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 […]
By Alister Doyle; editing by Mark Heinrich8 December 2016 OSLO, Norway (Reuters) – Giraffe numbers have declined by as much as 40 percent since the 1980s in a “silent extinction” driven by illegal hunting and an expansion of farmland in Africa, the Red List of endangered species reported on Thursday. Populations of the world’s tallest […]
OAKLAND, California, 26 October 2016 (Global Footprint Network) – The overexploitation of ecological resources by humanity is directly contributing to the 67 percent plunge in wild vertebrate populations scientists forecast for the 50-year period ending in 2020, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report 2016. The top threats to species identified in the report are directly […]
By George Monbiot25 November 2016 (The Guardian) – Please don’t read this unless you are feeling strong. This is a list of 13 major crises that, I believe, confront us. There may be more. Please feel free to add to it or to knock it down. I’m sorry to say that it’s not happy reading. […]
By Gail Zawacki25 September 2016 (Wit’s End) – My last post here at Wit’s End received some thoughtful queries which deserved an answer in kind, a response I have assiduously procrastinated making – an avoidance which was made easier by a ten day trip with minimal access to the internet. Most of the photos in […]
By Ker Than14 September 2016 (Stanford University) – An unprecedented pattern of extinction in the oceans today that selectively targets large-bodied animals over smaller creatures is likely driven by human fishing, according to a new Stanford-led study. “We’ve found that extinction threat in the modern oceans is very strongly associated with larger body size,” said […]
9 September 2016 (UQ News) – A University of Queensland-led international study released today reports catastrophic declines in wilderness areas around the world over the past 20 years. UQ School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management and Wildlife Conservation Society in New York researcher Associate Professor James Watson said findings demonstrated alarming losses comprising a […]
Honolulu, Hawai’i, 4 September 2016 (IUCN) – The Eastern Gorilla – the largest living primate – has been listed as Critically Endangered due to illegal hunting, according to the latest update of The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ released today at the IUCN World Conservation Congress taking place in Hawai’i. Four out of six […]
By Jeremy Hance16 August 2016 (mongabay.com) – The Paris Agreement marked the biggest political milestone to combat climate change since scientists first introduced us in the late 1980s to perhaps humanity’s greatest existential crisis. Last December, 178 nations pledged to do their part to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius […]
By Amrith Ramkumar28 July 2016 (Bloomberg) – Deforestation in the Amazon region dropped by 30 percent from 2005 to 2010, sparing trees that soak up carbon dioxide. A big win in the fight against climate change, right? Maybe not big enough to save the planet, or the species on it. After trees are cut down, […]
