Huge fleets’ intrusions into Pacific fishing territory prompt Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to join forces
Related: 'It's terrifying': can anyone stop China's vast armada of fishing boats?
Four South American countries have joined forces in a bid to combat illegal fishing by huge Chinese fleets off their coasts.
Continue reading...Scientists find several living specimens of Voeltzkow’s chameleon during expedition
Scientists have found an elusive chameleon species that was last spotted in Madagascar 100 years ago.
Researchers from Madagascar and Germany said on Friday they had discovered several living specimens of Voeltzkow’s chameleon during an expedition to the north-west of the African island nation.
Continue reading...Hilsa fishermen must borrow to buy equipment but have to sell their catch at a low price to moneylenders – creating a generational debt trap
Kalam Sheikh’s life revolves around the few months when he goes in search of Bangladesh’s prized hilsa fish. When he gets a good catch, he can make enough money to live on for the rest of the year. He can pay off some of his debts and even improve his home.
But this fragile annual cycle has been broken this year, with bad catches bookended by months off the water by the coronavirus pandemic and government restrictions to stop overfishing.
Continue reading...Voluntary action of companies including Tesco and Princes aims to put pressure on regulatory body to tackle overfishing
British supermarkets and brands, including Tesco, the Co-op and Princes, are stepping up action to cut yellowfin tuna catches in the Indian Ocean, amid warnings the stock is in a “critical” state.
The effort, by companies reliant on healthy fish stocks, represents a counterintuitive effort to force regulators to act, rather than the other way around.
Continue reading...Restoring degraded natural lands highly effective for carbon storage and avoiding species extinctions
Restoring natural landscapes damaged by human exploitation can be one of the most effective and cheapest ways to combat the climate crisis while also boosting dwindling wildlife populations, a scientific study finds.
If a third of the planet’s most degraded areas were restored, and protection was thrown around areas still in good condition, that would store carbon equating to half of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution.
Continue reading...Trillions of dollars of GDP depend on biodiversity, according to Swiss Re report
One-fifth of the world’s countries are at risk of their ecosystems collapsing because of the destruction of wildlife and their habitats, according to an analysis by the insurance firm Swiss Re.
Natural “services” such as food, clean water and air, and flood protection have already been damaged by human activity.
Continue reading...Wildfires, mostly caused by land clearing for cattle grazing and soya production, have set four nations ablaze
Primatologist Martin Kowalewski is measuring the scale of the fires raging across Latin America not in satellite images, but in the number of caraya monkeys (black-and-gold howlers) that have succumbed to the flames.
“Of the 20 family groups that we used to trace in the wild, each group consisting of seven or eight monkeys, at least five groups were burned alive,” he tells the Guardian. Other animals have also perished at San Cayetano, a nature reserve in Argentina’s northeastern province of Corrientes. “Carpinchos (giant South American rodents), otters, two species of fox, guazú deer, yacaré caimans, turtles, snakes. Birds are better at escaping the fire, but that was before all the deforestation. Now they have nowhere to go because there is nowhere else. The forest is so fragmented that they have nowhere to nest.”
Continue reading...Quarter of fakes were stolen with some eggs tracked from thief to trafficker to consumer
Decoy eggs made by a 3D-printer and fitted with satellite tags have been placed in sea turtle nests on beaches in Costa Rica to track the illegal trade of their eggs.
A quarter of the fake eggs put among 101 turtle nests on four beaches in Costa Rica were stolen, with some eggs successfully tracked as they moved from thief to trafficker to consumer.
Continue reading...Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s three children quiz veteran broadcaster on his passion for nature
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s children have shared their passion for animals with Sir David Attenborough in an adorable video.
Prince George, seven, Princess Charlotte, five, and Prince Louis, two, quizzed the 94-year-old broadcaster in a video recorded at Kensington Palace in August. Princess Charlotte revealed that she likes spiders, and Attenborough told Prince Louis that his favourite animals were monkeys.
Continue reading...Brazilian leader vows to continue to exploit country’s natural resources in combative comments at UN biodiversity summit
The leaders dialogue on addressing biodiversity loss and mainstreaming biodiversity for sustainable development is underway. Statements from Angela Merkel and Imran Khan got us started.
The German chancellor said extinctions are accelerating at a pace never before seen in the history of humanity. She said the world must turn the tide on biodiversity loss by expanding protecting areas, restoring ecosystems and directing financial resources to protecting plants and animals.
We are going to take a short break now before the next leaders’ dialogue. It will be chaired by Angela Merkel and Imran Khan on addressing biodiversity loss and mainstreaming biodiversity for sustainable development.
That will begin at 3pm in New York and 8pm UK time.
Continue reading...Race against time to save plants and fungi that underpin life on Earth, global data shows
Two in five of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction as a result of the destruction of the natural world, according to an international report.
Plants and fungi underpin life on Earth, but the scientists said they were now in a race against time to find and identify species before they were lost.
Continue reading...A lack of awareness and ever-increasing competition among fishing boats threaten one of the sea’s most vital species
The temperature is cooling down in the fish market in Monastir, Tunisia. Still, the suffocating smell of the fish guts that have sat through the full force of the day’s heat hangs heavy in the air. The stallholders have left now, but on the floor amid the detritus is the unmistakable shape of a severed shark’s head.
Nearby, in a skip, the bodies of two guitarfish rays lie discarded, stripped of meat to the cartilage.
Continue reading...Elephants may have ingested toxins produced by bacteria found in waterholes
Hundreds of elephants died in Botswana earlier this year from ingesting toxins produced by cyanobacteria, according to government officials who say they will be testing waterholes for algal blooms next rainy season to reduce the risk of another mass die-off.
The mysterious death of 350 elephants in the Okavango delta between May and June baffled conservationists, with leading theories suggesting they were killed by a rodent virus known as EMC (encephalomyocarditis) or toxins from algal blooms.
Continue reading...Researchers say loss of 1.9m square kilometres of intact ecosystems will have ‘profound implications’ for biodiversity
Wilderness across the planet is disappearing on a huge scale, according to a new study that found human activities had converted an area the size of Mexico from virtually intact natural landscapes to heavily modified ones in just 13 years.
The loss of 1.9m square kilometres (735,000 sq miles) of intact ecosystems would have “profound implications” for the planet’s biodiversity, the study’s authors said.
Continue reading...‘Humanity at a crossroads’ after a decade in which all of the 2010 Aichi goals to protect wildlife and ecosystems have been missed
The world has failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems in the last decade, according to a devastating new report from the UN on the state of nature.
From tackling pollution to protecting coral reefs, the international community did not fully achieve any of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed in Japan in 2010 to slow the loss of the natural world. It is the second consecutive decade that governments have failed to meet targets.
Continue reading...Revival prompts calls to divert boats to help protect native Indo-Pacific humpbacks
Large numbers of dolphins returned to Hong Kong waters within weeks of the Covid-19 crisis shutting down high-speed ferries, and researchers are now calling for protections before the ferries resume.
Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, also known as Chinese white dolphins and pink dolphins, are native to the Pearl River estuary, but typically avoided the waters between Hong Kong and Macau because of the high volume of high-speed boats.
Continue reading...UK government said it failed on two-thirds of targets, but RSPB analysis is bleaker – and suggests UK is moving backwards in some areas
The UK has failed to reach 17 out of 20 UN biodiversity targets agreed on 10 years ago, according to an analysis from conservation charity RSPB that says the gap between rhetoric and reality has resulted in a “lost decade for nature”.
The UK government’s self-assessment said it failed on two-thirds of targets (14 out of 20) agreed at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, but the RSPB analysis suggests the reality is worse. On six of the 20 targets the UK has actually gone backwards. The government’s assessment published last year said it was not regressing on any target.
Continue reading...Large seizure of pangolin scales also carried out, government says, as four suspects are arrested
At least 26 great apes illegally removed from the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been seized in Zimbabwe, where four suspected traffickers have been arrested.
Congo’s environment minister, Claude Nyamugabo Bazibuhe, also announced a large seizure of pangolin scales from the country’s north-east.
Continue reading...Port Moresby nature park may not survive the impact of pandemic shutdowns
From the heat and dust of the city’s noisy, crowded streets, the Port Moresby Nature Park is an oasis, for the city’s residents as well as the animals it keeps.
Home to more than 500 creatures and spread over 30 verdant acres, the park has spent years rescuing injured, orphaned or trafficked animals from across the country, and protected and nurtured native species, including the endangered pig-nosed turtle, and the magnificent riflebird.
Continue reading...Extinction rates for birds and mammals since 1993 would have been ‘three to four times higher’ without action
Up to 48 bird and mammal extinctions have been prevented by conservation efforts since a global agreement to protect biodiversity, according to a new study.
The Iberian lynx, California condor and pygmy hog are among animals that would have disappeared without reintroduction programmes, zoo-based conservation and formal legal protections since 1993, research led by scientists at Newcastle University and BirdLife International found.
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