PLANET IN PERIL

PHYS ORG The white patch in the lower left and dark spot at right-centre were all that remained of two, once-mighty glaciers in the region in 2016. Now, they're gone. A NASA photo. The St. Patrick Bay ice caps on the Hazen Plateau of northeastern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, have disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery. Story here.

Science Magazine - Edited by Jeffrey Brainard The area of the mine in question. Photo by Erin McKittrick A company seeking to build a controversial gold and copper mine in Alaska won a major victory on 24 July when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued an environmental analysis saying the mine wouldn’t endanger the world’s most productive sockeye salmon fishery. The decision clears the way for the Corps to issue permits needed by promoters of the Pebble Mine, located at the headwaters of two major watersheds that form part of the Bristol Bay salmon runs, just north of the Aleutian Islands. Environmental and Native Alaskan groups and some salmon scientists blasted the new study, saying it understated risks by focusing on the mine’s small, initial footprint over 20 years of mining rather than its potential impacts if it expands to become one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, as its promoters hope. Mine backers have said such an expansion would get a closer environ

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism An Adobe photo. This article exposes the brazen culpability of the global beef industry for the fires ravaging the Amazon each year. Please open this "must-read' story here!

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Science Daily A new study looks at the growth of global livestock farming and the threat to biodiversity, and the health risks to both humans and domesticated animals. The growth of global livestock farming is a threat to our biodiversity and also increases the health risks to both humans and domesticated animals. The patterns that link them are at the heart of a study published in Biological Conservation by a scientist from the Institute of Evolution Sciences of Montpellier (ISEM -- CNRS/Université de Montpellier/IRD/EPHE) and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development's (CIRAD) ASTRE laboratory.

The Guardian The Denman glacier in eastern Antarctica. A public domain photo. Researchers say potent climate-heating gas almost certainly escaping into atmosphere. Story here.

by Larry Powell                 Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis).     Bobcat  (Lynx rufus). Photos by US Fish & Wildlife Service. To the untrained eye, the two species might pass as overgrown house cats. They're actually "felids" or mammals belonging to felidae , a family of wild cats.  Both live side by side in the wilds of Ontario, north of Lake Huron (see map). Researchers at the University of Trent (U of T) in Peterborough, Ontario, looked at bobcat and lynx numbers, movements and behaviour over three winters.  Their findings seem to show the bobcat holding an edge over the lynx in the struggle to survive, if not thrive in their rapidly-changing world.  The scientists are unable to give hard numbers. But, "harvest records" which document the numbers taken by trappers, offer an insight.  The lead author, Robby Marrotte, tells PinP, "We've noticed that the number of lynx harvested on traplines has decreased