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© UnknownA bird-eating spider found at a Bowen business
For about six weeks, residents have reported seeing huge bird-eating spiders crawling around their backyards and gardens.
Amalgamated Pest Control Bowen pest technician Audy Geiszler took this incredible photo of one of the spiders he caught wandering across the garden of a restaurant near the town's centre.
Mr Geiszler estimated its body alone was 5cm long, a specimen declared 'especially large' by the Queensland Museum. Most grow to be the size of a man's hand.
© Raphael Quinet/Creative CommonsThe situation of bears in the Iberian Peninsula is critical.
The non-invasive analysis of 146 samples has allowed for the identification of 39 bears in the western sub-population, and 9 in the eastern one, so as to show the genetic structure of the population. In order to obtain the individual genotypes of the bears, scientists have employed 18 micro-satellite markers in a joint fashion, and a sex marker with high-class genetic technology.
© Dean GrubbsSharks and other large predatory fish become rare on Caribbean reefs near large human populations.
While other scientists working in the Caribbean have observed the declines of large predators for decades, the comprehensive work by Stallings documents the ominous patterns in far more detail at a much greater geographic scale than any other research to date.
"Seeing evidence of this ecological and economic travesty played out across the entire Caribbean is truly sobering," said Associate Professor John Bruno of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who served as the PLoS One academic editor for Stallings' new paper.
© Graham TurnerAccording to the Environment Agency, the number of European eels across the continent has declined by as much as 95% in the past 25 years.
But the mystery of the vanishing eels is troubling fisheries officials, conservationists and fishermen who for generations have hunted the curious animal.
A conference in Somerset on the plight of the eel, which was attended by experts from across Europe, has been hearing this week that the eel is in crisis.
The number of European eels across the continent has declined by as much as 95% in the last 25 years, the Environment Agency says. Officials report that the number of young eels arriving in Britain's estuaries, rivers and streams this spring is significantly down on last year. Andy Don, an Environment Agency fisheries officer who has studied the eel for 20 years, said: "There is no doubt that there is a crisis. People have been reporting catching a kilo of glass eels this year when they would expect to catch 40 kilos. We have got to do something."
ProPublica has been reporting for months about how natural gas drilling is affecting the environment, but of all the causes for concern we've reported, here's a doozy.
Sixteen cattle dropped dead in a northwestern Louisiana field this week after apparently drinking from a mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig, according to Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality and a report in the Shreveport Times. At least one worker told the newspaper that the fluids, which witnesses described as green and spewing into the air near the drilling derrick, were used for a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. But the company, Chesapeake Energy , has not identified exactly what chemicals are in those fluids and is insisting to state regulators that no spill occurred.
Sixteen cattle dropped dead in a northwestern Louisiana field this week after apparently drinking from a mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig, according to Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality and a report in the Shreveport Times. At least one worker told the newspaper that the fluids, which witnesses described as green and spewing into the air near the drilling derrick, were used for a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing. But the company, Chesapeake Energy , has not identified exactly what chemicals are in those fluids and is insisting to state regulators that no spill occurred.
© AlamySwarms of poisonous Portuguese Men o'War have been spotted off Spain
Swept by westerly winds through the Gibraltar Strait from its north Atlantic habitat, Physalia physalis is set to colonise the Med and cause more pain to beleaguered holidaymakers.
Clusters of up to 50 Men o' Wars, which are not strictly jellyfish but floating colonies of microscopic hydrozoans, are drifting off the Murcian resort of San Pedro del Pinatar on Spain's Costa Calida. Scientists say they could soon invade waters around the Balearic Islands and advance towards the Catalan coast.
With a sting 10 times stronger than an ordinary jellyfish, it presents a more dangerous threat than the annual jellyfish invasion of beaches in Spain, France, Italy and North Africa.
© Bat Conservation International/The Clumbus Dispatch
Abandoned mines in the Wayne are well-known among biologists as winter havens for hibernating bats. Banning visitors could help keep white-nose syndrome from extending into Ohio, officials say. Discovered in New York in 2006, the disease has spread to eight other Eastern states, including Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The syndrome is named for a white fungus that grows on bats' faces, ears, wings and feet.
Nearly 500,000 bats have died.
Use of few or no chemicals makes orchards good wildlife habitat
The National Trust says 60% have disappeared since the 1950s, putting local varieties of apples, cherries, pears, plums and damsons under threat.
It is launching a £536,000 drive to reverse the decline of the orchards.
Their trees provide important habitats for species such as the noble chafer beetle and lesser spotted woodpecker.
The orchards - some with as few as five trees - also offer sources of pollen and nectar to bees, which are thought to be declining partly because of a lack of suitable food.
Pressure from commercial fruit growers has led many small-scale producers to develop their orchards or convert them to other uses.
Lima - About 100 people have been bitten in recent days by bats in an unusual ongoing series of attacks in Peru's Amazon region of Bagua, where a 6-year-old boy has died, apparently after contracting rabies.
The daily Peru 21 on Thursday quoted regional health authorities, who said that they fear there is a rabies outbreak among the bats, which would explain the 300 bat-bite cases registered in the last 12 months.
The daily Peru 21 on Thursday quoted regional health authorities, who said that they fear there is a rabies outbreak among the bats, which would explain the 300 bat-bite cases registered in the last 12 months.
