Green Options

Australia’s iconic koalas are in trouble.  Researchers are warning that koalas are alarmingly declining due to disease aggravated by stress!

The Army’s proposal to move 1,000 desert tortoises has been placed on hold by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, amid concerns over the Army’s previous plan that resulted in the death of 252 out of 600 tortoises.

The Center for Biological Diversity announced that a plan by the Army to move over 1,000 federally and state-listed threatened desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) from their Fort Irwin habitat to Bureau of Land Management lands has successfully been halted.

The European Union got strongly admonished this month by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) after the release of a report that is more than a decade late and comes to disheartening conclusions. The EU is giving only 0.1% of its budget to nature protection, with drastic consequences. Due to the miniscule investment in protecting wildlife, more than half of European habitats and species are under threat of extinction.

Portuguese environmentalists have condemned the killing of the country’s last remaining nesting male Iberian Imperial Eagle.

The bird, also known as the Spanish Imperial Eagle (Aquila adalberti), is one of the three rarest birds of prey on the planet, with only around 400 surviving, and is classified as ‘vulnerable to extinction’ in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The size of critical lynx habitat will increase from 1,841 square miles across three states to 39,000 square miles in six.

The expansion is due to a policy reconsideration because of allegations that Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Julie McDonald used her position to interfere with the way scientific findings were presented to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She resigned in 2007.

The Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Big Wildlife, and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance have asked eBay to stop the sale of guided trophy hunts for top predators like bears, wolves, cougars, and wolverines.

While most guided hunts currently listed on eBay are for animals like deer, elk, and geese, some auctions for predators are available, including a hunt for Alaskan brown bears with a going price of $5,100 with four days to go.

A team of eight scientists and conservationists with the Endangered Species Coalition have determined the top 10 species in the United States that deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The animals and plants that were considered for the list, titled “Without a Net,” were nominated by various organizations across the country. The coalition prepared the list because they believe that the US Fish and Wildlife Services do not sufficiently research and list species in need of new protection.

A comprehensive, international survey released today, showed that half of all 5,487 mammal populations are declining.

Just today, data from a global survey was revealed at a meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Barcelona, Spain.  1,700 researchers took part in the survey and named habitat loss and hunting as the major causes of the current, mass extinction.

Jan Schipper, who led the team, said: “Mammals are declining faster than we thought — one in four species is threatened with extinction worldwide.”

He said that land animals in Asia have been the hardest hit, where almost 80% of the primates are at risk.  Other mammals at risk across the globe include the blue whale, the bumblebee bat, the Caspian seal and the Tasmanian Devil.

Scientists currently have data for 4,651 species of mammals.  According to this study, 1,139 of these species face the threat of extinction.

Sarah Palin has said many times that the polar bear habitat is safe, and there’s no need to classify them as a “threatened” species.  Yet today comes word that as the Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears are finding less and less food sources and are beginning to cannibalize one another.