Rat-sized stucco-eating snails invade Florida – ‘The snails attack over 500 known species of plants, pretty much anything that’s in their path and green’

ORLANDO, Florida (MSN) – South Florida is fighting a growing infestation of one of the world’s most destructive invasive species: the giant African land snail, which can grow as big as a rat and gnaw through stucco and plaster. More than 1,000 of the mollusks are being caught each week in Miami-Dade and 117,000 in […]

Antarctic melt shakes up food chain

By Tim Barlass7 April 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Major changes to the food chain, weather, and landscape of Antarctica have provided stark evidence of the impact of global warming, a report on a polar expedition has revealed. The preliminary report on the research by scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the Woods Hole […]

Report: Asian carp may have reached Great Lakes

[Des called it for the Asian carp back in 2010. Here’s more evidence strengthening the case, unfortunately.] By JOHN FLESHER4 April 2013 TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) – At least some Asian carp probably have found their way into the Great Lakes, but there’s still time to stop the dreaded invaders from becoming established and unraveling […]

U.S. scientists warn climate change will double wildfire risk in Western forests – ‘It’s just unprecedented things happening. We’re getting into extreme events that seem to be having more and more effects across broader landscapes.’

By Bruce Finley3 April 2013 (Denver Post) – The hotter, drier climate will transform Rocky Mountain forests, unleashing wider wildfires and insect attacks, federal scientists warn in a report for Congress and the White House. The U.S. Forest Service scientists project that, by 2050, the area burned each year by increasingly severe wildfires will at […]

Record-sized Lake Erie algae bloom of 2011 likely to become regular occurrence, study says – ‘Everything is trending in the direction of conditions conducive to more large blooms’

By John Mangels1 April 2013 (The Plain Dealer) – The record-shattering glut of toxic algae that fouled much of Lake Erie in 2011 wasn’t a fluke, but a sign of what’s likely ahead for the troubled lake, researchers say. A combination of weather extremes and long-standing farming practices that unwittingly aid algae growth spawned the […]

As the climate warms, forests encroach on meadowland – ‘Meadows’ biodiversity value is much larger than the area they occupy’

By Carrie Madren  12 February 2013 (Scientific American) – In perhaps the slowest invasion in history, mountain meadows in the Pacific Northwest—where hikers and backpackers revel in breath-taking scenery—are gradually giving way to hemlocks, Pacific silver firs and other conifers. In these high-elevation, subalpine meadows of Jefferson Park in the central Cascade Range in Oregon, […]

Pythons, lionfish, and now willow invade Florida waterways

8 January 2013 (University of Central Florida) – Foreign invaders such as pythons and lionfish are not the only threats to Florida’s natural habitat. The native Carolina Willow is also starting to strangle portions of the St. Johns River. Biologists at the University of Central Florida recently completed a study that shows this slender tree […]

Invading species can extinguish native plants despite recent reports – ‘These species are slowly going extinct’

Contact: Benjamin Gilbert, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 416-978-4065  (office), 647-778-0900  (cell) benjamin.gilbert@utoronto.ca TORONTO, ONTARIO (University of Toronto) – Ecologists at the University of Toronto and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) have found that, given time, invading exotic plants will likely eliminate native plants growing in the […]

Mountain pine beetle threatening high-altitude, endangered trees

By Jeremy Hance2 January 2013 (mongabay.com) – In the western U.S., few trees generally grow in higher altitudes than the whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis). Providing shelter and food for bears, squirrels and birds, the whitebark pine ecosystems also help regulate water flow from snowmelt. But, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the […]

Environmental threat map highlights Great Lakes restoration challenges – ‘The Great Lakes continue to be degraded by numerous environmental stressors’

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 20 December 2012 (SPX) – A comprehensive map three years in the making is telling the story of humans’ impact on the Great Lakes, identifying how “environmental stressors” stretching from Minnesota to Ontario are shaping the future of an ecosystem that contains 20 percent of the world’s fresh water. In an article […]

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