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by Fulya OZERKAN Agence France Presse KARABURUN, Turkey (AFP) — The waves of the Black Sea lap peacefully on the shore of the Turkish coastal village of Karaburun outside Istanbul. Not far away, water buffalo peacefully graze on green pastures. But if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wins the June 24 presidential elections and succeeds in implementing one of his most controversial plans, this arcadian scene will be transformed by a shipping canal comparable to Panama […]
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) — Mexico’s population of wild jaguars has grown 20 percent in the past eight years, according to a study released Thursday, a bit of good news for an iconic species whose numbers have been declining. There are an estimated 4,800 jaguars in Mexico, found the study, carried out by a consortium of institutions and academics with remotely activated cameras triggered by sensors. That was a 20-percent increase from the first […]
PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AFP) — Slow and steady wins the race, the saying goes — and it seems to have worked for a small type of turtle native to western Mexico that has been declared a new species. For 20 years, residents of the area around Puerto Vallarta, a Pacific coast resort town, had been telling scientists about the little turtles native to their area. But it was only in May that zoologists were […]
by Mariëtte Le Roux Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Some of Africa’s oldest and biggest baobab trees — a few dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks — have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the past decade, researchers said Monday. The trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years and some as wide as a bus is long, may have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated. “We report that […]
TAMPA, United States (AFP) — Global warming is expected to make vegetables significantly scarcer around the world unless new growing practices and resilient crop varieties are adopted, researchers warned on Monday. By the end of this century, less water and hotter air will combine to cut average yields of vegetables — which are crucial to a healthy diet — by nearly one-third, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A […]
BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — Startling images of plastic shreds, rubber bands and other debris found jammed in the stomach of a green turtle in Thailand have highlighted the crisis of waste-strewn seas following the widely publicized death of a whale this month. Thailand is one of the world’s largest consumers of plastic, which kills hundreds of marine mammals and reptiles swimming off its coasts every year. The problem grabbed public attention in the first week […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — Up to five trillion grocery bags are used each year and like most plastic garbage barely any is recycled, the UN said Tuesday as it warned the world was choking on trash. In a report for International Environment Day, the UN warned at current levels the earth could be awash with 12 billion tonnes of plastic trash by the middle of the century. “Our oceans have been used as a […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Conservation experts warned Wednesday of alarming falls in Australian fish populations and called for more marine reserves and better management to halt the decline. A 10-year study, looking at nearly 200 species at 544 sites, found the main cause was overfishing, with climate change also contributing, although the organization that manages the nation’s fisheries disputed the findings. The research, in the decade to 2015 by the University of Tasmania and […]
by Harumi OZAWA Agence France Presse CHOSHI, Japan (AFP) — Ben Lecomte dived into the Pacific Ocean Tuesday, kicking off an epic quest to swim 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) from Tokyo to San Francisco, through shark-infested waters choking with plastic waste. Under sunny skies, the 51-year-old Frenchman slipped into cool and placid waters shortly after 09:00am (0000 GMT), in warm and pleasant conditions with a slight breeze. He will face giant waves, sharks and jellyfish, […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — At a recycling plant outside Tokyo, workers in face masks pick through an unending torrent of plastic rubbish, fuelled by a national obsession with pristine packaging — and famously strict rules that ensure much of it is reclaimed and reused. Some 10 tonnes of recyclable plastics are brought in every day to be processed at the Ichikawa Kankyo Engineering center, where workers hover over conveyor belts removing any stray items or […]
by Bhuvan Bagga © Agence France-Presse KANPUR, India (AFP) — Soot turned the white handkerchief around Abhash Kumar Sharma’s face to black as the police officer tried to direct gridlocked traffic in the Indian city with the world’s dirtiest air. It was all he had to ward off the pollution blamed for filling Kanpur’s hospital beds with growing numbers of chronic lung and cancer cases. “It is the same story for everyone who spends such […]
by Jenny Vaughan and Asia bureaus © Agence France-Presse THANH HOA, Vietnam (AFP) — A Vietnamese mangrove draped with polythene, a whale killed after swallowing waste bags in Thai seas and clouds of underwater trash near Indonesian “paradise” islands — grim images of the plastic crisis that has gripped Asia. About eight million tonnes of plastic waste are dumped into the world’s oceans every year, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic being tipped into […]
