The Macquarie Marshes – a vast, tangled sprawl of creeks and swamps between Nyngan and Walgett in the state’s northwest – has declined by about half since the 1960s because of the drought and the diversion of water for irrigation. … ”About 50 per cent of the wetland area is gone and more has been […]
By Ben Raines, Press-RegisterSunday, August 01, 2010, 5:24 AM MOBILE, Ala. — Now that BP’s damaged Gulf well appears under control, scientists are struggling to answer two questions: How much oil ended up in the Gulf, and what will be the long-term effects? Federal estimates of the flow rate from the Deepwater Horizon well covered […]
By David A. FahrentholdWashington Post / August 2, 2010 ON TAMBOUR BAY, La. — In the next act of the drama of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, two of the most important heroes don’t look like heroes. They are just thin green stalks, sticking out of blackened patches of grass. They are cordgrass and […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com August 01, 2010 UNESCO’s World Heritage committee has added Madagascar’s unique tropical forests to its Danger List of threatened ecosystems. The move comes following a drawn-out illegal logging crisis that has seen loggers and traders infiltrating the island-nation’s national parks for rosewood. Bushmeat hunting of lemurs and other rare species also […]
UPDATE: Desdemona failed to notice that this story is from 1998 and thanks readers for the QA. BBCOctober 10, 1998 The scale of the damage caused by recent forest fires in Russia’s Far East amounts to a world-wide ecological disaster, a United Nations team has said. The Russian news agency, Itar-Tass, said the team was […]
Data on wildland fires in the United States show that the number of acres burned per fire has increased since the 1980s. In the western United States, both the frequency of large wildfires and the length of the fire season have increased substantially in recent decades, due primarily to earlier spring snowmelt and higher spring […]
Indonesia’s largest palm oil and pulp group, Sinar Mas, is continuing to destroy rainforests and peatland despite promises to end the practice Ecologist29th July, 2010 A major supplier of palm oil and pulp (paper) to multinationals, including food giant Cargill, has been caught clearing orang-utan habitats and carbon-rich peatlands. The Sinar Mas group, which has […]
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSONPublished: July 29, 2010 HOUMA, La. — Loulan Pitre Sr. was born on the Gulf Coast in 1921, the son of an oysterman. Nearly all his life, he worked on the water, abiding by the widely shared faith that the resources of the Gulf of Mexico were limitless. As a young Marine staff […]
By Staff WritersNairobi (AFP) July 29, 2010 Wildlife officials in Kenya warned Thursday that an antelope species, whose entire global wild population of 103 exists only in the east African country, was on the verge of extinction. Habitat loss, genetic factors, predation and disease were threatening to wipe out the mountain bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci), […]
Lagos (AFP) July 27, 2010 – Nigeria, the eight largest oil exporter, recorded at least 3,000 oil spills between 2006 and last month, the environment minister said Tuesday. Evoking the figure at a meeting with oil company chiefs, John Odey told them to work with authorities to tackle the problem, the official News Agency of […]
