By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Oil companies scouring the coastline of Alaska’s North Slope for new production sites are converging on the same territory as hungry polar bears trying to escape shrinking and thinning sea ice. Polar bears have not attacked any workers recently, but oil companies are reporting four times as many […]
By MARY PEMBERTON, Associated Press Writer ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A government study found that a group of endangered beluga whales in Alaska is declining, raising concern that bolstered protection for the animals is not coming quickly enough. The downward trend comes after two years where numbers for the Cook Inlet belugas appeared to have stabilized. […]
By CHARLES J. HANLEY (AP) ON THE PORCUPINE RIVER TUNDRA, Yukon Territory — Here on the endlessly rolling and tussocky terrain of northwest Canada, where man has hunted caribou since the Stone Age, the vast antlered herds are fast growing thin. And it’s not just here. Across the tundra 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) to the […]
By Dan Joling, Associated Press ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Trampling likely killed 131 mostly young walruses on the northwest shore of Alaska, according to an examination by an investigative team that included federal scientists. Young animals can be crushed in stampedes when a herd is startled by a polar bear, human hunters or even a […]
The catastrophic decline around the world of ‘apex’ predators such as wolves, cougars, lions or sharks has led to a huge increase in smaller ‘mesopredators’ that are causing major economic and ecological disruptions, a new study concludes. The findings, published today in the journal Bioscience, found that in North America all of the largest terrestrial […]
The recent observed collapse in the population cycles of small rodents, shown here for lemmings in northeast Greenland, as a result of diminished snow cover in the Arctic [from O. Gilg, B. Sittler, I. Hanski, Glob. Change Biol. 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.01927.x (2009)]. Eric Post, et al., Ecological Dynamics Across the Arctic Associated with Recent Climate Change, Science, […]
By Jenni Vincent, Journal staff writer, September 27, 2009 MARTINSBURG – It’s only been three years since White-nose syndrome was discovered in bats living in caves near Albany, N.Y., but the number of bats now believed to have this fungus has grown significantly and spread to other states such as West Virginia. U.S. Fish and […]
Demand for halt to hunting after decline in salmon stocks is blamed for bears starving to death By Tracy McVeigh First it was the giant panda, then the polar bear, now it seems that the grizzly bear is the latest species to face impending disaster. A furious row has erupted in Canada with conservationists desperately […]
Woodland caribou is one of the species likely to be extirpated from regions subjected to Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) development. Caribou declines across Alberta have been correlated with the level of industrial development within their ranges.43 In the past ten years, the East Side Athabasca River caribou herd, whose range overlaps much of the […]
Posted by Nate Hagens at The Oil Drum …The liquid tailings, a by product of the oil sands mining process, contain naphthenic acids, unrecovered hydrocarbons and trace metals, making it toxic to aquatic organisms21 and mammals22. Operators are required to store tailings waste on site in large containment dykes because the water is too toxic […]
