By Claudia Boyd-Barrett 7 January 2019 (Ventura County Star) – 2018 was a tough year for monarch butterflies.Each year, monarchs in the western United States migrate from inland areas to California’s coastline to spend the winter, usually between September and February. But the number of butterflies turning up at overwintering sites this year — including […]
26 November 2018 (BBC News) – At least one million bees are suspected to have died of poisoning in a wine-producing area of South Africa. Brendan Ashley-Cooper told the BBC that an insecticide used by wine farmers, Fipronil, was thought to have killed the insects on his farm. Other honey bee farmers in the area […]
By Edwin Dobb 4 August 2018 (National Geographic) – Two male lions had been killing cattle and goats for weeks. The Maasai herdsmen in Kenya’s Osewan region had seen enough.Solve the problem by Christmas, the Maasai told the Kenya Wildlife Service in late December last year, or we’ll solve it for you. “We know how […]
By Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sandra Maler 3 August 2018 (Reuters) – The Trump administration has rescinded an Obama-era ban on the use of pesticides linked to declining bee populations and the cultivation of genetically modified crops in dozens of national wildlife refuges where farming is permitted. Environmentalists, who had sued to […]
By Michael Biesecker 10 August 2018 WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration endangered public health by keeping a widely used pesticide on the market despite extensive scientific evidence that even tiny levels of exposure can harm babies’ brains. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco […]
By Jim Robbins 9 July 2018 SEATTLE (The New York Times) – For the last three years, not one calf has been born to the dwindling pods of black-and-white killer whales spouting geysers of mist off the coast in the Pacific Northwest. Normally four or five calves would be born each year among this fairly […]
By Chris Sellers, Lindsey Dillon, and Phil Brown 6 June 2018 (The Conversation) – The Environmental Protection Agency made news recently for excluding reporters from a “summit” meeting on chemical contamination in drinking water. Episodes like this are symptoms of a larger problem: an ongoing, broad-scale takeover of the agency by industries it regulates.We are […]
By Brandon Keim 14 March 2018 (Anthropocene) – No guild of North American birds is declining so rapidly as aerial insectivores: acrobatic marvels whose maneuvers make our hearts soar, and who provide a vital ecosystem service. Why are their numbers plummeting? A leading explanation is a widespread decline in insect populations — a troubling possibility, […]
20 March 2018 (AFP) – Bird populations across the French countryside have fallen by a third over the last decade and a half, researchers have said. Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, the scientists said in a pair of studies – one national in scope and the other […]
15 February 2018 (NOAA) – Emissions from volatile chemical products like perfumes, paints and other scented consumer items now rival vehicles as a pollution source in greater Los Angeles, according to a surprising new NOAA-led study.Even though 15 times more petroleum is consumed as fuel than is used as ingredients in industrial and consumer products, […]
