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Showing posts with the label Endangered Species

B.C. government announces end of grizzly hunt

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|NATIONAL OBSERVER The British Columbia government announced on Monday it was ending the trophy hunt of grizzly bears throughout the province. Story here. Grizzlies in Yellowstone Park. Chris Servheen/USFWS

While America Focuses on Tax Bill, Congress Quietly Tries to Open Arctic Refuge to Oil Drilling

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EcoWatch The U.S. Senate has passed a Republican tax-reform package that contains a provision to authorize oil drilling on the coastal plain of Alaska's  Arctic  National Wildlife Refuge, placing the biological heart of one of our last pristine, untouched places in severe peril. Story here. Barrenground caribou, Nunavut.  Ansgar Walk photo. RELATED: Proposed oil development threatens yet another caribou herd.

As World Warms, Heart-Breaking Video Shows What It Looks Like When a Polar Bear Starves

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Common Dreams "For all of you still trying to hold a ridiculous 'debate' about whether there's something wrong with our planet, please watch this, if you can." Story here. A starving polar bear in  the Norwegian Arctic. Photo by  Andreas Weith

Narwhals’ mixed-up response to fear could kill them

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Nature Tracking study suggests the Arctic whales are particularly vulnerable to human disturbance. Story here. Image by  Pixabay.

Feces from entangled North Atlantic right whales reveals 'sky-high' stress levels

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ScienceDaily Endangered Species Research journal publishes pioneering whale feces research; also being used to investigate unprecedented number of right whale deaths this summer. Story here. A North Pacific right whale. Photo by John Durban, NOAA

Yet another of Earth's creatures faces extinction. - by Larry Powell

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It’s not looking good for the vaquita.   Photo: C. Faesi / Proyecto Vaquita 1992. The vaquita are porpoises which measure only about 1.5 meters, fully grown. They’re among the smallest of the cetaceans, an order of marine mammals which includes porpoises, dolphins and whales. Their numbers have now dwindled to fewer than 30 in Mexico’s Gulf of California, where they live.   The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports vaquita numbers have declined an astonishing 92% since 1997.  Gill net   fishing is the main culprit. The vaquita have become “collateral damage” as poachers target a fish whose swim bladder fetches $20 thousand dollars per kilogram for use in Chinese medicine. Mexico has imposed a permanent ban on the taking of vaquita. But authorities have been unable to enforce the law sufficiently to make a difference. Now, the magazine, Science is reporting, an eleventh-hour bid by a team of conservationists, to bring them back from the brink,

Canada releases report on the progress of caribou recovery-strategy - overall prognosis? Not good!

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CISION In the boreal forest, the environment and the economy are linked: all stakeholders have a part in protecting it. Our government is committed to conserving wildlife habitat and protecting species at risk in this vast swath of Canadian forest. Story here. Photo credit - Jon Nickles  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Newly discovered orangutan species is also the most endangered

nature The first new species of great ape described in more than eight decades faces threats to its habitat. Story here.

"Just like eating yogurt" - scientists hope to end epidemic in bats

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NATIONAL OBSERVER Canadian scientists are racing to test a remedy that they hope will save bats from a deadly fungus that has already killed millions of the winged mammals across the continent. Story here. Hibernating healthy Virginia big-eared bats in W.V.  U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service 

Crash in sea-turtle births stumps ecologists

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Nature|News Leading suspect — climate change — doesn’t fully explain what is happening to leatherback turtles in the US Virgin Islands. Story here. Little leatherbacks leave their nest in Aruba. Photo by  Elise Peterson

Rare chicks rescued in Manitoba catch flight to Ontario before heading south

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CBCnews 4 chimney swift chicks were rehabilitated after falling from building at Lower Fort Garry. Story here. Other Swifts seen here in a chimney.  Photo by  Greg Schechter from San Francisco, USA

DEEP TROUBLE - 7 right whales entangled this summer, new data shows

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CBC news Fishing lines killed at least 2 whales, and 2 others were freed by rescuers.  Story here. We destroy our kindred creatures in ways that are varied and wondrous. This northern right whale was run over by a ship. Photo by NOAA.

Help the World Wildlife Fund help save our vanishing wildlife

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RELATED: PinP reviews the book - "The Sixth Extinction - an unnatural history."

Living Planet Report Canada - Our Vanishing Wildlife

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World Wildlife Fund                    Burrowing owl.                                   Great Blue Herron. Bobolink. (PinP photos.) The fate of wildlife in Canada is in our hands. WWF -Canada’s Living Planet Report Canada shows that wildlife is on a troubling decline. It’s time to come together and turn things around. Story here.

Battle Begins to Restore Protections for Greater Yellowstone Grizzly Bears

ECOWATCH A conservation group is suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, challenging the  agency's rule stripping grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of Endangered Species protections. Story here.

'The entire species could become extinct': Crowdfunding underway to save Manitoba butterfly

CBCnews The rapid decline of a tiny butterfly living in an equally small patch of Manitoba has prompted the Nature Conservancy of Canada to take action in hopes of saving the species from extinction.  Story here.

Insecticide found in same B.C. hummingbirds that are in decline

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CBC news A rufus hummingbird, one of the kinds in decline. Dean E. Biggins 'No one has ever measured pesticides in hummingbirds before. So we decided to try it,' says scientist. Story here. RELATED:  "Will New Research Nudge Canada Toward a 'Neonic" Ban?" " Environmental groups back in court over pollinator-killing pesticides "

Parisitic birds use oil and gas infrastructures to prey on prairie songbirds - Study.

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Royal Society Open Science  We're only beginning to find out all the ways in which industrial activity disrupts the ecosystem, and a new bird study gives yet another example of the unexpected ways in which human activity affects the local fauna. Researchers at the University of Manitoba have found that the presence of oil and natural gas infrastructure—such as fences, power lines, and transmitters around oil wells—in Canada's Northern Great Plains helped boost the number of brown-headed cowbirds by four times. Cowbirds are a parasitic species who lay their eggs in other birds' nests, forcing others to raise their brood. The parasitic species uses oil and gas infrastructures as perches, and the availability of perches makes it easier for these birds to find their brood hosts.  Savannah sparrow. Photo by  D. Gordon E. Robertson Cowbirds' abundance in the area could hurt another grassland bird species, the Savannah sparrow, which often falls victim to the parasitic

A rare look at the potentially harmful effects of climate change on terrestrial species in Antarctica

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Nature Much research has been dedicated to studying the effects of climate   change and global warming on the Antarctic ice sheet and sea levels; but  t he same can't be said about the ice-free parts of the region, which cover  l ess than 1% of the continent.  Australian researchers modelled the potential effect of climate change   under two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate-forcing   scenarios. Their findings suggest that under the more radical of the two   scenarios, the ice-free areas in the Antarctic can expand by as much as   25% by the end of the 21st century.  Such a drastic increase in surface area   can bring about a homogenization of the biome, the extinction of less- competitive species and the spread of invasive species. Though the   expansion of habitat space can be viewed as a positive outcome,  r esearchers say that sticking to the protocol that aims to reduce global   temperature increases will help maintain the current biodiversity

Prep school teens were accused of massacring protected birds. Did they get off too easy?

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The Washington Post Albatross. Photo by JJ Harrison KAPA‘A, Hawaii — The first of the bodies was discovered by a hiker who snapped a photo of the suspicious scene with his cellphone. Buried in a nest on the westernmost spit of the Hawaiian island of Oahu was a dead bird the size of a human child. On the ground next to it was a large stick. More Here.