By NEIL GOUGH4 September 2013 HONG KONG (The New York Times) – Thousands of dead fish floating along a 19-mile stretch of a river in Hubei Province in central China were killed by pollutants emitted by a local chemical plant, provincial environmental officials said Wednesday. Environmental protection officials said tests on water taken from the […]
By Jeremy Hance7 July 2013 (mongabay.com) – The newest update to the IUCN Red List has downgraded the status of the Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) from Endangered to Critically Endangered, reflecting the deteriorating state of arguably the world’s most degraded river system. The downgrade follows a survey last year that counted only 1,000 […]
By Jeremy Hance16 April 2013 (mongabay.com) – A survey late last year found that the Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) population has been cut in half in just six years. During a 44-day survey, experts estimated 1,000 river porpoises inhabited the river and adjoining lakes, down from around 2,000 in 2006. The ecology of […]
By Harold Thibault, Guardian Weekly31 January 2012 For visitors expecting to see China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang is a desolate spectacle. Under normal circumstances it covers 3,500 sq km, but last month only 200 sq km were underwater. A dried-out plain stretches as far as the eye can see, leaving a pagoda perched on top […]
Athens, Georgia, October 26 (SPX) – Increasing acidification in coastal waters could compromise the ability of oysters and other marine creatures to form and keep their shells, according to a new study led by University of Georgia researchers. Their findings will be published in the November 2011 issue of Nature Geoscience. The researchers determined the […]
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) – The Yangtze River dolphin, the Christmas Island shrew and the Venezuelan skunk frog are all victims in an alarming flood of extinctions, but how do scientists decide when such "possibly extinct" creatures no longer exist? The United Nations says the world faces the worst spate of extinctions […]
