By Jeremy Hance Oil is leaking from an offshore drilling rig in the Timor Sea near Australia’s Northwest coast. Authorities say it will be weeks before the leak is plugged: they are awaiting the arrival of a drilling rig from Singapore to plug the leak. “This is a potential disaster for turtles, whales, dolphins, sea […]
By Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News Poachers are threatening the survival of the northern Madagascar spider tortoise, which only lives along a narrow strip of the island’s coast. The animal has disappeared from swathes of its habitat, taken by collectors to supply the exotic pet trade. Wild numbers of the tortoise may have already fallen […]
The animals’ stampede through the Mara river is one of nature’s most spectacular events. But now the watercourse is drying up, a sign of the damage being done to Africa’s fragile eco-system By Daniel Howden The scale of it is hard to comprehend. Even standing on the dented roof of an old jeep in the […]
Prosperous middle class contributing to a growing appetite for ‘forest food’ By Andrew Buncombe, Asia correspondent As any visitor to Vietnam can confirm, its people have a remarkable taste for meals made from each and every creature. From snakes and spiders to monkeys and rats, there are few wild animals not prized when it comes […]
By John Platt Who stole 83 loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings from their nest on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina? A $5,000 reward has been posted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the turtle-napper(s). Loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) are protected as a threatened species […]
Despite being accorded the highest level of protection under Indian law, soft shell turtles are regularly trafficked in Kerala for the restaurant trade, report researchers writing in in the journal Tropical Conservation Science. Conducting a survey in Punnamada (South India), K. Krishnakumar, Rajeev Raghavan and Benno Pereira found that Indian pond terrapins and Indian Flap-shelled […]
A fifth of reptiles and almost a quarter of amphibians in Europe are threatened with extinction on the continent, according to the European Commission. By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent The first European Red Lists of threatened species for the two groups of species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) shows 23 per […]
