By Amrith Ramkumar28 July 2016 (Bloomberg) – Deforestation in the Amazon region dropped by 30 percent from 2005 to 2010, sparing trees that soak up carbon dioxide. A big win in the fight against climate change, right? Maybe not big enough to save the planet, or the species on it. After trees are cut down, […]
By Rebecca Morelle2 August 2016 (BBC News) – One of the last known groups of woolly mammoths died out because of a lack of drinking water, scientists believe. The Ice Age beasts were living on a remote island off the coast of Alaska, and scientists have dated their demise to about 5,600 years ago. They […]
8 July 2016 (IUCN) – New IUCN Red List assessments reveal that growing human pressures on whale sharks, winghead sharks and Bornean orangutans are putting these species at an increasing risk of extinction. Whale sharks and winghead sharks are now listed as Endangered and Bornean orangutans as Critically Endangered – only one step from going […]
By Dominique Mosbergen25 July 2016 (Huffington Post) – It’s been a wretched year for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest living structure and one of the most complex natural ecosystems on Earth. The area suffered the worst bleaching event ever, one that impacted over 90 percent of the reef and killed more than a third […]
Updated April 2016 (IRF/SRI) – Joint Statement by the International Rhino Foundation and Save the Rhino International (July 2015) Introduction Over the past two years or so, Save the Rhino International (SRI) and the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) have been monitoring the progress of four US-based companies that have announced their intentions – with varying […]
[Many more to follow. –Des] 14 June 2016 (University of Queensland) – University of Queensland and Queensland Government researchers have confirmed that the Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) – the only mammal species endemic to the Great Barrier Reef – is the first mammal to go extinct due to human-induced climate change. In a newly […]
By David Neiwert24 June 2016 (Crosscut) – Vancouver photographer Mark Malleson took this photograph of the Southern Resident killer whale known as J-34, or Doublestuf, breaching while he was in the interior waters of the Salish Sea this spring. It’s a remarkable and frightening photo for orca lovers, because the male orca’s ribs appear to […]
7 June 2016 (Guardian) – Richard Vevers from the Ocean Agency had never experienced anything like the devastation he witnessed in May diving around the dead and dying coral reefs off Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. When his team emerged from the water, he says, ‘We realised we just stank – we stank […]
By Emily Williams11 May 2016 (CU Denver) – A researcher at the University of Colorado Denver has found that Neanderthals in Europe showed signs of nutritional stress during periods of extreme cold, suggesting climate change may have contributed to their demise around 40,000 years ago. Jamie Hodgkins, a zooarchaeologist and assistant professor in the Department […]
By Merrit Kennedy14 May 2016 (NPR) – The massive bleaching hitting the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is likely that country’s “biggest ever environmental disaster,” says Dr. Justin Marshall, who has studied the reef for three decades. Only 7 percent of the reef has escaped bleaching, according to researchers at the ARC […]
