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"New research indicates that the middle [of the food chain] -small insectivorous birds and lizards-are critically important to overall health of an ecosystem, and actually help promote greater biomass." "Gruner and a team of other researchers looked at more than 100 studies insect predation by birds, bats or lizards and found that, regardless of the predator in question, their presence was associated with a 40 percent reduction in damage to plants. In turn, a healthy population of insectivores was linked to a 14 percent increase in plant biomass."

"One in six mangrove species faces extinction as coastal ecosystems are being destroyed or damaged by development, aquaculture, logging, and climate change, according to a new study. On the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central America, as many as 40 percent of mangrove species are threatened, the report said."

"Speed is not a word typically associated with trees; they can take centuries to grow. However, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change."

"Eight years ago, world governments made a pledge to put a halt to growing biodiversity loss by 2010. They have not succeeded. The ongoing loss of biodiversity has instead become even more severe of a threat to the planet's once-balanced ecosystems--it's become a full-on extinction crisis. Thanks to human development and expansion, species are now going extinct exponentially faster than ever before--they're dying out at the frightening speed of 1,000 times the natural rate."

"Today, Target became the first major US retailer to stop selling farmed salmon products! Salmon consumption in the United States is a huge market for retailers. Aquaculture (farming fish) is often called the future of the seafood industry, but some types of aquaculture - such as conventional open-net salmon farming - can cause tremendous damage to the environment. Parasite infestations, concentrated fish waste, the uncontrolled spread of genetic material, and the unsustainable use of wild fish to feed farmed animals all pose significant threats to the sanctity of our marine ecosystems."

Maps in the new Atlas of Global Conservation show the diversity of bird, animal and plant species populations, which are among 80 that scientists have produced for a comprehensive look at the planet's eco-regions. The maps crosses three types of habitats that exist: terrestrial, freshwater, and marine.

From 1950 to 2006 the United Nation Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO) estimated that 12,700 metric tons of fish were caught in the Arctic, giving the impression that the Arctic was a still-pristine ecosystem, remaining underexploited by the world's fisheries. However, a recent study by the University of British Colombia Fisheries Center and Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences throws cold water on this widespread belief. According to the study, published in Polar Biology, the total Arctic catch from 1950 to 2006 is likely to have been nearly a million metric tons, almost 75 times the FAO's official record.

The State and Federal government announced today that they would "pursue other alternative sources of energy, namely gas, to meet Sabah's power supply needs." Proposed for an undeveloped beach on the north-eastern coast of Borneo, the coal plant, according to critics, would have threatened the Coral Triangle, one of the world's most biodiverse marine ecosystems, and Tabin Wildlife Reserve, home to Critically Endangered Sumatran rhinos and Bornean orangutans. Local fishermen feared that discharges from the plant would have imperiled their livelihood.

Darwin would be heart broken----The Galapagos archipelago has already been transformed by global climate changes and human activity, a report has concluded.

This is messed up, "A series of events, including the 1982 El Nino, overfishing and the appearance of urchins that destroy coral, has altered the islands' marine ecosystems. At least 45 Galapagos species have now disappeared or are facing extinction. "