Over 100 Amazon river dolphins were found dead in Lake Tefé over the past week, the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, a social organization under Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, reported. Thousands of dead fish were also found, with experts concerned that the record-breaking high water temperatures and ongoing drought in the region […]
President Joe Biden has decided against imposing an embargo on products from Mexico after the country was sanctioned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) for failing to protect vaquitas by curbing illegal totoaba fishing. Vaquitas are critically endangered porpoises with only about 10 individuals left in […]
A new study by scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Durham University and Princeton University asserts that bolstering the protections of current conservation areas is as important for keeping biodiversity intact as establishing new protected areas, a press release from Durham University said. The researchers found that, of the approximately 5,000 species studied, […]
The Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act has passed in California. The act is the first legislation in the state to protect a species from climate change. It prohibits any person or public agency from importing, exporting, removing, owning, buying or selling western Joshua trees or any of their parts, and the legislation requires the Department […]
Scientists from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Wageningen University & Research and Rice University indicates for the first time that protected areas do not keep the tropical mammals living within them from being affected by human activity that occurs outside their borders.
The rusty patched bumble bee is one of the many bees facing threats to its survival, from toxic insecticides to loss of habitat and global heating. Once prevalent throughout the upper midwestern and northeastern U.S., this unique bumble bee species has declined more than 85 percent and now lives only in the northernmost portion of […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being sued for unlawfully reapproving toxic herbicides used to grow food that contain 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), an active ingredient used in the chemical weapon Agent Orange. The Center for Food Safety (CFS), Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) and Alianza Nacional De Campesinas, Inc., are suing the EPA […]
The shy, elusive vaquita is the smallest and most endangered porpoise in the world, with fewer than 20 remaining in their small range in the Gulf of California’s Sea of Cortez. Vaquitas have been hanging on against all odds, despite the consistent threat of entanglement in gillnets used to illegally catch totoaba, a large fish […]
The Australian and Queensland governments have introduced a more than $160 million package to phase out the commercial gill net fishing that damages the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world, as well as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Area. […]