Using tools which included video taken by a robot submarine, a Canadian research team recently discovered an amazing array of plants and animals, living in the heart of Milne, the very ice shelf which broke apart just this summer north of Ellesmere Island (above), losing almost half of its mass. Dr. Derek Mueller, Professor of […]
Author: Larry Powell
I’m a veteran eco-journalist living in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. I have a life-long love of wildlife & natural places. After working for radio and TV stations for about 30 years, I've turned to science writing as a freelancer specializing in the Earth Sciences. I’m a member of the Science Writers & Communicators of Canada and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I’m authorized to receive embargoed material through the Science Media Centre of Canada, the Royal Society, NatureResearch and the World Health Organization. This allows me advance access to important, peer-reviewed research often warning of habitat loss and the threat of extinction facing many wild species, usually thanks to human intrusion and intervention by the hand of man. They then often become "hot-off-the-press" stories which are ready to publish the moment the embargoes are lifted. I publish www.PlanetInPeril.ca (PinP) "Where Science Gets Respect." I own professional photographic gear and am sometimes able to enhance my stories with my own images.
Snarl for the camera! An international team of scientists and software developers use facial recognition technology to identify individual grizzlies in the wild.
Facial recognition techniques have long been used to identify primates, including humans. But, up ’til now, there’s really been no effective way of identifying wild species like the grizzly (brown) bear who, unlike the zebra or giraffe, lacks unique and consistent body markings. In co-operation with two US software developers, four scientists from the University […]
Can manmade rope bridges offer relief for the world’s rarest primate – the Hainan gibbon? A new study shows promise.
The Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus) is described as “The world’s most critically endangered primate.” In fact, its numbers are said to be much lower than any other primate on Earth. It’s found in just a single block of forest on Hainan Island, China, and nowhere else. Like so many similar creatures, it travels through the […]
Massacre on Cyprus. Researchers call for a crack down on poachers who lure millions of birds to their deaths on the Mediterranean island with recordings of their own songs.
Millions of birds like the Sardinian warbler (above) and the Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) have been migrating through the region for a long time. And, each year for many years, poachers on Cyprus have been trapping and killing them illegally. The slaughter is now said to have reached “industrial levels.” A study just published by The […]
Could a million freshwater turtles help clean up some of Australia’s polluted rivers? A team of scientists believes, they could!
For well over a century, freshwater fish from Europe – the carp (originally from China), have been released, either deliberately or accidentally from fish farms, into Australian waterways. The fish, now widely regarded as pests, are thriving. Their habitat includes rivers flowing through the Murray-Darling Basin of New South Wales. Those vast waterways support, through […]
New research shows, two closely-related species of wild cats in Ontario, Canada, may face starkly different futures. Is this “survival of the fittest?”
To the untrained eye, the two species might pass as overgrown house cats. They’re actually “felids” or mammals belonging to felidae, a family of wild cats. Both live side by side in the wilds of Ontario, north of Lake Huron. Researchers at the University of Trent in Peterborough, Ontario, looked at bobcat and lynx numbers, […]
According to a new study – there’s simply no proof that wolf culls – aimed at saving western Canada’s endangered mountain caribou – are working.
New research by a team of biologists, seems to support critics who have long argued that wolves are being sacrificed unnecessarily in efforts to save mountain caribou in British Columbia and Alberta from the growing threat of extinction. Since the 80s, authorities in the two provinces (Canada’s westernmost) have been conducting “culls” which have probably […]
New research suggests, zoos and aquariums in Canada do little to protect endangered creatures in the wild.
A study published in the Canadian journal, Facets recently, begins positively enough. It acknowledges that the thirty Canadian zoos and aquariums represented by CAZA, a private, non-profit charity, do try to be leaders in researching this field. And, they do take part in programs aimed at species survival by breeding animals in captivity, then re-introducing […]