July 3 (AFP) – Indian scientists on Friday said that the water in the holiday resort state of Goa was unfit for bathing and fishing due to high levels of bacteria from untreated sewage. The National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), which is based in the former Portuguese colony, said that the level of faecal coliform […]
By Jane Merrick, Political Editor3 July 2011 Water companies are draining the nation’s most at-risk rivers dry, causing environmental damage, death to wildlife and the build-up of chemicals that upset fragile aquatic ecosystems, all of which could result in ever-higher bills for consumers, a damning report will say tomorrow. Current abstraction by firms from rivers […]
By Pete Wilton June 28, 2011 Half the elephants from West and Central African savannahs have vanished in the past 40 years, scientists report in PLoS One. A team, including Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, estimate that around 7,750 elephants remain in the Sudano-Sahelian zone, which covers 20% of the continent, a […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com30 June 2011 A prolonged drought in East Africa is bringing many of the region’s impoverished to their knees: the World Food Program (WFP) is warning that 10 million people in the region are facing severe shortages. While not dubbed a famine yet, experts say it could become one. Meanwhile, a recent […]
By BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press 28 June 2011 LUBBOCK, Texas — West Texas farmer Billy Brown remembers the devastating drought that spanned the state in the 1950s — and believes this one is worse. […] “The grass just crackles underneath the feet,” Brown, 72, said of walking across his acreage in the town of Panhandle […]
By LAWRENCE HURLEY AND PAUL QUINLAN of Greenwire29 June 2011 A federal appeals court handed Georgia an enormous victory in long-running, tri-state water litigation yesterday, overturning a decision by a federal judge that could have sharply curtailed the availability of water in Atlanta beginning next summer. The three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit […]
By Steve Savage27 June 2011 I tend to be a “glass half full” sort of person, particularly about the prospects of successfully feeding the 9-10 billion people we expect by 2050. My optimism is based on daily contact with the innovative public and private entities who develop technology for agriculture. It is also based on […]
MOSCOW, June 29 (RIA Novosti) – The volume of annual runoff of almost all of Russia’s rivers will be substantially affected by global climate change, the Emergencies Ministry’s Natural Disaster Center said on Wednesday. “Owing to the expected shifts in temperature and rainfall amounts, the annual runoff of rivers located in the Central and the […]
By KATE GALBRAITH18 June 2011 On the cliffs surrounding Lake Buchanan in Central Texas, a white ring extends some 13 feet above the shoreline, marking where the water reaches when the lake is full. At nearby Lake Travis, staircases that once led to the water’s edge now end well above it. These two lakes serve […]
By Ker Than14 June 2011 Hundreds of archaeological sites are under threat from a weeks-old, still raging wildfire in eastern Arizona. (See Arizona-fire pictures.) Since it began in late May, the so-called Wallow Fire—the biggest in Arizona’s history—has burned at least 733 square miles (1,900 square kilometers), and has now crossed the state line into […]
