By Ben Panko 7 September 2017 (Smithsonian) – What if the world’s parasites suddenly went extinct? Given how much work we’ve put into combating malaria-carrying mosquitoes and horrifying Guinea worms, it sounds like a reason for celebration. But think twice: Actually, losing these much-despised mooches, bloodsuckers and freeloaders could have disastrous consequences for the environment […]
Yaoundé, Cameroon, 7 September 2017 (TRAFFIC) – Weak governance, corruption, and shifting trade dynamics are significant factors seriously undermining the control of ivory trafficking throughout five countries in Central Africa, according to a new TRAFFIC study launched today.In the first comprehensive assessment of ivory trade in the region in nearly two decades, investigators from TRAFFIC […]
Warming event that took place 56 million years ago led to significant ecological disruption and could shed light on modern climate change By Sarah Nightingale 30 August 2017 RIVERSIDE, California (UCR Today) – A natural global warming event that took place 56 million years ago was triggered almost entirely by volcanic eruptions that occurred as […]
By Neha Jain 5 September 2017 (Mongabay) – It’s no secret that widespread overfishing is driving many shark species to extinction. Many of these apex predators are ensnared incidentally as bycatch in longline fisheries targeting tuna or swordfish. Shortfin mako sharks — the fastest sharks in the ocean — are among the shark species that […]
By Sophie Tremblay 17 August 2017 (The Guardian) – The head of an animal conservation NGO who had received numerous death threats has been shot and killed by an unknown gunman in Tanzania. Wayne Lotter, 51, was shot on Wednesday evening in the Masaki district of the city of Dar es Salaam. The wildlife conservationist […]
By Peter Brannen 11 July 2017 (The Atlantic) – “Who you with?” “I’m a science journalist,” I said, jolted from my reverie on the shoulder of I-68 in Maryland, where a crowd of geologists had gathered on a field trip to poke at some rocks revealed by the highway department’s dynamite. The rocks, slate gray […]
By Malia Wollan 18 July 2017 (The New York Times) — It was a freakishly warm evening last October when a maintenance worker first discovered the water — torrents of it, rushing into the entrance tunnel of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a storage facility dug some 400 feet into the side of a mountain […]
By Gareth Davies5 July 2017(The Daily Mail) – A heartbreaking photo of an orphaned baby rhino standing next to its dead mother after she was slaughtered by poachers for her horn has become the tragic symbol of a weekend rhino massacre in South Africa.The picture of the calf was posted online by anti-poaching campaigners in […]
15 June 2017 (The Guardian) – A few years ago, Björk began corresponding with a philosopher whose books she admired. “hi timothy,” her first message to him began. “i wanted to write this letter for a long time.” She was trying to give a name to her own singular genre, to label her work for […]
By Maya L. Kapoor 2 June 2017 (High Country News) – U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Bob Keane has studied whitebark pine, a coniferous tree of the high country, for more than thirty years. Still, when asked to describe a whitebark to someone who’s never seen one, he takes a breath and pauses for a […]
