Group items tagged

Research published in the American Journal of Primatology earlier this month finds that the overall Western Chimpanzee population declined by six percent annually between 1990 and 2014, a total decline of 80.2 percent. The main threats to the Western Chimpanzee are almost all man-made. Habitat loss and fragmentation driven by slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial agriculture (including deforestation for oil palm plantations as well as eucalyptus, rubber, and sugar cane developments), and extractive industries like logging, mining, and oil top the list. In response to the finding that the Western Chimpanzee population has dropped so precipitously in less than three decades, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated the subspecies' status to Critically Endangered on its Red List of Threatened Species.

Potent, climate-warming gases are being emitted into the atmosphere but are not being recorded in official inventories, a BBC investigation has found. Air monitors in Switzerland have detected large quantities of one gas coming from a location in Italy. However, the Italian submission to the UN records just a tiny amount of the substance being emitted. Levels of some emissions from India and China are so uncertain that experts say their records are plus or minus 100%.

Los Angeles County approves the start of the Newhall Ranch master-planned community north of the city of Los Angeles. The state has never seen a community quite like Newhall Ranch, proposed by California developer FivePoint. It will be a carbon-neutral development in the Santa Clarita Valley that tackles such critical challenges as climate change, water conservation, and the dire housing shortage that is severely threatening our economic competitiveness.

On Thursday, Asia Pulp & Paper Group announced it is committing to retire roughly 7,000 hectares (~17,300 acres) of commercial plantation areas to protect threatened carbon-rich peatlands - the first time that plantations on tropical peatland have been retired for conservation purposes worldwide.

Climate change and other hurdles mean it will take more water - and potentially more taxpayer money - to save the Everglades, according to new scientific findings released Thursday. The report to Congress warns that rising seas and warming temperatures are threatening to worsen damage already done by decades of drainage and pollution, caused by development and farming overtaking the Everglades. A recent report showed that climate change, pollution and other factors could increase the cost to restore the Florida Everglades. So far, restoration costs are pegged at $16 billion, but additional efforts, such as proposed reservoirs, could add to that cost.

Chines courts are allowed to hand down the death penalty for serisous cases of pollution

The proposed Pebble Mine in southwestern Alaska is a project of almost unfathomable scale. The Pebble Limited Partnership intends to excavate a thick layer of ore - nearly a mile deep in places - containing an estimated 81 billion pounds of copper, 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum, and 107 million ounces of gold. The mine would cover 28 square miles and require the construction of the world's largest earthen dam - 700 feet high and several miles long - to hold back a 10-square-mile containment pond filled with up to 2.5 billion tons of sulfide-laden mine waste. All this would be built not only in an active seismic region, but also in one of the most unspoiled and breathtaking places on the planet - the headwaters of Bristol Bay, home to the world's most productive salmon fishery. Composed of tundra plain, mountain ranges, hundreds of rivers, and thousands of lakes, the greater Bristol Bay region encompasses five national parks and wildlife refuges, and one of the largest state parks in the U.S.