As if decimating rainforests isn't bad enough, now it turns out industrial logging is also preventing leatherback turtles from nesting.
There is a timber boom in central Africa, with logging now allowed in two-thirds of Gabon's rainforests. Felled logs are floated down rivers to the coast in their thousands, where they are packaged for shipping abroad. Some are lost in transit, though, and float out to sea, eventually washing up along Gabon's 1000-kilometre coastline. Those beached logs pose a threat to breeding turtles, says William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
Maude Barlow is the head of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy organization, and founder of the Blue Planet Project. Barlow is author of the new book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
CLAYTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. - Jim Koan has gone hog-wild in his battle against a beetle that threatens his 120-acre organic apple orchard.
As part of a research experiment believed to be among the first of its kind, Koan is using pigs to help protect his fruit from the plum curculio, a tiny insect that is among the most destructive apple pests.
An electronic device designed to ward sharks away from surfers failed so spectacularly during a trial off South Africa that it was eaten by a great white.
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British marine experts have found what they claim is a world first - a six-legged octopus, or "hexapus", whom they have christened Henry.
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The Kashmir valley was rocked by a sharp tremor at around midnight on Friday night, and felt two others, one at about 2 p.m. and another in the evening on Saturday. A student died of a heart attack after the nocturnal tremblor, while people came out of doors in panic in many areas.
The evening's earthquake was the fifth experienced by the valley in the past 10 days, and details of any damage it might have caused are awaited.
Officials said that 4,500 people had been displaced by floods in the usually dry northern parts of Namibia following heavy rains in neighbouring Angola which led to the devastating floods.
Gabriel Kangowa, head of the Emergency Management Unit of Namibia, said that heavy rains in the northern neighbouring country, Angola, and torrential rains in Namibia turned the usually dry flood plains into raging rivers, washing away vital infrastructure such as roads, bridges, schools and clinics.
Coastguards in northern Egypt have discovered the dead body of a six-ton, 17-meter-long (56-feet) white whale, Egypt's official news agency MENA reported on Tuesday.
The rotten carcass of the rare albino whale was discovered lying on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in the Kafr el-Sheikh Governorate. It is believed to have died of a stomach wound at sea.
Sleet and deep snow made Arkansas roads slippery Tuesday and closed some schools as stormy weather stretched across the region.
At least 11 inches of snow fell at Russellville in west-central Arkansas, state highway department spokesman Randy Ort said. Some 18-wheelers had trouble negotiating roads and the highway department advised motorists to stay home.
Kerstin Gehmlich
ReutersTue, 04 Mar 2008 14:20 UTC
German pensioner Erika Ihiebert has lived with minor earth tremors caused by coal mining for years. But when her chimney collapsed nearly two weeks ago, she had had enough.
