Environment

Highest-ever temperature recorded in Norwegian Arctic archipelago

OSLO, Norway (AFP) — Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard on Saturday recorded its highest-ever temperature, the country’s meteorological institute reported. According to scientific study, global warming in the Arctic is happening twice as fast as for the rest of the planet. For the second day in a row, the archipelago registered 21.2 degrees Celsius (70.2 Fahrenheit) in the afternoon, just under the 21.3 degrees recorded in 1979, meteorologist Kristen Gislefoss told AFP. Later in the afternoon […]

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Vietnam suspends wildlife trade as pandemic prods action

HANOI, Vietnam (AFP) — Vietnam, one of Asia’s biggest consumers of wildlife products, has suspended all imports of wild animal species “dead or alive” and vowed to “eliminate” illegal markets across the country. The directive signed by the leader of the Communist country follows an international scandal over the sale of wildlife, which has been blamed as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic in neighbouring China. It is a major victory for conservation groups who […]

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Much maligned elsewhere, bats get star treatment in central France

by Maxime MAMET Agence France-Presse BOURGES, France (AFP) — At a museum in central France, researchers tenderly feed insects and kitten milk formula to tiny orphaned bats — creatures widely reviled for their role in human disease outbreaks, most recently COVID-19. The pandemic has triggered bat-killing sprees in communities from India and Peru to Cuba and Rwanda, but the mission of the team at the Bourges natural history museum is to protect the misunderstood winged mammals. […]

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Reef tales: candid cams reveal shark populations in decline

by Sara HUSSEIN TOKYO, Japan (APF) — An unprecedented global survey has revealed a shocking decline in the number of reef sharks, with the predators “functionally extinct” on nearly 20 percent of sites studied. The four-year study used more than 15,000 baited and remotely operated cameras — so-called “chum cams” — to obtain the first comprehensive picture of where reef sharks are thriving and where they are virtually non-existent. The results, from over 370 reefs […]

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Rare twin red-ruffed lemurs born at Singapore zoo

SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) — Twin red-ruffed lemurs have been born at Singapore zoo, officials said Thursday, a rare double delivery that is a boost for the endangered saucer-eyed primates. It was the first birth at the zoo of the endangered creatures, which are native to Madagascar, in over a decade, Wildlife Reserves Singapore said. The arrival of the yet-to-be-named twins was “particularly special” because the creatures breed only once a year, it said. The fluffy […]

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160 turtles caught in plastic waste rescued from Bangladesh beach

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (AFP) — About 160 sea turtles, many of them injured after getting entangled in plastic waste, have been rescued after washing up on one of the world’s longest beaches in Bangladesh, an official and conservationists said Wednesday. The Olive Ridley turtles began floating to shore at Cox’s Bazar with a huge mass of plastic bottles, fishing nets, buoys and other debris at the weekend. Survivors were released back into the Bay of […]

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Tiger, pangolin farming in Myanmar risks ‘boosting demand’

YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — Conservationists have warned a sudden change in Myanmar’s law allowing the commercial farming of tigers, pangolins and other endangered species risks further fuelling demand in China for rare wildlife products. The Southeast Asian nation is already a hub for the illegal trafficking of wildlife, a trade driven by demand from neighbouring China and worth an estimated $20 billion worldwide. In June, Myanmar’s Forest Department quietly gave the green light to private […]

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Colombia lost forest area the size of Sao Paulo in 2019: report

BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Colombia lost 159,000 hectares of forest — an area the size of Brazilian megacity Sao Paulo — to deforestation in 2019, according to an official report presented on Thursday. Although considerable, it represents a 19 percent reduction in deforestation compared to the 197,000 hectares destroyed in 2018. In 2017, that figure was 219,000. “We’ve managed to control a growing trend of deforestation,” said Maria Claudia Garcia, the deputy minister for the […]

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Climate change turning US mountain lakes green with algae

by Phineas RUECKERT PARIS, France (AFP) — Global warming is turning clear mountain lakes green in the western United States because of an increase in algae blooms “without historical precedent”, researchers reported on Tuesday. The concentration of algae in two remote mountain lakes more than doubled in the past 70 years, researchers at Colorado State University found. Their results, published in the British Royal Society journal Proceedings B, highlight the potentially harmful effects of climate […]

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Tie for warmest June globally, Siberia sizzles: EU

by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France (AFP) — Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average in June across much of permafrost-laden Siberia, with last month in a dead heat for the warmest June on record globally, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said Tuesday. An Arctic hourly temperature record for the month — 37 degrees Celsius — was set on June 21 near Verkhoyansk in northeastern Russia, where a weather station logged a blistering 38C on […]

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Botswana reports mysterious deaths of hundreds of elephants

GABORONE, Botswana (AFP) — Hundreds of elephants have died mysteriously in Botswana’s famed Okavango Delta, the head of the wildlife department said Thursday, ruling out poaching as the tusks were found intact. The landlocked southern African country has the world’s largest elephant population, estimated to be around 130,000. “We have had a report of 356 dead elephants in the area north of the Okavango Delta and we have confirmed 275 so far,” Cyril Taolo, the […]

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Brazilian Amazon sees worst June in 13 years for forest fires

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Amazon forest fires in Brazil increased by 19.5 percent in June compared to the same month last year, making it the worst June in 13 years, authorities revealed on Wednesday. June marks the start of the dry period and there were 2,248 recorded fires, leaving analysts expecting a worse year for the rainforest than the devastating 2019, which provoked anger throughout the world. The National Institute for Space Research […]

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