By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com August 01, 2010 UNESCO’s World Heritage committee has added Madagascar’s unique tropical forests to its Danger List of threatened ecosystems. The move comes following a drawn-out illegal logging crisis that has seen loggers and traders infiltrating the island-nation’s national parks for rosewood. Bushmeat hunting of lemurs and other rare species also […]
By John PlattJul 20, 2010 05:30 PM Illegal trade in endangered species continues to grow around the world. How big is the problem? Here are 10 major cases that have hit the media in just the past week: Six pallets containing 765 kilograms of elephant tusks worth an estimated $1.2 million were seized in Thailand […]
By SHAILA DEWAN Published: Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 5:16 a.m. GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle lay belly-up on the metal autopsy table, as pallid as split-pea soup but for the bright orange X spray-painted on its shell, proof that it had been counted as part of the Gulf of Mexico’s continuing […]
By NPR StaffJuly 3, 2010 As the oil spill coats Gulf Coast beaches, rescuers are hatching a daring plan to save as many as 70,000 sea turtle eggs from the disaster. Each year, thousands of newly hatched sea turtles scramble from their nests in the Florida Panhandle’s sandy beaches and Alabama coasts into the water. […]
By Juliet EilperinWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, July 2, 2010; 6:58 PM The Coast Guard and BP reached a settlement Friday with environmental groups over the issue of how best to guard against accidentally killing endangered sea turtles during controlled burns in the Gulf of Mexico aimed at curbing the oil spill’s spread. Four environmental groups […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com June 29, 2010 The Selmunett lizard (Podarcis filfolensis ssp. Kieselbachi) is very likely extinct, according to Maltese naturalist Arnold Sciberras. One of four subspecies of the Maltese wall lizard, the Selmunett lizard was last seen in 2005. Although the lizard’s home—Selmunett Island—has long been uninhabited by people, that fact did […]
The Times-PicayunePublished: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 3:07 PM Two animal conservation groups on Tuesday said they will sue BP and the U.S. Coast Guard to stop what they say are the deaths of turtles that are trapped in the controlled burns of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle […]
By Ryan Dezember, Press-Register Published: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 5:00 AM Federal wildlife officials plan to move tens of thousands of sea turtle eggs from oil-plagued beaches along the northern Gulf to Florida’s east coast, where the reptiles would hatch in a controlled environment and be released into the Atlantic Ocean. Made public over the […]
So-called burn boxes are torching oil from the water’s surface at the sacrifice of turtles, crabs, sea slugs and other sea life. By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles TimesJune 17, 2010 Reporting from the Gulf of Mexico — Here on the open ocean, 12 miles from ground zero of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the gulf […]
A shrimp boat captain in Louisiana hired by BP was blocked from rescuing juvenile Kemp’s ridleys that were covered in oil in the Gulf waters. He was captured on video saying that the turtles are being collected in the clean-up efforts and burned up like so much ocean debris with other marine life gathering along […]
