60 percent of primate species face impending extinction, and 75 percent have declining populations globally

By Russell A. Mittermeier and Anthony B. Rylands24 January 2017 (mongabay.com) – The Year of the Monkey has just ended, and won’t come around again for another 12 years. In the meantime, what is happening with our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates? A recent paper in Science Advances by 31 of us indicates that […]

Brazil President Temer reduces preservation in Pará forest and legalizes squatters – Protection removed from 305,000 hectares (754,000 acres)

By Fabiano Maisonnave; translation by Thomas Muello22 December 2016 MANAUS (Folha de S. Paulo) – In an action criticized by environmentalists and commemorated by squatters, the President of Brazil, Michel Temer, ratified a provisional measure that paves the way to legalize dozens of rural proprieties inside the National Forest (Flona) of Jamanxin, in the southwest […]

Old sea ice is vanishing in the thawing Arctic

By Steve Connor8 January 2017 (The Guardian) – Something is happening to the floating sea ice of the Arctic, other than the well-documented retreat in its surface coverage each summer. Scientists are finding that Arctic sea ice is getting younger and thinner, which is set to continue in March, when US research reveals the winter […]

U.S. lists first bumble bee species as endangered

By Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler10 January 2017 (Reuters) – The rusty patched bumble bee, a prized but vanishing pollinator once familiar to much of North America, was listed on Tuesday as an endangered species, becoming the first wild bee in the continental United States to gain such federal protection. One of several species […]

Climate change will lead to annual coral bleaching in the near future

5 January 2017 (United Nations) – If current trends continue and the world fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nearly all of the world’s coral reefs will suffer severe bleaching – the gravest threat to one of the Earth’s most important ecosystems – on annual basis, the United Nations environment agency today reported. The finding […]

New look at rivers reveals the toll of human activity

By Jim Robbins4 January 2017 (Yale e360) – The Yellowstone River has its headwaters in the mountain streams and snowy peaks of the famous U.S. national park with the same name, and makes an unfettered downhill run all the way to the Missouri River, nearly 700 miles away. It is the longest undammed river in […]

Cheetah population crashes, with only 7,100 cheetahs remaining globally

New York (Panthera) – The world’s fastest land animal, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), is sprinting towards the edge of extinction and could soon be lost forever unless urgent, landscape-wide conservation action is taken, according to a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Led by Zoological Society of London […]

Hundreds of species are already going locally extinct because of global warming – “In some ways, this is just the beginning”

By Sean Greene13 December 2016 (The Los Angeles Times) – As the planet warms, species around the world are engaged in a race against time to either adapt or move to cooler habitats. Hundreds of them are already losing, according to a recent study in PLoS Biology. As animals and plants move to higher elevations […]

Largest die-off of corals ever recorded on Great Barrier Reef in 2016

29 November 2016 (AFP) – A mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef this year killed more corals than ever before, scientists said Tuesday, sounding the alarm over the delicate ecosystem. The 2,300-kilometre (1,400-mile) long reef—the world’s biggest—suffered its most severe bleaching in recorded history, due to warming sea temperatures during March and April, […]

Amazon deforestation in 2016 up 29 percent over 2015 – ‘The loggers are better equipped than we are’

By Camila Domonoske 30 November 2016 (NPR) – An annual study released by the Brazilian government estimates that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon has increased by 29 percent over last year. That’s the second year in a row that deforestation in the Amazon quickened; last year, the pace rose by about 24 percent. […]

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