Salmon fishermen losing water war with desperate California farmers

By COLIN SULLIVAN of GreenwirePublished: April 2, 2010 SAN FRANCISCO — California congressmen George Miller and Mike Thompson stumped for salmon fishermen yesterday during a political rally here meant to counter the political muscle of San Joaquin Valley farmers who tend to get more media attention in the long-running war over the state’s strained water […]

Power lines contribute to 75-percent decline in endangered Hawaii seabirds

  Lihu’e, Hawaii— Four conservation groups are suing Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative for killing rare seabirds without a permit, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The complaint, filed in Hawaii’s federal district court on March 24, says the utility’s illegal actions “bear substantial responsibility” for the crash of the Newell’s shearwater population on Kaua’i, […]

Mysterious whale die-off is largest on record

By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Contributorposted: 29 March 2010 08:27 am ET Mass death among baby right whales has experts scrambling to figure out the puzzle behind the largest great whale die-off on record. Observers have found 308 dead whales in the waters around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina’s Patagonian Coast since 2005. Almost 90 percent of […]

Rare animals are being ‘eaten to extinction’

By Louise Gray, Environment CorrespondentPublished: 7:00AM GMT 23 Mar 2010 Research in the Congo Basin in Africa found more than three million tonnes of ‘bush meat’ is being extracted from the area every year, the equivalent of butchering 740,000 bull elephants. Most of the animals are small antelopes like blue duiker or rodents like the […]

Central Africa gorillas extinct by mid-2020s

By the CNN Wire StaffMarch 25, 2010 4:13 a.m. EDT (CNN) — Gorillas may go extinct in much of central Africa by the mid-2020s — victims of a meat trade, of logging and mining, and even the Ebola virus, a new report says. Unless action is taken to guard the gorillas’ habitat and counter poaching, […]

Death of coral reefs could devastate nations, have ‘tremendous cascade effect for all life in the oceans’

By BRIAN SKOLOFF (AP) WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Coral reefs are dying, and scientists and governments around the world are contemplating what will happen if they disappear altogether. The idea positively scares them. Coral reefs are part of the foundation of the ocean food chain. Nearly half the fish the world eats make their […]

Sir David Attenborough aghast at global decline of butterfly population

Disappearance of species points to catastrophic environmental damage, says Sir David. By Michael McCarthyFriday, 26 March 2010 Butterfly numbers are declining rapidly all around the world, Britain’s leading conservationist, Sir David Attenborough, warns today. The celebrated television presenter is sounding the alarm that butterfly loss, a concern in Britain for decades, has become a global […]

CITES fails to protect 5 species of sharks from overfishing and finning

By John Platt The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) this week decided not to create any new international trade restrictions to protect five endangered shark species, all of which are highly prized for their use in the Chinese delicacy known as shark fin soup, or as I […]

Corals used in jewelry fail to win UN trade curbs: ‘Vanity has once again trumped conservation’

By Alister Doyle in Oslo (Reuters) – A U.N. conference rejected on Sunday trade restrictions on red and pink corals used in jewelry in what environmentalists called a new setback for endangered marine species. Delegates at the 175-nation meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha failed to back a […]

Silent streams: Freshwater animals are vanishing faster than those on land or at sea

By Doug ChadwickPhotograph by Joel Sartore …Lakes, swamps, and rivers make up less than 0.3 percent of fresh water and less than .01 percent of all the water on Earth. Yet these waters are home to as many as 126,000 of the world’s animal species, including snails, mussels, crocodiles, turtles, amphibians, and fish. Almost half […]

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