By Diego Leal and David Salisbury 9 Septemer 2014 (Forest Trends) – Always carrying a sheaf of legal documents and maps, Peruvian indigenous leader Edwin Chota tirelessly traveled from his native community of Alto Tamaya – Saweto to the city of Pucallpa, Ucayali, using the seven-day boat trip as an opportunity to plan his next […]
By NATHANIEL RICH 2 October 2014 (The New York Times) – In Louisiana, the most common way to visualize the state’s existential crisis is through the metaphor of football fields. The formulation, repeated in nearly every local newspaper article about the subject, goes like this: Each hour, Louisiana loses about a football field’s worth of […]
By Dan Joling30 September 2014 ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Associated Press) – Pacific walrus that can’t find sea ice for resting in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in northwest Alaska. An estimated 35,000 walrus were photographed Saturday about 5 miles north of Point Lay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]
By Drew Sterwald September 2014 (Pinnacle) – Trees and creek banks stained black with petroleum. Lakes too polluted to fish. Villagers suffering skin and organ ailments associated with contaminated water. This was just part of the evidence Shauna Stoeger (’14, M.S., Forensic Studies) uncovered when she spent four months in remote Amazonian villages to investigate […]
By Roger Harrabin30 September 2014 (BBC News) – The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought, the London Zoological Society (ZSL) says in its new Living Planet Index [pdf]. The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago. […]
By Ari Phillips 19 September 2014 (ThinkProgress) — This week, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 6-1 to potentially allow part of a state wildlife area to be strip-mined for coal. The ruling, which settles a dispute involving an esoteric land contract from 1944, could open up $2 million of coal to be dug out of […]
By Bob Marshall 28 August 2014 (Scientific American) – In just 80 years, some 2,000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to […]
By Jan Rocha15 September 2014 (theguardian.com) – The unprecedented drought now affecting São Paulo, South America’s giant metropolis, is believed to be caused by the absence of the “flying rivers” − the vapour clouds from the Amazon that normally bring rain to the centre and south of Brazil. Some Brazilian scientists say the absence of […]
By Amel Ahmed11 September 2014 (Al Jazeera) – The rate of destruction blighting the world’s largest rain forest spiked by nearly a third last year, according to new data released by the Brazilian government. Satellite data showed that 2,315 square miles of forest had been cleared from the Brazilian Amazon in the 12 months through […]
15 September 2014By Amy Remeikis (Brisbane Times) – It’s the 35-year plan designed to stave off UNESCO’s “in danger” rating and save the reef, but conservationists are already doubting it will work. Queensland Environment Minister Andrew Powell announced the Reef 2050 plan on Monday while the government was in Yeppoon for community cabinet. The plan, […]
