Environmental stories from around the web, April 20, 2018

  • There are many important conservation and environmental stories Mongabay isn’t able to cover.
  • Here’s a digest of some of the significant developments from the week.
  • If you think we’ve missed something, feel free to add it in the comments.

Tropical forests

Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park is a haven for birdwatchers (The New York Times).

Drinking water threatened by logging in the Solomon Islands (Wildlife Conservation Society/EurekAlert).

A campaigner who took on the palm oil industry has been killed in Brazil (The Guardian).

Fishing and rampant tourism are threatening the biodiversity paradise in Indonesia’s Komodo National Park (The Guardian).

Peru’s president wants to move forward with mining to capitalize on commodity prices, but says that communities will have a say (Reuters).

Ivory Coast is working with chocolate makers to halt deforestation for new cocoa plantations (Reuters).

A new global study finds evidence that the climate change mitigation strategy REDD+ might diminish women’s well-being (CIFOR Forests News).

How to save an endangered eagle that lives only in Philippine forests (Earth Island Journal).

Scientists explain the outsize importance of blocks of relatively undisturbed “intact forest landscapes” (The New York Times).

Coffee companies to work with farmers to reduce deforestation in Indonesia (Global Landscapes Forum).

Artists come together to help save Tasmania’s rainforest (Arts Hub).

Film: Blockchain technology that underlies digital currencies could help save the Amazon (The Economist).

Food giants Pepsi and Nestlé alleged to have deforested rainforest in Borneo for a joint venture (The Grocer).

Other news

The U.S.’s Gray Ghost caribou herd is down to three females, making it “functionally extinct” (The New York Times, The Province, Calgary Herald).

New study catalogs the irreversible changes to the Great Barrier Reef after heat waves hit it in 2016 and 2017 (Los Angeles Times).

Humans are causing large mammals to grow smaller in size, and we’ve been doing it for thousands of years (Los Angeles Times).

Satellite maps detail the distribution of carbon dioxide around the world (Institute of Atmospheric Physics/Chinese Academy of Sciences/EurekAlert).

Biologists highlight the need for maps that show the distribution of threatened species (Portland State University/EurekAlert).

Strategies to deal with climate change could be adversely affecting biodiversity in Ethiopia (Stockholm University/EurekAlert).

A new survey of the deep sea around Indonesia finds more than 12,000 animals (National University of Singapore/EurekAlert).

U.N. official says that half of the world needs to be more hospitable to nature (The Guardian).

Iceland plans to hunt almost 200 whales after two-year layoff (The Guardian).

Coral at the mouth of the Amazon River should keep oil companies from drilling, Greenpeace says (Reuters).

EU says that Poland illegally logged an ancient forest (Reuters).

Species with males that have to fight for mates might do better in the face of climate change, new research finds (Queen Mary, University of London/Phys.Org).

Forests in the eastern U.S. might grow back faster thanks to climate change (Duke University/Phys.Org).

Humans touched off a pulse of mammal extinctions at least 125,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought (University of Nebraska-Lincoln/Phys.Org).

The shipping industry consents to slowing ships down to lower carbon emissions (Mother Jones).

Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C., welcomes the birth of a new western lowland gorilla (BBC News).

Shipping routes are now much closer to the North Pole as ice recedes (Pacific Standard).

Climate talks in Africa focus on cooperation (Devex).

A photographer sets out to catalog global plastic pollution (Lonely Planet).

Banner image of Philippine eagle by Paul Pajo via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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South Africa Today – Environment


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