Ecosystems // Current

Uranium: Boom, Bust and Back Again

Mining is returning to the Uranium Capital of the World. But do people really want it back again?

dbocaz
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Farmed & Dangerous Alert

Groups Join Together in Exposing Problems With Farmed Salmon & Call on Supermarkets to Change "Sea lice has the... more

julesrs007
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Nature losses to far exceed losses due to 'bank crisis'

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an... more

JanforGore
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Feds Propose Putting 48 Hawaiian Species on Endangered List at Once

The federal government took a new, ecosystem-based approach to the endangered species list on Tuesday, proposing an all-at-once addition of 48 species, including plants, two birds and a fly, that live only on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

The action by the Interior Department would designate about 43 square miles as critical habitat for all the species rather than considering each species' habitat separately, which has been the practice for three decades. Officials said considering the species all at once should save time and resources and would help the whole ecosystem.

The same approach is planned to help protect rare species on Oahu, the Big Island and Maui over the next several years, and it could be considered for the Arctic, big river systems of the Southwest and areas of the mountain West, according to department officials.

"For more than three decades, we've been struggling with one species at a time," said Dale Hall, Fish and Wildlife Service director, in a conference call with news media. "This gives us a chance to look at groups of species and at the same time be economical in the way we designate critical habitat."

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, in Honolulu for an island health conference, said the new "holistic approach" will benefit not only the listed species but also the rest of the ecosystem.

The species include 45 plants, two birds and an insect, the Hawaiian picture-wing fly.

The Endangered Species Coalition hailed the action as "an end to the drought," noting that the Interior Department has added only one species to the endangered list in the past two years, the polar bear.

It pointed out that no recommendation has been made for 23 other species the administration had told Congress it would be proposing for this fiscal year.

The American Bird Conservancy said the two birds proposed for listing need all the help they can get. Both birds are species of honeycreepers.

The two Kauai birds are the akikiki and the akekee, both honeycreepers and prized finds for birdwatchers. The akekee is yellow and green with a short blue bill and long notched tail. The akikiki has dark feathers above and light feathers below and a pink bill.The federal government took a new, ecosystem-based approach to the endangered species list on Tuesday, proposing an all-at-once... more

TravG73
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1 month ago

Breaking news: House energy bill passes 236-189

The House of Representatives passed legislation on Tuesday lifting a longstanding congressional moratorium on offshore drilling. ... more

julesrs007
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2 responses

2 months ago

Save the planet? Buy it

Millionaires are purchasing entire ecosystems around the world and turning them into conservation areas. Their goal? To stop... more

TravG73
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14 responses

3 months ago

Deadly jellyfish hits UK beaches

Beach-goers are risking potentially deadly "harpoon" stings after Portuguese Man o' Wars started washing up on... more

GeoffNI
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15 responses

3 months ago

Mass Extinctions And 'Rise Of Slime' Predicted For Oceans

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale... more

GeoffNI
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3 months ago

Brown tree snake a threat to Guam

In the last 60 years, brown tree snakes have become the embodiment of the bad things that can happen when invasive species are introduced in places where they have few predators. Unchecked for many years, the snakes caused the extinction of nearly every native bird species on the Pacific island of Guam.

A variety of other damage has been directly attributed to brown tree snakes, including large population losses among other native animal species in Guam's forests, attacks on children and pets, and electrical power outages.

But new research by University of Washington biologists suggests that indirect impacts might be even farther reaching, possibly changing tree distributions and reducing native tree populations, altering already damaged ecosystems even further.

"The brown tree snake has often been used as a textbook example for the negative impacts of invasive species, but after the loss of birds no one has looked at the snake's indirect effects," said Haldre Rogers, a UW doctoral student in biology.

"It has been 25 years since the birds disappeared. It seems to me the consequences are going to keep reverberating throughout the community if birds are fundamental components of the forest," she said.

Birds typically make up a small part of the life of a forest, but they are important for pollination, spreading seeds around the forest and controlling insects that feed on plants. Guam, an island 30 miles long and 5 to 15 miles wide about 3,800 miles west of Hawaii, lost most of its native birds after the brown tree snake was introduced by accident from the Admiralty Islands following World War II. The snake has few predators on Guam, so its population density is quite high -- estimated at more than 3,000 per square mile -- and some individuals there grow to an unusual size of 10 feet long.

Before introduction of the brown tree snake, Guam had 12 species of native forest birds. Today 10 of those are extinct on Guam, and the other two species have fewer than 200 individuals. Though Guam has some non-native bird populations, few other birds moved in when native species died out, and none of them live in the forest. That leaves few birds to consume tree seeds and then drop them away from the trees.

That could have two possible negative impacts on the native forests, Rogers said. First, some plant species need birds to handle their seeds to ensure effective germination. In addition, seed predators and fungi that kill seeds are often found in high density directly beneath a parent tree, so the trees rely on birds to disperse seeds beyond the range of those negative effects. If native birds performed those functions on Guam, tree populations could suffer from the loss of birds. It appears 60 percent to 70 percent of tree species in the native forests are dispersed, at least in part, by birds, she said.

In the last 60 years, brown tree snakes have become the embodiment of the bad things that can happen when invasive species are... more

TravG73
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3 months ago

Plastics are Forever

ReusableBags.com Newsroom: VIDEO CLIP: Plastics are Forever The Cleanest Line - Patagonia, 08.05.08 Maui native Micah Wolf... more

julesrs007
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5 responses

3 months ago

Humans out of balance = nature out of balance

“All of the different species of bumblebees that we sampled around greenhouses showed the same pattern: really high levels... more

SeaJade
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4 months ago

Study shows air pollution doing serious harm to ecosystems

If you are living in the eastern United States, the environment around you is being harmed by air pollution. From Adirondack... more

JanforGore
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25 responses

4 months ago

Fossil Suggests Antarctica Much Warmer in Past

A college student's new discovery of fossils collected in the East Antarctic suggests that the frozen polar cap was once a... more

mundosanto
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1 response

4 months ago

It's a good read for eco-minded and those threatened by eco-agenda.

After reading an article here on current.com about the Monsanto company suing farmers over it's patented gene manipulated... more

Stradius
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4 months ago

Nature laid waste: The destruction of Africa

The massive scale of environmental devastation across the continent has been fully revealed for the first time in an atlas compiled by UN geographers. Michael McCarthy reports

It was long shrouded in mystery, called "the Dark Continent" by Europeans in awe of its massive size and impenetrable depths. Then its wondrous natural riches were revealed to the world. Now a third image of Africa and its environment is being laid before us – one of destruction on a vast and disturbing scale.

Using "before and after" satellite photos, taken in all 53 countries, UN geographers have constructed an African atlas of environmental change over the past four decades – the vast majority of it for the worse.

In nearly 400 pages of dramatic pictures, disappearing forests, shrinking lakes, vanishing glaciers and degraded landscapes are brought together for the first time, providing a deeply disturbing portfolio of devastation.

The atlas, compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the request of African environment ministers, and launched yesterday simultaneously in Johannesburg and London, underlines how extensively development choices, population growth, regional conflicts and climate change are impacting on the natural world and the nature-based assets of the continent.

The satellite photos, some of them spanning a 35-year period, offer striking snapshots of environmental transformation in every country.

The purpose of the atlas is to inspire African governments to improve their records as environmental custodians, and as such, its language and tone are studiously neutral, generally referring to environmental "change" rather than destruction. But although there are some examples given of change for the better, the vast majority of the case studies are of large-scale environmental degradation, and the atlas compilers freely accept that this represents the true picture.

They write of "the swell of grey-coloured cities over a once-green countryside; protected areas shrinking as farms encroach upon their boundaries; the tracks of road networks through forests; pollutants that drift over borders of neighbouring countries; the erosion of deltas; refugee settlements scattered across the continent causing further pressure on the environment; and shrinking mountain glaciers."
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This is a human tragedy.
The massive scale of environmental devastation across the continent has been fully revealed for the first time in an atlas... more