Galapagos land iguana returns to Santiago Island after 200-year absence

 Noel Kirkpatrick 

 Photo: Samuel Meylan/Wikimedia Commons

Welcome back, iguanas! A group of more than 1,400 land iguanas (Conolophus subcristatus) were reintroduced to Santiago Island as part of an ecological restoration project at the National Galapagos Park in Ecuador, the park announced on Jan. 7. The iguanas came from North Seymour Island, another of the 18 islands that make up the Galapagos archipelago. British naturalist Charles Darwin was the last person to officially see a land iguana on Santiago Island in 1835. Not long after, invasive predators like the feral pig wiped out the lizards…

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Pesticides Are Harming Bees in Literally Every Possible Way

Beekeepers are struggling to adapt their hives to the use of dicamba, a pesticide that kills many of the flowering plants that bees depend on.

Daniel Schoenen/Getty Images

Author: Liza GrossLiza Gross

This story originally appeared on Reveal and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent nonprofit news organization… Read more.

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Dangerosité du glyphosate : soupçon de plagiat sur un document européen

Le dernier rapport des autorités sanitaires de l’Europe sur le glyphosate a des similitudes troublantes avec les argumentaires de Monsanto.

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Sabrina Krief : un cri d’alarme pour les grands singes

 Les plus proches cousins de l’homme pourraient bien disparaître d’ici trente ans, si rien n’est fait pour mettre fin à la déforestation et aux nombreux trafics dont ils sont victimes. Le magazine “13h15 le samedi” (Facebook, Twitter, #13h15) est allé à la rencontre de la primatologue Sabrina Krief. Spécialiste française des chimpanzés, la vétérinaire de formation refuse de baisser les bras devant ce terrible constat. Entourée de personnalités comme Nathalie Baye, Laurence Parisot ou le chocolatier Patrick Roger, elle a lancé un appel pour que la France s’engage à sauver les grands singes de l’extinction.

La menace des pesticides

Comme Dian Fossey et Jane Goodall avant elle, la scientifique consacre sa vie aux chimpanzés, une des six espèces de grands singes, dont il ne subsisterait que 200 000 individus sur terre. Sabrina Krief suit une communauté en Ouganda depuis plus de dix ans, épaulée dans son combat par son mari, le photographe Jean-Michel Krief, avec qui elle a publié Les chimpanzés des Monts de la Lune (coédition Belin et Muséum national d’histoire naturelle). Violaine Vermot-Gaud, Patrice Brugère et Fanny Martino ont suivi cette professeure du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle dans son enquête, qui pourrait mettre au jour une autre menace pesant sur ses protégés : les pesticides ! Et pour cette titulaire d’un doctorat en écologie et chimie des substances naturelles, créatrice avec son mari du Projet pour la conservation des grands singes (PCGS), préserver ces bêtes et leur habitat, c’est aussi sauver la planète.

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 A Photographer’s Quest to Document the Last of the Rainforest Caribou

In a new book, photographer David Moskowitz turns his lens on the story of a rapidly declining species and habitat

By Jennifer Billock smithsonian.com Four years ago, David Moskowitz trekked into the world’s last inland temperate rainforest, stretching a short range from northeastern Washington and northern Idaho to southeast British Columbia in Canada. He hoped to get a glimpse and photograph the elusive mountain caribou, an animal known to live in this unique ecosystem. What he found was catastrophe. Moskowitz discovered that both the mountain caribou and their home are deeply endangered, and are becoming more so every day. Very few herds still exist and are limited to the Selkirk Mountains region, but the most endangered, the Selkirk herd, may already be extinct. “I was driving up the road, and I saw their habitat coming back down the road on logging trucks,” Moskowitz told Smithsonian.com, speaking of the part of the forest that hasn’t yet been protected. “I couldn’t believe we are actually, today, in the 21st century, clear-cut logging old-growth rainforest. It was this epiphany for me, just how utterly unbelievable the landscape these animals occupy is and what we’re doing to that landscape.”…  

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Conservationists plant a ‘super grove’ of redwood trees cloned from ancient stumps

The clones come from trees that were larger than any alive today.

Russell McLendon

 

About a quarter of the new saplings were cloned from the Fieldbrook stump (pictured), a redwood that was roughly 400 feet tall and more than 3,000 years old when it was cut down in 1890. (Photo: Archangel Ancient Tree Archive)

A new “super grove” of endangered coast redwood trees has arisen in California, thanks to a nonprofit group that planted 75 saplings at a park in San Francisco. Since their species is endangered, any new community of coast redwoods would be welcome news. Yet these 75 saplings are also newsworthy for another reason: They’re all clones, born of DNA that conservationists retrieved from ancient redwood stumps. Now growing together at the Presidio of San Francisco, they carry on a valuable genetic legacy that dates back thousands of years…

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 Londres : les taxis se mettent au vert

Les taxis londoniens se mettent eux aussi à rouler propre. Les célèbres blacks cabs commencent à passer à l’électrique. 

  Indémodable, et même irremplaçable. Le célèbre taxi londonien, le black cab, traverse les rues et les époques, depuis les années 1950, avec sa silhouette bien reconnaissable, mais aussi avec le crépitement de ses pots d’échappement. C’est bientôt de l’histoire ancienne, car désormais, le black cab se distingue par son silence, celui de son moteur 100% électrique.

500 taxis électriques

Sur les 21 000 blacks cabs londoniens, plus de 500 sont désormais équipés de moteurs électriques. Car petit à petit, Londres bannit tous ses taxis diesel. Chaque nouveau véhicule mis en service a désormais l’obligation de rouler à l’énergie verte. Des nouveaux véhicules qui reviennent également moins chers pour les chauffeurs. Pour sept jours de travail, les recharges coûtent en moyenne 45 euros contre kilométrage équivalent, 250 euros de carburant pour les anciens blacks cabs. Ces nouveaux taxis électriques pourraient bientôt débarquer dans d’autres pays d’Europe où la demande est forte : aux Pays-Bas, en Norvège, mais aussi en France.

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English legends are available. 

         

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1/3 da vegetação nativa do Brasil está em áreas pobres

Dado faz parte de diagnóstico da biodiversidade apresentado nesta quinta-feira por cientistas brasileiros; relatório procura dar subsídio à tomada de decisões

Júlia Marques, O Estado de S.Paulo

Bioma da Caatinga está ameaçado  Foto: José Patrício/Estadão

Um terço da cobertura vegetal nativa do Brasil está concentrada em áreas pobres, que deveriam ser consideradas prioritárias para a conservação de espécies. Esse e outros dados fazem parte de um diagnóstico sobre a biodiversidade do País, apresentado nesta quinta-feira, 8, por cientistas brasileiros. O documento reúne informações para dar subsídio à tomada de decisão de gestores nessa área. O Brasil é um dos países mais ricos em biodiversidade do mundo, mas enfrenta desafios. “A situação se agravou nos últimos dez anos. Os principais causadores dessa perda ainda são a mudança do uso da terra, que leva à degradação ambiental, e, mais recentemente, as mudanças climáticas”, explica Carlos Joly, professor da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) e coordenador da Plataforma Brasileira de Biodiversidade e Serviços Ecossistêmicos (BPBES), responsável pelo documento…

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Wyoming billionaire pledges to protect 30% of the planet by 2030

Hansjörg Wyss leads a conservation effort of epic proportions.

Matt Hickman

With a 8.5 million assist from the Wyss Foundation, the Andes Amazon Fund will disperse funds to a range of local organizations working to protect the forested headwaters of the Amazon River basin in Peru and beyond. (Photo: Jorge Láscar/Flickr)

If you follow global conservation and don’t already know the name Hansjörg Wyss, there’s a good chance you soon will. Born in Bern, Switzerland, the 83-year-old entrepreneur and businessman first made his fortune in the Belgian steel industry before establishing the U.S. division of Synthes, a multinational medical device manufacturer best known for producing internal screws and plates used to help mend fractured bones. (The company has since been acquired by Johnson & Johnson.) …

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