Colombia palm oil plantations reduce species richness by 47 percent – Government says oil palm agriculture to double to one million hectares by 2020

30 May 2018 (James Cook University) – With palm oil production exploding around the world, a new study of a leading producer has found ways to make the process easier on the environment.James Cook University PhD candidate Lain Pardo studied the industry in Colombia – a country described as being on the “tip of the […]

Poachers kill 122 pregnant minke whales during summer months – “A shocking statistic and sad indictment on the cruelty of Japan’s whale hunt”

By Daniel Hurst 30 May 2018 (The Guardian) – More than 120 pregnant whales were killed during Japan’s annual “research” hunt in the Southern Ocean last summer, a new report has revealed.Of the 333 minke whales caught during the controversial 12-week expedition, 181 were female — including 53 immature ones. Figures show that of the […]

Humans have destroyed 83 percent of wild mammals and reduced the total biomass of the biosphere to half of its pre-human value

By Damian Carrington 21 May 2018 (The Guardian) – Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since […]

Venezuela’s hungry citizens hunt wildlife, zoo animals, as economic crisis grows – “I can’t imagine a place in the world where they let the animals suffer so much”

By Jeanfreddy Gutiérrez Torres 21 May 2018 LAKE MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Mongabay) – The wildlife of Venezuela, one of 17 countries that account for 70 percent of the world’s biodiversity, has come under new pressure in addition to deforestation, toxic oil spills. and illegal trafficking: human starvation.The economic crisis that began in 2014 with the collapse […]

Only 40 red wolves remain in the wild in North Carolina as rising sea level reduces habitat

24 April 2018 (USFWS) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today released a five-year status review and Species Status Assessment [pdf] outlining the latest science and data supporting its recommendation for no change in the red wolf’s overall status as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The status review is required every five years […]

Unprecedented wave of large-mammal extinctions linked to ancient humans – “What we’re doing is potentially erasing 40 to 45 million years of mammal body-size evolution in a very short period of time”

By Scott Schrage 19 April 2018 (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) – Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and other recent human relatives may have begun hunting large mammal species down to size — by way of extinction — at least 90,000 years earlier than previously thought, says a new study published in the journal Science.Elephant-dwarfing wooly mammoths, elephant-sized ground […]

Relative timing of species interactions has changed substantially in recent decades – “Many species interactions from around the world are in a state of rapid flux”

By Seth Borenstein 16 April 2018 (PhysOrg) – Global warming is screwing up nature’s intricately timed dinner hour, often making hungry critters and those on the menu show up at much different times, a new study shows.Timing is everything in nature. Bees have to be around and flowers have to bloom at the same time […]

Nearly 150 beached whales die after mass stranding in Australia

By Amy B Wang 23 March 2018 (The Washington Post) – More than 150 short-finned pilot whales stranded themselves Thursday on the southwestern tip of Australia, stunning parks officials and prompting a massive rescue effort to save as many as possible. The mass beaching likely took place sometime Wednesday night to early Thursday morning, local […]

Trump wildlife protection board stuffed with trophy hunters

By Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson, and Jeff Horwitz 16 March 2018 WASHINGTON (Associated Press) – A new U.S. advisory board created to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinos is stacked with trophy hunters, including some members with direct ties to President Donald Trump and his […]

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 […]

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