By by Andrea Nicolau, Andi Thomas, and Leah Kucera 18 April 2019 (NASA) – Considered a hotspot for biodiversity, the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru is an exceptionally fertile landscape. Standing at the edge of the Amazon basin, Madre de Dios has a rich concentration of endemic species—plants and animals that are found nowhere […]
5 June 2019 (AFP) – The noxious air hanging over India’s towns and cities kills more than 100,000 children under five every year, a damning study published Wednesday for World Environment Day found. India has repeatedly failed to address environmental concerns. Last year a UN report found 14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities […]
By Julia Jacobo 28 May 2019 (ABC News) – The last male Sumatran rhinoceros in Malaysia has died, eliminating the likelihood of saving the species in the country, according to animal conservationists. Less than 100 Sumatran rhinos are left in the world, according to the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA). They are scattered across the wild in Indonesia […]
7 May 2019 (Amnesty International) – There is an imminent risk of violent clashes in Brazil’s Amazon region unless the government protects Indigenous peoples’ traditional lands from increasing illegal land seizures and logging by armed intruders, Amnesty International warned today. Amnesty International recently visited three different Indigenous territories in northern Brazil where illegal intruders had […]
6 May 2019 (IPBES) – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was […]
By Mikaela Weisse and Liz Goldman 25 April 2019 (Global Forest Watch) – The tropics lost 12 million hectares of tree cover in 2018, the fourth-highest annual loss since record-keeping began in 2001. Of greatest concern is the disappearance of 3.6 million hectares of primary rainforest, an area the size of Belgium. The figures come […]
By Shreya Dasgupta 16 April 2019 (Mongabay) – Until recently, there were just four known Yangtze giant softshell turtles in the world. On 13 April 2019, the only known female among them died in China’s Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Zoo following an attempt to artificially inseminate her, according to local media. She was more than 90 […]
By Lindsay Fendt 15 April 2019 (The Guardian) – Every year, from November through March, leatherback sea turtles arrive to the secluded shores of the Río Escalante Chacocente wildlife reserve on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast to lay their eggs. Though leatherback nesting habits vary, Chacocente has been a reliable egg-laying site for as long as conservationists […]
By Craig Welch 4 April 2019 (National Geographic) – She started out studying tree-climbing marsupials, but only after she applied what she knew to marine reptiles did Camryn Allen actually get worried. Allen, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii, had spent her early career using hormones to track koala bear […]
By Steve Lundeberg30 January 2019 CORVALLIS, Oregon (OSU) – One hundred forty-three species of large animals are decreasing in number and 171 are under threat of extinction, according to new research that suggests humans’ meat consumption habits are primarily to blame. Findings published today in Conservation Letters involved an analysis of 292 species of “megafauna” […]
