habitat loss
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Giant mob protests Brazil crackdown on illegal logging
A mob of some 3,000 people trashed a government office in Paragominas, Brazil, on Monday to protest the government’s crackdown on illegal logging. Environment Minister Carlos Minc says the riot will not deter anti-logging efforts. sources:
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Colombian vice prez chides cocaine users for rainforest destruction
Cocaine users get no love from Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderon, who speechified to police officers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday: “Colombia has lost more than [5 million acres] of rainforest in the last 15 years to plant coca. If you snort a gram of cocaine you are destroying [43 square feet] of […]
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Cote d’Ivoire’s West African chimp population drops off dramatically
The population of West African chimpanzees in Cote d’Ivoire has declined 90 percent in the last 18 years, according to a new study published in Current Biology. In the 1960s, the West African country was home to about 100,000 of the apes; in 1989-1990, scientists counted 8,000 to 12,000, which they estimated to be half […]
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Overrun by humans, Galapagos Islands crack down
The Galapagos Islands are totally hot right now. To tourists, the island chain 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador offers stunning biodiversity (blue-footed boobies!) that infamously inspired Charles Darwin to write The Origin of Species. To residents, the tourism-driven economy offers high wages, top-notch public schools, and a dearth of violent crime. But as […]
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Severe erosion caused by Hurricane Ike may make many homes illegal
Hundreds of beach houses on the gulf coast of Texas may soon be declared illegal and seized under a state law that prohibits houses from being built (or remaining) between a beach’s high and low tide marks. Hurricane Ike’s 12-foot storm surge and 100-mile-per-hour winds severely eroded many Texas beaches and redrew the tide lines […]
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Oil platforms off La. fare OK under hurricane; wetlands, not so much
Louisiana’s people and property fared better under Hurricane Gustav than had been feared, but acres of valuable wetlands were likely irrevocably destroyed. “The last thing on anyone’s mind during a hurricane is how the wetlands are going to do,” says activist Aaron Giles. But since happy and healthy wetlands act as storm barriers, “wetlands are […]
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Feds axe acreage of spotted owl habitat
The amount of old-growth forest designated as critical habitat for the northern spotted owl was slashed 23 percent, or 1.6 million acres, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday. One might think that means that spotted owls are doing well for themselves, but no: the spotted owl population is dropping by 4 percent […]
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Wildlife so far largely safe from Mississippi River oil spill
Louisiana wildlife have so far largely escaped harm from the oil spill that shut down 100 miles of the Mississippi River last week. But biologists remain nervous as the oil slick heads downstream toward the Delta National Wildlife Refuge and neighboring marshy areas, where nearly 100,000 migratory birds will alight in the fall. Barriers are […]
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Oil spills into Mississippi River after tanker-barge collision
Some 420,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled into the Mississippi River early Wednesday, after a 600-foot chemical tanker collided with a fuel barge. The collision split the barge in half; thick, slow-to-evaporate fuel has traveled at least 12 miles downriver. The Coast Guard closed a 29-mile stretch of the river around New Orleans, and residents […]