biodiversity

Salmon Face Upstream Battle as Blueprints for Recovery Are Ignored

Salmon Face Upstream Battle as Blueprints for Recovery Are Ignored

As the days get cooler and shorter, millions of salmon are making the arduous journey up the rivers and streams of British Columbia (B.C.) to the spawning grounds where they were born. Waiting for this rich pulse of life from the Pacific Ocean are bears, gulls, wolves, eagles, ospreys, crows, pine martins and dozens of […]

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    Why Ecuador Abandoned Plans to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground and Save the Amazon

    Why Ecuador Abandoned Plans to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground and Save the Amazon

    Adam Chimienti On Aug. 15, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced his government’s abandonment of the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, the innovative attempt to reverse the economic arrangement of oil extraction in the Amazon by keeping the oil in the soil in exchange for international assistance. His words that evening were disheartening to many. They encroached on the […]

    250 Groups Call on EPA to Ban Endocrine-Disrupting Atrazine

    250 Groups Call on EPA to Ban Endocrine-Disrupting Atrazine

    Center for Biological Diversity A diverse coalition of more than 250 conservation, public-health and sustainable farming groups sent a letter today asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban atrazine, a toxic pesticide that threatens wildlife and people across the country. The Center for Biological Diversity also submitted comments today from more than 38,000 […]

    Scientists Mimic Cacti to Create Oil Spill Clean Up Method

    Scientists Mimic Cacti to Create Oil Spill Clean Up Method

    Yale Environment 360 Chinese researchers have developed a method of removing oil from polluted water using tiny barbed spikes that mimic the natural design of a cactus. Writing in Nature Communications, the Beijing-based researchers describe how arrays of tiny copper spikes, similar to the cone-shaped spikes of a type of cactus known as Opuntia microdasys, […]

    EPA’s New Pesticide Label Fails to Fully Protect Honey Bees

    EPA’s New Pesticide Label Fails to Fully Protect Honey Bees

    Beyond Pesticides The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new pesticide label for honey bee protection, announced Thursday, has been widely criticized by beekeepers and environmentalists as offering inadequate protection in the face of devastating bee decline. Under the new guidelines, the labels will prohibit the use of some neonicotinoid pesticides when bees are present, and […]

    Pilot Study Finds Plants Sold As ‘Bee Friendly’ Pretreated With Pesticides

    Pilot Study Finds Plants Sold As ‘Bee Friendly’ Pretreated With Pesticides

    Friends of the Earth Many “bee friendly” home garden plants sold at Home Depot, Lowe’s and other leading garden centers have been pre-treated with pesticides shown to harm and kill bees, according to a new, first-of-its-kind pilot study released yesterday by Friends of the Earth and allies. The pilot study, co-authored by the Pesticide Research […]

    Arctic is Caught in Rapid Melt ‘Death Spiral’

    Arctic is Caught in Rapid Melt ‘Death Spiral’

    TckTckTck By Heather Libby “The record or near-records being reported from year to year in the Arctic are no longer anomalies or exceptions. Really they have become the rule for us, or the norm that we see in the Arctic and that we expect to see for the forseeable future” – Jackie Richter-Menge, U.S. Army […]

    Monarch Migration Patterns Yield Clues About Pollinator Declines

    Monarch Migration Patterns Yield Clues About Pollinator Declines

    Yale Environment 360 A comprehensive mapping of the the North American migration patterns of the iconic monarch butterfly could help preserve a species threatened by loss of habitat and food sources, a team of international researchers says. In a study conducted across 17 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, from southern Texas to Alberta, biologists […]

    Connecticut-Sized Dead Zone Found in Gulf of Mexico

    Connecticut-Sized Dead Zone Found in Gulf of Mexico

    Ocean Conservancy By Alexis Baldera Imagine if all of the animals throughout the entire state of Connecticut left or died. This is what happens every year in the Gulf of Mexico. The size of the dead zone varies—sometimes it’s as big as New Jersey or only the size of Rhode Island, but the problem always […]