Environmental headlines

One fifth of Americans are birdwatchers, according to a report released today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The report, which is an addendum to the 2006 National Survey…

A 20-foot-long, 5,000 pound basking shark washed up on a Long Island beach yesterday, reports CNN. The shark died shortly after authorities arrived on the scene. The cause of death…

Panna National Park, one of India's tiger reserves, no longer supports tigers, reports BBC News. State Minister of Forests Rajendra Shukla said a recent survey found the reserve no longer…

Comments from Chinese official don't commit the world's largest palm oil importer to buying eco-certified palm oil but suggest interest in the environmetal performance of the vegetable oil linked to…

While their trade has been prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 2002, Asian pangolin populations are rapidly declining due…

The impact of land crabs on the near-ocean forests in which they live has long been overlooked, with emphasis placed instead on water levels, salinity, and other abiotic influences. However,…

The deaths of billions of birds annually due to collision with window glass can be reduced through simple measures including dimming lights in buildings at night, landscaping changes, and using…

Indonesia has released revenue sharing rules for forest carbon projects, reports Reuters. According to a document released by the forestry ministry in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) at dephut.go.id, the revenue-sharing depends…

With deforestation increasingly driven by industrial actors, rather than subsistence farmers, tropical timber managers should be aware of the growing clout of environmental groups in swaying public opinion, says a…

A Brazilian federal prosecutor is leading an investigation into charges that illegal timber from the state of Pará is being laundered as "eco-certified" wood and exported to markets in the…

Auckland Zoo has pulled Cadbury chocolates from its shops and restaurants following the candy maker's decision to start adding palm oil to its chocolates, reports the Sunday Star Times. The…

Three satellite images released by the European Space Agency (ESA) reveal a dramatic shrinking of the Aral Sea from 2006 to 2009. The Aral Sea was until recently the world's…

ZTE Agribusiness Company Ltd, a Chinese firm, plans to establish a one million hectare oil palm plantation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) for biofuel production, reports China…

A variant of the deadly Ebola virus has turned up in pigs in the Philippines, report researchers writing in the journal Science. Roger W. Barrette and colleagues documented Reston ebolavirus…

Review reports that many pharma companies have eliminated their natural product research programs in the past decade, while from 2001 to 2008 there was a 30 percent drop in the…

Swiss banks, Credit Suisse and UBS, together with the French BNP Paribas, are helping Singapore-listed Golden Agri-Resources raise up to 280 million Swiss francs ($258 million) to finance conversion of…

A coalition of environmental groups stepped up efforts to stop Astra Agro Lestari (AAL), an Indonesian palm oil company, from continuing to clear orangutan habitat in Aceh province, Indonesia. The…

India hopes to reintroduce the world's fastest land animal some 60 years after it went extinct in the country, reports The Independent. India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said the government…

A 20-year study on rhesus monkeys found that substantially reducing caloric intake slows the aging process and leads to longer lifespans in primates. The research, published in the journal Science,…

Rhino poaching rates have hit a 15-year-high as a consequence of demand for horns for use in traditional medicine, according to new report published by the wildlife trade monitoring network…

Researchers have discovered one of the world's smallest salamanders in a road-side creek in Georgia. The amphibian is so unique that it represents the first new genus of four-legged animal…

A declaration issued by political leaders meeting at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, included a strong statement on the need to include forest conservation in a future climate agreement.…

Mechanisms to mitigate disputes with local communities, can reduce risk for companies seeking to profit from forest use while at the same time helping protect rights of forest people, argues…

Consumer apathy towards eco-certified palm oil have undermined efforts to improve the environmental performance of the industry, a top industry official told Reuters. Speaking with Reuters in an interview Tuesday,…

A new study, published in the journal Geology, estimates the age of the Amazon river at 11 million years. Conducting analysis of sedimentological and paleontological data obtained by drilling deep…

Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type of sea ice for the first…

The reasons behind the colonization of the Pacific islands have long been sources of controversy and fascination. Now a new study looks into toxic fish poisoning as a possible migration…

A new species of monkey has been discovered in the Brazilian Amazon, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society. The monkey, a type of saddleback tamarin, has been named Mura's saddleback tamarin…

Five to nine percent of the Amazon's 40,000 known species of plants will be at risk of extinction by 2050 should current deforestation trends continue, report researchers writing in the…

The establishment of protected areas on the Indonesian island of Sumatra may have helped reduce deforestation in adjacent unprotected areas, reports new research published in Journal of Biogeography. The results…