New list spotlights most endangered turtles and action plan to save them
The Turtle Conservation Fund (TCF) today released its first-ever list of the World’s Top 25 Most Endangered Turtles to highlight the survival crisis facing the world’s tortoises and freshwater turtles and to unveil a Global Action Plan to prevent further extinctions. Fully 200 of the 300 living species of tortoises and freshwater turtles are threatened and require conservation action.
The TCF
90 % of all large fish including tuna, marlin, swordfish, sharks, cod and halibut are gone – leading scientists say need to attempt restoration on a global scale is urgent
The cover story of the May 15th issue of the international journal Nature reveals that we have only 10% of all large fish– both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large groundfish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder– left in the sea. Most strikingly, the study shows that industrial
Taken from a microbe that thrives in the depths of a Yellowstone National Park hot springs pool, a newly discovered enzyme may be the key to transforming industrial bleaching from environmentally problematic to environmentally green.
Chemical engineer Vicki Thompson and biologists William Apel and Kastli Schaller from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory discovered that the catalase enzyme from a Thermus brockianus microbe flourishes i
WWF Italia is monitoring the urbanization of the Italian coast to catch overdeveloped “hot spots”, courtesy of an ESA programme to develop new applications-driven services with space data.
WWF Italia has been working with ESA as part of the Agency’s Urban Expansion (UrbEx) project to provide a novel information service that monitors the loss of natural areas from urban development. The project’s objective was to demonstrate the capability to monitor urban growth using Earth observa
The resilience of sockeye salmon runs in Alaska’s Bristol Bay -– after a century of fishing they’re as healthy as they’ve ever been – is about strength in numbers.
It’s not just an abundance of fish, although the numbers returning to spawn is tens of millions more than the total across the lower 48 states and prudent actions by fishermen and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game have helped make it a classic example of a sustainable fishery.
As it turns out, it’
Weizmann Institute study suggests that rising carbon dioxide levels might cause forests to spread into dry environments
Missing: around 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas charged with global warming. Every year, industry releases about 22 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And every year, when scientists measure the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it doesn’t add up – about half goes missing. Figuring in the amount that could be s
Converting one third of chemical scrubbers worldwide could save up to two billion dollars each year
Scientists at UC Riverside have pushed the current limit of a technique for biologically removing hydrogen sulfide from sewage emissions a step further. Marc Deshusses, associate professor in the department of chemical and environmental engineering, and his postdoctoral researcher, David Gabriel, report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that they have modifi
While it is well-established that roads can help spread invasive weeds, one new study shows that improved roads are worse than primitive ones, while another suggests that roadless areas act as refuges for native species against invasions.
Cheatgrass, knapweeds and other non-native plants have invaded nearly 125 million acres of the American West. Roads promote invasion because vehicles can transport non-native seeds into uninfested areas, and disturbed roadsides give weed seeds a place to g
The number of housing developments on greenfield sites could be significantly reduced thanks to technology, pioneered by University of Greenwich environmental scientists, which can quickly decontaminate polluted and brownfield land, ready for building affordable environmentally friendly housing.
nown as Accelerated Carbonation Technology (ACT), this new process can treat contaminated land and hazardous waste in minutes rather than the days or weeks required by some conventional methods.
Several industrial activities of the previous decades resulted in serious contamination of groundwater. For instance, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production and related activities cause annual underground releases of 137 tonnes of 1,2-dichloroethane (1,2-DCA) in the USA (1988-1999). The latter molecule has an environmental half-life of about 50 years, is the most abundant groundwater pollutant of all chloroethenes and –ethanes, and is a suspected carcinogen. Its physico-chemical properties result in a s
The Ntumu (the Beti-Fang), live in the equatorial forest in southern Cameroon, in the north of Gabon and of Equatorial Guinea. They practice a semi-nomadic slash-and-burn form of agriculture. Their farming is highly diversified, mainly of food crops (such as cassava, plantain banana, sweet potato, yam and taro) but they also produce cash crops (cacao, groundnuts). When they clear a plot (1 ha on average), the Ntumu systematically spare certain trees, generally about 15 whatever cutting methods or imp
Areas deforested in Brazil increased from 152 000 km_ in 1976 to 517 000 km_ in 1996. That figure is the equivalent of the surface area of France. Deforestation is a complex process and involves a host of changing and widely differing situations. The factors behind it are many and varied. They include rising demand for agricultural land, international trade needs for timber and political decisions regarding strategic planning and development.
Researchers of the IRD Space Unit conducted an i
Sunlight can convert triclosan, a common disinfectant used in anti-bacterial soaps, into a form of dioxin, and this process may produce some of the dioxin found in the environment, according to research at the University of Minnesota. The researchers said that although the dioxin was a relatively benign form, treating wastewater with chlorine could possibly lead to the production of a much more toxic species of dioxin. The study is in press in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A: Chemist
Nature has many patterns and ecologists seek to both describe and understand them. Nature also is very complex. One challenge is to find patterns in that complexity and to ask whether simple explanations lie beneath them.
Ecologists have tackled this challenge for decades, erecting various hypotheses and debating their plausibility. In an important paper featured in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), an international team of ecologists describes
“Bellwether” of what’s to come farther south, say Queen’s researchers
Dramatic clues to North American climate change have been discovered by a team of Queen’s University scientists in the bottom of 50 Arctic lakes.
Using innovative techniques that enable them to collect historic evidence from fossilized algae in lake bottom sediment, the researchers have found signs of marked environmental changes in a variety of lakes of different depths and composition, within a 750-km r
Logging, illegal hunting, and Ebola caused nearly 60 percent decline since 1983
Scientists say chimps and gorillas now ’critically endangered’
Scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, Princeton University and other organizations have reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature that a dramatic decline of gorillas and chimpanzees is taking place in western equatorial Africa, the last stronghold for great apes on the continent. Ravaged
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