The batteries used to store electricity from solar panels could become a major source of lead pollution in China and India, a new study warns. It concludes both nations will need to improve mining, manufacturing and recycling practices if they want to prevent planned solar power expansions from causing massive releases of the toxic element. […] Read More »
A continuing global failure to crack down on a booming trade in body parts from endangered animals could soon cause some species – including rhinos and tigers — to “wink out” of existence, a conservation advocate warns. But a couple of recent developments, including a recent United Nations decision to make combating wildlife crime a […] Read More »
In Europe, some farmers are paid to periodically mow fields to create habitat for grassland birds – often regardless of the outcome. In Cambodia, villagers are paid to preserve forests – but only if visiting birdwatchers see certain unusual species. But which approach – payment for action, or payment for results – is best for […] Read More »
If green is your color, then cotton may be your cloth. A new effort to rank commonly-used textiles by their environmental impact has found that organic cotton tops the list of the least damaging threads, while synthetic acrylic finished last.
“Surprisingly, very little research has been carried out to assess the currently available fibers in […] Read More »
By Paul Salopek Illustration by Daniel Reiter
Look at the seed. It is oblong, tapered like a bowling pin, ashy black, smaller than a peppercorn.“You can see it’s not really domesticated,” Chris Schmidt says.
Schmidt, who is prematurely bald, soft-spoken, a bit monastic, a noticer of small things, looks exactly like an entomologist from the […] Read More »
Across South and Central America, forests are reclaiming large swathes of countryside as rural residents move to the city. The migration trend is often seen a boon for biodiversity, as fewer people can mean less hunting, fishing, logging and land clearance. A provocative new study from Mexico’s southwestern highlands, however, argues that fewer people could […] Read More »
A ban on a veterinary drug that has caused devastating vulture die-offs in South Asia is beginning to produce benefits, a new survey concludes. But vulture populations in India and neighboring nations will continue to decline without greater efforts to banish the compound from the birds’ food supply.
Since the 1990s, the region’s once robust […] Read More »
A trio of turtle-sniffing dogs – and some clever detective work – has enabled researchers to discover where a rare Vietnamese turtle makes its home in the wild. The find could help preserve the endangered species, which had been known only from Asian markets.
Asia’s turtles are facing a severe “crisis” due to overhunting, “and […] Read More »
The Capital of Biodiversity is facing a tsunami of toxic mercury. Spurred by rising prices, unregulated gold miners are flooding into a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon, clearing forests and contaminating the landscape with mercury used to extract the precious metal. And mercury releases could double this year alone, a new study predicts, as […] Read More »
OK, maybe “Turbines for Trashed Landscapes” wouldn’t be the right slogan. But a new analysis concludes the U.S. could get all the windpower it wants by building wind farms on “disturbed” lands that don’t have much value for wildlife.
U.S. officials have a set a goal of using windpower to produce 20% of the nation’s […] Read More »
It turns out one man’s trash is another rat’s treasure. A former Buenos Aires landfill has turned out to be a great refuge for native rat species in Argentina, a new study finds.
For years, researchers have been studying just how many plants and animals really recolonize reclaimed landfills. Outside of Buenos Aires, a team […] Read More »
An avalanche that severed the main electric line into Juneau, Alaska has given researchers a unique look at how high electricity prices can cause long-lasting changes in how people use energy.
The April, 2008 slide cut power lines that connect the Alaskan city of about 30,000 to its main power source, two hydroelectric dams about […] Read More »
In late June 2009, researchers in Rwanda noticed a female mountain gorilla coughing as she fed in her forest home. Within days, she was dead – and a new study concludes that she and an infant gorilla were killed by a virus that appears to have spread from human visitors. The news highlights the risk […] Read More »
The evidence isn’t black-and-white, but paint color could be contributing to wildlife kills at the world’s growing number of wind turbines. Field experiments in England suggest that common turbine hues attract insects, and the buzzing food supply might, in turn, lure hungry birds and bats too close to the whirling blades.
A few studies have suggested that insects […] Read More »
That Merlot with the plastic bottle-stopper may be threatening biodiversity, according to a new study of bird life in the Mediterranean oak forests that produce traditional corks.
“Montados” in Portugal and “dehesas” in Spain are agricultural grasslands dotted with the cork oak (Quercus suber) and holm oak (Quercus ilex) trees. The cork oaks produce much of […] Read More »
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Changing the BatteryFlamingos stand precariously on top of one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium—the very stuff that powers our mobile world
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Shrink to FitHumanity appears to be ushering in new age of minifauna, a kind of Lilliputian world full of runts and dwarves |
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Chasing RainbowsLured by a utopian visions, agencies dropped billions of trout into thousands of lakes. Now, they’re determined to undo the damage they caused. |
