By Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil 3 May 2011 In the forests of Italy’s Abruzzo National Park live one of the rarest creatures on Earth: the Marsican brown bear. For the last several decades the species has been on the brink of extinction — with current estimates putting their population at less than 50 individuals, […]
By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst, BBC News15 April 2011 Air pollution is damaging 60% of Europe’s prime wildlife sites in meadows, forests and heaths, according to a new report. A team of EU scientists said nitrogen emissions from cars, factories and farming was threatening biodiversity. It’s the second report this week warning of the on-going […]
By Roger Highfield 21 April 2011 A quarter of a century after the world’s worst nuclear accident, experts still can’t agree how many people it killed. Two people died immediately as a result of the blast at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine – then part of the Soviet Union – on 26 April 1986. […]
Geneva (AFP) April 20, 2011 – Swiss officials began moving trout from a river this week to save them from plunging water levels, amid one of the worst droughts to hit the country in 150 years. “2011 is off to a good start to finish as one of the most significant droughts since 1864,” the […]
Contact: Nicki Chadwick, Media Relations Officer, IUCN Office, t +41 22 999 0229, m +41 79 528 3486, nicki.chadwick@iucn.org;19 April 2011 More than 40 species of marine fish currently found in the Mediterranean could disappear in the next few years. According to a study for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ on the status […]
Budapest (AFP) April 6, 2011 – Wildlife has still not returned to the area in western Hungary that was devastated by the country’s worst chemical accident six months ago, the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday. “Wildlife and fishlife were totally devastated or displaced from the area, and six months later, the banks of rivers Marcal […]
April 2, 2011, 12:09pm BERLIN (AP) – For a look at just how long radioactivity can hang around, consider Germany’s wild boars. A quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union carried a cloud of radiation across Europe, these animals are radioactive enough that people are urged not to eat them. And […]
Documenting the end of multicellular life on Earth requires a somewhat obsessive personality, which Desdemona has in spades. But the good people of the RSOE EDIS Climate Change Monitoring Service have gone far, far beyond the level of effort Des would ever expend, compiling a huge database of disasters in near-realtime. The latest mishaps are […]
By Jennifer Hattam, Istanbul, Turkey 12 March 2011 Key reservoirs in Cyprus are drying up. In some parts of the Greek side of the divided island, 50 percent of the trees have died due to drought, damaging soil quality and agricultural productivity. Experts say the Mediterranean island could end up with as little water as […]
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, March 7, 2011 (ENS) – Deforestation rates in the South American country of Guyana have increased during the last year, despite a 2009 agreement with the Norwegian government aimed at supporting forest protection to avert climate change, the nonprofit watchdog organization Global Witness said today. Signed in November 2009 and worth up to […]
