Mike Baird has this week announced a plan for a six-month trial of shark nets off the beaches of northern New South Wales. This would extend the state’s shark net program from the 51 beaches now netted between Wollongong and Newcastle. The premier’s announcement was triggered by a surfer receiving minor injuries on Wednesday after […]
Tag: threatened species
Humanity driving ‘unprecedented’ marine extinction
Humanity is driving an unprecedented extinction of sealife unlike any in the fossil record, hunting and killing larger species in a way that will disrupt ocean ecosystems for millions of years, scientists have found. A new analysis of the five mass extinction events millions of years ago discovered there was either no pattern to which […]
Baby killer whale fights for life in New Zealand harbour
A baby orca separated from its mother and pod for two weeks is slowly dying in a New Zealand harbour, despite a taskforce being set up to try and save it. The orca – nicknamed “Bob” by locals – was separated from its pod two weeks ago and has been swimming in the waters of […]
Endangered Species Act: A Big Success!
One of the most frustrating elements for me of the toxic political climate today is how little facts seem to matter anymore in public discourse. It’s become a common belief that the Endangered Species Act hasn’t worked because, since its passage in 1973, only a handful of species have recovered enough to be de-listed. Just […]
Reserve with rare gorillas finally protected
The calamitous civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed more than five million people. It has also nearly wiped out populations of the world’s largest primate — the Grauer’s gorilla. From an estimated 17,000 individuals in 1995, Grauer’s numbers have fallen to less than 4,000 today, thanks to prolonged civil unrest, […]
POLL: Should leopards be culled to protect endangered penguins?
A leopard killed dozens of endangered penguins at a nature reserve outside Cape Town earlier this month, prompting a renewed debate about how best to protect South Africa’s threatened species. Ranger Cuan McGeorge found the bloodied, lifeless bodies of 33 African penguins on 11 June scattered across Stony Point, a reserve at the sleepy holiday […]
Indonesia’s birds being wiped out by pet trade
Birds are hugely popular pets in Indonesia. A 2011 study found, for instance, that more than one-third of households in the six biggest cities of Java and Bali kept birds as pets. Most of these pet birds are caught from the wild. Conservationists say that the popularity of bird-keeping in Indonesia has been driving the […]
One-third of North America’s birds at risk of extinction
More than one-third of North America’s native bird species are at immediate risk of extinction, a new report has found. The 2016 State of North America’s Birds report — compiled by scientists, government and non-governmental organizations and citizen scientists from Canada, the continental U.S. and Mexico, and publishedby the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI) […]