ever recorded. […]
By Sarah Lazarus 27 March 2019 (CNN) – In 2014, Mark Sabbatini noticed cracks in his apartment walls. Then a mysterious bulge appeared in his bedroom and the apartment block’s communal staircase became crooked. “Doors and windows weren’t shutting properly,” he says. Sabbatini, the editor of a local newspaper, was living in Longyearbyen, the world’s […]
By Steve Lundeberg30 January 2019 CORVALLIS, Oregon (OSU) – One hundred forty-three species of large animals are decreasing in number and 171 are under threat of extinction, according to new research that suggests humans’ meat consumption habits are primarily to blame. Findings published today in Conservation Letters involved an analysis of 292 species of “megafauna” […]
23 March 2019 (BBC News) – A Russian man has been arrested in Bali on suspicion of trying to smuggle a young orangutan out of Indonesia. The two-year-old male was found drugged inside a rattan basket when Andrei Zhestkov was stopped at security at Denpasar airport on Friday night. Mr Zhestkov is said to have […]
By Hannah Ellis-Petersen 4 March 2019 (The Guardian) – Police in the Philippines have discovered 1,529 live turtles wrapped in duct tape inside suitcases abandoned in an airport. The customs bureau seized four suitcases in Manila on Sunday and found they were filled with rare and protected varieties including star tortoises, red-footed tortoises, sulcata tortoises […]
By Lauren Kent23 February 2019 (CNN) – Only two whaling companies remain in Iceland. It’s a small industry that conservationists say is inhumane, has minimal economic benefits, and defies the international ban on killing whales. But this week the Icelandic government announced it will allow up to 2,000 whales to be killed in the next […]
TUCSON, Arizona, 15 February 2019 (CBD) – President Trump is the winner of the Center for Biological Diversity’s 2018 Rubber Dodo award. The statue is awarded each year to the person or group who has most aggressively sought to destroy America’s natural heritage or drive endangered species extinct. “From wildlife to public lands to climate, Trump […]
12 February 2019 (University of Sydney) – A research review into the decline of insect populations has revealed a catastrophic threat exists to 40 percent of species over the next 100 years, with butterflies, moths, dragonflies, bees, ants, and dung beetles most at risk.Author of the review, Dr Francisco Sanchez-Bayo, an honorary associate with the […]
10 December 2018 (National Butterfly Center) – Congress funded 33 new miles of Border Wall in the 2018 omnibus Appropriations Act and contracts for the first 6 miles have been awarded to SLSCO . The real kicker is, the border wall is not being built on the border, but over 2 miles inland, moving the […]
By Graham Readfearn 23 January 2019 (The Guardian) – Australia must roll out an emergency national response to an invasive plant disease that is rapidly pushing at least four plant species to imminent extinction, experts have told Guardian Australia. A draft emergency action plan for the fungal disease myrtle rust proposes that a rapid collection […]
