Articles include: Making way for wildlife; Biden suspends drilling in the Arctic Refuge; imagining life after highways; methane emitters; where solar & wind power are needed; Study: heat deaths & climate change; Trump denial; airlines & GHGs; Norwegian environmental base.
Tag: wildlife
The Daily Climate, April 27, 2021
Articles include: California drought; underreporting GHGs; weather station in the Andes; 26,000 snakes; tools: graphics and climate change; deforesting Brazil; EPA and California air standards; pandemic and snow melt in SE Asia.
The Daily Climate, April 23, 2021
Articles include: GHG commitments from Biden; Miami sea level rise costs; Steel company and GHG goals; Texas and clean energy; clean energy loan risks; humanity’s friend against climate change; bitcoin and the environment; Canada’s biggest banks missing from net-zero pledge; Study: dangerous toxins in Alaska’s algae; Study: ocean currents are changing; farmers and climate change; homelessness in America.
The Daily Climate, April 15, 2021
Articles include: 2050 Goals are inadequate; champagne & climate change; 100% clean power; renewable energy powers decarbonization; electric vehicles by 2035; Interior Department and Manchin; Epic Drought; Indian monsoon season; ticks moving into the Arctic; East African oil pipeline; American research station abandoned; food web in the Great Lakes.
The Daily Climate, April 13, 2021
Articles include: Reactions to ‘Fracktured’ investigation; Native communities and rising waters; Losing ‘gods’ to climate change; American Jobs Plan; climate change, wildfires, and Elk; California, oil wells, and groundwater pollution; NFTs fueling climate change; Pacific heat wave & the Gulf of Mexico; burning pig poop; polluting SUVs; laws aimed at pipeline protestors; moms battling climate change.
The Daily Climate, April 8, 2021
Articles include: Marine life can’t survive at the equator; Black climate agenda; Biden to court – dismiss children’s lawsuit; ghost forests and sea level rise; Enbridge pipeline & Michigan; handling the climate crisis; nuclear heating plant; lightning & the Arctic; Report: Canadian wood pellet industry; EPA reverses trump; polar bears’ food plight; PayPal net-zero pledge.
Study: Just 3% of world’s ecosystems remain intact
The Guardian: Just 3% of world’s ecosystems remain intact, study suggests. Pristine areas in the Amazon and Siberia may expand with animal reintroductions, scientists say.
ust 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat, a study suggests.
These fragments of wilderness undamaged by human activities are mainly in parts of the Amazon and Congo tropical forests, east Siberian and northern Canadian forests and tundra, and the Sahara. Invasive alien species including cats, foxes, rabbits, goats and camels have had a major impact on native species in Australia, with the study finding no intact areas left.
The researchers suggest reintroducing a small number of important species to some damaged areas, such as elephants or wolves – a move that could restore up to 20% of the world’s land to ecological intactness.
“Much of what we consider as intact habitat is missing species that have been hunted [and poached] by people, or lost because of invasive species or disease,” said Dr Andrew Plumptre, the lead author of the study, from the Key Biodiversity Areas Secretariat in Cambridge, UK. “It’s fairly scary, because it shows how unique places like the Serengeti are, which actually have functioning and fully intact ecosystems.
Study: Climate crisis pushing polar bears to mate with grizzlies, producing hybrid ‘pizzly’ bears
Independent: Climate crisis pushing polar bears to mate with grizzlies, producing hybrid ‘pizzly’ bears. Scientists say warming Arctic is expanding range of grizzlies, bringing species into greater contact.
Back in 2006, a strange polar bear was seen in the Northwest Territories of the Canadian Arctic. It had patches of brown on its otherwise white fur and an unusual face shape.
Hunters shot the bear dead and DNA tests confirmed what had been suspected: it was the hybrid offspring of a polar bear and a grizzly bear.
In 2010, another hybrid bear was shot by a hunter in the western Canadian Arctic. Tests revealed this animal was a second-generation cross born of a hybrid mother and grizzly father.
Dr DeSantis’s recent research has been into the dietary habits of bears and how the climate crisis is impacting them, with polar bears increasingly forced to scavenge from human waste as they look for alternative food sources.
Study: Marine life is migrating from the equator to the tropics
InHabitat: Marine life is migrating from the equator to the tropics, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study shows that many species known to reside in the equator’s warm waters are migrating to cooler waters. Scientists behind the study have linked this situation to global warming, saying that water at the equator has become too warm for some species.
Traditionally, the equatorial regions are known to have more species diversity than the poles due to abundant food sources and warm waters. However, with the changing climate, environments for marine life are changing, too. As equatorial waters become less hospitable, many species are migrating for better conditions.
Study: Climate change will hit ‘endemic’ plants and animals the hardest
Carbon Brief: Climate change will hit ‘endemic’ plants and animals the hardest, study warns. Plants and animals that only live in one region – known as “endemic” species – are expected to be “consistently more adversely impacted” by climate change than their less specialised counterparts, new research shows.
The synthesis study, published in Biological Conservation, finds that more than 90% of endemic species will face negative consequences – such as reduced populations – if global warming reaches 3C above pre-industrial levels. However, it adds that invasive species are expected to see overall neutral or positive impacts from the warming climate.