PLANET IN PERIL

TIME Of course, "The Big Thaw" is not confined to Canada. This Alaskan permafrost has melted, causing one of this lake's banks to collapse.  As a result, its waters are draining into a river,  then into the sea,  perhaps leading to the lake's disappearance! NPS Climate Change Response  Photo (C.Ciancibelli) The Canadian Arctic permafrost is thawing 70 years earlier than expected, a rate shocking a group of scientists who released the findings of their long-term study this month. More here.

The Guardian Shark fins for sale in Canada. Photo by Hakai MAGAZINE  Measure which also bans sale of fins awaits royal assent. Story here.

Bureau of Investigative Journalism Spreading manure on a harvested corn field. Photo by Chesapeake Bay Program. Thousands of deaths could be avoided each year if air pollution from UK farms were halved, new analysis has revealed. But the government's failure to act means the most damaging sectors are under no obligation to cut their emissions.  Story here.

ILRI The swelling around the kidneys & the muscle hemorrhages shown here are typical of pigs with African swine fever. Karen Apicelli - USDA. African swine fever is a highly contagious viral disease affecting domestic and wild pigs. It kills nearly 100% of the pigs it infects. The good news is that the African swine fever virus does not infect or harm humans. The bad news is that it devastates household and national economies. Particularly in Africa and now in China and Vietnam, it can destroy the livelihoods. More here.

The Energy Mix On May, 2016, the Landsat 7 satellite (NASA) acquired this false-colour image of the wildfire that burned through Fort McMurray. Advanced technology allows it to penetrate clouds and smoke to reveal the hot spots associated with active fires. Smoke appears white & burned areas appear brown. More than two thousand wildfires hit British Columbia in 2017. Another massive one consumed much of Fort McMurray, Alberta a year earlier. Mike Flannigan, A University specialist in wildland fire, says both were connected to climate change.  Story here.

It's no secret that the now-infamous bug-killer, DDT , persists stubbornly in the environment. Still, what scientists found in lake sediments they recently analyzed in the Atlantic province, 50 years after it was last used there, shocked them. The sediment in all five lakes they tested (representing numerous watersheds), were laced with DDT at levels up to 450 times beyond what would be considered safe for key aquatic species and even entire food webs. by Larry Powell A plane sprays DDT on bud worms in Oregon, 1955.  Photo by Forest Health Protection. In some ways, it was like a real war. In the early fifties, governments and the forest industry teamed up in New Brunswick to launch a massive aerial assault against spruce bud worms.  The pests had probably been eating their way through conifer stands in eastern Canada and the U.S. for thousands of years. But now, they were causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage yearly to forests of mostly spruce an