An irresistible press release popped up in my inbox this morning. Last month, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist spotted this Laysan albatross on the world’s most remote coral atoll, smack in the middle of the Pacific near Hawaii. The bird was first tagged by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 1956, when she was estimated …
Wildlife
The Next Great Extinction Could Be Coming Sooner Than You Think
It’s no secret that wildlife around the world is under severe stress. The most recent Red List from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated that 33% of the species evaluated by the group are at least threatened. The causes are many—hunting, disease, habitat loss, invasive species, even climate change—but …
Guam Now One of the Shark-Friendliest Places on Earth
If you’re a shark, the Pacific Islands are not a bad place to be these days. Yesterday, the Senate of Guam followed Hawaii’s lead and became the third region to move to ban the sale, possession and distribution of shark products in the U.S. territory. Hawaii was the first U.S. state to make the move last year, followed by the …
Are Humans Increasingly to Blame for Whales Strandings?
As authorities scrambled to pick up the pieces after a deadly earthquake hit the southern New Zealand town of Christchurch on Tuesday, government workers further south had just finished handling an altogether different kind of natural disaster. Over the weekend, more than 100 pilot whales were found on a remote beach on Stewart Island …
AAAS: Making the Tough Decisions on Protected Areas
I’m currently blogging to you from the Acela train en route to Washington for the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, otherwise known as nerdapalooza. (Just outside Philadelphia now, to which I can only say—go Phils!) I’ll have lots to write about today, over the weekend and early next week on the …
The Beginning of an End to Whaling in Japan?
The annual kerfuffle between Japanese whaling ships and the anti-whaling activists who chase them around Antarctic waters every winter is once again getting its seasonal share of ink and airtime. But this year the familiar scenes from the southerly tug-of-war might have a new victor – for now.
For the last several winters, the Sea …
An Urban President Hails America’s Great Outdoors
This afternoon, President Obama took time out of what has already become a bruising budget battle to announce the release of a new report on America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. It’s a program the White House launched last year to preserve parks and open space across the country. (Access the report, which gathered the opinion of more …
Wildlife: Amid the Ruins of Haiti, Conservationists Find Endangered Frogs
Even before the earthquake a year ago that killed at least 220,000 people, Haiti was an ecological nightmare. Large-scale deforestation has left less than 2% of the original forest cover standing—a fact that is starkly apparent when flying between Haiti and its neighboring country the Dominican Republic, which has conserved far …
Fool’s Gold: Giant Tuna Sold for Nearly $400,000 in Tokyo
A behemoth bluefin tuna sold for a record 32.49 million yen — or about $396,000 — in Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji fish market on Wednesday, smashing the 2001 record when a bluefin auctioned for 20.2 million.
The fish, bought by a sushi restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza district and a Hong Kong sushi chain, weighed in at market at an …
Why the Aflockalypse Is Business As Usual For Biodiversity—And Why That’s Not Good
Call it the Aflockalypse, the Aquapalypse or some other clever term that will soon be trending on Twitter. What’s clear is that something odd seems to going on with the birds in the sky and the fish in the waters. First on New Year’s Day, the residents of Beebe, Arkansas awoke to find thousands of dead birds scattered over rooftops …
