France’s bird population collapses due to pesticides – “The situation is catastrophic. Our countryside is in the process of becoming a veritable desert.”

20 March 2018 (AFP) –  Bird populations across the French countryside have fallen by a third over the last decade and a half, researchers have said. Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, the scientists said in a pair of studies – one national in scope and the other […]

Hundreds begin 95 km protest march against plans to mine bauxite in Ghana’s Atewa forest reserve

By Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku 19 March 2018 (Citi News) – Members of a group calling itself Concerned Citizens of Atewa Landscape are embarking on a six-day walk from Kyebi in the Eastern Region to Accra, in a bid to put pressure on government to preserve the Atewa forest reserve against any form of mining […]

Scientists hatch bold plan to save polar bears – “There’s no future for polar bears in an Arctic without the sea ice”

By David Cox 27 February 2018 (NBC News) – For the past two decades, scientists have been monitoring the effects of a warming Arctic on the world’s polar bears — and the bears’ future has looked increasingly bleak.The latest estimates suggest that Arctic sea ice is disappearing by 14 percent a decade, drastically limiting the […]

Environmental NGOs decry Brazil high court ruling on Amazon Forest Code – “With this amnesty, you create a climate that invites deforestation in the future. It creates the impression that if you deforest today, tomorrow, you are handed an amnesty.”

By Sue Branford 1 March 2018 (Mongabay) – In what many consider Brazil’s most important ruling ever about the environment, the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected, by a tight vote of 6 to 5, some of the most important charges of “unconstitutionality” brought against the New Forest Code – the Law of Native Protection (12.651/2012).The […]

Honduras energy company executive held for murder of dam activist Berta Cáceres

3 March 2018 (BBC News) – Police in Honduras have arrested an energy company executive on suspicion of masterminding the murder of a renowned environmental activist. Berta Cáceres was shot dead inside her home exactly two years ago, on the night of 2 March 2016. She had led protests against a dam project. The arrested […]

Judge approves waiving environmental laws to build U.S.-Mexico border wall

1 March 2018 (Mongabay) – On Tuesday, a federal judge in California ruled that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not abuse its authority in waiving dozens of environmental laws to build sections of wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. The ruling frees the department to waive laws for future border […]

Tropical forest fragmentation nearing “critical point”, study finds – “Near the critical point, dramatic effects are to be expected even in the case of relatively minor deforestation”

14 February 2018 (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research) – Tropical forests around the world play a key role in the global carbon cycle and harbour more than half of the species worldwide. However, increases in land use during the past decades caused unprecedented losses of tropical forest. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research […]

China’s lust for jaguar fangs imperils big cats

By Barbara Fraser 23 February 2018 (Nature) – The jaguar was found floating in a drainage canal in Belize City, Belize, on the day after Christmas last year. Its body was mostly intact, but the head was missing its fangs. On 10 January 2018, a second cat — this time, an ocelot that may have […]

Study says deforested areas in the Amazon vulnerable to loss of legal protections – “It’s a vicious cycle: If a protected area has suffered from deforestation, then it becomes vulnerable to loss of legal protections”

​ Arlington, Virginia, 12 February 2018 (Conservation International) – A study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) finds that protected areas that are deforested are more likely to subsequently lose legal protections.The study examined 62 protected areas in Rondônia, Brazil, home to immense stretches of the Amazon, and found […]

Dramatic decline of Borneo orangutans – Global demand for natural resources has reduced the orangutan population by more than 100,000 in the last 16 years

15 February 2018 (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) – Nearly 50 years of conservation efforts have been unable to prevent orangutan numbers on Borneo from plummeting. The latest data published by a team from 38 international institutions, led by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the German Centre […]

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