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Fishing Technology Letting Turtles Off the Hook
Alternative fishing technology has been shown to save turtles while not affecting fish catches, according to a report released by WWF and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC).
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Bats: Gone With the Wind
Batman has the Joker; real bats have wind turbines. The energy-generating machines kill bats the world over, yet the exact cause has remained as mysterious as the plot of a movie thriller. Now, a new study appears to have solved the riddle.
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Pollutants cause birds to sing tainted love songs
Traces of a chemical once used by power plants leave birds looking fit, but singing another tune altogether.
Wild chickadees exposed to permitted levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can't keep a tune as well as other birds.
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Polar bears found swimming miles from Alaskan coast
An aerial survey by government scientists in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea this week found at least nine polar bears swimming in open water — with one at least 60 miles from shore — raising concern among wildlife experts about their survival.
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Marine Turtle Conservation Moves into High Gear
Bali/Bangkok, 20 August 2008 - An innovative regional agreement is beginning to turn the tide for the 'ancient mariners' of the world's oceans.
Marine turtles traverse the seas for thousands of kilometers, returning after decades to nest in the same area where they entered the world as tiny hatchlings.
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DNA Forensics May Prevent Elephant Poaching
A shipment of forest timber traveled around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean before it arrived at the Hong Kong dockyards two years ago. During a routine X-ray examination, customs officials discovered an even more lucrative cargo hidden behind a false wall: 605 elephant tusks.
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Hopes fade for abandoned baby whale in Australia
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Hopes of saving a baby whale abandoned by its mother in a bay north of Sydney faded late on Wednesday as the calf continued to try to suckle from a moored yacht. International experts said it had just days to live.
The humpback whale, nicknamed "Colin" by Australian media, was found at Pittwater after apparently being abandoned by its mother off Australia's east coast.
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EPA not spilling the beans on bees.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is refusing to disclose records about a new class of pesticides that could be playing a role in the disappearance of millions of honeybees in the United States, a lawsuit filed Monday charges.
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Little robin from Gabon is world's newest species
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A red-breasted bird discovered by accident in the forests of Gabon is a new species, U.S. scientists said on Friday.
They have named the little bird the olive-backed forest robin, or Stiphrornis pyrrholaemus, but say they know little about it yet.
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King penguin receives Norwegian knighthood
Nils Olav already has medals for good conduct and long service. He made honorary colonel-in-chief of the elite Norwegian King's Guard in 2005. And on Friday he was knighted. Not bad for a 3-foot tall penguin — actually, three of them.
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Coastal "dead zones" spread globally, study finds
"Dead zones" in coastal waters -- regions of ocean floor so deprived of oxygen that most marine life cannot survive -- are spreading worldwide at an alarming pace, scientists said on Thursday.
Driving the trend are nitrogen and phosphorous from chemical agricultural fertilizers that reach coastal waters after flowing off farm fields and into streams and rivers, according to the study published in the journal Science.
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Mysteries of Mediterranean bluefin tuna come under the microscope
The most ambitious Mediterranean tuna tagging project yet will today start seeking answers to some key mysteries on the migratory behaviour of this most valuable but also most imperilled ”prince of the sea’.
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Elephant seals join fight against climate change
Elephant seals swimming under Antarctic ice and fitted with special sensors are providing scientists with crucial data on ice formation, ocean currents and climate change, a study released on Tuesday said.
The seals swimming under winter sea ice have overcome a "blind-spot" for scientists by allowing them to calculate how fast sea ice forms during winter.
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Endangered Species Act Changes Give Agencies More Say
The Bush administration yesterday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades.
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U.S. ship heads for Arctic to define territory
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter will embark on an Arctic voyage this week to determine the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska and map the ocean floor, data that could be used for oil and natural gas exploration.
U.S. and University of New Hampshire scientists on the Coast Guard Cutter Healy will leave Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday on a three-week journey. They will create a three-dimensional map of the Arctic Ocean floor in a relatively unexplored area known as the Chukchi borderland.
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Some big whales recovering since 1980s hunt ban
Some large whale species such as the humpback, minke and southern right whale are recovering from a threat of extinction, helped by curbs on hunts since the 1980s, the world's largest conservation network said on Tuesday.A review of cetaceans -- about 80 types of whales, dolphins and porpoises -- showed almost a quarter were in danger, mostly small species.
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Polar bear eaten by shark: who's top predator?
Already threatened by a thaw of ice around the North Pole, the polar bear's title as the top Arctic predator may under challenge from a shark.
Scientists researching how far sharks hunt seals in the Arctic were stunned in June to find part of the jaw of a young polar bear in the stomach of a Greenland shark, a species that favors polar waters.
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Pacific Shellfish Ready To Invade Atlantic
As the Arctic Ocean warms this century, shellfish, snails and other animals from the Pacific Ocean will resume an invasion of the northern Atlantic that was interrupted by cooling conditions three million years ago, predict Geerat Vermeij, professor of geology at the University of California, Davis, and Peter Roopnarine at the California Academy of Sciences.
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Indigenous training offers hope of cutting poaching in Primorye
An indigenous people famed for helping early Siberian explorers survive in the wild are now passing on their knowledge to the guardians of one of the world’s most porous borders.
Leading the training effort in north east Russia is Vasilii Dunkai, leader of the scouting school in Krasnyi Yar in northern Primorye.
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New $27 million project will protect key pollinators for food security and biodiversity
The unique five-year project “Conservation & Management of Pollinators for Sustainable Agriculture through an Ecosystem Approach”, which will be implemented through the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will help ensure food security through the protection of the key pollinator species.
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Mystery killer disease may be spread by vampire bats
A mysterious illness has killed at least 38 people in a remote patch of South American rain forest in recent months. Most, if not all, of the dead are Warao, an indigenous tribe native to north-eastern Venezuela.
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Tiny invasive snail impacts Great Lakes, alters ecology
Long a problem in the western U.S., the New Zealand mud snail currently inhabits four of the five Great Lakes and is spreading into rivers and tributaries, according to a Penn State team of researchers. These tiny creatures out-compete native snails and insects, but are not good fish food replacements for the native species.
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Wanted: $21 Billion to Save Brazilian Rainforest
Can a new plan to halt deforestation of Brazil's Amazon rainforest actually work? Last week, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced a new international fund to raise money for sustainable forest projects. It is hoped that nations will donate a target amount of $21 billion over the next 13 years. Norway has been the first to commit with $100 million so far.
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Flawed U.S. Regulations Make Tigers in Captivity Vulnerable, New Report Shows
The report, Paper Tigers?: The Role of the U.S. Captive Tiger Population in the Trade in Tiger Parts, found there are no reliable regulatory mechanisms to keep track of captive tigers in the United States. While the report shows no evidence that these tigers are currently a supply source for the international black market, these weak U.S. regulations could leave them vulnerable to illegal trade unless the issue is immediately addressed.
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Ivory Poaching At Critical Levels
African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a pace unseen since an international ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989. But the public outcry that resulted in that ban is absent today, and a University of Washington conservation biologist contends it is because the public seems to be unaware of the giant mammals' plight.
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