Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience
New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.
The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.
Continue reading...The MSC’s coveted blue tick is the world’s biggest, and some say best, fishery ecolabel. So why is it in the headlines – and does it really do what it says on the tin?
This month, two right whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence were found entangled in fishing gear. One, a female, was first spotted entangled off Cape Cod last year, but rescuers were not able to fully free her; the other, a male, is believed to have become entangled in the Gulf.
Hunted to near extinction before a partial whaling ban in 1935, North Atlantic right whales are once more critically endangered, with only 356 left. The main threat remains human contact: entanglement in fishing gear, and ship strikes. Fatal encounters, caused in part by the whales’ migratory shift into Canada’s snow crab grounds, have soared: more than a tenth of the population died or were seriously injured between 2017 and 2021, mostly in Canada and New England.
Continue reading...Insects have declined by 75% in the past 50 years – and the consequences may soon be catastrophic. Biologist Dave Goulson reveals the vital services they perform
I have been fascinated by insects all my life. One of my earliest memories is of finding, at the age of five or six, some stripy yellow-and-black caterpillars feeding on weeds in the school playground. I put them in my empty lunchbox, and took them home. Eventually they transformed into handsome magenta and black moths. This seemed like magic to me – and still does. I was hooked.
In pursuit of insects I have travelled the world, from the deserts of Patagonia to the icy peaks of Fjordland in New Zealand and the forested mountains of Bhutan. I have watched clouds of birdwing butterflies sipping minerals from the banks of a river in Borneo, and thousands of fireflies flashing in synchrony at night in the swamps of Thailand. At home in my garden in Sussex I have spent countless hours watching grasshoppers court a mate and see off rivals, earwigs tend their young, ants milk honeydew from aphids, and leaf-cutter bees snip leaves to line their nests.
Continue reading...Researchers find ‘significant relationship’ between stony coral tissue loss disease and nearby shipping
A virulent and fast-moving coral disease that has swept through the Caribbean could be linked to waste or ballast water from ships, according to research.
The deadly infection, known as stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), was first identified in Florida in 2014, and has since moved through the region, causing great concern among scientists.
Continue reading...Minnesota pet owners warned not to release fish into wild, where they wreak havoc on native species
Authorities in Minnesota have appealed to aquarium owners to stop releasing pet fish into waterways, after several huge goldfish were pulled from a local lake.
Officials in Burnsville, about 15 miles south of Minneapolis, said released goldfish can grow to several times their normal size and wreak havoc on indigenous species.
Continue reading...Authorities reclassify animal as vulnerable with a population outside captivity of 1,800
Giant pandas are no longer endangered in the wild, but they are still vulnerable with a population outside captivity of 1,800, Chinese officials have said after years of conservation efforts.
The head of the environment ministry’s department of nature and ecology conservation, Cui Shuhong, said the reclassification was the result of “improved living conditions and China’s efforts in keeping their habitats integrated”.
Continue reading...Experts say now’s the time to get on top of the destructive impact of the invasive species on vulnerable ecosystems
If there is one thing beef cattle farmer Ted Rowley has learned while trying to manage feral deer on his property, it is this: for every deer that you see, there are at least another 10 that you can’t see.
“In the beginning you see a few deer and think that’s pretty cute,” he says. “But what you don’t see is the very large number that are across the landscape.”
Continue reading...From giant clams to zebra shark, marine biologists want to replace lost and vanishing species at sea but face unique obstacles – not least rampant overfishing
Kneeling on the seabed a few metres underwater, I pick up a clam and begin gently cleaning its furrowed, porcelain smile with a toothbrush. It’s a giant clam but a young one and still just a handful. Here in Fiji, giant clams or vasua as they are known, were so heavily overfished for their meat and shells that by the 1980s they were thought to be extinct locally. Australian clams were imported to start a captive breeding programme, and subsequent generations of their offspring have been released on coral reefs across Fiji. They’re still vulnerable to fishing and poaching, but if carefully guarded the giant clams do well and have become symbols of healthy corals reefs inside well-managed marine protected areas.
A key to their early survival is rearing them in cages to keep them safe from predators until they’re large enough to survive by themselves. However, the cages also exclude herbivorous fish, so the clams can easily get overgrown by seaweed, which is where the regular toothbrushing comes in.
Continue reading...Small-scale fishers say mostly EU fleet is devastating catches with method that nets entire shoals of fish
The UK has been accused of allowing a fleet of mainly EU “fly-shooting” fishing boats “unfettered access” to the Channel, without a proper assessment of the impact on fish populations, the seabed or the livelihoods of small-scale fishers.
Organisations representing small-scale fishers on both sides of the Channel have warned that the fleet is having a “devastating” effect on their catches. They are calling for a review of the vessels’ UK licences until an impact assessment has been carried out.
Continue reading...Countrywide scheme is flourishing after being set up to reverse a 75% decline in insect populations
To escape the Berlin bustle on a summer afternoon, all that Derek O’Doyle and his dog Frida have to do is lap the noisy building site outside their inner-city apartment, weave their way through the queue in front of the ice-cream van, and squeeze between two gridlocked lorries to cross over Baerwaldstrasse.
Bordered by a one-way traffic system lies a bucolic 1,720 sq metre haven as colourful as a Monet landscape: blue cornflowers, red poppies, white cow parsley and purple field scabious dot a sea of nettles and wild grass as armies of insects buzz through the air. Two endangered carpenter bees, larger than their honey bee cousins and with pitch-black abdomens, gorge themselves on a bush of yellow gorse.
Continue reading...Exploratory project in Botswana and Namibia is threat to ecosystems, local communities and wildlife, conservationists say
Tens of thousands of African elephants are under threat from plans for a massive new oilfield in one of the continent’s last great wildernesses, experts have warned.
Campaigners and conservationists fear the proposed oilfield stretching across Namibia and Botswana would devastate regional ecosystems and wildlife as well as local communities.
Continue reading...After more than 20 years watching from the cliffs of Botany Bay, Wayne Reynolds’ passion is having tangible results
He may have seen it tens of thousands of times before but when Wayne Reynolds spots a whale emerging from the water, he reacts with the excitement of a child pointing out a rollercoaster at an amusement park.
“Oh wow, there’s a minke and her calf,” he yells out with boyish enthusiasm from the rocky cliff at Potter Point in Kurnell, in Sydney’s south. “I just go into auto-mode, I can’t help it.”
Continue reading...eBioAtlas programme aims to identify fish, birds, amphibians and land animals in freshwater systems from the Ganges to the Mekong
Concealed by the turbid, swirling waters of the Amazon, the Mekong and the Congo, the biodiversity of the world’s great rivers has largely remained a mystery to scientists. But now a multimillion-pound project aims to describe and identify the web of life in major freshwater ecosystems around the world with “gamechanging” DNA technology.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UK-based environmental DNA (eDNA) specialists NatureMetrics have launched a partnership to take thousands of water samples from freshwater river systems like the Ganges and the Niger delta to identify the fish, birds, amphibians and land animals that live in and around them.
Continue reading...‘Queen of the Deep’ says it is not too late to reverse human-made damage to oceans and preserve biodiversity
The world has the opportunity in the next 10 years to restore our oceans to health after decades of steep decline – but to achieve that, people must wake up to the problem, join in efforts to protect marine areas and stop eating tuna, according to the oceanographer and deep sea explorer Sylvia Earle.
“We are at the most exciting time maybe ever to be a human, because we’re armed with knowledge,” said Earle, also known as the Queen of the Deep and “her Deepness”. Earle has also set numerous records for deep sea diving, and was the first woman to serve as chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Continue reading...Undercover documentary investigates the trafficking of Latin America’s big cat to meet demand in China
Elizabeth Unger was a 25-year-old biology graduate working as a PhD research assistant for big cat and climate projects in Latin America when she heard about the Bolivian authorities intercepting dozens of packages containing jaguar fangs sent by Chinese citizens to addresses in China.
“I was really blown away as [the story] was completely under the radar,” she says. Six years later, she is making her directorial debut with a film about the trade, which is contributing to a decline in the population of Latin America’s iconic big cat.
Continue reading...Warning comes amid fears of further delays to Kunming summit, which aims to agree on curbing destruction of ecosystems
The world is running out of time to reach an ambitious deal to stem the destruction of the natural world, the co-chair of negotiations for a crucial UN wildlife summit has warned, amid fears of a third delay to the talks.
Negotiators are scheduled to meet in Kunming, China, in October for Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, to reach a hoped-for Paris-style agreement on preventing wildlife extinctions and the human-driven destruction of the planet’s ecosystems.
Continue reading...Purchase of Langidoon and Metford sheep stations is the second-biggest national parks land procurement in NSW in the last decade
The New South Wales government has purchased more than 60,000 hectares of farmland near Broken Hill for an outback nature reserve, home to at least 14 threatened species.
In an effort to expand conservation efforts in the traditionally underrepresented far west of the state, on Monday NSW environment minister Matt Kean announced the government had finalised the purchase of the neighbouring Langidoon and Metford sheep stations.
Continue reading...Traditional owners are standing together to protect the Fitzroy – a ‘beautiful, living water system’. Just watch out for the bird-sized spiders …
A Nyikina man, Mark Coles Smith, and his fellow travellers began their 400km journey down the mighty Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) on a flood plain covered in giant spiders.
“Bird-sized” spiders were clinging to the canopy, jostling for space on branches protruding above flood water that stretched for kilometres in every direction.
Continue reading...Parts of the continent potentially face a decade of crisis. These two measures are more important than any other in avoiding it
There are so many good causes in the world it is often difficult to know where aid money should go. As leaders line up to attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, the most effective destinations for aid money have become clearer – a global vaccination programme and improving girls’ education.
This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where so much can go wrong over the next 10 years – a population explosion, massive biodiversity loss, desertification, famine and mass migration to mention just a few – that unless we focus our efforts on vaccines and girls’ education, whatever is done to alleviate poverty or tackle the climate emergency will be threatened or even sabotaged in almost every other region of the world.
Continue reading...The 10th edition of the Carmignac photojournalism award was dedicated to the Amazon and the issues related to its deforestation. Photojournalist Tommaso Protti, accompanied by journalist Sam Cowie, travelled thousands of miles across the Brazilian Amazon. From the eastern region of Maranhão to the western region of Rondônia, through the states of Pará and Amazonas, they portrayed modern-day life in the Brazilian Amazon, where social and humanitarian crises overlap with destruction of the rainforest.
As I sat in my hotel room in Marabá, a city in the Amazon state of Pará, Jornal Nacional – Brazil’s flagship news programme – transmitted images of the country’s newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro. “The Indigenous in their reservations are like animals in a zoo,” he said. It was November 2018.
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