This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
World’s Most Endangered Sea Turtle Found Strangled by Beach Chair
An extremely endangered sea turtle was found dead on a Fort Morgan, Alabama beach Saturday, strangled by an abandoned beach chair, the Miami Herald reported Sunday.
The turtle's death was documented by a series of Facebook posts by the Fort Morgan branch of Alabama sea turtle conservation group Share the Beach.
"This makes me so mad. How many hundreds of times do we have to ask people to pick their stuff up? It should just be common decency. I think I am going to print this out and carry it with me next time I have to ask," the first post said.
The posts identified the turtle as a Kemp's ridley turtle, which are the smallest species of sea turtle, according to the Miami Herald, and also the most endangered, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
They typically nest in Texas and Mexico but have been found in the Gulf, WPMI reported.
Kemp's ridley sea turtles have been listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) as endangered species since 1970, and the greatest threat to the species is human activity, according to the Miami Daily Herald.
"We did it, turtles will not encounter chairs if it were not for us," Dauphin Island resident and Share the Beach volunteer Richard Brewer told Fox10 News. "Heartbreaking. Truly heartbreaking."
Brewer said that he had a pile of nets, ropes and refrigerator tanks in his yard that he and his daughter had collected from beaches on Dauphin Island this season.
"We had great news this morning, we believe that we have the first Kemp's ridley nest ever found on Dauphin Island, to find out that we had a mature female Kemp's that just died because of something that could have been prevented is tragic," Brewer told Fox10 News.
Matt Ware, a Ph.D. student and marine ecologist who posted the second set of photos of the turtle, said the turtle was found during salvaging activities permitted by U.S. FWS.
Ware told WPMI that he was not sure how long the turtle had been dead, but it could have suffered for days.
"The chair had some growth on it and the turtle was showing signs of decomposition, though not extensive," he said in a comment on the original post reported by the Miami Herald. "It's late in the season for these guys to be nesting, so either she's been carrying it around awhile or she picked it up in the water."
Ware told WPMI that beachgoers should take everything back with them when they leave the beach, even if they plan to return the next day.
"We aren't the only animals who enjoy the beach," Ware said.
The Russian military is taking measures to protect the residents of a remote Arctic settlement from a mass of polar bears, German press agency DPA reported.
The move comes after regional authorities declared a state of emergency over the weekend after sightings of more than 50 bears in the town of Belushya Guba since December.
This year's letter from Bill and Melinda Gates focused on nine things that surprised them. For the Microsoft-cofounder, one thing he was surprised to learn was the massive amount of new buildings the planet should expect in the coming decades due to urban population growth.
"The number of buildings in the world is going to double by 2060. It's like we're going to build a new New York City every month for the next 40 years," he said.
Over the past few years, it seems vegan cooking has gone from 'brown rice and tofu' to a true art form. These amazing cooks show off the creations on Instagram—and we can't get enough.
By Shana Udvardy
After a dearth of action on climate change and a record year of extreme events in 2017, the inclusion of climate change policies within the annual legislation Congress considers to outline its defense spending priorities (the National Defense Authorization Act) for fiscal year 2018 was welcome progress. House and Senate leaders pushed to include language that mandated that the Department of Defense (DoD) incorporate climate change in their facility planning (see more on what this section of the bill does here and here) as well as issue a report on the impacts of climate change on military installations. Unfortunately, what DoD produced fell far short of what was mandated.
Trump is losing his rallying cry to save coal. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) voted on Thursday to retire two coal-fired power plants in the next few years despite a plea from the president to keep one of the plants open.
Earlier this week, the president posted an oddly specific tweet that urged the government-owned utility to save the 49-year-old Paradise 3 plant in Kentucky. It so happens that the facility burns coal supplied by Murray Energy Corporation, whose CEO is Robert Murray, is a major Trump donor.