World wildlife populations halved in 40 years – ‘The scale of biodiversity loss and damage to the very ecosystems that are essential to our existence is alarming’

By Roger Harrabin30 September 2014 (BBC News) – The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought, the London Zoological Society (ZSL) says in its new Living Planet Index [pdf]. The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago. […]

Police find 9,400 endangered sea turtle eggs in car trunk outside Nicoya, Costa Rica

By Zach Dyer 1 September 2014 (Tico Times) – Costa Rica’s National Police have seized what is likely the biggest illegal stash of poached sea turtle eggs this year, just outside of Nicoya, Guanacaste. Police officers spotted a nervous driver of a Nissan Sentra at a highway checkpoint outside Nicoya, a city on the Nicoya […]

This Hawaiian island is so polluted with plastic that it might become a Superfund site – ‘These animals face enough threats to their survival from sea level rise and habitat loss, the last thing they need is to choke on a floating plastic bag’

By Taylor Hill12 September 2014  (takepart.com) – Hawaiian green sea turtles, monk seals, and black-footed albatrosses are all closer to getting a cleaner, plastic-free home as the federal government takes a step toward declaring a remote Pacific atoll a Superfund site. The designation, which the United States Environmental Protection Agency gives for areas severely contaminated […]

Choking the oceans with plastic

By Charles J. Moore25 August 2014 LOS ANGELES (The New York Times) – The world is awash in plastic. It’s in our cars and our carpets, we wrap it around the food we eat and virtually every other product we consume; it has become a key lubricant of globalization — but it’s choking our future […]

Video: Tourists rescue endangered sea turtles from poacher – Turtles were tied up and left to suffocate

By Kristina Bravo27 August 2014  (Take Part) – The sight of two suffocating turtles, on their backs with fins tied up, horrified tourists on Little Corn Island, Nicaragua. Thanks to their quick thinking, the animals were returned safely to sea. A video posted on YouTube Monday shows tourists rescuing two loggerhead turtles, each weighing about […]

Little has changed 1 year after slaying of Costa Rica conservationist Jairo Mora

By Lindsay Fendt31 May 2014 MOÍN, Limón (Tico Times) – It was February, and leatherback sea turtles had just starting arriving to nest on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast when Marielos Morice and I made our drive down the uneven dirt path along Moín Beach. When the road turned to sand, Morice looked up and yelled […]

Prosecutors file murder charges against turtle egg poachers who allegedly murdered Jairo Mora

By Lindsay Fendt  5 May 2014 (Tico Times) – On Monday, after more than nine months in preventive detention, the seven men suspected of participating in the killing of Costa Rican sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora last May were formally charged with murder and a host of other offenses. All seven men — with the […]

Search for Flight MH370 hampered by ocean garbage problem – ‘The world does use the ocean as its toilet, and then expects that toilet to feed it’

By Tom Cohen2 April 2014 (CNN) – Another debris field, another new and so-far futile focus in the search for Flight MH370. More than three weeks after the Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared, one thing has been made clear: the ocean is full of garbage, literally. “It isn’t like looking for a needle in a haystack,” […]

New report exposes nine of the dirtiest U.S. fisheries – ‘Hundreds of thousands of dolphins, whales, sharks, sea birds, sea turtles, and fish needlessly die each year as a result of indiscriminate fishing gear’

Contact: Dustin Cranor, dcranor@oceana.org, 954-348-1314, 954-348-1314 (cell); Amelia Vorpahl, avorpahl@oceana.org, 202-467-1968, 202-476-0632 (cell) Washington, D.C., 20 March 2014 (Oceana) – Today, Oceana released a new report exposing nine of the dirtiest fisheries in the United States. These nine fisheries combined throw away almost half of what they catch and are responsible for more than 50 […]

Blood in the Sand – Costa Rica’s turtle egg poachers are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way

By Matthew Power2 January 2014 (Outside Magazine) – It was only eight o’clock on the evening of 30 May 2013, but the beach was completely dark. The moon hadn’t yet risen above Playa Moín, a 15-mile-long strand of mangrove and palm on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. A two-door Suzuki 4×4 bumped along a rough track […]

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