Alaska lawmakers line up against whale habitat as beluga population plummets

By Erika Bolstad | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — If there’s one thing Alaska’s congressional delegation can agree on, it’s a distrust of the Endangered Species Act and a belief it could ruin the state’s economy. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Democrat Sen. Mark Begich and Republican Rep. Don Young met Friday to express their concerns with […]

Australia won't back tuna trade ban

By Karen Barlow Despite a collapse of world tuna stocks, the Australian Government has decided not to support a global ban on the trade of the northern variety of the species. Instead the Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, is supporting stronger trade control measures on the trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Australia will formalise its […]

Drought, agriculture, and pollution are rapidly destroying Kenya's Lake Naivasha

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comMarch 10, 2010 Heavily polluted and shrinking, Lake Naivasha is in dire trouble. Environmentalists say the cause is clear: flower farms. Some 60 flower farms line the entire lakeside, growing cut flowers for export largely to the EU. While the flowers industry is Kenya’s largest horticultural export (405.5 million last year) it […]

Graph of the Day: Symptoms of Coastal Eutrophication, 1850s – 2000s

Period in which the symptoms of eutrophication and hypoxia / anoxia began in developed countries and how the symptoms are shifted to more recent years for developing countries (modified by N. N. Rabalais from Galloway and Cowling, 2002; Boesch, 2002). The occurrence of hypoxia in coastal areas is increasing, and the trend is consistent with […]

Dolphin-safe tuna not very green

By Kelsey Munro, March 6, 2010 MORE than 20 years after the campaign to get dolphin-friendly tuna into shopping bags, supermarket shelves are still stacked with tuna that has been fished unsustainably. That’s according to Greenpeace’s new report card on the canned tuna brands in supermarkets. John West ”lacks credibility”. Sirena is ”one of the […]

Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists

By Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers – Sun Mar 7, 12:01 pm ET WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth’s oceans, particularly off the United States’ Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say. They warn that the oceans’ complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food […]

Atrazine found in Australia river system

By Peter Gardiner | 5th March 2010 A CHEMICAL linked to sex changes in frogs and chemical castration has been found in samples taken from the Noosa River system. However, fish health expert Dr Matt Landos said the levels of atrazine, which is used as a weed killer, were not of sufficient concentration to be […]

The dark side of nitrogen

By Stephanie Ogburn, 4 Feb 2010 2:00 PM …To see nitrogen’s ill effects up close head to the mid-Atlantic coast and visit the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary. Once the site of a highly productive fishery and renowned for its oysters, crabs, and clams, today the bay is most famous for its ecological ruin. […]

Road salt and cars produce extreme water contamination in Frenchman's Bay

Contact: Eleni Kanavasekanavas@utsc.utoronto.ca416-208-5103University of Toronto (University of Toronto) The levels of contamination to water and sediment in Frenchman’s Bay in Pickering, Ontario, greatly exceed provincial water quality standards, in some cases by as much as 250 per cent, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. This is largely due […]

Desperate California to get more water, but drought persists

By Dan Whitcomb (Additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric Walsh)LOS ANGELESFri Feb 26, 2010 4:33pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Drought-stricken farmers and cities across California were granted a measure of relief on Friday when federal and state officials said they expected to supply significantly more water this year than last. The announcements […]

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